The Russian Girl Who Grew Up in a Garbage Dump

Trailer for Something Better to Come

Ten-year-old Yula lives in Europe's largest trash dump, called Svalka, just 13 miles from the Kremlin in Putin's Russia. It's the only home she's known: Heaps of garbage, where Yula and her mother, Tanya, are forced to work for an illegally-operated recycling business. They're paid in denatured alcohol (a substance similar to rubbing alcohol). The residents drink and bathe in melted snow. They eat rotten food scraps and sleep on trash in makeshift huts. Their only connection to the outside world is through the garbage of others and the glimmering views of Moscow that can be seen from the dump.

Fourteen years of Yula's life there are chronicled in a documentary, Something Better to Come, by Oscar-nominated director Hanna Polak. The film—which one reviewer called "Boyhood from a trashcan"—follows Yula from age ten to 24, through family struggles, rampant alcoholism, and a teenage pregnancy. Polak's use of cinema verité creates an intimacy and immediacy between subject and viewer. As viewers, we don't just see life in the dump—we feel it, touch it, and experience it, as much as you can from the other side of a screen. With subtlety and patience, Polak gently reveals the horror and destitution of Yula's life and the lives of those around her. But most importantly, Polak teaches us that shared grief and despair can create the truest form of kinship and community.

The film makes its debut on HBO Europe on Sunday, as well as select screenings in the United States this week. I spoke to Polak about the creation of the film, the decision to follow Yula, and the astonishing changes she saw over their 14 years together.

VICE: You must have met hundreds of homeless people while making this film. What drew you to Yula?
Hannah Polak: She was outstanding in many different ways. You could immediately see that the camera liked her, that she is beautiful, that she has something really interesting in her face, in her eyes, something very strong, something very stubborn. I liked her immediately. I thought Yula and her mother Tanya were amazing because they really supported each other and were really close with each other, which does not often happen in these kind of difficult families. Often times, the parents are drinking, the children are alone, and they actually run away from those kind of abusive houses.

What was Yula's childhood like?
In Yula's case, she actually really did have strong relationship with both of her parents. She really loved her father, even though her father was very abusive. When she was a young child, he would send Yula to buy him vodka without giving her money. She would have to go around the small province where they were living and collect garbage and sell it. She would just have to go and find vodka otherwise she couldn't come back. So, you know, I think it's something on this emotional level—that they both have this capacity to be kind .

They accepted me very quickly, both Yula and Tanya, and they were very easygoing and they would tell me things. And I wanted to listen and I wanted to be there, but Yula whose fate was completely extraordinary.

Watch: Can Anyone Shut Down Greece's Volcano of Burning Garbage?

How did you relationship with Yula change over the course of 14 years? Were there any pivotal moments in your relationship?
She realized very quickly that she could trust me , because they knew that she felt safe when I was there. They said, "OK, you can film but just be there because we don't know if she is going to run away." So this is how I was able to observe the moment.

Yula was 15 years old when she got pregnant. She didn't really have any shelter, and I took her from the garbage dump to give birth. That was the moment she completely opened to me—she was completely frightened and searching for some kind of support in me and I felt that this was a moment when I finally understood many things about their life. This girl... It's not a film, it's a life.

Almost the entire film takes place in one of the largest garbage dumps in Europe, Svalka, which seems like a lawless dystopia. Who is in charge of Svalka and what are the politics of the place?
Svalka was opened in 1964 and is considered a military area because of the hazardous materials dumped there. There is a rumor that even radioactive waste from previous years is still buried in this ground. It's a huge mountain of trash, 14-stories high, stretching two miles long and one mile wide, surrounded by a fence. There are official staff workers, some of whom came up with an idea to open different kinds of businesses at the garbage dump, including recycling centers, but these businesses were not sanctioned and operated illegally. So, poor people come from all over to work at these illegal recycling centers where they collect recyclable materials and are paid with a small amount of money or vodka, which is not really vodka, but some kind of spirit. Many people are poisoned and die from this alcohol and the people in charge buy this alcohol for 30 cents and sell it for a dollar. It's become kind of a mafia situation, in which the people from the recycling centers beat someone who goes and works for another recycling center, and the people who are on the lowest level of this hierarchy suffer the most because they are paid pennies. They can be threatened, they can be killed. No one cares for their life and existence. So you can see that it's a huge business and there is an illegal market system in place.

It sounds almost like a micro-country with its own self-contained market system.
I think that was the most shocking thing for me—I found a country in the country. Normal country laws do not apply here, because there is this fence which is dividing this garbage dump from have no rights to call the police if something happens, so then in turn, they've created a situation in which there are all these illegal things going inside and there are no investigations.

There was this one case of a woman who nearly raped; she was stabbed with a knife many times. It happened sometime after I met her and I saw that she only had one eye. I asked her, "Marina, what happened?" and she said, "I was attacked with a knife in this rape attempt." She said in the beginning she could still see, but after a month, she wasn't able to see anymore. I asked her, "Why didn't you go to the hospital? Why didn't you call me?" And she said, "Do you think I could go to the hospital? Do you know that they would start an investigation here, a criminal investigation, and I would never be able to return here?" I couldn't believe it. She had no rights.

Had you seen things like that happening—the police investigating after someone sought help or medical attention?
Yes, this is something I observed so many times. The police would come from outside to burn the houses inside, beat the people, put them in prison, for not having documents.

Related: A Volcano of Garbage in the Arctic Has Been Burning For Eight Weeks

The film is very subtle with its social commentary. We only really hear about what's going on in Russia and the world outside of the dump via the broken-down radios and what the people in Svalka see on television. Why did you choose to mediate social commentary this way?
First of all, I didn't want to create a cliché about Russia. I love this country, and I don't want to be amongst the people who just blindly criticize everything, politicize everything. I am not an outsider who is trying to find a bleak subject and talk about the country; I want to tell the stories of these people. I'm sure that many Russian people have no idea about what is happening, because no one talks about these people.

There is also the fact that this is a universal story—it's not only in Russia, but everywhere in the world that we have homeless people. I included the radio parts to create a sense of time passing and history passing. Putin came to power in 2000, and I used his career to draw a small moment in the Russian history. There is some kind of context to this place.

How do you think this film can help the people living in Svalka?
I hope that it will evoke discussion. I hope the viewers will be inspired by Yula. I don't even see the film about the garbage dump—I see this as an inspiring story, that we all are able to change our life, to be kinder and nicer; show more love and appreciation and kindness.

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Inside the Carthage Film Festival After the Tunis Suicide Bombing

A member of the Tunisian security forces stands guard as journalists gather at the visitors entrance of the National Bardo Museum in Tunis on March 19, 2015, in the aftermath of an attack on foreign tourists. Photo by AFP/Fethi Belaid

Last week, the Carthage Film Festival was thrown into turmoil when a suicide bomber killed 12 members of the Tunisian Presidential Guard. The bombing took place in the downtown district housing the cinemas where Africa's oldest film festival was taking place. The next day ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, as they had done in the past month when bombing a Russian passenger jet in Egypt, and attacks in Beirut and Paris.

The suicide bomber struck while I was on the flight to Tunis to attend the festival. "We have been attacked," were the first words I heard as I landed at the airport. The words were spoken in a grave voice by the communications director of the festival, who had come to meet me at the airport. Her second words were, "You're going to stay, right?" I nodded. Her phone was ringing off the hook with guests canceling visits, and others asking if they could leave Tunis. She said we had to take separate cars to the hotel.

The drive from the airport to the hotel was an eerie affair. Hardly anyone was out, and the only vehicles on the streets were parked police cars that acted as blockades stopping us from getting to the hotel. A curfew had been set for 9 PM, and we had already missed it. The driver snaked through the streets looking for a path to the hotel. Every couple of blocks, he would get out of the car to chat a few words in Arabic before returning to the car and driving on until he reached a barricade, where the police would let us past. At one barrier, there were no police, only another vehicle, and both drivers seemed to stare each other down until we moved on. A few minutes later, the driver's mother called, demanding he return home. It felt as though I was in some desolate town in a Western, not heading to Africa's oldest film festival.

