The recent news reports that the US government can pull whatever data it wants from the internet and has free rein to peek at your phone records might have been shocking initially, but really they just underscored something already known (or at least assumed) by lots of people—we’re being watched pretty much all the time. Thanks to all the technology we casually use every day, everyone from corporations to government intelligence agencies to petty criminals have the opportunity to snoop through our stuff on a level that would have been unimaginable just a couple of decades ago. There are some measures you can take to hide from the NSA, but one of the most aggressive ways to guard your data is using the products available from Silent Circle, a tech start-up that sells software that encrypts calls, texts, emails, and files. The company, which has been around since last year, employs well-known cryptography experts like Jon Callas and Phil Zimmermann, the creator of the widely used PGP email encryption program, and they also own servers in Canada and Switzerland, where the laws are more privacy-friendly than those of the US. Even if they did open their servers to law enforcement or other government agencies, they say, there’s little to find there—the keys to decipher their customers’ encrypted calls and messages are generated on the users’ own devices and automatically deleted shortly afterward.

Obviously, a company providing a way for individuals—and potentially criminals—to communicate in secret might worry law-enforcement agencies. But Silent Circle isn’t worried about that, and they say that they abide by the laws while giving people an edge over data-gathering busybodies. I recently chatted on the phone with CEO Mike Janke and CTO Jon Callas about the right to privacy, what I got wrong in a previous article, and why even the FBI is buying their products.

VICE: Surveillance is in the news because of the NSA stuff. But obviously, the government isn’t the only one monitoring people and collecting information. What are some common non-NSA threats to people’s privacy?
Jon Callas: The first obvious one is the Chinese government, who do an awful lot of spying, particularly on people who do business. Then there is the usual gang of identity-stealing criminals usually based in Eastern Europe. And there are a lot of cases when, if you’re in business, there are specific people who might engage in espionage against you. There are a lot of industries where the companies spy on each other all the time.

Mike Janke: For the average citizen, it’s not just about the threat of criminal hackers. Many other countries in the world have organizations similar to our NSA with very similar mandates, and many of those operate without the same type of oversight the US has, if you want to call it oversight. Also, how do you feel from a personal privacy perspective that your texts, the websites you shop on, the calls you make—whether it's to an illicit lover or for a business deal—the pictures you share, and the documents you send are being collected, collated, repackaged, and sold as data? Where is your version of privacy and what do you use to reign [surveillance] in?

Do you think that this is a moral question? Do we have a fundamental right to keep our communications private?
Jon: Absolutely. In my view, in Silent Circle’s view, every person in this world, regardless of their station in life or religion, should expect a level of basic human privacy. And many of the people on the internet have no understanding on what level they are giving that up.

But is that a legal right? As far as I know, laws regarding encryption differ a lot from country to country.
Mike: In your article, you said that right to encrypt things is notoriously unclear. And that is totally false. It is completely clear. You do have a right to do encryption. That’s certainly true in the United States and what I will call the first world—Canada, the European Union, Japan, etc. You absolutely have the right to encrypt data. And there’s never been any issue with that.

Now, when you go a little further than that, first of all, there are restrictions if you happen to be in a repressive country—Syria, China, you name it. But there’s also the issue that relates to the Fourth Amendment [which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures]. And a way to look at this is that you absolutely have a right to put a safe in your house and no one has suggested you can’t. Where the battles come in is suppose you get accused of some crime and somebody either in the course of a lawsuit or criminal investigation says, “Hey, I ought to be able to look to see what’s in that safe.” And the circumstances to which they can and cannot do something about that vary widely from country to country. In the United States, one of the things we have seen the past couple of years has related to these issues, particularly with people who have been charged with crimes is, do they have to open up their safes when these safes aren’t physically in their homes, but are encrypted disks on their laptops? That’s where the controversies have come in.

Thanks for clarifying that. So what does Silent Circle do to make people’s information more secure? What happens when I send a text, say, from one device with Silent Circle software on it to another?
Jon: The keys that encrypt that message are generated on your device and the other person’s device. So all the encryptions are being done there; we don’t have the keys. When [the text] gets to the other person’s device, there is an integrity check to make sure that it hasn’t been modified in transit. It also gets decrypted there.

Mike: Once the session is done, the keys are deleted off the device, and that’s also true for calls. So every new time I call you it creates new keys and then deletes them after the call. This is called ephemeral keys. Which means if you and I are talking on our silent phones or texting, and you go through an airport in Shanghai and they take your phone to some lab and try to suck the bits out of it, there’s nothing for them to get because the keys are deleted after each session. That’s the beauty of it—we don’t have the keys.

So what happens when law enforcement from one country or another come and ask to see the records of people who have used your services for allegedly illegal means?
Jon: It depends on what country. If the Chinese come to us and say, “Hey, here’s a bunch of dissidents using your service, tell us everything,” we will laugh. And they have no way of doing anything. But it’s a rule that you have to obey the laws of every country you operate in—if you don’t do that, you are a criminal organization. So if say, the US or the Canadians come to us with and warrant all of those things, we have to comply because we are law-abiding people. We tell them up front, “We don’t have the keys, we don’t keep records of any of the calls, so we can’t give anything to you.”

Mike: We don’t have anything. They understand that now. The odd thing is, they’re also buying [our products]. The FBI and law enforcement and the intelligence agencies have the same BYOD—bring your own device—issues [around keeping data private] that corporations in America and Europe have. So, we’re a solution for them as well. It serves their purpose. We don’t have any data. The FBI doesn’t want their agents’ data collected when they make personal calls.

Do you guys think that there’s any way that we’ll return to a society where people can have some expectation of privacy when they communicate with each other?
Jon: Well, part of quote, unquote “getting your privacy back” depends upon things out of everyone’s control. I mean, I am carrying on my person, right now, three or four devices with cameras. There are video cameras everywhere, and so on and so forth. All of that is going to increase. There are lots of businesses that fund themselves by collecting and selling your personal data. The reason why Google can give you Gmail and searching for free, and Facebook is free is because that they are giving information to advertisers who use that information to present better ads to you. Our business model is the reason why you should want to pay us. We’re not offering some sort of ad-supported service—you are paying us to protect your privacy.

Mike: The new gold coming out of the ground is data, your data. You are not the customer anymore. Your data is worth more than you now. Whether it is to a government being Big Brother, or all of the corporations around the world that need data—Little Brother—the fight for privacy will be an uphill and never-ending fight. There will be more surveillance in the future, not less, but there will also be more of us creating things to protect your privacy.

@HCheadle

More about surveillance:

Privacy’s Public, Government-Sponsored Death

Behind the Burqa of Drone Fashion

Why Did a Student in Montreal Get Arrested for an Instagram Post?

Photos by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

The E3 video game expo is a yearly celebration of the multi-billion dollar gaming industry. It’s also super fucking boring. As the largest video game trade expo in the world, it’s both overly stimulating and stultifyingly corporate. Imagine taking a walk down the Las Vegas strip, with all the lights, sounds, and annoying carnival barkers yelling at you, then accidentally stumbling into a TED talk. Yeah, that sounds shitty to me too.

While hanging around there in spite of myself, I heard about a Christian gaming organization called Gamechurch with a booth on the ass end of the convention center that was supposedly giving away free beer to anyone desperate enough to talk to them. I figured my E3 had been saved. Could it have been a sign from God himself that I should get a taste of the gospel and also get drunk on cheap keg beer? 

To my surprise, there was no beer left when I arrived. I suppose everyone else at E3 had the same idea, but much earlier in the day. All that was left for me to do was read their material until more beer showed up.

I fingered through their pamphlet titled “Jesus, for the Win!” long enough to realize that this whole operation was serious. A condensed version of the Book of John was interspersed with essays justifying mixing the New Testament with the latest Call of Duty game. Those just seem naturally compatible, right?

They also had a table of free Gamechurch branded merchandise. Anyone could walk up and grab the standard expo swag (stickers, pins. etc.), but to get the primo freebies like shirts and votive candles, you had to join their mailing list. 

I signed up so I could get a candle. Joke's on them though, as I actually have a spam filter for the word “Jesus.” 

I had hoped to learn a bit more about Gamechurch in an analog fashion, so I spoke to Mikee Bridges, fedora enthusiast and the founder and owner of Gamechurch (and also xxxchurch.com, an anti-porn site designed to look like a porn site, which is a pretty clever trick at 3 AM when I have my pants down), who assured me prior to our interview there was, in fact, no more beer coming. 

VICE: How did you get into Christian gaming?
Mikee Bridges: I've been a Christian all my life and I don’t like American, Western Christianity. I don’t like the way we’ve portrayed Jesus, which is surrounded by guilt, shame, and judgment. Nowhere in (the Bible) does it say any of that stuff. I went from being a musician to being a promoter, and because of promoting, I had music venues, and in these music venues, I’d have a café or a lounge. I’d put some computers in there, and kids started gaming. It was a lot more fun to hang out with the kids who were gaming than the musicians, because the musicians were babies. So I stopped doing music, and I started doing gaming. We run a 7,000-square-foot gaming facility in Ventura, about an hour from here. All we do is game, all day, all night. Gamechurch.com is an extension of that.

How can you combine gaming, which is often this overly aggressive, misogynist-laden entertainment medium, with your message of peace and love?
We don’t. I’m not the morality police. What you play at home is never going to affect me. We [as Christians] so badly want something to judge. They did it with music, with movies, with books, now with video games. That’s one of the reasons I don’t like my brothers and sisters and what they’re doing. I think it comes down to two things: good parenting and self-discipline. If you’re an alcoholic and you don’t want to be around beer, don’t go to a bar. Don’t go to that rated R movie if you can’t handle it, but I’m going to go and I’ll tell you about it. I’m not shaken by violence, sexuality, gore. Nothing really scares me. I’ve been around the block a few times. 

Do you think gaming causes people to behave differently in the way that socially conservative interest groups claim? You’ve dealt with sex addiction with your other site, xxxchurch.com, and you say that porn changes people. Do violent, sexually gratifying games change people the same way you say porn does?
Everything affects us. Walking down the street affects me. When I see a restaurant, it affects me. I really think it comes down to self-discipline, self-control, and good parenting. I’m sad at the video game industry, because we are over-sexualizing women and there is a problem there. I think it’s getting addressed now, which is cool, but unfortunately, I’m not the police. So, for me personally, I look at it and I would step in and say, “Yes, we’re oversexualizing stuff.” Not every woman in video games needs to have tits and ass. For you, I don’t know you. I don’t know you to judge what’s OK for you.

Why do you think Christians are historically known for being so judgmental about personal choices?
Two hundred to 300 years ago, we became a feared, fearful group. I’m going to find whatever it is that makes you feel dirty, so that you come crawling to “the Lord,” and it was all fear-based, and it sucks, and it’s not true. It has nothing to do with the gospel I know of. It’s a bummer.

If Jesus was at E3 or Comic-Con, would he cosplay as himself or as another character?
Himself. Absolutely, himself. What I want to do is throw a party, and have someone cosplay as Jesus and have him be the DJ. Can you imagine an open bar, a tiny little club that fits 200-300 people—Jesus gets up to the tables and everyone is freaking. That’s what he would be like. He was famous. He was a rock star.

