Earlier this week, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty released signed statements from Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, the two Cleveland Police officers behind the November 2014 shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

The officers read the accounts—their first public statements since the incident—as part of sworn testimony to a grand jury mulling charges against them on Monday, according to Steve Loomis, the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association. They provide roughly identical narratives of how the child playing with a toy gun was shot and killed in broad daylight seconds after the officers arrived at a public park. But coming after the release of independent reports commissioned separately by the prosecutor and the family—which alternately found that the shooting was and was not reasonable—the officers' stories quickly angered activists and threaten to further erode public trust in local law enforcement.

Officer Loehmann, the shooter, and Garmback, the driver, both describe entering Cudell Park via W. 99th Street, which dead-ends at the park's swing set, where Rice had been flagged by a 9-1-1 caller. (As has been previously reported, the fact that the person brandishing a weapon was "probably a juvenile" and that the gun was "probably fake" had not been relayed by police dispatch to Loehmann and Garmback.)

"As we were even with the swing set," Loehmann writes in his two-page account, "we observed a male matching the description given by the radio seated under the Gazebo." He describes Garmback driving at roughly ten miles per hour over the snow-dusted ground and seeing "the suspect" pick up an object, stick it in his waistband and walk in the direction of a nearby rec center. As the car approached and slid, Rice turned to them, and Loehmann says he "continuously" yelled "Show me your hands!" His partner reportedly did the same. Believing the child to be "over 18 years old and about 185 pounds," Loehmann saw a "real and active" threat when Rice "lifted his shirt reached down into his waistband."

Calling it an "active shooter situation"—even though no shots had been fired—Loehmann said he followed his police training, remembering, e.g., that "hands may kill" and "the cruiser is a coffin." He said that when Rice " the gun out of his waistband" with "his elbow coming up," he essentially had no choice but to fire.

The officers' accounts—and the nature of their release by McGinty—are not playing well in the wider community, and some fear they are simply laying the ground work for a non-indictment.

"This business of soliciting and obtaining unsworn statements from these officers that are clearly riddled with problems, and then putting them out in public as if this is the final word is deeply troubling," Subodh Chandra, the Rice family attorney, said. "Fortunately, all the smart lawyering in the world doesn't clean up the fact that what Officer Loehmann is saying he observed and did couldn't possibly have happened in under two seconds, unless he's the Flash."

A memorial to Tamir Rice at the site of his death. Photos by the author

However, McGinty's spokesperson, Joe Frolik, has said that no witnesses—including Loehmann and Garmback—were permitted to give unsworn statements to the grand jury. In a brief phone conversation, he said that the prosecutor's office was "extremely limited" in what it was legally permitted to say about the proceedings, but reiterated that "whatever happened at the grand jury, wouldn't know about. All they really know is whether and when their clients would've testified."

Samaria Rice, the child's mother, we know, testified on Monday.

Frolik also said that most, if not all, of the statements made to the County Sheriff in the Tamir Rice investigation released in June would not have been under oath.

Loomis, the president of the local police union, told the New York Times that Loehmann and Garmback, after reading their statements, invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and did not answer questions. (The statements would have been read under oath.)

Chandra, the family lawyer, conceded that "of course" he didn't know what happened behind the closed doors of the grand jury, but said that "there are so many problems with these statements that a prosecutor committed to vigorously cross-examining them could rip them limb from limb. They could say, for instance, 'OK, I'd like you to please cry out three times, Show me your hands while I'm running a stopwatch. Now do it five times. Oh and by the way, why were you shouting with the windows rolled up? Are you disputing Officer Garmback's testimony that the windows were rolled up? What's the point in yelling then?"

(Garmback, in the tenth of 13 numbered points that comprise his account, wrote: "I believe the cruiser windows were up at the time of these events, but I am not sure.")

Even the gentlest cross-examiner might have been inclined to ask Loehmann exactly what he meant when he said, "Even when was reaching into his waistband, I didn't fire." As the video of the shooting clearly shows, that's precisely what Loehmann did.

"What strikes me is that they clearly wrote them together," Rachelle Smith, a Cleveland activist with the local organizing network #OrganizeCLE, said of the officers' accounts. "They didn't even bother to change the style and language used! When are two targets of an investigation given the opportunity to jointly craft their statement to law enforcement? Apparently, when they're law enforcement officers and think 'justice' is a group homework assignment."

Check out our documentary about the so-called Cleveland Strangler and policing in the city:

Cleveland Councilman Zack Reed, a prominent figure on the city's east side who has long advocated for legislation aimed at curbing violence in the city—even at the expense of his popularity among council colleagues—said he agreed with Chandra that McGinty has tainted the grand jury process.

"If this were an outside prosecutor, people would look at it and say, 'OK, at least I get the transparency part,'" Reed said in a phone interview. "But because it's McGinty—and I don't think he's a bad guy—he has done so much to muddy the waters that going forward, anything he does, even if it's done correctly, looks as if he's either leaning toward the police or against the police. He's so radioactive, it does not look like he is for the benefit of the public."

Iconoclastic Cleveland journalist Roldo Bartimole agrees. Bartimole self-published a bi-weekly Cleveland political newsletter from 1968 to 2000, but these days he chimes in only periodically on issues of regional import on a local blog.

"The officers, apparently the city, and the county prosecutor—and if that's the case, the grand jury too – expect you to believe statements by an officer who shot a couple of seconds upon arrival in a police cruiser poorly guided by another officer... They expect you not to see or believe the film that reveals exactly what happened. Quick and deadly."

Like other critics of McGinty, Roldo "Tell the truth and shame the devils" Bartimole worries that the county prosecutor—like many across America—is too cozy with his cops.

"McGinty may be making peace with the cops after indicting Michael Brelo ... Brelo was acquitted. But the police resent his even being charged."

In a follow-up email, Bartimole called the release of the officer statements "part of the PR workup for the grand jury to do nothing."

Protest signs from the year's demonstrations still litter the grounds of the park.

From the Rice family's point of view, the release of "self-serving" statements is corrupting the process. They have called for McGinty to step down—he has refused—or at least, before he makes a final recommendation to the grand jury one or way another, commit to what his position on criminal charges might be.

"He has not committed to doing that." Chandra said. "Why, we don't know. He did it in the Anthony Sowell case. He does it all the time. The concern the Rice family has is that the entire process is a charade in which the prosecutor claims transparency on one hand, but hides behind the secrecy of the grand jury on the other, to be able to blame the grand jury for his own lack of interest, diligence and vigor in pursuing the prosecution of these officers."

McGinty, for his part, has said the documents were released "in keeping with determination to be as transparent as possible.

"The investigation is continuing," he added, "and ultimately the grand jury will make its decision based on all the evidence."

Sam Allard is a staff writer at Scene Magazine in Cleveland. He previously reviewed books for the Plain Dealer and wrote about organized crime in Sarajevo. Follow him on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user ERIC SALARD

Read: What We Know So Far About the Mass Shooting in San Bernardino

Not long after Wednesday's tragic mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, a woman named Valarie Kaur was boarding a Delta flight in Minnesota bound for LA to celebrate her son's first birthday. The suspected shooters in San Bernardino had just been identified as a married Muslim couple, and Kaur—a Sikh woman—could allegedly already feel the judgmental glare of those in line with her while waiting to board the plane.

Kaur took the luggage tag off her carry-on luggage where she kept her breast pump, which she planned to use during the flight. That roused the suspicion of an angry white man behind her, and he began pointing Kaur out to other passengers. Soon, an "alarmed and angered" gate agent was flagged, according to Kaur.

"I explained that I was a nursing mother, but she still didn't let me board with my bag," she wrote on her Facebook page. Kaur was then forced to show the angry agent her breast pump. "Only then was I allowed to take my seat. All the passengers in first class watched and I smiled weakly to show them I wasn't a terrorist."

Sitting on the flight afterward, Kaur was "angry, shaken, and sad." Her grief for those shot in San Bernardino, she writes, "was interrupted by a passenger seeing me as a suspect." On the plane, she thought back on "the countless subtle acts of profiling of Muslim Sikh and brown bodies in the last 14 years."

After the flight, a Delta rep reached out to Kaur via Twitter and apologized. Kaur updated her Facebook post to point out that the rest of the crew on her flight acted professionally and respectfully.

That sign could soon say "and weed." Photo via Flickr user Chris Waits

Liquor stores in British Columbia and Ontario want to start selling weed once it becomes legal in Canada.

The two unions representing BC's public and private liquor stores announced a partnership this week—the Responsible Marijuana Retail Alliance of BC—through which they're advocating to sell recreational pot at retail locations by next Christmas.

Their logic seems to be that liquor stores already sell a controlled substance that gets people fucked up, so adding weed to their mix just makes sense.

"Just as with alcohol, there are legitimate concerns about access to marijuana by youths. Our stores are an over-19, age-controlled environment and our industry has demonstrated the strongest compliance with identification checks," said Stephanie Smith, president of the BC Government and Service Employees' Union, which represents the province's 200 public liquor stores.

It would also be cost effective. Because liquor stores already have a warehousing and retail system in place "there is no need to reinvent the wheel," she said.

Last month, Warren "Smokey" Thomas, head of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents LCBO employees, said LCBO outlets would be ideal weed retailers because they already have "social responsibility" covered.

"They do age checks, they do refusals if somebody's intoxicated."

Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger echoed those sentiments: "We would want any employee in one of our outlets to be well-trained, to be able to inform the public of any of the potential health risks or safety risks, and do it without consuming the products."

Understandably, existing cannabis vendors aren't stoked about the prospect of getting undermined by liquor stores.

"I think it's bad idea because that would cut us out," said Larry, a partner at Toronto Cannabis Dispensary who didn't want to give his last name.

"I don't think it would be a bad regulatory system if it went that way," he told VICE. "They're doing it with booze and they're doing a pretty good job, as long as they keep the quality and everything. But I don't want that to happen."

Larry said he already hears concerns about quality from people who get their weed from licensed producers, which would likely supply the legal market.

He said it's hard to say why, but thinks it's partially because the people managing large, 10,000-square-foot manufacturing houses aren't used to tending to so many plants.

The wisdom of selling drugs and alcohol in the same place has also been called into question.

Damian Kettlewell, spokesperson for non-medical marijuana for the BC Private Liquor Store Association, told VICE that employees are already trained not to sell alcohol to drunk people and a similar program will be rolled out for weed.

"We're going to be socially responsible," he said. "That would include not selling to intoxicated persons whether it be liquor or under the influence of marijuana."

Larry pointed out that in the Netherlands, weed and booze are sold separately.

"The two definitely don't go together, at least for me," he said.

Anyone who has had the spins would likely agree.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Promotional material from Amy Schumer's recent HBO stand-up special, riffing on imagery traditionally associated with male comedians

A couple weeks ago, I attended a screening of rare clips hosted by a comedic "authority" who recently released a book on the history of comedy. I watched, in horror, as he refrained from playing one solitary clip of a female comedian and only made reference to the mere existence of less than a handful. I can tell you the handful, because I was keeping track:

1. Minnie Pearl, who was only referenced in the context of being one of the guests on a '60s talk show George Carlin did a set on.
2. Elaine May, who was referenced in passing as part of the comedy duo Nichols and May.
3. Lily Tomlin, who he placed in a trifecta of the "most important political comedians" of the '70s, along with George Carlin and Richard Pryor, yet showed no footage of (don't worry, he showed copious footage of the two men).
4. Lucile Ball, who, along with her husband, Desi Arnaz, was tangentially referred to as the subject of a roast Albert Brooks' father did immediately pre-death.

That's it. No one else. Not even Joan Rivers, for fuck's sake! Right before the intermission, he played a compilation of rare clips of comedians before they "made it big." Surely he'll have at least one woman, finally, I thought before said compilation played. But, alas, there was not a one. Jerry Seinfeld and Adam Sandler were featured twice, however.