Can a film festival take place at the time of curfew? Behind the scenes, the organizers had already made their decision. The show would go on.

At the hotel door, the fact that the security guard was the size of a Bond henchman, offered no comfort. Nor the three young men carrying guns, with "police" emblazoned across their jackets.

The tension evaporated when I saw the magnificent beard that drops like a bat from the chin of Tarzan Nasser, or it could've been his co-director, his identical twin brother Arab. He was sitting with the great Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, the star of their film Dégradé.

I couldn't help but chuckle over the fact that we were living out the plot of Dégradé, which tells the story of several women in a hair salon who are almost oblivious to the mini-war that is going on outside. In the hotel lobby, however, the director was just staring forward with an expression that seemed to say, "I can't get away from this shit."

The lobby bar was bustling because no one had anywhere else to go. The conversation between the badge-wearing collection of filmmakers, actors, producers, staff, and journalists was mostly about cinema, sprinkled with the odd comment about the bomb. We learned that a month-long state of emergency had been called by the government. No one in the lobby was certain if the festival would still carry on.

Can a film festival still happen when there's a curfew in place? Behind the scenes, the organizers had already made their decision. The show would go on. Sami Tlili, the artistic director in charge of selecting feature films, was busy rewriting the schedule for movies that he had been poring over for months.

"A lady said to me that any other film festival would have stopped," Tlili told me. "But we didn't want to be defeated by terror. We spent the whole night rewriting the schedule so that we could screen the films in the hours when there is no curfew, trying to make sure we showed every film that was in the selection at least once."

One of those films was Much Loved, a film about Moroccan sex workers that was banned in its homeland after its world premiere in Cannes. The lead actress Loubna Abidar was recently beaten up by extremists in Casablanca, then said she was ignored by the police when she went to report the crime. She claimed the police said that it was just desserts for her performance. Fearing for her safety, she moved to France.

Yet Tlili argued that the film wasn't programmed as a political statement, even if the choosing of the film had come to been seen as such. "The polemic that occurred around the film and in Cannes didn't come into our decision of playing the film. We chose it because of the cinematic merits. Of course we know other Arab countries refuse to show the film, but they have their own criteria and we respect their decision."

The desire not to be defeated was apparent when two days after the bomb, Much Loved played to a full house. The street was packed with attendees and fans, several straining to take photos to post on social media, celebrating free speech and open discussion. This was the event of the festival, the best rebuke to the terrorists, an appreciation of a film that shows sex workers operating in an Islamic country that doesn't try to hide their existence. It's hard to imagine that there has been a more meaningful and exhilarating screening of a film anywhere else this year. The crowd breathed pathos.

VICE Talks Film: Talking to Director Joshua Oppenheimer About 'The Look of Silence':

The decision to be the first country in the Arab world to play Much Loved is in keeping with Tunisia's position as arguably the most liberal Arab country today. After all, it was in Tunisia that the Arab Spring began in December 2010, after the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi sparked a series of demonstration that toppled President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Inspired, Tunisia's neighbors followed suit, although many have since headed into the arms of warlords.

Despite—or perhaps because of—its position as the only Arab Spring country that has made the transition from dictatorship to constitutional democracy, Tunisia has already faced two major terrorist attacks this year. In March, three ISIS-affiliated gunmen shot visitors at the Bardo National Museum, killing 22. In June, a gunman killed 38 tourists on a beach in Sousse. Yet even here the Tunisian people showed their desire for democracy, when a dozen locals and workers at the hotel, formed a human barricade, challenging the gunman to shoot them first. The gunman turned away, saying, "I haven't come for you. Go away."

Parliamentary elections last year resulted in an Islamic country voluntarily relinquishing power to their secular opponents. The new constitution incorporates the Islamic heritage and secular liberal freedoms. Notably, the constitution even guarantees equal rights for women, a fact noted by Michael Moore in his new film Where to Invade Next, in which he contrasts Tunisia's progressive gender politics, especially its high number of female parliamentarians, with the paltry situation in the United States.

The decision to continue with the festival was a fitting way for the Carthage Film Festival to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The festival screened a broad spectrum of films from around the world, with a focus on Argentina and Italy this year, as well as showcasing the best in regional cinema.

On the night of the bombing Alayan was disappointed that the 9 PM screening of his film was cancelled. "Maybe it's because I live in occupied Palestine," he said. "I was even ready to go to my screening that night."

Yasmine Mustafa, the editor of The Council , a documentary about students running for elections at the UNRWA school in Jordan, was walking to her screening when the bomb hit. She had to be asked repeatedly to return to the hotel before she eventually decided to return. She called the cinematographer who was already at the cinema. "I was told that the screening carried on," she explained. "So I would like to have been there, but they cancelled all the Q&As that were to take place after the screenings."

It's fair to say that in the nights after the bomb, some cabin fever set in at the hotel. The same faces, the same dinner, no movies to invigorate us. Yet the conversation remained lighthearted. Keeping the tone joyful was Muayad Alayan, the Jerusalem-based director of Love Theft and Other Entanglements, about a petty Palestinian thief who steals a car with an Israeli soldier in the trunk.

On the night of the bombing, Alayan was disappointed that the 9 PM screening of his film was cancelled. "I didn't even think that it was in question whether the festival would carry on," he said. "Maybe it's because I live in occupied Palestine. I was even ready to go to my screening that night."

Also, with a smile constantly on her face and a glittering jumpsuit, is Hind Shoufani, director of Trip Along Exodus, who made a film about Palestinian politics through the years, told through the eyes and writing of her father Dr. Elias Shoufani, a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Because of the time constraints, the film festival cancelled post-screening Q&As, but like many at the festival, she held a Q&A in the cinema lobby instead.

I spoke with British producer Georgina Paget, who came to the festival with her film Queens of Syria, about female Syrian refugees who performed their own version of The Trojan Women while in Jordan.

"I'm here with a documentary film that shows the human spirit triumphing over adversity and that highlights the power of art and creativity to unite and heal," Paget said. "But this year the festival itself has been testament to that. It's been truly amazing to see the way that the organizers, film makers and audiences have made sure that it's been art, and not violence, that's triumphed in Tunis."

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Rent-Striking London Students Won Compensation for Their Crappy Housing

Photo by Chris Bethell

The UK housing crisis spares only a lucky few, but a bunch of students at University College London (UCL) have just scored a victory that might give those struggling with crappy housing situations reason to be cheerful.

Student digs are traditionally dives, but earlier this year, Hawkridge House in Kentish Town, London, was basically turned into a loud building site with very little notification. There was often construction noise, even in exam times, and students were told not to open their curtains because there would be builders about, peering in. There were also sightings of rats and mice.

Pissed off students decided to do something about this, and in April held a rent strike—meaning they got organized and simply refused to cough up their rent. This led to threats from the university that they would be thrown out of their classes. VICE can now reveal that they have been awarded £300,000 in compensation. 238 students were each given £1,197 —equivalent to nine weeks' rent that they had demanded.

The university complaints panel unanimously declared UCL had "seriously failed" in its treatment of its students, saying management showed a "lack of empathy" in dealing with students' grievances whilst acknowledging conditions at Hawkridge House were "unacceptable."

This comes off the back of last month's announcement that students in other UCL accommodation had also won some compensation, too. Strikers at Campbell House were awarded over £100,000 in compensation for living in conditions described as "unbearable."

VICE has been given a first look at the campaign's announcement. The triumphant tone will presumably leave UCL's management a bit nervous. It says:

"UCL Cut the Rent—a directly-democratic, student-led campaign—believes this announcement further vindicates their established position that direct action and disruptive protests are extremely effective methods for holding unelected and powerful bodies to account. With compensation for striking students now in excess of £400,000, UCL-CTR believes that rent strikes will become an increasingly important tactic amongst the wider student movement."