@dave_schilling

More about video games:

My Name Is Tom and I'm a Video Game Addict

How Awful Are the Free Porn Games on the Internet?

North Korea's First Racing Video Game Is Terrible

Good afternoon, ladies and germs. We'd just like to borrow your attentions for a moment to let you know our TV show, VICE, has been renewed for a second season on HBO. It took a lot of work, some of us almost died a bunch of times, there were many sleepless nights, high points and low, and now we're gearing up to do it all over again and can't wait. According to our co-founder, Shane Smith, "We learned a lot over the course of shooting season one, and are insanely excited over our story selection for season two. Now that our various parasites, hernias, and virulent rashes have been treated, we are ready in mind and in body to go out there and get the gold." Here, here.

This is the part where we're supposed to thank you guys for watching, we think (we're kind of winging it here—never had to write one of these before). And although it's a cliched sentiment that people in sparkly clothes at fancy awards shows like to wax on about, it's true that we wouldn't be getting a second season if you people weren't watching our show and enjoying all the weird crap we get ourselves in to. So thank you.

Don't forget to watch tomorrow night's season finale, which is entirely devoted to our recent trip to North Korea, and we'll see you next year.

Beijing, China. Tiananmen Square. "The Tank Man" stopping the column of T59 tanks. June 4, 1989.

Magnum is probably the most famous photo agency in the world. Even if you haven't heard of it, chances are you're familiar with its images, be they Robert Capa's coverage of the Spanish Civil War or Martin Parr's very British holiday-scapes. Unlike most agencies, Magnum's members are selected by the other photographers on the agency, so becoming a member is a pretty grueling process. As part of an ongoing partnership with Magnum, we will be profiling some of their photographers over the coming weeks.

One-time Magnum president Stuart Franklin is probably best known for his photo of an average-looking man with some groceries defying a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square. Yet, as I discovered when I spoke with Stuart, that photo was not the instant sensation people might expect it to be. He talked me through art school's effect on his work, the difference between approach and style, what "news photography" really means, and getting caught up in the Heysel Stadium disaster.

VICE: Unlike some of the people we have spoken to in this series, you were classically trained in the arts.
Stuart Franklin: I studied drawing, painting, and photography on a degree course at what used to be called the West Surrey College of Art and Design.

Do you think that influenced the way you work?
In terms of photography, it gave me a better sense of lighting and urged me to not be afraid of anything—formats or technical hurdles. On the postproduction side, I was able to go straight into setting up my own darkroom in London, processing my films and functioning as an editorial photographer, which was quite useful.

Manchester, England. Moss Side Estate. 1986.

I feel that maybe your styles and subjects have been more varied compared to those of most other photographers. Do you attribute that at all to your lack of concern about formats and techniques?
I believe there are two things to consider: one is style and the other is approach. I think the approach I take to photography is quite consistent across the board. It’s a considered, gentle approach that I have to working in almost any context. The tools that I pack in my bag to take on different assignments or projects vary enormously. They become a localized and temporary style, but I think that underneath everything there is the thumping bassline of the work, which is about my approach attempting to be quite graceful, to be quiet. The tools are whatever I pick up on the day—it could be a pencil, it could be a camera.

You became well-known after covering the famine in the Sahel in the mid-1980s, directly after you studied art. How did you transition into photojournalism?
In the beginning of the 1980s, I did a lot of work in Mexico City, supported by the Telegraph Magazine. I also did lots of work in the north of England looking at the decline of the manufacturing industry, as well as similar stuff in France, the Pas-de-Calais and areas around Metz. Those were my early bits of work. I joined Sigma in 1980, and over a period of five years they mainly sent me to cover breaking news. The first major story I covered was the 1983 bombing of the US barracks in Beirut, where I think 285 US soldiers were killed. [It was 241; a further 58 French servicemen were killed in a separate blast nearby two minutes later. Six civilians and the two bombers also lost their lives.] I covered the civil war in Lebanon in a wider context, too—those things all happened before I went to Sahel to cover the famine.

Beirut, Lebanon. 1983. American soldiers sift through rubble in the aftermath of a devastating truck bomb in Beirut.

How did those early assignments compare to the expectations you had? Was photography as a job something of a shock?
I remember one of the first assignments I had with Sigma was the IRA bombings in Hyde and Regent's Parks in 1982, down near Horse Guards. Sigma rang from Paris and asked me to go and cover it. I got there to see police tape, miles from what had happened. I couldn't really see anything, so I went back home. They rang me later furiously asking what I had got. I told them that it didn't look very interesting. I learned then that, in a news situation, anything visual is valuable—even if it's only a photo of the police tape with something blurry in the background a mile away.

The materiality of any war or news story overrode the aesthetic potential for a while, and that was quite a shock to me. I was expecting to make powerful, striking photographs and often I was actually just expected to photograph anything I could.

On the subject of striking photos, I was wondering about your photo of the man in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square. First off, do you ever feel that one image overshadowed the rest of the work you did during the student protests there?
Well, it didn't actually happen that way. When I got back from China, I went into Michael Rand's office at the Sunday Times Magazine. He was laying out one of my photos on the cover of the magazine, but it was another of the photos from my trip —a topless guy with his arms raised. That became equally well known for a while. The "Tank Man" picture grew in importance over time, but it didn't actually stand out far from the body of work immediately after the event.

But yes, in more recent years people talk about that photo a lot. Does it annoy me? Well, you can't really be annoyed about it. I am just glad I was there. All I know is that I did my job and I think I did it well.

Beijing, China. Tiananmen Square. 1989.

What happened immediately after that moment, to you and the protesters? I can't imagine it was easy getting these photos out of the country.
It was all very uncertain. The police and security people were going from room to room in my hotel, searching for journalists and confiscating films. That atmosphere was very worrying. I remember packing my film into a box of tea that was supplied in the hotel room and asking someone who was going back to Paris to take it for me. I was left in China without my film. I wasn't worried about it once the film was out, and I didn't mind if I lost a couple of cameras. It wasn't easy—we were shot at, at times—but I was lucky.

Brussels, Belgium. Heysel Stadium disaster. Liverpool fans en route to the stadium. May 29, 1985.

I guess the way photos are used in news has changed since then. What other stories in that era were important for you?  
The Heysel Stadium disaster was, at the time, a huge story. It was bigger news in Europe than Tiananmen Square was. Paris Match dedicated 22 pages to it. In the age of photojournalism, before TV or the internet took it elsewhere, photography was responsible for in-depth coverage of the world around us. Now, if you look at all the papers, they more or less tell the same stories and use the same pictures. That wasn't the case in the 1980s. Every magazine you picked up had a different story.

At the time, I was covering football hooliganism, which was a growing story in the UK. We weren't really sure how to cover it so we thought we'd travel down to Brussels with the Liverpool fans, and it happened to be the European Cup Final. We weren't expecting anything to happen, it was just a way of getting into the life of football fans, seeing how they related to each other and the world around them. It was meant to be a quiet story. I went into the stand with them and of course it turned into something different. What that exemplifies is a form of in-depth photo-reporting that is very rare to see these days. That was the norm back then.

Brussels, Belgium. European Cup Final. Heysel Stadium disaster. May 29, 1985.

Moving onto your more recent work, how do you feel about cities? We spoke to Jonas Bendiksen recently, and he has a very definite view. He thinks slums have to be seen as functioning and important parts of our cities, not black spots to be glossed over. Do you have an overpowering feeling about the state of our cities?
Well, on the subject of slums, as I said at the beginning, my first photographic engagement with cities was working in some of the poorer parts of Manchester, the Moss Side estates, Liverpool, Glasgow, Newcastle and then Mexico City. I think when I got to Mexico City and saw the slums, or barrios, of that city, I thought of American anthropological theorists like Oscar Lewis who had said that the poor are in the slums because they deserve to be there and that nothing will ever change. Of course that was complete rubbish. Anybody who moves anywhere, whether to a mansion or a cardboard box, is aspirational.

I have returned year on year to one particular barrio in Mexico City. Over time, window boxes appeared, gardens were created, roads were better maintained. I think slums are often the beginning of a move from urban wasteland to normal and regulated parts of a city. It’s like an informal economy; people start selling in instant markets and over time those people own shops and start paying taxes.

Narcissus, 2009-2013

A bit of a jump here, but how did Narcissus fit in with your previous work? It’s remarkably removed from a lot of your other work.
I suppose there were several things that influenced Narcissus. I had become frustrated by the notion of "global photography," the idea of a meta project, of showing the "greatest places on Earth," or the "worst hellholes on Earth"—this global stuff. It’s all quite grand. And I have done so much of that stuff already: Dynamic Cities was shot, I think, in 40 cities around the world. I thought that I was perhaps missing something. For me, Narcissus was a bit like going back to playing scales if you were a musician. Just trying to sharpen one's vision and address one's focus.

I had started to reflect on the notion of landscape photography, the nature of photography in general. And actually, landscape is like anything, what was drawing me to it was abstraction, cutting something out of the cloth of what's in front of you. I wondered, if there were no expectations placed upon me—as there are, of course, when you shoot landscapes for National Geographic, for example—then what would actually draw me? It turned out that what drew me to landscapes were things that were resonant of memories I had, the very human social life I had led. The forms I recognized in the landscape were human forms, shapes that were semi-human or zoomorphic. I think Freud, when talking about photography, connected it far more to the function of memory than of vision. It was completely different, yes, and I won’t be doing it again, but I learned a lot from it. I learned to work in a small place and limit my needs. It was Spartan in itself and very coherent.

Click through to see more photography by Stuart Franklin.

Great Britain. Unemployment office. 1986.

Yokahama, Japan. Nissan Cars. 1987.
 

Belfast, Northern Ireland. Riots. 1985.
 

Kabul, Afghanistan. Women soldiers in militant groups participate in a support rally of the PDPA and parade in front of their president, Major General Najibullah. 1989.

Honduras. Civil War. El Capire. Bodies of Nicaraguan Sandinista troops on display for international press. The Sandinistas were allegedly killed during a cross-border incursion directed against the contra camps. 1986.

Honduras. Civil War. 1986.

Sudan. Famine refugees. 1985.

Narcissus, 2009-2013

Previously: Jonas Bendiksen Takes Photos in Countries That Don't Exist

More from Magnum:

Peter Van Agtmael Won't Deny the Strange Allure of War

Ian Berry Takes Jaw-Dropping Photos of Massacres and Floods

Thomas Dworzak Has Photos of Sad Marines and Taliban Poseurs

It's time, once again, to roll our eyes at some people who are scared of the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Holy Trinity School

Photo via

The incident: A school found out that one of their employees was in an abusive relationship.

The appropriate response: According to the website dosomething.org, you should follow these steps: Speak up, be sensitive, listen, be there for them, connect them to resources, stay with them. 

The actual response: The school fired her. 

Back in January, second-grade teacher Carie Charlesworth was forced to call the police three times on her abusive husband, after what she described as a "very bad weekend" with him. A temporary restraining order was put in place against him.

When she returned to her job at Holy Trinity School in San Diego the next day, she told the principal what had happened, and confided in her that she was being abused. 

