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Watch the Ten Best VICE Documentaries About Drugs

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Kings of Cannabis, our documentary about weed kingpin Arjan Roskam and his quest for the rarest strains.

Humans have been getting high for as long as there have been humans, but in the past few years, a series of debates on drug policies have spread around the globe, charging the subject with a sudden urgency. Can powerful substances normally used for recreation be used to treat mental illness and addiction? Does arresting and prosecuting drug dealers really lead to a safer world? What should we do about new synthetic drugs that can turn people into empty husks of addiction? Is marijuana actually an incredibly potent medicine? Why is marijuana illegal, anyway?

We've been delving into these issues for years, sending our far-flung correspondents to talk to not just policy experts but dealers, users, manufacturers, and everyone else who has a stake in the global drug economy. Below are a sampling of our favorite drug-related videos.


Swansea Love Story

VICE befriends a gang of young addicts caught up in South Wales' largely ignored heroin epidemic. Our intimate look into their lives shows how economic depression, family breakdown, and addiction create unbreakable cycles for the people in their grip.


The Real Walter White?

When AMC's Breaking Bad premiered in 2008, one of Alabama's most successful meth cooks was already knee-deep in building a massive meth empire. His name? Walter White. In this documentary, Walter told us the secret behind his product, how he stacked up thousands of dollars a day, and why his partner is now serving two life sentences.


Krokodil Tears

Russia is the biggest consumer of heroin in the world. The Siberian town of Novokuznetsk lies on the Kazakhstan border, the area hit hardest by the country's heroin problem. In this doc,we visited the hub of the heroin trade, saw religious cults disguised as rehab centers, and witnessed the effects of a bootleg drug called Krokodil, which eats its users from the inside out.


Stoned Kids

Medical marijuana is legal in 20 states and the District of Columbia, but there are still use cases that are very controversial, like medical marijuana for children. Some claim it's a wonder drug for epilepsy, severe autism, and even to quell the harsh side effects of chemotherapy, while others decry pumping marijuana into still-growing bodies. We went to the small town of Pendleton, Oregon, where medical marijuana is legal, to visit Mykayla Comstock, an eight-year-old leukemia patient who takes massive amounts of weed to treat her illness.


Getting High on Krystle

At the dawn of the millennium, all the inhabitants of the world's largest LSD laboratory were arrested, except one—Krystle Cole. We tracked her down to get the story in this episode of Hamilton's Pharmacopeia.


The Cannabis Republic of Uruguay

At the end of 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to fully legalize marijuana. VICE correspondent Krishna Andavolu headed over to Uruguay to check out how the country is adjusting to a legally regulated marijuana market.


Heroin Holiday

Every August, while Europe's bankers, lawyers, and other desk jockeys head to the beach, the junkies of Prague set up camp in the poppy fields outside the city for a vacation of their own. For one glorious month, there are no cops to run from, no dealers to skirt—just acres of vermilion blooms and as much free opium as you can collect before nodding out.

One year, we joined the junkies on their heroin holiday to learn how to turn the same poppies that seed our morning bagels into potent injectable narcotics and sample the most all-natural, locally sourced opiates Europe has to offer.


Sisa: Cocaine of the Poor

Greece's infamous new drug, sisa, is basically meth and filler ingredients like battery acid, engine oil, shampoo, and cooking salt. The majority of its users are poor, often homeless, city dwellers reeling from the psychological and physical impacts of a country in the grip of economic collapse.


Getting High on HIV Medication

In 1998, the antiretroviral drug efavirenz was approved for treatment of HIV infection. Though the drug was highly effective, patients soon began to report bizarre dreams, hallucinations, and feelings of unreality. When South African tabloids started to run stories of efavirenz-motivated rapes and robberies, scientists began to seriously study how efavirenz might produce these unexpected hallucinogenic effects.

In this doc, correspondent Hamilton Morris travels to South Africa to interview efavirenz users and dealers and study how the life-saving medicine became part of a dangerous cocktail called "nyaope." He even tracks some down and tries it himself.

You can watch a bunch more VICE documentaries here.


Is Britain Still Cool? We Asked Some Foreign VICE Offices to Find Out

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Photo by Live4Soccer(L4S).

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Tonight, Chris Evans's anarchically boorish TFI Friday returns to British TV screens 19 years after it first aired on Channel 4. If you're too young to remember, back then Britain was a very different place. In fact, it wasn't really "Britain" at all, it was a newer, braver, gakkier place called "Cool Britannia," where the future was something people still smiled about and no one knew what austerity was. For example: today we have Sleaford Mods; back then we had "Things Can Only Get Better." Today, we have Mrs. Brown's Boys D'Movie; back then we had Austin Powers. Today, we have Nigel Farage; back then we had the man who threw an egg at John Prescott. I'm not saying that the late 90s were culturally superior—clearly, "Jolly Fucker" shits over anything D:Ream will ever do—just that it was a different type of culture. It wasn't like today when no one is happy.

With TFI Friday crash-landing into David Cameron's Britain this evening, we decided it would be a good time to ask some of our international offices: Is Britain still cool? And if it is, is it as cool as it was back in those early, heady days when Oasis were still friends and Tony Blair was not yet a war criminal? Here are their replies, including images that they say sum up Britain in 2015. None of them seemed bothered about the territorial differences between Britain, Great Britain, and the UK, and for some reason they all wanted to talk about the Libertines.

Read: Boozing at Dawn with London's Twilight Drinkers

VICE ITALY

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Photo that sums up Britain according to VICE Italy by Anis Ali.

Yes guys, you still rock. Even though I was too young to care about Oasis vs. Blur, I remember there was a time when I thought Pete Doherty was the coolest man on planet Earth. It didn't matter that he was pale and flabby and the only time he came to Milan he had a nervous breakdown and fled the stage screaming after the first song—he's the kind of guy who can break Mediterranean girls' hearts. I was convinced there was a clear line running from Dylan Thomas through Joe Strummer to Pete Doherty—something to do with tight jeans, talking like your throat is a pub ashtray and not giving a shit about girls. I still believe it. You had the punk movement, too—and I am sure every Italian kid will continue to go through a punk period in their life till the end of Western civilization itself.

We still like you guys today because of the pub-fights and the five-o-clock beers, but on the other hand, you know, southern Europe seems to have become the destination of choice for soon-to-be-married British girls who want nothing more than to get drunk and faint naked on the beach. Then there's the carpet thing: Why the hell do you feel the need to put fitted carpet on all of your rooms and staircases? It's so unhygienic. Not to mention undeniably uncool.

Sometimes you look like you're never going to change; that the monarchy and politeness and hooligans will stay forever. We like your balance. And your accent. American English sucks. ––– Elena Viale, Staff Writer, VICE Italy.

VICE FRANCE

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Photo that sums up Britain according to VICE France by Landii.

Guys, basically you and New York invented, theorized, and classified the concept of cool itself. Like, when I was 18 and had this big bowl-ey Byrds haircut, my grandmother used to scream, "You look like a young English man, you're almost a Beatle!" For most people here, "British" is still a synonym for politeness, humor, and class. And pop-rock. Britain is the pale-skinned gentleman sleeping in a castle near the river in his Barbour jacket; the Stone Roses fan who likes soccer, pints, and getting smashed on Es. Both are stereotypes adored by French kids.

On the other hand, the last 15 years saw the coming of age of your 21st century—drunken youths marauding through the streets of Soho and the worst tourists in the Western world. Frankly, we think it's gross. Most people I know associate premature obesity and vomit with the English. Also, what can we say about a guy like Cameron? He's almost the only guy on Earth who could make people think Sarkozy is a left-winger. I don't know if Britain is "uncool" or whatever, but there are definitely a couple of things that make you look like assholes to the rest of us. ––– Julien Morel, Editor in Chief, VICE France.

VICE GREECE

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Photo that sums up Britain according to VICE Greece by Brian Ledgard.

Britain has always been cool in my eyes. If Britain were a person, it would be one of those sharp-dressed Mods who wanders around town on their scooter looking for either a fight or amphetamines. That's what I like about Britain: the conflicts. You always have to "stand your ground" and be proud of who you are and where you come from. There's no shame in being poor but it is also not your fault if you happen to be an arty rich kid. People in Britain seem to understand this.

Mods vs. Rockers, Oasis vs. Blur, Millwall vs. West Ham, it's all there—rabid tribal conflict that all builds to this cathartic moment when you scream your lungs out about how proud you are to be you. That's the coolest thing about Britain. It's not just the obvious things—music, art, literature, comedy, The Beatles—that make Britain cool, it's about taking the fall with a smile. And then necking a dozen pints of lager.

