The Macedonian capital of Skopje saw its second angry Albanian demonstration in as many weeks on Friday. A week earlier, on July 4, the city’s Albanian minority rioted against the outcome of a politically charged murder trial, dubbed the “Monster Case.” So, come the weekend, everyone was expecting another round of hurled concrete, baton swings, and burned trash cans.

Macedonia is a divided country. Slightly less than two thirds of the population are ethnically Macedonian. The second-largest ethnic grouping, accounting for just over a quarter of the population, is Albanian.

In 2001, tensions between the two groups escalated into an armed conflict between government security forces and the Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA). The conflict was short-lived and brought to a close with the Ohrid Agreement, a peace treaty that saw NLA commanders rebranded as legitimate politicians and enhanced social and political rights being granted to Macedonia’s Albanian citizens.

While armed hostilities ended nearly 13 years ago, relations between the different groups are still not all that friendly. Albanians still feel disadvantaged, neglected, and that their rights are unequally applied.

The “Monster Case” has become the latest shitty banner for disaffected Albanians in Macedonia to rally around. The case saw seven Albanians tried for the execution-style murder of five ethnic Macedonians. The prosecution framed the murders as acts of Islamic terrorism, designed to destabilize the country.

On Monday, June 30, the court found six of the seven guilty, sentencing them to life imprisonment. The verdict enraged the Albanian community, who saw the trial as a mockery. Commentators from both sides of the ethnic divide have observed that the evidence against most (some say all) of the defendants would not have held up in any other court.

"The NLA is not DUI. The NLA is with the people." Essentially, what they're saying is, "Even if the DUI's leadership is made up of former NLA members, you no longer represent us. The NLA represented us."

The Albanian community was even more pissed off by the support lent to the case’s outcome by senior Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) politicians. The DUI was formed from the ashes of the NLA, and since 2008 has been in a ruling coalition with the Macedonian nationalist VMRO DPMNE. For many Albanians this is seen as a betrayal, which is manifested in endless neglect of Albanian interests in the party’s governance. Support for the conviction of the six Monster Case defendants was seen as typifying the sellout.

So, on Friday, July 4, the city exploded. Thousands marched the short distance from a mosque in the central, largely Albanian neighborhood of Bit Pazar to the Mavrovka shopping center. They were met by dozens of armored vehicles and row upon row of body-armor-clad, riot-shield-bearing, faceless-under-visor riot cops.

Fighting soon broke out between crowd and cops. Tear gas and rubber bullets were deployed. Protesters responded by hurling crates of beer bottles and chunks of concrete. The police pushed the protesters back into the narrow alleyways of central Skopje’s Albanian neighborhoods. Every street was bitterly fought for until the protesters had been spread so thin throughout the labyrinth of side streets that all momentum was lost.

Macedonian-language media was joined by DUI and VMRO politicians in denouncing the violence. However, DUI’s leadership acknowledged that a repeat of that violence would be even more damaging than making concessions to its actors. So, while the protesters planned another Friday of protest, DUI officials began denouncing the trial and its verdict, while calling on protesters to refrain from further violence.

Meanwhile, ethnic-Macedonian soccer fan groups, known for being militant supporters of VMRO, planned a counterprotest. Many feared the Macedonian protesters would clash with their Albanian counterparts.

So it was that last Friday, July 11, the Skopje city center was once again full of police and armored vehicles.

Lunchtime prayers ended, and thousands of Albanian men gathered once more outside the mosque in Bit Pazar. Many concealed their faces. Those whose faces weren’t hidden displayed bitter anger. Red and black flags bearing the Albanian eagle were waved high alongside banners bemoaning the DUI and the Monster Case. As they marched forward, it looked certain that things would kick off.

After less than half a mile, police and protesters were toe to toe. More precisely, nose to riot shield. Angry nationalist slogans were screamed, and chunks of concrete were sent hurtling over police lines and into the gathered press pack, which found itself scrambling for cover between photographs.

Unlike the week before, however, the legions of police with their Panzer division of riot-suppression vehicles remained remarkably calm. Behind the scenes, officers dashed back and forth with preparatory fire extinguishers; but at the front lines, cops maintained poker faces.

Then, after an hour or so had passed and sufficient anger had been displayed, the protesters started marching back the way they came, with only a handful of testosterone-pumped adolescent stragglers lingering to throw a few last taunts at the police and assemblage of journalists. Strangely, the Macedonian counterprotest had failed to materialize also.

Just 30 minutes later and no one would have been able to guess Skopje had been on the brink of chaos.

A tight lid, manifested in the detention of political prisoners, is kept on dissidence in Macedonia for an important reason. This is the second instance in as many months of ethnic issues boiling over into violent action. The first, in May, saw Macedonians destroying Muslim and Albanian property following the fatal stabbing of a young Macedonian. During the 2001 conflict it seemed at times as though the only solution would be federalization, effectively splitting the country into two nations. Now, as tensions rise to the surface again, there are commentators that fear federalization—or worse, war—might be the ultimate outcome.

If that happened, the repercussions could spread beyond just Macedonia, across the Balkans. If Macedonia’s Albanians are allowed to form their own state, why not the Serbs in northern Kosovo, or Bosnia’s Republika Srpbska?

As with Macedonia, there has never been a proper resolution to these divided countries that emerged following the disintegration of Yugoslavia. And just as Yugoslavia began to fall apart following seemingly innocuous secessions, there is a fear that boundary changes in Macedonia could trigger serious unrest across the Balkans.

