On the morning of August 16, 1977, a handful of police officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's (RCMP) Victoria drug squad, including at least one bomb expert and a locksmith, carefully made their way across a property on Westdowne Road, located just outside the small town of Ladysmith on Vancouver Island. The officers slowly encircled a barn at the back of the property, with their hands clenched tightly around their weapons and their eyes scanning incessantly for potential booby-traps.

As the officers reached the complex, they discovered that the building resembled more of a fortress of brick and cement, complete with gigantic staircases connected to the building by a drawbridge. Inside, they found numerous secret passageways that ultimately led to a hidden room. The room contained traces of an illicit drug, MDA. It was the final piece of evidence needed to arrest "The Wizard of Ladysmith" a.k.a.: Arthur James Williams.

The story goes that in an underground fortress on his Westdowne Road property in Ladysmith, known as "The Barn," Williams manufactured large quantities of the drug Methylenedioxyamphetamine, or MDA. Using a network of biker gangs, it's believed that Williams's product was distributed as far east as Winnipeg, and some have even suggested his product was sold internationally. In 1977, after years of monitoring Williams's activities, the Victoria drug squad arrested him on charges related to drug manufacturing and conspiracy. But Williams never made it to the courtroom.

On the evening of November 30, 1977, days before he was scheduled to stand trial, Williams took off in a small, single-engine Cessna bound for either Vancouver or Nanaimo. However, his plane never landed in either destination.

After an official inquest, authorities claimed that Williams's plane crashed in the Strait of Georgia, a narrow, navigable body of water between British Columbia's mainland and Vancouver Island, killing him. However, the majority of the wreckage and Williams's body were never found. Almost 15 months later, Williams's estranged wife, Margaret Williams, also seemingly vanished without a trace, leaving authorities baffled.

Nearly 40 years later, the Williams investigation is still open despite a provincial inquiry into his death. Margaret's disappearance has never been publicly solved.

"The Wizard of Ladysmith," a.k.a, Arthur James Williams. Photo courtesy of the Times-Colonist

According to Williams's death certificate, he was born in Portbury, England, on December 31, 1924. His service records show he enlisted in the British army in 1943 at the age of 19. Williams was a small man, standing only 5'5" and weighing 125 pounds at the time of his enlistment. In later years, Williams packed on some muscle, most likely from his time in the military, but he'd always maintain his wiry frame.

Williams's military records show he fought with the 1st Battalion of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and the 5th Battalion of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. He was wounded at least once while fighting in Europe, and, from his service records, it appears he was popular amongst his superiors. Testimonials describe Williams as "extremely trustworthy," "reliant," "loyal," "responsible," and "hard-working." Williams was discharged from the British army in May of 1951 at the rank of sergeant.

After leaving the army, Williams set his sights on Canada. He initially moved to Alberta, where he met and married a woman by the name of Margaret McDonald. Around 1955, the couple moved to Vancouver Island, settling in the small town of Ladysmith. Ladysmith sits on the southeast side of Vancouver Island, approximately 15 miles south of Nanaimo and 55 miles north of Victoria, British Columbia's capital. Originally named Oyster Harbour, Ladysmith was primarily known for mining, logging, and fishing.

Shortly after Williams and Margaret settled in Ladysmith, he became infatuated with archery. He became a proficient archer and even started his own archery business, which was later seized by the bank, likely prompting Williams's distrust of governments and institutions.

Nothing in Williams's service records indicates how or why he would be involved in a drug conspiracy, and it's unclear exactly how MDA got on his radar. MDA was first synthesized in Germany in 1910, and the US military considered experimenting with a form of MDA to be used as a sort of truth serum during the 1950s. The drug became popular during the 60s, often associated with the counterculture movement of the time, and it was often referred to as the "hug drug" or "Sally." MDA can be taken in pill form or in gel caps (it's believed Williams used gel caps to package the MDA he produced), and once ingested, the drug produces a highly stimulant and hallucinogenic state, even more so than its chemical cousin, MDMA.

During the early 1970s, Williams founded the BC Institute of Mycology, a body dedicated to the study of, and experimentation with, fungi and mushrooms. Williams was fascinated with the topic and spent thousands of dollars on equipment and chemicals for his research. By 1972, however, the US Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, now the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), had become suspicious of Williams's large orders of Isosafrole, a chemical used to manufacture illicit drugs. (It should be noted that a FOIA request to the DEA showed that files pertaining to Williams have been destroyed, apparently in accordance with DEA protocol.)

The RCMP case files on the investigation into Williams are still closed to the public. Even through an Access to Information Request, the files are not available. The reason provided to VICE was that although Williams was declared dead by a provincial inquiry, the federal case is still open (Williams would be 92 if still alive). As a result, the case files will not be available until the year 2080.

However, the RCMP did supply one piece of weird evidence: At least one witness told the RCMP that Williams was heavily influenced by a science-fiction novel, The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester. The book was first published in 1952 and won the Hugo Award in 1953. The plot is complicated, but in essence, it's a police procedural set in the 24th century where telepathy is common and a man commits murder in order to save his business. Any commonalities between the story and the case surrounding Williams seem very loose at best.

Luckily, there is a much more reliable and tangible source from the police investigation into Williams. During the time of Williams's disappearance, Derek Sidenius, a reporter for a local Victoria paper called the Times (now the Times Colonist), covered the case against Williams extensively. Sidenius wrote that, throughout the early 1970s, the RCMP's Victoria drug squad and local authorities conducted an extensive investigation into the activities of Williams and an associate, Dale Elliot. Elliot was a local mechanic suspected of having connections to biker gangs and their drug network. Using informants, bugs, and surveillance, the RCMP tirelessly monitored Williams and Elliot until the winter of 1973. After observing and bugging a suspected lab, on one of Elliot's properties in Chemainus, authorities decided to raid both the lab and Williams's residence.

During the raid, authorities caught Elliot with chemicals used to manufacture illicit drugs. As a result, both Williams and Elliot were put on trial for charges related to trafficking MDA, conspiring to traffic MDA, and possessing MDA. In the end, Elliot was found guilty of trafficking MDA and sentenced to ten years. On January 25, 1975, a judge acquitted Williams on all charges, and it appeared that he was in the clear.

Williams's barn on Westdowne Road in Ladysmith, where he manufactured large quantities of MDA. Photo courtesy of the Vancouver Sun

The following year, 1976, was a busy one for Williams. For one, it appears that he had continued manufacturing large batches of MDA. In April of the same year, Elliot was acquitted by the British Columbia Court of Appeal after serving only 15 months of his sentence. The acquittal hinged on the grounds that the police had failed to properly describe the drug he was allegedly trafficking. As a result, Elliot and Williams were free to continue their operation.

In an article for Quest magazine a few years later, John Masters wrote an article titled "The Wizard of Ladysmith." In the article, Masters wrote, " today).

Not much is known about Williams's personal relationship with drugs. Rumors have it that during the 1960s, hippies traveling through Vancouver Island often stopped at his place, experimenting with MDA. Locals say that Williams often spent time down at the courthouse, coming to the defense of "hippies" who had been busted on drugs. The aforementioned article by Masters said Williams kept a notebook filled with egotistical and eccentric ramblings, encouraged by his own experimentation with MDA, but there's no concrete evidence to support this claim.

During the summer of 1976, Williams obtained his pilot's license after completing a training course. Soon after, Williams purchased two Cessna planes. One incident involving Williams's planes actually made international headlines. In April of 1977, Williams and his former lawyer, Donald Bohun, were flying from the Florida Keys to the Grand Cayman Islands when they were intercepted just outside Cuban airspace by two Soviet MiGs. Allegedly, Williams was told to wait for clearance to enter Cuban airspace from Havana officials, but either miscommunication, or a lapse of communication, caused an almost fatal incident.

The episode was recorded in several papers including the Bulletin from Bend, Oregon: "The Canadians said that on six occasions, one of the fighters swooped down ahead of the small craft and turned on its afterburners, dumping jet fuel and sparks over the front of the Cessna. He said that on the sixth pass the Cessna was sucked into the vortex of the jet and went out of control." Williams told reporters afterwards that the chase continued until he turned the plane back toward Florida.

Photo courtesy Ladysmith Chronicle

Bohun recalled to me that the entire incident "was fucking scary" and attributed Williams's alleged experience as a glider pilot during World War II as the reason they made it out of the ordeal. Williams later signed an affidavit with the Canadian Department of External Affairs about the incident.

By 1977, Victoria's drug squad was once again right on the tail of Williams and Elliot. Using an informant, investigators surveyed various drug drops and transactions made by Williams, Elliot, and another co-conspirator named Raymond Ridge. Police officers were also using phone taps to monitor activity, but by the summer of 1977, their court ordered taps were going to expire. It was time to close in.

During the early morning hours of August 16, 1977, authorities raided three different locations, including Williams's property on Westdowne Road. When police raided the duplex, Williams and his girlfriend, Shirley Ferguson, were sleeping. By this time, Williams was estranged from his wife, Margaret, yet she continued to live on the property in a separate dwelling. At least a couple of sources suggest that sometime during the raid, Williams cursed and threatened the police, calling them "Nazi pigs" and yelling, "I'll sue you, I'll sue you!" Williams eventually calmed down, and the police began their search. They turned up nothing in the duplex where Williams, Ferguson, and her children slept. But then they turned their sights on a building in the back of the property, commonly referred to as "The Barn."

In the years leading up to Williams's 1975 acquittal, he was expanding a building in the back of his property. At a quick glance, it appeared that Williams was renovating the building to accommodate his new found passions for studying and researching fungi. But as the police circled the dwelling during the morning of August 16, 1977, they saw that the building was more like a fortress, designed to keep unwanted visitors out.

As the barn came into view, what the officers saw was staggering. On either end of the building were gigantic staircases connected to the building by a drawbridge. One staircase led to a tiny apartment, mainly used as sleeping quarters, while the other led to a larger room where Williams had his mycology lab.

Officers, including a bomb expert and locksmith, searched the tiny apartment and discovered a hidden passage behind the abnormally thick walls. From there, officers descended through tight corridors and found another hidden door disguised as a set of shelves. Once through the second door, authorities discovered a ladder leading to a hatch. Sidenius wrote, "The bombmen swept the chamber and then carefully climbed up and raised the hatch. They entered a concrete-lined room about ten square feet high and seven feet high. They had found the MDA lab at last." In it, the police found traces of MDA along with gelatin capsules.

At the time, Dave Staples, head of the RCMP's Victoria drug squad, remarked to the press, "We always respected Williams as a wily adversary... He was hard to catch. It took a lot of man-hours, a good deal of imagination, and a good deal of luck."

The preliminary hearing of the case against Williams ended sometime in early November. Before the trial could get fully underway, however, Williams vanished. All that was found of the supposed wreckage of Williams's plane was a seat, a life vest, a sun visor, and a logbook. Some months later, some said a wheel of the plane washed ashore near Campbell River.

But the mystery doesn't end there.

Almost 15 months later, Margaret Williams, his estranged wife, vanished without a trace from their home on Westdowne Road. According to various local newspaper outlets, when authorities searched the property they found more than $57,000 in cash buried around the home. Even stranger, the house had been untouched, and most of Margaret's belongings remained intact. One of the investigators at the time, Ladysmith RCMP Sgt. Bob Udahl, told local reporters, "There is not an abundance of evidence to indicate one way or another whether Mrs. Williams left of her own volition, or otherwise."

What's left of Wiliams's fortress. Photo by Gerry Beltgens

Authorities were completely baffled by Margaret's disappearance. Sgt. Udahl told the press "We have absolutely no clues for starting a search." Following Margaret's sudden disappearance, many began to speculate that maybe Williams wasn't dead after all.

A family member, only identified as Williams's nephew, told the Nanaimo Daily Free Press, "I know there was an inquest after the crash, and he was declared dead, but to this day, I have never accepted that verdict... Now that his wife has vanished from the face of the earth, I am even more skeptical."

In August of 1979, just three months after Margaret's disappearance, the investigation had gone nowhere. The following year, the property on Westdowne Road was put up for sale and bought by a couple from Nanaimo. Ken Heal, one of the buyers, attempted to turn what was left of the barn into a museum and even planned on using it to shoot a film based on Williams's life. But then the Heals began receiving threatening calls, and when, shortly after, part of the barn was destroyed by arson, the notion of the place becoming a side-show faded quickly.

So what happened to Williams and his wife? To this day, no one really knows, but that hasn't lessened public interest in what happened to the "The Wizard of Ladysmith."

To this day, Williams's niece, Joanne, still wonders what happened to her uncle and is fascinated by the wake of allegations and stories his legacy has left behind. And although there's no closure for Joanne, she makes a constant effort to keep her memories of the man alive: "Although it's been almost 40 years since my uncle's plane crashed in the , there hasn't been a time that he's been very far from heart. Stories that have been relayed to me about my uncle are foreign as I wonder who this person is they're talking about. The man I knew and loved was clever, a prankster, with a good sense of humor—yet he gave thoughtful, gentle replies that tickled the imaginations of a child," she told VICE.