On the other hand, I have come to the conclusion that some aspects of Britain which I always admired are fading like the color in Pete Doherty's hair. It is the quality of life. That's what is important, in my opinion, right now. Making sure that people live a happy life. And that is not what happens in Britain these days. ––– Antonis Konstantaras, Writer, VICE Greece.

VICE SPAIN

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Photo that sums up Britain according to VICE Spain by Javier Izquierdo.

How could we not love you, the British? In our mind, the UK is a lot of the music that we love, social movements that have changed the world, like punk, and really cool people like Morrissey, John Lennon, David Bowie, and Cliff Richard.

From a distance, we peer at you and see an intelligent people who have much more money than us and that, obviously, means everything is better.

The problem only really arrives when we come face to face with you here in Spain. When you come to visit us and all we see is a bunch of men with shaved heads, too many tattoos, not enough sun cream and an abject, almost criminal level of drunkenness. Britain to me today is a pissed man who is continually trying to find out if he can jump from the window of his Magaluf hotel room to the pool. And he dies every time. These days we don't know what to think. ––– Juanjo Villalba, Editor-in-Chief, VICE Spain.

VICE DENMARK

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Photo that sums up Britain according to VICE Denmark.

You've changed, guys. What happened? You used to be punk and conquer the world and subsequently ruin it like it was nobody's goddamn business. You used to give fewer fucks than Sid Vicious himself, and now it's all Ed Sheeran this, political pedophile ring that. We don't know where it all went wrong, but we suspect it might have something to do with the strange impulse your rather loud citizens have to buy up all the bars in the world and name them ridiculous things, like "The Feathery Cock" and "The Hunter's Willy." And just for the record, adding "...and chips" to something doesn't mean you've created a brand new dish.

That said, you guys leaving the European Union will be the most punk thing you've done in years. It will be sort of like flipping off all your friends and wandering off into the wilderness to die alone, but pretty punk nonetheless. Also: Sleaford Mods. They're cool. ––– Mads Schmidt, Online Editor, VICE Denmark.

VICE SWEDEN

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Photo that sums up Britain according to VICE Sweden by Alex Sturrock.

To a Swede, Britain's dry cider is fucking cool. All we ever come up with is super sweet candy cider that attracts bugs. Also, the dry cider—like Strongbow—is available everywhere! AND it comes in huge bottles! So cool. But drinking huge bottles of alcohol comes at a price: namely British tourists, who are the worst: drunk, loud monsters who mistake holidays for war, and try to conquer travel destinations with their pale, alcohol-flushed bodies.

When it comes to music, the Brits have a ton of genres that are cool and some that aren't cool. Grime is cool, 'cos it's like the older, smarter, cleaner brother of trap. It's sexy in that weird, awkward, British way. And once upon a time, the Brits knew how to make cool dance music.


Related: Watch Boy Racers, our film about Britain's speed-obsessed young men


Unfortunately, that time is over. The British rave scene WAS cool until the mid 90s. But then, like with most of your weird electronic styles (drum and bass, donk—WTF?—jungle, etc) you get lazy and don't know how to keep up with the world around you. Jamie xx alone isn't enough for you guys to be considered cool. And I mean, Calvin Harris—really? I don't usually say this, but: LOL.

But then again, no one can take indie-rock away from you. Babyshambles, The Kooks—yeah, baby! You'll always be cool for that. It's a shame that many of your uncool citizens think it's cool to dress like a Babyshamble in 2015. It's not. ––– Caisa Ederyd, Editor, VICE Sweden.

VICE ROMANIA

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Photo that sums up Britain according to VICE Romania by Todd Dwyer.

It's pretty easy for a middle-class Romanian to say what we like about Britain. If a war with Russia ever breaks out, most of us will probably migrate to Britain. We already have a lot of friends who moved there. You might have seen that in the news.

We like that you're heavy drinkers, and you're one of the few Western nations who have some semblance of dark humor, which is basically the only humor eastern Europeans approve of. On the other hand, the people of Bucharest hate your dark beer, but love your drugs, because cocaine is very rare in Romania.

Music-wise, I don't think there's any new British band or DJ from recent years that was popular enough to reach our corner of the world, but we still fill up stadiums for British heavy metal bands from the 80s, so I guess we're a little out of the loop.

We also love you guys for Prince Charles, who keeps coming to Romania to throw money around and help preserve our historical heritage. As for our dislikes, we really hate your backwater xenophobia. Parties like UKIP and the Conservative Party make us out to be thieves and beggars in a manner that reminds us of Soviet propaganda. Some of our friends who work in the UK told us that they feel this prejudice every day, even though they've been working and paying taxes there for over a decade.

Also, what's the deal with grime music and cutesters? We really don't get how those are "a thing" there. ––– Mihai Popescu, Senior Editor, VICE Romania.

VICE NETHERLANDS

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Photo that sums up Britain according to VICE Netherlands by Sander v Ginkel.

It's hard to definitively conclude whether Britain is still cool or not. On the one hand, it's hard to think of Britain as "cool" when your main contact with British people is hen parties—especially when you're having to weave around them as they sit-down-piss in the streets of your home town and capital city. When it comes to the British, our first association these days is girls who wear bulky belts as skirts, circling around guys in stained football shirts. If these people are cool it's only in terms of their body temperature, seeing that they refuse to wear coats or jackets, even mid-November, when the streets are full of snow and ice. Cool people, on this continent at least, wear coats or jackets.

The MTV of Blur and Oasis is dead, while the MTV of Geordie Shore is very much alive, continuously airing the life dilemmas faced by people with plastic hair, unintelligibly wheezing at each other. British people screaming, fighting, drinking, and doing drugs used to be cool, but somehow it now feels a tad trashy.

On the other hand: grime. ––– Wiegertje Postma, Editor-in-Chief, VICE Netherlands.

'Orange Is the New Black' Explores Motherhood Behind Bars in Season Three

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Kate Mulgrew as Galina Reznikov and Selenis Leyva as Gloria Mendoza in 'Orange Is the New Black.' Photo courtesy of Netflix

Warning: minor spoilers from here on out.

During one of the flashbacks in the new season of Orange Is the New Black, a teenager is threatening to jump off the roof of his high school while a crowd of fellow students gathers below him.

"I'm failing Math and Western Civ!" he wails.

Someone deep within the throng of onlookers yells back, "We're all failing Western Civ!"

It's a funny line uttered by a faceless stranger, but the blink-and-you'll-miss-it sentiment encapsulates so much of what the Netflix series is about, from the fact that the number of women in prison has grown an astounding 800 percent over the past three decades, to the revelation that it took a Trojan horse—as show creator Jenji Kohan called the Caucasian, blond character of Piper Chapman, based on the real-life memoir by Piper Kerman—to get viewers to care about stories that center around incarcerated black, Latina, and older women.

While last season centered on a conventional "Big Bad" television trope in the form of the nasty, manipulative Vee, the new episodes take a quieter, more intimate approach to storytelling. Struggles concerning motherhood in all its various forms and contexts are the central theme that ties everything together. (So far, that is—Netflix only released the first six episodes for review.) The premiere even kicks off with Litchfield hosting a Mother's Day event, where children of inmates are allowed on the grounds for a party in the yard, planting the seeds for storylines to come.

Considering that more than half of the women in prison are mothers of children under the age of 18 (according to the last available data, which dates back to 2007), it's about time the show took a deep dive into the subject.

During visiting hours, even tiny kids were expected to remain still in their chairs.

"It was really refreshing to see that we were tackling motherhood, because we hadn't done that," said actress Selenis Leyva, who plays Gloria Mendoza, head of the prison kitchen and a mother figure in her own right to the Latina population at Litchfield. In the new season, we discover that she hasn't seen her son Benito in two and half years, and when she insists that he finally visit, we're introduced to a surly brat of a teenager, a far cry from the adorable tyke we met during Mendoza's flashback episode last season. In an effort to make him get his act together, Mendoza demands that he start visiting every week to do his homework in front of her, but Benny has no way of making the long trip up to Litchfield on a regular basis. Gloria works out an arrangement with Sophia (Laverne Cox) for their sons to make the trek together, and it sounds like things go south from there.