Shannon Maureen Conley and Basit Javed Sheikh planned trips to Syria to join up with jihadists.

One is a 19-year-old citizen from Arvada, Colorado, named Shannon Maureen Conley. The other is a 29-year-old, Pakistani-born permanent US resident who lived in North Carolina named Basit Javed Sheikh. Both—entirely separately—planned to travel to Syria for love and jihad, according to public records, and both came under close scrutiny of the FBI and were eventually arrested.

But in Conley's case, the FBI gave the would-be jihadist every available out. Overt agents who identified themselves as being from the FBI repeatedly cautioned her against going through with her plans to travel to Syria and join the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham (ISIS). According to a sworn affidavit, they warned her she would be arrested if she tried to board a plane to the region, but to no avail. Few, if any, targets in federal terrorism investigations have been given such apparently blunt warnings from openly identified agents. “That's a first as far as I know,” says Trevor Aaronson, author of The Terror Factory: Inside The FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism.

Sheikh, however, wasn't so lucky. The FBI didn't openly try to talk him out of boarding a plane allegedly to join Jabat al Nusra, the al Qaeda–linked militant group fighting Bashar al Assad's regime in Syria. Sheikh has even gone so far as to claim that an FBI informant, posing as a nurse in Syria, engaged in a romantic relationship with him, and he was traveling to marry her. An undercover agent—as opposed to an openly identified one, like in Conley's case—told Sheikh he didn't have to go through with his plan, something investigators often do to prevent an entrapment defense. Both cases are currently in the pre-trial motions phase.

Though the FBI is often criticized for foiling terrorist plots of its own making, the cases of Conley and Sheikh are examples of what US officials repeatedly say is a growing problem: Americans traveling to Syria, training with militant groups, and returning as battle-hardened terrorists. Attorney General Eric Holder reiterated that threat last week before European officials in Oslo, and claimed there are “dozens of Americans” fighting in Syria and Iraq. The former head of the UK intelligence agency MI6, by contrast, said recently the threat of Islamist-based terrorism in the West has been dramatically overblown.

An FBI spokesperson told VICE in an email that in the last year FBI-led task forces have “arrested at least six US persons for attempting to travel to Syria to join extremist groups.”

Conley first attracted attention from law enforcement after roaming the grounds of a Faith Bible Chapel while taking notes. Church staff confronted her, at which point she allegedly became antagonistic. She told law enforcement that after the altercation, she thought: “If they think I'm a terrorist, I'll give them something to think I am.”

FBI agents met with Conley on a nearly weekly basis for a period of months. Conley never had a lawyer present, though she was advised of that right, according to the affidavit, and repeatedly made incriminating statements to the agents. “Conley was reminded, and acknowledged, that she had made statements to overt law enforcement about waging Jihad against the US,” according to the affidavit. “Conley was further advised, and acknowledged, that what she wanted to do is illegal.”

In another meeting, an “overt attempt to dissuade Conley from violent criminal activity,” an FBI agent “admonished Conley twice in the conversation that travel with intent to wage Jihad may be illegal and result in her arrest.” Conley was arrested roughly two weeks later, attempting to board a Turkey-bound flight to connect with a Tunisian ISIS fighter with whom she had begun an online romance. Conley was charged with material support of a terrorist organization, and faces up to 15 years in prison. In the affidavit, Conley comes across less as a sophisticated threat and more as a hapless teenager.

The FBI became aware of Basit Javed Sheikh, the North Carolina man, after he made repeated statements on Facebook praising Jabat al Nusra. In August 2013, according to court documents, Sheikh contacted someone through Facebook who claimed to be a nurse affiliated with al Nusra, but was in fact an FBI informant, also known as a confidential human source (CHS). Sheikh was arrested three months later.

The exact nature of their relationship isn't yet clear, but according to court transcripts reviewed by VICE, Sheikh may have thought he was traveling to Syria, at least in part, to marry the “nurse”—that is, the FBI informant. “Did the defendant ever show interest in marrying this confidential source, CHS?” Sheikh, representing himself, asked Special Agent Jason Maslow at a pre-trial hearing last November.

Maslow, the FBI agent who swore the affidavit against Sheikh, didn't offer a clear answer. “I'm not aware of any,” Maslow responded initially, then added, “There may have been” a romantic interest from Sheikh “towards the end,” as well as “towards the beginning on some of the initial contacts.”

Apparently not satisfied, Sheikh pushed the issue. “There may have been?” he repeated.

“Yes,” Special Agent Maslow said.

Moments later, Sheikh—not aware of criminal trial procedure—demanded that “that the full nature of the relationship between the CHS and the defendant be known so that the defendant's true motive of [sic] traveling overseas can be determined.” The judge stopped him and said that's called discovery, and happens later in the case. Like Conley, in court documents Sheikh came off as bumbling and perhaps depressed, obsessed with a fantasy of jihad as much as or more than the real thing.

Regardless of the veracity of Sheikh's marriage claims, there were never any attempts by overt agents to dissuade Sheikh from traveling to Lebanon, then to Syria. Rather, a clandestine, undercover agent at one point told him, “You don't have to do this,” and “If you are scared and don't want to [travel to Syria] then make jihad in other ways.” Sheikh responded that he wasn't scared, said “I'm ready,” and shortly afterward bought his ticket to Lebanon, according to the affidavit. (The undercover agent had previously suggested Sheikh ask his sister for money for the plane ticket, which Sheikh couldn't afford on his own at the time.)