To this day, "The Wizard of Ladysmith" is not only talked about often but has become a local attraction. Those looking for answers on what happened to Williams can wander into the Ladysmith Archives and begin their own investigation into the case. Those who are really intrigued can drive south from Ladysmith, on Highway 1, to Westdowne Road where part of Williams's "barn" rests in decay at the back of the property.

Daryl Ashby, a Victoria resident who hopes to release a book on Williams's life, is still trying to piece together the mystery. When asked what he thought happened to Williams, Ashby said a member of the Canadian Coast Guard, who responded to Williams's crash, told him that "had he known how little material was going to be located at the time of the crash, he would not have wasted his time going out."

After Williams's disappearance, one of his neighbors, John MacNaughton, told the press when he heard Williams was released on bail he thought, "Well, goodbye, Art... That's the last you'll ever see of him. Letting him out on bail was the biggest mistake they ever made."

One of Williams's sisters also told the press, "Arthur always had an aura of mystery about him; once he even claimed he could fake his death. I guess a lot of people get carried away by that."

Williams's former lawyer, Bohun, laughed at the suggestion of Williams crashing, "Art Williams, crash? He's a fucking ace pilot. He didn't crash."

Tyler Hooper is a writer and journalist based out of Victoria, BC. His work has been featured in publications such as The Vancouver Sun and Esprit de Corps. You can follow him on Twitter.

The trill has landed in South Carolina, a.k.a. South Cakalaka to the locals, and I've been through these parts before many times. I feel like one of them. The people here are Southern and proud of it. So am I. And why not? The South has a deep and rich cultural history. Music. Food. Art. Sports. Some the best who ever did it did it here. For most of us, Southern Pride is worn like a badge of honor.

But there's a part of Southern history that very few of us down here are proud of. From slavery to Jim Crow to last year's shooting at a black church in Charleston, racists have been rearing their ugly heads in these parts for centuries. Some wear suits and ties. Some wear badges and judicial robes. And some wear white sheets and hoods. But they all have the same hateful blood pumping in their veins. It's the world we navigate as people of color down here. Welcome to the South.

Being black in the South varies from city to city, in terms of style and grooming, but dealing with racism is pretty much the same across the board. I grew up in Port Arthur, Texas; our neighboring town, Bridge City, has had basically zero black residents for my entire life. It's the same in Vidor, another suburb, which was a KKK haven for years. James Byrd Jr. was dragged less than 100 miles from where I grew up. I've seen racism and its effects in my life and the lives of those around me. I'm sick of it. But that's the South.

Our first stop is in Walterboro, where Donald Trump is having a rally Wednesday before South Carolina's Republican primary this weekend. Normally, I wouldn't go this deep into the country without my pistol because shit pops off in the woods. Trust me. Small towns in the South operate differently than other places—what happens here stays here but not in a cool Vegas way. But we have a camera, so if something happens, at least there'll be proof. My Raiders jacket doesn't help me fit in, but I don't wanna fit in. I want it to be very clear who I am and what I represent.

On the drive out, we see several Confederate flags on the highway, but that's not a surprise. If you follow the news at all, you know people down here care strongly about the flag. And I get it. For many poor white people in the South who either don't have or don't claim foreign ancestry, it's pretty much the only history they have, and they're holding on like GI Joe with the Kung-Fu Grip.

As we close in on our destination, I see a truck with not one but two American flags on the back, along with the Don't Tread On Me flag you see around South Carolina. We meet the owner, Larry Johnson, and it turns out Larry actually has five American flags—and also five Confederate bumper stickers. That's right, five. If you wanna know who a man is in the Deep South, look at his back window and bumper stickers.

Larry tells me that he and I have the same history, and while I agree that as Southerners our pasts are intertwined, I let him know we stand on very different sides and shoulders. He says the Civil War wasn't about race but about business; when I argue that the business was slavery, he starts talking about Egyptians having white slaves. I want to let him know that by acknowledging that fact, he's admitting black people were the first people to walk the Earth, but I don't wanna see his head explode, so I simply state that a huge part of the Confederate fight was about owning people as property to harvest goods under constant threat of abuse or death. He then informs me about his "black friends, white friends, and yellow friends." Yellow friends? Who the fuck are his yellow friends? Big Bird and Bart Simpson. I smile and move on.

We're mad early because everyone wants a front row seat to the Trump show, and I don't how long before they find out what type of shit I'm on and run me off. There are still two hours to go before the man shows up, and already there's a line about 100 folks deep to get into the event. Most of them are over 40, but they have the urgency of teenage girls at a Taylor Swift signing. The first lady in line tells me she's already seen Trump speak twice before, but that she's never had such a great view. She talks a little bit about how he'll change the country, but her eyes seem to say, "He's just so dreamy!" As we talk, the doors open, and the crowd rushes at them like a Black Friday mob.

There's a lot of camo here, and it ain't Bape. It's more of the hunting sort. There was a little bit of that vibe in New Hampshire last week, but here in South Carolina, it's literally part of the build out. The entire stage backdrop is camo, behind 18-wheelers packed with fresh cut logs and a podium that is literally made out of bales of hay. My Raiders starter draws some small talk from sports fans in the crowd. It also gets me some hard stares, but to be fair, it might be more than the jacket that bothers people here. I'm sure most of crowd would assume I'm against Trump. Which I am, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm against them.

And the more I talk to people, the more I realize that these supporters are more anti-Obama and anti-liberal than they are pro-Trump. Their decision to back Donald seemed to have little to do with whether he's the best Republican in the presidential race, or even the most conservative candidate. These people are so upset by the current administration that some of them are willing to compromise their values if it means that the other side loses.

The rally isn't all hunting vests and trucker hats, though. There are many people who don't fit into the typical image of a Trump supporter. You can tell by their clothes, their hair, and of course, by their skin color. Traditionally, the political assumption has been that black people are a monolith, collectively aligned in ideals and values. But while some elements of the black experience are similar, each individual is unique. For some black people, whether its for geographical or financial reasons, color has never been an issue. For others, it's the only issue.

We talk to Dolphus Pinckney, a black father who's brought his young son Hunter here because he likes how Trump speaks, how he says what's on his mind. It's a sentiment I've heard from almost everyone at these rallies. And it's a bit troubling, to be honest. People, by nature, gravitate to the loudest voice in a room. Except right now, the room is our country. And while Trump may be the loudest voice, he isn't actually saying anything. He's just promising to "win so much you're gonna get tired of winning!"

But Trump wins no matter what. For a capitalist like Trump, winning the Republican nomination will be like pulling off the ultimate moral Ponzi scheme; losing simply means more speaking tours and book sales. In the world of politics, where lies and deception are currency, Trump is even richer than in real life. The only real losers here are us. He's specifically targeting people who are upset with their station in life and looking for someone to blame—and giving them something to point their collective finger at.

When I hear the opera strains coming out over the speakers, I know Trump is close. Then comes the Rolling Stones, which means Donald is about to take the stage. The Walterboro rally is outside, so there's nowhere for the campaign to play its usual intro propaganda film, but the people here don't really need to be swayed. They know who they want, and they are just looking to be part of the show. The campaign herds us into the press staging area and back to the cage we go.

The Lowcountry Sportsmen, the official hosts of the rally, take the stage and talk about how they wouldn't say the things Trump says, but they're glad he's around to say them. They also talk about how an AR-15 is a great gun for a young girl because it doesn't kick. What the fuck a young girl needs an assault rifle for I have no idea. Then, on the count of three, they all chant "Build that wall!" I assume that means the wall Trump plans on building on the US-Mexico border.

As Trump takes the stage, complimenting the sportsmen who introduced him as "very rich and very nice," I get it. This isn't about politics. This is about a famous person from television coming to town. This election isn't really about the issues at hand—it's a popularity contest, made for reality TV. And this dude is the Honey Boo Boo of this political pageant.

The tone of Trump's speech is the same as it always it is, except this time, he's leaning on the Second Amendment like an armrest. This is Lowcountry—guns are like a sixth finger or a third arm for people here. He goes on for a while about how conservative he is about Common Core and immigration and this and that, and for the first time, I see a person or two giggle. They know this guy isn't a conservative. But they don't give a shit. It sounds good, and that's all that matters to a mob.

Trump finishes talking, and the people applaud him as he exits. But I'm done with this bringing America back shit. This guy is Mussolini. He's Dr. Evil with hair. Shit, even his hair is evil. So evil it won't even listen to him. It has its own separate agenda. But we can't leave. No one is allowed off the grounds until Trump is gone. Trump's team informs us that if we leave the press cage for any reason, the campaign will pull our credentials for good.

We play it cool, but at this point, I've endured more dirty looks and side-eye than I can handle. Every time I talk into the camera people take pictures and record from the sidelines, waiting to tattle on me to Trump staffers. The crowd is no longer on its best behavior. The unspoken message from the silent majority is crystal clear: We are not welcome here. That's cool. I was on the way up out this bitch anyway. You ain't gotta love me. My momma do. Peace.

Follow Bun B on Twitter.

New York City cops have used 'StingRay' technology to track cell phones more than 1,000 times since 2008. Photo by Erland Grøtberg/via Getty

For the past several years, police departments across America have been using a nifty new piece of technology to trace the location of suspects. IMSI-catchers—commonly known as "StingRays" after the most popular brand name—are small boxes that gather all cell signals in a given area by mimicking a cell phone tower. And they've grown increasingly popular even as the federal government has issued stricter guidelines as to where and how the technology should be used.

But thanks to bizarre non-disclosure agreements struck between the FBI and the manufacturer of the StingRay, the Harris Corporation, the devices are rarely entered into evidence as part of a criminal case. That often leads to prosecutions marred by glaring holes as to exactly how the cops knew where a person was located, defense lawyers argue. The New York Police Department and other law enforcement agencies are strictly barred from speaking about the use of StingRays, even under court order, and even if their use is central to prosecution.

"There are all these cases where the police just magically locate people, so the police will say we went looking and found this guy at a specific location," said Joshua Insley, a defense attorney in Baltimore who's been working on cases involving StingRays for the past several years. "Then you actually interview the defendant and he'll say, 'Yeah, my phone started ringing, it wouldn't turn off, I didn't have any service and all of a sudden the police were at my door'."

Disturbances of cell service are often one of the first signs of a StingRay-assisted apprehension, according to Insley, but understanding the full scope of their use would require some level of cooperation by law enforcement. Lawyers and due process advocates have been fighting for years to get information on Stingrays and their use dished out to the public, with only occasional success.

Last week, the NYPD finally answered some parts of a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) about the use of the StingRay. The documents released, which showed that the NYPD has used the StingRay more than 1,000 times since 2008, paint a portrait of a law enforcement agency that uses the stingRay to apprehend individuals suspected of committing serious crimes like murder but also more trivial infractions like a prank call to 9-1-1.

Of course, you shouldn't bother asking New York's finest or any other police department for specifics of why or how they use the StingRay. They're not telling.

In a statement to VICE, the NYPD said that even though StingRays are capable of storing communications and collecting phone numbers of thousands of New Yorkers in a single go, the privacy of New Yorkers is not at risk. "What is at risk is the safety of New Yorkers, without the limited use of this technology to locate dangerous fugitives," J. Peter Donald, the director of communications for the department, said in a statement.

While the documents released do show that New York police have used the StingRay to locate suspected murderers, rapists, and kidnappers, a litany of other charges have apparently merited the use of StingRays as well. These include money laundering, contempt of court, and identity theft.

"The scary thing about them is we really have no idea when they're being used," said Sid Thaxter, an attorney at the Bronx Defenders. "This is military grade technology being used on civilians and intentionally hidden from the judicial process. It is theoretically possible to uncover the use of IMSI catchers by looking at the circumstances of someone's arrest or gaps in paperwork, but that is only guesswork."

More than a hundred people have been arrested after a StingRay helped locate them in Bronx County over the past seven years, and Thaxter believes that at least a few of his office's clients have been apprehended that way. Not that any mention of a StringRay ever comes up in court documents.

You have to look pretty hard to get even a vague sense these devices might be in play.

For example, last year, a Bronx man named Dominick Davis who was charged with murder filed a motion attempting to have his confession tossed after police officers used a series of cell phone "pings" to find his location. They did this without a warrant and failed to disclose to a judge the next morning that they had already "pinged" his phone. In testimony, the head of the NYPD's Bronx Homicide Unit, Lieutenant William O'Toole, explained that the department will often proceed without a court order if officers need to locate an individual immediately, and that Davis was fairly easy to locate thanks to information provided by his cell phone company. But the NYPD was unclear about which cell phone company was contacted, instead focusing on the "pings" that were received from a cell phone tower.

Davis's motion was denied.

It's unclear whether a StingRay was actually used in Davis's apprehension, but cases like this show just how fraught the distinction can be between lawful and unlawful action by police, especially when they've agreed to keep a tight lid on their technology.

In April, Detective Emmanuel Cabreja, a member of the Baltimore Police Department's Advanced Technical Team, was called to testify in the trial of two people who had been tracked and apprehended with the help of a StingRay in 2013. The detective came to court with the FBI's non-disclosure agreement in hand.

Joshua Insley asked Cabreja, "Does this document instruct you to withhold evidence from the state's attorney and Circuit Court, even upon court order to produce?"

"Yes," Cabreja replied.