"I have a scene that I shot with Laverne that was exhausting and very draining," Leyva told me over the phone. "I'm curious to see how that's going to play itself off. But it's a really crucial and very important scene for both of our characters and all our journeys as mothers. You're going to get to see how it kind of unravels and she starts her own lashing out. Its like, 'Uh oh, Momma's upset,' so that sort of trickles down through her jail daughters."

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Selenis Leyva as Gloria Mendoza in 'Orange Is the New Black.' Photo courtesy of Netflix

The mother of a pre-teen herself, Leyva has the upmost empathy for women in Mendoza's position. "I know that it means the world to [my daughter] to be able to come home after a day of mini-dramas in her life and be able to discuss them with me," she said. "I can only imagine how hard, how horrific it is for Gloria's children on the outside. Even though they're being taken care of by a relative, it's not easy."

A former real-life inmate named Joanne Archibald emphatically agreed. She told me she's a fan of OITNB, but believes that the show's treatment of motherhood "has been one of their weak points." Archibald's personal story, oddly enough, mirrors many of the same elements of Piper Chapman's. While in college, Archibald got busted carrying drugs over state lines for someone she was close to, never thinking that there would be any real consequences to her actions. (Another depressing prison fact: Two-thirds of incarcerated women are there for nonviolent offenses.) After getting caught at an airport she was sentenced to one year and one day in a federal prison, just as her infant son was turning seven months old.


Check out our VICE News documentary on the famously progressive prisons in Norway:


Archibald was 24 at the time and got uncommonly lucky with her childcare. "I had a close friend who did an amazing thing for me," she said over the phone. "She offered to move to the town the prison was in [to help raise the baby]. She went from being footloose and fancy free to caring for an infant in a town where she didn't know anybody except me in the prison."

It's an almost unheard-of situation, and one based on an intense level of devotion on her friend's part. Because of it, Archibald was able to maintain a semblance of a relationship with her son for that formative year of his life. Not that it was simple. During visiting hours, even tiny kids were expected to remain still in their chairs.

"To get a toddler to sit for an hour or two is not that easy!" she said. "They want to move around, and you get scolded. Guards say, 'If you can't make them stay still, they are going to have to leave.'"

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Joanne Archibald with her son David

Then there was the mandatory strip search after each visit. "Some people would have their family members leave early to avoid having to stand in line after they left, which was the worst." Archibald described the queue as eerily silent, everyone waiting to be physically humiliated while reflecting on loved ones now gone from the premises.

"There were some officers who you could tell did not want to be doing it," she said. "But some of them really seemed like they enjoyed humiliating you and dragging it out. It was pretty gross."

The process was traumatic enough for some of Archibald's fellow inmates to ask family members to stop visiting altogether, to avoid having to repeat the experience on a regular basis. The guards exercise control while mothers lose theirs, and on OITNB, that feeling of helplessness often spills over into relationships with other inmates.

For Mendoza, Levya said, "She's taken all these women and girls and decided, 'I'm going to take care of them, I'm going to do what I can't do for my kids on the outside.' And she needs that, she needs to take care of them, in order to remain almost sane."

Speaking of prisons, did you know there are some in Indiana that are allowing some inmates to order pizza and takeout?

In Archibald's case, her son's caretaker did her best to make her feel included in the process of raising him. "She really worked it out for me so that I still felt like I had some control when in fact I had none," she said. "Like if he got a cold, she would ask what she should do. I knew that she knew what to do."

Today, Archibald works for womenandprison.org, collecting personal stories from current and former inmates, as well as cataloging news about women's experiences in the criminal justice system. And Leyva does a lot of work with Women's Prison Association.

"At the start of the school year, we make sure that we have backpacks filled with supplies for women who are in the program who have children that are going off to school," she said.

If you're truly a fan of OITNB, do yourself a favor and explore these organizations for better sense of the real world behind the show, or better yet, donate some time or money to their cause. Consider it a little extra credit to keep from failing Western Civ.

The new season of Orange Is the New Black premiered yesterday on Netflix. To learn more about Women and Prison, a website, installation, and zine created entirely from the work and lives of America's incarcerated women, check out their website. To find out about Women's Prison Association, a support group for women at all stages of criminal-justice involvement, click here.

Joshua Lyon is the author of Pill Head. Follow him on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Pussy Riot Member Nadya Tolokonnikova Arrested For Protest in Moscow

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Courtesy of Nadya Tolokonnikova

Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot was dragged away from Bolotnaya Square in Moscow today after staging a protest there. Another activist, Katya Nenasheva, was arrested as well. The pair have been released and are currently waiting for their arrest papers outside of jail, Tolokonnikova's husband, Peter Verzilov, told VICE.

Nenasheva, an artist, has been donning prison garb for the past 18 days to draw awareness to the lack of jobs and acceptance women face when they are released from Russian jails. Today, on a holiday called Russia Day that celebrates the country and its constitution, she and Pussy Riot's Tolokonnikova planned to sew a message onto a Russian flag in the square while wearing prison uniforms.

"We will sew the Russian flag on Bolotnaya Square, the square that became the starting point for many years in prison for dozens of activists who went out to protest Putin's regime in May 2012," Tolokonnikova said in a statement. "So here we are, on this square, and we will sew the sign "PRISON CAMP RUSSIA" to the face of the Russian flag on Russia Day."

In March 2012, Tolokonnikova was arrested for hooliganism after performing inside Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. The sentencing drew international outrage and was the subject of an HBO documentary called Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer. (Here at VICE, several staff members got tattoos to show solidarity.)

Not long after the protest started, a police van arrived at the square and took Tolokonnikova and Nenasheva into custody, along with their sewing machine, according to Mashable.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Cry-Baby of the Week: A Woman Pepper Sprayed a Bunch of People Because a Restaurant Fucked Up Her Burrito

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It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: An unnamed woman in California

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Screencaps via Google Maps and NBC4

The incident: A restaurant messed up some woman's burrito order.

The appropriate response: Getting them to make you a new one.

The actual response: She pepper sprayed a bunch of people.

On Monday, a woman (who has yet to be identified) ordered a burrito at a Del Taco in Ontario, California.

According to a report on the Los Angeles CBS station, the woman's burrito was not made to her liking. This caused her to become "upset." Witnesses say the woman started shouting at the restaurant's staff before throwing a bowl and a pen at them, then storming out of the building.

When the manager of the Del Taco followed the woman outside to take note of her license plate, she reportedly took out a canister of pepper spray and started spraying the manager.

The manager then ran back inside the restaurant with the pepper-spraying woman in pursuit.

According to witnesses, the woman continued to spray the manager once she was back inside the restaurant, and then turned her attention to the customers.

"I just happened to look at her and she sprayed me and the employee in the face," a customer named Rose Keith (pictured above, holding a cloth over her eyes) told NBC Los Angeles. "I didn't know what to think, I've never had pepper spray in my face. It was terrible, it's awful."

Once she was done spraying, the woman fled the scene.

There were 14 people in the restaurant at the time of the rampage, none of whom required hospital treatment. Police have the license plate of the burrito-loving, pepper-spray-wielding woman. But, so far, no arrest has been reported.

Cry-Baby #2: John O'Connor

The incident: A former marine wore his uniform in public.

The appropriate response: Nothing.

The actual response: He was confronted by two men, one of whom is a cop, who refused to leave him alone, despite being shown military ID.

Late last month, Robert Ford, a 75-year-old former marine (pictured above) was wearing his marine uniform at an art fair in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was passing through the fair after taking part in a wreath laying ceremony earlier that day.

Robert served six years in the marines, from 1958 to 1964. Since leaving, he has taken part in over 600 military funerals. He also helps other local veterans with denied claims with the local VA hospital.

According to Robert, a soldier who spotted him at the art fair thought he was a phony, and reported him to a cop named John O'Connor who had been standing nearby.

The detective reportedly approached Robert. "He made the comment that 'I have to investigate for stolen valor,'" Robert explained to the local ABC affiliate. "Which I thought was a little insulting."

Robert says that, despite being insulted, he let it go and told the officer, "Next year maybe you can come down to our ceremony and bring some friends."

The cop reportedly left for a moment before returning and confronting Robert again. "He demanded, practically shouting, 'Where did you go to boot camp?'" Robert said. "I realized at that point this was very strange."

This is when, Robert says, he asked the officer to leave him alone.

Then, according to Robert, the cop began addressing the crowd of people at the art fair, shouting, "He's a fake, he doesn't know where he went to boot camp."

The soldier who had originally reported Robert allegedly also joined in, pointing at him and shouting that he was a phony and had never been a marine.