If you're a broad without a Netflix special to your name, the chances of you being able to monetize your stand-up is miniscule.

I later learned that the three women he had intended on including were cut for time, presumably so he could double up on the Seinfeld and Sandler clips. It was clear to me that he didn't even think about the implications of their absence. Men (and sometimes women) in his position never, it seems, think about it. Until, of course, it's brought to their attention.

Whenever anyone asks which comics I idolized as a child, I'm forced to confront the fact that my comedic idols were overwhelmingly male. As someone who considers herself a feminist (sorry, Reddit), this may come as a surprise, but it is the truth. Sure, I could lie and say I owned every Moms Mabley album when I was eight, but what would be the point? It's hard to consider female comedians when they're not in your immediate purview. I didn't even think of Joan Rivers as anything but a plastic surgery disaster until I bought Mr. Phyllis and Other Funny Stories, her first album, in high school. In the liner notes, Bill Cosby praised her by patronizing her: "the beautiful part about ," he wrote, "is that she's funny without doing all the stereotyped things that blondes do to get a laugh." Thanks, creepo.

It is—stop me if you've heard this before—hard to be a woman. It is harder yet to be a woman in the entertainment industry, specifically comedy. Which is not to imply the thankless tasks mothers, teachers, nurses, and whatnot do is less important than telling clit jokes, but still: being a female comedian is uniquely difficult.

There are, for starters, very few A-list female comedians (or, if you're still living in the Cold War, comediennes). The existence and success of Amy Schumer, Chelsea Handler, Iliza Schlesinger, Tig Notaro, and Sarah Silverman are often cited by clickbait journalists as proof that female comedy is experiencing a renaissance; that the "problem" of women in comedy no longer exists. These exceptions, however, do not prove the rule.

If you're a broad without a Netflix special to your name, the chances of you being able to monetize your stand-up, in even the piss-worst clubs of the most obscure Midwestern enclaves, is miniscule. If you're a male comedian, however, the bar for being considered at the Laff Dumpster in Left Bend, Indiana, is not particularly high. Men with vague, non-specific credits like "Comedy Central" (Read: Had a tweet featured on @Midnight once) and "MTV" (Read: Was a contestant on Next in 2008) are consistently flown out and put up with room and board without a second thought. But what do they have that women don't, other than cocks they can't shut up about?

One of the problems with most mainstream, regional comedy clubs is that racist, homophobic, and misogynistic material continues to be seen as acceptable in club environments. In light of this outright hostility towards women, it's understandable that many modern female comedians choose to go the alternative route, performing instead in rooms where they won't get patted on the ass on their way up to the stage or sexualized by tired old "road dogs" in the green room.

Even in the world of alternative comedy, however, inequality between genders exists.

To wit: a friend of mine once booked me on the last iteration of a very popular, consistently diverse stand-up show. Despite this consistent show of diversity, I was the only woman on the bill. When I casually informed him that I was indeed the only woman he had booked for such an important send-off, his face contorted into a look of horror. He had simply not thought about it. He wasn't being malicious, it wasn't intentional, it just hadn't occurred to him. This type of stuff happens all the time in the comedy world.

Often when I perform in Los Angeles, even for no pay (by and large, most stand-up is done for no pay, regardless of gender—some could say exploitation is the great equalizer), I am the only woman on the lineup, or one of two. (Let the record show there are more than two female comedians in Los Angeles.)

I've come to realize that this practice, while infuriating, is not intentional. The non-booking of women (by both male and female bookers) is rarely done maliciously. The cause, rather, is something even more insidious than maliciousness—it is unawareness.

Last month, my Facebook feed was a-titter with indignation over the Whatever Fest in Houston—people shared, in disgust, an image of the festival's lineup, which showed that, out of over 40 booked comedians, a laughable three were female. Emma Arnold, an Idaho-based comic, posted said flyer on her personal Facebook page, which in turn triggered a slew of support and vitriol. She recalls that many of the negative comments were "mostly of the women aren't funny, name-calling variety, with a few 'joking' violent comments thrown in for funsies."

Arnold is used to such online abuse. Responses to a blog entry wherein she described being sexually assaulted ("like full puss contact") by an out of town comic were horrific (e.g. "It's always the nonfunny female comedians that have these problems though" and "Maybe don't hug guys after they've slapped your ass if you don't want hands up your skirt? Duh."); she made memes of the most egregious offenders. It didn't scare her away from posting about her issues with the Whatever Fest lineup, though, which resulted in her creating a dialogue about the fest's overwhelming maleness with the fest's booker, Andrew Youngblood, who she describes as "pleasant and respectful."

Youngblood says he learned something from the exchange. He told me he "didn't anticipate" the blowback, and that the booking inequity was decidedly unintentional. "I put in offers for both males and female headliners for the fest," he claimed. "But due to scheduling, budget, and other reasons, we ended up with this lineup."

Which is all well and good, but out of 40 comics, not all were headliners—why, then, was the inequality so stark? (For what it's worth, Whatever Fest's music bill was similarly gender-lopsided, though the female-fronted band Metric was among the fest's headliners.)

"I never even realized how few women we had on the festival until it was brought to my attention," he says. "I'm glad people like Emma Arnold and Emily Galati seemed to treat the whole thing like it was worse to be accused of sexism than it was to be sexist. And that if sexism was accidental, it didn't count and shouldn't be acknowledged." His initial kneejerk reaction to the criticism, and his horror over being accused of accidental sexism, indeed seemed a bit maudlin — he acted as though he was being persecuted merely for maintaining the status quo. But the only way to make it not the status quo is to create a dialogue. In the grand scheme of things, the fact that the fracas ruined his weekend meant little. It certainly didn't ruin his reputation.

"I can't pretend to know what it's like to be a women in comedy," Youngblood told me. "I will never know. I sympathize with the struggle and can do my best to understand. I can listen, and I can learn, and hopefully I can help everyone move forward." Let's hope he's sincere. Because if so, that's one down, three billion to go.

Follow Megan on Twitter.

Photo by Brock Williams/Sundance Selects

When the Taser was being developed by a NASA researcher named Jack Cover in the late 1960s and early 70s, the premise was almost utopian: a weapon that could subdue criminals without killing them, or even doing them lasting harm. Even the name—originally an acronym for Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle, after the Tom Swift series of novels—speaks to the weapon's sci-fi origins.

It takes a lot of work for that sort of idea to become reality. The early Tasers used gunpowder to fire darts containing an electric charge at a target, and as a result they were classified as firearms. Once the invention was bought from Cover by a pair of entrepreneurs, however, the gunpowder was swapped for compressed air, they stopped technically being firearms, and today Taser International, Inc. brings in $164.5 million in revenue a year. The company has dominated the conducted energy device (CED) market for 15 years and supplies some 17,000 law enforcement departments around the world with its eponymous devices. (The company has also moved into manufacturing body cameras.)

At a time when police shootings dominate the news, the notion that Tasers are a safer way to subdue suspects than gunfire is a welcome one. But Nick Berardini, the filmmaker behind Killing Them Safely, a new documentary, wants people to know that while Tasers may be less lethal than guns, they're far from safe.

Berardini began work on his film five years ago, when he heard about the death of 23-year-old Stanley Harlan, who was Tasered after a traffic stop in Moberly, Missouri, near where Berardini was attending college. Harlan died in front of his parents after being zapped three times and going into cardiac arrest. (Taser's VP of Strategic Communications Steven Tuttle told VICE via email that "both the medical examiner and the courts have found that TASER did not cause the unfortunate death.") One of these Taser blasts lasted for 21 seconds, longer than most Taser tests, which tend to be closer to 16 seconds. Berardini was baffled that police didn't appear to understand how much harm their Tasers could cause.

"The officers stood around and eventually even said they believed was faking," he told me in a phone interview.

Though most Taser models can be used directly on the skin in "drive stun" mode, they are intended to be unleashed from a distance of up to 35 feet via the two barbed probes that are launched from the device. A short burst—five seconds at a time, though newer models include the option to hold the trigger and increase the duration—ideally incapacitates a person safely.

Like Tasers, pepper spray, batons, and newer less-lethal devices such as sound weapons are all controversial to one degree or another, and arguably deployed too often. Pepper spray's effect can last for 45 minutes, and in rare cases can apparently be fatal. Tear gas can be even more debilitating, and as the death of Eric Garner illustrated, even a simple chokehold can kill.

So the question is not so much whether Tasers can kill—they can. The question is whether when such deaths do occur, is it solely the fault of the officer using the weapon? Or can you lay some blame at the doorstep of the weapon's manufacturer?

Berardini thinks you can. He told me he's not a use of force expert, that he can't decide this kind of thing for law enforcement. He can, however, critique what he sees as the company downplaying the dangers of their product so that police departments would buy these expensive weapons.

Fundamentally, Berardini said Taser "changed how officers did their jobs. They basically overthrew the system of de-escalation, encouraged to embrace using force—not just to end dangerous confrontation, but any confrontation."

But Tuttle, the Taser spokesman, argues, "To take Berardini's film seriously, you have to buy into the dark conspiracy theory that the manufacturer possesses some secret knowledge of the dangers of their weapon and suppresses this like the tobacco industry did in the past"

There is no denying that the documentary takes aim at the company, but it's not exactly a hatchet job. Berardini says nice things about the company, pointing out that co-founders Rick and Tom Smith started off with decent ideas and a desire to help law enforcement and prevent the death of suspects. But he thinks the weapons were advertised as being less dangerous than they turned out to be. They didn't replace guns, but became a tool cops are all too eager to use, despite the risks. Tasers are becoming, as an Amnesty International spokesperson put it in 2013, "a weapon of first resort." The human rights group has been criticizing the use of Tasers for years, and in 2012, they said that more than 500 people had died after being hit by Tasers since the beginning of the 21st century.

When you're Tased, your muscles contract. Nerves fire. The idea is to stop you long enough for cops to restrain you, but depending on the subject's health, this shock to the system can be dangerous. Studies have been inconclusive about the effect of Taser blasts on the heart, but Taser International now warns against hitting suspects in the chest due to concerns about cardiac arrest. (Bernardini's documentary goes into this issue in detail and finds it credible.)

It should be said that Taser International has some solid numbers on its side. Some three million field uses, and two million tests of the weapon have taken place, and a 2011 study funded in part by the Department of Justice concluded, "the use of... application is a physically stressful event and that the number and duration of... exposures should be restricted to the minimum necessary to achieve lawful objectives." Ultimately, it's up to cops to follow these guidelines. As Taser CEO Rick Smith toldFortune in 2011, "We don't enter into debates about policy, we just make the equipment. Once the agency makes the decision to use force, it's in their hands."

At one point in his film, though, Berardini hangs out with officers from Warren, Michigan. That department stopped using Tasers in 2012, six years after they began, and after two incidents where people died following use. One of these was 16-year-old Robert Mitchell, whose death was ruled in part due to the Taser blast fired at him. To that end, the documentary makes a compelling—albeit anecdotal—point about how some police didn't feel adequately warned about Taser's potential dangers.

Berardini is correct that if police were truly sold that this was an entirely harmless weapon, they were misled. But it's a mistake to consider Tasers in a vacuum—police officers also have beanbags, pepper spray, batons, and more, all weapons with their own risks in this era of militarized policing.

Follow Lucy Steigerwald on Twitter.

Belle Owen and a coat from IZ Fashion. Photos by Jake Kivanc

Most of us go shopping for clothes with two things on our minds: what do we want and how much money are we willing to spend? For those with a disability, however, there a lot of other variables to take into account. Will the clothing fit? Is the store even accessible? Will some impatient asshole get mad for some kind of nonsense reason?

According to Belle Owen, social media manager of a new accessible fashion line called IZ Fashion, all of these things unfortunately accompany the already stressful experience of visiting crowded shopping malls and busy department stores when you have a disability.