"Our understanding in Baltimore was that the StingRay was supposed to be of use in the most extreme circumstances, like terrorism. Who cares about the Fourth Amendment if you need to locate a bomb?" Insley told VICE. "But the first case I got was of an attempted robbery of a pizza delivery man. It's now in use as a standard crime-fighting device, and there are tons of cases where the police just magically find someone."

StingRays first gained wide use by police departments after passage of the 2001 Patriot Act, when "pen register orders," also known as "trap and trace court orders," began to proliferate in criminal investigations. Unlike the high privacy standards imposed on judicial warrants for surveillance, pen register orders only require any information obtained to likely be "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation." (Last year, though, the Department of Justice shifted its own policy to require that all federal agents get a judicial warrant to deploy a StingRay, and not just a pen register.)

That means the feds are adhering to a higher privacy standard than many local beat cops.

"The NYPD said to us that it doesn't have a written policy, which is very concerning. This is a very powerful surveillance device, and if it's going to be used, it should certainly be used with robust policies in place," said Mariko Hirose, a senior staff attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union. "In certain configurations, a StingRay can intercept the contents of communications and emails."

Local cops, of course, tend to deny this.

"The NYPD does not capture the contents of communications, as the NYCLU stated," Donald, the department spokesman, told VICE. "Furthermore, the NYPD does not and never has swept up information from cell phones nearby."

Until there's an actual policy in place for disclosing their use, or police departments divulge more about their new favorite toy, we'll just have to take their word for it.

Follow Max Rivlin-Nadler on Twitter.

Arty horror darling The Witch is terrifying as fuck, but that's just one of many reasons it's caught on among film freaks. Robert Eggers's feature-length debut is a phantasmagoria that draws from historical records of New England's Puritan era, including the writings of clergymen Samuel Willard and Cotton Mather, as well as longstanding folklore about the supernatural. It's also an incredibly subversive movie that features a final girl who does whatever it takes to save herself, even if that means damnation.

The film follows the story of an intensely religious Puritan family with a couple of rather large crosses to bear, from dying crops to the mysterious disappearance of their newborn baby. Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) is the family's oldest daughter, a workhorse just this side of puberty that makes her a threat to her mother Katherine (Kate Dickie from Game of Thrones) and a temptation for her brother Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw). The claustrophobic farmhouse is bursting with secrets, but the mounting tension inside is nothing compared to what actually is lurking in the woods.

When everything goes to hell, Thomasin is the only one left standing. As many teenage girls do, she embraces everything she's been accused of, and you can hardly blame her. It's the sort of perverse ending that would have delighted Angela Carter, who famously reworked Charles Perrault's fairy tales into feminist parables where Little Red gets in bed with the Wolf and Bluebeard is thwarted by his new bride's wily, gun-toting mother.

The Witch's distributor, A24, has leaned into the overtly Satanic overtones of the movie by linking up with The Satanic Temple for performance events and screenings in NYC, Los Angeles, Austin, and Detroit. The Temple's national spokesperson herself, Jex Blackmore, referred to the film as "a transformative Satanic experience."

"I think part of what makes the film so horrific is that the things that the witch character is engaged with are so taboo and demonic. But those things come from our own folklore about women," Blackmore said over the phone. "We don't typically use the word witch any more, but we do use the word bitch!" Blackmore added with a laugh. "It's interesting because it's applied in the same way. It's applied to women who are freethinking and speak their minds. It's applied to women who fight for their own reproductive health rights, and it's often applied even to women who kind of excel in the work world."

The feminist appeal of The Witch is in step with the current New Age-y zeitgeist, at least symbolically. Although it stands to reason that most modern supernaturally inclined ladies, myself included, are more interested in futzing with tarot cards and crystals than kicking back with Old Scratch, our urges come from a very similar place—an exhaustion with the stifling status quo.

Alex Mar, author of Witches in America and director of American Mystic, concurred. "Modern-day American witches—or Pagan priestesses—have been reclaiming that word," she said, "changing its meaning, using the label of witch as a way to say, 'I'm not afraid of living on the fringe of society, I'm not afraid of being misunderstood, I don't need to be a part of the mainstream, I don't need to be the kind of woman who fits neatly into a feminine role.' A woman can be a priest. A woman can train in a 'mystery' tradition. A woman can see her sexuality as a source of power, not a political bargaining chip."

Ultimately, the movie's subversion is as sly as Satan himself; it's so visually and aurally overwhelming that, by the time the credits roll, you're left dazed and blinking. It's a fantasy of liberation, and one that has more in common with what's happening in Hollywood than you might think. Kier-La Janisse, a film writer and founder of the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, described the ending as "a huge feminist kick in the balls, for sure."

"I think horror movies often reflect our political landscape, so it doesn't surprise me that we're seeing more witches while debates about feminism are overwhelming online discussions and the CDC is recommending that women abstain from alcohol unless they are on birth control." —Alison Nastasi

Janisse explained, "Over the last year we've seen a number of articles exposing the gender bias in Hollywood, programs instated in several countries to help address the gender imbalance when it comes to filmmaking resources, and a lot of films that take place in female space. On the mainstream side, you have a film like Suffragette, and on the odd side, you have things like The Witch. But both are coming from the same place and demanding conversation." Suffragette has been criticized for "whitewashing" the British suffragette movement, and for an ill-conceived photo shoot with the leads wearing shirts reading, "I'd rather be a rebel than a slave." Frankly, it's not a very good movie, but there's no denying that the strong female presence in front of and behind the camera is hopefully a taste of things to come. It's just that that conversation needs to be much more inclusive—something that the various strains of paganism and occult belief around the world have going for them.

Flavorwire writer Alison Nastasi, who contributed to Janisse's book Satanic Panic, sees modern witches "as any subculture or social movement—a way of empowering the outcast, including women, LGBT, and non-white people. Practitioners of witchcraft and the occult have the ability to take a sense of disillusionment and use it to create an intimate bond or community of empowered individuals. This results in a counterculture of self-reliance," she explained.

"I think horror movies often reflect our political landscape," she added, "so it doesn't surprise me that we're seeing more witches while debates about feminism are overwhelming online discussions and the CDC is recommending that women abstain from alcohol unless they are on birth control." After all, few things are scarier than a cabal of government cronies deciding the fate of our reproductive health and individual liberty.

Follow Jenni on Twitter.

The Witch is in theaters Friday, February 19.

Toronto's financial district. Photo by the author

I am a woman in her mid-40s, in a same-sex relationship, suffering the same problem as many couples out there: The sex part has died. Absolutely everything else is wonderful. I work on Bay Street in Toronto—I am an extremely well-known figure in what I would describe as a very professional career path. I decided last year to start looking into escort services, and I've grown to love my time as a female client.

It didn't start off great, however. It took about six months of researching the market before I settled on my first booking. For example, there are many SPs (service providers) that are tailored toward men or heterosexual couples, but it's hard to find those that specifically state that they will work with women, and who fit my preferences. I consider myself a very fussy person. I think everybody is to some degree, but I'm a very picky person. I prefer a mature woman who has been around, who knows how to behave, who is confident, and can carry themselves. Essentially, I'm not only looking for an intelligent woman but a classy, sophisticated woman who isn't going to stick out beside me.

For the first SP I saw, I booked a hotel room and waited two hours past our appointment time before she arrived. It turned out that she was unruly and inconsiderate—she barged in with a backpack on her shoulder, and the entire experience was over within 30 minutes. After she left, I realized she had taken an expensive bottle of wine that I had bought for the occasion, along with the takeout I had ordered. She asked for both—she didn't steal them from me—but it struck me as extremely tacky.

Growing up, I didn't have an opinion on sex work, and I really didn't care. I don't mean that in a derogatory manner, it just wasn't important to me. It's not until I met Lisbeth—the SP who gave me my first real experience, almost two months after the aforementioned encounter—that I realized just how amazing and compassionate these women can be. Everything about her impressed me: the way she spoke, the way she carried herself, her punctuality. It was all incredibly graceful. Suffice it to say, after that, I was hooked.

For me, the whole experience goes far past just sex. The meeting, the talking, the intelligent conversation, the way someone carries herself—that's all foreplay. To see somebody who's well put together and very confident, like I am, that's my high. I don't think many of the SPs have met a woman like myself, and because of that, I try to treat them in an amazing way. Like a princess. To me, it's very, very important to treat sex workers with respect and with dignity. I have given some of them gifts and surprises that they never imagined receiving. In a way, I know it's selfish: The whole process of wooing them over—even when I've already paid for the time—gives me an adrenaline rush.

Despite how much I love being a client, the question I find myself asking sometimes is how long I can keep this up for. I've never done this in my career or personal life, so it's somewhat new to me, but yes, I am a cheat. I am not in denial. Some people would say, "You're meeting an SP, so it's not cheating." I disagree—I am cheating. Obviously, that kind of preempts my personal needs, so I have to sort of look away and turn a blind eye. My partner doesn't know, my colleagues don't know. No one knows about this life but me and my SPs.

Outside of that, what concerns me is that these women have become my friends, which in a way is much more difficult than the escort part of it. These women are totally awesome, and I would love to stay friends with them. I mean, I've never just ended a friendship abruptly. That said, for them, I'm not sure if it would really matter at the end of the day. I understand that aspect is part of the job, but it would be hurtful for me.

I think that, in a way, ironically, I have become protective of these women. It's like I'm their savior. I want to make sure they're OK, because I have the utmost respect for these women. I would not be able to do this job, so I give such huge kudos to sex workers. Not only do they put themselves out there—physically and mentally—but this job in general is so taxing. These women have become a part of my life, and I care for them deeply.

*Names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Shehla Rashid, vice president of Jawaharlal Nehru University's student union, with other protesters. All photos by Daniel Oberhaus

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) was eerily deserted as I passed the police barricades at its gates earlier this week. Over the weekend, thousands of demonstrators had converged at the university in South New Delhi to protest the arrest of the school's student union president, Kanhaiya Kumar, but on Monday, the school seemed quiet.

Kumar was arrested last Friday, after organizing a meeting to criticize the "judicial killing" of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri man who was convicted of masterminding the terror attacks on India's Parliament in 2001 (his conviction is contested). Members of JNU's right-wing student organization Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) tried to stop the meeting. When that failed, some students claim the group showed up to intimidate participants in the meeting, who responded by voicing what authorities have characterized as anti-national slogans.

These "anti-national" remarks were used as grounds for the university to ban eight JNU students from all academic activity, pending a disciplinary hearing. Kumar, who was arrested by Delhi police and was charged with sedition, the crime of inciting rebellion against the government, has been held without bail since Friday.

Earlier this week, the student union called for a student strike, which is meant to last until authorities have guaranteed Kumar's unconditional release. Protestors say the fight for Kumar's release has taken on larger symbolic dimensions, calling into question the tactics used by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India's ruling Hindu nationalist party, and its student wing, the ABVP, to stifle intellectual dissent in the country. Their fight has drawn international attention, including a letter of support from a number of leading academics, including Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler.

While most of the campus was quiet on Monday from the strike, I found several hundred protestors gathered on the steps of the JNU administration building, where student union vice president Shehla Rashid addressed the crowd.

"An atmosphere of fear has been created on the campus," Rashid told supporters. "Any institutional process or enquiry has to be conducted in an atmosphere that ensures safety and dignity for the students. The students cannot present their case in an situation where they have been already debarred, where they've already been branded and demonized."

India's sedition law, which is now being used against Kumar, was originally instituted under the British Raj in 1860 and was used to imprison Mahatma Gandhi for six years after he wrote magazine articles critiquing British rule in India. More recently, the Indian authorities have used it to charge people who failed to stand during the national anthem and people who protested a nuclear power plant.

Kumar denies he made any of the remarks he was arrested for, telling a court this week that "I dissociate myself from slogans that were shouted during the event," according to The Indian Express. But several government officials support his arrest under the sedition law. India's Home Minister Rajnath Singh, for example, told reporters last week that "if anyone raises anti-India slogans, tries to raise questions on the country's unity and integrity, they will not be spared. Stringent action will be taken against them." Similarly, India's Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani said that the nation "will never tolerate an insult to Mother India." Both politicians are members of the BJP.

The party, which came to power after Narendra Modi was elected prime minister in 2014, has been criticized by the student protestors for using its student wing, the ABVP, to stomp out opposition on campuses. Protestors who visited the courthouse where Kumar was scheduled to appear on Monday told me they saw more evidence of these tactics: They were promptly ejected and physically harassed by lawyers.

"What we saw at who've taken oaths to defend the constitution of this country behaved like storm troopers of a fascist government."

Similar incidents at other Indian universities have buoyed the suspicion that intellectual discourse and dissent are under attack. Last month, the ABVP at Allahabad University threatened violence against the speaker at a panel on "Democracy, the Media, and Freedom of Expression" on the basis that he was "anti-national." In July, members of the ABVP at Hyderabad University alleged that they were attacked by members of Ambedkar Students Association, a group representing the Dalit, or "untouchable," caste. Those allegations led to the suspension of five members of the ASA, one of whom later committed suicide.

For now, Kumar's fate remains uncertain. When he reappeared in court Wednesday, he was ordered to be held in judicial custody until March 2. If Kumar is ultimately found guilty of sedition, the conviction can carry a life sentence.