Hunting down people who are "stealing valor" has become something of a hobby for many members of the military, who often post videos of themselves humiliating people who they suspect of fakery.

Robert says he produced his VA identification and showed it to the cop. "And this guy turns around to all the people to say, 'It's a fake, anybody can print those.'"

According to Robert, after this, he attempted to leave. "I moved away and I kept telling these two guys to please stay away from me," he said. "But they kept it up, they followed me. This went on for ten-fifteen minutes."

The cop's supervisor then also reportedly came to speak to Robert. "The captain told me that maybe I would just wanna leave," Robert said.

Robert refused to leave, and stayed at the art fair. But, he says, the cop who had initially confronted him spent the rest of his time there glaring at him.

Speaking of the incident to Penn Live, Robert said, "It was the most humiliating experience of my whole life."

Harrisburg Police have launched an internal investigation.

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Previously: A guy who called the cops because some people cheered at a graduation vs. a man who slashed someone's tires because she sat in his favorite seat at bingo

Winner: The graduation guy!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

I'm 23 Years Old and I've Never Had an Orgasm

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This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

I'm lying on my bed with my legs spreadeagled. Two women are kissing on the screen in front of me, one slowly getting penetrated by a man from behind; a cloud of Ikea's vanilla scent permeates my room. I've decided to try and do it myself – to give the whole orgasm thing another chance. But it's impossible; somehow I feel totally out of place, like I'm just not cut out for climaxing.

Sixteen minutes and 38 seconds later, I give up and make myself a cup of tea. While stirring in the sugar, I'll introduce myself to you. I'm 23, and I've never had an orgasm. For starters, I get bored of masturbating really quickly – it doesn't really do anything for me, not even when I'm alone in my bed. That made me feel strange for a long time, but not any more.

I like to watch porn for aesthetic reasons, but not because it makes me horny. That doesn't apply to most of the material, of course, but luckily the industry is re-orienting itself. In general, I think women are more beautiful than men – there's something about tits on screen that gets me going. And pussy, too. Dicks irritate me sometimes. It's a little bit like roulette: you never know what's gonna pop out of a guy's pants.

Related: Can You Tell Which of These Porn Star Orgasms Are Fake?

For me, an orgasm is a mystery. It's the Higgs boson – its existence has yet to be conclusively proven. But you can't miss what you don't know, and unfortunately most of my sex partners have failed to understand that. That's why I fake my orgasms. I think I'm good at it too, because, so far, all the people I've had sex with have seemed to think of themselves as total studs.

I have to admit that some of them were really good – as good as french fries with ketchup AND mayo – but I'm talking about the entirety of the act. The kissing, the groping, the beating heart, the dirty words. The beautiful rawness and the desire and your knee jammed in between two car seats. I love having sex, I just don't climax. How could I?

I moan and I shake because that gives men pleasure. I once told a guy I dated about my problem. Two glasses of wine got me tipsy and slowed the communication between my synapses. He was handsome, older and brought along a lot of baggage, which I didn't mind. I thought it would be an interesting experiment: I wanted to see what would happen, how he would react and act. At first, he seemed overwhelmed, maybe a little uncomfortable. He recommended pillows, developed a temporary head tick and helplessly rubbed my clit. I just lay there, looking at the peach-coloured blanket.


Watch – Orgasms: Where R They?


Aside from some pistachios giving me a stomach ache, that was the worst part of the evening. Some people just aren't meant for each other, physically. It all got a bit much by the end and I felt sorry for him, so appeased him with a fake orgasm. Once it was all over I turned to look at him. He seemed so proud.

I think it's great that he took my orgasm seriously. You can't take that kind of selflessness for granted. It could have been fun, but in the end his keenness made everything too psychological. He reminded me of a panting dog running after a treat. He really should have concentrated less on the goal and more on the journey.

Here's a thought: if people stopped making such a big deal out of the fact I don't come, maybe I could finally let go and actually come. I'm tired of worrying that my inability to climax will loom over my relationship like a stormy cloud, and I'm pretty sure it's that stress that keeps me from knowing what an orgasm feels like.

So let me sprinkle a little sugar on you, dear men of the world: Sex can be wonderful without an orgasm. For me, it's just the bright red cherry on top of the cake. Intimacy with the right person is horribly exciting and fulfilling. The sizzling in the air, the breathlessness before a kiss – they taste better than cactus-flavoured ice cream. Making people happy makes me happy. Orgasms are not my priority. It would be really nice if it happened at some point in my life, but we all need to loosen up a bit before it does.

Got trouble orgasming, too? These could help:

How to Have an Orgasm With Your Vagina

How to Fake an Orgasm

Washington Civil Rights Activist Outed as White by Her Parents

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Washington Civil Rights Activist Outed as White by Her Parents

Line 9 Pipeline Could Start Pumping Heavy Oil Soon Despite First Nations Court Challenge

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A Line 9 protest in Toronto. Photo by Michael Toledano

Despite opposition to the Enbridge's Line 9 pipeline from municipalities and First Nations, plans to get oil flowing east to Quebec through the 40-year old line are on the verge of becoming a reality, pending final-final approval by the National Energy Board.

However, a court case brought forward by the Chippewa of the Thames First Nation (COTTFN), an Anishanabek community near London, Ontario, could have an impact when it begins June 16 in Toronto.

The Line 9B pipeline west terminal is located in Sarnia, Ontario and its east terminal is in Montreal, closely following Highway 401 for most of that distance. Since 2012, Enbridge has tried to get approval to reverse the flow of Line 9B to pump up to 300,000 barrels per day of western oil, including heavy tar sands bitumen and lighter Bakken crudes. The NEB gave Enbridge the nod in February, and the Calgary-based company indicated it expected to have the line operational this spring. A Toronto Media Coop article stated oil could have started flowing "as early as June 1." But the NEB has yet to give its really-final approval.

We asked the NEB what effect of the Chippewa's court case was having on their Line 9B approval process. The NEB told us, "No other court has granted a stay of the Order, so there is no reason why the [National Energy] Board would delay its assessment of the leave to open application for Line 9B."

In plainer language, the NEB is not waiting for the legal challenge to be resolved.

But the NEB also mentioned, "There is no time limit for the NEB's review; we will take the time needed to make the right decision." The NEB won't say when it will give Enbridge the go-ahead, but it is saying the Chippewa's case isn't holding them back. Communities along the line, including COTTFN, are concerned oil could start flowing soon.

Lana Goldberg of Rising Tide Toronto, an organization closely watching and opposing Line 9 developments for years, says, "We're expecting it to start up any day now."

On May 21, COTTFN tried appealing directly to the NEB for a "stay of Board Order," legalese for getting the NEB to pause the project, until issues of consultation were addressed. That application was rejected by the NEB on June 3 following a response from Enbridge calling COTTFN's application "frivolous, vexatious, and an abuse of process."

VICE spoke with Myeengun Henry, a COTTFN band councillor.

"Canada has never consulted us on this project and it's their constitutional obligation to do so. They can't appoint a third party. It should be a nation-to-nation discussion," he said.

The "third party" Henry is referring to is the National Energy Board, which operates at arms-length from the federal government. Cabinet appoints theNEB's members, the majority of whom have worked in the energy industry and are white.

Henry asserts the NEB's consultations with COTTFN on Line 9B amount to "a failure of Canada to live up Section 35 of the Constitution." Section 35 describes Canada's responsibilities to consult with First Nations.

But Henry stresses the importance of looking beyond Section 35 to the treaties it was meant to respect and honour.

"The Two Row Wampum is a very important treaty in this region," says Henry from his Conestoga College office. "I also carry the Treaty of Niagara belt and 24 Nations belt and let people know what it means." These treaties were made between First Nations of the Great Lakes—St Lawrence region (and other lands) and the British to successfully ratify the Royal Proclamation of 1763, a document foundational to the Canadian state.

"They're about shared relationships and shared resources between indigenous and settler peoples," says Henry of the treaties.

But in court it will be Section 35 taking centre stage, not the treaties. Section 35 will feature in a similar case being heard in Vancouver this fall concerning NEB process for the Northern Gateway pipeline, another Enbridge project mired in delays.

Asked about the suitability of the NEB acting to consult First Nations on behalf of Canada, Natural Resources Canada told VICE, "The NEB is a quasi-judicial body with full authority to consider Constitutional issues within the NEB's mandate. The Government of Canada has complete confidence in the NEB's ability to consider [Section] 35 issues, within its mandate, in a thorough and reliable manner."