I spoke to Angus O'Brien, the current UCL Union Halls and Accommodation representative, who told me that the victory feels, "really good, to be honest. It's been an incredibly long fight that started over seven months ago."

But there are no plans to let up now that the students have been compensated. "The relationship between students UCL in accommodation has completely changed. They're now a little bit running scared of the campaign and hoping that we don't do it again. But this is exactly what we want to do on a wider scale across the university and get affordable rent for all students."

UCL currently makes almost £16 million in profit from renting out accommodation. "That could fund a 45 percent rent cut for everyone," said Angus, adding that the campaign's demand is for a 40 percent cut to allow for maintenance work. "We think Hawkridge House and Campbell House will provide great examples for how we can take back control over our accommodation and access to education. If that leads to a rent strike it leads to a rent strike. But the students have the power to win this battle."

The longer-term goal is to abolish rent entirely, he said. "We'll get there one day."

Angus put the cost of rent into a wider context of universities trying to milk their students for every penny they can to make up for funding cuts: "Fighting against the rent increases can be the front line of the free education movement. If universities can't exploit students in other ways, they're going to have to go to the government and say, "we need free education—this isn't working."

According to the campaign's statement, the action continues this week:

"As the next stage of the campaign, UCL-CTR will be holding a rally at the university on Friday at 13:00 to demand an immediate 40 percent rent cut and the establishment of affordable rent prices for all those living in UCL student accommodation."

Angus reckoned the rent strike could provide inspiration for other people paying sky high rent to live somewhere awful: "Universities can provide a testing ground for housing actions. It's all the same landlord, students live in the same place, there's a social element to it. It would be much harder to do it across a city than in a university, which is why it's so important to do it in university. Once there's that example of housing action and collective action, that can be applied to a larger scale because people can see it's going to work."

I asked Angus what the students were going to do with the money. "I have no idea," he told me. "Hopefully booze and stuff but probably just more on rent."

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What We Know About the Guy Whose Alleged Mass Murder Threat Shut Down the University of Chicago Monday

Photo via Wikimedia Commons user Leefon.

Amid the ongoing tensions surrounding the indictment of a Chicago police officer in the 2014 murder of 17-year-old Chicago high school student Laquan McDonald, a student at University of Illinois at Chicago has been arrested for allegedly making online threats to "rid the world of white devils." According to reports, the student, Jabari Dean, posted extremely specific messages online about bursting on to the nearby campus and executing 16 white people—one for each police bullet fired at McDonald on October 20, 2014.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the following unambiguous threat was included in a comment posted on WorldStarHipHop.com, below a movie clip about Black Panthers preparing to kill police, and it was initialed "JRD":

This is my only warning. At 10 a.m. on Monday morning, I'm going to the campus quad of the University of Chicago. I will be armed with an M-4 carbine and two desert eagles, all fully loaded. I will execute approximately 16 white male students and or staff, which is the same number of time McDonald was killed.

The comment was apparently discovered online over Thanksgiving weekend by a New York resident who forwarded the information along to the FBI. On Sunday night, the University of Chicago had received word of the threat, and announced that the campus would be closed Monday. The FBI apparently tracked Dean down through his ISP and made the arrest on Monday morning.

Limited information has been released about Dean. The 21-year-old was arrested "without incident," according to a press release by the Department of Justice. According to his Linkedin profile, Dean studies electrical engineering at the University of Illinois, and attended to Hirsch Metropolitan High School on Chicago's South Side.

Federal prosecutors say that Dean, who appeared in court on Monday, is not considered a threat, because he lacked the resources—presumably weapons—to make good on his threats. He will be allowed to return to his mother's house, where he lives, on Tuesday.

The arrest comes in the wake of protests over McDonald's murder. Last Wednesday, a Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder in the case. Footage was released showing the police officer emptying a clip into McDonald, who is seen jaywalking, then being shot in what is apparently continuous gunfire that persisted long after he is seen lying on the ground, limp. McDonald had allegedly attacked a police car while on PCP.

With the help of the Fraternal Order of Police, Van Dyke was able to post bail Monday, and was expected to leave jail later this evening.

Dean now faces federal charges of making a "threat in interstate commerce," a charge that usually accompanies terrorism cases. However, the court filing in the case says Dean's alleged crime carries a five-year maximum penalty, so it's by no means clear that federal prosecutors plan to pursue terrorism charges in this instance.

Earlier in November, after two faculty firings at the University of Missouri, a student posted a similar threat on Yik Yak, saying "I'm going to stand my ground tomorrow and shoot every black person I see." A suspect, Hunter Park, was arrested and charged with making a terrorist threat.

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World Leaders Have Only One Goal at the Climate Conference in Paris

United Nation Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon welcomes Barack Obama at the COP21 United Nations Climate Change Conference. Photo via Thierry Orban/Getty Images

On Monday leaders from nearly 150 nations gathered in Paris for COP21, or the Conference of Parties, an annual gathering that seeks to find global solutions to help get a handle on arguably the Biggest Bugaboo of our time, climate change. The conference is set to last just under two weeks, until December 11, and upon its conclusion the 195 countries and 40,000 delegates who made the trek to the French capital hope to have agreed upon something monumental. They have but one real goal: They seek a "legally binding and universal agreement" to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, "with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C," according to COP21's website.

If the world isn't able to keep the temps from rising above the agreed upon 2 degrees Celsius the consequences could be disastrous. Many scientists project that warming above that target in the future would fundamentally alter our world, and would bring about long droughts, rising oceans, mass migration, and extinctions. It would render many cities on the Persian Gulf uninhabitable.

"Never have the stakes been so high," French President Francoise Hollande said in his speech to the gathered delegates on the first day of COP21. President Obama echoed those sentiments, and along the way quelled Chinese fears that such measures can't be taken without stalling the economy, pointing to economic growth in the United States over the last two years despite no growth in emissions. Chinese President Xi Jinping said that any agreement reached at the conference must account for the differences among the attending nations, saying countries should be allowed to seek their own solutions to cap emissions based on their own interest. China and America, the two largest producers of greenhouse gas, met on Monday at COP21 and vowed to continue to take strong action on climate change, a move which was met with praise in the form of a Tweet from former Vice President Al Gore.

British Prime Minister David Cameron asked the other world leaders amassed in Paris "what would we tell our grandchildren" if, in fact, they fail to agree on a robust climate deal? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country would remain committed to the goals of COP21, and believes new technology will help the world reach them. Perhaps, of the many speeches given on COP21's first day, the one with the highest stakes came from Perry G Christie, prime minister of the Bahamas, who said failure to reach a binding agreement could spell the end of his country in total. As a result, he'd like to see a more aggressive plan, one that would not see the earth's temperature rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In other climate news out of Paris, Bill Gates is heading up a 20 billion dollar investment, along with 28 other backers, in clean energy. The group, called Mission Innovation, would be a public-private venture, marrying billionaire investors to governments because "the pace of innovation and the scale of transformation and dissemination remain significantly short of what is needed," as they put it in their launch statement. The money will be spent on technologies designed specifically to reduce greenhouse gas.

Reaching an agreement won't be easy, as past negotiations at COP have proven, and sticking to it may prove even harder. The proof there lies in the Kyoto Protocol. Reached at COP3 in 1997, it was designed to lower greenhouse emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. But that protocol is a nonbinding one, which ultimately meant it didn't have the teeth to hold countries responsible when they couldn't keep to the goal. Beyond that, several large nations—Canada, India—were exempt from the agreement reached at Kyoto. The binding agreement of COP21 has been something conference organizers have been working toward for 20 years, and one that requires everyone to be on board. It's an important 12 days. Our future may depend on it.

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One of the Most Powerful Politicians in New York Was Just Found Guilty of Corruption

Former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver during better times. Photo via Flickr user Zack Seward

In Manhattan federal court on Monday, a Lower East Side politician named Sheldon Silver was found guilty of all seven counts against him. Just like that, one of the longtime pillars of what is probably America's most corrupt state was done.