Later that day Carie's husband showed up in the school's parking lot, prompting a lockdown. He was arrested and jailed on two felony charges. 

As a result of this, the school put Carie on indefinite leave. They also pulled her four kids out of the school. 

After three months on leave, Carie received a letter from the school, telling her she was fired:

"We know from the most recent incident involving you and Mrs. Wright (the principal) while you were still physically at Holy Trinity School, that the temporary restraining order in effect were not a deterrent to him. Although we understand he is current incarcerated, we have no way of knowing how long or short a time he will actually serve and we understand from court files that he may be released as early as next fall. In the interest of the safety of the students, faculty and parents at Holy Trinity School, we simply cannot allow you to return to work there, or, unfortunately, at any other school in the Diocese."

According to a report on NBC 7 San Diego, several parents were planning to remove their children from the school if Carie was allowed to return.

In an interview with the station, Carie said, “I mean that’s why women of domestic violence don’t come forward, because they’re afraid of the way people are going to see them, view them, perceive them, treat them.” Adding, "they’ve taken away my ability to care for my kids. It’s not like I can go out and find a teaching job anywhere."

Carie's (now ex-) husband is due to be released at the end of the month. 

Cry-Baby #2: Escambia Academy High School

via Reddit

The incident: A Native American girl wore a feather in her cap at her high school graduation ceremony, despite being warned not to. 

The appropriate response: Nothing. Or telling her off if you really care. 

The actual response: The school are refusing to let her graduate until she pays a $1,000 fine. 

Chelsey Ramer, a 17-year-old, is a member of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. She, along with several other Native American students, were planning to hang a traditional feather from their mortarboards at their graduation ceremony.

The school, Escambia Academy High School in Atmore, Alabama, found out about this, and warned them not to. They also asked the students to sign a contract that stated, “students and staff shall not wear extraneous items during graduation exercises unless approved by the administration.”

According to Chelsey, she didn't sign the contract. 

On May 23, the day of graduation, Chelsey ignored the warning and took to the stage with the feather hanging from her hat. The school refused to hand her her diploma and transcripts.

They are now saying that, in order to get them and graduate, she must pay a $1,000 fine. 

In an interview with her local news station, Chelsey said, “I don’t think it’s fair at all. I feel like it’s discrimination.” 

A former teacher of Chelsey's, who is also a Native American, was interviewed by the station, and said, “Being honored with a feather for graduation is a wonderful experience. It’s a lot more than showing off your culture. It has ties in to our spirituality as well.”

Chelsey is planning on taking legal action against the school.

Which of these schools is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll:

Previously: The guy who made his son quit the Scouts vs. The guy who murdered three people over a prank

Winner: The (alleged) murderer!!!

@JLCT

I am no longer a hoarder. As a child I amassed thousands of comic books. In my teenage years it was Star Wars toys. In my 20s I began seeking out and buying up old, classic skateboards. Then I turned 30, got married, had kids, and realized I don’t really care to have heaps of crap cluttering up my life. But there is still one thing I can’t help but stockpile: celebrity sex tapes.

I’ve got them all. From the original sex tape of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, to Paris Hilton’s night vision fuck, to the only worthwhile thing Kim Kardashian has ever done in her entire existence, to Saved by the Bell’sScreech giving two girls a dirty Sanchez in a Vegas hotel room, to the unearthed 8mm threesome that may or may not be Jimmy Hendrix, and all the other D-Listers that hoped to become B-Listers by selling their “stolen” sex tapes.

Up until recently my personal favorite was the Tom Sizemore tape. I already knew how awesomely insane he was from friends who had worked with him prior to watching him try to have sex with two prostitutes in a hotel room with a coked-out wet noodle, but the level of raw, unscripted depravity in his sex video took his legend status to new heights. At the time of filming Sizemore was in and out of court with the trial of LA madam Heidi Fleiss, and his relationship with the pimpess was paraded all over the evening news. In his porno we got to see just how affected Sizemore is when he says, “Fuck the LA police department. Fuck them. I hope 22 cops die tonight and they all have a lot of children.” (You can read my review from seven years ago here.)

As sexy as Sizemore’s sweaty, slovenly body was I got the seven-year-itch and found a new favorite celebrity sex star: TV’s Teen Mom, Farrah Abraham. Prior to this tape I’d never heard of her, but she is hands down the best person to ever do a celebrity sex tape. Her body is flawless. She goes straight for butt sex. She squirts. She masturbates in the back of a limousine. The male talent, James Deen, is an actual porn star and so the cinematography is top-notch porn quality; the best we’ve ever seen in a celebrity sex tape. Is it an actual personal sex tape or just a straight up porno made for resale? Who cares? She takes it in the can with a zeal that even most seasoned porn stars don’t exude on screen.

(This is neither here nor there, but I’m a HUGE fan of the phrase, “take it in the can.” This is perhaps one of my favorite 80s lines ever.)

Most of the “celebrities” who make these tapes shun the porn industry. They’re happy to get the sexposure and capital gains of being in porn, but they pretend like they’re not in a porno. Farrah Abraham, on the other hand, is embracing the porn industry, going so far as to make a signing appearance at the Vivid Booth at the recent Exxxotic Expo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. So I flew down to get some face time with Farrah and try to get her to give me a PSA on the PMA of anal. (As well as get some porn girls to give back to the Oklahoma Tornado victims.)

To watch Farrah’s backdoor foray into porn go to http://farrahsuperstar.vividceleb.com/.

Previously - Porn Stars Auction Their Bodies for Oklahoma Tornado Victims

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com or @Nieratko

When I heard the title The Rambler, Calvin Reeder’s 2008 short film, my mind shot to the familiars: Johnny Appleseed, John Henry, and Davy Crockett. I thought of someone who braved new frontiers and was a badass. Even with its ramshackle opening sequence—in which the eponymous Rambler, who is played by Reeder, hitchhikes out West with a guitar and shades—I still believed my first impressions were on the right track. But with each passing minute the film becomes more and more bizarre. Almost right away the Rambler with an unknown past, mysterious aurora, and deadpan demeanor is thrown smack dab in strangeness. The first man to give him a lift is a mummy-fancying mad scientist who invented a device to record dreams to VHS. Reeder climbs in the car, answers evasively, never removes his sunglasses, never removes his hat, and keeps rambling on while the peculiarities unfolds.

The Rambler is shot on expired 16 mm film stock, which makes the landscapes lush and the gore gross. Like I said, with each passing minute the storyline unravels and plays into excess. At the end of the day, this Rambler isn’t all that different from the other ramblers. But unlike their world, his tries every bat shit thing to shake his cool, including one of the longest and most bizarre sex/vomit scenes ever.
 

Director Calvin Reeder’s work is a mix of underground shock horror and existential atmosphere. He made a name for himself with the short films Piledriver and Little Farm, which screened at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. The Rambler appeared at the Festival the following year. His feature debut, The Oregonian, divided Sundance Film Festival audiences in 2011 just as his shorts had before. Reeder specializes in turning lo-fi splatter pics into art films by meshing high-concept thought and design with genre story lines. His newest film is a feature version of The Rambler starring Dermot Mulroney as the titular character. The feature played Sundance and SXSW this year and is out now in limited release and on DVD/VOD on June 25.

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as an art and film curator. He is a programmer at the Hamptons International Film Festival and screens for the Tribeca Film Festival. He also self-publishes a super fancy mixed-media art serial called PRISM index.

@PRISMindex

Previously - I'm Short, Not Stupid Presents: 'Sins of the Nude'

Artwork by Marilyn Minter

S

he met Jack at a party her stepmom was throwing for her dad. She was sitting alone in the corner, bored, when Jack sat next to her. He was wearing a suit without a tie and nice shoes. His eyes were a deep, obvious blue, like hers, and his hair was light brown. He looked young and tan and handsome.

They talked for 20 minutes on the couch, and by the phone after that. He was helping her with the SAT. When she got a 1400 on a practice test, he took her to dinner. He ordered mussels. When she said she had never had them, he plucked one from its shell, swirled it around in the bowl, and held the fork across the table. She thought about leaning forward and eating it off his fork, but instead took the fork from him.

“You know, I tried out for cheerleading in middle school.”

“Really?” Jack said.

“Mmhmm.” Marie nodded and sat up in her chair. “I didn’t make it the first year, so I never tried out again. I really regret that. I don’t think I’m really the cheerleader type.”

Jack insisted they share a dessert, and outside he opened the door for her. They got in his car, and she flipped through the stations until she found a Biggie Smalls mash-up.

When Marie and Jack pulled up in front of Marie’s house, Jack turned to look at her. She was sitting in the passenger seat with a cigarette between her fingers, her bare feet on the seat.

“You remind me of a little kid,” he said.

“Oh no.”

“A little smoking kid.”

Marie exhaled. She said, “Wanna come in for a second?”

“Won’t your parents mind?”

“No, they’re asleep, anyway. As long as we don’t wake them up, they won’t care. We can climb in my window.”

It took a bit of talking, but she thought it would be worth it. Or, she wouldn’t let herself hope it would be worth it, but she would be let down if it weren’t.

They climbed up the tree next to the house. It had thick branches and plenty of places for feet, but Marie’s dress kept getting caught, and Jack didn’t have as much experience climbing trees as Marie would have guessed. But she liked him more because of it. They both made it to the branch next to the roof. Jack scrambled over Marie and onto the roof, brushing her legs with his. He opened her window, and then held out his hand for her. She grabbed it and stepped onto the roof, and then half fell into her bedroom, headfirst. She laughed and turned around to help Jack, but he was already in.

He sat on her bed, and she sat down next to him. He lay down on his back. She did, too. They were quiet for a minute. Marie felt self-conscious every time she blinked, and worried about the sound of her breathing.

It started to rain. It smelled like rain, and reminded Marie of Seattle. But this rain is more of a Texas rain, she thought.

“Jack?” she asked. “How do you think of me?”

“As a friend. A peer.” 

“Good.”

Marie turned on her side to face him. “Jack, if I ask you something, will you promise to answer honestly? You won’t hurt my feelings if you’re honest. I just want to know.”

“OK.”

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

“Yes.”

“Really? You don’t have to say that, you know.”

“Really, Marie, you’re very pretty.”

“Thank you,” Marie said. “Jack?”

“Yes, Marie?”

“Are you attracted to me? And answer honestly, please. You won’t hurt my feelings.”

“Yes, Marie.”

She smiled. She wanted to reach over, so she turned over on her other side. She closed her eyes and focused on slowing down her breathing so she could pretend to sleep. She said, “I feel like you’ll fall asleep and I won’t, and then I’ll be alone.”

Jack sat up. He saw a book on her nightstand and picked it up. “I love this collection,” he said. He opened it and read a couple lines out loud.

“Yeah, I love that part,” Marie said. She sat up. “Even though it’s about religion.”

“I don’t think it is. I know that’s what people say. But I think it’s about just what it says. It’s about a girl washed up on a beach.”

They were sitting next to each other. She wanted to drape her legs across him or put her head on his chest. “Do you still want to be friends with me?” she asked.

