In the spirit of full frontal disclosure, as I like to call it, the following is something I’ve published before, in a pamphlet written for The New Press in 2004 called Schwarzenegger Syndrome: Politics and Celebrity in the Age of Contempt. It was a book written as a public service, in the wake of the California recall election of 2003, in which it was possible, simply by being a resident of California and paying a $5000 filing fee, to appear on the ballot as a serious contender for the job of the state’s governor, depending on your definition of ‘serious.’

I wrote Schwarzenegger Syndrome for a laughably small fee—like I said, as a public service. Its residue on the internet seems to consist entirely of a link to a turf-marking piss spray review by an ostensibly ‘leftist’ wastebasket in the LA Weekly—the kind of deliberate friendly fire that speaks volumes about why the left never gets any traction in the US. The LA Weekly was an exception; other reviews were positive. Still, the book had a hobbled career. The editor who commissioned it was fired, to his complete astonishment, by a widely detested colleague at The New Press whom he’d never been informed was actually his boss. She, spitefully, removed the books he’d commissioned still in hardcover from the next year’s paperback list, so my little book and several others simply disappeared.

As I’ve mentioned in an earlier VICE column, I don’t believe it is  possible to ‘plagiarize yourself’ any more than it is possible, at the end of the day, to fuck yourself, but I would not normally quote myself, let’s say, at what will be unusual length, even from material of which I am the sole owner, were it not for many recent appearances of a certain rat-faced, repulsive member of Congress on various talk shows, where he is apparently considered a serious political mouth to be reckoned with, as well as a ‘personality,’ one moreover who considers himself a great wit in front of a camera, though I have never heard him raise a single laugh apart from his own canine chuckle. I was startled when this person emerged as a talking head, and discovered that no one I knew outside of California had the slightest idea of his history. So I’m going to supply it for you here, in hopes, once again, of providing a public service:

It is early 2003. A petition to recall the California governor, Gray Davis, launched by various monied right-wing interests (mainly ones in the Texas utility sector who are under investigation in Sacramento, through their cut-outs in California), has been garnering thousands of signatures—but not fast enough to trigger a special election before the 2004 national primary, “when heavy Democratic turnout would improve Davis’s chances of staying in office.” At this juncture, subject enters the scene:

“An Arab American member of the US Congress, Darrell Issa, stepped into the breach with a third pro-recall entity called Rescue California in May 2003. Issa had immensely deep pockets, having reaped millions from the car alarm business. He intended to run for governor himself.

“Like the other groups, Rescue California numbered among its talking points the state’s ‘negative business climate,’ a neatly phrased appeal for larger corporate tax breaks. As it happened, Darrell Issa’s own company, Directed Electronics, had moved its corporate headquarters to Florida to avoid paying California taxes. This can, of course, be viewed as proof that Issa had first-hand experience of this negative business climate. In any case, he was able to dump his tax savings into the recall movement.

“Rescue California hired professional signature-gathering firms and ad time, swiftly yanking the signatures up to 16,000 per day. By announcing his plans early, Issa also became a sidebar issue himself.

“Issa’s was the kind of success story familiar from novels by James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler. In 1971, while in the army, 18-year-old Issa was accused of stealing a car from Sgt. Jay Bergey, who settled the matter out of court. ‘I confronted Issa,’ Bergey later said. ‘I got in his face and threatened to kill him, and magically my car reappeared the next day.’ Issa was demoted from a bomb squad assignment after an Article 15 hearing on bad conduct and ‘allegations that he had stolen a fellow soldier’s car.’

“In Ohio, in 1972, Issa was indicted for auto theft. Charges were dropped when the local district attorney decided not to prosecute.

“In Michigan, in 1973, Issa was convicted on weapons charges.

“In 1980, Issa was again charged with grand theft auto, in San Jose, California. Again, the DA declined to prosecute.

“In 1982, Issa took control of Joe Adkin’s car alarm company by calling in a $60,000 loan after making verbal promises to allow Adkin several additional weeks to pay it. Without notifying Adkin, Issa went to court the following day and seized his company’s headquarters. Next, he quadrupled the fire insurance on the company’s headquarters. He was observed hauling records and computer equipment out of the building the day before it burned to the ground in an arson fire.

“Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Issa drove several competitors out of business with nuisance lawsuits and intimidation, while outsourcing manufacturing jobs to Taiwan. He found time to run and lose a Senate race in 1998. In 2000, he ran, unopposed, for a House seat, at a cost of $1.7 million—the same figure he eventually sank into the recall.

“Issa’s background in auto theft was obviously useful in becoming a car alarm entrepreneur. His habit of enriching himself at other people’s expense, on the other hand, didn’t recommend him in any obvious way for the job of governing the world’s sixth largest economy. One right-wing columnist referred to Issa’s role in the recall effort as that of ‘a useful idiot.’

“Aside from a colorful business and military resuméthat was, in truth, less unusual than otherwise, Issa’s record in Congress appeared unlikely to win crossover Democratic votes, or votes from modern Republicans. Even most conservative Republicans in California considered Issa rather loathsome because of positive statements he had made on behalf of Hezbollah.

“He advocated school prayer, the criminalization of flag-burning, and restrictions on abortion and stem cell research. He strongly advocated offshore oil drilling. He opposed campaign finance reform, malpractice suits against HMOs, and litigation against gun manufacturers. After 9/11, Issa ‘threw a temper tantrum’ while trying to late-board an Air France flight, creating an international incident. During the recall period, he made many menacing phone calls to Scott Barnett, a co-founder of Republicans Against the Recall.

“Issa had a history of brandishing firearms when under stress, or to make a point to his employees, or to ‘send a message’ to business rivals. In many ways, Darrell Issa embodied the inchoate anger roiling under the $3 million homes and manicured gardens and SUVs maintained by that part of California that perceived itself to be in crisis. He belonged to that top tenth percentile income bracket that saw its future eradicated by ‘taxes,’ by the issuance of driver’s licenses to the people who tended their gardens and mopped their floors and blew fallen leaves off their lawns, by affirmative action, by bilingual education, by wetbacks spilling over the border. Still, Darrell Issa had the whiff of rotten fish about him, a trace of some fetid glandular disorder or the subborn lingering smell of the arriviste.

“And then, once the recall petition was certified, and the special election scheduled, Issa suddenly decided not to run. He wasn’t anyone’s favorite cup of tea in the first place, but Arnold Schwarzenegger’s entry as a candidate effectively removed whatever tiny possibility Issa might have had in the general fracas. The latter withdrew in what was tactfully reported as a ‘tearful announcement.’

“In an interview with Inc.com, a publication Issa had once awarded himself an imaginary prize from, the non-candidate put a game spin on the whole misadventure: ‘If you can take $1.7 million and leverage it against a $38 billion problem and help fix that problem, then it’s the best leveraged capital you can invest.’

“Some would stipulate that that depended on whose $1.7 million and whose $38 billion Issa was talking about. He took the occasion to cloud his 1973 weapons arrest, the 1980 indictment, and other notable achievements of his own by attributing them to his brother, who was, he said, such an incorrigible car thief that he ‘even stole two of my cars.’ Issa spoke of this brother as a kind of evil twin whose messes he’d been cleaning up for years. ‘Had I at times been unwilling to implicate my brother in things that I knew or could have known that he did? Yeah.’

“Issa did, actually, have a brother. Witnesses had noticed singed hair on Issa’s brother’s arm the day after Joe Adkin’s car alarm company burned down.”

Along with the echoes of Double Indemnity and The Big Sleep in the Darrell Issa saga, the alert reader will note a striking parallel between Issa and Flem Snopes, Faulkner’s son-of-a-white-trash barn-burner who inexorably rises and rises through society by threats of violence, horse-trading, skeevy real estate transactions, calling in debts prematurely, and a blissful absence of any moral sense—a real American success story, of which the U.S. Congress is overgenerously full.

Previously by Gary Indiana - Fleapit: the Movie

Not many people have been wondering why the internet doesn’t have a nose. But some have. Among them: Amy Radcliffe, a design student at Central St. Martins in London. She is working on a machine that can harvest a smell by putting a big glass nose over it, analyze it, then reproduce it remotely. Twenty-first century Smell-o-Vision. It’s still pretty proto—the chief problem is that it’s easy enough to get the raw data on what molecules are inside a smell, much less to gather all the molecules you’d need to recreate it. And harder still to combine them all exactly enough for it not to bear the same resemblance as a deformed waxwork does to the real-life Tom Cruise. 

But today’s shed pooterers are tomorrow’s megacorps. Amy's designs are a reminder that, with the basic concept already lodged somewhere along the development spectrum, big business is inevitably going to get its claws in on this one and figure it out properly.

The teleportation of smells is going to give us the first door toward a new humanity. But the humans themselves will not be teleported; they will be the same old apes with drapes. Meaning that it’ll bring out the most stupid in all of us, because as the past decade has shown, when complex life-enhancement breakthroughs occur, most of us are more interested in using them for celebrity gawking or exploring them as new mediums for dick jokes. So smells—as the most information-low but emotion-rich sense—will be the ideal fodder for the parts of modern culture that can’t be bothered to read.

By 2016, you’ll be passing time on the bus by sniffing your mobile phone, scrolling through the crowd-sourced suppositories of the latest kooky celebrity smells: "The scent of Will.I.Am eating a bowl of spaghetti,” "The smell of the top of Hilary Clinton’s head," leaked smells borrowed from the crotch of Miley Cyrus’s short shorts, and the acrid whiff taken from the scene of some iconic, fatal car crash.