After spending nearly 40 years in government, the former New York State Assembly Speaker was arrested earlier this year on charges of honest services fraud, extortion, and money laundering. The federal complaint from US Attorney Preet Bharara's office essentially accused the guy of repeatedly using his position for personal profit (he was also a private attorney). That scheme included a Columbia University doctor who referred clients to a law firm in exchange for state grants for research. It also centered on luxury developers who—through a secret retainer—indirectly did Silver the same favor; in the developers' case, the payoffs were lucrative tax breaks from the state.

It was your classic "pay to play" corruption: a politician using power to line his own pockets and lying about it routinely—a guy pretty much everyone thought they knew was corrupt. And through the five weeks of trial, the US attorney's office brought a ton of evidence against Silver to prove that point. Silver's defense team, on the other hand, simply argued that what their client did was just "politics as usual."

Now the the 71-year-old faces the possibility of decades in federal prison for his crimes, joining the increasingly crowded club of Empire State politicians to get caught on the wrong side of the law. The only question is how big of an impact Silver's fall will have on the way things get done in New York.

"Today, Sheldon Silver got justice," Bharara said in a statement issued soon after the verdict was announced. "And at long last, so did the people of New York."

Silver's downfall is a major victory for the prosecutor, who has made it his mission to DirtDevil the shit out of the Empire State. It was his office that picked up the pieces of the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption last year, after the subpoena-wielding body was shut down by its own creator, Governor Andrew Cuomo. (It is now pretty common knowledge that the reason for the shutdown had something to do with the Commission getting too close to Cuomo's own office in its probes.)

After the Commission was shut down, Bharara sprang into action, leveling two massive indictments: one against Silver, and another against his Senate Republican counterpart, Dean Skelos, who's still on trial himself. It felt like almost overnight, the US Attorney had single-handedly eliminated two of the "three men in a room"—a made-for-Frank-Underwood phrase that captures how, in Albany, Cuomo, Silver, and Skelos used to agree on budget deals in back rooms.

Even as Skelos's trial rages on, literally just around the block from where Silver met his demise on Monday, what Bharara has done is essentially convict the entire governing process in New York. With this verdict in mind, any deal that Silver touched in the past now firmly reeks of favors, subtle bribery, and straight-up corruption. The rest of Albany will most likely try to shun his legacy—it already seems like Silver's name has been swiped off his district's website—when, in reality, it was the broader political culture that took a big hit on Monday.

Of course, given this state's track record, it's hard to expect a massive turnaround after one conviction, splashy though it may be.

"Rats don't fall for the same trap twice," Janos Marton, a former Moreland Commission Special Counsel, told me over email after hearing the verdict. "Silver's successors in power may find different paths to the same corruption, and it's on all of us to stay vigilant."

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How Urban Gardening Can Save Black Communities

All stills from 'Can You Dig This.'

Before the urban farming boom—even before Michelle Obama popularized the phenomena of "food deserts"—there was Ron Finley—a man who calls himself a "gangster gardener," and who started urban gardening on the strip of dirt outside his home in South Los Angeles. In 2013, it was Finley who convinced the LA City Council, after years of debate, to allow fruit and vegetable plots on public parkways.

Los Angeles-based filmmaker Delila Vallot heard about Finley's efforts, and decided to dig past the rhetoric to see if urban gardening was delivering on the hype. Her journey through the gardens of LA's neediest neighborhoods culminates this week in a new documentary, Can You Dig This, which will be available on VOD Tuesday. The documentary, which features Finley, follows four residents of South LA: two 20-somethings who join the Compton Community Garden, a halfway house resident who learns to garden, and an eight-year-old girl who turns her garden into a money-making venture. As each of the subjects struggle to overcome personal hurdles and systemic challenges in their communities, the film focuses on the small-scale victories they get from urban gardening.

On MUNCHIES: This Rooftop Garden Is Feeding Atlanta's Homeless

I spoke with Vallot and Finley about their vision for the film, the importance of having a hand in food production, and how gardening can be a seed for social transformation.

VICE: Delila, what inspired you to make this project?
Delila Vallot: I wanted to explore more about Ron, and his very cool diatribe about changing lives through planting seeds. I wanted to find out first-hand if that was real or not. Through the process of shooting him, I realized that while there were some people who knew him through this TED talk and all the buzz, there are a lot of people who might be encountering him for the first time. So what I wanted to do was see a day in the life of Ron, to have him talk to us as if you were going to someone's house that you really look up to, that you want to have an intimate conversation with. That was my idea as far as shooting Ron, and I wanted to have representatives of his ideas in the movie—actual test cases, if you will, who are examples of his message.

So how did you find those test cases? The film depicts four subjects at vulnerable points in their life, dealing with very difficult challenges.
Vallot: I did a lot of research. It took me at least six months to get to where people trusted me enough to start to open up for me to realize that they would be characters. I did spend a lot of time with gardeners in gardens, and a lot of time on the phone doing research.

One of the key things I learned while shooting the doc was that if I didn't open up about real stuff about my life, they had no reason to either. People don't necessarily want to be on camera, even though we think that they do. They didn't necessarily care—they have their lives to lead. It was about forging real friendships with people, and capturing those friendships.

"Billions and billions of dollars grow on trees every day. We need to have people realize that this apple you just grew is currency." — Ron Finley

By the end of the film, Quimonie—a young girl in the projects—isn't just helping her family eat better; she's helping pay the bills. Do you see the future of urban gardening as becoming a model for local businesses?
Ron Finley: No doubt. That's exactly where it's going. You're showing someone life skills, you're showing them how to take care of themselves, and you're showing them how you can grow resources. We've been taught all our lives that money doesn't go on trees—but it does. Billions and billions of dollars grow on trees every day. We need to have people realize that this apple you just grew is currency. It's not about being frivolous and getting your hands dirty—it's about changing people's lives and employing people. This is a way you can be self-sustaining. That's what to me this is about.

Watch: Hi-Tech Guerilla Gardening

What are some of the obstacles in trying to scale up gardens into businesses?
Finley: The biggest obstacle has been people. culture is not built for you to be sustainable, to be an entrepreneur. As far as I'm concerned, this culture's built for slavery. That's for everybody—I don't care what color you are. If you don't have a hand in your food, you're a slave. It's something that's so important to you, yet you're getting someone else to do it for you.

My thing is to change the culture so people realize how important this is, and to get people to have reverence for the soil, what comes out of it, and what goes into it. People don't want to get it because the current system serves them. Some people are happy with the status quo, some people are happy with being politically correct; I'm not. Being politically correct is what got us into this shit. It's time for people to be renegades; it's time for people to say, 'I'm tired of this, dude.' We gotta change this. I know a ten-year-old who is 300 pounds. It's not cool. It has to change.

Los Angeles has 26 square miles of vacant lots. Is there any kind of initiative to open that land for public use?
Finley: I would love to be able to do that, but this is LA, where land is a premium. Nobody's just trying to give it up. Hopefully some opportunities are developing, where we have the ear of some politicians that say they want to make it happen, and use this land to put people to work and change their lives. But something's gonna happen—if we have to take it, something's gonna happen.

Vallot: Is it the bureaucracy that's in the way?

Finley: Oh, totally. The bureaucracy injures everything. But the fact that we're all having this conversation says a lot. People are waking up and being inspired to know they can change their lives.

"You feed them this bullshit food every day, and then expect them to excel. How? They're not getting the nourishment for their bodies or their brains to develop." — Ron Finley

Many of the challenges the film's subjects are dealing with—from unemployment to being prejudicially targeted by law enforcement—intersect with concerns raised by Black Lives Matter activists across the country. Do you see urban gardening as a way that black communities can organize to remedy some of those problems?
Vallot: You'll notice in the film I really tried to leave everything with an inspirational message, because I feel like when we talk about things that are wrong and negative, that creates a recording in our brains and we keep going to a place where we're victims. So the idea was to leave it with all the positive things that gardeners can do, and bring up the fact that there aren't enough gardens in black neighborhoods, and that it does create community and all of its positive benefits. That will create more positivity, and that's a form of activism—passive activism—and that's what I stand behind. Well, Ron feels that it's not passive activism.