The FBI did not offer comment on the seeming discrepancies between the two investigations despite multiple requests from VICE. Lawyers for Conley and Sheikh have previously declined to talk to the media.

For some observers there is a larger problem of how the FBI investigates terrorism cases, including the signs that make a person a threat. “The FBI has a problematic theory of radicalization, where someone goes from speaking out about an issue to becoming violent,” says the ACLU's Mike German, a former FBI agent, who was speaking about the FBI generally and not about the Sheikh or Conley case specifically. “They describe it as a funnel, and once you're in the funnel, there's no coming out of that.” He says the strategy is built on a fallacy that “if we just leave them alone,” they'll wind up radicalized and violent anyway. The result, in many cases, is a plot that almost certainly couldn't have happened without FBI involvement.

Click here for last week's episode.

GIF by Daniel Stuckey

Last week, in "Beyond 'Existentialism,'" the first installment of this series, I told the story of how I first encountered Terence McKenna. This week, I’ve organized a list of my 30 favorite Terence McKenna memes. McKenna defined a meme as “the smallest unit of an idea that still has coherency” and said he was very conscious of creating them during his talks. He explained in 1996:

What a gene is to biology, a meme is to ideology... Madonna is a meme, Catholicism is a meme, Marxism is a meme, yellow sweaters are a meme... rainbow-colored dreadlocks are a meme. Launch your meme boldly and see if it will replicate—just like genes replicate, and infect, and move into the organism of society. And, believing as I do that society operates on a kind of biological economy, then I believe these memes are the key to societal evolution ["Memes, Drugs, and Community"].

The King George Brothel in Berlin opens at 4 PM, Monday through Sunday, excluding the Christmas Holidays. For €99 ($135) you can stay there until dawn, when the first street cleaners are passing, and drink as much as you like and have sex as much as you like with Klaudia, Katja, Petronella, Alina, Barby, and whichever of the 27 staff members are perched on the velvet stools or the leather booths beneath the many red lights next to the bar.

The King George is Germany's first flat-rate brothel. It's the sex industry's answer to the global recession. In Berlin there are about half a dozen of them. The brothels themselves prefer calling it "all-inclusive" rather than flat-rate. As owner Sascha Erben says, “This is sex after all; it's not text messaging or long-distance calls.”

Alina works the door. She's wearing this pink tube dress. It covers her body like a bun covers a hot dog. When she gets up from her chair, the dress zips up over her ass until she jigs it down again with her fingers. The rest of the girls wear the same dress in different grades of pink. It's like a house uniform. Zipping up and down, flashing bare bum and bits of crotch as they walk around on stilettos that make them look like those fishermen's houses built on stilts—the ones that don't outlast storms or oil slicks. They all smoke cigarettes. Marlboros or Chesterfields with health warnings written in Cyrillic. And everything inside, from the drink in your hand to the seat you lean on, smells like cotton candy.

As soon as I tell them I'm just writing a story, they take out their phones, start eating pizza, and pluck stray hairs from their bikini lines—the same things they would have done if I'd told them I was gay, I guess.

The layout of the building is an homage to the penis itself: A long narrow bar leads into two tight networks of small rooms with wipe-clean beds and showers and lighting that you'd never want to read a book under. Europop plays from tiny speakers, hidden high up in the shadows. I've never been to a nightclub in Dubai, but I imagine that beyond the mirrored dance floors, the Swarowski glasses, and the $5,000 table reservations, the DJ's got the same bad collection as the King George.

"Do you like the music?" I ask Alina.

"What music?" she says.

The majority of the women are from Eastern Europe. Klaudia is from Austria, and she's something of a celebrity in Berlin. Men request her for €200 ($270) an hour. Alina says she's from Napoli and that she misses the sea and her home. But Alina, I, and her accent know her home isn't Italy. It's probably Romania. The same goes for the girls speaking Spanish, like Petronella and Barby. They learn it growing up in Romania watching Spanish telenovelas, and they speak it because it's fun, she says. And it is fun pretending to be Spanish, but in Germany, where being Romanian is the only thing that makes people as mad as kiddie fiddling, it's good sense too.

Obviously they lie about their age. Someone who looks in her 40s is allegedly in her 30s, and the 30-year-olds are all 19. But I guess that's just a symptom of the dishonest premise brothels are built on. The women act like the men are interesting and desirable, and the men convince themselves they actually are. 

The men start arriving as the factories and shops close for the day. They're in uniform too: steel-toe boots, Snickers work pants with some gray T-shirt tucked in so best to highlight the arch of their gut.

Erben knows his clientele well. “We cater for taxi-drivers, the unemployed, guys who aren't making much more than €1,500 [$2,040] a month.”

Erben bought the King George more than six years ago. It was a strip club before that. He grew up in East Germany, where his first taste of the oldest job in the world was renting out apartments by the hour for a family friend. When the Wall came down, Erben moved south to Bavaria before deciding on a return to Berlin. “A smile is the most important thing in a prostitute,” he says. “They don't have to be pretty; in fact it's often better if they're not. What you want is the sort of girl who can still turn on some charm after 12 hours sitting down with nothing to do.”

Erben comes across as likable. The girls support the argument. Klaudia tells me he's too kind. He loans the girls money. He bought her a €300 ($410) handbag. But you can't tell the other girls that.

But does he fuck them too? “No," Erben says. "The minute you do that, you're not respecting them as an employee. And it can cause problems between the girls.”