Owen, 30, moved to Toronto a year ago from Adelaide, Australia, out of something she describes as an "uncontrollable impulse" to travel. Previously working in public relations and journalism in the music industry, she ended up at IZ shortly after moving to Toronto. One of the reasons Owen applied is because she relates to the brand: she was born with a disability called pseudoachondroplasia, a bone growth disorder which prevents her bones from growing past a child's length and causes her great pain when walking and carrying things.

The fashion line, by runway designer Izzy Camilleri, was created after an interaction between Camilleri and now-deceased Toronto Star reporter Barbara Turnbull when Turnbull asked to have a custom cape made for her. Owen tells me it's what made Camilleri realize that fashion needed to be created for people with disabilities. To get a better sense of what kind of stereotypes exist both in and outside the fashion industry for disabled people, and what IZ hopes to accomplish, VICE spoke to Owen herself.

VICE: Can you tell me a little bit about your disability?
Belle Owen: OK. So, I have a post-conception genetic deformation. It's pretty rare—my parents could have, like, 100 more kids and it probably wouldn't happen. It means that I didn't start using a wheelchair until I was ten and I still do walk—I walk at home— is more for joint preservation and for pain and things like that. I think, without it, I wouldn't have been able to travel or I couldn't have gone to a music festival or gone to social events. None of that kind of stuff.

What was it like growing up with a disability? From what I understand, your condition means your bones don't grow past a certain point. When did you find out?
I was actually two-and-a-half when my parents found out. With my disability, you're born at a regular size and then, as the bones grow, you kind of begin to notice. It's funny, the week my parents found out, they were pregnant with their second child, my younger brother, so they had a lot of tests done. Like, my brother was tested right away, but he's 6'4" or something, so he's totally fine.

My brother and I weren't raised any different, we were always really good friends with other kids and stuff. He just grew taller than me really fast. Even though I grew until I was 18, I just grew really, really slowly. My brother was taller than me by the time I was five.

As far as generally growing up, my parents were really cool. Like, they were really chill. As far as being a kid with a disability, they never really limited me at all. Y'know, my dad was just kind of like, "If you're going to do drugs, just tell somebody what drugs you're doing," and, "If you want to sleep around, don't get pregnant." I had a really cool childhood.

Did you face any stereotyping or discrimination around your disability when you were younger?
You know, I feel like I got really lucky as a kid in that I never felt like an outsider. I was never excluded from friend groups or faced any bullying because of my disability. But it's funny because when I was 25 years old, I actually got assaulted by a stranger in the street. I ended up reporting it to the police, we went to court, and the other person went to jail for about six months. It was a really big thing at the time. What shocked me is when I went to go do the police report, they told me because I had a disability I was a "double target." I'm a woman, and I have a disability. It hadn't occurred to me before that people were in real danger of being victimized because of their stature or because they're a woman. It blew me away, so I feel I'm pretty privileged to not have been exposed to that early on.

What about now?
It's really important when it comes to language around disabilities... When people say 'wheelchair bound' or 'confined to a wheelchair,' it's got negative connotations. But when you say, y'know, 'wheelchair user,' it's more of just a tool that you use. A means to an end. That kind of language is really important to me. I do mentoring to other youths with similar disabilities. Like, when I was in Adelaide, a lot of the time if you do have a disability, especially one that is really physically obvious, people take it as kind of an invitation and people assume they can ask you questions.

A lot of the time, it's very imposing questions. It doesn't necessarily happen to me, but if you ask somebody who had a spinal cord injury, like, 'Oh, what happened?,' you might be asking them to recount something that could trigger PTSD. Yes, people that you don't really owe people anything.

Izzy Camilleri

What was it like shopping for clothing prior to coming across accessible fashion?
Honestly, adaptive clothing didn't even occur to me before I found IZ. I never searched for it, I never sought it out. Even when I was mentoring, I was working with a lot of other people who have disabilities, and it was never a topic of conversation because, when you are a wheelchair user especially, you get used to making due so often. Getting into buildings, you gotta make due with where you're going to drink coffee in the morning because, if two places have a step and one doesn't, your choice is made for you. That applies across the board. You get so used to that selection that it doesn't occur to you that there is a better option.

So, I make do a lot. If there was that really didn't work, I'd just get something else, or I'd fix it myself. I taught myself how to use a sewing machine. I took it in and redid all my jeans, or took everything up from the shoulders, so, yeah, if you're not making due then you're making the changes yourself. And we hear that a lot. Stuff like, "Oh, my grandma just put some extra fabric at the back and it's good to go." Like, people shouldn't have to do that.

When I found about IZ through the job, I was mindblown, and I think that's part of why I enjoy my job so much as social media manager because I can find other people and tell them. I remember how I felt when I found out about it, like, oh my god. It makes so much sense that it exists, but because it's not discussed, it didn't even occur to me.

What's the general consensus around fashion in disability? Are people having conversations that are supportive and inclusive of disabled narratives?
Outside of IZ, there is a little bit of a movement toward inclusion. You'll see people using wheelchairs, or people using crutches or canes walking the runways at fashion week, but the fashion isn't inclusive. Like, the runway itself might be, but the fashion isn't adapted in any way. It's good that conversation is leaning that way and as a company that does have all those things taken into account, we can kind of steer and direct the conversation to a solution rather than a Band-Aid.

We talked about how disability and fashion sometimes intersect in half-assed ways. As you said, someone might be on the runway, but the fashion isn't tailored toward them. What do you think are some of the more neglected narratives when it comes to disability?
A lot of people, out of curiosity, will ask, "What kind of fashion are disabled people into?" The thing is that disability is not a genre. It's not, like, 'Oh yeah, these people want to wear X kind of pants and X kind of shirts.' You can't generalize it, everyone is different. Disability is not a group of people and a lot of people don't take that into account.

When we talk about people with crutches or amputees walking runways and we talk about how the clothing isn't adapted for them, we also have to talk about how those same people are not being used in their catalogues. It's not a fully comprehensive thing and sometimes it can feel like sort of a grab, you know what I mean?

I noticed you've done some modeling for the brand. Have you done modeling outside of that?
Not really, just if I've been asked to occasionally. I have a good amount of photographer friends that will ask me sometimes and it's fun, it's definitely fun. I like to be visually represented in a way that's not cookie-cutter or sterile. There's not any pictures on the site right now but we just did some shots for the holidays where there's a couple curled up on a couch, and that's not something that's done a lot around disability. Like, most of the time, disability is not associated with sex or sexuality in any way. That's not to say modeling has to be sexual, but there's no implication of any kind of sexual relationship or sexuality at all. It's good to see real situations and real relationships that aren't just a carer-type situation or a best friend situation.

What do you think are some of the biggest issues facing the disability community, both within and outside fashion?
I think there's this really fine line between what is and isn't, I don't know what the terminology is, but "inspiration porn." I had a friend named Stella Young who died last year, and who had done a TED Talk about inspiration porn that was really amazing. It's a disheartening idea. I really want people to get past seeing disability as something you have to overcome or have to ignore. You know, people assume that normalizing is a compliment.

I have people who I've known for a long time tell me stuff like, "Oh, I don't even notice your chair, I don't even notice your disability," as if that's a compliment. Like, really? My disability is a huge part of me and has shaped who I am and it's not really a compliment for you to say that you don't notice that. It's hard to explain to them when they're coming from a point of positivity that they're being really dismissive of that. To a lot of people, it doesn't occur to them at all. I could be on the subway and someone can say, "Good on you!" Like, dude, I'm just going to work like everybody else, slightly hungover and just as exhausted. It's just trying to find a really strong way to communicate that to people.

I almost see accessible fashion as being a way to empower people with disabilities, when they have choice robbed of them so often. Is that what IZ is going for?
Yeah. A lot of the beauty about it is that it does take into account things like need and function, but the end product doesn't look like it has. It doesn't look like you're wearing special jeans or whatever. It doesn't look like a seniors product. The jeans look sleek and comfortable when you're sitting down, so nobody thinks, Oh, that's cut different or made a different way. It doesn't occur to you; it just looks like a sleek pair of jeans.

What has the response been like? What kind of things are you hearing?
Most of the time it's really positive. People are either very skeptical or have a lot of questions when they hear about the brand, because it's kind of hard to believe. I think the only negative responses we get is that sometimes people take issue with the price point, but that's honestly just the cost that it takes us to make the product, especially because we're a small team that manufactures right out of Canada. Prices usually get jacked on products aimed at disability already, so it's an understandable reaction.

Outside of that, people are really stoked... I don't know if you've looked at our website, but we have different styles of . Some of our products have a zip, or some have no zips, or some have a complete wrap where you don't need to stand at all to put them on, so communicating those differences is hard, especially when we don't have a brick and mortar store for people to come into and go, "Oh wow, it really works." When people eventually do try the product on, they're full of praise.

You seem to work heavily with the community due to having such a small team. In terms of your models, are they mostly people with disabilities, and if so, what's that like?
Yeah, they're all people with disabilities. We wouldn't use somebody who didn't have a disability, which is also unique, because normally it's much easier to just get an able-bodied model to try to swap in and out of clothing and try different poses. At the moment, all of our models spinal cord injury, which of course, does slow the process down, but it actually works to educate people.

Like, the photographer may have never shot someone who has a disability, so you can help them learn more through the experience. It's all through experiencing and showing that, yeah, we are going to use people who have disabilities, and I think that kind of education is making a difference. That mindset I think is just going to kind of naturally spread throughout the fashion world and we don't have to shout about how different we are. It speaks for itself.

If there was one thing that you really hoped people to take from the idea of accessible fashion, what would it be?
I think contributing the conversation around disability and changing minds is really important. Our "Fashion is Freedom" campaign is really important to me. Disability, as a community, is seen as really unsexy, while fashion is viewed as the definition of sexiness. At the same time, fashion is seen as shallow or narcissistic. It is kind of about bringing those two worlds together and showing that compromise can be had and that people don't have to settle for one or the other.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

On Thursday, one day after the horrific mass shooting that left 14 dead and 21 wounded in San Bernardino, Californiamass shooting that left 14 dead and 21 wounded in San Bernardino, California, Republican presidential candidates spoke to assembled members of the Republican Jewish Coalition. And unsurprisingly, several of them had terrorism on the brain.

Read: What We Still Don't Know About the Mass Shooting in San Bernardino

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who Wednesday tweeted his prayers and thoughts for the victims and families affected by the senseless tragedy, was feeling much tougher this morning. "This is yet another manifestation of terrorism, radical Islamic terrorism here at home," he told the RJC audience, according to Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel. This "horrific murder underscores that we are at a time of war, whether or not the current administration realizes it," he continued.

Appearing on stage later in the day, Donald Trump told the same group that President Obama's refusal to use the term "radical Islamic terrorism" was proof "there is something going on with him that we don't know about." Through a series of retweets, Trump indicated that when events like the one that occurred inSan Bernardino happen, he sees a bump in the polls.

Mike Huckabee also got in on the action, accusing the president of moving with "lightning speed" to push for additional gun control measures in the wake of Wednesday's shooting, while ignoring the threat of "radical Islamic terrorism."

On Thursday, Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, and some kind of human sponge designed to absorb all of the world's hatred, announced at an event held by Forbes that he thinks he should have raised the price of Daraprim higher. Daraprim is, of course, a $13.50 pill whose cost he raised to $750 back in September, even though it's a necessary medicine for AIDS and cancer patients.

He hasn't said how much higher, but presumably the cost he has in mind is "everything you hold dear," and then after he takes you for all you're worth, he'll do this:

Just kidding. Kind of.

He's still going around making a point about capitalism, and claiming that insurance companies absorb the cost, not the patients themselves. Here's the exact quote he gave after someone at a Q&A on Thursday asked him if he would have done anything differently earlier this year:

I probably would have raised the price higher is probably what I would have done. I think healthcare prices are inelastic. I could have raised it higher, and made more profits for our shareholders, which is my primary duty.