Finley: Why I do what I do is everything you just mentioned: the fucked up school systems, the bad food that they're feeding these kids, the lack of opportunity. African Americans are 13.2 percent of the US population. How the fuck are we 70 to 80 percent of the people who're in prison? That means I'm a crime machine, dude! I'm robbing this person, I just broke into this house, and I'm assaulting someone and stealing their car if those numbers make any fucking sense whatsoever. They don't! People are waking up and seeing that, man. These kids don't even know that they're being set up, from birth. You feed them this bullshit food every day, and then expect them to excel. How? They're not getting the nourishment for their bodies or their brains to develop. How are they supposed to compete with kids in Japan, or Spokane, Washington? They can't. You're telling me that they don't know this? You're telling me this isn't by design?

Vallot: We're talking about breaking the cycle. And it does sound overly simplistic, but by surrounding ourselves with a lot of healthy greens, beautifying our neighborhoods, and doing something that is actually feasible—planting a seed in the ground—I saw people's lives changing. When I went into the garden on Long Beach Boulevard, which is filled with prostitution, drug dealing, and all that stuff, I saw that that garden was an oasis, and you really do feel safer there. It's something that really does create change.

Can You Dig This premieres on VOD December 1.

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The Artist Making Hair a Political Issue for Black British Women

Selina Thompson on the set of her show 'Dark and Lovely'

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

"Hair is just hair." Selina Thompson has repeated this six or seven times to 40 assembled strangers before they have to be prompted to turn it into a chorus. "OK, you're not really getting it, are you?" she says, cajoling us to join her in what quickly becomes to feel like part of a ritual. Hair is just hair. Hair is just hair.

But nine years ago in a bathroom in Erdington, Birmingham, her hair wasn't just her hair. When a 16-year-old Thompson looked at herself in the mirror and decided the only solution for her heat-battered afro, damaged after years of exposure to home relaxers, was to buzz the whole lot off, hair wasn't just hair. Nor was hair just hair when her mother sobbed and her dad shut down and refused to engage with his freshly-sheared daughter.

"I was just so confused," she tells me once she's emerged from the tumbleweave of hair-extensions that forms the set of her one-woman show Dark and Lovely—an exploration of how hair informs ideas of race, gender, and beauty. "Watching all these reactions happen around me. I couldn't understand it. My dad's reaction was the most difficult one to deal with, he was just so angry. But I didn't regret it, just because I'd been so deeply unhappy with the state of my hair before."

The "hair is just hair" motif is Thompson's response to some of the reception that early scratches of Dark and Lovely received, mostly from people who couldn't fathom why it was a subject worthy of the kind of ceaseless attention the Leeds-based artist has shown it over the last two years. The answers are condensed into just under two hours of stories gathered from the floors of hair salons in ordinary working class black communities, where the politics of what it means to be a black woman come resoundingly to life.

Thompson began putting her material together by spending time in hair salons, with barbers and black hair in beauty shops in the Chapeltown area of Leeds, finding that the best way to get under the skin of these places was to muck in and help out. "I found that by going in with a notepad and a dictaphone people became stressed-out and didn't want to speak to me. So instead I would just spend the day working there.

"I learned a lot about what it is to be black and British, and the multiplicity of that. I learned about how, for these women, getting their hair done is a moment of community and bonding and almost a spiritual time to be shared between people. But I also learned about times when it is exposing and revealing of deeper and darker tensions within the black community."

The centerpiece of Thomspon's show—a seven-foot-high igloo of hair extensions decked-out with a barber's chair and the odd photo—is where she creates a momentary community that brings her audience right into the bosom of the black lives that she's explored.

The scene inside is unflinching in its purity for the way it generates spontaneous and real conversation between Thompson and her audience. For those familiar with her reference points—the night I attend in Sheffield, black women make up about half of those in the audience—it provokes a hum of knowing laughter and uninvited but welcome interruptions as her stories tap into the fabric of lives led.

For those in the audience who didn't grow up with the unusual pressures that black hair places on its bearer, the tumbleweave is a place where facts and stats—and Thompson has plenty—morph into real people and real experiences. For example, L'Oreal estimates that black women spend six times as much on their hair as any other ethnic group; women in the UK spend £5.2 billion on their hair, 80 percent of which is spent by black women despite the fact they make up fewer than 3 percent of the population.

Some of the stories Thompson tells are domestic and simple. Others are more layered. "There's a story about a little white girl" she tells me, "who comes back from holiday and goes into school with cornrows. She's told that the cornrows aren't suitable for the school environment so her parents write in and ask why.

"They point out that there are black girls who also have their hair in cornrows. The teachers say that the school makes allowances for other people's cultural heritage, but the little girl's hair is too urban so she can't wear them in cornrows. I think about that story a lot. There's so much going on but I can't quite unpick it."

Hair is not just hair; it is more. It's a kind of shorthand for black experiences lived out in a white world. A world where an 18-year-old student has to travel to the other side of a new city just to find the kind of products that her hair needs, passing dozens of chain outlets en route. It's not necessarily a story of victims and oppressors, but one of a young girl who wonders why she has to give up an afternoon to attain basic convenience.

"You can't undo 400 years of damage with a hundred years of trying really hard," says Thompson. "For centuries black hair was 'othered' and talked about really aggressively as if it was fur or wool. The changes we make to it are all about changing the texture to make it look a bit more like Caucasian hair, and that throws up so much to do with race and beauty politics and who is and who isn't beautiful, and the cultural value that goes with that.

"At the other side of all that black hair is still 'other,'" Thompson continues. "It's the complete opposite end of the beauty spectrum."

Even after two hours of careful exploration it's clear that this is a complex issue. To reduce the process that Thompson and millions like her have gone through to "a struggle" seems too bleak, and it denigrates an experience which seems to be at the heart of black female identity.

"I hope that if and when I have kids that I would surround them with lots and lots of imagery of afro-hair that was not just beautiful but also cool." She laughs, and it's the kind of laugh that gets in your ears and warms them up. "But it's hard to know what kids think is cool."

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Blood, Beer, and the Maritime Rumor Mill: The Bizarre Murder Trial That Has Captivated a Small Canadian Town

Dennis Oland, charged with second-degree murder in the death of his father, arrives at his preliminary hearing at the Law Courts in Saint John, N.B. on Wednesday, November 26, 2014. Photo courtesy The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan

Rumors ran thick and fast in Saint John, New Brunswick on July 6, 2011, when Richard Oland, president of the Far End Corp and a sixth generation member of the Oland beer dynasty, was beaten to death on the floor of his office in the heart of the historic uptown. The cause of death: dozens of slashes and blunt-force wounds. The killer had wielded a heavy object with enough force to break apart the bones in his face, leaving fragments lodged in the wounds. Gashes on his hands indicated he fought for his life. The blood soaked through three layers of flooring, permeating the ceiling of the office below.

Murders are rare in Saint John, a port city of 70,000, a melange of massive oil refineries and wild ocean views, dead malls, and 19th-century brickwork draped with film-noir fog. For 230 years, Canada's oldest incorporated city has kept it old school, in the sense of both strong family and community loyalties, and in that it's still an old boy's club. At some point, almost all Saint Johners have been hired and fired by a small coterie of millionaires and billionaires. Irving and Oland-owned companies pump the gas, brew the beer, and sign the checks: that's enough to shut up most of their critics. Generally, it's only when things get so bad that a dispute ends up in court that the juiciest scandals of such wealthy elites enter into public record.