There will be high-mindedness mixed in, of course; Rageh Omar tweeting out the smell of factory pollution spilling into the streets of Karachi, for example. Or the much-reblogged odor of the refrigerator where Assad’s body is being stored after his murder by an angry mob. But even intellectual big guns will need to knock out a smelly gag every now and then to keep people interested. And, as with most social media, there will be a creeping need to reveal intimacies to strangers. Sometimes this will be the scent of family pets or Christmas tree needles. Sometimes it will be the smell of Brian Williams's wife’s perfume: "Just a whiff of this reminds me why I fell in love in the first place #fridaynightwiththemrs."

Soon enough, like pimpy directors with actresses, corporations will start pressurising more and more physical intimacy from their contracted stars. Nike will swab Usain Bolt’s post-victory torso and market a viral campaign around the scent. Porn companies will be pocketing millions from the same stinks that soap companies once made billions by eradicating.

At the bottom of the pile, frat boys will be telling the stories of their sordid Friday nights via scent uploads of vomit, fingering, and shawarma. Meanwhile, the social foodies who were Instagramming their delicious dinners will have a secondary means to secrete self-satisfaction.

And the young? God, they’ll be terrifying. Teenagers will be turning smells into a complex metalanguage, firing off long bursts of them in olfactory GIFs. They’ll be the ones who know the difference between the smell of a lion being eaten by a crocodile and a croc being murdered by a lion, and what the inverse metameaning of each is. We’ll all have to come to terms, for the first time in human history, with the idea that smells can be ironic. It’ll end up as Proust’s madeleine in reverse. Certain smells will become so associated with internet culture that you’ll never be able to attach true or personal memories to them ever again. Fresh-baked bread will now be a meme signifying that you "are feeling fat," and the smell of a roaring log fire will signify that you’re "bored by what someone’s saying."

Oh, and $20 says that the smell version of Tumblr is called Prousterest or Madeleinstagram, or something along those lines.

Smell you later.

Follow Gavin and Marta on Twitter: @hurtgavinhaynes / @MartaParszeniew

Illustration by Marta Parszeniew.

Ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks fought in the streets with sticks and stones for several hours in the northern Afghan city of Taloqan on Saturday before the violence escalated to gunfire, leaving three people dead and 52 wounded.

But when international leaders review the game reel of the incident, what should be most distressing—especially to the United States, who has spent more than 4,000 lives and billions of dollars in Afghanistan over the last dozen years—was the nearly absurd tactical response by Afghan National Police, who didn’t just fail to stem the violence, but have even been accused of helping create it.

More than 400 national police officers were mobilized around Takhar Province National Police headquarters in response to a weeklong rally by ethnic Uzbeks, frustrated by what they say is a lack of representation in both the national government and the province. The last straw, they say, was when an Uzbek police chief for the province was sacked and replaced by one of the Interior Minister’s cronies.

Initially the National Police forces seemed to be the very model of restraint, with a large but unintimidating presence of officers on every corner and patrolling the streets, showing off their new gear from the Americans, including a Glock sidearm and Ford supercab police trucks mounted with machine guns. Several fire trucks were also deployed in the area in case they were needed to disperse the protestors with water cannons. The police made good use of street intel as well, using spies, they say, to help arrest half a dozen men suspected of trying to smuggle weapons into the protest.

But by late afternoon everything had turned to shit. Almost as if it were prearranged, Uzbek protesters and a group of mostly Tajik counterprotesters, as many as 500 total, faced off on a Taloqan street a half mile from the city center.

Only insults were hurled initially, but within minutes stones were flying in both directions. The groups took turns charging each other, both sides waving Afghan flags, and trying to overrun the other’s position.

I saw one man from the Tajik side pulled over to the Uzbek side and pummeled with fists and sticks. But instead of using their numbers and vehicles to divide the groups, Afghan National Police mostly deployed behind the Tajik counterprotesters and watched the stones fly. 

Police chiefs worldwide would agree that this would have been the time to separate the groups—using nonlethal means like tear-gas rounds or water cannons to break up a protest that was already an all-out street brawl.

Instead, after sitting on the sidelines for a bit, Afghan police lieutenants urged some of their officers forward to push back the Uzbeks and the others to hold back the Tajiks. It was not only ineffective, but almost comical, like a few children trying to break up a schoolyard fight between hundreds.

While the frontline officers did their best to calm the groups down, the police leadership hung back behind the Tajik protestors, choosing not to send in the brand new fire trucks or use other riot-dispersion gear.

Over the course of the afternoon, the incident developed a rhythm of its own. The crowd would settle down for a few minutes while officers desperately negotiated with each group, and then some hotheaded kid on one side or another would hurl a rock, restarting the cycle.

This continued until, finally, as many here feared, the guns came out. By the end of the day, scores were wounded and three killed. The episode didn't inspire much confidence in the idea that Afghan security forces will be prepared to handle not only outside threats, but their own internal ethnic divisions, once international forces leave in 2014.

One of the Uzbek leaders, Haji Jamshed, also a member of the Takhar Provincial Council, claims that the government was behind the counterprotest that helped spark the deadly violence, something the National Police strongly deny. But true or not, the failure to showcase their training and tactics to de-escalate the conflict without bloodshed is not encouraging.

Kevin Sites is a rare breed of journalist, who thrives in the throes of war. As Yahoo! News’s first war correspondent between 2005 and 2006, he gained notoriety for covering every major conflict across the globe in one year’s time and fostering a technology-driven, one-man-band approach to reporting that helped usher in the “backpack movement.” Kevin is currently traveling through Afghanistan in a taxi covering the tumultous country during "fighting season" as international forces like the US pullout. Keep checking back to VICE.com for more dispatches from Kevin.

More on VICE from Kevin Sites: Killing Up Close

Follow Kevin on Twitter: @kevinsites

And visit his personal website: KevinSitesReports.com

Photo via Flickr user fdecomite

Welcome back to Bad Cop Blotter, our weekly news roundup that compiles instances of cops behaving like assholes and the occasional instance of an officer actually serving and protecting the community.

On the night of April 11, 20-year-old Elizabeth Daly and her roommates were “terrified” by seven agents of Virginia's Alcohol Beverage Control. These cops ran at her waving badges she couldn’t identify, jumped on the hood of her car, and one even drew his gun—all because they apparently believed Elizabeth’s just-purchased six-pack of water was beer. Elizabeth, who attends the University of Virginia, later said in a statement that she was so scared of the plainclothes officers she tried to drive away, at which point the agents tried to break her car windows while yelling at her to stop. Elizabeth’s instinct for self-preservation in the face of strange people accosting her resulted in her being charged with three felonies—two for assaulting a police officer, one for eluding police—and a day and half a night in jail. The charges against Elizabeth were dropped this week, but so far the agents involved in the confrontation have not been identified, much less reprimanded.

Like many a tale of police brutality or absurdity, this one has gone viral, which may shame someone into apologizing. But there are similar incidents that suggest cops often unreasonably expect people to know who they are. Back in 2010, a high school senior from Pittsburgh named Jordan Miles fled from cops he thought were robbers and got brutally beaten when they caught up with him (the officers claim they properly identified themselves). Other situations in which civilians arguably didn’t realize cops were cops have resulted in deaths: Georgia pastor Jonathan Ayers was killed by police in 2009, New Yorker John Collado suffered the same fate in 2011, and 92-year-old Atlantan Kathryn Johnston was murdered by cops (who ended up in prison) in 2006.

There are 300 million guns in the US and 150 SWAT raids a day—it’s surprising there aren’t more incidents where police or homeowners are injured or killed. What happened to Daly was less dramatic and thankfully less tragic than it could have been, but it was also preventable. In many cases, police officers seem to assume that the civilians they approach should know they are cops even in the absence of proof.

In the case of Elizabeth and her roommates, the women had attended a “take back the night” rally earlier in the day and listened to survivors of sexual assault telling their stories. But even without that added excuse for jumpiness, they had a lot of reason to freak out when strangers approached them screaming and waving guns. It shouldn’t need to be said, but had Daly been guilty of the awful crime of buying alcohol while being underage, that still wouldn’t excuse the officers approaching her and her friends with such a baffling level of aggression.

Now on to our other bad cops of the week:

- A 66-year-old man who allegedly “played some role” in illicit pharmaceutical-drug trafficking was fatally shot on June 27 in Clay County, West Virginia, after DEA agents and state police attempted to serve a warrant on his trailer at six in the goddamn morning. Cops say Richard Dale Kohler refused to open the door—though they don’t mention how long they gave him—and when they entered, he was pointing a rifle at them, so several officers fired.

- Across the country on the same day, Los Angeles County deputies killed an armed 80-year-old man during a drug raid. The cops broke his door down at 7:30 AM  and found Eugene Mallory in a bedroom holding a handgun, they say, and you can guess the rest.

- Two women who were pulled over in July 2012 for throwing cigarette butts out their car window just won a lawsuit against the Texas Department of Police Safety. State Troopers David Farrell and Kelly Helleson stopped Angela and Ashley Dobbs, searched their car, and then Helleson gave the women a cavity search, meaning she put on a latex glove and inserted her fingers into both their vaginas and anuses (even worse, she used the same glove for both of them). Helleson was later fired and charged with two counts of sexual assault, and Farrell is under investigation for allegedly stealing a bottle of prescription drugs from the women. Angela and Ashley were awarded $185,000 for their suffering.