It's yet another unabashedly articulated version of a familiar kind of greed-is-good business logic: the goal of every CEO is to funnel as much money as humanly possible into the pockets of your shareholders, provided you don't run afoul of the law. According to Shkreli, that's what "we're all taught in MBA class."

"Try to be a CEO yourself. See how it goes," he said. The people with the right stuff to make it in his line of work—he claimed—are "people that are willing to make these hard choices, grow earnings for their shareholders, and again, try to do the right thing with those prices." Otherwise, he said, "try to maximize profits and not get kicked out of a company and let me know how that goes for you."

Last month, when he announced he wasn't lowering the price, his company's press release emphasized that while insurance companies would still take the hit, those paying out of pocket would be spared from financial ruin if they jumped through the right hoops to get a discount. He also pointed out on Thursday, "we did lower the price for hospital customers," along with releasing a smaller bottle of Daraprim. "We talked to our customers and that's what they want," he said.

But it appears that uninsured people making over $60,000 would still have to pay the full $750 a pill.

And it also looks like insurance companies' absorption of the astronomical cost of Daraprim doesn't necessarily mean insured consumers emerge unscathed. In July, when Insurance companies announced that for the year 2016, costs would need to rise by an average of 25 percent, they cited rising drug costs as a major cause.

Eye doctor and health business pundit Sreedhar Potarazu wrote back in August that, "the cost increases affect employers and insurers, who are transferring some of these costs to consumers, requiring them to pay a larger share through their monthly premiums and rising copays."

According to Potarazu this creates a situation in which patients "despite having health insurance and even government assistance to pay for it, are increasingly unable to pay for the care they need."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

This story appears in the December issue of VICE magazine.

1. NEW YORK CITY: Whiz Kids

Kids say the darnedest things. They also say some of the most surprisingly insightful and twisted things if you ask them the right questions. Whiz Kidz is Motherboard's new kids show for adults, asking tykes seven to ten years old questions about future-facing topics such as cyborgs, space travel, the internet, and cell phone etiquette. Filmed in our Brooklyn studio against a green screen, we let the squirts run their imaginations wild so that we grownups can envisage the future through their wonderful and sometimes dystopian little eyes. According to one of our whiz kidz, "Earth in fifty years will be made of red oceans, the houses will be floating on clouds, and we'll be flying around on jetpacks to get to the grocery store."
Tune in later this month on Motherboard.

2. ESTONIA: Estonia Boots Up

Since Russia's involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, nearby Baltic states have been on high alert for fear that they, too, will be invaded. Estonia, the smallest country in the region, spent $147 million on military equipment last year—the most in the country's history. The nation also has a growing militia, known as the Estonian Defense League, made up of 16,000 volunteers. Membership in the militia has risen by 10 percent since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. There's a growing concern in Estonia that Russia will breach their borders to the east. Recently, VICE News reporter Jake Hanrahan went on a combat-training exercise with 800 members of the Estonian Defense League to find out how they're preparing for a possible confrontation with Russia.
See the latest installment of The Russians Are Coming on VICE News.

3. ISTANBUL: Valley of the Islamic Dolls

Plumped lips and boob jobs aren't exactly synonymous with Islam, but in the weird world of cult leader Adnan Oktar, they're a major facet of his interpretation of the Qur'an. Oktar started his ministry during Turkey's hyper-secular 1970s, when he began preaching creationism on university campuses. But his cult gained lasting notoriety for its obsession with beauty, or at least blond hair and fake tits. Today, his female followers are called his "kittens": a cadre of wealthy and Botoxed Istanbul socialites. Together, they are presenting what they call the new face of Islam on their TV network. But despite their outward-facing media, the cult remains secretive, and rumors of sex scandals are always in the foreground. Broadly takes a closer look at Oktar's airbrushed world.
Check out the doc on Broadly

4. KRAKOW: Techno Rave Cave

This October, the Unsound music festival hosted a slew of performances in offbeat venues across Krakow—an abandoned tobacco factory, an old Communist Party hotel—but the highlight was a mysterious concert held in the Wieliczka Salt Mine. The mine—700 years old, 185 miles long, and nearly 1,100 feet deep—is one of Poland's most iconic monuments, attracting more than a million tourists a year. But up until now, it's never hosted a mosh pit of ravers. Legends from the techno underground went literally underground to transform the site into an experimental performance spectacle. THUMP correspondents put on their hard hats to explore Wieliczka with former miners and then watched the historic space morph into an 800-person dance party.
Check it out next month on THUMP.

5. LAS VEGAS: Blue Wall of Silence

Street Survival is a two-day police seminar run by one of the largest security-training companies in the country, Calibre Press. Every year, the lecture series teaches 20,000 officers how to survive gunfights, use their weapons, and handle suicidal subjects. With no standard training model for police academies across the country, Street Survival has filled a void for decades. But the warrior mentality it espouses has come under scrutiny as police brutality and excessive force have become matters of national concern. Until recently, Calibre Press kept the public and media away from the seminars, but we managed to gain unprecedented access. In this episode of VICE Reports, Thomas Morton looks behind the blue wall of silence, attending a Street Survival seminar in Las Vegas.
Watch the doc on VICE.

All photos courtesy of Ducky Doolittle

When Ducky Doolittle opens a package, she unloads the contents and asks herself: How many ways can I fuck this thing? It's a question she has to answer pretty regularly, as the main buyer for Komar, a wholesale sex toy distributor. She's trying to calculate what she calls "orgasms per dollar"—the concept that the more ways one can use a sex toy, the more value it has.

"So if it's a sex toy that's made for the G-spot but it's also a great clitoral vibrator, it has higher value, because there are a couple ways to use it," she tells me. "That's one testing ground."

Doolittle has tested countless sex toys since she joined the team at Komar a little over a year ago. She's responsible for selecting the toys the retailer will stock—everything from colorful vibrators to flavored lubricants—which means she essentially gets paid to masturbate.

Doolittle's been working in the sex industry for 26 years, starting as a clerk in a sex shop and then as a peepshow girl and burlesque performer. Later, she went into sex education and built a reputation as one of the most trusted sex educators in the country. Carol Queen, a sex-positive sex educator, called her "one of the most thought-provoking and interesting sex teachers out there," and feminist writer Susie Bright said she was "one of the most insightful and original sex educators and artists I've ever met." Doolittle went on to found the Academy of Sex Education, organize sex education workshops at places like Babeland and the Museum of Sex, and in 2006, wrote the book Sex with the Lights On: 200 Illuminating Sex Questions Answered. Basically, she's your go-to girl for anything sex-related.

"I never planned to be in business this long but, I love it and I'm good at it. Those things together just keep dropping opportunities in my lap," she says.

Working for Komar was an "unexpected" opportunity, Doolittle says, but one that she accepted happily. The company has been in the sex-related product distribution business for over 50 years. In the 1960s, under then-owner Samuel Boltansky, Komar fought obscenity laws, so books like Lady Chatterley's Lover and The Story of O could be distributed and sold in the United States. The company also worked to distribute adult magazines, and later, porn on VHS and DVD. For the past decade—in part, due to the proliferation of porn online—Komar has shifted to focus on selling and distributing sex toys.

"I'm not here to tell people what they can fuck. I'm here to help instigate their desire."
—Ducky Doolittle

Doolittle normally starts her day by opening the new boxes of sex toys that have been sent to her from manufacturers all over the world. Among the shipments she's received recently are silicone dildos in colors normally found in a crayon box; cock rings and ball straps in discreet black packaging; and miniature masturbators, or "pocket pussies," some of which look like naked women without heads.

Ultimately, it's up to Doolittle to decide what Komar sells—which means a lot of decision making about a product's "fuckability."

"You wanna have sex with that thing? I'll get it for you," she tells me. "All day, all night."

Fuckability, of course, means different things to different customers, and Doolittle has to consider the many different needs and tastes of people buying the products she selects. Some people want wellness-oriented products; others want luxe, high-grade, or chemical-free toys; others want what she calls "a mythical experience," something to make them feel dirty. To cater to all kinds of customers, she ends up choosing a variety of materials—sleek silicone vibrators with high-powered motors, alongside the cartoonish, plastic blowup dolls. "I'm not here to tell people what they can fuck," she says. "I'm here to help instigate their desire."

That's not to say she isn't selective. "I don't really have any loyalty to anything other than giving users orgasms, and that's really confusing to some manufacturers," she explains. "They just want me to pick up everything in every color. And I'm like, 'I don't care about color, I care about orgasms!'"

For example, she only buys anal toys in black because of "residual poo," as she puts it. "If people are afraid of residual poo and they're sold a black toy, they have more confidence. They use it more often," she says. "If you sell them a pink or a purple or a light flesh color, they'll be a little bit more shy about using it."

Related: How to Design Sex Toys for People with Disabilities

Doolittle's ultimate goal is to have every toy in "high rotation," meaning in regular use by the consumers in their homes (or elsewhere, for those who like to use sex toys on the go). She tells me excitedly about a product that makes your secretions taste sweet, and a new lubricant called Unicorn Spit that's made to taste like donuts—things she can envision people using regularly.

She aims to test everything she selects, but it's not always possible, mostly because it's a time-consuming process for her. "I don't think you have a fair understanding of what a toy is until you've used it at least five times," she says.

When she can't test a product herself, she focuses on measures like the aforementioned "orgasms per dollar," as well as the smell, touch, and even taste of the product. Smell, she says, can help her understand what chemicals are being used to make the product; taste helps her understand the way the product will interact with a person's mucous membranes, which are also present, of course, "in the pussy or ass."

A typical day for Doolittle will also include a trip to a sex toy warehouse in northern Baltimore: "100,000 square feet of fuckables," is how she describes it. "It's all so neatly put away that the warehouse looks inconspicuous." On a recent trip to the warehouse, Doolittle sent me a photo of herself wearing a black T-shirt from a sex toy company called CalExotics and what seem like infinite shelves of cardboard boxes filled with sex toys behind her.

Visiting the warehouse helps her to physically see what's being sent out to stores. She likes to look in each bin and cart to see what's selling well, alongside analytics on the computer, to inform her buying decisions. When the semis pull in, she takes pictures for blogs and tweets to generate hype.

Between shopping for products and testing them herself, Doolittle spends a few days a week doing store visits and staff trainings or going to trade shows around the country (the Sexual Health Expo and the Adult Novelty Manufacturers Expo, to name a few). For a store visit, she'll set up an appointment with the owner of a particular store selling Komar products and consult with them about how the products have been selling: What could they be doing to make the store better? What's working? What's not working? She also likes to understand the price points in the store, the economy of the area where it's located, and the average amount a customer spends per visit, so she can better relate to the buying market she's serving.

On Motherboard: Why Are Sex Toys for Men So Terrible?

Part of what makes a sex shop run smoothly is the knowledge of the staff, which is why Doolittle also conducts staff trainings—both online and in-person—for Komar distributors. She'll go to a store, talk to the manager, find out where the staff's struggles are, and design a training to strengthen those areas.

"There is still a stigma overall working in a sex shop," she explains. "So anybody who works in a sex shop is already strong. People crack jokes, like, 'Oh, you sell vibrating doodads,' but in reality, a great worker has the potential to change somebody's relationship with their body, to change somebody's relationship with their partner, to help them find peace."

Doolittle trains staffers to interact with what she calls "the blur"—when people walk into a sex shop and they're so overwhelmed by everything they don't know what to look for or at first. She also teaches them how to help customers who are visibly lost but won't (or don't know how to) ask for help. It's essential for employees to know how to explain the differences between toys, so customers can make the right decisions for their bodies, how to care for the products they buy, and more.