But whom does he fuck then? “I do have a girlfriend, but finding someone to build a family with me, considering my business, is hard.”

The girls have families, though. Klaudia has a 17-year-old daughter. She picks her up from work at night, and they go eat kebabs together. Klaudia is also a nurse. She's useful to have in the brothel, but less so in the real world, where she only earns €1300 ($1,770) a month. A good night at the King George gets her €600 ($815). She does OK as a prostitute. She holidays in Ibiza in summer, the Alps in winter.

“A lot of the money isn't even from sex. The men just want to talk or share a bottle of champagne with me,” she says. “I'll often have three of them here at once, sitting in the jacuzzi and laughing.”

It isn't just about sex. Erben's got it all worked out. The average flat-rate customer fucks 2.7 girls. The rest of that time, he's drinking at the bar, feeding coins into the poker machine, maybe even having a lie-down in one of the rooms on his own.

“Traditional brothels,” Erben explains, “are uncomfortable for a lot of men. They rush you in and out, and some guys get nervous and can't perform. Here, a customer can treat it like his own pub, and they have time to talk to the girls.”

The King George is open seven days a week, but the girls are allowed to work a maximum of five days a week. “To regenerate,” Erben says, “mentally and physically.”

A woman might have sex 20 times in a night. I can't and won't ever begin to imagine how a person regenerates mentally from that.

The girls leave and come back. Katja from Hungary has two children and is a qualified care worker who can't find work right now, so she's back at the King George for the moment.

Does she like it? “Sometimes, but not really. You're not supposed to like work, though,” she says.

Erben doesn't have a problem hiring. Some days there are even lines outside. “In other brothels a girl might not even make her cab fare,” he says.

There are more red lights inside the King George than all the junctions in Germany. On a bad night, a girl will come away with €100 ($135). For every euro that a customer spends, the woman make 50 cents. Extras—like blowjobs without condoms, anal, kissing—earn her extra. Because it's Germany and prostitution is not illegal, they will pay tax on that, and their contribution will go to building schools, hospitals, bridges, boots for German soldiers in Afghanistan. Hydra, an organization that fights for prostitutes' rights in Germany, estimates there are close to half a million sex workers in Germany. Two thirds of them are not German. Klaudia the Austrian is as close as it gets. She has a weathered tattoo on her shoulder. It was her first one as a teenager, and it says "Love."

“It's silly,” she says.

"Love?" I ask.

“No, just the tattoo.”

Follow Conor Creighton on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Barnaby Dorfman

Good Golly, Miss Molly. Thousands of Central American children who have illegally crossed the border into the US sure are causing a lot of problems over in Capitol Hill. Headlines describe the “flow,” “flood,” and “tide” of selfish little brats who dared to risk their lives in the hope of a better future. What are we gonna do with all these whippersnappers? The New York Times recently ran, in its opinion section, a debate entitled “How to Stop the Surge of Migrant Children;” in it, six immigration experts discussed the issue. They hemmed, and they hawed, but came to no concrete conclusions. I have, though.

Want to stop the surge? First, you’re going to have to barricade the doors. Use whatever you have handy. My suggestion? Your great-great-great grandfather's—the one who valiantly fought on the side of the good ol’ boys during the Civil War—trunk filled with rebel paraphernalia. Because the enemy will try to enter your home, operating under the auspices of wanting work cleaning said home and parenting your children for a sub-living wage. Don’t let them.

Or, failing that, do, but make a solemn promise to your God that you won’t respect them and their sacrifice. No matter what, don’t treat them as people. Because, by the same God I just name-checked, your ancestors came on a boat, which is far more dignified than swimming across a river, so that inherently makes them better people, more deserved of rights.

Photo via Flickr user Brian Kelley

Next, go to your PC. Note I said PC, not Mac. MAC, as we all know, is an acronym for Minority Amiable Computers, of which you want nothing to do with. Register your fear and revulsion for the other on a message board of some kind, or in the comments section of a YouTube video that has little to nothing to do with the issue at hand. Having done so, microwave yourself a meat treat, because you earned it.

Surround yourself with the safety that is your guns. Note that I said guns, with an “S.” Plural. The more guns you have, the safer you, and by proxy your family, are. That is, after all, the last advice God gave to us before he died. Note that I said he, with an “H.” It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and “Eve-qual Rights Amendment.”

Think about the good old days. This isn’t necessary to the cause, per say, but it will make you feel better. Doesn’t it feel nice, just rememberin’? Rockin’ in your favorite chair? Drinking a lemonade your long-suffering wife mixed for you, in spite of the fact that you haven’t spoken to her in a non-aggressive tone since the Carter administration?

Photo via Flickr user Xavier Badosa

Unlearn any Spanish you may have picked up by virtue of being an American human being that exists in the 21st century. Un-like that Santana song you awkwardly danced to once in 1978. Santana’s one of the good ones, sure—he’s got his own brand of tequila, which in spite of its ethic origins, sure as shit can get your second wife Amber turnt the fuck up, emphasis on fuck. But his ethnicity colors (yeah, you went there, but hashtag sorry not sorry) his gifts. This ain’t about Carlos. This is about your tax dollars. Being used on bleeding heart, socialist rhetoric.

Unbarricade the doors, but only for a minute. You need a smoke break. I mean, you could smoke in your own home, but why do that when you have such a nice deck? Everyone knows how much you spent re-staining it. I mean, you got a sweet deal from your buddy Brian, who’s a fucking grand wizard when it comes to staining wood, but still. It wasn’t cheap.