Municipalities along the route have expressed concern over the safety of Line 9. After the NEB approved the project in February, the city of Toronto asked for emergency shut-off valves to be installed on either side of waterways. Montreal joined over 10 Quebec municipalities in asking for hydrostatic tests to determine the strength of the 40-year old pipeline. Industry veteran Richard Kuprewicz estimated there is a 90 percent chance Line 9 will rupture. The asked-for valves have not been installed and hydrostatic tests have yet to be performed. Enbridge has indicated such tests could potentially damage Line 9.

Speaking to safety concerns, the NEB told us, "If the Board is not convinced that the project will be safe and operated in a manner that protects communities and the environment - Enbridge will not be allowed to operate that pipeline."

VICE asked Enbridge for comment for this story and received no response as of press time.

The COTTFN court challenge begins next Tuesday in Toronto. A rally is planned outside the courthouse.



Dumb Parents Need to Stop Letting Their Young Kids Eat Weed Brownies, Study Says

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Are these normal brownies? Or weed brownies? Only one way to be certain. Photo: wikipedia.

According to a new study, children under the age of six are being exposed to marijuana products more than ever. But instead of an alarmist report about peer-pressured toddlers in preschool, research shows that the little rascals might accidentally be getting into weed edibles around the house.

The Clinical Pediatrics Journal published data gathered from poison control centres across the United States. According to their findings, while it is still uncommon for children to be exposed to marijuana and THC products, states that legalized the product saw as large as a 600 percent increase in exposures, mostly by ingestion.

Yesterday, the Canadian Supreme Court legalized medical marijuana in any form, so legal users no longer have to just smoke it or use a vaporizer. Although this is good news for many who feel that edibles are a better alternative to smoking weed, which is considered harmful by some studies, parents will have to be cautious with their edibles around young children.

"They're not trying to get high, they're not trying to use it, these are kids going through the house—that's their environment, that's where they live—and coming across THC products," Henry Spiller, toxicologist and co-author of the study, told VICE.

Three quarters of the kids in the study were exposed via ingestion while fewer than ten percent were affected by inhalation.

Marijuana edibles come in many different forms: from the common cookies, and brownies, to lollipops, gummy bears, mints and drinks. In Colorado, there's even a twice-baked weed pizza with cheese and pepperoni. All of these items are appealing to a child who can't tell the difference from the non-THC infused versions.

"We call it exploratory behavior, they just do this. We try to keep them out of bleach and cleaning products but they still get into it because it's in the home," said Spiller, who knows first-hand how curious they can be, from his own five children.

The study shows that about a third of the children were sent to hospital. And although the majority reported minor effects, some children were reported to suffer commas, seizures, fever, and vomiting.

Marijuana, for young teens, is said to be harmful for brain development, but effects on infants is still understudied. Dr. Margaret Thompson, Medical Director of the Ontario Poison Centre at SickKids says that the symptoms children experienced in the study can be experienced by anyone who severely overdoses.

"For the naïve child who's never had it before, the number of milligrams of marijuana in that same quantity can [cause] basically overdose effects," she said.

Thompson says that the Ontario Poison Centre has received calls of children being exposed, and they are treated the same as a child being exposed to any toxic substance.

"The government has policy that if it's a substance that is meant for children it has to be kept in a container that's child resistant," she said. "When you're dispensing medical marijuana there should always be warnings that these things should be in child resistant containers."

Spiller suggests that parents should manage marijuana products the same way they would alcohol—in a cabinet and out of reach. But he also says that teaching parents is not enough. He hopes that any government that legalizes distribution of edibles will take action and call upon safer containers for distribution.

"Putting a sticker, a red thing, skull and crossbones means nothing to a four-year-old, they don't read," he said. "It really has to be in some sort of a package that's really a child resisting container."

As the debate in Canada continues for the legalization of marijuana, children shouldn't be left out of the conversation. Although very little research has been done on how marijuana affects such young bodies, toxicologists suggest we should consider the risks. Our own government might want to consider new strategies, if they weren't so focused on fighting the Supreme Court.

"If we can extrapolate to Canada, we might suggest that we need to be weary of that," said Thompson. "They should consider children for anything they legalize."

Follow Sierra Bein on Twitter.

RCMP Arrest, Charge Somali Man in Journalists' Horrific Kidnapping Ordeal

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RCMP Arrest, Charge Somali Man in Journalists' Horrific Kidnapping Ordeal

I Found Out What Yeezus Tastes Like

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I Found Out What Yeezus Tastes Like

VICE Talks Film: VICE Meets Crystal Moselle, Director of 'The Wolfpack'

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We talked to Crystal Moselle about her new documentary The Wolfpack. The film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2015, follows the lives of six teenage boys who lived and were homeschooled in a Lower East Side apartment. With little to no interaction with the outside world, the boys' only access to life outside their home was through watching movies.

Here's What You Should Do if You're Buried Under Private Student-Loan Debt

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Via Flickr user Judith E. Bell

It's safe to say that when 40 million Americans are saddled with about $1.4 trillion in student debt, it constitutes a crisis. Astronomically high tuition costs and ridiculous interest rates coupled with a lack of financial literacy among borrowers mean that graduates are often left owing the cost of a house after earning a four-year degree and have no idea how to tackle their bills.

On Wednesday, I wrote an article about what to do when you're being crushed by federal student loans. The tl;dr was, "Pay them, because you have no choice." As an expert told me, the federal government is the best debt collector in the universe, and it will get its money one way or another—even if that means garnishing delinquent borrowers' wages or withholding their tax refunds or government benefits.

I guess I struck a nerve, because after the article was published, I was inundated with Tweets, emails, and texts from both strangers and acquaintances asking for advice on private student loans. So in a quest to understand how those work, I rang up Peter Rhode, who calls himself "The Get Out of Debt Guy."

Even though defaulting on federal loans sounds like a special kind of hell, Rhodes told me that giving up on private ones is actually a good idea in a lot of cases. "People make all sorts of bad decisions about how to deal with their debt based on fears and not reality," he told me. "Today, the reality is that when it comes to private student-loan debt, so many people say there are no options, and that's just not true." Here's what else he had to say.

VICE: What happens if you don't pay your private student loans? How many months of nonpayment does it take for your credit to be completely fucked?Peter Rhode: The minute that it shows up on your credit report as being in collection, which is typically going to be by the 90-day mark, you're going to have a notification on your credit report that you're in collection. That can be overcome once you deal with it in one way or another, and then you make payments on your other lines of credit on time, and it will rebuild your credit quickly. So that's not really a concern.

Say you get a new job and you can start paying. How long does it take of making regular payments for the law to stop considering you a deadbeat?
It's interesting that people have so much fear about their credit report. For example, if you file bankruptcy, you can get a new car loan in a year, you can buy a house in a couple of years, you can get a credit card the next day... If the number-one issue is to fix your credit, then what you should do is abandon all your other life priorities and make sure you make the minimum monthly payment on your student loans for the rest of your life.

As soon as you've made 12 months of on-time payments, then the fault that you had will count less and less and the more time that passes the less it will count. But in order to stop bad credit being reported, you have to pay your account as agreed—and that's where most people who run into trouble would contact me. They've got $175,000 of student loan debt for a graphic arts degree—that's never going to pay them enough money in their field [for them to pay back] their loan. So instead what they do is they react to the loan payment.

If you look at home ownership among millennials, it's way down—there are more millennials living with mom and dad who can't afford to be out on their own. But the biggest tragedy, I think, is the inability to begin to save for retirement after you leave college, because you are so saddled with student-loan debt. Just yesterday I was talking to someone—they were 23 years old—and I explained to him that if he could just afford to [invest] $300 dollars a month for ten years and then never save for retirement again, by the time he retired he'd have a couple million dollars.


Watch our documentary on a British debt collector:


Right, and that's fucked up because I'm going to be paying that $300 a month until I'm 50 just to keep living.
When you get in that situation, what I always say to people is write your 80-year-old self a letter now and let yourself know what kind of dog food you like to eat—because you're going to be broke.

So what do you do? What's the solution?
It depends on what kind of private student loans you have. There is so much misinformation out there about the dischargeability of private student loans and bankruptcy. Some of them are instantly dischargeable now, especially if you went to a trade school, a vocational school, or a school that was not titled or accredited. Those are not protected in bankruptcy. When you have a lot of student loans that were taken out where a percentage went to paying for things that were not qualified educational expenses—things that weren't tuition, or books, or school expenses—all of that debt is dischargeable on bankruptcy.