The Oland case ripped the lid off the private life of Richard Oland. While well known in Saint John, he wasn't well liked. After losing a bitter battle to his brother for the helm of Moosehead, Canada's oldest independent brewery, he rapidly racked up his own professional successes—but according to his wife, he was verbally and emotionally abusive, and "never the same with his children" afterward. Richard's great joys seemed to be arguing with people, winning sailing competitions, making a lot of money, and carrying on an eight-year affair (which was increasingly difficult to hide). His shrewdness extended to his wife, whom he required to provide receipts for any expenditures from her $2,000/month allowance. By his death at age 69, he was worth a cool $37 million . Hundreds of mourners, including the premier, mayor, and lieutenant-governor, filed out of his funeral to the strains of the Sinatra classic "My Way." The lyrics ("The record shows I took the blows / And did it my way") were spookily fitting.

From the moment cop cars arrived at the murder scene on Canterbury Street, Saint John crackled and sparked with rumors. Cabbies, co-workers, and coffee-shop regulars all had their pet theories and suspicions. Among them: Richard was beaten to death with a drywall hammer (which, strangely, turned out to be probably true). The killer was his jilted lover or the jilted lover's husband or a pissed-off investor or the Russian mafia.

The top guess, however: Dennis Oland, Richard's only son.

Dennis Oland, accompanied by his mother Constance Oland, arrives for the start of his trial in Saint John, N.B. on Wednesday, September 16, 2015. Photo courtesy The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan

At face value, this was a slam-dunk theory. Richard's son admitted being the last person to see his father alive, at the office, where he said they were talking about a genealogy project. Dennis was also hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, according to testimony from a forensic accountant, spending around $14,000 as the co-executor of his father's will and trustee of an additional fund. Good financial news, at least, in a time of tragedy—but also, some said, a fiscal motive for murder.

The Saint John Police Department—which has since been dragged into allegations of corruption and other major fuck-ups in the Oland investigation, first realized something strange was happening with Dennis during a videotaped witness statement to Constable Stephen Davidson.

What started as routine questioning quickly turned into a laundry list of his late father's ugly traits. In the video, Dennis describes his father as "a really difficult" person "lacking in certain social skills." Unsolicited, he outlines Richard's infidelities, and how he alienated his friends and family with his constant disses and arguments. When asked if he knew anything that could help police, he airily theorized that "some crackhead looking for $20" was probably the killer (never mind said crackhead forgot the Rolex, laptop, and BMW keys sitting on Richard's desk). But while some people called Richard a "ruthless bastard," Dennis said, he didn't want his father dead.

The chattiness dried up when Dennis was asked where he was during the murder. While he admitted coming to his dad's office, he couldn't recall the route he drove or what he did afterward. Left alone in the room, Dennis appears confused on the video, tracing an imaginary map on a piece of paper, mumbling to himself. After 2.5 hours, police informed Dennis he was a suspect, and they'd be executing search warrants.

Inside the Far End Corp. building, where Richard Oland was killed. Photo by Julia Wright

But then, very strangely, the case seemed to go cold. The searches of Dennis's home, Volkswagen, and a boat co-owned by his wife turned up nothing. No other suspect was advanced: still, nothing happened. For two years. Dennis continued to work occasionally at the office where his dad was killed. Reporters, meanwhile, were going nuts: lawyers for the local paper and CBC started contesting the sealing of several search warrants, as police threw shade at the forensic lab for taking forever processing the scene. The media were forced to dance around a court-ordered publication ban on naming Dennis as a suspect for almost two years. While the ban was eventually overturned, the radio and print silence had only intensified the rumors.

Public feeling was equal parts shock and "no shit, Sherlock" when, two years after the crime, Dennis Oland was charged with second-degree murder. He was released after a few days in jail on $50,000 bail posted by his uncle, Derek Oland, who issued a public statement defending Dennis's innocence and pledging the family's full support during upcoming legal proceedings.

As with his highly public self-presentation leading up to the trial, it appeared as though Dennis Oland was trying to send everyone a message via social media November 9, 2013. Just a few days before he was charged, he changed his publicly-visible profile pic to a still of Harrison Ford in The Fugitive. In the 1993 flick, Ford plays a man wrongfully convicted of murder, trying to find the real killer while being hunted by police. It was either a truly ballsy bit of vaguebooking, or a strange attempt at black humor. Whatever the intended message, few people, if any, remarked on the reference. In any case, it was eclipsed by the re-emergence of another strange photo of Dennis, re-used by various media outlets, in which he appeared to be smiling as he exited his father's funeral.

Four years after the murder, those proceedings drag on. The trial, which started September 16, 2015 and is scheduled to run into December, is poised to be one of the longest criminal trials in New Brunswick history. It's drawn a remarkably vivid, dysfunctional portrait of the Olands. But it's an even more powerful illustration of just how much appearances matter in small towns, where gossip is a tie that binds, and burns. Peeping over the hedges to see what your neighbors are up to is a favorite recreational activity.

Dennis Oland's estate, Sevenacres, has been in the family for generations. On one of the toniest roads in Rothesay, a Saint John suburb with an average household net worth of $2.29 million , Sevenacres is screened from the road by a double-barrier of log fencing and box hedges, further buffered by spacious paddocks, a barn, and stables. While private, the situation is extremely cozy in other ways: it's just a five-minute walk from the mansion where Richard once lived—and closer still to neighbor and Oland family lawyer Bill Teed. The court-ordered conditions for Dennis's release include that he maintain this residence, surrender his passport, and advise police of any travel outside New Brunswick. In other words, he's basically trapped in this genteel seclusion.

Saint John, New Brunswick. Photo via Flickr user Thomas Duff

So, on a certain level, it's kind of easy to see why Dennis has, in recent years, turned into quite the man-about-town—a shift from his quieter, pre-2011 lifestyle, according to some who knew him. While Dennis is seen daily above the fold of the local paper, as well as entering and exiting court in a swarm of media, he's almost as frequently sighted at bars, restaurants, auctions, and concerts. In a city the size of Saint John, this is not a huge circuit. In fact, it appears from the outside a hellishly claustrophobic, Panopticon-like situation, enough to drive anyone mad. But it seems to have had an opposite effect on Dennis.

On November 26, the same day his preliminary hearing ended, Dennis Oland and a group of friends attended a Bob Seger show at Saint John's biggest hockey arena, Harbour Station. While Bob and the Silver Bullet Band revisited classics like "Against the Wind," he and his buds conspicuously rocked out—to some eyes, an odd way to cap off 37 days of court proceedings determining he'd be tried for murder. As Dennis and friends stood up in their seats, working on their night moves, saucy fellow Seger fans surreptitiously snapped pics of the local celebrity in their midst, stealth-texting photos with captions like "OMG look who it is!"

In a bizarre small-town twist, when Oland pleaded not guilty on September 8, 2015, he attracted a bigger crowd to Harbour Station than Bob Seger. Five thousand people were summonsed for possible jury duty: one of the biggest jury pools in provincial history, and larger than the pool for either Paul Bernardo or Robert Pickton, necessitating the makeshift venue. Even the typically yawn-worthy process of jury selection felt like the casting for a reality TV show. Offered a choice to be tried either by a judge alone, or by judge and jury, he choose the route of public spectacle. And so, the concession stands were open and prospective jurors chowed down on nachos as Oland sat in the middle of it all, watching the masses filter in. He entered his not-guilty plea into a microphone, on the arena stage, in front of thousands.

Several months ago, I was out with a fellow journalist at Port City Royal, around the corner from the former crime scene. We'd both covered the Oland case. So it felt a bit weird when we walked in and instantly spotted Dennis and Lisa. When Dennis left to bring the car around, we watched a mint-condition, dark-green 1967 Volvo Amazon roll down steep Grannan Lane. In a town of 12-year-old Toyota Corollas and brand new Ford F-150s, a ride like that stands out: I'd often spotted it parked on Charlotte Street. I'd even tweeted a picture of it, once: "My ride's here." I'd had no idea, then, who it belonged to.