Because nothing’s cheap in this goddamned country. And you know why? ‘Cause you’re paying the bills for all these illegal immigrants, and welfare queens, and motherfuckers who are unwilling, unable to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and make something of themselves like you and your parents and your parent’s parents did. Oh, your God. Thinking about it’s making your blood boil again. You’re gonna need to go online soon. Finish your cigarette, then rebarricade the doors.

Go back to your PC. Read the comments on your comments, and comment on those comments. Get a dialogue going! Someone disagree with your opinion? Tell them that they deserve to get brutally murdered in front of everyone they love. It’s the only way to affect change!

Photo via Flickr user Kevin Dooley

It has probably, at this point, occurred to you that you do not own enough guns. This is a common realization and one, thankfully, that can be quickly rectified. Short story long, you’re going to need to buy more guns. But you already knew that. The race war is imminent, after all! And if there’s one thing you love more than your guns, it’s war. So stock up! The enemy is Catholic, and if you know one thing about Catholics, it’s that they love making more Catholics.

After stocking up on heat, look your own child in the eyes and distance him from the non-English speaking children you hate on spec. Reconcile the fact that he is as innocent, as pure, as deserved of a future as the son you hate fucked into your second wife’s womb on a night you got too loco (Damnit, there’s that infernal language again!) to put a rubber on it. Because, I mean, Amber was looking good that night. Not to say that she still looks as good, but when you got together? That bitch was slammin'.

Think about the good old days, again. Think about the days in which Amber’s pussy wasn’t all stretched out. GodDAMN. She was nice, huh? You could almost resent your sons, if you didn’t love them so fucking much, for what they did to that sweet snatch. But you do love them. You’d do anything for them. Which is why you’re willing to sacrifice it all, sacrifice your life, sacrifice your future, for their future.  You can’t stomach them being persecuted for nothing, for being born into an alleged patriarchal white male society, without you taking a stand. Without standing up for  their rights, which are being infringed upon, apropos of nothing. Wait, did I talk too big? With my usage of "apropos"? I apologize.

Unbarricade the doors, again. Come out, all barrels blazing. Go out in a hail of police gunfire, courtesy of pigs on the payroll of Barack Hussein—think about it—Obama, because your country has abandoned you. Because you are a martyr for your cause, the cause being the status quo. Know that you died, as you lived, unwilling to accept the tide that is change. Because you were a patriot. For a dead republic. 

Follow Megan Koester on Twitter.

A gaggle of New York's Democratic power players felt the need to Stand with Israel on Monday. Photo by the author

When I asked US Congressman Jerrold Nadler at a pro-Israel rally on Monday whether our government bears any culpability for the mounting civilian death toll in Gaza, he called me an “ass” and stormed away.

The brief encounter was instructive. We were talking amidst a tense and uncomfortable press conference that had been convened by a delegation of leading New York City Democrats at the steps of City Hall in Lower Manhattan. At least 186 Gazans, including many children, are dead in the latest round of ethnic warfare between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, and while both sides have their share of villains, only Jerusalem receives billions in US military aid each year. This assortment of elected officials had decided to offer a fresh show of support for the aerial and ground bombardment campaign currently being waged by the Israeli government. Most if not all of these politicians identify as ‘progressives’—Nadler belongs to the Congressional Progressive Caucus—but nonetheless posed with a giant placard emblazoned with Israeli Defense Force (IDF)-distributed graphics, created by an official military PR operation in hopes of convincing other nations that the country's actions are justified.

The area at the steps of City Hall, normally freely open to pedestrian traffic, was closed off and guarded by a coterie of NYPD officers. Michael Miller, lead organizer and CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council, explained that the general public had been prohibited from attending for “security reasons.” (“Nothing nefarious,” he insisted.) Initially, an officer manning one of the entrances to City Hall’s pavilion area informed me that I would be barred entry without displaying an official City-issued press pass, which are often ridiculously difficult to obtain. When I replied that every other time I had attended events at this location no press pass had been required, the (now agitated) officer advised that he was “under direct orders” to impose stringent regulations, and denied me entry. (The officer presiding over a different entrance proved more amenable, and I was allowed in.)

Plainclothes NYPD personnel scoured the event, suddenly springing into action at one point when a woman, Tammy Gold, who had somehow found her way behind the press conference podium amongst the assembled dignitaries, held up a sign denouncing the Gaza assault. She was forcibly escorted away by an individual who self-identified as “Detective Berkowitz” but would not spell his name. A second individual who claimed to work in some police capacity refused to identify himself whatsoever. Jennifer Pastrich of Rubenstein Communications, a PR firm, distributed copies of talking points to journalists in the hopes they would use them to frame their stories. When asked to provide her name, she appeared uncomfortable, at first only replying with “Jennifer” and then inquiring why I'd asked who she was.

Almost immediately after the pro-Israel festivities got under way, protesters who’d crowded the outer perimeter of the park drowned out the elected officials’ speeches. As Capital New York's Azi Paybarah noted, the intended “Stand With Israel” message seemed to be supplanted by the dominance of the protesters, as well as the general absurdity of such a tightly regulated affair. The assembled politicians at times appeared really uncomfortable; before the “ass” remark, Rep. Nadler wore a grimacing frown and stared awkwardly at the ground.