"A good sex shop can be a community center, a place where you can go get information you can't get from your doctor or from your lover, and I think that's really profound shit," she says.

Sex toys, Doolittle says, were historically made for "planned obsolescence"—to be used once or twice and thrown away—so quality was never a top priority. People were so ashamed of using them in the first place they wouldn't complain when they fell apart. Today, though, sex toys are a multi-billion dollar industry, sold on Amazon and even recommended by Oprah, and quality matters in a big way. At Komar, Doolittle says she's seen "an old boys' locker room company and turn it into something modern." "You sell sex toys by the pallet," she adds, "it's just so much fun."

Some might tire of the constant parade of sex toys, but Doolittle never has. "I'm shocked every day," she says. "I think part of the thing is that I will always be a girl from Minnesota, I will always be shy." She tells me about the website of one particular sex toy company that "is so pornographic that I blush just thinking about it!" It's still titillating for her, somehow.

"The rubber butts come in and I lose my mind every time. I just get so excited by the idea and we can't keep them in stock," she says. "They're, like, rubber butts! Life is so good!"

Follow Elyssa Goodman on Twitter.

This story originally appeared on The Trace.

As jihadist terrorists continue to set their sights on Western targets, one thing has become abundantly clear: Firearms have become their weapons of choice. The assault on the Frankfurt Airport, the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, the Copenhagen shooting spree, the Sydney café standoff, the Charlie Hebdo shooting, and most recently, the Paris attacks—all were carried out by assailants armed with guns.

It's a pattern that extends to the United States. As part of an ongoing research project that draws upon open-source materials and information from news reports, I have been monitoring and analyzing incidents of domestic terrorism since 9/11. To compile my list, I use the definition of terrorism set down by federal law, which states that a politically-motivated act of violence is considered terrorism if it is "intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping."

Drawing from that larger list, I count 17 jihadist terrorist attacks—acts of violence explicitly or implicitly inspired by a warped reading of Islam, or in objection to American policies toward Muslims—on the American homeland during the past 14 years. The attackers in these incidents have employed incendiary devices, cutting instruments, vehicles, improvised explosive devises, and, most frequently, firearms. (The list does not include Wednesday's massacre in San Bernardino, California, which authorities are investigating as a possible terrorism case.)

When the fatal and non-fatal incidents are sorted into their own columns, another pattern emerges: All six deadly jihadist attacks on American soil involved firearms. Overall, these attacks have killed 28 people since 9/11, and 25 of those victims were shot to death. The deployment of IEDs along the route of the Boston Marathon accounts for the remaining three fatalities—the only one of the five attacks that involved a bomb that proved deadly. Attacks involving a vehicle, a cutting instrument, or an incendiary device failed to kill anyone. Out of the eight that involved a firearm, 75 percent resulted in fatalities.

There's an explanation for that breakdown: Most weapons aren't consistently lethal. Even the bomb-making capabilities of most current terrorists aren't guaranteed to produce devices that kill numerous victims, thanks to the federal clamp down on precursor explosive chemicals and materials. As we saw in Boston—where the attackers fashioned a pressure cooker into a bomb—the lethality of explosives is now more contained, compared to the damage bombs caused prior to and including the 1994 Oklahoma City attack.

Guns are the exception. They are readily available, affordable, and can kill in scores. In four of the six deadly incidents of jihadist terrorism since 9/11, the attackers bought their firearms legally. In the other two cases, one perpetrator borrowed the firearm from a close friend and the other stole it from his mother.

Raising concerns that ISIS-inspired terrorists might attempt a Paris-style swarm attack here in the United States, Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York is calling for a tightening of federal gun laws. "First and foremost, our goal has to be to avoid any terrorists—lone wolves or otherwise—from getting a weapon," he said, "rather than making sure we shoot them after they've gotten their hands on one." One measure that has received renewed attention is a bipartisan bill, sponsored by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and Republican Representative Peter King of New York, which would bar someone on the terrorism watch-list from being able to purchase a firearm. Feinstein has been pitching the legislation as a "no brainer." In her view, "If you're too dangerous to board a plane, you're too dangerous to buy a gun."

It's important to note that all this focus on Islamic extremists ignores domestic terrorists driven by other motives. In fact, right-wing domestic terrorists armed with guns, particularly Christian fundamentalists and white supremacists, have committed a slight majority of the lethal terror attacks taking place in the U.S. since 9/11, claiming 29 lives—a death toll that could climb to 32 if authorities confirm that last Friday's attack inside a Planned Parenthood center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, was politically-motivated.

When all lethal domestic attacks since 2002—regardless of motive—are tallied up, the numbers show that all but one involved guns. In total, firearms claimed 95 percent of the lives lost to terrorism in America over the same period. On the issue of deadly domestic terror in America, religion and skin color are not common denominators. Guns are.

Louis Klarevas, the author of the forthcoming book Rampage Nation: Securing America from Mass Shootings, teaches counter-terrorism in the department of global affairs at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Follow him on Twitter.

Follow The Trace on Twitter too.

SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array. Photo courtesy of Seth Shostak/SETI Institute

In 1960, renowned astronomer Frank Drake spent 150 hours holed up in the Green Bank Observatory, using a giant radio telescope to look for aliens. The experiment, known as Project Ozma, focused on two nearby stars—Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani—which Drake had selected for observation. But at the end of the project, he had little to show for his efforts: He hadn't found any signs of intelligent life.

Though he didn't know it at the time, Drake's experiment had paved the way for the modern search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, in shorthand. Drake's pioneering use of radio waves would change the way scientists scanned the cosmos for signs of life, meaning his expensive and embarrassing failure had actually revolutionized the search for aliens, and would inspire SETI programs at institutions like Harvard, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.

But in 1961, Drake couldn't have known any of this. So he called an informal conference of 12 men—among them, a handful of Nobel laureates and a young Carl Sagan—to come to Green Bank Observatory and decide if it were financially and scientifically justifiable to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Not only did the group decide that SETI was a worthwhile venture, but they began working on concrete research methods. One of these methods was the Drake equation, a formula meant to quantify the number of extraterrestrial civilizations that could be expected to be found in the Milky Way. Based on his formula, Drake would peg this number at 10,000; Sagan, in his unflagging optimism, estimated it was closer to a million.

On Motherboard: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life Is Like Hunting for Pizza in a Dorm

In the years after the Green Bank conference, the search for life beyond Earth remained mostly a fringe enterprise, and SETI was little more than an umbrella term for a loosely-affiliated sect of space scientists prowling the cosmos for extraterrestrial life. But in 1971, NASA became interested in SETI after developing Project Cyclops, which would use 1,000 100-meter telescopes to search for radio signals from neighboring stars.

Project Cyclops was ultimately scrapped—in part due to its astronomical price tag of $10 billion—but it jumpstarted the space agency's interest in SETI research, building on those early experiments from Drake. By 1976, NASA's Ames Research Center and JPL both had their own fledgling SETI programs. Within a decade, a number of independent SETI initiatives had sprung up up, including Sagan's Planetary Society, which funded small JPL and Harvard SETI initiatives; the "Serendip" program at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Ohio's "Big Ear" program; a number of initiatives in the Soviet Union; and of course, the SETI Institute, which was founded in 1984.

Watch: When Will Humans Live on Mars?

Still, not everyone thought scientists should spend time—and precious research money—staring into the sky to look for aliens. In 1978, US Senator William Proxmire called NASA's SETI program a waste of taxpayer money and succeeded in killing the program's budget in 1981. (He agreed to reinstate the funding in 1983, after a chat with Sagan). When NASA started building hardware for its SETI program in 1988, Congress threw a fit over who was going to pay for it, and defunded the program the following year.

In 1993, after NASA had secured $11.5 million for its newly-minted High Resolution Microwave Survey, US Senator Richard Bryan submitted a last-minute amendment to kill the program once and for all, noting that "this will hopefully be the end of Martian hunting season at the taxpayer's expense." The Senate ultimately approved Bryan's measure and by the time the dust settled, NASA's SETI program was dead.

"Bryan saw SETI as a target that he could use to show his constituents that he was trying to save them money that he considered being wasted by the government," said Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer and director of the SETI Institute. "SETI was easy for him to attack because there weren't thousands of jobs involved. It was a topic he could easily make fun of."

But while NASA's program was dead, SETI researchers were determined to continue their alien hunting. With the help of investors in Silicon Valley, the SETI Institute—which had been contracting with NASA for a number of years—raised $7.5 million to continue the targeted search that NASA had started the year prior. The renewed search was named Project Phoenix, and it logged 100 observation days at Arecibo, a radio telescope in Puerto Rico, as well as 2,600-plus hours at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia.

"Project Phoenix was rising from the ashes of NASA's SETI program," Shostak told me. "Some of had been at NASA. They joined the Institute when all the SETI employees at NASA had to stop working on SETI. If they joined the Institute, then maybe they could continue on their project—and some of them did that."

Related: So, How's the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Going?

Since then, the Institute has been the preeminent source of SETI initiatives, which are funded exclusively through private donations. The organization has overseen over 100 projects since its inception, including building its own SETI-dedicated array of telescopes, known as the Allen Telescope Array. It's the only institution of its kind, but Shostak is cautious about calling it the largest—there are only five people at the Institute who actively search for intelligent life.

"Ninety-six percent of the scientists are doing investigations into life that is not-so intelligent," said Shostak. "Think bacteria under the sands of Mars, or maybe under the icy skins of Europa. Most of the effort here is actually astrobiology."

According to Shostak, the emphasis on astrobiology is a reflection of the institute's funding problems. While NASA still provides a significant number of grants for research into astrobiology, it hasn't provided funding specifically for the search for intelligent life since the 90s. Last July, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner announced that he would donate $100 million to boost the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, but according to Shostak, it isn't likely to benefit the Institute directly.

Milner has said that a portion of the $100 million will be saved for "active SETI," which involves intentionally sending messages into the cosmos. This type of research is controversial for two reasons: First, some people are wary that the communications might give away Earth's location to a potentially hostile alien race, in effect inviting the destroyers of human civilization to our doorstep. Others object because there's no consensus on just what the messages should say—and only a select few get to decide what is communicated on Earth's behalf.

"There are people out there who think active SETI is dangerous, but I think it is a phony argument," said Shostak. Still, he added, "it's a controversial subject, so at the moment the SETI institute is not doing active SETI."

Despite the fact that the SETI Institute has yet to receive a "hello" from ET and can't actively send out interstellar messages itself, Shostak and his colleagues believe that their efforts will ultimately pay off.

"You have to look at SETI as exploration because that's what it is," Shostak said. "You could say it's a stupid waste of my money when we've got people starving in the streets, that's the nature of all research. It's all driven by curiosity. That sounds frivolous, but it's not. It's very easy to show that societies which don't have that curiosity disappear rather quickly—so the long term benefits are high. You never know what it's going to lead to."

Follow Daniel Oberhaus on Twitter.

On today's episode of Daily VICE, we talk Mongolian metal band Tengger Cavalry, visit an island disappearing beneath rising sea levels, and check out the real-life X-Files.