He wrapped her in his arms, like a dad or an uncle.

“Would things be different if I were 18?” she said.

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, do you like me?”

“Yes, Marie.”

“Would you lie to me?” She couldn’t let herself get excited yet.

“No, Marie.”

“If I didn’t run around town telling everyone, why would it matter that I’m younger? Couldn’t this be a secret? Why does age even matter? Everyone is different. How did we even decide on 18, anyway? I know 18-year-olds who should not be considered adults. We should judge that person by person, if it wouldn’t be so difficult and time-consuming.”

“You’re right about some things,” Jack said.

Marie tried to look serious, but she was too close to beaming. She pressed her face down into the pillow and then turned and looked up at him. Her shoulders were pushed down, slightly uncomfortably, and she thought it must be very unflattering. “Like what things?”

Jack just smiled at her and then looked away. This was the first time Marie had seen him act shy.

“If I were 18, would you kiss me right now?” She felt a little pushy, but at this point, how much did it matter?

Jack lay down, exhaled into her hair, and said, “Yes, Marie.”

He turned her face toward him and traced her lips with his finger. She smiled with her mouth closed. He pulled his hand back. Then he ran his hand through her hair, slid it under her neck, pulled her face toward his, and kissed her. From that moment on, Marie was a high school dropout. 

More from this year's Fiction Issue:

Miami

Forked River Roadside Shrine, South Jersey

A Ghost Story

Joey Ramone, Arturo Vega, and me in the studio in 1978. Photo by Tom Hearn

“Really Arturo, ABBA?” I shake my head in disbelief as I enter his loft, where the Swedish rock band is blaring from the record player. The record player is on a table, and next to it sits the Ramones' entire silk-screen operation—one long counter weighted down with a wooden silk screen, cans of white acrylic paint, and stacks of black T-shirts. Arturo is busy making another pass with the squeegee over the latest model of the new Ramones logo, the one with the names of Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Tommy encircling an American eagle clutching a baseball bat in one talon and an apple-tree branch in the other. It will become their most famous design ever.

“Aren’t they wonderful?” Arturo beams at me, looking up from the T-shirt. I can’t tell if he’s talking about the music or the T-shirts, since he’s never been self-conscious about his musical guilty pleasures. Let’s face it: even though ABBA is spectacularly popular, no one would ever accuse them of being hip or guess they'd be on the stereo here at the epicenter of punk, the Ramones' loft at 6 East Second Street. Arturo Vega lives here. 

That was the beauty of Arturo. He would combine elements that didn't fit, and sometimes the end result actually worked. Though, back in the late 70s, I wasn't so sure about the whole ABBA nonsense.

“ABBA is like some satanic bubblegum that you can’t stop chewing, ya know?” he explains, noticing my displeasure. “Es like what you think happiness should sound like, right?”

“I don’t know about that,” I say, considering his theory. The Swedish pop music was way too loud.

“You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen / Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine / You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life / See that girl, watch that scene, diggin' the dancing queen!"

“That’s happiness?” I scowl, “Give me the fucking alternative..."

“Happy, happy, happy!” Arturo chuckles, mimicking a line from the Ramones' “Gimmie Gimmie Shock Treatment” as he pulls a freshly printed T-shirt out from under the screen and replaces it with another. The song's lyrics are “Peace and love is here to stay / And now I can wake up and face the day / Happy, happy, happy all the time / Shock treatment I’m doing fine.” It’s become a sort of mantra around the loft whenever things aren’t looking too good for the band, which is quite often. Arturo would smile that inviting smile of his and, overflowing with irony, say “Happy, happy, happy!” Then everyone would kinda snicker, suck in their gut, and keep on going. Sometimes a line from a song is all you have to go on.

Arturo holds the freshly screened shirt up for me to inspect. “Isn’t it beautiful! Es so… so… so majestic! Like, rigid militarism combined with that 'Beat on the Brat' honesty, right?” 

He isn’t just pleased with his new design, he’s thrilled. It really is an iconic symbol. “Wow, really cool,” I say admiringly. “Can I have one?”

Arturo rolls his eyes. “Donchoo ever have any money? Doesn’t Holmstrom pay you? You know, Legs MucNeil, maybe you should be looking for another job?”

“Doing what?” I mope, knowing that now isn’t the time to hit him up for a pack of smokes and a tall boy of Bud. I only have three Marlboros left. Shit. At least the ABBA album finished, and Arturo didn’t restart it, like he usually does.

“I don’t know. There’s gotta be something you can do.” He thinks hard before breaking out laughing at the absurdity of his own words. “Nevermind! Of course you can have a shirt, but you gotta wait until we get back from London, these has to last us the whole time!”

“Why are you guys going to England, anyway?” I gripe, not seeing any benefit to the Ramones' upcoming weekend in the UK. I know about Malcolm McLaren and the cool rock 'n' roll fashions coming out of the King's Road, but other than Dr. Feelgood and the Flaming Groovies there isn’t much happening music-wise in London. And while those bands are OK, they don’t sound like the future of rock 'n' roll to me. At least not the way the Ramones do. Besides, who was I gonna hang out with over Fourth of July weekend? 

Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time, the English punk-rock explosion is waiting for the Ramones to show them how to detonate the bomb. It will only be a matter of days before the shit hits the fan. I continue griping. “Come on, England sucks. There’s nothing going there! I mean, warm beer—you call that civilization?”

"You’d rather we stayed here and played My Father’s Place?” Arturo deadpans. He's referring to a shitty nightclub out on Long Island that’s a hangout for the mullet set, and quickly becoming a Ramones staple. He had a point. There aren’t many places that welcome the Ramones outside of Max’s and CBGBs. It’s a pretty desperate situation all around, even if none of us can understand the resistance to the world’s greatest rock 'n' roll band.

“No, I think we should take over a radio station,” I offer, growing excited. “We could, like, barricade ourselves inside the station and just blast the Ramones for 24 hours until everyone realizes how great they are! You know, like that DJ did in The Buddy Holly Story, how he just barricaded himself inside and played 'That’ll Be The Day' over and over."

Arturo just smiles at me. “You’re such a child, arenchoo? You know, they do have SWAT teams now, hahaha! You’d be dead before 'Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World' even finished.”

“Well, at least it was an idea,” I mumbled, defending myself. “There’s gotta be someway of getting the music out there.”

I’m interrupted by Joey Ramone bursting through the door, happy and excited for his upcoming weekend in England. He's gushing and fires out a machine-gun greeting: “Hey Legs, what’s happening? What’s going on? Where’s the party?”

He’s carrying a few packages, and he dumps them on the kitchen counter before joining us around the silk-screen operation. His enthusiasm for England only makes me sadder and lonelier.

“Hey,” I nod to Joey. “Where were you?”

“My mom had to take me shopping,” Joey explains. “I had to get some shit for the trip, but when we went to get my vitamins, there was like this crazy homeless lady inside the health-food store who was screaming at the cashier. I thought she was gonna murder somebody, she was like really nuts. So we had to wait for the cops to come. I thought they were gonna pack her off to Bellevue, but all they did was take her name and address—and then they just left her there to continue her tantrum, man. The cops probably went back to get more doughnuts. So it was taking like hours, and it turned out all she wanted was a birthday card for her nephew. So I helped her pick one out, a real funny one.”

“You shoulda mailed it for her,” Arturo joked. “I can just see the headline: '27 Massacred at 14th Street Post Office, Little Boy Says His Aunt Never Forgot a Birthday.'”

“She wasn’t that bad, for a nut, yaknow?” Joey smiles as he loops a strand of hair around his index finger. He never stops playing with his hair. Ever. “And she even paid me for helping her, she gave me a quarter!”

“Save it for her legal defense fund,” Arturo quips as he runs the squeegee over another T-shirt. “She’s probably one of these eccentric millionaires who es gonna leave all her money to her cats.”

“Maybe I can get Paul in her will, too?" Paul is Joey's cat. He grabs a shopping bag off the kitchen counter and pours over it, looking for something. Whatever he’s looking for, he can’t find it. He’s even worse than me, and I lose everything immediately. Most of Joey’s mornings at the loft are spent searching for shit—scraps of paper with girls' phone numbers on them, articles of clothing, a pair of sneakers—anything. Searching for Joey’s stuff was a daily ritual.

“Yeah, she probably had millions stashed under her mattress,” Joey laughs, abandoning the shopping bag. “That cheap bitch, she probably had thousands in cash on her. I shoulda frisked her, but she wasn’t smelling too good.”

And then we’re all in hysterical laughter.

“So whatta we doing tonight?” Joey asks, as he stares at some of the finished T-shirts hanging out to dry. “And why does John’s name always have to come first?”

Arturo ignores the question. He knows better than to open that can of worms.

“Johnny says he can’t afford to pay me to go to England,” Arturo explains, dodging Joey’s query. He's become an expert at navigating the Ramones' internal politics. “He said I can keep all the money I make selling T-shirts, so I thought I’d make a bunch of 'em to pay for my airfare and expenses. John said he didn’t know why anyone would want to buy a Ramones T-shirt, but I was welcome to try and sell em."

“Yeah,” Joey snorts again. “Always the optimist, isn’t he?” Joey was already tired of Johnny Ramone taking all the enthusiasm out of the Ramones' creative possibilities with his excruciatingly practical approach to band business.

“I think they look really cool, yaknow?” Joey says, admiring the T-shirt design, pretending to get past the order of names on the shirts. But Joey can never let anything go. “It’s like one of those presidential things, yaknow? That they hang on his desk whenever he speaks? What are they called? Emblems?”

“Presidential seals,” Arturo corrects him as he puts the ABBA record back on.

“Uh-oh,” Joey cracks. “I feel a 'Dancing Queen' about to rape me! You know this is crap, right?”

“Es happy music!” Arturo laughs, singing along with the record. “I was telling Legs, es what happiness is supposed to sound like!”

“No one was ever that happy,” Joey cracks. “Except maybe you, Arturo."

”Oh go on and be your big punk rockers,” Arturo tells us, glowing. “It makes me happy, and es all that matters, right?”

“Happy, happy, happy!” Joey laughs, mesmerized by Arturo’s assembly line production as he silk-screens the shirts. Arturo falls into a faster pace, bolstered by the Swedish pop music. We just stand over him, watching him work.

“It would be really cool if we actually sold some shirts, yaknow?” Joey muses, looking at me and dreaming. “And then maybe we can afford to eat breakfast, hahaha!”

And then we’re all laughing again.

Previously - David Bowie Stole My Suicide Record So I Ripped the Hubcaps off His Limo

Legs McNeil founded Punk Magazine back in 1975, which is part of the reason you know even know what that word means. He also wrote Please Kill Me, which basically makes him the Studs Terkel of punk rock. In addition to his work as a columnist for VICE, he continues to write for his personal blog, pleasekillme.com. 

You should also follow him on Twitter - @Legs__McNeil

Nothing is ever new. The NSA’s monitoring of the internet and the phone records of millions of Americans surprised some people, and made the public as a whole fairly pissed off, but it’s not the first time US government has taken an Big Brotherly interest in its citizens. The feds have been tapping into the private lives of Americans without warrants and with the help of communication companies for nearly a century. Here are some of the more significant spying programs:

Black Chamber

Herbert O. Yardley, the head of Black Chamber, who later revealed its secrets. 