Still, the students at JNU are committed to ensuring his release—not just for Kumar's sake but also to maintain the intellectual integrity of Indian university life. "Let's be clear: Things are not going to get easier, they're going to get more difficult," Menon said. "It's a long drawn out struggle, but we will fight and stay the cause."

Follow Daniel Oberhaus on Twitter.

Ariel Kohane, an anti-Beyoncé protester debating with counter-protesters at the Anti-Beyoncé Protest Rally in New York. Kohane is a volunteer in Ted Cruz's presidential campaign. All photos by the author

Yesterday's planned anti-Beyoncé protest in front of NFL headquarters in New York ended up becoming a punch line. Three lonely protesters stood in the rain, severely outnumbered by reporters, police, and anti-anti-Beyoncé protesters. The event was organized by a group called Proud of the Blues, which alleged that Beyoncé's Super Bowl halftime performance of "Formation"—which featured Black Panther imagery that complemented the song's pro-black themes—was anti-law enforcement.

At the protest's scheduled start time of 8 AM, a group of about three dozen Beyoncé supporters arrived in front of the headquarters at the corner of Park Avenue and East 52nd Street. Waiting for them were about a dozen police officers and a gaggle of news reporters, from venues ranging from NBC to the Guardian to the Cut. None of the Proud of the Blues's 1,700 Twitter followers were there. In fact, there are signs now that the Proud of the Blues organization, and the "Anti-Beyoncé Protest Rally," might've been a hoax.

There is no direct contact information to any of Proud of the Blues's accounts, and, as The Daily Beast notes, the organization got its name after the protest was added to Eventbrite by an "unnamed organizer." Still, part of what made Proud of the Blues's existence believable was how it shared certain arch conservatives' outrage. Shortly after the performance, the Blaze's Tomi Lahren infamously accused Beyoncé of race-baiting and went after her husband Jay Z, saying, "For 14 years, he sold crack cocaine." Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who's gained notoriety for his racist views on African American crime, slammed the Super Bowl performance as " outrageous."

Although some counter-protestors were obviously Beyoncé fans, their messages were centered on the rights of all African-Americans. One protester held a sign bearing the names of women and girls killed by police. Another's sign read, "PRO BLACK IS NOT ANTI WHITE." Both posters featured black-and-gold coloring, a reference to Beyoncé's Super Bowl outfit.

"It's not like we're super Beyoncé fans," explained counter-protester Khadija Amon-ra. "We're super black pride." Amon-ra viewed the anti-Beyoncé supporters as less against the entertainer specifically, and more against the entire idea of African-American women asserting themselves in society. "They want people of color to stay in their place in this country," Amon-ra said.

A Beyoncé supporter and Tim Winterhalter

If Proud of the Blues's anti-Bey sentiments were a joke, the three protesters who showed up after 9 AM weren't in on it. Tim Winterhalter, a heavy-set, middle-aged white man in a Giants jacket, believed the Super Bowl was not the place for Beyoncé's message.

"It just came across to me that it was a political statement, which is fine, everybody has that," Winterhalter said. "But this is a football game. Let's just keep it a sports game."

Ariel Kohane, a 44-year-old man wearing a gray suit and an American flag yamurkle, held two paper signs, including a green one that read, "Cops are worth more than 1% per year," an apparent reference to the state arbitrator who recently recommended a 1 percent pay increase for NYPD officers.

"The problem is what she said about police officers," complained Kohane, who identified himself as a volunteer for Ted Cruz's presidential campaign. But when pressed by protestors about what exactly Beyoncé said about police he so disagreed with, he replied: "Well, if she didn't say that then why would I ?"

Three Beyoncé supporters

Twenty-five-year-old student April Bedunah was the last of the three anti-Bey protestors to arrive, sporting a Seahawks jersey and winter hat with the words "POLICE" stitched in gold lettering. "It's sickening," she told the Guardian. "It's making people hate each other. She could have talked about anything else rather than trying to make people mad. And look what it caused. These people should be at work! I should be at school right now," Bedunah said.

Time and time again, the three protesters confused Beyoncé supporters. The two men never saw the Super Bowl performance in full, and Bedunah seemed to know little about the Black Panther movement. When asked, Kohane wasn't able to name a Beyoncé lyric that offended him. The conversations played out like a kind of black satire: White people angry about something but not quite sure about what.

Bedunah's voice broke when she spoke about having a black son and friends who are police officers. She was the last anti-Beyoncé protester the pro-Bey crowd confronted.

A Beyoncé supporter

"Have you heard about any white cops in the past five years getting indicted for the murder of a black person?" Tajh Sutton, a 27-year-old Beyoncé supporter, asked her.

"I respect what you say, and I do think that you have a wonderful voice," said Bedunah, trying to restore goodwill while still avoiding the question.

A little later, Kohane gently tapped Bedunah from behind to explain that he, too, was an anti-Beyoncé protester. She ignored him to again face the black crowd, leaving Kohane to piece together his paper signs, which had been torn into wet halves by the rain.

Update: An earlier headline of this article implied that all three of the Beyoncé protesters were white. They were not, and the headline has been updated.

Follow Brian on Twitter.

In 2012, Gabriella Fox, owner of a white fox terrier with brown spots called Dizzy, ended up in Hennepin County Jail in Minneapolis after getting arrested on suspicion of burglary and possession of a stolen TV. When Fox was released after 72 hours due to insufficient evidence, she recalled to VICE that she felt "really, really excited to curl up into a ball with my dog, cuddle, and get high."

But when she got home, it turned out her door had never been properly shut, and Dizzy had escaped. Fox grieved over the loss of her "last remaining connection to life and unconditional love," and then got high.

Fox's case is one of an unknown number of instances in which dogs vanish after their owners get arrested. There's no uniform national policy about what police should do about dogs in these cases. Local governments have different ways of making sure dogs don't simply starve in people's houses, or languish in abandoned cars, but these systems are imperfect, and there are generally some hoops for the owner to jump through.

Some dogs are in their owners' cars during the arrest, say for a DUI. This leaves the arresting officer with an obvious potential paperwork problem. "If the person arrested is cooperative and easy to communicate with, most officers will ask the person if there is someone that can be called to pick up the dog," said Walter Duncan, a retired sheriff's deputy who worked in Riverside County, California, both in corrections and as an officer in the field.

Matthew Ludwig, an LAPD officer, said there's no formal policy about what to do in his jurisdiction. "Usually, it's a family member who takes care of the dog," he said, but if no family materializes, the problem goes up the chain of command. "We can call our supervisors for advice," Ludwig said. If need be, he continued, "We could also call the animal task force unit." The LAPD is in a large enough city to have a task force designated to dealing with animal problems—usually complaints of cruelty.

Speaking of illegal activity around dogs, here's The Westminster Dog Show... On Acid!

But across all circumstances, Duncan pointed out that in his jurisdiction, "the dog's owner is responsible for the care of the dog." At every stage, from booking to final incarceration, he explained that people in jails have the opportunity to call someone and make sure the dog is being looked after, or just notify the officers about his or her concerns.

But during her three-day lockup, Fox didn't let any authority figures know there was a four-legged problem back at the apartment where she'd just been moving "large quantities of drugs." She stayed quiet because she mistrusted her captors and partly because she was in withdrawal. "I was kicking heroin and meth," she said.

"We get a couple of these a week," Karen Knipscheer Cox who represents Los Angeles animals services told VICE. When animal services gets involved, they'd like more than anything to get the dog safely out of their custody, by handing it over to the incarcerated owner's family member, or getting someone else to adopt it. They prefer, Cox said, if the arresting officer gives them a call and puts the arrestee on the line immediately. "We need to obtain all the information we can on the owner—and custodian if they give us one—or ask the arrestee to sign the dog over to us."

In other jurisdictions, the policy can be more arcane. One example is Kitsap County, Washington, where according to an investigation by its local newspaper, the shelter "faxes a document to the Kitsap County jail asking the owner to choose between having the animal picked up by someone else or paying $16.29 a day to have the animal boarded."

In Los Angeles, a dog that's not immediately signed over to the city is held as private property in a municipal shelter for 30 days, Cox told VICE. That's a long stay, actually; other jurisdictions give owners as few as five days to make other arrangements—then the dog enters the general population and goes up for adoption.

If adoption doesn't work out, depending on circumstances and local policies, the dog of an arrestee is just as likely as any other dog to be euthanized.

In Kitsap County, Washington, in 2010, a man named Douglas Bolds was picked up for a DUI while his dog, Chloe, was in his car. He suffered a similar fate to Fox: When he got out of lockup 60 days later, Chloe had vanished. He found Chloe in someone's car almost a year later, stole her back, and found himself in hot water for dognapping his own dog. He later claimed that his rights of private property had been violated.

Fox was luckier. In the days after she returned from lockup, a woman who lived in her building was suddenly in possession of a fox terrier mix that looked strangely like Dizzy. When Fox repeatedly asked, the neighbor denied it was the same dog.

Fox was evicted not long after. Suddenly, she had no reason to behave herself, and she decided to commit one last petty crime. "I picked her lock and took my dog at the last minute before we left," she said.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

The Palestinian village Wadi Fukin in the foreground. The Israeli settlement Beitar Illit in the background.

British photographer James Morris' book, Time and Remains of Palestine, published by Kehrer Verlag and out this March, offers an unsettling look at the often almost invisible monuments of the Nakba: the rubble, ghost towns and paved over Palestinian settlements erased in the 1948 Palestine War.

Yet, in spite of the book's highly charged political subject, it is a beautiful, eerie and markedly unobtrusive document of Palestine's past and the West Bank's precarious present. I had a chat with James about the work.

VICE: Firstly, how do you think of yourself, in terms of photography?
James Morris: Definitions are always difficult because they feel restrictive and are usually applied by other people. However, I suppose I am a photographer intrigued in all sorts of ways by the evidence of human interaction with, and presence in, the landscape; man's impact and the layers of history evident there. I follow threads linking place and people, past and present.

How does Time and Remains of Palestine fit into your photographic approach and past work?
It could be seen as a tangent because it deals particularly with conflict, which I haven't done so directly before. However, it feels a logical extension of my practice. The Israel-Palestine conflict has been present for all of my life and shows no sign of diminishing, so is a constant in my mental landscape. This is what drew me to look at the actual landscape. What I found – starting on the first day, in fact – was something I hadn't considered or expected: the absence of architecture, a demolished landscape and a veiled history. So by following this particular line of enquiry, as with all projects, there is both continuity and variation.

Central Market, Old City, Hebron

How do you describe this project? I always think it's interesting to ask, especially in a case like this where you're at times documenting an absence more than "a thing".
I think of the project as exploring a part of both what happened to Palestine in 1948 and where it finds itself now, through looking at this very particular "man-altered landscape". It follows a historical trajectory that links past and present, starting, in part one, by probing the now historic Palestinian presence in much of Israel, documenting the sites of some of the 400 or so villages and numerous towns that were depopulated and in most cases razed as a consequence of the 1948 war and later conflicts.

Part two reflects on the concept of a would-be future Palestine that resulted from the Oslo Peace Accords but has failed to materialise in any meaningful form; documenting the fabric of occupation and conflict in the labyrinthine West Bank, a land zoned into multiple and convoluted "areas", divided by walls and fences, checkpoints and road blocks, and reduced by settlements. Rather than addressing the conflict as a whole it considers the diminishing of Palestine.

The book is split into two distinct parts. The first deals with Nakba, the "disaster" that is a huge part of the Palestinian identity and history. How did this part of the project start?
Part one originated from a walk in a pine forest at the very start of my first visit to Israel, when I stumbled on the unexplained remains of some seemingly ancient structures. A plaque erected in 2004 by the Jewish National Fund declared the place an "oasis", "a recreation area, a place of water, of hope, of peace, of vision". Later that day I found a film online depicting a recent visit to the same location by Israeli Palestinians. Elderly men recalled that, as children, those remains had been their village. They had been made internal refugees by the 1948 war, during what they called their Nakba; their village flattened, their right of return refused, a planned forest of imported pines veiling their former world.

What was strikingly evident was the huge gulf between these two perceptions of one place. Though I knew of the concept of Nakba, finding myself in such a place and then coming to understand this history was a powerful introduction to its reality – though the term specifically relates to the defeat and substantial depopulation of Palestine in 1948, the notion of "disaster" or "catastrophe" is one that strongly echoes still.

Anata village

In terms of research, I presume lots was required, as these locations are hardly signposted. What was the process there?
As you say, the sites of destroyed villages are very rarely signposted, and many are entirely flattened or built over. Even international guidebooks aimed at foreign tourists, who might well find this history of interest, almost completely ignore it. After my first visit I started research, mainly looking at the work of the so-called New Israeli Historians who emerged in the 1980s and began to question the more comfortable and accepted histories that were being taught.

The most significant text was Benny Morris's 600-page The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, which exhaustively trawls Israeli military and state archives from the 1948 war. But also the work of Meron Benvenisti, Walid Khalidi and numerous other sources. When back in Israel I searched out the village sites using old maps and the internet; some were easy to find, many had virtually disappeared. It was always an unsettling experience to come across the remains of a village, possibly a pile of stones amid a forest or a solitary minaret in the middle a modern Israeli suburb, knowing already something of its charged history and its continuing significance to the diaspora. Before I started to photograph a place I would sit and read more of its history from the books I carried with me. The notes I made evolved into the extended captions that work as a brief history of the site of each photograph in the book.