As Lisa got in beside Dennis, she looked back. For a second, I saw the scene from her perspective: us staring out at her, framed by the glowing rectangle of the window. She looked pained and annoyed: we were caught red-handed, watching. Indeed, it was impossible not to watch the car's silhouette, like a getaway vehicle in a Turner Classic Movie, as it disappeared into the darkness.

"If one does not think that the privacy of my clients has not been invaded, let me suggest to you that it's not only been invaded, it has been run over by a truck," defense lawyer Bill Teed told a closed-door hearing in August 2012.

"What this family has had to put up with and deal with as a result of this murder, as a result of the investigation, as a result of the media attention, their privacy rights and...the innocent rights that we try to protect for them, has been just about drowned." The trial, for the Oland family, has no doubt been a humiliating, painful airing of dirty laundry, literally: the court has seen pictures of Dennis's Hugo Boss jacket, stained with trace amounts of blood matching Richard's DNA profile.

All this stuff about privacy and appearances hearkens weirdly back to something Dennis said, early in his video statement to police. Describing the ill-fated genealogy project he and Richard were working on, he unconsciously may have revealed an irony in how he sees himself—and how he thinks Saint Johners see him.

"We have our family You could see all these fabrications were built up about people being, y'know, more than they actually were."

His public appearance of carefree innocence aside, Oland may well see this four-year nightmare quietly resolved. The expertise of his top-flight Toronto lawyers, the bungled police investigation, the two-year delay in laying charges, the fact that no murder weapon was ever found, and innumerable other factors all cast enough reasonable doubt for a jury to, very soon, potentially find Dennis Oland innocent.

But whether he'll ever walk freely again in Saint John again is another question.

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Daily VICE: Watch Obama's Science Advisor Talk Climate Change on Today's 'Daily VICE'

On today's Daily VICE, we discuss hipsters with a consumer behavior expert, visit the observatory on Hawaii's sacred volcano, explore Seattle's feminist music scene, and talk global warming with President Obama's chief scientific advisor.

Watch Daily VICE in the VICE channel on go90. Head to go90.com to learn more and download the app.

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What We Know About the 'Very Weird' Planned Parenthood Shooting Suspect

Robert Lewis Dear. Photo via Colorado Springs Police Department

On Friday afternoon, shots rang out at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs. The suspected shooter holed up inside the clinic, and police arrived to a tense and bloody standoff that lasted five hours. Three people—a police officer, an Iraq War veteran, and a mother of two—were killed (and nine more were injured) before Robert Lewis Dear, 57, was convinced to surrender.

Though his motives remain hard to pin down, over the weekend a clearer picture of Dear took shape, one that adheres all too well to the familiar archetype of the aggrieved, troubled white man with a history of anger against women.

Dear's widely-reported statement to police that there would be "no more baby parts" seems to support the views of Vicki Cowart, president of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, who told CNN she believes he "was motivated by opposition to safe and legal abortion." But Dear has reportedly said a lot of stuff to law enforcement while in custody, including, NBC News reports, some kind of mention of President Barack Obama.

Neighbors of Dear—who before moving to Colorado last year lived in a shack in the mountains of North Carolina that had no running water—have told the press he kept to himself, avoided eye contact, and rarely made sense when he spoke. "If you talked to him, nothing with him was very cognitive—topics all over place," his longtime neighbor James Russell told the Associated Press. Dear was the kind of guy you "had to watch out for," he added.

"He was a very weird individual. It's hard to explain, but he had a weird look in his eye most of the time," a neighbor who wished to remain anonymous told the Washington Post.

But neighbors there said abortion, politics, and religion didn't really come up when talking with Dear, even if he "complained about everything," as another neighbor put it. Dear sounds paranoid and hermit-like, and apparently believed everyone was out to "get him."

"It was very crazy," the former neighbor told the Post.

Last year, Dear bought a $6,000 chunk of land in Hartsel, Colorado, and parked a trailer on it. A neighbor, Zigmond Post Jr., lived about a quarter mile away, and recalled one brief but odd run-in with Dear, which occurred after Post's dogs ran onto Dear's property. "We got the dogs back and everything and as we were getting ready to leave he handed us some anti-Obama pamphlets and told us to look over them," Post told Reuters.

Another Colorado neighbor told the New York Times that Dear "preferred to be left alone," though was apparently living with a girlfriend prior to the incident. The paper visited with Dear's ex-wife, Pamela Ross, who told them he was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. Dear's father, who passed away in 2004, was a graduate of the Citadel, and served in the Navy during World War II. Ross told the Times Dear "was not obsessed with politics" and, though he believed abortion was wrong, "it was never really a topic for discussion." (The paper also reported that Dear apparently "sought partners for sadomasochistic sex" online.)

The "baby parts" Dear referred to while in custody is perhaps a vague reference to video tapes, recorded secretly by an anti-abortion group called Center for Medical Progress. In the videos, which were released this summer, employees of Planned Parenthood are depicted discussing the body parts of aborted fetuses, which they were looking to sell for research. Though analysis has proved the videos to be altered and largely deceptive, they stoked much outrage, even among Republican presidential candidates. The defunding of Planned Parenthood has been hotly debated since the tapes have been made public, and Congress may vote on the question when deciding whether to fund the government in a matter of days.

Planned Parenthood operates more than 700 clinics in the United States, and bills itself the largest provider of reproductive health services in America. In 2013, they saw an estimated 2.7 million patients, 80 percent of whom came in for low-cost birth control prescriptions or screening for sexually transmitted diseases. The group is also the country's largest provider of abortion, but even though it is federally funded, tax dollars are not spent on abortion services as part of a Reagan-era budget compromise.

Records show Dear has had several run-ins with the law over the years, and in the past he's been accused of being a "peeping Tom," domestic violence—his ex-wife declined to press charges—and was charged with two counts of animal cruelty. He is currently being held without bond by the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center, and was set to make his first court appearance on Monday afternoon, where he will face state murder charges. Justice Department officials are also reportedly weighing the possibility of federal charges for Dear, which could be feasible under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. That law makes it a crime to injure or intimidate reproductive health clinic patients and employees.

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This post will be updated as more information becomes available.

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What Hillary Clinton's Emails Tell Us About How She'd Deal With Terrorism

Read: Why You Actually Should Care About Hillary Clinton's Damn Emails

According to some new poll results from last week, America trusts Hillary Clinton to fight terrorism more than Donald Trump, or any Republican presidential nominee (although Jeb Bush is within the margin of error). That's especially good news for Clinton as a Democrat, since polls typically show that voters trust the Republicans more than her party when it comes to keeping the US safe from groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda.

But as with any issue during a presidential election, it's impossible to know whether that kind of trust is earned, or based the emotions Americans feel after watching campaign commercials.

But Clinton spent a little over four years as America's top diplomat, and in that period of time, her role as Secretary of State put her front-and-center in America's anti-terrorism efforts. That also means the public is entitled by law to dig through all of her correspondence from that time, as long as doing so doesn't jeopardize national security.

The full record of her emails from that time still only exists on a private email server she set up—a legally questionable state of affairs. But after some legal grappling with VICE News, the State Department has released thousands of her emails, revealing—to anyone committed to, as VICE News' FOIA expert Jason Leopold put it, "actually sitting down, and fucking reading every goddamn motherfucking email"—what went on behind the scenes when HillaryClinton was the one shaping foreign policy.

Jason is one of the few people who actually does just that—or at least gets pretty fucking close. Since he uses the same coffee machine as me, after I read those poll results, I thought I should sit down and ask him what the emails can tell us about Clinton's potential presidency, and specifically how a future President Hillary would deal with the terrorist threats facing the US.

VICE: You probably saw this new poll that shows that more than any other 2016 candidate, America trusts Hillary Clinton to fight terrorism. What do you think about that?
If anyone took the time to really dig into the emails, you can see that Hillary is very, very aggressive on issues revolving around terrorism, that she has not made any decisions—at least from what I've seen—unilaterally, on her own, on issues related to Al Qaeda.