Media gathered near the scene of the shootings.(Photo by Brooke Workneh/VICE News)

Everything you need to know in the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

• FBI Treating San Bernardino as Possible Terrorist Act
  Federal investigators are treating the mass shooting which left 14 dead in San Bernardino as a potential act of terrorism. They are examining the two suspects' stockpile of ammunition, their recent Middle East travel and evidence one of them was in touch with other extremists. —The New York Times

• Obamacare Under Threat
  After five years of failed attempts, the Senate has passed a bill to repeal key parts of the Affordable Care Act. The symbolic bill is expected to pass at House of Representatives too, but President Obama has vowed to ultimately veto the measure. —CNN

• Chicago to Release Another Shooting Video
  Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said video showing another young man being fatally shot by a Chicago police officer will be released next week. Ronald Johnson, 25, was killed by an officer in October last year, and an attorney for his family says he was running away when he was shot. —USA Today

• All Combat Roles Open to Women
  All combat roles in the US military will now be open to women, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter has announced. This means women will be eligible to join Navy Seals, Army Special Forces and the Green Berets for the first time. —VICE News

International News

• Syrian Peace Talks to Begin in Saudi
  Saudi Arabia will host talks for various Syrian opposition groups and rebel factions next week. The aim is to come up with a unified front ahead of peace talks with Syrian government representatives, set to start in January. —AP

• Japan Launches Spy Unit
  A new Japanese Foreign Ministry group will start collecting information on militant groups such as Islamic State, prompted by last month's attacks on Paris. The intelligence gatherers will work in Japanese embassies around the world. —Reuters

• Germany Votes For Military Action
  Germany's parliament has voted in favour of providing military support to the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State militants in Syria. Reconnaissance aircraft, a naval frigate and 1,200 soldiers will be sent to the region. —BBC News

• Egyptian Restaurant Firebombed
  Sixteen people have been killed in Cairo, after molotov cocktails were thrown into a restaurant. Egypt's interior ministry said it appeared to have followed a row between workers and others at the venue, which also housed a nightclub. —Al Jazeera
  

Scott Weiland. Photo via Wikimedia

Everything Else

• Jon Stewart Lobbies For 9/11 Firefighters
  Stewart took a group of 9/11 responders to the Capitol building, tracked down Senator Rob Portman, and persuaded him to back a bill making a health program for them permanent. —The Huffington Post

• Singer Scott Weiland Found Dead
  The former Stone Temple Pilots frontman has died at the age of 48. Weiland's manager said he "passed away in his sleep while on a tour stop". —Los Angeles Times

• Mount Etna Erupts
  The volcano on the Italian island of Sicily has erupted for the first time in two years, closing the nearest airport. The tallest volcano in Europe, it has been active for an estimated 2.5 million years. —The Guardian

• People Who Share Inspirational Quotes are Dumb
  Canadian researchers say there is a link between low intelligence and being impressed by bullshit, asinine, seemingly profound quotes on Facebook. - VICE

Done with reading today? Watch our new video 'Ali Boulala Was the Original Baker Boy'

Photos courtesy of Kathleen Marden

Last week, NASA issued a clarification that a bright light in an image tweeted by one of its astronauts was, in fact, from the International Space Station, and not from a UFO. Even though there's never been any scientific evidence that UFOs exist, it's not exactly surprising: A higher percentage of Americans believe that UFOs exist than those who believe in climate change, evolution, or that the earth is 4.5 billion years old.

One of the best-known organizations claiming to scientifically study UFO's is the "Mutual UFO Network," or MUFON. Much of their work involves consulting with "experiencers"—people who claim to have been abducted or otherwise come in contact with extraterrestrial beings. It's a little bit hard to accept that the process has any scientific validity, given that the "experiencer questionnaire" reads a bit like an oncologist diagnosing a hypochondriac by asking them if they have cancer. Even still, they are the go-to for those who believe to have had alien encounters.

MUFON's director of experiencer research is Kathleen Marden—the niece of Betty and Barney Hill, two of the most well-known alleged UFO abductees from the 1960s. I talked to Marden about her methodology, the support services she provides for "experiencers," and whether media portrayals of aliens do more harm than good.

VICE: Tell me a little about what you do with MUFON.
Kathleen Marden: I'm MUFON's director of experiencer research. What we ask experiencers to do before they file a report with MUFON is to go to our website and take the experiencer questionnaire. It's a commonalities questionnaire to determine what they have in common with experiencers who participated in the Martin Stoner Commonalities Research Project in 2012. Once they do that, their score will go to me, along with their questionnaire, and I will assign a member of the team to get in touch with them.

Then what happens?
We talk to individuals to help them determine what they want to do: Do they want a formal investigation of their case with someone from MUFON? Do they have evidence? Are they not sure what's going on? Do they want some pointers on what to look for and how to collect the evidence? Do they have unpleasant memories about what has happened to them? Are they looking for a support group? We will attempt to find a support group for them—there are so few that it's really difficult, but there are some online support groups. Or are they looking for a therapist or a hypnotist? Then we will tell them where to look for a list where they might be able to get some information about those things. Professionals who specialize in this stuff are not very prevalent so it's difficult, but we do the best we can to help experiencers define what they want.

Have you encountered people who've tried to deceive you about their alien encounters?
Absolutely. A very small percentage of experiencers who request an investigation and file a report have done so in order to attempt to pull off a deception. I have caught a couple of them in cases that I have investigated. These people tend to either have a mental illness or they tend to be on the margins of society and believe that by pulling off a deception, they're going to bring publicity to themselves and possibly money. That's not going to happen because most experiencers, if they bring publicity to themselves, it's of a negative type. They're criticized by the public and by skeptics, and nobody makes a lot of money doing this.

Watch: On the Hunt for Aliens in the Valley of the UFOs

Do you worry that somebody might not share those commonalities but still be worthy of investigation? Are there other benefits to filling out the questionnaire?
That happens. My team is non-prejudicial. There are individuals who have had recent experiences for the first time, and they won't have all of the characteristics that long-term experiencers have. So it's kind of open-ended. What it does is it can start a conversation, and the goal is to help people because these events can be traumatic and people don't know where to turn.

Because most people don't believe them?
They might have tried to speak to their families, and the families say, "Well... what were you drinking?" You know, I had a case where a medical doctor had confided in a friend hypnotized them separately and he reinstated amnesia at the end of each session so they didn't know what the other one stated. I have those tapes of their separate hypnosis sessions—I transcribed them and lined up their separate statements. What I discovered is that Betty and Barney describe where these ETs were standing, how they moved, what they did. That information was not in Betty's dreams—and it was also in conflict with some of the information in Betty's dreams—which lead me to believe this was a real event, and not just Betty reliving dreams under hypnosis and Barney knowing a little bit about her dreams and building on his own story based upon that. All of their testimony is in agreement; there is no conflict in their separate testimony.

What would you say to someone who accused them of being coached to tell this story?
Well, that's ridiculous! There was no other abduction experience before Betty and Barney's! We weren't aware of any of this. How could anyone possibly coach them? And Betty and Barney were upstanding credible members of the community. The psychological evaluations that they underwent showed that they were normal functioning people—except for Barney's distress over this experience. They were highly intelligent. They were committed to the truth. These were church-going people. They were committed to improving the conditions for their community, and for the people of their state and the nation.

Some people have suggested that those who claim to have had contact with extraterrestrials are actually experiencing vivid dreams, or sleep paralysis. How do you respond to those sorts of explanations?
All of those things are something that could occur, and that is something that we always look at. We always attempt to explain these away with prosaic explanations first. But we, as unbiased investigators, must also look for evidence. We have to look for individual testimony, eyewitness testimony, circumstantial evidence, physical evidence such as fluorescence in certain patterns on the bodies of experiencers, certain markings that we find on the bodies of experiencers—even to the point of installing surveillance cameras, motion-activated infrared in the homes of experiencers and outside those homes, and looking at the evidence.

What we find is that the outside camera might pick up a bright light outside the home. If this is a bedroom abduction, you might see the husband and wife sitting up in bed, and the next thing you know, the camera shuts down for two hours, and then you see the individuals again—but they're in bed in a different position. It's that sort of thing: the cameras always shut down.

A camera shutting down for two hours sounds more like an absence of evidence.
No. It's not an absence of evidence. It's evidence that something unusual has occurred. It's evidence of an anomaly. And when you get evidence of that anomaly over and over again, then it is significant. And what we need in all of this is not one smoking gun, one piece of evidence that is going to be irrefutable, but the preponderance of evidence, the weight of the different types of evidence that is around this constellation of evidence that we require in cases of alien abduction, for example.

Do you think that portrayals of extraterrestrials in popular media are conducive or harmful to people coming forward?
It depends on what you see. For example, MUFON's Hangar 1: The UFO Files show on the History Channel has caused many people to come forward. We've received far more reports than we did before Hangar 1 was on. But then, there are some science fiction shows that are just very, very frightening and, oh boy, it is not good for this field—and I don't think that it's good for the general population either. That kind of portrayal, in my opinion, makes people more frightened, and that's certainly something that shouldn't be happening. We should be looking at this more scientifically, more as investigators, and I am not in favor of any of the science fiction that comes out on this.

Follow Simon Davis on Twitter.

Destruction in a northern Syrian town. Photos courtesy of GOAL

This week, Britain joined the coalition of countries dropping bombs on Syria in an effort to disrupt the Islamic State's operations, though some experts think airstrikes alone won't have much of an effect. Meanwhile, many Syrians feel their voices are often ignored as global powers play out an extended proxy war on their country.

The Turkish town of Antakya has become an ad-hoc refuge for Syrians fleeing the escalating conflict in their country. Thousands of people escaping airstrikes near the Turkey/Syria border live in dilapidated buildings scattered around the city without food, heating, or water. I asked five young Syrians there—some of whom risked their lives crossing the border between the two countries—how they felt about foreign involvement in a war that has killed over 300,000 Syrians and displaced millions. Many didn't want to give me their full names or have their faces in pictures as they cross the border regularly and fear for their families.

Ayham

Ayham from Damascus
If you are a pilot and you are carrying out an airstrikes you don't know who you are killing, you don't know who is underneath you. Can they be certain there are no women, children, or normal people under them? Some terrorists will die but thousands of women and children will be killed. They are being killed. I don't want to see any more killing. I don't want to see blood. I don't want people to die because of airstrikes or weapons of bombs. Death is everywhere in Syria. I just want this war to end.

If I give you a flower what are you going to do with it? If I give you a weapon what will you do with it? Weapons are designed to kill, airstrikes are not designed to make peace they are designed to kill. They need to focus on stopping this war, without using more weapons. The international community needs to stop supporting one group over another this will not stop the war.

If there's killing in Europe or the US the whole world will shine a spotlight on it. In Syria, we have been suffering for five years but no one is shines a spotlight on all those people who died. No one is asking us our opinions and feelings, no one says, "Why are these people being killed?" "How many people have been killed?" or, "How can we stop this war?"

In one night they used a chemical weapon inside Syria and on that night 1,800 people were killed at the same time. That was very close to my home in Damascus. The social media community focused on it for half a day and that was it. People need to hear the voices of Syrians.

Aram

Aram from Damascus
I suppose in a way, I support the British army and the French army mainly because of the way Europe has helped refugees, including my family, but airstrikes are useless if we don't have troops on the ground.

I don't trust the Russian government—they're supporting the regime and we know Assad must go. He has committed so many crimes against his own people and the suffering of Syria is a direct result of his power. Hundreds of thousands of people in my country are dead. People who do not support terrorism are being killed by airstrikes everyday. All these countries have another agenda in Syria.

This week ISIS took over two villages in north Aleppo because of Russia airstrikes. So two places that were not under ISIS control are now in the Islamic State. How is this fighting terrorism? I want Europe to help us but they need to put in ground troops, otherwise it's not going to work.

Amer from Damascus
Everyone is bombing us to suit their own interests, This is a new cold war between global superpowers with Syria as the playing field. Airstrikes are not going to destroy terrorism. We need ground troops to finish the war.

Airstrikes can act as a support, but you have to pull terrorism out from its roots, so we need to stop the people funding it. I think the world should support Syrian moderates exclusively by providing them with money and weapons. I don't trust foreign powers inside Syria and I think the strategic location of Syria in the Mediterranean created this war. Everyone wants to export gas through Syria and Russia wants to prevent that in order to preserve its own interests. We all know about what happened in Afghanistan and how foreign interests supported extremists there.