Qisarya, district of Haifa

In part one, made up of these photos of the remains of settlements, some are in ruins, but to me the strangest examples are the car parks or playgrounds, where the original settlement hasn't just been removed, but emphatically built over. Which were the sites you found strangest to photograph?
Too many to say, really. The whole experience was intense, unsettling and often deeply strange. There was a nervousness at not knowing how people would react to what I was doing, which in the end was largely unfounded because so few people seemed to register what it was I was looking at. Also, the weight of the knowledge that I was accumulating, an understanding of what had happened there and where the population had ended up. And then of course also knowing so much of the history of the European Jews who came to Israel hoping to find solace from their unimaginable horrors. Together, this made for a very charged atmosphere.

Kafr Bir'im is unsettling because so much of the village is still extant – you can walk through the lanes and look into collapsed and overgrown houses. In Imwas there are picnic tables among the abandoned graves in the old cemetery, which at first sight does seem unbelievable. Ein Houd is now an artists colony of pretty stone houses in one of the few un-demolished Palestinian villages, the atmosphere outwardly bohemian, but one senses an odour of guilt.

ON VICE NEWS: In Photos – One Year in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

One notable thing in the book is the stillness and general absence of people. I assume that's intentional? Clearly in part one it adds to the feeling of desolation, but in part two it continues to feel starkly empty.
As you observe, part one is concerned with an absence, and this is the atmosphere I wanted to project. But as a whole, the work is more concerned with historical developments than individuals. I wanted the landscape to reveal the stories, which I think it proved capable of. So apart from a few examples, the occasional figures who appear are not particularly recognisable as individuals – they are perhaps symbolic figures.

The lack of people in the book makes the observer feel invisible, too. During the project, how much did you interact with residents, Israelis, Palestinians or authorities?
Actually not a lot – not in depth. I felt it was important to maintain some distance from those people affected by the politics on a daily basis to try to achieve some objectivity. I wanted it to be a very particular exploration of what I found, or was drawn to look for, and to avoid the effect of being embedded in either culture. So beyond everyday encounters with people in the street it was quite a solitary experience. I was only once told to not photograph something, an old Palestinian building in Israel, but even then not with any real conviction.

Abu Zurayq, district of Haifa

How does looking at the current state of Palestinian life in part two contrast with, or inform, part one?
In portraying the West Bank I am looking at the place that should be a future Palestine, according to the Oslo peace accords, but which has failed to materialise in any meaningful form; it remains a virtual state under Israeli dominance. Each part could work as a piece in its own right; they are separated both in time and location. The intent is that they work like book ends of the period of time since the foundation of Israel, encapsulating something of the story of Palestine. Comprehending the history evident in part one helps understand how the landscape of the contemporary West Bank has evolved. It is perhaps as two small pieces in a complex puzzle, joined in the need to see more of the picture.

There are photos – of Beitar Illit, for example – where there's a sense of encroachment by new Israeli settlements on existing Palestinian ones. Is there a feeling of history repeating itself in these places?
I think that rather than repeating itself, it is perhaps a continuation in an evolved form. When I arrived in Israel for the first time I was handed a "Touring Map of Israel" at the airport information desk. This officially-sanctioned image of Israel encompasses, without mentioning its name, the whole West Bank to the River Jordan, but makes no reference to Palestinian Territories, using instead the terms Judea and Samaria. It doesn't mark the separation barrier or the 1949 green line, and gives only slight mention to the five major Palestinian cities beyond Jerusalem, and none to the smaller towns. By comparison, even tiny Israeli settlements are recorded. It was explained as: "This is all Israel, you can go anywhere." I don't think it would be controversial to assume that many in Israel are attracted to this concept of a Greater Israel, and would probably not be saddened if there were many fewer Palestinians in it. Settlement expansion can certainly give the impression of an ongoing encroachment into the viability of a Palestinian state, but whether there is a clearly defined goal I don't know.

The subject of the book itself seems to point to a political direction on your behalf, but do you see it as a political book?
I don't see the book as any kind of activist text, though the subject is of course political. Yes, the work is concerned almost entirely with the Palestinian story and does not attempt some notional sense of "balance" by exploring a parallel Israeli history; and that could be construed as political – but it's not a label that feels appropriate. It's interesting to note that the historian Benny Morris, whose work I most relied on, has more recently said that, in 1948, Israel did not go far enough and should have expelled many more Palestinians. So to reflect on this history does not need to imply a particular bias. Its intent is to express what has taken place, to encourage the viewer to look and think. In recognising it is only pieces in a complex picture, it doesn't have the certainty of a political book. More important, I think, are the words of Raja Shehadeh in the book's introduction: "Without people acknowledging, truly seeing, the Nakba, there can be no peace in this region."

It is necessary, especially in conflict, that both history and the present are endlessly re-explored. My hope is that those who pick up this book will be more than capable of forming their own opinions.

See more of James' work at jamesmorris.info.

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Screengrab via YouTube

There's been an unspoken routine in my flat, and it's not something we're proud of. At around 11:30, me and my two flatmates - all culturally engaged and supposedly compassionate towards social causes - would find ourselves slumped on the sofa, the debris of dinner and another working day strewn around us, more often than not, with a freshly clicked tinnie in our hands. The television, tuned to BBC Three, would be burning bright. Burning bright with the colours of Family Guy. I know I'm not alone. Across the nation, adults, real grown-up adults with jobs and mobile phone contracts and long-term boyfriends and girlfriends, have been secretly indulging in animated rape jokes and flatulence. Your shamed faces illuminated by LED screens, too tired to leave your seat, not sleepy enough to close your eyes. Brian and Stewie are doing a song, look! I can't go to bed yet.

When we were young, we'd run in from the garden, gobble down fishfingers, and sit wide-eyed and cross-legged in front of The Simpsons. Now we drag our dreary limbs off a train, are lucky to have microwaved some leftovers by 9PM, briefly consider opening the scary-looking post from the Inland Revenue that arrived that morning, phone our mums, reply to some more emails, switch the heating on and fall lovelessly into the arms of Peter Griffin. Giggidy, giggidy, goo.

Only, there's hope. A break in the chain. This week BBC Three left television and became an online-only service, and it did not take Family Guy with it. It will return to UK television on the 29th February on ITV2, but in its brief absence, let's take a moment to reflect on exactly why we keep going back.

Why is Family Guy popular? I have watched a lot of episodes by now and I'm pretty sure the reason isn't "because it's funny". I've never really laughed at an episode. If I do make a noise, it's this sort of disappointed pity-groan. As if my laugh is questioning its own existence as it is leaving my mouth. I imagine it's the noise I will make if I ever change a nappy: "There's loads of shit and piss, which is sort of funny in that it's eventful, but more than anything it smells terrible and I don't want to look at it any more."

I think its watchability is down to three things:

1. Pace.

2. Recognition.

3. Bright colours.

Firstly, pace. When you compare Family Guy to the average British sitcom in 2016, you can begin to see where some of its appeal might lie. In the post-Peep Show quagmire (sorry), British comedy has become stuck in a cycle of staid silences and prolonged awkward looks. The humour is always based around mates, or mums, or dads, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Those long uncomfortable spaces in slow-moving 30-minute episodes give you plenty of time to consider just how unfunny what you're watching is. To its credit, when Family Guy is making shitty jokes, it's making a lot of them. Family Guy contains, on average, 5.20 jokes a minute. With that gag-rate, none of them hang around for long enough for you to consider just how unfunny they were. And when that doesn't work, they go the other way and drag a joke out for so long you feel you have to laugh just to make it stop. See Peter's fight with a chicken, or anytime someone falls over. It's the comedic equivalent of taking somebody hostage until they agree to hang out with you.

These tabs have way more uses than getting off your face at a festival. Photo via Wikimedia

A medical historian in Canada recently stated that everyone's favorite hallucinogen, LSD, might make its way back to the medical scene—namely for use in palliative and geriatric care.

Erika Dyck, a medical historian who works as a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, looked into LSD trials in the 1950s and 60s for her paper recently published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal to figure out why there was initial interest in the drug. "To see where some of that renewed interest is, some of the questions are rather similar, and some have moved in different directions," Dyck told VICE.

One of those different directions is the use of the drug in palliative (medical care for those with serious illnesses) or geriatric (medical care for the elderly) settings. Though Aldous Huxley, a well-known British intellectual and psychedelic pioneer, took LSD on his deathbed, the use of the drug for those nearing the end of their lives is a relatively new idea in the medical field.

" studies—ayahuasca, peyote—we know that there have been elements of spirituality that confront death—that deal with death and mortality."

In 2014, a trial conducted with 12 cancer patients showed the efficacy of LSD relieving anxiety in those with life-threatening diseases. In that study, results showed both a decrease in anxiety (77.8 percent of participants) and an increase in quality of life (66.7 percent) for those who took the drug.

Dyck says that rather than LSD being a solution to an ailment, the drug could be used to help people manage what they might be going through mentally.

However, she says, acid's reputation as a festival drug long associated with hippie and party culture could be detrimental to its chances of being used in a legitimate medical setting.

"It may be interesting that the same generation that engaged in recreational use of LSD are now perhaps the patients demanding it in a more medical context," Dyck told VICE. "One of the biggest challenges to any so-called psychedelic renaissance will be encountering that reputation that it has culturally as a drug of abuse."

Follow Allison Elkin on Twitter.

Mechoulam during a lecture, with the structure of Tetrahydrocannabinol behind him, circa 1964. Courtesy of Zach Klein, from his documentary 'The Scientist'.

THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN THE COLOMBIAN EDITION OF VICE MAGAZINE

In 1980, a team of investigators from the Sao Paulo Medicine Faculty of Santa Casa published a study that should have changed the lives of 50 million epilepsy sufferers around the world – but never did.

The findings of the investigation, carried out alongside the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, were, at the very least, encouraging. Researchers administered daily doses of 300 milligrams of cannabidiol, the most important non-psychoactive component in marijuana, to a group of eight epileptic patients. Four months into the treatment, four of them stopped having seizures and three others saw the frequency of their seizures decrease.

"Who cared about our findings? No one!" says Raphael Mechoulam, frowning from his sofa. "And that's despite many of the epilepsy patients being kids who have 20, 30, 40 seizures a day. And what did they do? Nothing! For 30 years, no one has used cannabis to treat epilepsy."

I'd been searching for Mechoulam for a year. Just like anyone else interested in medicinal cannabis, I'd formed this mythical image of him, like a sort of Karl Marx or Syd Barrett figure, a revolutionary mind who defies the conventions of his time and alters, forever, our perception of the world. A few months ago, Norton Arbeláez, the Colombian businessman who designed the medicinal cannabis regulatory system in Colorado, told me that this organic chemistry expert's investigations had added scientific weight to his regulatory lobbying in the United States. Meanwhile, Juan Manuel Galán, a senator from Colombia's Liberal party, told me last November that he had travelled to Jerusalem to meet the scientist in his laboratory while he was working on the draft for his proposal to have medicinal marijuana legalised, which was approved by the Colombian Senate in December and will be debated in the House of Representatives this March.

Everyone I spoke to about the scientist agreed on one thing: Mechoulam is the father of modern cannabis.

Mechoulam at his current lab, at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. (Photo by Elior Rave)

The 85-year-old lives in a small, sober but elegant apartment in West Jerusalem, where the marble buildings and the trees in the front gardens make you forget momentarily that Israel is a military state on a permanent state of alert. Every day he drives his silver Peugeot to his lab on the outskirts of the city, where he's spent the last five decades deciphering the chemical mysteries of marijuana and, more importantly, the way in which the human body interacts with the compounds found in the plant. Raphie, as his colleagues like to call him, isolated and deciphered the molecular structure of the "cannabinoids", the chemical compounds in marijuana. In particular, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the molecule responsible for the cannabis high, and cannabidiol, the main non-psychoactive compound of the plant, carrier of countless medicinal qualities.

At the start of the 20th century, with the gradual prohibition of marijuana in the USA, the modern world turned its back on the researching of a sacred and powerful plant used by doctors, shamans and druids for over three millennia. The Pen-T'sao Ching, the oldest pharmacopoeia in existence, records the use of cannabis in China in around 2700 BC as treatment for rheumatic pain, constipation, female reproductive disorders (such as endometriosis) and malaria. Similarly, the father of Chinese surgery, Hua Tuo, developed an anaesthetic composed of wine and weed during the first century BC. Similar accounts appear in documents and witness accounts from India, the Middle East, Africa and even Europe, where in 1838, William Brooke O'Shaughnessy, an Irish doctor, published – following experiments on animals and patients – a book named On the Preparations of the Indian Hemp, or Gunjah. In Tibet, cannabis was used in tantric Buddhist rituals to "facilitate meditation", while Assyrians used it as incense in the sixth century BC.

Raphael Mechoulam didn't know any of this when he began his research over 50 years ago. The son of a Jewish Bulgarian couple persecuted by the Nazis (his father, a distinguished doctor, survived a concentration camp), Mechoulam left Europe in 1949, soon after the formation of the state of Israel. There, he studied chemistry, completed a masters in biochemistry, served in the army, busied himself studying pesticides and completed his doctorate in 1963 at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot – the same place he would later discover the secrets of cannabis.