But it wasn’t just that the officials saw fit to declare their allegiance with a warring foreign government, or that their sympathies were with Israel—neither of these things would be particularly remarkable on their own. What struck me more was their jarring resistance to assessing the conflict with even an iota of skepticism toward the actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his generals. One by one, these officials uncritically repeated talking points disseminated by the Israeli government. Perhaps the most widely-used example goes something like this: Israel is making every effort to minimize civilian casualties, and in fact should be applauded for engaging in such enlightened bombing tactics.

“Israel has taken extraordinary measures to protect the civilians, much more so than I’ve ever seen any other country in a warlike situation take,” Nadler proclaimed at one point.

Missing from his analysis is that the most effective civilian casualty minimization strategy would be to, you know, refrain from bombing areas that are heavily concentrated with civilians. The Gaza Strip is more densely populated than London. The idea that ostensibly not targeting civilians somehow legitimizes any kind of attack the Israeli government should see fit to carry out—that just seems nuts." (VICE News’ Danny Gold visited one 5-year-old Gazan child in the hospital.)

Given the manipulation and deceit that representatives of this foreign government have admitted were employed to create pretext for initiating the bombardment, one would think at least a dose of skepticism toward their claims is, by now, warranted. But not only did these officials uncritically parrot talking points, they amplified them to a greater extent than even many Israelis do. It was truly a weird scene.

“Imagine if you will for a moment, that there were hundreds of rockets raining down on the Lower East Side,” offered Mark Levine, chair of the City Council’s Jewish Caucus. This was yet another talking point propagated by Israeli government PR teams, who have created a bevy of slick-looking promotional material asking citizens of various metropolitan areas around the world how they would like it if rockets were falling on their residences.

Levine’s colleague on the Council, emerging NYC power-broker David Greenfield, bemoaned the lack of “context” in which the current conflict is depicted by Israel’s critics. Agreeing with the need for additional context, I asked him whether invoking the specter of rockets raining down on Manhattan to justify the current actions of the Israeli government was also devoid of context, given that New York City is not occupying, embargoing, or dropping bombs on a neighboring people.

As Greenfield began to answer the question, a particularly obnoxious New York State Assemblyman, Phillip Goldfeder of Queens, sauntered over. Goldfeder interrupted the conversation by cackling about my concern for Palestinian civilian deaths. When I pointed out that children getting extinguished in the dead of night under questionable pretext is a serious matter, the assemblyman escalated said cackling. Even Councilman Greenfield, who was in the process of defending the Israeli government’s actions and is by all accounts a devout backer of Israel, appeared put off by Goldfeder’s conduct.

None of these liberal politicians expressed even an iota of curiosity as to how recent Israeli bombings of a rehabilitation center for the disabled, a World Cup watch party, and the Gaza police chief’s residence might further Netanyahu's stated goal of curbing rocket attacks. When asked about the assault on the World Cup watching party, New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said simply, “I wasn’t there.” Presumably, he also wasn’t there for the numerous attacks he had just cited as allegedly having been perpetrated by Hamas “terrorists,” but as I’m trying to get across, these people have largely dispensed with logic at this point.

You don’t have to view the Israeli government as uniformly overrun by cold-blooded killers to recognize that their claims demand special scrutiny, especially when the lives of innocent children are being ended. And neither do you have to accept Hamas as blameless agents in order to recognize that a state-of-the-art military apparatus subsidized by the US government is on a wholly different moral playing field than a few rogue Islamist-affiliated young men propelling shoddy rockets into Southern Israel (which as of yet have killed just one Israeli, thanks to their Iron Dome shield).

“If civilians are killed, that’s the fault of Hamas, not the fault of Israel,” Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel told me. Ponder his reasoning for a moment: The people who initiated and launched the attack are absolved of any moral culpability for the results of their actions, according to this formulation. That just seems crazy, whatever else you might think about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hamas is the elected government of Gaza. Does that mean anyone with any kind of affiliation with Hamas is an acceptable target? That would be like saying, in retaliation to the US Government’s flagrantly illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, that any American would be a justifiable target for counterattack. It doesn’t make any sense.

“No country can exist if its citizens are under rocket attack day in and day out, year in year out,” Engel continued. He may be right, but the same logic was used to justify Israel’s previous two sustained assaults on Gaza, in 2012 and 2009, neither of which apparently succeeded in stemming rocket attacks for more than short time. So purely from a tactical standpoint, the proposition of renewed bombing warrants extra attention. “Hamas wouldn’t allow demonstrators to demonstrate against them,” Engel told me. “They would kill people.” The congressman also invoked 9/11 for some reason, because of course.

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio was not present, but in the past has addressed AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, in meetings that were omitted from his public schedule. “It is our obligation to defend Israel,” he reportedly told one audience.

Curtis Sliwa, the red beret-clad talk radio shock jock of Guardian Angels fame—and partner of Queens Borough President Melinda Katz—was also on hand. I asked if he was troubled by the latest round of Palestinian civilian deaths. “No,” he replied.

Follow Michael Tracey on Twitter.

Screencaps via streaming episodes on the MTV site

“Not based on a true story. Not inspired by true events. Just true.” 

Follow Theis Duelund on Twitter.

Mexico's narcocorrido music genre and subculture openly celebrates the most extreme aspects of the country's drug war. The songs are filled with catchy, detailed narrations of beheadings, executions, coked-out nights, and a strangely consistent obsession with Buchanan's whiskey.

With lyrics like "We're bloddy and a little twisted / We love killing / Mass kidnappings are the way they should be done / All my crew with gold-plated AKs / Shooting up their bodies until they fall to pieces / A sharpened knife on hand for beheadings," the movimiento alterado—literally the "altered movement"—is more of a "we're-fucking-crazy-and-we-will-cut-you-up" movement.