What many consider a predecessor of the NSA began in the 1920s, when a group of Army codebreakers working under the friendly-sounding moniker “Black Chamber” began a project to spy on other nations’ communications. Black Chamber’s chief was Herbert O. Yardley, considered to be one of the greatest cryptologists of all time. The idea was to monitor international telegraphs as the were sent to and from the US in search of anything that could affect national security—but first they had to get those telegraphs, so they asked the presidents of the major telegraph companies if they could see them.

Turns out, companies like Western Union were happy to comply. According to journalist James Bamford, who has reported widely on the NSA, Yardley later wrote: “After the men had put all our cards on the table, President Carlton [of Western Union] seemed anxious to do everything he could for us.”

The Black Chamber program set the template for a now-familiar story: a group is put in charge of monitoring communications in the name of national security and gains access to those communications through the cooperation of the private companies that own the communication infrastructure. It was Western Union telegrams back then; it’s Facebook messages now.

Funding for this program ended in 1929, and Yardley would go on to write a book titled The American Black Chamber that exposed the group’s activities. Quite possibly the first whistleblower in the American intelligence community, he is now disparaged on the NSA website and official histories, where he's described as a “disgruntled” employee who wrote the book because he was “unemployed and accustomed to luxury.” The NSA calls the book itself a “monumental indiscretion” that put America in danger. But this exposure didn’t stop future spying programs.

SHAMROCK

Screencap via The Daily Show

Operation SHAMROCK began as an Army program in 1945. During World War II, the Army had legal access to the cables of the three major communication companies of the day (RCA Global, ITT, and Western Union). But with the war over and won, that access was considered illegal, though apparently the government didn’t want to just stop listening in. According to The Lawless State: The Crimes of the US Intelligence Agencies, the Army Signals Security Agency asked the companies to continued to let them monitor international cables. The companies agreed, but there was a twist. As the authors of The Lawless State wrote, “The government apparently never informed the cable companies that its activity was not limited to foreign targets but also analyzed and disseminated the telegrams of Americans.”

In 1952, the NSA was created and took over SHAMROCK and soon the agency—which the vast majority of Americans had never heard of—was intercepting 150,000 messages a month.

During the Church Committee hearings in 1975, which publicly revealed the existence of the NSA in the process of looking into misconduct of America’s intelligence agencies, Lew Allen Jr., the the NSA’s director at the time, said that Congress passed a law in 1959 that “provides authority to enable the NSA as the principal agency of the Government responsible for signals intelligence activities, to function without the disclosure of information which would endanger the accomplishment of its functions.” In other words, it could pretty much do what it liked.

The NSA used that freedom, according to a Congressional investigator who discovered SHAMROCK, to establish secret facilities in several cities, including New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, and San Antonio. In each city, NSA employees would go to the major telegraph companies and copy telegrams, with the companies’ permission but without warrants.

As Bamford describes it, agents would “bring [the telegrams] to an office masquerading as a television tape processing company. There they would use a machine to duplicate all the computer tapes containing the telegrams, and, hours later, return the original tapes to the company.”

This program, conducted illegally yet with full cooperation with the US government and the communication giants of the day, went on for 30 years. It didn’t end until 1975, when the secret finally came out thanks to the Church Committee.

MINARET

A UNIVAC system purchased by the NSA in 1963. Photo via Motherboard

Project MINARET, often described as a sibling to SHAMROCK, was a reaction to the social movements of the 1960s. This was the program the NSA used to target “domestic enemies,” a.k.a. those involved in civil rights and antiwar groups.

Around this time, the NSA had become a sort of tool for other federal agencies, like the FBI and CIA, who would supply names of “subversives” to monitor. The NSA didn’t need warrants to tap people’s phones and was more than happy to comply. The agency also worked with the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (the precursor to the DEA) to target suspected drug traffickers; this was the dawning of the war on drugs and the beginning of the federal government’s obsession with using controlled substances as an excuse to watch and arrest Americans. During the Church Committee hearings, Allen often mentioned “drug trafficking” in the same breath as “terrorism” when describing the objectives of his agency.

It took the Church Committee to expose the fact that both SHAMROCK and MINARET were blatantly illegal and in violation of the Fourth Amendment. That led to the passing, in 1978, of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the law that established procedures for surveillance of communications. After FISA, if the government wanted to spy on suspected foreign agents within the US, they had to go to a secret court and get permission.   

That may have slowed down the NSA’s surveillance programs, but it hardly stopped them.

ECHELON, Stellar Wind, and a Decade of Whistleblowers

Image via 

“The average person doesn’t have a concept of the massive capability that is available to the National Security Agency,” said former NSA analyst William Weaver in a 2007 interview with Frontline. “Forget about the idea of a guy with earphones on listening to something. That’s not what happens. The calls are being sucked up by the millions and you’re engaged in data mining.”

Programs like SHAMROCK established the NSA’s model of using communication companies’ infrastructure to spy on Americans, but project ECHELON was the beginning of the government’s compulsive need to gather as much data from as many people as technologically possible.

ECHELON has never been formally recognized by the NSA; the agency’s official history doesn’t mention it. But it has been covered by many journalists around the world, including Nicky Hager, whose work led to an investigation by European Parliament. And now that we know what we know, it’s quite possibly the midwife of the now-famous PRISM program.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, ECHELON is “a global network of computers that automatically search through millions of intercepted messages for preprogrammed keywords or fax, telex, and e-mail addresses. Every word of every message in the frequencies and channels selected at a station is automatically searched.” This far-reaching operation is reportedly as a collaboration between the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand governments

ECHELON probably has its roots in the 70s, but could have started earlier or later, since it’s still officially a secret. What is known is that once the Patriot Act was passed in 2001, the NSA got busy becoming the world’s largest data miner—and that technology wasn’t created overnight after 9/11.

Information about the NSA’s capabilities has been coming out in bits and pieces for years. In 2005, Justice Department lawyer Thomas Tamm and NSA analyst Russell Tice blew the whistle on the spy agency by telling the New York Times about a warrantless surveillance system being used to data-mine millions of phone calls and emails. This operation had been going on since 2001.

In 2006, AT&T technician Mark Klein exposed the NSA’s massive data collection operation in the AT&T building in San Francisco—a joint venture between the telecom giant and the spy agency. The operation became widely known as “Room 641A,” named after the roomful of supercomputers the NSA built to collect and analyze phone calls and internet traffic.

Also in 2006, NSA employee Thomas Andrews Drake talked publicly about Project Trailblazer, described by the Baltimore Sun as an attempt to create a system to analyze the “2 million bits of data the [NSA] collects every hour—a task that has grown increasingly complex with the advent of the internet, cell phones and instant messaging—and enable them quickly to identify the most important information.” The bloated program cost $1.2 billion and was a gigantic failure, proving that the government's spy agencies sometimes make costly mistakes.

The NSA needed somewhere to store all this data it was gathering, of course. William Binney, a mathematician who worked for the agency, told the public exactly where that was when he gave the media information about Stellar Wind, a terrifyingly massive data-storage center in Utah where all your calls, emails, texts, and Facebook messages collected by PRISM are probably filed away.

While discussing the mass surveillance systems set-up after 2001, Binney told Wired: “[The NSA] violated the Constitution setting it up. But they didn’t care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood in the way.”

Judging from the agency’s history, that should be the NSA’s official motto.

Follow Ray on Twitter: @RayDowns

More on the NSA:

Yes, the NSA Can Spy on Every US Citizen

The NSA’s Data Collection Habits Are Trickling Down to Cops and Credit Agencies

A Photo History of the NSA, from Its Once-Secret Archives

Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim. Photo courtesy of Abdiaziz

Everyone’s talking about Somalia’s future. They’re talking up foreign business investment, they’re talking up the new government, and they’re talking up the Islamist militia al-Shabaab. Something that hasn't come up quite so much is the precarious existence of journalists in the Horn of Africa nation. Eighteen journalists were killed in Somalia last year and a number have already died this year in the capital, Mogadishu. Journalists are being harassed, threatened, and imprisoned—and not just by al-Shabaab, but by a Somali government keen to cover the tracks of any nefarious activity they don't want the rest of the world hearing about. 

One reporter, Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim, was thrown in prison for having the gall to interview a woman, Lul Ali Osman, who claimed to have been raped by members from a militia wearing government uniforms. Unwilling to acknowledge that their soldiers might be raping people, the government and police accused Abdi of spreading “propaganda.” He was eventually released, found not guilty of doing something that isn’t even a crime.

The government was also forced to admit that they knew some of their troops were raping and torturing women in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. It’s a difficult situation for the fledgling government, who is struggling to control the clan-oriented militias that are meant to be keeping the peace under their auspices. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has made the right noises about improving the situation for journalists, but real progress will take time. I spoke to Abdiaziz about his experience.  

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Photo via

VICE: Can you talk about Lul Ali Osman and what she told you when you interviewed her?
Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim: She lived in an IDP camp in Mogadishu. People in the district had told me about her, and I’d been following her case. Rape cases have been increasing in southern Somalia in the last year and I had been investigating that. The president released a statement saying that anyone who violated human rights in that way might be killed. I interviewed her and she told me men in a militia wearing government uniforms raped her. She told me they tortured her and took her into another place near the camp. That was where she was raped and tortured.

Was the article published before the government found you?
No. I interviewed her on January 6. On the same day, Al Jazeera English published an article about the rise in rape cases in Mogadishu. The police started to investigate some of the cases based on the article. They found the name of the lady and her telephone number because she had spoken to the police after she was raped. They asked her who had interviewed her and that’s how they found me. I didn’t write the Al Jazeera article and I was never able to publish my own article.

What happened when the police first came to you?
The head of criminal investigations called me through Lul Ali Osman’s mobile. He asked me my name and told me he knew me and that he wanted to see me. He told me it was a simple inquiry. I went to his office and, after a couple of minutes, he told me I was under arrest. He showed me the report from Al Jazeera and asked me if I’d written the article. I told him I hadn’t but he didn’t believe me. Lul Ali Osman confirmed that I’d interviewed her, so they arrested me. There was no official letter, or anything. They told me that I’d made up the article for Al Jazeera, that it was propaganda and that they were going to search my home and my office. They searched both those places and then kept me in a cell at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for a couple of weeks while they carried out more investigations. They didn’t find anything when they searched my house and office, but they sent me to the central prison in Mogadishu anyway.

Somali militia preparin for inspection. Photo courtesy of Rolf Helmrich

At this point, was Lul Ali Osman also in prison?
She and her husband were arrested, as well as the woman who put me in touch with Lul Ali Osman. Lul Ali Osman had a young child and was breastfeeding, so she wasn’t sent to the central prison.

Can you describe the conditions in the central prison?
It’s very close to the Indian Ocean. It’s an ancient building and it’s very crowded. There are more than 1,000 people in the prison. There’s food and water shortages and when you're sick you aren’t treated quickly. People often die in the prison because they don’t get any medical assistance. When I was there, there was a cholera outbreak and people were dying of that.