- A Sheridan, Pennsylvania, woman was the victim of a state police SWAT raid on June 25. Agents handcuffed Jessica Earnest in front of her two children, deployed some kind of nonlethal grenades (she called them “smoke bombs”) and ransacked her house. The not-particularly-funny punchline is Jessica had never heard of the man listed on the search warrant.

- A local news station in Atlanta just revealed that police in Gwinnett County, Georgia, are permitted by state law to, with a search warrant, forcibly draw blood from DUI suspects if they refuse a breathalyzer test. The video of this is pretty disturbing.

- Two Los Angeles Police Department officers found guilty of perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice (the charges stem from a 2008 drug search) were sentenced to... community service on Tuesday.

- On June 17, a cop in Concord, California, shot a 13-year-old cocker spaniel mix named Kirby while running through his owner’s yard in pursuit of a suspect. Now the dog’s owner wants an apology and for the police to pay the vet bills. The cops, of course, claim that the shooting was justified because the officer felt he was in danger. From an ancient cocker spaniel.

- Pittsburgh’s official response to an American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act request for data on how often the city deploys its SWAT team was not very friendly: “[T]he requested records, to the extent they exist, are not public and your request is denied in its entirety."

- A 53-year-old man who jumped out of a third-story window last week when a SWAT team raided an illegal casino in Norwalk, Connecticut, has died. No doubt stopping the scourge of illicit Texas hold 'em games is worth it to some officials.

- This time around, our Good Cop of the Week award goes out to the police department of Whitewater, Wisconsin, where all the officers are now equipped with helmet cams. If there’s an arrest or something noteworthy, cops upload the interaction into evidence, where only a supervisor can delete it. Cameras protect cops and citizens both and they should be part of every single police encounter.

Lucy Steigerwald is a freelance writer and photographer. Read her blog here and follow her on Twitter: @lucystag

Previously: Yet Another “Justified” Police Shooting

The author.

Dear Sequential Graphics Enthusiasts,

My name is Nicholas and this is my weekly column for VICE, in which I share news, images, and reviews pertaining to comics, books, illustration, fine art, and general nerd interest. 

The biggest news in this installment is also the saddest. Kim Thompson, the co-publisher of Fantagraphics Books for 35 years, has died from cancer. Fantagraphics is the best comics company and has been for a long, long time, way before comics were ‘cool’ or respected. Throughout its existence Fantagraphics has led the charge in the battle against mediocrity and stupidity, and Kim was always there on the front lines, translating foreign books, publishing and hocking wares at conventions and festivals with a friendly and enthusiastic gusto. He used to give me discounts back before I was a guy who wrote reviews and we all owe him a lot for the good things he produced while alive and the things that will keep happening because of him long after his passing. Thanks for everything, Kim. 

You can read a better and more detailed obituary written by Kim's surviving co-publisher and friend, Gary Groth, at the Fantagraphics site. 

In much, much lighter news: Check out this boss Breaking Bad action figure. 

Beetle Bailey is a very sexist comic. It’s so sexist that even when they make a Beetle Bailey toy gun it's still about harassing women. 

Also, this comic. 

Apparently Gerard Way pitched a gothy Batman comic to Vertigo that never happened. Nice sketch, though. 

The cartoon crossover event you've been waiting for!

This comic by Sam Alden looks pretty. You can buy it here. 

Punk Press: Rebel Rock In The Underground Press 1068 - 1980
Vincent Bernier and Mariel Primois
Abrams

I don't care if punk is the uncoolest thing in the world. I still get really into these images. This long, tall book features the best covers and excerpts from old magazines about punk rock. It’s got slick magazines as well as Xerox zines. You know what this shit looks like already. This is just a really big book of it on nice, porous paper. It's like all the best stuff from a punk magazine collection condensed into an easy-to-move-with book. 

Buy it here. 

Everything Together
Sammy Harkham
Picturebox

This is a collection of pretty good and pretty OK comics by Sammy Harkham. The ones that are only OK are older, from when Sammy’s drawings weren’t great. The later ones, however, are real good. There are even some things he did for VICE in here, including a comic where I gave him three themes to use. Why didn't he mention VICE or me? Because he is a total jerk. His comics typically revolve around a bunch of abrasive loudmouths who he or his other main characters have to suffer quietly. One time I saw Sammy Harkham humiliate some actor pal of his at a comic con just like one of the jerks in his comics. I can be abrasive and rude too, but I acknowledge it. I don't make comics where the flaws of the judgmental narrator are ignored. 

Anyway, this is a really good book and I like all of it and you should definitely get it. 

You can buy it here.

Nudity Today
Edited by Jesse Pearson
Picturebox

Before he became a purveyor of highbrow filth, Jesse Pearson was the editor of VICE. This is what happens after you stop being the VICE editor-in-chief, you look at naked ladies professionally. It's not bad. Come work for VICE, you're golden parachute is made of golden shower photos. 

Several people I know and some I only wish I did are in this book, naked in their own photos or in other people’s. There's Sandy Kim and Maggie Lee, who have been all up inside VICE for a while. There are photos of Aurel Schmidt having sex with a guy who looks better nude than it seems most men are capable of. Nicky Lesser, who I remember as being kind of high and giggly, also has some photos in here. It all starts with a great collection of thoughts from Jesse about nude photos and an admission that he jerked off to some of the pictures in the book.

This is a very good book even though I find myself resenting how all the people in it look good naked while I look like a hairy, angry toad. 

You can buy it here and jerk off until you go blind or die or whatever.

You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack
Tom Gauld
Drawn & Quarterly

I can't remember if I wrote a review for Tom Gauld's book Goliath, but I really hated it. It was a big humorless thing with no words and panels that took up the entire page. It was about some simply drawn people building a giant robot or something. I don't remember much of the content, just that I thought it was arrogant how he was trying to pass off so little as being so much. 

This new book is the opposite of the last, mainly because I enjoyed it a lot. It's also small and every page is a jokeful, jolly time that proves Tom is a funny guy with ideas. 

The comics collected in this book are one-pagers that originally appeared in some heavy metal zine called the Guardian. All of them are full of references to books, book knowledge, and literature (which is another word for books).

This book falls into the same genre of comics that Kate Beaton works within. He mixes up the high culture with the low, and it works because both Gauld and Beaton are funny people. My only qualm is it seems to be about congratulating people for getting references to books, and it will probably appeal mostly to smug bores who think they are smart and worldly. Despite that, I like this book a lot.

You can buy it here.

Sun Ra + Aye Aton: Space, Interiors and Exteriors, 1972
Edited by John Corbett
Picturebox

Before I peeled the plastic wrap off of this book I thought it would be more than it was. The cover design is beautiful, with a photo of Sun Ra on the dust jacket that's cut at an angle to reveal an Aye Aton painting underneath it. 

There are 12 similar photos of Sun Ra at the front of this book. They all are OK, but very similar. There are also a couple of essays, and then the rest of the book is mostly small, old photos of murals that Aye Aton did. They are nice but it seems like the images in this book weren't made for a wide viewership. 

You can buy it here.

See you next week. You can see my last column here. 

@NicholasGazin

Photo via Wikimedia.

It started in my limbs and made its way up my ribcage, until everything tingled. I was at Electric Zoo and had just popped a molly. My teeth ached from smiling. I chewed my gum into mush. The bass made my bones vibrate.

And all of a sudden things got weird.

I started to feel anxious. I thought, Maybe I need some more? But was too paranoid to make a move. As sweaty bros and raver girls peaked to Above and Beyond, I clammed up. What is this shit? I didn’t have that fuzzy warm feeling you get with MDMA. I didn’t even want to be touched. It felt like I was trapped in a ziplock bag, watching everything happen outside myself and feeling dizzy from the recycled air.

Later I found out what I thought was MDMA was actually a drug called mephedrone, also known as MCat or Meow Meow. It looks like MDMA, but it’s a cathinone, a compound found in the khat plant (also spelled qat), a leafy semi-narcotic used in the horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula as a social lubricant. But cathinone concentrated can be used to achieve a stimulated high. Mephedrone’s synthesis was first reported in 1929, but the drug resurfaced in 2003, when an underground chemist publicized it on a drug website called The Hive.

It’s a member of the “bath salts” family with MDPV and methylone, and was placed under emergency scheduling by the DEA in October 2011. It’s one of many “designer drugs,” which means it’s produced in bulk in China like knockoff purses. In two years it’ll be old news.

Craig Motbey is a researcher and PhD candidate in psychopharmacology at the University of Sydney, who conducted experiments on rats with mephedrone on its addictive nature and potential risks.

Motbey explained to me that the drug’s popularity in the UK was because of government crackdowns on cocaine and ecstasy. All of a sudden, this powder was everywhere, and it was legal. For some, mephedrone is the best of both worlds. It’s the intense rush of coke mixed with ecstasy’s unconditional empathy.

“Cocaine and MDMA were very hard to get, they were very expensive, and the quality was dreadful,” Motbey said. “So you had the choice of paying a lot of money for some not very good ecstasy, or paying much less money for some high purity mephedrone.”

In New York, people pop molly like Altoids. But when supply runs low, some drug dealers offer mephedrone in its place and hope no one notices. That’s exactly what Mo Napoli* did.

Napoli works a 9 to 5 job now. But not too long ago, he had a side job peddling drugs. He discovered mephedrone three years ago at a friend’s house, when he was propositioned to help sell it. Napoli was unsure until he saw first hand how hard his friends rolled on the drug.

“I see these people, and I’m like, Jesus Christ we are gonna be so fucking rich,” he said.