"I was 34 when I started looking for research subjects," he tells me when I ask about the origins of his interest in cannabis. I'm expecting his answer to relate to the hippie era of the 1960s – "I was smoking a joint one day in my lab, when..." – but Mechoulam, who has only consumed cannabis once in his life, gives me a very straight response: "A scientist has to pick an original subject, one that doesn't have another 50 people working on it. The subject must also be substantial, and with social impact. Around that time I read plenty of articles in English, Russian, French, German, to try to discover some unexplored problem, until I realised the scarce chemical knowledge about the compounds in cannabis. I found it very surprising: while morphine had been isolated from opium and cocaine from the coca leaf, no one had studied the chemistry of the marijuana plant. It was very odd."

One day the young chemist showed up in the office of the Institute's director and asked for his help in procuring some weed. The director didn't think twice. He picked up the phone and called the police, who donated 5 kgs of Moroccan hash they had recently seized coming in from Lebanon (Mechoulam tells this anecdote in a very amusing way in the biographical documentary The Scientist, directed by Zach Klein). Some time later he had isolated, one by one, all the compounds in the plant.

Which of these compounds was the cause for all the mental stimulation that had terrorised governments and legislators in the 20th century? Was it just one, or a combination of all of them? To answer this question, Mechoulam and his team tested each individually on monkeys. The first surprising discovery was that only one of them, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), had any effect whatsoever. The primates looked drunk, sedated.

Mechoulam had discovered the psychoactive compound responsible for the marijuana high. To confirm it, he took a big dose of THC home with him and asked his wife, Dalia, to add it to her cake recipe. That day, the father of cannabis got high for the first and only time. He was also able to prove a phenomenon that today guides investigation into medicinal cannabis: that each organism reacts differently to THC. He knew it when he looked around him: one of his friends talked non-stop, another appeared to be in a trance, a third friend had the giggles. Only one of them looked paranoid.

As I listen to the anecdote, I remember a panel on medicinal cannabis I once attended as an observer, as part of the National Psychiatry Congress in the Colombian town of Armenia. There, three psychiatrists said they were worried about how the mass media talked about medicinal marijuana, particularly now the Colombian Health Ministry has signed a decree regulating it. The growing political sympathy towards medicinal cannabis was, according to the panel members, generating a false sense of security about marijuana. For the psychiatrists, the new media frenzy generated by this political debate has obscured studies that prove that one in ten adolescents who try marijuana develop psychotic episodes and addictive behaviours.

I communicate the panel's worries to Mechoulam.

"Neither THC nor cannabidiol are toxic. However, since the sixth century we have known that marijuana can provoke psychotic episodes. In addition, there is evidence that 10 percent of marijuana consumers develop an addiction, although not as strong as one to morphine. But beyond psychiatric disorders or the possibility of addiction, there is no evidence of any illnesses caused by cannabis."

READ: War in Weed Country

That whole debate corresponds purely to the recreational use of the drug, Mechoulam tells me. To him, it is one thing to debate the risks involved in smoking cannabis to get high, and another very different thing to explore the potential medicinal applications of its compounds, particularly THC and cannabidiol. The former is something sociologists can do, and doesn't concern him much. The latter, however, has occupied a large chunk of his life and those of the members of the International Society for the Investigation of Cannabinoids, a growing network of academics that, under his tutelage, has confirmed in their labs the reasons behind the historical usage of this plant.

It's likely that Mechoulam's greatest discovery isn't actually THC or cannabidiol. After all, following a short frenzy during the 1970s, and while practically every police force on the planet chased the cultivation, commercialisation and consumption of weed, science gradually lost interest in cannabinoids. But Mechoulam did not stop asking questions. In the late 80s he began to investigate the ways in which THC interacts with the nervous system.

"After we discovered THC, we began to study the metabolism and the ways in which the human body reacts to this compound," he says. "A team in Oxford had claimed that THC works in a non-specific manner. But we, alongside a young researcher, showed that, in reality, it is very specific."

The researcher is Allyn Howlett, doctor in neuroscience, who in 1988 discovered that most animals' brains have a receptor in the nervous system designed specifically to interact with THC. She called it CB1. Finding CB1 was like finding the lock for a particular key – a finding that was followed by an unsettling question: how was it possible that the nervous system had a receptor designed specifically to react with a marijuana compound? Had the human body evolved to interact with a specific plant? Was God (or Darwin) suggesting that man and marijuana were created for one another?

The answer Mechoulam found generated a scientific maelstrom which, to this day, fuelled by billions of dollars from big pharma, is still growing larger.

"Our nervous system has many neuronal receptors, and those receptors are linked to some substance produced by our body ," he says. "But these receptors were not created to link up with a shrub. If that was the case we would have millions of them, one for every species of plant on the planet."

In other words, if the human body has specific receptors for cannabinoids, it means our bodies produce them.

WATCH: 'Stoned Kids', our documentary about an eight-year-old leukaemia patient who uses massive amounts of weed to treat her illness.

In December of 1992, Mechoulam reported the discovery of a compound produced by the human body, located in and around the brain, which linked perfectly to the receptor he'd discovered years before. It was as if, suddenly, he had found another key that perfectly fit the lock. The discovery was so important that the molecule deserved a worthy name. A member of the team, a Hindu enthusiast, baptised it Anandamide, from the sanskrit "ananda", meaning supreme joy.

With the discovery of CB1 and Anandamide (and the later discovery of a similar receptor, CB2), it became evident to Mechoulam and his team that the human body contained a system of receptors and compounds very similar to those found in marijuana. They named it the endocannabinoid system. Since then, two matters have kept them up at night: what function does that system fulfil within the fragile and quasi-perfect balance that keeps humans healthy? And how can marijuana be used to treat illnesses related to that system?

"The endocannabinoid system is very important. Almost all illnesses we have are linked to it in some way or another. And that is very strange. We don't have many systems which get involved with every illness," says Mechoulam, patiently explaining what he's no doubt explained many times before.

Which illnesses would we be talking about?

"All sorts! Lung, heart, liver and kidney diseases... it all depends on how intensely the receptors become stimulated. Take dopamine, for example. If our bodies have too little dopamine we can develop Parkinson's; if they have too much, we can suffer from schizophrenia. It's the same thing with cannabinoids. Receptor CB2 is a protector. It protects the body from a multitude of things. CB1 works in different ways, depending on whether the dosage is high or low. In other words, as long as the levels of Anandamide – and other endocannabinoids since discovered – remain stable, the human body will perform many of its functions correctly. If these compounds become unbalanced, science could use cannabinoids like THC and cannabidiol, naturally occurring in marijuana plants, to cure many ailments.

The professor even assures me that there are some hints this system is related to certain types of cancer.

"But we are not certain," he says, frowning. "We don't have proof because those clinical studies are not being carried out! We know of people who consume THC and have claimed that they were cured of cancer. But beyond that we know nothing. We need more research! We need more clinical studies."

This is a sentiment he repeats like at every talk, interview or class he gives. For Mechoulam is a cannabis science activist. A wise old man who, despite being ignored for decades, insists that humanity is not worthy of what cannabinoids have to offer. Today, he sounds slightly more optimistic thanks to the recent interest in research from academics and pharmaceutical companies.

"I'm curious," I say at the end of our interview. "How come a money-making machine like the medicine industry has ignored all these findings?"

"It's simple", he replies. "Who would want a New York Times front page saying, 'Merck Makes Millions from Marijuana'"?

More on VICE:

Can You Actually Get Rich Selling Weed?

Everything I Learned Dating a British Weed Dealer

Inside Surrey's New 'Cannabis Cafe and Hotel'

(Photo by Panagiotis Maidis)

"European citizens have witnessed a wave of privatisations in their countries in recent years," write Sol Trumbo Vila and Matthijs Peters in the introduction to a bleak report published this week, The Privatising Industry in Europe.

It's true and it's not: privatisation is happening across the continent but Europe's citizens don't exactly "witness" it. The transactions between public and private happen behind closed doors ­– finance capital thrives in the dark. European citizens are more likely to feel privatisation, for instance through crappier jobs and more expensive utilities bills.

It's hard to quantify how people experience privatisation, but the report does a great job demolishing its economic justification, demonstrating how it fails on its own terms – the IMF admits there's no evidence privatisation is more "efficient" than public ownership – and showing that it is riddled with corruption and legal grey areas.

The report looks at case studies of privatisation, detailing how Greek land, Spanish airports, Italian railways and Portuguese infrastructure have been undervalued and sold to private firms and foreign governments. These public assets are often "the most valuable and profitable" ones, because they're the easiest to sell, so it's almost guaranteed the public will make a loss in the long run.

As its title suggests, the authors were less interested in the ideology of privatisation than in the "industry" that goes with it – the informal coalition of supranational institutions, sovereign and investment banks, legal and accountancy firms that makes it possible. We read about the American firm Lazard, which the report claims under-evaluates public assets so it can buy them up for cheap (privatisations are "as sweet as it gets", a former Lazard banker testifies); and the "Big Four" accountancy firms who advocate for governments to "grasp the opportunity" of privatisation on the knowledge they'll collect "a fee of up to 5-7 percent" of the gross proceeds."

We spoke to the report's co-author Sol Trumbo Villa – a Spanish activist who remains optimistic about Europe's future – to discuss what shocked him about his findings, the limits of anti-austerity politics and whether the EU is so incorrigible the British left should vote for Brexit.

VICE: Privatisation has been a feature of western economies for decades. What's new about this report?
Sol: We had a report in 2013 called Privatising Europe that looked at the different privatisation programmes and the popular resistance to them – because privatisation almost always has strong opposition from the workers in those public companies but also across society in general.

So we wanted to develop this research looking at the specific actors involved. It was a surprise for us because we knew something was happening but when we started digging into the issues, we discovered that a few firms, most of them based in the UK and US, were involved in all aspects of the process.

One of the infographics in the report was inspired by "A Beginner's Guide to Privatisation" made by the accountancy firm PriceWaterHouseCoopers. I guess these guys speak honestly between themselves.
Exactly. It's striking to see what extent they're so sure about implementing privatisation. Of course we knew that there's this debate going on between neoliberals and Keynesians – debates about increasing the influence of the private sector versus those who want more public control of certain areas of the economy – but when you see who's actually endorsing this neoliberal agenda, it's the same institutions that are benefiting from privatisation: audit companies, banks and legal firms. So they're not being neutral. They have a vested interest in promoting certain policies.

One of the contradictions you show is how these privatised public assets are being sold to state-run companies in China. What does this tell us?
I think it's an example of how privatisation processes are not about economic efficiency. It's about making a lot of money in a quick time in a context of panic or "shock" – as Naomi Klein would put it. In the case of Greece and other places in Europe, the banks who were the most at risk in periphery were from Germany and France. They were lending billions of Euros to the periphery, making lots of profit in the process without making good risk assessments, and when they became afraid they might lose all the loans, that's when the Troika stepped in. This is how private debt became public debt for all the Eurozone taxpayers.

This enormous amount of now-public debt had to be sold – and it didn't matter how you did it. They just needed the money as soon as possible. And if the buyer is the Chinese state, that's fine, they didn't care. The need was simply to make as much money as possible in a short term.

What were the most shocking case studies you examined?
The cases in which the advising company advised the government and the buyer were the most striking. You have that with the Banco Espirito Santo de Investimento in Portugal, advising the Portuguese government on one side and then Chinese state owned companies buying Portuguese assets on the other.

In the case of Lazard , they were actually acting as the buyer of public assets with one of their branches while advising on the value of state assets with another. It's so clear that there's a conflict of interest there we were surprised that no prosecution was happening. But then we discovered those practices are actually legal.

When Lazard were questioned on it they responded saying, "We have a Chinese Wall within the company." They claim they have their own mechanisms to avoid sharing information within the same company.

Some of the most important opposition to privatisation can come from people who work in the sector affected. How effective have the unions been in resisting these changes from above?
Trade unions have been really combative in southern Europe. In Greece there were 22 general strikes in the process of the first memorandums from the Troika. It was a massive mobilisation, not really common in other countries. And the response to that was basically state repression by the police, with the institutional and discursive support of the European institutions and IMF.

Read: Why the Dealy Asbestos Industry Is Still Alive and Well

It's true that nowadays unions have much less influence than before – fewer members and so on – so they've done what they could in a complex environment. However, it's also true that many unions are not up-to-date with the 21st century – in terms of forms of communication and mobilisation.

That said when they try to do anything they're suppressed. Just this week in Spain there was a trial of eight workers who were arrested simply for going on strike. It shows you the level of repression trade unions are facing these days.

People on the left in Britain might read your report as confirmation that we need a "Lexit" – to leave the EU for left-wing reasons.
What I would like to ask them is, "OK but then what is going to be left in Britain?" It's true that European institutions are strongly influenced by neoliberal policies; first by their own nature, how they're built, and also in the influence of corporate lobbies in Brussels. But then the institutions in the United Kingdom aren't very different – I think they'd be facing the same problems if they left the EU. Most of the companies we look at in this report are from the UK!