How many people are there in a cell?
In my cell there were more than 45 people. The cell wasn’t more than 23 feet long.

Shit. What do you do all day? Just sit in the cell without moving?
You can’t do anything. People are there—they don’t move, they can’t go out, can’t see the sun... So you keep yourself in the cell for 24 hours. It’s very difficult to move in the cell—you can imagine, 45 people in one cell doesn’t make it easy to get around. You have a very small space in the cell where they tell you to sleep. It’s not big enough—it’s about the size of one hand and five fingers. You have to sleep on your side.

Is it a violent place? Do people fight there?
My cell was much more quiet than other cells. It was full of very different kinds of people: policemen were in the cell alongside al-Shabaab fighters. I could hear fighting going on in other parts of the prison. Sometimes the guards would come and beat inmates.

Somali technicals on the move. Photo courtesy of Rolf Helmrich

I can't believe that policemen and al-Shabaab fighters were in the same cell. It doesn't seem like they'd get along.
Absolutely! Guys from al-Shabaab would come up to me and tell me things that weren’t good for me to hear. One of them told me, “If I was out of this prison then I would never let you live in this world.” When I was in the CID prison, the officials there threatened me as well. They said, “Well, we can release you, but where will you live?” Which meant that they wouldn’t let me live.

That’s a little unpleasant. And, of course, you were in prison for no good reason—just for doing your job. What was your lawyer like?
I had two very good lawyers—human rights lawyers. Very respected in Mogadishu. They thought about journalism and human rights and how to defend those things. Unfortunately, they were killed in a suicide attack on April 14. Before then, I had been sentenced to a year in jail. We appealed and it was reduced to six months. Then we appealed again and I was found not guilty and was released. 

Since you’ve gotten out of prison the government has all but admitted that their troops have carried out attacks and raped women in IDP camps. This supports what Lul Ali Osman said to you, doesn’t it?
You, as a journalist, understand. You have credible sources and you trust them to give you good information. I knew that these things were happening in the camps in Mogadishu. It was not just one case. A lot of women were raped and tortured. All these violations against human rights have been increasing in southern Somalia. As a journalist, I was aware of that and I had been focusing on human rights issues. For the case of Osman, when I met her I asked her a lot of questions to confirm that what she said happened really happened. I backed that up by going to the hospital, to the police, and interviewing other sources. For doing these things, for doing my job, I was arrested. It was clear to me that she was raped.

Do you feel angry about what happened?
I didn’t do what they accused me of doing and that’s why international organizations got involved with my case. I was very unhappy with what happened—it was painful. To be put in prison for doing my job was very difficult, and to see her put in prison alongside her husband was also very hard.

Are you worried that it’s getting harder to be a journalist in Mogadishu?
You have to understand that I live in permanent fear because of what happened to me. It’s always better to respect the freedom of exploration in the country. There are a lot of problems for journalists in Mogadishu. We are being killed. You see a lot of constraints and difficulties. We don’t have the freedom to travel widely across the city. Everyone is confined to small parts of the city. We need to find a safe place where every journalist can do his job freely and the government needs to help us find that place. The government, with the help of international investigation experts, should investigate the killing of my colleagues and bring the perpetrators to justice.

Thanks, Abdiaziz.

Follow Oscar on Twitter: @oscarrickettnow

More stuff from Somalia: 

Somaliland Is a Real Country, According to Somaliland

Rapping for Peace in Somalia

Can Britain Handle the Rapes, Killings and Clans in Somalia?

Photos by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

I don’t deserve nice things. I don’t feel comfortable in nice places. The only time I feel safe is when I’m surrounded by desperation and mediocrity, which is why I love chain restaurants. That's why I decided to include a visit to Chuck E. Cheese’s in my spiritual quest to find comfort in the bosoms of the worst restaurants in the world.

Because I’m just like you. I know you, bro, because you’re me. You’re young. You’re shitty. And you’re proud of it. Your entire persona is predicated on your degeneracy. You spend your days either suckling at the teat of your long-suffering parents or toiling at a low-paying job where the majority of your productivity is wasted on creating Facebook event invites. 

Your nights are spent in a drunken stupor, punishing your body with piss-weak American macrobrews and sucrose-laden foodstuffs while you ironically watch Home Alone 2: Lost in New York on Netflix. You haven’t felt a sincere emotion since you were nine.

So why aren’t you at Chuck E. Cheese’s? It is, after all, where “A Kid Can Be a Kid,” and the last time I checked, your maturity level would place you thoroughly within that demographic. Did I mention it serves beer? It serves beer.

I read online that the branch of Chuck E. Cheese’s I was about to visit was rather brutal. I looked forward to reveling in the madness and enjoying the schadenfreude of watching stoic parents, resigned to a life of tedium and mediocrity, passionatelessly eat pizza while their progeny ran amok. I looked forward to the desperation, to the ignorance. I fantasized that a fight would break out. I wanted to delight in the worst humanity had to offer. I, like you, am a piece of shit.

And there it stood, an oasis in the middle of a food desert dotted with liquor stores and gas stations. It was situated next to a Dollar Tree and a Panda Express. It looked bleak. I prepared to let the sweet, sweet irony of what I was about to experience wash over me like a neon-colored tide.

I, like you, am not capable of having fun without the aid of some sort of intoxicant. As such, the first thing I did upon entering (after, of course, getting my hand stamped by a borderline suicidal teenager) was order a large ($3.99) beer and an all-you-could eat salad bar ($5.99 with coupon). The mediocrity of both the beer and the salad was unquantifiable. But they were so cheap! Wine was also available, and equally cheap, but the fact that it was: 1. Blush and Chablis only and 2. situated on draft next to the MGD and Miller Light taps disturbed me. 

Granted, not all Chuck E. Cheese's locations serve alcohol, but this was the sort of neighborhood where no one would raise much of a fuss about it. Actually, the vast majority of parents—sporting sagging pants, sagging flesh, and saggier frowns—seemed to need it to tolerate the aggressively annoying surroundings.

My beer was served in a translucent plastic cup, the kind fast food restaurants give you when you ask for water. I drank it with aplomb. I smothered my salad in ranch. Now, logic would dictate that a salad should taste savory. Not at Chuck E. Cheese's. Here, it tasted like corn syrup. Everything tasted like corn syrup. The buzz of the beer, coupled with the sugar high I copped from the ranch, made what I was witnessing feel magical.

High, I stared transfixed at a ten-year-old girl as she provocatively danced in front of the green screen situated to the left of Chuck E.’s animatronic carcass. A Bon Jovi parody track blared. A kid who was probably around seven attempted to look “tough” in the photo his mother was taking of him next to the animatronic Chuck E.—the possessed rat kept robotically jerking from left to right, repeatedly hitting the scowling, cross-armed kid in the head. The seven-year-old refused, however, to move. He was either sincerely tough, sincerely stupid, or both. I put my money on both. I got another beer.

Suitably juiced, I re-entered the stage area and became entranced by a monitor. A music video of M.C. Hammer’s “U [sic] Can’t Touch This,”  featuring the shockingly competent dancing of a man in a Chuck E. costume, blew my mind. A scene from an episode of Fraggle Rock followed. I surveyed my surroundings. Why the fuck was I the only 20-something, childless loser in this place? It should have been packed with dipshits in acid-washed jean jackets and skintight bodysuits. The beer was unethically cheap. The food was atrocious. The entertainment was irony incarnate.

Photo-taking opportunities abounded. Millennial narcissists who needed new profile pics could stand in front of the green screen, pay a quarter for a dot matrix printout of themselves, or download an iPhone app that made it possible to get their picture taken with a crudely animated Chuck E.

Prizes include Tech Decks and ThunderCats action figures. It was entirely possible to drunkenly yell, “I wanna ride the plastic horsey!” and then do it.

Did I drunkenly ride the plastic horsey? You’re goddamned right I did. I played skeeball. I rode in a child-sized car. I, a grown-ass woman, crawled around in plastic tubes that reeked of vomit. I regressed to infancy. And no one stopped me.

Why would they? I was young. I was white. I was American. I was shitty. I was you. 

@bornferal

More tales of pure, unvarnished sadness:

The Worst Restaurant in the World

Horse Racing: The Sport of America's Lower Class

I Got Saved at San Diego's Creationist Museum (Just Kidding, It Sucked)

Photo by Nate Miller

A few days ago, I considered taking a week off from this column. I mean, there has to be at least one week where nothing blatantly, horribly racist happens, right? You’d think that some higher power would shine their love upon me and give me a reason to put my feet up and relax on Friday. Well, fuck me and fuck this horrible world.

Instead of lounging on a beach “maxin’ and relaxin’” as I had planned, my friends at the @YesYoureRacist Twitter account and I will yet again be ranking news stories on a scale of 1 to RACIST, with “1” being the least racist and “RACIST” being the most racist.

- Ten-year-old Sebastion De La Cruz is a mariachi singer of some repute. Such a precocious young tyke should warm the heart of any normal human being. He’s so small, but he’s also doing a grown-up thing! It’s cute, plus hilarious. Well, some people thought it wasn’t so “LOL-worthy.”

The Spurs brought the kid back for last night's Game 4 too, as a big "fuck you" to the above people, but I wonder, could this have been avoided? Maybe if he had avoided traditional mariachi garb and worn, let’s say, a tank top and some tasteful jorts, it wouldn’t have been so much of a problem. People who dress differently than I do are constantly throwing me off. Like, dashikis, turbans, and Crocs just make my head spin. How could these weirdos with funny clothes even be close to American?

By the way, this kid is American. As in, he was born in the USA. Oh shit. That’s RACIST.

- A 911 operator in Dallas, Texas, lost her job last week after posting a string of racist statements on her Facebook page. “I can count on 1 hand the black people I know who don’t have shit for brains!!!” wrote 23-year-old April Sims. “Black people are outrageous!” she wrote in another post. “They are more like animals, they never know how to act … Always causing problems.” When one of April’s Facebook friends asked her what her boss would think about the posts, the young lady got defensive. “I stand by every word I said,” she responded. “And do not apologize. The end.” RACIST

Photo via Flickr User GageSkidmore

- The Washington Redskins, the NFL team some mushy-brained liberal media types refuse to call by name as some sort of half-hearted protest, has hired Republican pollster Frank Luntz (pictured above) to organize a series of focus groups to see how the American public really feels about their racially insensitive nickname.

I guess Redskins owner Daniel Snyder isn’t worried about how it looks to the media that he’s hired a Republican pollster to help justify his team having a racist nickname, and why should he? It’s not like the majority of football fans are into stuff like “reading,” “current events,” or “politics.” They just want to watch 300-pound men smash into each other every five minutes. Chances are, the fans Luntz polls will tell him exactly what he wants to hear, that the name is not offensive and they’re “ready for some football.” Thanks to centuries of racist policies and neglect, the US government has decimated the Native American population anyway—they're so uncommon the team might as well be called the “Washington Klingons” for all the relevance it has to most fans' lives. They wouldn't know a Native American unless he was wearing face paint and shooting arrows at them.