Napoli, along with five other dealers, began buying and selling mephedrone. Because the drug looks close enough to MDMA, they decided to label it as such, selling it for triple the price they paid for.

“People love it, so I’m gonna keep telling them it’s molly because they don’t know any better,” he said. “It was almost over night. One day I had no money, and the next day I had so much of the shit I didn’t know what to do with it.”

While his friends would place the calls and send the money orders to China, Napoli was responsible for distributing in the city.

“Depending on how much you get, you can get it for as little as three dollars a gram and I was selling it for a hundred dollars a gram. I was killin’ it.”

Websites list mephedrone as a plant supplement. But let’s be real, mephedrone isn’t fertilizer. It’s only being labeled as plant food and not for human consumption to avoid product regulations. Motbey said the name may come from an unsuccessful study done in Israel several years ago which tried using mephedrone as insecticide.

Napoli and the boys would receive a pillow-case sized package from China labeled as laundry detergent or potassium sulfate every other week. The cycle continued until mephedrone was classified as a Schedule 1 drug in 2011. Then they slowed down.

The DEA’s final order on bath salts read that, “At one United States point of entry, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has encountered at least 127 shipments containing primarily mephedrone, methylone, and MDPV, as well as other synthetic cathinones like 4-MEC, butylone, fluoromethcathinone, and dimethylcathinone.”

So while plenty of people in the U.S. still haven’t caught on to the drug, enough people knew for the DEA to take notice.

Napoli told me that these days in New York, MDMA is almost obsolete and is being replaced by its cheaper designer twin.

“Why would I get MDMA, if I can just call some dude in China and have him send me meow meow for a fraction of the price, that I can still sell for the same money?”  

Motbey’s studies show that mephedrone damages long-term memory more than MDMA, and that it’s also more addictive, which can lead to a long night of re-dosing and a higher chance of ODing—probably why I was fiending at Electric Zoo.

In 2012, InTech a science journal company, released a report citing all of the UK mephedrone-related deaths up until then. According to the National Programme on Substance Abuse Deaths (np-SAD) 125 of those were allegedly mephedrone-related and according to post-mortem results 87 of those were confirmed to have mephedrone in their systems.

Motbey mentioned that his own research confirmed a study done at the University College in London. The study found that people who had used mephedrone regularly as opposed to non-users performed much worse on various memory tests. Motbey then tested this out in the lab on rats, and found that the rats that had mephedrone had more trouble with object recognition; something they are naturally good at.

Besides long-term memory loss, mephedrone’s potential negative effects include, paranoia, nausea, hallucinations, and possibly seizures.

Napoli didn’t believe these side effects. His high tolerance for drugs kept him from worrying until the day he took a gram to himself at a house party—about 10 average doses.

“We took the first one. Fucking flyin’ high, feeling like a million bucks, time of my fucking life!” he said. “Then the party’s winding down and the drugs are wearing off, so I’m like ‘Time to pop another one!’ And then I did, foolishly.”

Napoli left the party and went to Times Square. As he walked around, his eyes began to go in and out of focus.

“You know how atoms get super excited to the point where they are virtually stuck in place because they are moving so fast? That’s how I felt. I couldn’t use my fingers. I had no dexterity. I had like 10 million things in my hands. I couldn’t keep things in my pockets,” he said. “I’ve never felt so crazy in my life.”

It’s no surprise he felt this way. Motbey explained that mephedrone releases a sharp explosion of both seratonin and dopamine. The seratonin release triggers the strong but short bouts of euphoria, and the dopamine is linked to the addictive nature of the drug. That night, Napoli’s brain simply went into overdrive. A woman noticed him “struggling” and helped him get to a friend’s house where he slept off the high into the next day. He says he’ll never underestimate it again.

A few months ago, you could pick up a baggie at the nearest head shop, but it’s trickier now. Dealers still use “plant food” sites and have learned to cover their tracks. In New York, depending on your record and regardless of quantity, getting caught with mephedrone can get you charged with a Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the Seventh Degree, a misdemeanor that’s punishable with up to a year in prison.

The DEA recently released a new report this May that reads that “substances identified in forensic labs as mephedrone went up from 10 reports in 2009 to 336 in 2011, then went back down to 60 in 2012. Law enforcement officials have encountered mephedrone in 36 different states since 2009.”

Motbey’s sure that even if mephedrone supplies dried up tomorrow, people will quickly find the next new drug. For him, the problem is less about mephedrone and more about the system itself.

“You ban one drug and the next drug comes in, and then you ban that one and the next new drug comes in, and the next new drug, and the next new drug. By doing this they’re keeping the consumers ahead of the research,” Motbey said. “It’s just a matter of time until we stumble upon something that’s incredibly toxic and does really serious damage to large numbers of people, before we really learn what’s going on.”

As for Napoli, he’s shut the book on dealing and likes his life better that way. And for the future of meow meow, don’t expect to see a drought any time soon. This drug still has a few more lives left.

More about drugs on VICE:

The Dutch Love Ecstasy So Much Their Dirt Is Toxic

These Rappers Hate Ecstasy

Thatcher's War on Acid House

Illustrations by Cristina Peral

I didn’t mean to make a baby with Scott in the closet, on ecstasy, the floor pulsing to the bass of the house music, strobe lights flickering through the crack under the door. Back rubs with agendas were happening everywhere. It was another death experiment. 

I was an opportunist. Scott never fucked unless he was high or drunk. He never initiated sex at all. 

I was on top. 

Maybe I did mean to kindle life out of a pile of bodies. 

His torso is the barrel of a horse’s chest. I breathed in time with him. It made me dizzy. The pounding of his great, big bloody heart inside of all that air made me crazy. 

It felt good, like death. It felt like Prozac a million, million times over. We were everyone in the house, and whatever we were was going to bust out of the walls. I clawed the peeling plaster. The house was crumbling. He was gone behind his arm. 

When I first met Scott, he had beautiful long hair and wore his mother’s skirts and nail polish. He wore my lipstick. When I presented myself, he balked. He said love was too strong a word. 

I loved watching him melt.

He was shuddering. I fell down on him. I whispered. “Oh my God, I want to die.”

***

When I got pregnant, the whole goddamned thing collapsed. I asked Scott to buy me a pregnancy test. He bought beer instead. I sat on the floor and drank beer. I told them all. Scott and Chuck and everyone who slept at the Mad Hatter. When I told them, it sobered everyone but Scott, and they all moved out except him. 

One night Scott came home with his eyes looking in different directions. He picked me up and threw me on the couch and then he passed out on the stairs. I slapped him until he sobered up enough to let me pull him up the stairs and into his room. When I moved out, nobody fed the cat. Nobody cleaned anything. The garbage piled up. 

I tried to forget about Chuck. Scott thought of hanging himself, but he could not find a sturdy rafter. 

***

I moved back to my parents’ house. I didn’t tell them right away that I was back for good. It could have been like the other times I came home and scratched at the window to be let in, passed out on the couch, stole food out of the freezer, and then was gone again. Or, at least, I was making plans to be gone, anyway. 

At these times, when I fuck up and bring shame on myself, the shame travels a predestined course out from me, and the shame is amplified. 

I told my mom and she cried and swore. Then I backed off and took a shower, got some things together, picked up my keys, and waited for the reverberation. 

I was walking toward the front door, past the room where they sit and watch television and drink wine in the evenings, when my dad called my name.  

“Jamie.”

He sat alone on the love seat, staring at something on the wall across the room directly in front of him as he picked his fingernails. My mom, sunk in her own big overstuffed chair, looked at me wide-eyed, the way she does when she is about to say some horrible thing.

“You’re not really going to have this baby, are you?” she asked. The question was mostly breath when it came out.

She said the same thing the last time I got pregnant, when I was 14. Then, the solution was Prozac. This time, my dad made me call and schedule another abortion, while he listened on another phone. After I made my appointment, there was a mandatory informational recording about abortion, and we both listened to it, him in his desk chair, me standing beside him. After we hung up our phones, he told me, “Make sure this never happens again.” He let me go back to my room.

Later I thought to ask her why she wanted to kill all of my babies. How did I live, raised by a woman who kills babies like she’s scooping maggots out of a sink? 

“I am going to have this baby,” I said. I said it really quiet. I started to leave.

“Look at you. You can’t take care of a baby. Do you think I’m going to raise this baby for you? I work. I have a life.” She gestured broadly with a glass of Chardonnay.

“How the hell do you know what I can and can’t do?” I felt powerful. Being pregnant is like that—it makes you feel yourself strong. 

“I know you’re on drugs. Your sister told me. With all the birth defects in the family, and God knows what drugs. Oh, Jamie.” Then her voice got really soft and sad. 

“Jamie, what will you do if the baby is retarded?”

***

The first time I had an abortion, so that I would not feel the baby, I practiced not feeling anything at all. My mom drove me to the clinic. Then she drove me home. They sent me to vocational school, and we didn’t talk about it anymore.   

“Honey, we’ll pay for it. Then you can go back to college. It will be OK.” That’s what my mom said the second time. But it wasn’t any different from my teenage memories. 

I told her no, I wouldn’t do it again. I opened the door. As I was leaving I heard my dad say, “I just don’t understand how you turned into such a whore.” 

When I came back later, they let me stay, because we’re strapped together. We own one another. Tighter than ever, the baby bound me to them.

***

“What are you having?” a kid asked and passed me the bowl.

“Kittens,” I said. I hit the bowl, passed it. 

The boys in the circle laughed. 

The cat snuggled against my swollen belly. 