The music scene originated in the old cartel citadel of Mexico's western Sinaloa state, and it's an open secret that most of the artists identified with the genre are tied to the local cartel.

VICE went to Mexico to talk to some of the genre's major producers and see whether they're as hard as their songs suggest.

Thanks to its thriving sex industry, cheap beer, and even cheaper accommodation, Riga—for tourists, at least—is synonymous with the kind of bro holidays that end in black eyes and disorderly conduct convictions. Understandably, people in the Latvian capital aren't too happy about this, which is possibly why the city has opened the doors to a building that will attract a very different kind of visitor—the former KGB headquarters, which haven't been accessible to the public for the past 20 years.

If you didn’t know what had taken place inside the building you’d probably pass by its taped-up windows without suspecting a thing. But it was a place that provoked fear from thousands during the time of Soviet rule in Latvia; for more than 40 years, this was where those who were thought to have defied the state were imprisoned, tortured, and, in the worst cases, killed.

If you ask the linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, the Arab Spring did not begin in Tunisia in 2011—it began with the October 2010 protests in the town of Gdeim Izik, in Western Sahara's occupied territories. The former Spanish colony has been illegally occupied by Morocco since 1975. Its territory is divided in two by a 1,677-mile-long sand wall and surrounded by some 7 million land mines.

The native Sahrawis, led by their independence movement the Polisario, are recognized by the International Court of Justice as the rightful owners of the land. However, Morocco hijacked Western Sahara's decolonization process from Spain in 1975, marching some 300,000 settlers into the territory. This triggered a 16-year war between Morocco and the Polisario, which forced more than 100,000 Sahrawis into exile across the border in Algeria. Technically, Western Sahara is still Spanish and remains Africa's last colony.

Whether adrift in refugee camps and dependent on aid or languishing under Moroccan rule, the Sahrawis are still fighting for their independence in an increasingly volatile region. Meanwhile, the UN has no mandate to monitor human rights in occupied Western Sahara. VICE News travels to Western Sahara's occupied and liberated territories, as well as the Polisario-run refugee camps in Algeria, to find out more about one of the world's least-reported conflicts.

In part two, VICE News heads to the Polisario-controlled liberated territories, an all but uninhabitable no man's land littered with mines from the 16-year war. On the way, we pass a Sahrawi protest near the Moroccan Wall—also known as the berm or the wall of shame—that separates the Polisario-controlled Free Zone from the Moroccan-occupied territories.

Once we reach the heart of the liberated territories, Polisario Commander Ahmed Salem shows off one of the many pieces of art he has created and placed in the desert. Then he has his soldiers demonstrate their desert guerrilla tactics.

Hamas and other militant groups have been raining crude rockets into Israel since Operation Protective Edge launched last week—more than 1,000 at last count. Thanks to the Israeli missile defense system known as Iron Dome, few have struck targets and there has been one confirmed Israeli casualty.

But the threat of rockets remains terrifying for people across Israel—especially in the country's south, which takes the brunt of the barrage. VICE News heads there to get a feel for life under constant attack.

On this episode of VICE Meets, we sit down with Ken Vogel, the chief investigative reporter at Politico. In his new book, Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, One Suspicious Vehicle and a Pimp—on the Trail of the Ultra-Rich Hijacking American Politics, Vogel dives into the world of mega donors and their role in politics. We discuss the evolution of big money in American politics and how its influence has changed the game.

This photograph originally appeared in the 2014 VICE photo issue. 

Roxana Azar is a Philadelphia-based photographer. See more of her work here

An American Juggalo, looking more like a soundman at a Halloween party than a gang member. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

It’s not a crime to dress like a clown and listen to horrorcore, though it’s certainly not going to get you a job at Goldman Sachs. However, it does seem a little harsh that here in the United States, fans of Insane Clown Posse are legally on a par with the Bloods and the Crips.

Back in 2011, an FBI report labeled ICP fans a "loosely organized hybrid gang," whose members were guilty of committing assaults and vandalism, and were actively engaged in more serious crimes. ICP brought a lawsuit against the FBI on behalf of their beloved Juggalos and Juggalettes, but last week they lost that court case, bringing great shame upon the Juggalo cohort.

We asked some UK-based Juggalos and Juggalettes how they feel about their subculture being criminalized.

Stephen, 42, Sunderland

VICE: Hey, Stephen. What does being a Juggalo mean to you?
Stephen: It’s all about family, friends, the music that we listen to—as in ICP, ABK, Twisted. It’s all about the horror music. We smoke the old green, but most people do nowadays, so that’s nothing new. To me, it’s all about family and respecting one another. I have not met a Juggalo that I haven’t respected, because we all come from different backgrounds, areas, walks of life.

So you're not a “gang” then?
I just think it’s ridiculous, to tell you the truth. The whole UK Juggalo community thinks it’s ridiculous. To call anyone into different music a gang member is just wrong. To call Slipknot or Slayer fans a gang is mad. The same thing happened when people started listening to Marilyn Manson—it’s all to do with dark music and death metal.

What’s the UK Juggalo community like?
We have gatherings and meet up when we can. I have a Juggalo tattoo, and I’ve become sort of the unofficial Juggalo tattooist. It’s all about family. We’re there to help the family. We go to a lot of gigs and shows, and never seen one bit of trouble. All we do is keep to ourselves. When the people from the outside come in, that’s when any trouble gets caused, but it’s us that get the bad name. It’s always the God Squad and people like that.