Syrian moderates are the only people I trust. I wish British airstrikes could distinguish between innocent people and terrorists but unfortunately they can't and killing innocent people is not going to lead to peace in my country—it's going to make it worse. I think the British government should focus its attention on the people who give money to terrorists, I think they know who they are and this is something they can do that would make a big difference.

Related: Watch Photographer and videographer Robert King document the war in Syria

Mustafa from Homs
Over 75 percent of my city is destroyed. My home was destroyed by a bomb. I saw pictures on social media and my home is now gone. Imagine your home, all your memories, your childhood wiped out by bombs. Syria now is just numbers, numbers of deaths, numbers of weapons and numbers of bombers, we just keep counting. Now we're at hundreds of thousands but they are people, these are lives. The whole situation is so complicated and no one with a sane mind can predict what's going to happen or what are the right moves to make. We are Syrians and we don't know what's going on. If Syrians themselves don't know, how can others?

Our lives are just pawns in a chess game. We are good people, we don't want more bombs and more weapons in our country, we don't want to join the army. Right now if I say to someone, "My home was destroyed" they'll reply, "OK it's the same for me." This is no life for us.

Mohammed

Mohammed from Idlib
England has now entered the war with airstrikes but this won't help to end the war. I think it will make things worse. More people will die and I think there's going to be even more migration from moderate Syrians to Europe and Turkey.

Six months ago I was with my brother and we saw a black point in the sky, suddenly it became bigger and bigger it was coming for us so we ran into our home and hid underground. It was a barrel bomb. Most of the families in Idlib and nearby villages have moved out, they are sleeping in tents because they are frightened of bombs.

We don't know who is bombing us, usually when we see a group of planes we think it's Russian because the others fly alone, but we don't know. These airstrikes will not help to stop terrorism in Syria, the armed groups have places where they can hide underground. Innocent people will be killed.

Follow Norma on Twitter.

Norma Costello is with GOAL, a Dublin-based international aid agency, which is delivering aid to over 1 million people inside Syria.

In this documentary, VICE meets up with Joe Nickell, a longtime paranormal investigator who's been called the real-life Agent Scully. We travel with him to Roswell, New Mexico, on the anniversary of the famous 1947 UFO crash to talk to believers, skeptics, and UFO witnesses alike to see if the truth is really out there.

Read more on the real X-Files:

We Talked to a Woman Who Helps People Deal with Being Abducted by Aliens
A Brief History of Scientists Searching for Extraterrestrial Life

Photo via Flickr user jar

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

It's an unseasonably warm, sunny November day, and Greg Diatchenko is sitting in the visiting room of the Boston Pre-Release Center, four weeks from a moment that was never supposed to happen. On December 7, 34 years after he was sentenced to life without parole for a murder he committed at 17, Diatchenko's mother will pick him up in her car and drive him home.

For more than three decades, he tried not to think about his death in prison, a certainty that would eventually arrive. He stayed focused on his job at the prison's plumbing shop, on his schoolwork for the degree he earned from Boston University, on the Buddhist sangha and other groups he became involved with behind the walls. He got older. Then the Supreme Court handed down Miller v. Alabama in 2012, a ruling that laid the groundwork for his own case, Diatchenko v. District Attorney, which in 2013 outlawed juvenile life without parole in Massachusetts. Then there was the parole hearing he was suddenly eligible for; the court rulings were so new, no one knew what to expect. And then, grace—"parole is granted after 12 months in lower security...during which time Gregory Diatchenko must maintain good conduct and comply with all DOC expectations for programs, activities, and employment."

He'll be on parole for the remainder of his sentence—which, in Greg's case, is the rest of his life.

Almost a year ago, he was transferred from MCI-Norfolk, the medium-security prison where he spent the last several decades, and the countdown began. Now he rides the bus to and from his work-release job at a Panera Bread in a Boston suburb, where he clears tables and makes sandwiches.

As his release date approaches, Diatchenko's excitement and anticipation have increasingly been shadowed by uneasiness and anxiety—a little depression, even. He finds himself chasing away bad thoughts more often now, worrying over his future. What follows is his account of what it's like to get ready for your release after thinking prison was the place your life would end.

I get on a bus, I thought everyone was going to look at me and go, "Oh! He's a convict," "Oh, he's in prison." And it's not like that. People don't know you. They don't know your history or who you are or where you're from.

I have an itinerary I follow every day. I'm not supposed to stray from it, and I don't. We're not allowed to go in stores. We're not supposed to go in Dunkin Donuts and get a coffee or nothing like that. You go straight to work and come back. There are things I can't do. I can't even strike up a conversation with a woman that I see that I'm attracted to. I can, but I don't want to, because I'm still in prison. Last night, there's a woman sitting there with her computer—everybody brings computers into Panera Bread. I don't have a cell phone so I couldn't give my number, and I don't have an address yet.

Where do you live?

Oh, I live at the Pre-Release Center.

Oh, that's good. That's a good way to start up a conversation.

When I get out, my main thing is to set up some medical appointments. Dental—my teeth are terrible. My mouth hurts so bad. It's been uncomfortable like this for 15 years. It's like a lion with a thorn stuck in its paw.

You don't save money when you're doing a death sentence

I'm going to be looking for a job at Boston University. I was told to go on the BU website and check on what jobs I might like to do. They said I might have to start low. Everybody's telling me, you're coming out of prison with a degree, you have qualifications. Some jobs people don't want but maybe you can take it. Get your foot in the door.

After 34 years, I only have like $600 in my account; I was making $5 a day at Norfolk. But you spend that. You want to eat. You want to have coffee. You want to buy shampoo and toothpaste. You could split your money, your earnings, 50/50 in your savings and personal account. But lifers don't have to. What are you going to save money for? You don't save money when you're doing a death sentence. I'm fortunate that people are there to help me, show me: This is how you fill out an income tax return. You want to get a car? This is the paperwork. I've never done any of that stuff before.

Your 17-year-old son ain't coming home—I'm 51.

I wonder how I'll be accepted outside. When they find out where I'm from, and my past. I have that blemish on me. Once a prisoner, that's there forever. No matter what you do, no matter how good you do. It's just always there.

I don't know if my lifetime parole is going to be a battle with the parole officer. I've heard horror stories. Some people had parole officers that were all over them all the time. So I'm going out there after all these years and I really don't know what to expect. My mother said—we were actually arguing about it out here—"Look at Greg, he's getting out, he doesn't even smile like he's excited about it." And I said, "What do you want me to do? I'm going home. OK, I'm happy about it."

But I'm not just coming home and everything's hunky dory. Your 17-year-old son ain't coming home—I'm 51.

I'm under the thumb of the parole board. I'm going out to society not knowing how long I'm going to be free. I could be out there, have a house all built up, my job, a truck out in my driveway, and one or two children, little ones running around, and all of a sudden I'm snatched up and sent behind the walls for something stupid. I've seen some parole violations for some of the pettiest things. If you don't like me, and you live down the street, and you don't want me on your street, you call the cops, and say: Listen, my neighbor just threatened to punch my face in. word against mine. I ain't never said boo to that person. Cuff up. Parole violation.

Even though I'm out, if they find out that I die outside, they'll put me on the list as a lifer that died.

I'm leaving a lot of good guys behind. I remember when I left Norfolk, it was weird. I was in that prison for about 29 years. I knew a lot of lifers, I mostly hung around with lifers. There were guys up there who were just as deserving, if not more so, than me, for a second chance in life. Guys with three, four, and five decades in prison. It's sad, because they were out in lower security getting furloughs, before Willie Horton. And they're not going anywhere. Here I am, I had this opportunity, this blessing. This court ruling that opened the door for me. I feel guilty. I walked out that door, and these guys that were so sad to see me go—I can't even send Christmas cards to those people. As a parolee, we're not allowed to associate with convicted felons or ex-felons.

If this never happened, we wouldn't even be talking right now. I'd be at Norfolk. Working in the plumbing shop. Going to work every day and just doing my thing. Living. Existing. Waiting to die.

When you're in prison, at the end of the day, when it's nice and quiet, you're laying there at 10:00 after the count, a lot of thoughts are running through your head. At the Lifers Group, once a year they read off all the lifers that died in prison over the years. AIDS, cancer, diabetes, suicide. Murder. That list is so long. The board of directors would stand up and they'd go around and they'd each read five names and go around and around. Most of them I knew, even the ones that were in other prisons, because we've been around together for years and years. All these lifers are standing there for a moment of silence, and what's going through their head? They're probably saying,One day I'll be on that list.

Even though I'm out, if they find out that I die outside, they'll put me on the list as a lifer that died. I'm still a lifer.

This article was co-published with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

Image via Wikicommons

On Monday, the UK's National Crime Agency released a short cartoon to encourage casual cocaine users to think twice before doing that next bump. Over the course of two and a half minutes the mini-film (released with the hashtag #everylinecounts) lays out a recipe for cocaine that includes major deforestation and dead Colombian policemen. It culminates in you, the casual consumer, passively facilitating an entire industry of exploitation.

With its emphasis on environmental and humanitarian repercussions, it's certainly a refreshing departure from the traditional "don't do drugs, you'll die" approach we've come to expect. But will it be enough to deter a nation when it comes to ordering in that next gram? We spoke to some casual users to find out.

Tristan, 24, Guitarist

VICE: How much do you reckon you spend on coke per month?
Tristan: I would estimate I probably pretty consistently spend about £40 a month on coke, although that's only been in the last year or two.

How much do you know about where it comes from?
I don't know anything. I prefer to keep a bit of distance because, to be honest, I don't like that I do it. I don't like to do it—well, I do, obviously—but I don't really like to make it a habit. I've never met the guy I buy off, he's just a number on my phone. I feel like I should do more research, but at the same time when I smoked weed as a kid I never knew where that was coming from.

What do you know about the trade in general?
I think it's much like fruit and sugar and many of these resources. It's largely unfair trade for people who are on the fields, picking and making it. I imagine they probably don't get paid very well and it probably resembles something closer to slave labor than a Western idea of paid work.

The thing is, because I think of it as a vice, I compartmentalize it from the rest of my life. I tend to be quite a healthy and fair person day-to-day, but with things that I know are bad for me I try not to think about it because I already don't like that I do it. Same with the alcohol I drink, the porn I watch—I don't really investigate where it comes from because I know it's a bad thing already.

What do you think about the NCA video?
I think it's much less black and white than that makes out. There's no mention of the systems at play that have made the trade so dark and violent. This video is pitting the little man against the little man, when really they're both victims of the illegal underworld they created.

Sure, but regardless it is still a fact that if there wasn't a consumer at the other end there wouldn't be people dying.
That's true, but if they made alcohol illegal people would get killed for that. Does that mean it's our fault for wanting a beer? I don't think so.

OK, you seem to have worked it through in your head. Are you going to stop?
I feel a bit more conscious of it, because regardless of whether it changes or not, the demand is still a factor. However, I'd much more readily campaign for the legalization of it than stop altogether.

Photo by Adam Swank

Tracey, 21, Student

How much do you reckon you spend on coke on average?
Tracey: If I could I'd take coke every time I go out, which is like three times a month, and spend about £20 to £50 each time, depending on how much I take. I had my first bump of coke when I was 16 or 17, but I didn't start taking it regularly or buying until I moved to London aged 19, so I'd say the regularity with which I take it now has only been in the last two years.

What do you know about where your cocaine comes from?
I've never had a friendly connection with any of my coke dealers, but I have had friends who are dealers before. It's my experience that you just take what you're given and it all falls under "miscellaneous white powder." If they rip you off, there's not much you can do about it, but you can normally tell what it's going to be like from looking at it and how much you've spent on it.

What about the implications of the cocaine trade more broadly?
I don't really know much about the cocaine trade apart from the occasional gangster movie or book or public figure exposing all in some undoubtedly glamorized version of the south American cocaine trade. Sometimes a dealer will text me saying he's got the "banging Peruvian," so maybe it's from Peru?