Scott was only home between construction trips. He had to pay for the baby; he had to work. He lived in the house of a satanist who had fucked his own sister years before in the lavender-painted room. The satanist’s brother once stayed up all night drinking 40s and carving a skin tag out of his neck with a kitchen knife, which he then set on fire. The empty bottles and burned skin were on the kitchen table the whole time Scott lived there. 

Flies hummed in the air around us. 

One night I waited with the satanist in the living room of that house for Scott to come home from a party, because he didn’t have a phone and I needed to tell him something about the baby. The satanist told me that he’d dreamed that I would have a baby girl, that her name would begin with an A. In his dream, I tried to hide the baby in the closet, but it kept crawling out. 

The satanist was waiting for a woman he met on the internet to come over. The woman showed up and she was older and unwashed. The three of us talked, and then the two of them went upstairs. I sat in the empty room until Scott came home. Then I told him whatever thing I had to tell him. 

***

The hospital staff wouldn’t give the baby to me at first, although I begged for her. 

A woman in scrubs wheeled in a clear plastic bassinet on casters. I wanted to pick the baby up, but I didn’t know how. Scott knew how, but he said he thought she needed a new diaper, and he didn’t know if he knew how to do that. I opened the diaper. A black tarry substance coated her skin. We looked at each other. She was quiet. I took wipes from under the bassinet and cleaned her, put the dirty things in the trash. I washed my hands. Scott put her diaper on. Then he put one hand under her head and the other under her body and lifted her. Then he gave her to me and showed me how to hold her like that. 

A different nurse came in. She taught me how to breastfeed, but the baby didn’t want to. I stopped trying.

Scott had gotten dressed up in a button-down shirt to witness the delivery of his daughter. He wore the same clothes for days as he rode with me to the hospital, stood watching the spectacle white-faced, cut the cord, slept in the chair in the room, propped me up as I walked out limping to the smoking area in the parking garage. He rode home in the backseat with the baby. I drove. At home, he slept on the floor in a sleeping bag beside the crib. 

***

In the following weeks and months, I dreamed of Chuck. I forgot that I had a baby. Then one day, I woke up and was afraid to look in the crib. She made sounds that were painful to me. I slept in my bed holding my private parts protectively because they’d been cut and torn and sewn up.

When I took a shower I could feel all of it; I could see some of the black stitches that wound through the pink and purple flesh around the long, white scar tissue. No one told me what to do about it. I decided I would not go back to the doctor I had begged not to cut me, even as she made the incision. Not even to get the stitches taken out.

My room and the baby’s room were the same room. It was in the basement of my parents’ house. I didn’t know a lot about babies, but I was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to live underground. It was cold and dark. Maybe that’s what was wrong with her. Her huge blue eyes looked at me as I rocked her to sleep down there. I buried my nose in her hair. I memorized that smell. 

***

When I touched her, I believed she felt my despair. 

My baby, Scott’s baby. 

When I cried at night, I thought I did so silently, but she always woke up, and then I cried and rocked and sang and cried and rocked and sang. 

I gave her to my mom and got out of there. My arms felt empty. 

I thought about driving off the road into the cold river, but instead I went out drinking with Chuck. 

It was dawn already when we went to his place. There was a couch, but we both lay down on the air mattress. I was turned away from him, on my side. I said the thing he was waiting for. He turned over and put an arm around me, his body against my back. He kissed the back of my neck. I felt teeth. I turned around and kissed him on the mouth. He was authoritative, yet tender in a way I hadn’t expected. He was a sensualist. Something about his fingertips. I have nothing very important to tell about it, except that. 

More fiction on VICE:

Three Gangster Fables

The Number

On the Illness

A bunch of people into homeopathy protesting outside the Advertising Standards Agency.

I’ve always envied reporters who cover big protests. The protests I end up at never seem quite in the same league, be they a group of environmentalists baking bread under a tree in Rothamsted, or, as I witnessed last week, a contingent of miffed homeopaths demonstrating outside the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). While you couldn't question the zeal of the 20 or so polite men and women who turned up with their banners, it's difficult to imagine the state being overturned by people who are convinced that putting water in a tube, banging it against something repeatedly, then pouring it over little sugary pills can cure diseases like malaria and typhoid.

Most reasonable people dismissed the idea that homeopathy might be able to benefit anyone years ago. It's been around since the 18th century, so it's not quite as old as trepanning, but it's roughly as illogical as drilling a hole in your head to cure a headache. For some reason, the practice has been allowed to continue. Treating what are essentially placebos as legitimate medicine may be harmless if you're buying them from an upscale pharmacy like the Boots in Hampstead because your millionaire husband snores too loudly, but it's more dangerous if you're a refugee in Nairobi being told that homeopathy can cure your daughter's life-threatening illness.

But somewhere along the line, homeopaths may have shot themselves in the foot. A few years ago, critics of homeopathy examined the Code of Ethics published by the Society of Homeopaths (SoH), a professional body with ambitions of becoming the statutory regulator of the industry. They spotted an interesting clause in it, in which SoH members were told that they must comply with the British Code of Advertising Practice, as enforced by the ASA, and avoid claiming that their pills could cure specific diseases. As it happens, the SoH aren’t the most enthusiastic enforcers of their own code, but given the ASA’s strong record on tackling bogus remedies, skeptics fresh from battling the British Chiropractic Association sensed an opportunity to take down another foe. Mass complaints were organized, supported by the Nightingale Collaboration, a consumer group set up by the science writer Simon Singh. 

A number of punitive rulings later and homeopaths were getting seriously pissed off. William Alderson left his position as director at the Society of Homeopaths to co-found the group Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century (HMC21), an ironically name given the quackery that never really left the 1700s it was founded in. Alderson and HMC21 had organized the protest that I’d now managed to infiltrate using the "dark arts" of journalism: not giving anyone my last name and hoping I was too obscure for anyone to recognize me. Which, it turned out, I was.

Office workers looking happy with the protest outside their building.

Back in High Holborn, things were not kicking off. Instead of being kettled like a real journalist, I was busy explaining what VICE was to a group of people in their 50s and 60s. William Alderson was leading the protest and displaying plenty of the energy and commitment that had earned him the nickname "homeopathic Duracell Bunny" from the antiquack blogger Andy Lewis. (Alderson was wearing bunny ears in a reference to this at one point, but wouldn't let me photograph him wearing them.) Every so often, two charming ladies would lead a cheer—“Homeopathy WORKS! Homeopathy WORKS!”—blissfully unaware of the dagger eyes being thrown their way by workers exiting the office buildings nearby.

I spoke to Jennifer, a homeopath who had seen her own ad rejected by the ASA on the grounds that she had failed to provide enough supporting evidence for her claims. To her, it seemed terribly unfair. “What I find a joke is… I was watching TV with my grandson and a Lucozade advert came on, and it says, 'Lucozade hydrates better than water!’ So my grandson’s like, ‘Get us some Lucozade, it’s really good!’ and it’s got bright colors and it’s on children’s television. I went into the supermarket and I looked at the ingredients—first ingredient is water, all the other ingredients are chemicals. Nothing that helps the body hydrate. They got away with advertising that—where’s their proof? Where’s their evidence?”

I asked her why she felt there were different standards. “Money!” she replied. Capitalism came up with almost everyone I spoke to in one form or another, with protesters variously criticizing Monsanto, Nestle, and, of course, the pharmaceutical industry. Some of their arguments had merit, and I found myself nodding along in agreement on more than one occasion. It was easy to see why alternative medicine has been so welcome in the anti-big-business Green Party over the years.

Alderson was particularly eloquent. Most of what he said seemed to me to be wrong, but he said it well. His basic argument revolved around the worth of patient testimony. The ASA will not let you advertize medicine as being effective if those claims are based purely on feedback from those who've been treated with it. This is critical to the marketing of homeopathic remedies, because most tests that rely on actual science rather than conjecture suggest that homeopathic medicines are as effective as placebos. Alderson's objection is that mainstream medicine also takes patient testimony into account—although this is in the form of regulators collecting reports of negative side effects. And of course academics and pharmaceutical companies do conduct empirical research before this stage.

Other arguments seemed confused or lost in sophistry. “Randomized controlled trials [also known as RCTs, the tests used by mainstream medicine companies] only produce results in about 50 percent of cases. Half of them are inconclusive,” he told me. But even if that's true, it's not really very surprising—plenty of potential new drugs may have a marginal or unclear effect. In another gambit against medicine’s gold standard, he suggested: “Every drug that is withdrawn is withdrawn because the RCTs that proved they were safe and effective turned out to be wrong.”

Again, he seemed to struggle to understand what trials are and what they do. An RCT can’t "prove" that a medicine is safe. It can suggest it with a degree of probability, and then patient surveillance is used over time to look for any issues that may have been missed. In any case, the fact that RCTs aren’t flawless doesn’t mean that anecdotes from homeopaths are any better.

Alderson loved science, but seemed to have missed some lessons along the way. “When they say the explanation for homeopathy is the placebo effect, there is no scientific explanation for the placebo effect. You can’t explain one inexplicable thing by another inexplicable thing.“ Perhaps not, but you don’t need to know how something works to observe that is—scientifically—working.

Paul Burnett, a homeopathy supporter.