This name will never change, but it especially won’t if the press refuses to use the fucking name in stories. Explain to people why this shit is unacceptable. Don’t think you’re doing anyone a favor by not saying “Redskins” when talking about this horrible situation. I’m giving Daniel Snyder and Frank Luntz a 7 for being so goddamn insensitive, and I'm giving the media organizations who refuse to print the word a very disapproving side glance.

- The first national study to evaluate marijuana arrest rates by race found that even though marijuana use is relatively constant across racial lines, African-Americans are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana use than whites. According to the ACLU report, the racial disparity of marijuana arrests increased from 2001 to 2010. Enforcing marijuana laws costs states more than $3.6 billion every year, not to mention the income lost by the people who are targeted by these laws and end up in prison or lose their jobs as a result. There’s no joke here, that’s just fucked up. 9

Photo via Flickr User GageSkidmore

- Ann Coulter receives this week’s Ann Coulter Award for Excellence in Racism for stating that if the Republican Party supports sensible immigration reform it “deserves to die” as an organization.

Never mind that notion that Hispanics are a growing voting bloc and that any political party in this country should hope to govern the entire nation, rather than whatever demographics seem most appealing to them. The thought of making immigration a less complicated process, or giving illegals a path to citizenship is so repugnant to Ann Coulter that she’d rather destroy one of two major political parties in the United States.

To really drive the point that Hispanics are an irrelevant group of interlopers, Coulter writes:

The sleeping giant of the last election wasn't Hispanics; it was elderly black women terrified of media claims that Republicans were trying to suppress the black vote and determined to keep the first African American president in the White House.

Leave it to Ann Coulter to never get tired of trying to find reasons that Barack Obama won the 2012 election that aren’t “more people preferred him to Mitt Romney.” There has to be some magic bullet, like Hurricane Sandy, or black people being afraid, or Obama putting mind control drugs in the water supply like a fucking Batman villain. Ann Coulter telling the GOP that they should ignore a large cross-section of American voters is no different than her chastising Democrats for not appealing more to rural voters. Like, I'm not going to tell Ann Coulter she should wear fewer plaid patterned clothes and drink less. It's just all ridiculously hypocritical. 8

@YesYoureRacist’s Ten Most Racist Retweets of the Week [all grammar sic'd]:

10. @rednek4x4: If u think Obama is the best thing America's ever had ur just like that ni**er. Go back to shitty land and put ur rag back on

9. @kristananana: If Asians are so smart why do they suck at driving? #NotRacist#ButTrue#SoFrustrating

8. @theheeldeal: i'm not racist, but i'm all for segregated movie theaters #stfu

7. @ayeebarraza: I'm not racist but my heart starts beating faster when a black person approaches me at an ATM.

6. @poxypalin13: I'm not racist, but if you start chanting your foreign beliefs in the cubicle next to us again I'm poking your eye out!

5. @stoeeej: Im not racist but I make fun of everybody whos not white or is jewish.

4. @gskibos: Im not a racist but today i hate puerto ricans.

3. @koreananchjo: Damn there is ALOT of black people and the school I'm going to is 40% black. I'm not racist but that's just too much.

2. @patarnull: I'm not racist but we have to kick all the pakis out of England before its too late

1. @pancake_kevin: the reason everyone's internet is acting all retarded is cause of the fucking government and that ni**er obama watching everything we do

Last Week in Racism: This Week in Reverse Racism

@dave_schilling

If you were alive back in March, chances are you heard about our little adventure to North Korea with Dennis Rodman and the Harlem Globetrotters. The news spread around the world like an exceptionally newsworthy wildfire, and in the months that have passed people have been itching to see our footage and find out exactly what happened on the first-ever basketball diplomacy mission. Well, all will be revealed on June 14 when the season finale of VICE airs on HBO at 11:00 PM. Until then, here is one last nugget from the trip to hold you over. These photos were taken by VICE producer Jason Mojica during the crew's time in North Korea, and cover everything from the exhibition game with the North Korean national team to VICE correspondent Ryan Duffy's cooldown at the Kim Il Sung University pool. Captions by Iris Xu.

The VICE Podcast Show is a weekly unedited discussion in which we go inside the minds of some of the most interesting, creative, and bizarre people we come across. This week, host Reihan Salam talks with documentary photographer, filmmaker, and artist Tim Freccia. We discuss his past work, his experience documenting conflict, as well as his most recent project Cowboy Capitalists, which will air on VICE on June 17th.

Here's just the audio from this week's podcast:

Previously on The VICE Podcast Show, Reihan spoke with Greta Gerwig about his role in the 3D-printed gun movement.

More photo stuff from VICE.com:

There's More to Stuart Franklin Than the Most Famous Photo of the 20th Century

The Magic Kingdom Is Creepy

Tom Bianchi Photographed His Gay Paradise Before It Disappeared Forever

A Free Syrian Army unit receiving medical supplies coordinated by the Syrian Support Group. Via Facebook.

Louay Sakka is a co-founder of the Syrian Support Group, which was set up to help promote democracy in Syria and support the moderate members of the Free Syrian Army as they fight Assad regime. Although Sakka left Syria in 1997 and has only been back once since, he has become a key supporter of the FSA, helping rebels find each other on the ground and communicate with the US State department. He does this all from the comfort of his basement in Oakville, Ontario, using Skype, Viber, and his Android phone. He also fundraises for the FSA and has set up a PayPal account to allow people from all over the world to contribute. So far they have raised over $150,000 this way—essentially, the SSG is helping to crowdsource a war. And now, with the US saying it will arm the Syrian rebels after the Assad regime used chemical weapons against the, the SSG will only be getting busier as this situation unfolds.

I met with Louay in downtown Toronto, where he works as an IT specialist by day, to discuss how this all works.  

VICE: I understand you’re based out of your home in Oakville. How does that work?
Louay Sakka: Well, I have a network of thousands of people in Syria. They all know how to reach me and if I can’t help them directly, I will put them in touch with the contacts who are operating in other areas, such as Aleppo. I’m from Damascus, so that’s the area I focus on—but I oversee all the communications. Every day I am working to connect rebels and activists on the ground in Syria, to help them understand their situation and each other. It’s important to understand their backgrounds, like who they are and what their needs are. 

And you do this through Skype?
Yes, mainly through Skype, but also Viber and my phone. When you make multiple conference calls, Skype requires you to have a good internet connection. If you want to do a conference call with ten different people, which you often need to do in these circumstances, you need someone with a very good internet connection, and that’s one reason why they need me. I can do that from my home.

How much else can you do from your home?
It is very important that [the rebles] have an understanding of each other. We can break Syria down into provinces to better understand the different people from different backgrounds in order to help unite the Free Syria Army, the rebels, and the activists. They don’t always understand each other. For instance, people from Damascus are very different from people from Aleppo. We are involved in the structuring and in the chain of command in Syria. The FSA is made up of 80 percent civilians and 20 percent military defectors, so we help unite them all because there has always been a historical mistrust between those two elements.

How many rebels and activists do you communicate with daily?
Well it depends. In the beginning I would talk to hundreds daily, and now that we have a leadership in SMC (Supreme Military Council), I talk more directly to the leaders daily, which lessens the amount. But I still talk to many, many people each day.

It seems like almost every day there is breaking news from Syria, what is the most recent crisis situation you’ve had to help deal with?
Well, probably the most recent incident happened in Al-Qusayr. Fifty thousand people were living there and we had to evacuate it to save civilians from Hezbollah.

How were you able to help with this?
On May 28 I received a call from General [Salim] Idris (currently Chief of Staff of the SMC) asking if we could find a way to escort the civilians out of Al-Qusayr because it was surrounded by Hezbollah. He called me at 4 AM to tell me how bad the situation was and I quickly reached out to the State Department to explain. From there the State Department promised to work on it and they talked to the UN who talked to Russia, who could put pressure on Iran and Hezbollah to get the to cease fire and allow the civilians to exit safely. A day later the civilians started to evacuate the town.

.

That’s intense. Were you successful in evacuating everyone?
Well I can say that when the city fell into the hands of Hezbolloah, it was empty because we were able to get them out. 

So why do they need to call you and not the State Department directly?
General Idris needs to call me because there I have a much faster response time and I am in a position to communicate better with people here. If he calls the State Department it will take a long time and it’s much faster to deal with me.  But the SSG now knows many people within the State Department. For day-to-day operations in Syria, I will relay what is important to the right people.

Do members of the FSA stay in touch with you while something like a ceasefire is going on?
Yes. I get constant updates and they will let me know when everyone has been evacuated.

Have you ever lost communication with someone while fighting is taking place?
Yes, there have been many times where I’m talking to people who have been disconnected because their area has just been bombed. Once I was talking to someone from Damascus, in the neighborhood of Kadam, who was trying to give me an update of what was going on. Artillery fire started to hit them and they had to cut and run out. From there, at that moment, it’s really tough, because there is really nothing I can do but wait. I had to wait a week to hear back from them and I didn’t know if they were dead or alive.  

There are pro-Assad Syrians out there.  Do you ever worry about your safety?
No, because they are such a minority that they would not dare support him now. All the things Assad has done, from using chemical weapons against his own people to air attacks that wipe out full towns, I doubt anyone would stand by him now.

Are there other people like you working from their homes?
We have people like me all over. In the UK, Turkey, France, and many places in North America such as Chicago and Washington.

I understand there is an SSG fund. Could you explain the PayPal account component?  How exactly does that work?
We set the account up last summer after we got our license from the US Treasury Department in order to give people a chance to donate money. There are many people who wanted to help the Free Syrian Army but couldn’t, and now there is an easy way for them to do it.

So, people from anywhere in the world can go online and donate funds through PayPal that will go towards this cause?
Yes. And then we use this funding for many things, such as our administration work and some of the FSA projects, media awareness centers, and internally distributing non-lethal aid. Also, we use that funding to assist in our bigger donations. Like when the US government wants to give [the FSA] food and we need money to move the food supply around, we would use the money from the fund for such an operation. 

Are there any restrictions on who can donate?
Yes. There is a blacklist set up by the US government that we are not allowed to accept money from.  

Who is donating to the fund?
There are Americans, many people from France, Eastern European countries too, interestingly enough, and also Canadians. Sometimes people give what they can, like $10 or $20, but it’s very helpful. We have monthly donors who contribute as well, and then there are bursts [of donations] to the account when the media gets talking about it. 

Because the FSA is working alongside some extremist groups, how are you preventing the money from going to terrorists?
This money is not going to terrorists or extremists. They are part of the same cause, but they are separate from the SMC. They follow their own leadership and get weapons from their own channels and leadership. When people say they don’t want to give money to the FSA they are missing something. They say that it is going to al-Qaeda—but they neglect the fact that there is already a lot of support going to the extremist groups and by not supporting the moderate members [of the FSA] who only want democracy, we allow the extremists to win. 

Are you concerned with the alliance the FSA has with al-Qaeda and other extremist groups?
Yes, of course I’m worried about this. I’m worried that the extremists will take over; part of the reason the Syrian Support Group was set up was to help the moderate members overcome this possibility.