If the "Privatisation Industry" is so entrenched within the EU, what are the options for those who oppose it while staying in?
I think an important message is that we shouldn't be afraid of democracy. People in general know what is good for them. If they're not sure, it's good that they discuss and talk about it openly.

It's true since the 1990s the European Union project has been kidnapped by those who believe it should only be about markets and multinational corporations. But there are initiatives that can stop that. There are networks that advocate for registering lobbyists so they're obliged to disclose meetings they have. That could be implemented very quickly and will immediately put some light on who's influencing whom.

I also think we should start using referendums more often. There have been some already: there was one about the "Right To Water" which got over one million signatures in support so the European Commission had to reiterate their commitment that they can't oblige member states to privatise their water. This allowed the Greek people to protect their water because it was being privatised under the Troika. Thanks to this European Citizens' Initiative it was possible to stop it.

So let's keep doing that and building a capacity to discuss – this is how we empower people within the European project, this is the goal. Otherwise the EU will crumble and we'll have to find new structures. And in the current context, it's very likely that we'll return to the nationalisms.

@Yohannk

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Are Companies That 'Blacklisted' Workers Trying to Buy Their Way Out of Justice?

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Zelda illustration by Stephen Maurice Graham

The third episode of the VICE Gaming Podcast is a Legend of Zelda special, what with Nintendo's famous action role-playing series celebrating its 30th anniversary in February 2016.

1986's original The Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System was unlike anything that had come before it. It placed you in the shoes of Link, a young boy with only a shield in his hand and a limited sense of direction, and asked simply that you got on with it. Go, lad, to wherever your feet may take you. No arrow flashing at the top of the screen, directing you a certain way. Do visit the cave to the north, immediately – it's still amazing how many players don't grab a sword at the first time of asking. It is dangerous to go alone.

Soon enough, Link's exploring dungeons and overcoming bosses on his way to freeing the kingdom from the threat of the evil Ganon. And just like that, a substantial body of lore was set, one that's underpinned so many more Zelda games to follow the series' debut.

Stream our Zelda special below, or download the podcast to listen offline ("right click" and so forth to download the file).

RSS feed for the VICE Gaming Podcast

Two special guests join VICE Gaming editor (and something of a Zelda know-nothing) Mike Diver for this episode. Holly Nielsen is a freelance gaming journalist for The Guardian, Sky News and more, and can be heard alongside Gamespot's Kate Gray presenting the Toku Podcast. She bloody loves Zelda. Alongside her is Simon Miller of VideoGamer.com, a fantastically muscular man whose Miller Report internet infamy can't mask his almighty affections for the wee Hero of Time.

Listen, keenly, as we recall our first encounters with the Zelda series, from 8bit experiences through to N64 and GameCube classics. As we move on to Twilight Princess, about to receive an HD remaster for the Wii U to mark its tenth birthday (released on March 4th). And as we finish by discussing our hopes, our dreams, for the Zelda franchise moving forwards. What potential is there for further crossover games? What will this eagerly anticipated entry for the Wii U – and maybe the NX, too? – actually be like? Is it okay to want a Zelda title that is, basically, The Witcher 3 in Hyrule? Can Zelda get sexy?

Follow our guests on Twitter at @nielsen_holly and @simonmiller316, and VICE Gaming at @VICEGaming.

The cover of right-wing magazine 'wSieci'. The text reads "The Islamic Rape of Europe".

This week, the popular right-wing Polish magazine wSieci ran a cover that has offended a lot of people. Reason being: it features an image of a woman being grabbed at by numerous hairy arms, and the words: "The Islamic Rape of Europe".

The photograph – which, minus the hands, looks a lot like a stock image for "woman who's just remembered she left the iron on" – is a comment on the sexual attacks on German women in Cologne that took place on New Year's Eve. There were 58 counts of sexual assault that night, and even though only three arrested suspects were recent refugees, the subsequent message from Europe's right-wing media was clear: refugees are a threat to the safety of women in the EU.

Since the migrant crisis began, Poland has stuck to a very strict line on immigration. Most recently, at the EU summit currently taking place in Brussels, Poland – along with the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary – has called for Europe's borders to be sealed off in order to block the main route used by refugees .

Considering the uproar so far seems to have come mostly not from Poland, and because I don't speak Polish and therefore cannot gauge the reaction on Twitter, I decided to give our friend and VICE Poland editor Maciek Piasecki a call to see what his fellow countrymen think of the cover.

VICE: Hi, Maciek. What was your initial reaction to the cover?
Maciek Piasecki: I'm becoming increasingly desensitised to this kind of cover because the right-wing media do this kind of thing all the time. They portray someone they don't like with a gun to their face. They are pretty shameless about it.

Is the majority of Polish media right-wing?
Yeah, I think so. Some of the more eccentric left-wing magazines have been closing down in recent years. There has been an increase in magazines like wSieci – they call themselves "rebellious magazines". They came about during the time of the centralist-neoliberal government in Poland and were openly against the government, but right now they are really pro-government, because the government is now conservative.

Friends of the ruling party, for example, own the Polish Journal, so it's a bit like the Hungarian situation, where friends of the party in power also own the media. But these magazines still call themselves "rebellious", even though they're basically party media.

Do you think the message on the cover is something that resonates with more of the Polish population than not?
There aren't many Syrian refugees here in Poland – people get their information from these kinds of magazines or really biased social media pages. The topic of Islamic refugees attacking European women has been the source of this discourse for the past few months, especially after Cologne. The cover story is definitely playing on this sentiment. Also, it's not exclusively about attacks on women; it's also about what the EU is covering up, pretending they're uncovering some conspiracy theories.

READ ON VICE NEWS: Poland's Right-Wing Government Scares Europe by Going After the Media

What do you think about the cover aesthetically?
I think we should have more art classes in Poland.

Does Poland have an issue with the EU in general, or just immigration?
The ruling party is not eurosceptic; they have never openly opposed the EU. The lives of many Poles have improved through being in the EU. But the immigration quota is something that is definitely a concern of Poland. I don't think many people want to stop in Poland anyway, and it's the Poles who want to leave Poland. Everyone is trying to run away. Poles are really happy to emigrate, but they clearly don't see that people would like to come here too.

Do you think the cover will have much of an impact in Poland?
I don't think so; I think its just part of the rhetoric. On the whole it is quite dangerous, as I think Polish people are coming to think that it's normal to publish such things, which is worrying.

Has there been much of a backlash against it? Are people offended?
People are offended, but only those aware of the racial issues, not the majority of the public. I don't think the editor of the magazine would say they were racist; it's just under the skin. The old EU countries are definitely more politically correct. In Poland you don't get people with different shades of skin – everyone is pretty ethnically uniform. There aren't many in Poland who could be hurt by the image because they don't see these perpetrators as part of their community – that's the issue.

Thanks, Maciek.

@ameliadimz

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Boxing instructor Khadijah Safari.

"The last thing people think I've got in my bag is a load of boxing gloves" says Khadijah Safari. The 5"4 hijabi Muay Thai boxing instructor is struggling under the weight of the huge sports bag she's hauling to the class she teaches in Milton Keynes. "When I lived in London, I'd get taxis all the time and drivers would say, 'Where are you off to? What do you teach?' I'd tell them and they'd double-take, thinking perhaps I'd just covered my head because it was raining or something, but it was obviously my hijab... Once I went to Holland & Barrett to buy training supplements for one of my students. The guy behind the counter loudly and slowly asked, 'Can.I.Help.You?' like he assumed I couldn't speak English. Though I suppose that's better than the time a man yelled, "Go back to your fucking country!" and threw his sandwich at me.

Tales of this kind of racism aren't uncommon. What might be is Khadijah's response to it. Four years ago she set up boxing classes in London, which catered predominantly to Muslim women. She recently moved to Milton Keynes, and has become even more ambitious – setting up a national women-only kickboxing tournament that will allow Muslim women and non-Muslim women to compete on a national level together. Her hope is to empower them, physically and emotionally, and give them the confidence that they could kick the shit out of people on the streets in the real world – if they had to.

You have to be strong – before I came here, I lived in Worcestershire and people would shout "Muslim!' at me in the street.

The ethnic make-up of the streets that Khadijah's students inhabit has shifted significantly in recent years. In 2001, 13.2 percent of Milton Keynes residents were from an ethnic group other than "white British". By 2011 – the most recent figures available – this had risen to 26.1. Only 4.8 percent of people in Milton Keynes identify as Muslim, but in a climate where ethnic difference can be seen as a threat to the political rhetoric of "British values", a feeling of unease prevails. In 2013, a petrol bomb was flung onto the roof of the local Zainabia Islamic Centre. It was a relatively isolated incident, but it's recent enough to make it plain why local Muslim women feel a need to be defended.

"One of my students asked me to go the shop with her to get milk because she was wearing a niqab and was scared," says Khadijah. "People threaten them, pull veils from their heads. Imagine how many women are experiencing that, every time they go out?"

Self-defence classes aimed at Muslim women have existed for years across the UK. It's perhaps unsurprising that many women are protecting themselves against a climate where their safety is being increasingly and aggressively compromised. In September 2015, a shocking figure showed that Islamaphobic attacks had risen 70 percent in London in the last year. The media reported stories of women being spat on and name-called, while the #afterseptember11 hashtag retold stories across Europe and the UK of how life had changed for women after the 9/11.

Khadijah, left, and one of her students.



Khadijah's sessions are gruelling. The one I attend is on Thursday. Headscarves hang on hooks at the back of the room, hair is tied back, and the sparring is quick, sweaty and punishing. When men are in the building, newspaper is stuck on the windows to respect "purdah" – the religious practice of screening women from men or strangers. Khadijah shouts at the panting women, who are blocking, punching and memorising sequences. At one point, she expertly raises her legs above her head and holds a firm static kick position for 30 seconds, in a display of control that receives applause from the room.

One of today's attendees is 26-year-old Fatima. Her family are from London, via Sierra Leone, and she found Khadijah through Facebook. "It's a good skill for anyone to have, but particularly Muslim women because we are more overtly Muslim," she says.

Khadijah, who is a black belt in Muay Thai, now wants to take this to the next level, by creating a the first halal martial arts association – Safari Martial Arts Association – which caters specifically for the needs of Muslims. Men and women train separately so it's a space where women can remove their headscarves and be respectful of their religion and their sport at the same time.

She's been inspired by the Islamic Women's Games in Iran, an event organised by the Islamic Federation of Women's Sport to create a space where women can be free to compete, and now wants to set up a UK official tournament.

Afshah, 33, is fixing her hijab with magnetic pins that the women are sharing around after the session as they remove black and red boxing gloves. She's from Islamabad but has been in the UK for eight years. "I have three kids at home and I want something for myself," she says, "My husband wants me to get a black belt. You have to be strong – before I came here, I lived in Worcestershire and people would shout "Muslim!' at me in the street. I felt so insecure. I didn't want to go out. This class has given me a little bit more confidence. If there was a competition, I would love to go to there."

Sisters need to be able to play football and go for a jog where they're not judged by the way they are dressed.

The current British female kickboxing champion is in fact a Muslim. Ruqsana Begum is also the only Muslim woman who is a national champion in her sport. She also runs her own classes based in London and is in the middle of launching a "sports hijab range for sisters" later this year, called Sports Hijab by Ruqsana. Her point is simple, but one that keeps needing to be made – that Muslim women are capable of powerful, physically demanding sporting excellence, without being held back by stereotypes. "Sisters need to be able to play football and go for a jog where they're not judged by the way they are dressed," she says.

Khalidjah plans to hold a competition to celebrate Milton Keynes' 50th birthday next year, which she hopes will lead to more interest and funding for her idea of a national competition. "It's very achievable." She says, "I don't see any reason why it couldn't be. It'd also be an opportunity to give positions like judges and referees, which are usually held by men, to women. In doing this, we're showing a totally different side of ourselves".

For more information on Safari Kickboxing visit their website.

@kieran_yates

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Fashion Week is a hysterical circus that descends on London twice a year. It's a bit like when you go to a house party in year 10 but with less tears, vomiting and dodgy glittery eye shadow. Wait, did I say less? I meant way more.

Most "norms" – people who buy their clothes at John Lewis and think Erdem is a Muslim holiday – don't really know about the freaks who go to fashion week. Yes, they see Cara Delevingne in the Evening Standard wearing 29 pendants, looking like she runs a 17th-century apothecary, but fashion is about more than just the big name models. There's a whole rabble of broken souls who gather in the law courts, museums and almshouses that have been converted into Fashion Week venues.

What sort of people are allowed inside this hidden world and why? This is everything you need know.

Teenage Models

Julie Pike/PEPPERCOOKIES.COM

Models are mostly teenagers from the ex-Soviet Bloc who've been sent abroad to make money for their families. They all look the same, so their agents invent new names for them, like "Analisa" or "Melissa P".

Then there are the "personality" girls, which is basically just fashion-industry racism for English girls. They get paid much, much more because they come from moneyed London dynasties and their parents are filthy rich, and because they can make funny faces on demand, like an unusually clever cat. Often journalists criticise models for being too thin, and they are too thin. Because being too thin is literally their job.

Male models like smoking weed and going to the gym and getting tattoos and fucking, or all of these things at the same time. The only ones who aren't like this are the tortured male models, weedy-looking and sexually confused. They sit on the floor in the corner of the dressing room under the clothes rails reading Albert Camus paperbacks and drawing pictures of magpies. They're alright.