Underlying all the cheerfulness were some worrying subtexts. The people I spoke to seemed very much in favor of science and the NHS, but had to square that with the seemingly inexplicable rejection of their medicine by the world around them. Conspiracy theories offered an attractive way out of their intellectual cul de sac. Alderson connected spurious dots between a Swiss government report that he believes upset "Big Pharma," the medical journal the Lancet's rejection of homeopathy in the mid-00s, the creation of Sense About Science and individual skeptics and campaigners. “You can see a whole pattern of using different organizations and individuals to push this attack [on homeopathy] in the public arena. The ASA is just the latest in this line of attacks."

It’s all very plausible, except that it falls into the skeptic’s fallacy: assuming that beliefs you don’t understand can’t be sincerely held. People campaign against homeopathy because it’s quack medicine, because belief in it can be dangerous and because treatments that don’t work shouldn’t be funded with tax payers' money. Many of the most prominent critics of homeopathy have also attacked practices in the pharmaceutical industry.

Another subtext was the threat of "poison"—a word I heard so many times that it felt like subliminal messaging. Almost every person I spoke to used the word "poison" in reference to real medicine. Alderson himself described Sense About Science’s campaigns on vaccination as "propaganda." Coupled with the proud boasts of parents who treated their own children with homeopathy (one man asked me to photograph his four children "All raised on homeopathy!"), a disturbing picture began to emerge: a community of people, suspicious of corporations, believing that modern medicine is poison and treating patients and their own families with an array of homebrew "remedies" that are actually nothing but water.

Before I left the small crowd in the sunshine on High Holborn, I asked Jennifer about the future of homeopathy. “We’ll always be here,” she replied. “I’ll defend homeopathy until I die.”

Follow Martin on Twitter: @mjrobbins

Previously - The Weird Science of North Korea

Photos via Bogdan Balaban

Remember that time thousands of dead birds fell out of the sky above Arkansas? Well, nature is back on the warparth. In May, reports emerged of thousands of dead fish floating along the Arieş River in Romania. The explanation the local administration came up with was that the fish had died from asphyxiation, caused by the mud brought in by heavy rains in the area. However, local NGOs have good reason to suspect that it was humans who caused the calamity, not a bit of rain churning up mud at the bottom of the river.

This isn't the first time the Arieş has suffered. There is an artificial lake in the nearby town of Valea Șesii, and many say that it is often to blame for the Arieş's problems. Or rather, the Cuprumin Company, owner of the nearby Roşia Poieni copper mine, is to blame, as it seems to be dumping all of its waste into said lake.

In 1999, several thousand cubic meters of water and sludge containing cyanide and heavy metals were released from the Baia de Aries gold mine into the Arieș River. All the fish died and the drinking-water supply for the nearby city of Turda was disrupted. In 2004, all plant and animal life in the Arieş River mystically perished.

In 2008, millions of dead fish floated along the river for three days because Cuprumin had forgotten to charge the electric pumps that protected the area from biohazards. In 2011, a pipe broke and 100 tons of waste poured into the Curmătura River before making its way into the Arieș River. Finally, last year a few mineshafts were flooded, which caused the red water to spill into the Arieș. However, no dead fish were reported. Every year, Cuprumin receives fines from the local authorities, yet these are obviously minor compared to the damage and don't seem to be having much, if any, effect whatsoever.

To find out more about the latest accident and what the authorities plan to do about it, I called up Tudor Brădățan, a member of the Independent Center of Resource Development, which is based in the Cluj region and works with a lot of environmental NGOs. Their latest project is focused on forming a large web of organizations that could monitor the rights of mines as well as their legality.

(Left) The acid water reaches the Arieș. (Right) The area between the town of Moldovenești and the border with the next county, Alba, where the dead fish were found. (Top) A larger view of the area. Map by Liminița Dejeu, a member of rosiamontana.org

VICE: Hi, Tudor. What do you think actually happened to the Arieș on May 31?
Tudor Brădățan: The authorities said that only fish smaller than 15 centimeters were found dead, and there was no proof of water pollution. However Marius Mașca, from the Potaissa Hunter’s Association in Turda believes they found four tons of dead fish belonging to four different species, for a distance of several kilometers upstream from Turda. He came up with this number after estimating the quantity of dead fish from one part of the river and multiplying it by the affected portion of the river. Repopulating the river will take years.

Why do you believe the fish were poisoned and not asphyxiated?
Portions of rivers which are only temporarily covered by mud can not affect such a large amount of fish; the water dilutes. Besides, if so much muddy water came from every hill near the Arieș, it would have caused severe damage to the nearby area. It’s suspicious that so many fish died from asphyxiation in an area surrounded by toxic waste dumps and pipes filled with acid.

It certainly is suspicious. Are there other factors?
Between the counties of Cluj and Alba there are lots of both closed and operational mines, which pollute the nearby waters.

Interesting.
Why don’t the fish in other rivers asphyxiate when it rains?

Some people collected the dead fish and sold them for food. Is that dangerous?
Under no circumstances should you eat these fish. Unfortunately, if you’re hungry and can’t afford anything better, then the temptation might be too great. The fish could be contaminated, and whatever killed it might kill you. The authorities are covering up an environmental accident and you could have been eating chemically altered fish.

In your opinion, what are the odds that this accident was caused by waste leaks from the Valea Șesii Lake?
The lake, which is actually a giant crater surrounded by a dam, is where waste produced by the Roșia Poieni copper mine is dumped. In the past there have been some examples of bad administration there. As the lake grows, houses from the former village of Geamăna are gobbled up by the toxic mud. Even if the authorities say these fish died from natural causes, I don’t think any institution actually did a field study to see if there’s a leak. They just took some water samples a long time after the dead fish were spotted, and no traces of pollution were found. But by the time the water reaches Târgu Mureș, it's already pretty diluted.

Have the authorities been helpful at all?
Communicating with the authorities from Alba is very hard—no environmental institution gives us any information. No complete report that documents the biohazards in this area was ever made. They're basically still following the old Communist system, where environmental accidents are never carefully investigated or punished. Cuprumin is always being disbanded and bought in complicated schemes, which only the politicians can understand. A few years ago the World Bank financed a project through which several maintenance works were done on the artificial lake, but there are other, older mining operations on which nobody is doing any repairs. The mining companies propose that the environmental disasters left to the current generation by the Romanian state should be solved with the reopening of the mining shafts.

What action are you taking?
We’re planning to make a guide for all the fishermen and those who find dead fish in the area. It will contain the methodology of taking samples, what authorities you have to call, and the cleanup process that should follow. We want to have specialists test the authorities’ implausible answers and offer them some conclusive samples taken right after the dead fish show up.

Why do you think the authorities want to cover up the pollution?
The state has been trying to sell the Cuprumin Company for a long time now. Several irregularities have been noticed and included in the motion which brought down last year’s government. Varujan Vosganian, the current Minister of the Economy, says that the process of selling the company continues. The authorities hope that a serious company will buy Cuprumin and they’ll invest in restoring the environment and waste their profit on this when they have no obligation to do anything. As these contracts are secret we can never tell if Vosganian acts on the interest of the people, who have a right to a clean environment, or that of the mining companies. Under these circumstances making an accident from that area near the Roșia Poieni Mine a popular subject wouldn’t help those with financial interests in the area, who care less about the people living there.

Thanks!

More stuff about gross water:

Watch - Toxic: Garbage Island

Watch - America's Water Crisis

Canada Day is all about getting absolutely shit-faced and proving that Canadians have their own, albeit relatively soft, identity. We aren’t just America Junior! In the nation’s capital, Canada Day is the one day where Ottawa is not the country’s most boring city. I went back to my hometown for a pool party in the burbs and then toured the Byward Market for the best and worst Canada Day has to offer. Cause, you know, getting a fake tattoo on your ass or boob is just the kind of heart that won Canada hockey gold at the 2010 Olympics!

Unless your ideal vacation involves drinking far too much in a dirty brothel, there aren't many reasons to visit San, a town in the Ségou region of Mali. In fact, most guidebooks actively tell you to skip it. But once a year, the people of this truck-stop town get collectively piss drunk, have a freaky dance party, and cap it all off with Sangue-Mo, a massive fishing festival.

I arrived in San on the eve of Sangue-Mo and met up with my friend, Abou. We sat in front of a tailor's shop and drank tea while waiting for the festival to kick off.

“Tonight, we dance,” said Abou. “Tomorrow, we fish.” Simple enough.

Over 600 years old, Sangue-Mo started as an animist celebration of survival and life, celebrating the end of summer and the start of the farming season. Despite Islam's dominance in Mali, animism is still a popular belief in the San region. Today, those ancient traditions intertwine with cheap Chinese motorcycles and cops policing the area in search of anyone acting like a drunken idiot. 

A few hours after sunset, Abou and I joined a stream of people heading out of town, passing the police station on our way. Cops were outside, unloading motorcycles and smashing their headlights in the parking lot.

“They took them from people driving their motorbikes too fast,” Abou explained.

Eventually we found the party—a sea of youths wielding makeshift weapons and machetes bobbed under halogen lights suspended from trees. People screamed and leapt and threw themselves into each other, while a few kids wearing traditional mud-dyed shirts beat on drums in the middle. Abou pushed me into the group.

Someone shoved an old motor-oil bottle filled with millet beer in my face and barked at me to drink it. The concoction inside was called tdjimidiama (pronounced a bit like chimichanga), looks like cloudy piss, and tastes like flat beer. At 20 cents a bottle, everyone in the crowd was blind drunk by midnight, with most either collapsing or pouring into the street to watch drunk guys drive motorbikes as fast as they could until the police chased them off.

The next afternoon, tens of thousands of people surrounded the sacred pond, Sangue, the festival's namesake, on the edge of the city. Fishing in the pond is banned, except on Sangue-Mo. After hours of waiting in the blazing sun, a group of elderly fishermen waded in and the crowed rushed after them.