Is General Idris concerned as well?
Yes, Idris is very concerned. But at this point he is in no position to push [the extremists] out because he needs them to help fight. They are very effective in helping to topple the Assad regime, which is the main goal right now. But he is aware that they are a threat for the future stability of the country and he also wants to ensure they won’t take over as they did in the eastern provinces, taking control of the oil and gas fields. 

What are some of the main issues in Syria that people in America need to understand?
They should know that the lack of support is causing people to be recruited to the wrong fight. Staying out of the problem is not going to help it. I am very concerned with Aleppo right now because I know many people from Hezbollah have gone there after Al-Qusayr and want to fight there—we can't evacuate Aleppo because it has a population of four million people, so we are just watching this very closely. I am in constant communication with my contact who watches over Aleppo and he will let me know immediately if there are any important updates.

What should people who are thinking of donating money through the PayPal account know?
That they will look back at these donations with pride that they helped. We are very thankful for the help and support and sympathy. And also we get many nice postcards that show support. It means a lot.

Follow Angela on Twitter: @angelamaries

More from Syria:

Syria's Refugees Are Wedged Between Hells

Snipers of Aleppo

The VICE Guide to Syria

For this week's Mahal, I headed over to the Good Company in the Lower East Side of Manhattan for a pizza party in celebration of Henry Gunderson's artwork. The Good Company opened six months ago. It was an idea birthed during an acid trip and its main goal is to keep up some good, if not traditional, artist collaborations.

Below is Henry's statement about the relationship between pizza, skateboarding, and his art: 

"I was living life on a strict pizza diet and riding a skateboard. It only made sense to combine the two. Who doesn't like pizza and skateboarding? The original Slicer I hand cut out of an old deck with a jigsaw and spray painted pepperonis and cheese on it. The pizza board is an idea I've had for a while, and I finally made it happen with The Good Company. I drew out the pepperoni graphic in colored pencil and we came up with a shape for the deck. The drawing was then translated into a four-color screen print and printed. The decks are a hand-signed edition of 100. All we are really saying is, give pizza a chance." 

Stay tuned for more art at and pizza related events at the Good Company, including a Rip N' Dip take over and a Jayme Lemperle art show in July. 

Photos by Taji Ameen.

@RedAlurk 

Alex Grey just hit the crowd-sourced lottery. The king of visionary art will be building the “sanctuary” for his trippy, visual-laced spiritual paintings and structures that he calls the Entheon. His Kickstarter campaign received over $210,000 from more than 1,500 backers. That sum is the second-most amount of money ever donated to an art project on Kickstarter.

The Kickstarter campaign ended on May 31st, which was the 39th anniversary of Alex and Allyson Grey’s first meeting. The two have been making visionary art ever since. It was also the 39th anniversary of the first time Alex every dropped acid. “We spent the night together and never left,” said Allyson at their fundraising party in LA last month. 

As Grey posted on his blog, “It takes a miracle of creative imagination on the part of a community to envision a sacred space into existence and that is precisely what happened.”

The Entheon will be one of the trippiest buildings you can imagine. Emblazoned with a gazillion cosmic eyeballs on the roof, walls, and doors, a pattern of faces watch you from every corner. There’s also a group of angels and slithering dragon snakes, not to mention symbols from Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and a ying-yang. It’s all very tribal and otherworldly. It’ll be built in the Hudson Valley a region just north of New York City that's been a renowned artistic haven since the painters of the Hudson River School produced their luminous, transcendentalist-infused landscapes.

The Entheon will be “a place to experience the God within.” The first show will be the art of Alex Grey including the Sacred Mirrors series. You can get in with their special entry coin (stay tuned for the opening party, as well, if all goes as planned).

Last time we spoke with the Greys, they told us about their donation-based church, the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. Now that they found the funding for the Entheon, they will break soil soon. We chatted about their building plans and how it feels to make this miracle come true. They speak as one voice, so their responses below are from both of them.

VICE: Hey Allyson and Alex! Congrats on meeting your goal! How does it feel to be so well supported on Kickstarter?
Alex and Allyson Grey: Thanks so much! We are very excited and grateful. It was an exhilarating ride and a tremendous learning experience inside a new social media community. The Church of Sacred Mirrors has been a non-profit since 1996 and a church since 2008, yet it feels like this is the first real fundraiser we’ve done. So many friends took part in this fun game where no one wins unless everyone wins. CoSM folk are immersed in getting rewards together for all the individuals that backed our campaign. All rewards will be shipped by Gordo, the unstoppable force of CoSM's online shop!

What inspired the wildly imaginative architecture of the Entheon?
On June 3rd, 2012 Alex had a vision of 30 interlinking heads wrapping around the carriage house, a symbol of 30 wisdom traditions embedded in the foreheads of the faces of God. The religious symbols are in alignment with the Cosmic Eyes of the Creator that sheds tears that are angels of the creative imagination bridging the eye of God and the Human Eye. Dragons of Evolutionary Consciousness lead to the One expressed in the Many, the steeple head on the top of Entheon.

This feels like a once-in-a-lifetime project. What kind of visionary art can we expect to see in Entheon?
The first long-term exhibition at Entheon will be the CoSM collection of painting, drawings, and sculpture, offering devotional portrayals of the universal human journey from birth to death and beyond with love, family, and enlightenment as the unfolding iconic narrative.

Entheon is the visionary art sanctuary at CoSM, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in Wappinger, New York. The purpose of Entheon is to empower the evolution of consciousness and advancement of the worldwide visionary art movement. There will be a great variety of artists exhibited at Entheon. Already at CoSM, many contemporary visionary artists have exhibited or presented their accomplished works to interested audiences. We cultivate alliances with collectives of visionary artists including Tribe 13, the Further Collective, Vienna Visionary Art Academy, plus the Federation of Damanhur and Wisdom University. At CoSM, Visionary Salons host presentations of art, dance, and music, light projections, and fire spinning by some of our favorite mystic artists. Entheon will be an attraction as a sculpted building and a sound-proof container for performance and ceremony. 

Visionary Art has become a growing movement worldwide as more and more people experience altered and mystic states of consciousness through yoga, contemplative practice, or heart opening sacraments. Careful depictions of inner journeys become validating for other psychonauts. Visionary Art has become a way of introducing evolutionary symbolism to the cultural meme stream through the internet, galleries and museums, print media, tattoos, fashion, clubs and festivals. A sense of sacred community hovers around visionary art events because of the holiness of the creative imagination and the importance of sharing our deepest inner illuminations and strangely detailed worlds of the Beyond Within.  

You have found a location and a structure to build upon. Could you tell us where it will be in Hudson Valley?
Chapel of Sacred Mirrors is a wooded 40-acre center for visionary culture, an interfaith church where we practice creativity as a spiritual path. CoSM is located in the Town of Wappinger, 65 miles from Manhattan. We are within easy walking distance to the river. The Hudson Valley is a place of great beauty and spiritual history. And the home of the first American art movement, the Hudson River School.

The Hudson River Landscape painters like Cole, Church and Bierstadt visually paralleled transcendentalist sentiments expressed by Emerson and Thoreau that Nature is Divine. The native Wappinger people called the Hudson River Mo-He-Kahn-I-Tuke, the “great flow that goes both ways.” The Hudson River is a Moon River, a tidal river that flows from the ocean up to just past CoSM and then back out to sea, changing directions every six hours. The river is a metaphor for community. Each of us is a small stream flowing into the great river with increasing speed and power toward the ocean of love bliss. In the case of the Hudson River, or the Mo-He-Kahn-I-Tuke, we have a spiritual ocean that is pulled within the community, even upstream, and the community is empowered with this special influx of holy energy from the greater body. This is one of the reasons we have always met on the Full Moon, in honor of the river, which we were the same distance from in the city.  A number of spiritual movements have originated in the Hudson Valley and there is a pearl necklace of retreat centers up the river, like temples on the Nile. Within several hours of arguably the greatest art capital in the world, next to an exquisite river, artists are finding a place in nature to be creative. Who wouldn't?

Wow. When do you plan on breaking ground, this year?
Town planners have given site approval. The bank is ready to make a construction loan when the engineering and architectural drawings have been finished and the bids from contractors are complete. Two sets of engineering drawings are needed for this sculpted building, one for the main structure and interior and another for the sculpted panels that will clad the building. This is an especially custom building. A new well has been dug and much site work and structural reinforcement has already gone into transforming this 1882 carriage house into a temple of visionary art.

New Yorkers may remember the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, which ran from 2004-2009. How is Entheon different?
CoSM operated 12,000 square feet in the heart of the gallery and club district of NYC. A dance studio, CoSM Shop, the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors and MicroCoSM Gallery, our studio, office, merchandise and shipping were all on that floor. But we couldn't build an enduring temple of the 4th floor of 542 W. 27th Street so we started looking for land again soon after CoSM NYC opened. 

Entheon is a freestanding two-story building with a third ground floor at the back. Many of the works that were exhibited at CoSM in the city will be on view in this installation including all 21 Sacred Mirrors, Cosmic Christ, Net of Being, Theologue, Oversoul and many others. Within Entheon, MicroCoSM Gallery will once again exhibit the works of excellent visionary artists. CoSM in the Hudson Valley is a tranquil yet very lush and alive natural setting. It is a very large "canvas" for art, creative projects and installations.

The name is inspired by the Entheon Village from Burning Man Camp. How will you be honoring this tradition?
It was Alex that offered the name Entheon to MAPS and Matt Atwood in 2006 for the Burning Man Camp we initiated with them that year. Within that camp, CoSM created a 60-foot dome chill space offering 24 hours of DJ down-tempo music. Entheon is a place to experience the God within. Originally, Alex was looking for a non-church name, one not already identified with a sacred space like temple, shrine, cathedral. A new kind of sacred space. 

When did you find out about the approved bank loan? Are you taking a big risk by building this project?
Yes. This is one of the biggest risk of our lives. The bank is very fond of our project. Our bank representative tells us CoSM is the most responsibly operated non-profit business with whom they have worked. We spend our lives seeking friends who might join us in building something beautiful to leave a trace of our visionary culture. 

Do you have plans for when will the Entheon opening celebration will take place? Can people buy tickets?
A CoSM coin is admission for two. Buying a ticket is taking a risk, gambling that we are at our word and will actualize Entheon. The coin is good for any item within CoSM worth $20, however. As coin holders, we vision the opening of Entheon together and trust that we can all make it happen. It will take many friends to build a temple. 

The admission coin looks fantastic. How many are being produced?
It is an unlimited edition. 918 Kickstarter backers of our Entheon campaign will receive a CoSM coin in exchange for two admissions to CoSM. The coin will soon be in the mail. Kickstarter backers will all get theirs before any additional ones go on sale.

If Entheon is your greatest challenge so far, is it also your greatest reward?
Our daughter, Zena is our greatest reward. Our love is our greatest reward. Entheon will be a tremendous satisfaction when it is completed, which may take two years or more. Our greatest blessing is our love being shared with a global community.

Entheon: Sanctuary of Visionary Art
Concept and Design by Alex Grey
Digital Modeling by Ryan Tottle

Follow @nadjasayej on Twitter.

More on Alex Grey:

Chapel of Sacred Mirrors: Cosmic Creativity, Entheogens, and psilocybin with Allyson and Alex Grey