The next strategy, if you can't afford anything—we're talking about private student loans—is to default. Defaulting certainly has some serious consequences—like it can show up on your credit report, you could be sued—but if you can't afford it, you can't afford it. I've had so many people who have wanted to kill themselves, leave the country, or become escorts to make their student loan payments. Defaulting is by far better than any of that stuff. If you default, which means you are 90 days or more delinquent on your debt, you will find that the student loan lenders will proactively offer you either settlements, or—oftentimes—more favorable payment terms.

What I'm seeing now is Sallie Mae is offering people a 50 percent reduction on their student loan debt if they can afford to pay it in one to three payments after they default. Not everybody has access to those kinds of resources, but if you could repay $70,000 in student loans for $35,000, and not incur any more interest, it might be worth borrowing the money.

So you mean taking out more loans to pay the loans at a more favorable interest rate? That seems weird.
Well, if you look at the compound interest on $70,000 in 20 years, versus a $35,000 loan that you pay over five years, the math just works out.

What are your thoughts on deciding between paying your private student loans or saving for retirement if you can afford one but not both? Is it smarter to default and use that money to save for retirement, or smarter to just use that money to pay off the loan?
Money problems are really made of two components: math and emotion. The emotional component is it's smarter to continue to pay on the student loans and avoid collections and negative items on our credit report—and emotionally that immediately feels better.

The other problem is that according to behavioral economics, people are more likely to put more weight on decisions that are right in front of them than in the future. The reality is, it's going to be better in the long run for yourself and society to be able to save money for retirement now so you won't have to rely on public benefits or retire broke in the future.

Half of Americans over the age of 50 have no money saved for retirement. The argument that it is more moral, or better, for someone to repay their debt now than to think about the future is an interesting one, because if you don't think about the future now and you retire broke, who is going to pay to support you?

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

We Spoke With the Artist Who Made a Graphic Novel Memoir About Her Father’s Violent Past As a Serbian Nationalist

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A page from Fatherland. By Aidan Johnston

Until the moment it's on your doorstep directly affecting your life, we have the tendency to contemptuously treat war like it's just a pile of puke on the sidewalk; we acknowledge it, tisk-tisk at it, then mindfully tip toe around it to safely continue on with our day. But for Canadian born artist/writer Nina Bunjevac, the chance to avoid such a mess never came and, from childhood, she was inextricably bound to her father's sordid, war torn history as a Serbian nationalist.

Rather than simply step over this blotch on her family's past, Nina chose to stop, look, and contemplate what caused it. In 2014, she released Fatherland, the critically lauded autobiographical comic that pieces together a childhood and family fractured by archaic politics and conflicting ideologies. 37 years earlier, Nina's father died in a Toronto garage when a homemade bomb preemptively exploded. It was a device that had been constructed for terrorist attacks against supporters of the Yugoslav communist leader Tito and Yugoslav missions throughout Canada and the States.

At the time of her father's death, three-year-old Nina and her sister had been moved back to Yugoslavia to live with their grandparents by her mother, whose brave instincts for survival led her to secretly flee with the girls and escape her husband's dangerous association with the fanatical group Freedom for the Serbian Fatherland (FFTSF). She was tragically forced to leave her son Petey behind. Through a minimalist black-and-white style that give her stoic illustrations the photographic quality of an old family album, Nina recounts her family history in two parts; the early memories of life with her paranoid and emotionally stifled mother, then delving back in time to reveal the path that led to her father's extremism after his exile to Canada.

Both a personal tale filled with pathos and an illuminating historical account of Yugoslavian peoples and politics; Fatherland succeeds in dissecting how hatred is transferred from one generation to the next, and the strength of a family who rejected it. After touring through the Balkans for the release of both the Croatian and Serbian editions of the book, Nina is back in her current home of Toronto where she's currently exhibiting new sculpture work at the AGO. We caught up with her to discuss Canadian identities, autobiographical comics and the time she saw a terrorist chilling on a patio.

VICE: What was it like investigating the story of your own family history? How much did you know before you started?
NINA BUNJEVAC: I knew a lot of information about my father and his involvement with the organization Freedom for the Serbian Fatherland. Up until the age of 14 I'd been told that my father died in a car accident, so anything new, I had overheard from people. I think it was when I was 16 and had come back to Canada that the whole story started making sense. I started meeting some friends of my father, and his Aunt Mara, who is mentioned in the book. So I got a lot of information about his childhood, mostly through stories from women in my family: my sister, my grandmother, and my great aunt. When I sat down to write about it, I realized that even though I thought I knew a lot, there were certain gaps left in the story. For example, I wanted to know about the structure of FFTSF, so I did a lot of research regarding that. After Tito died, a lot of current affair magazines would publish texts about FFTSF, and there was a Croatian equivalent called Otpor. There's a lot of stuff archived on the internet that hasn't really made it into history books because nobody's really writing about this right now. I knew a lot about history and have always been interested in it; I just needed to make sure I mentioned the most important things.

Did you piece the truth of your father's history together through stories or were you explicitly told?
Well, the first time that my brother came to visit us I was 14, and at that point I knew there had been an explosion, but I didn't understand what it was. At 16 you could've told me he was a Croatian nationalist and I would've said, "All right," like I didn't know. Nationalism to me was a foreign thing. We didn't really hear about my father because my grandparents were communists who were trying to shield us. But I think that we should've known, that knowledge is very important to defend yourself and know what you're getting into and who's trying to scoop you. As soon as I moved to Canada at the age of 16, I didn't know what the community was like, especially around the church, which became my community. That to me was completely foreign; seeing pictures of Mihailović who was the Chetnik leader.

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After all these years, what made you return to the tale of your father?
I didn't go back to the Balkans until 2007, after I'd connected with the Serbian cartoonist Aleksandar Zograf after reading his book Regards From Serbia. That was the first time I heard a voice come out of Serbia that spoke about regular, normal people in Serbia during the sanctions and NATO bombings of 1999. When the war went on, the media just focused on demonizing Serbs. So this book, which tells you about the power of comics too, was daily diary entries during the sanctions and bombings in comic form. It was through Aleksandar that I connected with the comic's scene in Croatia and Serbia, and then I discovered that during the war underground artists had kept collaborating in spite of mainstream politics. So you hadStripburgermagazine from Slovenia publishing stories by artists from Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia. I discovered the level of activism involved, and learned what life was like for people in Croatia and Serbia in the 90's. Shortly after one of the many Belgrade pride fiascos, I realized that these ultra nationalist groups had the same ideological blueprint that my father did. In my book Heartless, one of the last stories is a short comic which is a symbolic look at my father's last three hours and it's also my rejection of his ideology. I realized this is a topic worth exploring and that sharing the story could bring a lot of good. The target audience was people from former Yugoslav republics, but as time went on, terrorism became more and more of a hot button issue so now I see that people can relate from other places, which is completely something that I didn't think about or count on.

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You always see terrorism in the headlines, and of course it's villainized so you don't hear the human side of it. There's usually a lack of context for how this person was created and what the situation was that manipulated them. Was this something you were trying to show?
I worked on the script for a year and a half, and as soon as I started drawing it, I abandoned the script. In the script I was not as neutral as in the book; you can tell that I'm a lefty, that I didn't agree with my father's ideology. So I wanted to let the story develop without being judgmental. That new approach worked because once you remove the judgement you can actually analyze the story and characters. By removing my ego from the book I accidently happened to uncover the portrait of a terrorist. You don't hear about the families of these people. Why don't we about the families of these people? All I'm hearing is displacement, they were poor, they were homeless and so on.

What made you decide to tell this story as a comic?
My background is painting, sculpture, and graphic design. I didn't start doing comics until like 2005, so my first book was a collection of comics I did over eight years. I never thought I would do it full time. It was just a risk I took by quitting work and staying home all the time to work on Fatherland. I wanted to use that format, I love the way it was used in Maus and I love that autobiographical voice in comics. I saw a trend and every story I saw was exciting.

What do you think has led to the prominence of this autobiographical genre within graphic novels?
I think it was Maus, and Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Kurtz as well. It was realizing that comics can be used to share different types of stories, not just what we're used to with fantasy and superheroes; it can be used for educational purposes. Nobody could've done it like Spiegelman did [with Maus], because of the story, it's universal, and the approach was unique, it was very personal.