An endless stream of Malians were soon attacking the waist-deep pond, churning the water to muck. Everyone picked their spots and plunged their nets in the water, searching for fish. The chaos continued for hours, until there couldn't possibly be anything left alive in the lake. Crowds gathered around those with the largest fish, snapping photos with cell phone cameras.

As the sun set, everyone headed back into town. At the main intersection kids gathered to watch men wheelie motorbikes, waiting for someone to crash so they could all surge over to check out the wreck. That continued until it was too dark to see, bringing another Sangue-Mo to a close in a hazy, sweaty scramble of fresh fish, motorbike parts, and tdjimidiama hangovers. 

Follow Thomas on Twitter: @tmartinezphoto

On Sunday, Brazil's national men’s soccer team dismantled defending World Cup champions Spain 3–0 in the final of the Confederations Cup in Rio de Janeiro. In a soccer-crazed country like Brazil, you’d expect the buildup to such an event would be massive. And it was—but not for the love of the game. Thousands took to the streets adjacent to the soccer stadium where the match was played to continue to voice popular disdain for what protesters believe are the misplaced priorities of the national government: choosing to fund massive international sporting events like the World Cup and the Olympics instead of investing in health care and human development.

Starting at noon on Sunday, the neighborhood of Tijuca was a fortified by around 6,000 police officers, members of the Federal Highway Police, National Force, Army, and Home Guard. A so-called FIFA perimeter was established, surrounding a two-mile radius around the stadium, only those who had tickets could pass, and locals could only enter after presenting proof of residence. The numbers were less significant than in the previous week’s demonstrations, and little more than 5,000 people were in the area until game time.

Vídeo by Thomás R. P. de Oliveira

Protesters at the perimeter wore black T-shirts, gas masks, keffiyehs, and shirts tied in the face. As game time approached the crowd focused in front of the barricades, some sat in front of the police, and as expected, right when referees whistled the start of the game, the tear gas and rubber bullets popped  I was immediately struck by a rubber bullet in the calf and could not keep pace with the retreating crowd and resisted, kicking the tear-gas grenades back, hurling stones and molotovs. Police quickly emptied the streets and protesters dispersed.

Brazil might have won the game and the police this skirmish with protesters. But the Confederation Cup, as any soccer fan knows, is just a warm up to the main event.

More protests in Rio de Janeiro:

How Last Week's Protests in Rio Turned Violent

Rio Militarizes Its Favela Slums in Preparation for the 2014 World Cup

Sao Paulo Is Burning

As if shooting a music video for a world-famous band isn't nerve-racking enough, the filmmaking collective CANADA upped the ante for Phoenix's "Trying to Be Cool," released today by The Creators Project. The video features two film crews tackling the impressive task of continuously swapping shots every 25 seconds. The video becomes a kind of cinematic relay race as filming passes back and forth between the two crews. While one camera shoots, the other preps the next scene. When the timer hits zero, the baton is passed whether or not the crew is ready. If they're not, the video cuts to black. Tough times for the crew; fun times for the viewer.

Read more at The Creators Project.

Photos by Michael Toledano

This weekend, after years of fighting for the right to be seen and heard, thousands of people took to Yonge St. in the largest Trans March of all time. This wasn't the largest Trans March in Canada—this was the largest Trans March in the world. Ever.

In every meaningful sense, June 28th, 2013 was a watershed moment in Trans history. So, why has almost no one heard anything about it?

The answer is Pride. Not the biblical kind of pride, but rather the corporatized, heavily branded "McPride" that is the reality of modern, gay-for-pay, event planners.

It should astonish everyone (except trans people, who are used to this kind of thing) that the Trans March receives zero financial support from Pride Toronto Inc. No money, no media support, no logistical support, no water for marchers. Nothing.

The fact that one of the wealthiest members of InterPride / WorldPride contributes absolutely nothing to this community is disgraceful. However, not only have they failed to contribute, they have actively set up barriers (literal and figurative) to prevent marches from happening.

Community members had been asking for support for years, but had been dismissed with bureaucratic excuses from Pride Festival officials who claimed that "The city won't give a permit", "the timing isn't right", or that "the police won't allow it."

In 2009, local activists who were tired of this figurative blockade decided to assemble at the top of Church St. and walk a few hundred yards South towards Wellesley St—the heart of Toronto’s "Gay Village.” As we assembled, several "safety officers" representing the Pride Festival attempted to panic the Trans marchers by claiming the demonstration was "illegal.” After further discussion, they claimed that they had "brokered a compromise" and that we were allowed to march... down the sidewalk.

However, we were also told that we would have to stop the march at Wellesley St. because Pride Festival officials had placed a 50-foot wide metal barricade blocking the entrance to the Gay Village.

Understandably, marchers felt outraged. To have the entrance to our "heartland" blocked by a Pride Festival, which claimed to support us, was beyond betrayal. We took to the streets, we marched, we blocked traffic, and we pushed through those barriers.

Every year since then, the march has struggled on. And every year since, Pride Festival officials have failed to provide financial support and have engaged in obstructive practices. In 2010, they used "cattle gates" to attempt to funnel marchers into a beer-garden. In 2011, they used cisgendered volunteers to misdirect marchers. In 2012, they pushed marchers through market stalls that were still under construction. This is just a short list of the kind of tactics used.

In 2013, Pride Festival officials, yet again, claimed that the City of Toronto had objected to the March. When community organizers disproved this and obtained a "Notice to Demonstrate,” Pride Festival officials claimed that the march wasn't "legal" or "safe.” They sent out misinformation as to the route, the start time, and even went so far as to print thousands of copies of a route map that showed the march (incorrectly) ending up in one of their beer gardens.

And despite all of this, on June 28th 2013, the trans community self-organized the largest march of its kind in the world. 

This puts Pride Toronto Inc. in a very difficult position. Their fund-raising activities rely heavily on the claim that they support things like the Trans March. A claim that is demonstrably not true.

Perhaps this explains why Pride Festival Organizers are tongue-tied when it comes to gushing about this moment in Trans history. But ultimately the accomplishments of this past weekend have superseded Pride’s constant aversion to the Trans March, even if it’s a temporary win.


Previously:

I Interviewed Toronto's Most Popular Transsexual Model

Should Trans People Have to Disclose Their Birth Gender Before Sex?

Marc Martel. Singer of the Calgary Flood's "unofficial anthem." via Flickr user flamesworddragon.

Natural disasters have a tendency to bring people closer together, particularly when that togetherness comes in the form of uniting musicians to record disaster-themed tribute tracks. Plus, when it comes to natural disaster inspired music, the potential for a catchy single with great emotional appeal increases exponentially and, let’s face it, people affected by disasters are in dire need of a little cheering and booty shaking.

Hurricane Katrina gave birth to a great deal of unforgettable music—such as “Get U Down” by Warren G, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and B-Real, along with a large portion of Lil’ Wayne’s Suffix mixtape. I don’t think the world can thank Bono enough for all the songs he’s made about catastrophes: the “Springhill Mining Disaster,”“The Saints Are Coming” with Green Day for Hurricane Katrina, and “Stranded,” a pretty decent collaboration with Jay-Z, Rihanna and The Edge that followed the Haiti earthquake.

Clearly the people of Alberta who were affected by the recent flooding could use some groovy tunes to bounce to as well. But don’t worry Canada; even if U2 isn’t going to step up, there are already a bunch of songs out there dedicated to the Calgary flood of 2013. Too bad they’re all terrible.
 

"Hell or High Water" by Marc Martel (MP3)

Queen Extravaganza is one of the most well known Queen cover bands in the entire world, and their lead singer Marc Martel just came out with a new song that’s been dubbed by many as the unofficial anthem of the Alberta Flood. The song is everywhere, and honestly, it sucks balls. With nonsensical lyrics like “It’s hard to build a fortune out of sweat and tears with the faith of modern day pioneers,” the track is an overtly dramatic and energetic country failure pile. That said, with the Stampede coming up this weekend, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before Marc’s country song becomes a #1 amidst the exciting landscape of Calgary radio.

"Built My Way" by Cherhast

Now this is pure garbage. The song is awful and the autotune makes my ears bleed. On top of that, the video doesn't make any sense (the images are taken from a Quicksilver video, par example). Why not use images from the actual flood? It’s in poor taste to dedicate such a piece of trash to the people of Calgary, it seems they've been through enough crappy hard times already. Try again, Cherhast.

"Rose Over Storms" by Genius Production

This one initially won my heart over, and then I fell into a dizzying spell of complete and utter boredom. Bravo for starting the song with a clip from CBC’s The National. There’s nothing that says Canadian unity like Peter Mansbridge. The man’s voice is smooth as a Calgary cowboy’s leather chapeau, which is probably as comforting as it gets in this life. But after one minute of news clips, I lost all interest for the electro beats that followed.

"Hell or High Water" by Blake Reid

As much as I’d love to shit on another country song, it’s hard to find someplace to tear down Blake Reid’s heartfelt natural disaster track. It seems to be coming from a genuine place, plus it’s not as pretentiously stupid as the other ones. It’s a smooth and emotional country song that does a good job at describing the flood itself, along with the community’s excellent job of helping each other out. While it’s certainly not the worst song ever recorded, Blake’s anthem is more sentimental than an Anne Geddes tribute to babies with cancer, and I just don’t know if Calgarians need more excuses to cry.