OK great, now watch this video from the NCA. What do you reckon?
God, that was a bit peak—I feel like I'm going to look like a wanker now. It definitely raised a few things I hadn't thought of before, like the thing about the environment. It's hard, though, because all consumerist things seem to have bad environmental consequences.

Do you think you'll think twice about ordering another gram now?
Realistically, I know I won't stop taking it just because I know these things a bit better now. I knew about the violence before, but I guess I just feel like I'm such a small chain in the link. I'm a self-interested individual like everyone else, but I also think the impact of a few consumers stopping is a drop in the ocean compared to global and national drug reform and a more morally-sound farming procedure.

That said, the message of the video is definitely a lot stronger than the traditional "don't do drugs, you'll get addicted and die" message. That just really annoys me because it's so unrealistic and it undermines the governmental and moral systems that enforce it, which distances the consumer even further from these networks. It's like, "I took it, I didn't die, clearly everything you say can't be correct then." It really pisses me off.

Photo by Georgina Lawson from This Is What One of Colombia's DIY Cocaine Making Classes Is Actually Like

Charlie, 25, Barista

How much do you estimate you spend on cocaine?
Charlie: Probably between £150 to £200 a year, but that's spread over periods of high density and then gaps of little use.

How much do you know about where it comes from?
My dealer changes fairly regularly, probably about every six months to a year, and I've never known them very closely. Generally when I pick up I get it through several chains of different people, usually someone I know who knows someone who would then go and pick it up. In terms of where they get it from, I'd have no idea, really. I'd always just assumed it was all from the South America-type region...

How aware of the repercussions of the cocaine trade are you?
Most of what I know I probably got from pure fiction—TV shows, things like that. There's that Johnny Depp film, Blow, and that TV show Narcos on Netflix.

OK, so you're aware of the political context?
I'm not sure I've got to that bit yet—I'm only on episode two.

From what you know about the trade, is it something that gets to you much?
No, I definitely compartmentalize it. I feel like we're bombarded so much these days with terrible things going on around the world that lead to all sorts of pain and misery that, in a way, you sort of become desensitized to it.

Did the NCA video make you re-think your cocaine use?
I was sort of vaguely aware of the kind of widespread criminal networks that exist to transport and facilitate it, but the environmental effects never really occurred to me. This might sound kind of bad, but it's something that makes me think a lot more and speaks to me a lot more because it's kind of larger than just our species.

Does it make you want to stop?
Probably not, but it might make me think a bit more next time.

As in have a moment of guilt before you indulge?
Yeah, more like that. Unfortunately I don't think a short video will have enough impact to make me stop, but it might make me more aware at points. Maybe lots of similar things like that, over a long period of time, might make me think about changing. But for now I don't know.

Photo by Chris Bethell

Jonny, 30, Designer

How often do you do coke?
Jonny: Back when I did it regularly, it was probably a line or two a week if I was offered it, and then maybe buy a gram every three or four weeks on top of that. I tried it for the first time when I was 17 so have been doing it for 13 years, give or take, although I stopped taking all drugs two months ago.

How much do you know about where it comes from?
I've got lots of dealers, all who I know either personally or who I have a long-standing relationship with. I have a last-minute guy who does good stuff, I have a specialist guy who does all different varieties of high-quality stuff and who I would go to if I knew I was getting it in advance. Then I have the guy who I go to if I'm going to festivals; he sells pure, uncut pellets, the ones smugglers have to shit out. I only really call him for Glastonbury and then split one with a friend.

What do you know about the global repercussions of the trade?
I'm sadly very aware of the repercussions of the trade and the sort of effect it has had on farmers in places like Peru. It's a dark trade. Most of the information I've picked up from articles and TV programs and it's something I do try and keep in mind, but it's like anything else you are desensitized to: I don't think about the slaughterhouse as I'm eating my meat, but I'm fully aware of the reality of what it took to get it to the point of me consuming it.

Would the NCA video make you consider quitting?
I thought it was good, but I don't think it's really shocking enough to actually affect anyone. The cuteness of the video kind of diffuses the whole message in my opinion. You need something that makes users feel guilty enough to remember that feeling when they are pissed out their head on a Friday night. Most people won't buy coke when they're sober, yet they'll spend their rent money on it when they've had enough to drink.

So a harrowing documentary on the trials of narco-warfare might be more effective for you?
Yeah, I personally knew all the info in that video anyway and it didn't stop me before. If I'm going to get hammered on a Friday night, I'm not going to think about a cute cartoon. If you showed me a PETA-style video of a fox being skinned alive, that might come to mind.

So why did you stop? Was the ethical side anything to do with it?
Nope, it was far more selfish: health and happiness.

Long a prominent chronicler of the black American experience in films like Do the Right Thing (1989), Malcolm X (1992), and Get on the Bus (1996), Spike Lee has now turned his attention to a pressing social issue: gun violence. It' s a national concern—horrifying instances occur on a daily basis—but in his latest "joint," the impassioned, iridescent musical comedy Chi-Raq, Lee localizes his story in one of the nation's most affected areas: Chicago's impoverished, predominantly African-American South Side. Essentially, it's Lee on " black-on-black crime, " a hotly contested subject.

More than a few Chicagoans reacted with horror to the racy, exuberant first trailer, worried that Lee, a New Yorker (and thus an interloper) was trivializing a serious issue. In a dismaying sign of our times, writers trashed the film in hyperventilating op-eds before they, or anyone, had seen it. Lee is no stranger to this type of controversy: Back in 1989, pundits, including conservative columnist Joe Klein, erroneously fretted that his masterpiece Do the Right Thing would provoke riots among young African-American moviegoers.

In Chi-Raq's case, a plainly irritated Lee responded by cutting an unrepresentative, morose trailer prefaced by a stony-faced message in which he stressed that his film was deadly serious, and satirical. (This was a curious case of life imitating art: At the start of Lee's 2000 film Bamboozled, the main character explains the meaning of satire to the audience—did Lee figure he'd ever need to do the same?) Lee also flatly rejected requests from the likes of Mayor Rahm Emanuel to change the title, a portmanteau of Chicago and Iraq coined by locals to connote the area's warzone-like volatility.

Chi-Raq also happens to be the name of the character portrayed by Nick Cannon, into whose coiled, muscular frame the tragedy, violence, and aspirations of the city are sublimated. Chi-Raq's both a talented, aspiring rapper and the leader of the purple-clad Spartans gang. Their bitter rivals, the orange-decked Trojans, are presided over by Cyclops (an eyepatch-sporting Wesley Snipes, who gives a curious performance that veers from mumbly to tittering). " Pray 4 My City," the Cannon-performed rap track that opens the film, sets a rueful, angry tone. In a possible nod to the iconic 1987 video for Prince's " Sign O the Times," its lyrics are forcefully imposed in blood-red font across a jet-black screen as they're spit out by Cannon: "Too much hate in my city / Too many heartaches in my city / But I got faith in my city."

As you may have already heard, Chi-Raq's eyebrow-raising plot is an audaciously faithful update of Aristophanes's bawdy 411 BC play Lysistrata, in which the eponymous character persuades her fellow women to withhold sex from their partners so that they will stop the Peloponnesian War. Here, the killing of a young girl by a stray bullet is the catalyst for a sex strike led by Chi-Raq's girlfriend Lysistrata, played with magnetic charisma by Dear White People's Teyonah Parris. As the strike intensifies, tempers fray, balls go blue, politicians get involved, and hijinks ensue.

In the context of Lee's career, Chi-Raq is a paradox: It's both like nothing he's done before and a comprehensive compendium of his myriad, long-standing stylistic tics and thematic obsessions. One on hand, the gulf between his grave subject matter and his unorthodox cinematic delivery has never been more profound, nor challenging. He's made one musical—campus showdown School Daze (1988)—but its gaudy exuberance was well-suited to its tale of spunky students at war and play. His diagnostic, New York–set drug drama Clockers (1995), meanwhile, was characterized by its somber visual and tonal approach, save for the occasional stylistic flourish.

In attempting to balance tragedy with fun in Chi-Raq, Lee throws a lot at the wall, hoping it'll stick. It makes for a rather odd viewing experience: One minute there's a lump in our throat as we watch a grieving mother (Jennifer Hudson) mopping up the blood of her dead child; the next we're faced with a bug-eyed strip-club proprietor (Dave Chappelle) hollering about how "these hos"—the strikers—"have literally shut down the penis power grid!" Such transitions are far from smooth, but Lee deserves credit for venturing that the rude juxtaposition of ribald comedy and deep sadness are endemic to the urban black experience.

Chi-Raq is also a Brechtian overload, forcing the viewer to recognize its artificiality (spectacularly stylized, color-coded costumes and set design) while simultaneously flashing its documentary cred. After its Cannon-rap opening, a torrent of onscreen statistics about gun violence flood the screen, followed by a stentorian voiceover about life on the streets from real-life Chicago pastor Father Michael Pfleger, a version of whom is played in the film by John Cusack. Next we're introduced to the nattily dressed Dolemedes (Samuel L. Jackson), a one-man chorus who contextualizes the narrative in gleeful monologues delivered straight into the camera. (The role recalls his turn as community focal point DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy in Do the Right Thing.) The vast majority of the film's dialogue is delivered in rhyming verse, with mixed results. For every wryly funny couplet, there's one that sounds pulled straight from the "My First Rap" songbook: "Da Greek Aristophanes penned a play satirizin' his day / And in the style of his time, ' Stophanes made dat shit rhyme!"

Although Chi-Raq's source material is centuries old, Lee (and co-writer Kevin Willmott) make a concerted effort to establish its immediacy. They freight the script with references to recent incidents of racism in action, including mentions of George Zimmerman, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, and even Dylann Roof, perpetrator of the Charleston church massacre in June this year. It's admirably urgent stuff, but there's little sense of a consistent ideology underpinning Chi-Raq beyond its general despair at the existence of gun violence.

One long eulogy bellowed by Cusack' s Pfleger-proxy lays out an impressive social critique that situates gang violence and police brutality within a wider context of economic underdevelopment and structural racism. The speech is a crucial rejoinder to simplistic notions of "black-on-black crime," but the sequence feels awkwardly divorced from the wider narrative. Elsewhere, Lee appears to both decry pernicious " pull up your pants" respectability politics (in the form of a pompous black city official played by Harry Lennix) while simultaneously embracing them: Chi-Raq literally pulls up his pants at one point, and there are references in the script to a "self-inflicted genocide." The film's sexual politics are also confounding. Chi-Raq is refreshing, particularly in the context of buttoned-down Hollywood cinema, for its frank depiction of sex as a basic human need and a source of great enjoyment. But this is counterbalanced by the creeping, laugh-squelching feeling—not helped by Lee's seriously patchy record on sexual politics (see the dubious lesbian-impregnation comedy She Hate Me)—that the director genuinely sees the sex strike as a viable real-life solution. He has since said as much in a recent interview; an opinion brusquely dismantled by Ta-Nehisi Coates in a sharp article for the Atlantic; Coates compares the idea to asking women to stop wearing short skirts in order to avoid being raped. Lee has also satirized wild male sexual thirst more effectively in a single montage in his debut She's Gotta Have It (1986) than he does here, cartoonishly.

Ultimately though, for Chi-Raq's shortcomings, it's a joy to once again experience Lee, a master stylist and true artist, let loose on a subject he's passionate about, while backed with a sizable budget ($15 million by Amazon Studios, their first production). Lee's last three films—a desperately limp studio remake of Park Chan-Wook's Oldboy sandwiched between wispy, micro-budget doodles (Red Hook Summer, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus)—have conveyed a worrying sense of creative stagnation. Now Lee is unequivocally back in the spotlight, making the kind of full-blooded, confrontational, frustrating, and topical film only he can.

Follow Ashley on Twitter.

Chi-Raq is now playing on theaters nationwide.