Spiegelman used a lot of iconography, metaphor and more cartoonish elements, but in Fatherland it's a much more stark and realistic depiction of people and events.
What I found interesting is when I heard Spiegelman talk about how the Polish people were depicted not as pigs but as people wearing pig masks, and he wanted to make sure that was visible with the straps in the back of the mask. Now I hear that some people who see themselves as representatives of the Polish community see it as an unfair representation of Polish people and as an insult. A Serbian Chetnik organization sent me a letter also. Before I went to Serbia they claimed that I'd published "untruths" about General Mihailovic, and that he was collaborating with the axis in World War 2 and that had been debunked and they would like to educate me. What really bothered me is that they said I was putting a "blemish on Serbian people as a whole" and that really pissed me off because who the fuck are they to call themselves the representatives of Serbian people? When I arrived in Belgrade three weeks ago, Mihailovic was exonerated in a court, which means by the time that his trial happened in 1946, there was some kind of a technicality in his trial and now he's been rehabilitated which is ridiculous because he was the supreme leader of the people who were collaborating with the enemy. But even though they know it's wrong, they want to keep fighting it.

It's so hard to rationalize with any of these groups who are clinging to these old suppressive ideologies.
That was my response to them. You're stuck in World War Two.

It seems like a lot of extremist groups are defined by an inability to let go of the past.
It is inability to let go. It's the grudge. The Balkans have the tradition of blood revenge which means if someone kills somebody five generations ago, then ten generations later there will still be someone looking to kill that person. This runs deep in the land. I don't understand why they're so stuck in the past, I'm stuck in the past but I mean that's the nineteenth century Romantic Movement; travelling, Croatian poets and sculptors. These are the things I cling to in Serbian history, but not World War Two, not the nationalist movement.

Now that people are only an email or a comment thread way from expressing offense, are you always prepared for people to take issue with your work?There's always a chance that someone might take offense. Good criticism comes from understanding a piece of work, bad criticism comes from not understanding it or, worse, from not having it read. I guess the best approach is not intentionally wanting to piss someone off.

Was there a catharsis in finishing the book? Did you let go of anything that writing the book had stirred up?
I realized that certain things didn't bother me as much. It was very calming and satisfying that I could actually finish it to begin with. It was difficult, I was afraid of offending my mom and my sister and these little things.

How did your family react to it?
My mom's very proud, and my sister is, too. I don't have contacts with my brother though.

What has the reception been in Serbia and Croatia?
In Croatia the response has been wonderful. The ministry of education ordered 185 copies of the book for the libraries immediately. It was really flattering because they actually contacted my publisher. There were so many amazing reviews. In Serbia I've had positive feedback, but the book just came out so it's still early, we'll how it goes. The important thing is the Serbian edition is the first book that was published as a joint effort between a Serbian and Croatian publishing house since the war. It was nice because the book made it home.

Were you nervous for its release in Serbia?
I was a lot more nervous back when I exhibited the pages from Heartless because it targeted a specific group, and the group was called Obraz (which means "the cheek"), which is ultra right wing and nationalist. These are people responsible for the Belgrade pride bloodshed and numerous minority attacks. This was in 2011 when I had a show at the Centre for Cultural Decontamination. The leader of the group was released from prison the week I'd arrived, so they were preparing me what to do if they came. What they told me was just smile, smile because they don't know what to do when you smile, they only know how to return aggression. Luckily none of them showed up, but I ended up seeing the leader on the terrace of some restaurant in Belgrade. He looked so little and so fragile and so unhappy. That's when I realized there was nothing to be afraid of and changed my approach from accusatory to more understanding. So this time I wasn't afraid, I knew I was surrounded by people who wanted good things to happen.

Are you planning another book? How do you follow up something so personal?I'd like to do one more, the next book will pick up where his one left off and bring us up to the present. Then I'm done with autobiographical. I have some ideas for more sculpture and installation work. I'd like to make more of the dolls that I have on show at the AGO. Maybe animation will be the next step after, I'd like to try stop motion.

Where do you identify as your homeland now?
I think I've got a mobile home. It really is where my people are. I have a lot of friends all over the place. I've felt at home in Paris, Zagreb, Belgrade and Rome. There's one place in Croatia in the Adriatic, in the province of Istria, and it's the only place that was not touched by war in 90s. People there are wonderful and very friendly and I feel most at home when I'm over there. For many years I felt like I didn't belong anywhere and now I'm changing my attitude.

Fatherland is available now & her exhibit "Out of the Fatherland" is on at the AGO until August.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Follow Aidan Johnston on Twitter.


I Watched Giant Homeless Marsupials Ask ANZ Bank for a Home Loan

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Image by Melinda Wilson.

This post originally appeared on VICE Australia.

Yesterday at 11 AM, Cranky Koala entered the North Sydney branch of the ANZ bank. The professionally dressed koala, flanked by several other native animals, was there to apply for home loans to finance a new habitat. The bank funds the Maules Creek coal mine, which was responsible for destroying the Leard State Forest—their former habit in northwestern New South Wales.

Startled bank staff threatened to call the police if the giant native animals—which included a kangaroo, a possum, and a parrot—didn't leave. At that point, the possum piped in, "We need a home loan because they've taken our homes." After the animals were told they'd need to make an appointment, one staff member agreed to give Cranky an on-the-spot home loan interview. He was taken into an office behind closed doors.

Emerging from the interview 20 minutes later the Koala said, "They turned down the home loan. Obviously, being a small branch they don't make those decisions." His request, a loan to fund another irreplaceable forest, one that could accommodate 396 native species of flora and fauna, had been rebuffed. He explained the staff member had been sympathetic to the plight of the animals, choosing not to alert the cops.

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Image by Melinda Wilson.

Cranky Koala, also known as Mark Selmes, is no stranger to protest. In May last year, he locked himself onto a truck as part of an ongoing blockade at Maules Creek. In 2013, the renegade marsupial went on a 27-day hunger strike in front of the NSW state parliament in opposition to firewood clearing threatening native species, endangering the likes of the gang-gang cockatoo.

"I speak for the animals that have no voice: the homeless and the hungry," Mark said.

He told VICE the protest was not just about the $1.2 billion loan ANZ made to mining giant Whitehaven Coal in December 2012 funding the recently-opened Maules Creek coal mine. It was also to draw attention to the possibility that it could bankroll proposed coal mining projects in Queensland's Galilee Basin.


Related: Care about the environment? Watch this film on the Fukushima Disaster


The federal government has approved several coal-mining projects in the basin over the last couple of years, including Waratah Coal's China First mine and GVK Hancock's Alpha coal project. Much of the recent focus has been on Indian mining company Adani's proposed Carmichael mine, gaining federal government approval in July last year. It's going to be one of the largest coal mines in the world, worth $16.5 billion, and include a rail link to Abbot Point coal port, which sits beside the Great Barrier Reef.

In order for the Galilee Basin coal mining projects to operate, an expansion of Abbot Point needs to take place, which would have a significant impact on the reef. The Queensland Labour government's decision to dump three million tons of dredge spoil from the port expansion onto land, rather than a previous plan to dump it into the Caley Valley wetlands or straight into the sea, has been a welcome one.

In spite of this, the actual dredging process will still adversely impact the reef's delicate ecosystem, and the increased capacity of the port will turn the area into a coal shipping superhighway.

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Image by Melinda Wilson

Ben Pennings, convenor of Beyond Green, the group behind the protest, said, "We're targeting ANZ because they financed the last big coal mine in Leard State Forest and we want to make sure they don't finance the next." It's the group's second action in four weeks, the last involving a number of zombie koalas visiting an ANZ branch in Brisbane.

"If ANZ is the first big four Australian banks not to commit to funding coal expansion in central Queensland, that would make a significant statement and pressure the other three," Pennings explained. None of Australia's big four banks—which includes Commonwealth, NAB, and Westpac—have ruled out investing in the Galilee Basin mines. This is despite 11 international banks having declared they won't finance them.

Maules Creek mine produces thermal coal, as would the proposed Galilee Basin mines, which according to Pennings is completely unnecessary, "because there's better and cleaner ways of producing electricity these days."

Pennings pointed to an Essential Research poll released last month that found 63 percent of respondents disapproved of their bank helping to finance coal port expansions on the Great Barrier Reef, while 82 percent think that banks should consider the social and environmental impacts of the projects they fund.