With their city covered in shit and a lot of rebuilding ahead, Calgary deserves a true Canadian disaster hit, and not another lazy, acoustic guitar yawnfest. This is Canada. We have a lot of talented and popular musicians! Where’s the highly-anticipated Choclair and Celine Dion flood tribute collabo when you really need it? If you are a music producer who can make that dream into a reality, let us know in the comments.


Previously:

Trayvon Martin's Shooting Has Inspired Some Terrible Songs

Calgary Is Actually NIce

A selection of webcam photos of Cleo, the financial dominatrix.

Being a financial dominatrix is a lot like being an accountant. Except for the fact that people masturbate over your penny-watching and you're more likely to work from in front of a webcam than behind a desk in a pantsuit.

The fetish of financial domination basically entails men (or "pay pigs," as they're known within the fi-dom world) transferring large sums of money to women over the internet. The nuances vary, but a relationship can stretch anywhere from a pay pig sending his dominatrix $30 a week to donating the vast majority of his earnings and having his dom take full control of all his finances. Which seems a little frivolous given the current economic climate, but I guess that's kind of the point.

I spoke to a pay pig who wanted to remain anonymous because he figured his family wouldn't be too happy to find out he'd been spending a bunch of money on an internet dominatrix. Which is perfectly understandable. When I asked him how he'd ended up as a pay pig, he told me, "It was always meant to be—I was born to serve beautiful goddesses like my mistress."

His answer wasn't much of a surprise—submissives generally worship their doms. That's the general idea of those kinds of relationships. But discovering the amount he spends a month was a little shocking: "I leave myself enough money to eat basic foods and pay my bills and everything else goes to her. Sometimes I’ll go hungry so that I can spend more on her. I am the manager of a large company, so this means that I spend a lot."

The pay pig I spoke to insisted he wasn't being exploited, and I believed him–it's not like someone was forcing him to find sexual gratification in subsisting on 7-Eleven corn dogs and water scavenged from his neighbor's birdbath. But I figured in the interest of getting a balanced look at the whole thing I should probably speak to someone on the other side of the deal, so I got in touch with Cleo Tantra, a financial dominatrix who I contacted on findoms.com, a kind of fi-dom Facebook, to learn a little more.

A little bit of impersonal financial domination.

VICE: Hi, Cleo. Can you give me a quick rundown of what the financial-domination fetish entails?
Cleo Tantra: To me, financial domination is about dominating someone financially. Sounds simple, right? It isn’t. There are so many different ways to play the game. There are the princesses and sugar babies out there who basically say, "I am pretty so give me money." Is that financial domination? They think so, but where is the domination? There are the boys who beg to be blackmailed—they provide all their information and the dom asks for money to keep it secret. Again, where is the domination?

What's real financial domination, then?
There are two ways I do it that I feel are true financial domination. The first is to know everything about my pet—how much he makes, how much he spends, and what he spends it on. I do a budget for him that he must follow exactly. I make sure his bills are paid first, but cut his food spending down by half because he can eat ramen noodles very cheap. I cut his "extras" spending to a quarter. After that, I look at the balance of the earnings and half goes into savings for him and half comes to me. He reports to me via email daily, details any purchases and makes requests for savings withdrawals. I control all of his spending.

What's the other way?
That's just a basic online BDSM relationship with financial perks thrown in. We speak daily via email or on the phone and build a real relationship. I give him various tasks: weight-loss goals if he’s chunky, embarrassing pictures, such as in drag, chastity, etc. He gives me gifts because he appreciates my domination. I penalize him financially for any failed tasks or if he pisses me off.

What do you think the appeal is for your "pets"?
There are two main types of people who enjoy this. One is the guy who craves being abused. He likes to be ridiculed or to feel used. Having someone take your money from you can be humiliating and make you suffer and struggle. The other type is the macho, dominating-in-real-life kind of man. He's stressed out from making business decisions, running a business, and being the one in charge all the time. He really gets off on being vulnerable once in a while and having someone else take charge. It’s like a vacation for him.

How much do slaves typically contribute to their mistresses?
That really depends. I’ve had pets send me $20 a week, which is what they normally spent on the takeout coffee that they gave up for me. Others send all their income after bills and groceries are bought. There are others—"drive-by subs," as I call them—who will send a new dom that strikes their fancy $200 and then never contact her again, though the last is more of a financial fetish than financial domination.

I've heard that some slaves "adopt" their mistresses household bills and pay them. Do you ever do that?
I've heard that as well, but I don't participate in it. Most slaves are turned off if they think the dom needs their money, and paying a bill for her may appear that way. Any and all money I receive is spent on frivolous items, which makes it more exciting for me and my pets.

Do you think the main appeal of financial domination to the dominatrixes is financial or sexual?
I think with most it's financial, though they'll say otherwise. I love the money, but it's also thrilling sexually, mentally, and even emotionally to have control over another person, whether money is involved or not.

Do you have any idea what the top financial dominatrixes are capable of earning?
I don't. Many don’t like to share this information due to tax purposes, and many lie about what they make to make themselves appear more desirable. I would guess from financial domination alone that they could earn a few thousand a month.

Do you ever meet any of your slaves, or is it all done over the internet?
I haven't met anyone in real life yet, though I have two subs who I will meet at some point in the future. Many of my pets are in different countries, which makes it more difficult, and others I haven't known for long enough yet. I'm open to real-life meetings, it just hasn’t worked out yet.

Have you seen any changes to the fetish, given the fact that half the world is a lot poorer than they used to be?
I honestly think it’s disappearing. The number of doms currently completely outnumbers the number of subs. Many girls find out about it and think they can post an advertisement stating how beautiful they are and demand money. It turns potential subs and slaves off and drives them away. Only the girls who truly treat this as an art and get enjoyment out of the interaction as well as the financial side—and those who realize that it isn’t just sitting on your ass collecting money—will continue to thrive.

Thanks, Cleo.

More stuff about fetishes:

Watch: World's Fattest Mom

Edgeplay Isn’t Your Grandmother’s BDSM Scene

Things I Learned at the London Sex Expo 2011

On a starless night, just a few weeks after 9/11, I stood shivering with a handful of other journalists on the banks of the Amu Darya River. We were waiting for a raft operated by Russian soldiers to take us across the border from Tajikistan to Afghanistan. 

When we arrived in Afghanistan we entered through a small sliver of the country that had not fallen to the Taliban. It was a tenuous front line held by a fragile coalition of Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras, and other anti-Taliban forces known as the Northern Alliance.

Because the Taliban government had given safe haven to the al Qaeda terrorists responsible for the attacks on America, this ragtag bunch was about to get an infusion of air power and special forces soldiers courtesy of the United States that would help them topple the Taliban regime in less than 20 days.

I followed the Taliban retreat from the north all the way to Tora Bora on the border of Pakistan where US B-52 bombers pounded the caves the Taliban had taken refuge in. In the end, they died, surrendered, or escaped to Pakistan.

It was on this journey over a dozen years ago that Afghanistan would pop my cherry as a war correspondent, introducing me to the dopamine rush of combat and the kind of death and depravity that has haunted my memories ever since.

Now I’m back (for the sixth time), retracing the steps of that first journey. I’m crossing the Amu Darya again and traveling the length of Afghanistan to see what has changed, if anything, in the 12 years since international forces intervened here and as they prepare to leave in 2014.

Early during that first trip in 2001, I found myself in the middle of a tank and mortar battle between the Taliban and Northern Alliance in an area known as Kalakata.

I was filming in a frontline position near a Northern Alliance tank that was dug in facing the Taliban in the valley below. We heard a crack in the distance and I watched in my viewfinder as the Northern Alliance troops dove for cover. The mortar explosion behind me knocked me off my feet. It did worse to a National Geographic producer named Gary Scurka. I looked over and saw him holding his leg with blood streaming down his jeans. “I’m hit, I’m hit!” he screamed.

I continued to film, partly due to shock and partly because of the macabre thought that I might be witnessing the first American casualty of the war. After a moment I put the camera down and wrapped his leg using an Afghan scarf he had around his neck.

Scurka lived. But three other journalists were killed on the same day when the Northern Alliance armored personnel carrier they were riding in was ambushed by the Taliban. One of them was a French radio reporter named Johanne Sutton.

I didn’t know any of them very well, but I remember seeing Johanne that morning near the compound where many journalists were staying. She smiled at me briefly as I passed her on my way to Kalakata.

Of all the people I know who have died in war, I think of her most often. It's sad that she was killed in such a lonely place, in some anonymous battle seemingly so far from anything.

On this trip I returned to Kalakata and found the tank trench almost the way it had been in my memories. I also drove to the area where Johanne was killed. The field was peaceful now. While the conflict in Afghanistan is ongoing and may be for some time to come, at least in this lonely place where Johanne passed a golden crop of summer wheat paints over the evidence of some of its violent past.

Kevin Sites is a rare breed of journalist, who thrives in the throes of war. As Yahoo! News’s first war correspondent between 2005 and 2006, he gained notoriety for covering every major conflict across the globe in one year’s time and fostering a technology-driven, one-man-band approach to reporting that helped usher in the “backpack movement.” Kevin is currently traveling through Afghanistan covering the tumultous country during "fighting season" as international forces like the US pullout. Keep checking back to VICE.com for more dispatches from Kevin.

Previously - What We Can Learn from the Uzbek and Tajik Conflict in Afghanistan

Read an excerpt from Kevin's latest book: Killing Up Close

Follow Kevin on Twitter: @kevinsites

And visit his personal website: KevinSitesReports.com