Why do you think the FBI problems started?
There are good Juggalos and bad Juggalos, and the younger Juggalos are giving us a bad rep. We try to guide the younger ones, as the older Juggalos. We all do stupid things when we’re young, until we get older and learn better.

Does the US case mean anything for Juggalos in the UK?
There are Juggalos worldwide, so what’s happening in the US affects us all. It’s frustrating, because there's only so much we can do to help over here in the UK. Either way, I support my fellow homies in the States.

What would you do if being a Juggalo was criminalized over here? Renounce your allegiance?
I’d still be a Juggalo. My youngest son is a Juggalo too. I’ve brought him up as one, listening to all the music. Neither of us would stop being Juggalos.

Craig, 26, Hereford

Hi, Craig. What’s a Juggalo to you?
Craig: It’s basically being a strong fan of the music. We’re no more a gang than the people that follow other bands, like Justin Bieber and shit. I’d say Bieber fans are more dangerous than Juggalos, definitely. I’ve heard the shit they do. It’s ridiculous. They cut themselves in front of him and stuff. All Juggalos want is to have a good time, painting your face up, and listening to music. It’s nothing about gang members and all that.

Do you paint your face up?
I paint my face up and go out for a laugh sometimes. I haven’t got any tattoos of Hatchetman [the logo of Insane Clown Posse's record label Psychopathic Records] yet, but I'm looking to get a few. And I’d still get them if [the gang allegations] kicked off over here. The music’s what I love, and nothing’s gonna stop that. I’ll get a tattoo on my neck plain as day—don’t matter.

How long have you been aware of the American Juggalo scene's issue with the FBI?
Since about a year ago. I speak to a lot of the US Juggalos daily. I think it’s so stupid that they could even think Juggalos are a gang. There are actual gangs over there that are causing real trouble. It’s just ridiculous, and I can’t see why they’ve done it. I can’t describe how I feel about it.

Have you got any friends who've had problems over there?
Yeah, I was speaking to a Juggalo friend of mine who lives in the US, and he got stopped by the police for having a Hatchetman tattoo. They pulled him in and questioned him more about it.

Are you worried that the police will criminalize Juggalos here?
I’m definitely worried, especially because of the way that people over here get so panicked about stuff. It’s gonna cause riots. Does that mean I can’t walk down the street now wearing a Hatchetman logo on me, or what? It’s ridiculous to think I’m a gang member.

Kev, 30, Hereford

What do you think of the FBI classing your Juggalo brethren as gang members?
Kev: Well, it seems to just be another case of people thinking they can control everyone through conformity. It’s all about conformity and not really toeing the line. It’s just another example of the world becoming a dictatorial state. If you don’t conform, you’re not right, and therefore you must be stopped. They want to stop it because they don’t understand it. It comes across as being scared of something out of the mainstream. To my knowledge, there are no Juggalos involved in crime over here.

Are you a part of the UK scene yourself?
I’m a bit of an outsider Juggalo. I wouldn’t mind going to the gatherings—they certainly do look like a good laugh. I want to see ICP live, but they don’t come to the UK. That’s about it for me. For me, it’s all about the music. I like all the psychopathic music, but I listen to metal as well. I’m a Juggalo from afar, I’d say.

So you don't paint your face?
No, never been tempted with that one myself. It’s part of it, but it’s a choice. Everyone thinks, What are you doing that for?

Do you fear the prospect of police over here treating you all as gang members?
It’s certainly daunting, yes. It’s a bit crazy, isn’t it? You think about it, and it’s just music fans. It happened before with Marilyn Manson and the Columbine shootings. To be honest, it could happen, but it’s all whether we’re well known enough over here. It’s a bit of a different thing in the UK.

Do you think of yourself as a gang member?
I’ve never really given much thought to it, but I’d say that’s a bit ridiculous. If they said that over here, I wouldn’t stop listening to the music. If they can’t accept that it’s just music, it’s all madness. That’s for them to deal with. If they just talked to Juggalos, they’d see that. But they’d never do that.

Sez Too-Dope, 27, Manchester

You’re the organizer of the UK Gathering of the Juggalos. What’s the scene like here?
Sez Too-Dope: It’s only the unofficial gathering, but it gets bigger every year. It’s all good fun. The first gathering I did in Liverpool was small—there were only about 20 of us, but we traveled from all across the UK. And since then, it’s grown huge. It’s like we’ve known each other for years. It’s really special.

What have you heard from US Juggalos about what's going on over there?
People are having to get their tattoos covered and stuff. It’s ridiculous. The people giving Juggalos a bad name aren’t Juggalos—they shouldn’t be called Juggalos.

Would the criminalization happen over here?
I hope not, because I’ve got two Hatchetman tattoos and I don’t want to get pulled over by police. I don’t think there’s as many of us over here as in the US or other European countries, and ICP haven’t toured over here for years. No one gets any stick over here at the moment. We get asked about the tattoos and what we’re wearing and stuff, but that's no problem. We’ve got high-ranking people over here who are Juggalos. We’ve got a Juggalette who works for the council, and she openly says she’s a Juggalette.

That's handy for the future. What would you say to anyone who thinks Juggalos are dangerous?
The world would be a better place if we all treated each other like we Juggalos treat each other. 

Thanks, Sez.

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This article was updated at 5.54PM on the 16th of July to reflect transcription errors.