Front-row window dressing

Photo by Katya Moorman/Karen L. Dunn

Remember that amazing moment at the Yeezy Season 3 show when the Kardashian and Jenner family suddenly materialised before the crowds in glowing white fur, like angels from the clouds? London Fashion Week is nothing like that. The front row is a mire, a grim smattering of really dreadful pop stars and "it girls" you've never heard of, and loads of malnourished, substance-addled ex-Harry Potter extras who spend the rest of the year on holiday on the secret island of Lamu. And Skepta.

Stylists

Photo by Carl Wilson

Stylists dress weird as a profession. Some dress like Netherlandish cyber goth podium dancers in an explosion of neon pink extensions, fake everything and exposed flesh, illuminating an otherwise sombre and boring all-in-black audience. Others dress like traumatised child therapist textbook illustrations in tatty pink rags and candy accessories and roller skates. Others have been up for days on expensive champagne and speedy diet pills and end up looking like muddy scarecrows. Others are cool kids from Japan, dressed like clowns.

Stylists are the luckiest people in the room, really. They're good-looking but actually talented, they're making good money (day rates are in the thousands) and, best of all, they're not working in fashion PR.

Fashion PRs

Working as a PR at Fashion Week is like working as a parking lot attendant but with less job satisfaction and worse pay.

Up-and-coming designers

Photo by Carl Wilson

Being a fashion designer is the hardest job in the creative industries. Actually, it's the only hard job in the creative industries.

Spending every waking hour of your life making 100 insanely delicate items of clothing with very little commercial potential whatsoever, all for a five-minute show watched mostly by people who can't see the clothes, and couldn't care less, and couldn't fit into them anyway. Why bother?

Come Fashion Week they're nowhere near ready, they haven't slept in days and their old Central Saint Martins classmate and closest friend – basically their utter nemesis – is hogging all the press attention and stealing all their models. Sometimes industry types burst into tears spontaneously and nobody knows why (probably just because they're on a comedown), but when designers do this it's because they're just so tired. Because they have nothing left to give.

Super designers

Roberto Cavalli (Photo by Luciano Consolini via)

The crazed designers in charge of world famous fashion houses. Will Ferrell in Zoolander, basically. Lots of these sorts are dodgy Italians. Some think it's appropriate to have "African tribal" themed shows with only white Eastern European models. Others have a pet houseboy who follows them everywhere and cannot speak a word of Italian, and has to open their doors and stuff (and do worse things too, obviously).

There are also stories of fashion designers who throw dogs at the wall. Who buy vintage pieces from second hand shops and just send them straight down the catwalk. Who refuse to look their interns in the eyes. Someone once told me they walked into the house of one of fashion's biggest designers and found them naked and on all fours under the dining room table, sipping milk from a saucer and pretending to be a cat. Also: rumours are what make the fashion world go around.

Old people

With apologies to @baddiewinkle

In the youth-obsessed fashion industry, old people control everything. They are the bloated and walrus-like tax dodging plutocrats who fund the whole circus, as a place to promote themselves and nurture new ideas. They are the buyers who actually decide what's in shops and what we wear.

Old people run the fashion world. The models retire, the next-big-thing designers go out of business, the young talents drift away into more lucrative industries, and the thirsty fashion bloggers just give up (it's never going to happen). Everyone else changes, but the bastions of the industry stay the same.

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Writer Morgan (left) in the lift with Shia Lebeouf. Photo courtesy of Oxford Union.

It's a Friday morning in Oxford, Shia LeBeouf is here, and not many people care. Yesterday, I lost out on securing a spot on the Oxford Law Society's puppy playdate, which booked up online in under four minutes. Someone was trying to sell their spot for £100. Today, the Transformers actor-turned-conceptual artist is standing inside a lift for 24 hours, asking people to come and join him, while the whole thing is livestreamed on YouTube. He is also due to give a talk at the Oxford Union debating society tonight.

Apparently people love puppies more than they love performance art, so when I turn up to Shia's lift at the EC English language school, there is a meagre queue outside. It may be that it is 9AM on a cold February day, but Oxford students have queued for hours here for less – namely in to be in the same debating chamber as Made in Chelsea stars. Everyone here seems pretty bemused at their own interest in the event, and nobody coming out of the lift looks any more enlightened. The most pressing question here really is why? Why here, in this abrasively orange building, on a market square in a quaint university town? Apparently, because Oxford asked. And apparently, because no other building would have them.

We didn't wait long to get to the lift doors. After pressing the "up" button a few times, a group filed out and we filed in. I shook Shia's hand, then the hands of his collaborators Nastja Rönkkö & Luke Turners and then the door closed. Forgetting that our voices were being live-streamed we talked about the elves in The Lord of The Rings – the subject of the dissertation my nerdy best friend I brought with me is writing; we talked about how Shia had liked the floors in the college he stayed in, because they "have a lot of history"; and we talked about how much he likes partying at Mexican quinceañeras. I brought up Transformers once, tentatively. He changed the subject.

The author outside Shia's lift

After a couple of minutes, two Chemistry students came in and momentarily we forgot that we were in a confined space with a celebrity, and just chatted between ourselves about mundane student things. Eventually when conversation ran dry, and aware that we were Shia-hogging, we left. On my way out, someone asked me what he smelled like. But like any short conversation with another human being, my only real impression of him is that he is a nice guy. Listening to the livestream now, he just told someone he liked their corduroys, at another point he makes everyone get out of the lift so an old woman can actually use it. He holds the elevator door for you. He wants to know your dog's name.

Shia has been the simultaneous subject and arbiter of the media frenzy about his spiralling descent for the past couple of years – ever since charges of plagiarism over his short film HowardCantour.com. Critics who are unaware, or more likely unwilling to acknowledge that this narrative has been created by Shia himself, have dismissed his artistic performances as the self-indulgent narcissism of a celebrity desperate for acknowledgement from intellectual circles. Recently, we watched him watch every single one of his movies in reverse chronological order in #allmymovies, snidely joking about his falling asleep in Transformers. We made and shared GIFs out of his motivational 'Just Do It' video. We read articles about him allegedly being raped in the process of #Iamsorry, but apparently no one went to the exhibition itself. We laughed about his lurid spandex outfit when he ran laps around a gallery in Amsterdam to mark a 12 hour art conference in #metamarathon. We were bemused by the pretension of the silent interview in a hotel room he did with Dazed magazine. We were bemused, period.

Shia La Beouf makes everyone get out of the list so an old woman can use it.

It is easy to call Shia's behaviour erratic and attribute his performances to the same crazed celebrity mentality which saw him fighting outside strip clubs or checking into rehab. But it is so much harder to seriously engage with him. This is, obviously, less hard to do when you are in a confined space with the man himself, as he looks into your eyes and says that #allmymovies was just a struggle to "come to terms with myself". Alongside sincere moments like that, there was the inevitable bullshit that you would expect from someone who has had to be in the same room as Megan Fox a lot. Like when he told the Chemistry student we were in the lift with that he believed in science like he believed in magic. That was one of those times.

This piece, called #elevate, is an effective, if trite, exploration of the painful performance of small-talk, of the yearning for genuine human interaction, of bringing celebrity down to earth. Of course it's a derivative rip off of Marina Ambromovic's The Artist is Present – like how his apology tweets for plagiarism were all blatantly plagiarised, and just like how Damien Hirst's work is a rip off of every artist ever. This is just where art is at right now – and the enduring popularity of self-referential narcissists like Kanye West, James Franco, Joaquin Phoenix and Bret Easton Ellis is a testament to that. Whether or not I am able to confirm a wry irony in his smile, or an element of performance in his earnestness, standing in an elevator with Shia LaBeouf was worthy of my time. Listening to him is worth yours.

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Harper Lee. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. Courtesy of Harper Collins

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Local Alabama site AL.com reports that To Kill a Mockingbird author Nelle Harper Lee has died in her hometown of Monroeville, AL on Friday morning. She was 89 years old.

Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, released in 1960, had long been her only published novel. But the story of Jean Louise Finch's childhood in Maycomb, AL and her father Atticus's heroic court battle against racism stands as a hallmark in American literature. Her opus won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961, and it remains one of the most widely taught and referenced books in the US today.

Lee had lived a fiercely private life since the book's publication, almost never granting interviews or meeting with reporters – she even turned down an interview offer from Oprah. She recently made headlines when Go Set a Watchman, billed as a sequel but is more accurately an earlier draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, hit bookstores last July, raising many questions across the literary world. In the novel, Finch, the highly moral figure in Mockingbird, is instead written as a racist. Combined with the surprising timing of the book – after the death of her sister, Alice, who had been the diligent protector of her work and legacy – many wondered if the decision to publish Watchman was made without Lee's approval.

Among other things, Gretchen's family must keep its distance from schools. (Photo: Kelly Hunter via)

Life Inside is an ongoing collaboration between The Marshall Project and VICE US that offers first-person perspectives from those who live and work in the criminal justice system. This article originally appeared on VICE US.

In 2001, about six months before Gretchen met her husband, David, he was charged with sexual assault. After a night of drinking, police found him and a friend drunk and half-dressed on the side of the road; she was passed out, and he fled when the cops arrived. Gretchen* says that David initially thought he would be getting a DUI. In fact, he was ultimately charged with "sexual penetration by foreign object/victim unconscious" – the "foreign object" being his hand*.

David did three years in a California prison, three more on parole, and he will spend the rest of his life on the sex-offender registry. Fourteen years after the incident, almost every aspect of the couple's life together has been shaped by that night, from where they can live to whether they should start a family.

Gretchen is particularly worried about the passage of a new US law that will make it difficult for registered sex offenders to travel internationally. The law is aimed at those with underage victims; David's was not, but many on the registry report being stonewalled when they travel, regardless of the age of their victims.

Below, Gretchen discusses her marriage, her neighbours, and what the future might bring.

A couple of months into our relationship, he told me what had happened. I was 18 at the time. He was 22. I was very young and obviously in a little bit of shock. I thought, There's no way you can go to jail for this. I mean, you guys were two stupid young kids. You're not a monster. You're not the crazy man in the park, the lurker. And I just thought that it would go away.

It never went away.

He didn't go to prison for about a year and a half after we met, when he finally just gave up and pleaded guilty because he said he didn't want to put everyone through the agony of what was going on – mostly myself and his mother. The entire time he was gone, I was finishing my college degree. I would go up to see him on the weekends here and there, but he wanted me to focus on school and told me he was going to be fine.

He still says to this day that prison was the easiest part. He says that now it's even harder because he doesn't know what to expect. It's the constant worry. We're so fearful every time we drive up to our house: Are the neighbours going to be picketing out front? Every time the doorbell rings, my heart drops. You live in this constant state of fear.

We've never made friends with any of our neighbours. We really just try and keep to ourselves. But cops still do home compliance checks where they come knock on our door to make sure he lives there. So we're fearful of that – that somebody might see the police show up at our door every single year and start to get suspicious about what is going on in our house.

To be harassed every time you come home, it's a little uneasy.

For the first three years he was home, his picture wasn't even on the website. You would actually have to go into the police department to find out anything about him. And then they said they had made a mistake. Then, all of a sudden, his name and photograph is on there. Then they said he can't live within 600 metres from a school. We had just bought a home and lived about 615 metres away from a school. Thank God we didn't have to move.

Every time we turned around, it was something new.

We really wanted to be parents. But the more the laws kept changing, and the more we saw how people on the registry were treated – which at this point, he has truly not had to experience, but he's just terrified of what could be – we just thought it's not the responsible thing to do, to bring a child in the midst of this. To have to explain to them, "Your dad can't pick you up from school, and you can't have friends over."

We went and bought a large map and placed it in my office and just said, "You know what? We have four young nieces that all live within about 16km of us. Our very close friends with kids, they are always spending time at our home. We're going to be the best aunt and uncle we can be, and we're just going to go travel the world." We started traveling everywhere we could. We've gone to the Caribbean, we've gone to Europe. We have a trip planned right now to Greece in August.

This new law finally put us both over the edge. When we first found out about them sending notifications to other countries, we figured out a way around it. We live near the Tijuana border, and I said, "Let's try and fly out of there and see what happens." But of course, when we fly back to the US, he's essentially harassed at customs. There's nothing they can do, because he's not breaking the law, but they want to know how he got there and how he's been to all these places. There have been times where they've looked through all his stuff, torn everything apart, asked if he has computers, asked where he's been, asked who he's been with. To be harassed every time you come home, it's a little uneasy.

Now with what's coming, we kind of just feel like our backs are against the wall. Do we pick everything up and leave? We just don't know if that's the right thing to do. We have very close ties to our family here. I'm a business owner. We're financially pretty successful here. We just thought: Either we'll stay in California and just stick this out and hope maybe one day the laws will change. Or we'll leave the country altogether and be done with it.It's just a never-ending punishment.

*Gretchen says David and the young woman got intimate consensually, and police misread the situation when the woman opened the car door to throw up, then fell out and passed out. According to prosecutors, the young woman was passed out all along, and David perpetrated "a sexual attack on a totally vulnerable person."

Names have been changed.