So what was she up to?
During that first year when she was Secretary of State, she was not just becoming sort of adjusted or adjusting herself to this sort of position, she was also sort of laying the groundwork basically for what kind of president she would later end up being—particularly related to issues of foreign policy. As Secretary of State, she was the nation's top diplomat, and you can see this evolution of how aggressive she was.

Specifically, what did the emails say about her involvement in the war in Afghanistan?
she needed to be tougher; she needed to get behind the generals who were saying that we need to root out remnants of Al Qaeda and put the Taliban in its place. We look to her as this figure of someone who's sort of hawkish.

It's not wrong to think of her as a hawk though, is it?
She is very hawkish. But she's also somebody that takes a lot of advice, and had to be talked into it. She did have to be talked into it. There was another There were instances with Boko Haram and the fact of what they were doing, and that the US needed to step in and help, but nothing that sort of rose to the level of 'let's bring 'em to the US.'

I could see why people may look at this like, 'Oh yeah, now we like her!' But that's the whole point of the emails!

Are there clear examples in the emails that inform us about what actions she would take as the leader of the country?
Well, with Pakistan, she was told that the Pakistanis have to more aggressively pursue Al Qaeda—that's what she was told to say. That's exactly what she did. When she ended up visiting Pakistan on October 28, 2009, she accused Pakistani officials of giving safe haven to Al Qaeda terrorists. So that's what she said publicly, and weeks before she was getting all of this advice.

So when you imagine her coming up with a terror platform today, you picture her getting similarly hawkish advice from her friends?
You can certainly see how she would act as president. She has a lot of foreign policy experience. Particularly right now, you can look at what she's saying with regard to the Islamic State—that we need to be more aggressive—appealing to people who want to hear that, versus the current president, who is saying that it doesn't make sense to send troops out there.

So basically, she's complex? That's what we've learned?
You don't get a complete picture, but you get a pretty damned good picture of what she was like as the nation's top diplomat, and how she served in that position with regard to dealing with countries that were allegedly giving safe haven to terrorists, like Pakistan. And how she sought out advice. Then you've got another side of her—this complete human side—where here's a person who's actually seeing a young girl suffering human rights abuses. So yeah, you know, that's what makes this person a very complex character.

Careful man. You might accidentally make people like her.
I could see why people may look at this like, 'Oh yeah, now we like her!' But that's the whole point of the emails is that it underscores that she's a complex political figure, where she makes some decisions that the public might get behind and other decisions that might be cause for concern, particularly on foreign policy.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter. Follow Jason Leopold on Twitter too.

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Habits: Clementine Needs a Fix in This Week's 'Habits' Comic

Read more comics by Lauren Monger at her Tumblr and Twitter.

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VICE Vs Video Games: The New 'Adventure Time' Video Game Is an Adventure in Mediocrity

A few weeks ago a new Adventure Time video game was released, based on Pendleton Ward's award-winning series. I realize that the show has a rabid fan base, eager to buy up every last bit of Adventure Time paraphernalia they can get their paws on, but I would advise gamers and casual fans alike to leave this one on the shelf. It's not that Finn & Jake Investigations is the most hideous crock of licensed shit you can force yourself to sit down in front of—and to begin listing the worst offenders here would take us well into next week—it's just that it gets so dull, so fast. Which, for a game based on one of the brightest, most colorful and fantastically imaginative animated productions the 21st century has seen, is absolutely criminal.

But there's precedent to appreciate, which in turn tempers expectations. Investigations is the fourth major video game based on Adventure Time, and not one of them has come close to representing a worthy companion game to the show. The best game of the four is probably the first, Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?!, which mixed top-down map wandering with 2D sequences of jumping and fighting. The other two are better tossed into the Sea of Sure Death than slipped into a games console. Investigations avoids a dropkicking into the wet stuff, but at times it sure comes close to receiving a swift yet firm boot to the ass.

Firstly, it's worth noting this isn't a full-price, "premium" title that's going to show off the capabilities of your console of choice. There, said it, disclaimer-ed. But all the same, Investigations is for the most part an ugly game that likely wouldn't push the PS2's emotion engine. It adopts a 3D approach for its visuals and comes up short in almost every respect, save for the palette, which is as retina stinging as the cartoon. The models never look right, lip synching is non existent, environments are limited and at times downright bland, characters just disappear off the screen once their role is at an end, and it's sometimes incredibly difficult to notice important items or locations on the screen, and interact with them once they're spotted, thanks to janky detection—a problem given the nature of this game.

Related: Watch VICE's film on seeking out Mexico's top skate spots

Which I should probably explain, really. Investigations is essentially a point-and-click puzzle game where clues are found around the game world and used in conjunction with other characters and/or objects to progress each of the game's five stories, or cases. Sometimes these pick-ups need to be combined, so as to make one useful tool—you won't be able to paint a friendly NPC the colors of a penguin before you combine brushes with paint cans in your inventory. Solutions are occasionally incredibly unintuitive, leading to the random mashing together of items in fussy menus until something sticks. Need to clear a fire wolf from a basement? You're going to need some handlebars. If that all sounds fairly Monkey Island-y to you, bingo, you've gone and got it—fist-bump yourself, algebraically. It's just a shame that the show's humor isn't transferred to elevate Investigations' rudimentary gameplay.

There are smiles to be had across Investigations' ten-hour duration (you may finish it quicker, but I spent a lot of time missing obvious items, revisiting areas to scour for clues that weren't there, either because I'm an idiot or because the game really doesn't make itself clear), but no proper laughs. I'd not seen South Park in years before playing 2014's RPG based on the show, The Stick of Truth, but I howled hard in the face of its scatological humor. That's an adaptation that nailed its source lateral perfectly. For me, the funniest moment of Investigations was probably when I used Ice King's stinky pants as a stretchy catapult, to launch a slice of mushy pizza found under an easy chair into the beak of an errant penguin. I smirked, I guess, just as I did every time a penguin went "wenk" (because I'm British and it's almost rude). So there is fun here, just a little, but it's so cack-handedly conveyed. The show's original voice actors naturally struggle with a stunted script, while the player constantly has to overlook lazy stuff, like characters not facing each other when in conversation, in order to visualize what this game could have been. A little more love, a little longer in testing, and who knows.

When you're not pushing Finn (the human), always followed by Jake (the dog) although you never directly control him, into every extremity of every new area, so as to maximize your chances of picking up a vital clue, you're engaging in button-mashing combat sequences that rarely feel necessary, outside of lightly puzzle-based boss battles. I understand that fighting almost needs to be an element of any Adventure Time game—the show is at least partially inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, which I believe has its share of stabbing and the like—but here it's uncomfortably shoehorned into place. There are some cool powers that Finn can call upon, depending on which sword he's using (it's swapped for newer, better blades as you progress), and stringing enough hits together sees the pair team up for some special attacks; but it's all so risk free that every new "combat time" becomes more chore than challenge, however much loot you come away with.

There are some story beats in Investigations that link to season six of the show, most obviously a case involving Lumpy Space Princess, which is nice; and all of the characters you'd ever want to appear in an Adventure Time game duly show up, even the massive jerk that is Magic Man. But it's box-ticking stuff, really: familiar faces deployed to play hollow roles upon stages made of popping candy. Younger gamers and air-headed adults might enjoy the "random" side to certain situations, and chuckle lightly every time somebody says "dog buns," but unless you really are entirely too far gone in your Adventure Time obsession, and couldn't give a crap whether a video game's good or just does enough to not make you want to punch a hole through your TV, you don't need this. It's more mediocre than mathematical, sorry.

Adventure Time: Finn & Jake Investigations is out now for pretty much every contemporary platform on the face of the planet, but was tested for this feature on Wii U. Because it's nice to play something new on the Wii U, isn't it?

Follow Mike Diver on Twitter.

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