A spokesperson for ANZ told VICE that while they don't comment on specific projects, their involvement depends on government approvals, as well as social and environmental policies and standards being met. "ANZ has a balanced energy portfolio that includes renewables, gas and coal, and we have a stated goal to increase the proportion of project funding to lower-carbon gas and renewables," the spokesperson said, adding, "Our energy policy states that we will support our customers in the transition to a lower-carbon economy."

Leard Forest Alliance spokesperson Murray Drechsler said the proposed Galilee Basin mines were "a continuation of the madness we've seen here at Maules Creek." In his opinion, investing in more coal mines is ridiculous. Due to climate change "the whole world's talking about moving away from fossil fuels" and "the other thing is they're not profitable." Over the last year, the price of coal has halved, demand is down and there's a glut on the market.

Drechsler, who founded the three-year-long Leard Blockade protesting the Maules Creek mine, warned that things could get worse in NSW with the proposed Shenhua Watermark mine and others planned like it near Gunnedah. "It's going to turn into another Hunter," he said, referring to the state's major coal mining region, where there's been a recent downturn in the industry.

As Cranky Koala left the ANZ branch without a loan, he joined his fellow native animals, busking with a guitar. They were trying to raise funds in order to finance a new habitat without the backing of the bank. Pennings says these light-hearted protests are only the beginning, and that they're preparing to keep it up with ANZ, adding, "over time we're definitely going to escalate."

Follow Paul on Twitter.


A Look Back at the Most Controversial Season of 'Game of Thrones' So Far

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The Night King in 'Game of Thrones.' Courtesy of Helen Sloan. Courtesy of HBO

On Sunday, season five of Game of Thrones comes to an end. The show has become, if anything, more controversial, but remains wildly popular. Ratings dipped midseason, perhaps as a reaction to the rape of Sansa Stark, but then surged as people tuned in for episode eight, "Hardhome." The episode ended with Jon Snow and the Wildlings running (and sailing) away, as the Night King lifted his arms and raised the dead.

If nothing else, the Night King's farewell middle finger to the fleeing warrior should remind us that the petty squabbles of mortals means nothing. If we don't end up with Daenerys on dragonback versus the hordes of the undead, Game of Thrones is going to become The Walking Dead, only filmed in Croatia and Iceland. At the moment, given the state of things across Westeros and Essos, I've got my money on the zombies.

Before diving into the final hour, let's take a few moments to review the major plots of the year, the successes and failures of the last nine episodes, and some hopes for where we might go from here. Then we'll be ready for the final dispatch from Westeros, until George R. R. Martin publishes The Winds of Winter in 2016 (hopefully).

The books each present a chapter from a distinct point-of-view, and I find it useful to think about a season not just by who got screen time, but who most frequently functioned as the POV. Four women and four men dominate season five: Sansa, Arya, Daenerys, and Cersei each saw their stories develop in complex and important ways. They are matched by the cross-continental journey of Tyrion, Jamie and his comedy show in Dorne, Stannis going full-fundamentalist apeshit, and Jon Snow, who, of course, still knows nothing.

[body_image width='1000' height='750' path='images/content-images/2015/06/12/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/06/12/' filename='everything-we-know-so-far-from-game-of-thrones-season-five-body-image-1434134440.jpg' id='65795']Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark and Iwan Rheon as Ramsay Bolton in 'Game of Thrones.' Photo by Helen Sloan. Courtesy of HBO

Any recap of the season has to begin with Sansa. I'm really not over my anger about the way the show-runners have handled her storyline. At the end of season four, she shifted from the endless victim, constantly passive and being tossed about by powerful men to serve their plots (and hence not so interesting to watch), to a strong actor in her own right. She dyed her hair, attached raven wings to her dress, and seemed ready to step forward as a player. Instead, for baffling reasons, Littlefinger (a squandered character this season) decides not to use her in the Vale, but dispatches her to the Boltons. It makes no sense as a move for Littlefinger, but rather functions solely as a plot device. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the show creators, want to put Sansa in the clutches of Ramsay Bolton, so consistency is merely an afterthought.

In the meantime, Ramsay is clearly a sadistic psychopath, but his character remains entirely static and uninteresting, so depicting his rape of Sansa is not only upsetting, but purposeless as well, in that it doesn't serve to advance any character arc, except to turn Sansa back into a victim again. Worse, for reasons best known to the show's creators, we are shown Theon's suffering—he's forced to watch—during the rape, as if his character development is the one that matters. Sansa may still get her revenge, may get rescued by Brienne, may jump out a window, or we may be left unsure of her fate, but rest assured that this storyline has reinforced hundreds, if not thousands, of years of Western rape culture.

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Kerry Ingram as Shireen Baratheon in 'Game of Thrones.' Photo by Helen Sloan. Courtesy of HBO

The Shireen story was just as hard to watch, but mostly because of clumsy plotting. In episode four, Stannis and his daughter had a long talk about her greyscale illness, how hard he worked to cure her, and how deeply he loves her. That scene worked. It convinced us that Stannis had heretofore unknown emotional depths. And then in episode nine, we were supposed to believe that Stannis burned his daughter alive as a sacrifice to the Lord of Light rather than tough out what was, admittedly, a bad situation—his troops were starving in the cold and his hopes of taking Winterfell were dwindling.

But Stannis is famous for toughing out bad situations—his legendary stubbornness, displayed at the famous siege of Storm's End, is practically his defining trait. For a year, Stannis and his men ate everything down to cats, rats, and glue. Now, in a similarly bad situation, for Stannis to cave so quickly and burn his beloved daughter alive broke believability. I found the dragons and zombies more realistic than this plot point. In the meantime, Stannis's army is still hungry and snowbound, so it will be interesting to see whether the Lord of Light melts the snow and lets him get to Winterfell, or whether the Boltons destroy him. At this point, I think most of us would be happy to see mutual annihilation, but fans of Game of Thrones are never so lucky.

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Alexander Siding in the Alcázar of Seville as Dorann Martell in the Water Gardens of Dorne. Photo by Macall B. Polay. Courtesy of HBO

Everything else this season has been better. When the season started, I was most excited about the addition of Dorne and Braavos as major settings. Arya's development in Braavos has mostly taken place in isolation from world events, until Ser Meryn Trant, one of the few living people on her " kill list," showed up in the city. She's done her best to strip herself of her identity and serve the Many Faced God, even compassionately helping a sick child commit euthanasia. Now she's been given her first mission to kill. Meryn's death, though, has taken a higher priority, and she's likely to use his predilection for raping children as a lure (seriously, couldn't just one plot not involve rape or potential rape)? I think she'll kill him, but will she then be cast out by the Faceless Men?

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Dorne has provided some much needed comic relief in the sun. With Tyrion so serious of late (the whole murder of his father and lover seems to have sapped some of his joy—go figure), but Bronn remains a bastion of witty banter, irreverent singing, and fine swordplay. Poor old Jamie has gone from the fearsome Kingslayer to Bronn's straight man. Meanwhile, the siren-like Sand Snakes somehow failed to defeat Bronn and Jamie, despite what should have been an overwhelming advantage. But don't fret. So far, despite an attack by an armed patrol of Dornish solders, a lethal poison, imprisonment, the silly fight in the Water Gardens, and defiance in the face of the ruler of Dorne, not a single named character has been seriously hurt or killed in the hot land. So much for valar morghulis !

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Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister in 'Game of Thrones.' Photo by Helen Sloan. Courtesy of HBO

Then there's the two queens—Cersei and Daenerys—both of whom have offered a clinic on how not to rule. In Cersei's defense, she continues to play, and then overplay, the only hand she's got. She's lost her father and brother, on whom she relied for military force, and she sees that other men are all eager to sweep in and take over. So she blocks, buys, or distracts them all, then empowers the Faith Militant and the High Sparrow. Jonathan Pryce's portrayal of the religious leader, so humble and terrifying at once, is one of the best characters of the entire series so far. His conversation with Diana Rigg, as the Queen of Thorns, is certainly my favorite scene of the entire season, and top five all time. Sadly for Cersei, the High Sparrow cannot be cowed or bought. Since she's one of the most morally corrupt figures in Westeros, her true-believer ally wastes no time in imprisoning her once he learns of her crimes.

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Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen in 'Game of Thrones.' Courtesy of HBO

Daenerys's arc is more hopeful. It begins with mistakes. First, she's too lenient, and the people are not grateful, as they want vengeance. Then she brings down fierce justice on a freed slave, and the people are not grateful, because she's being harsher to their own than to the former masters. It turns out that ruling a conquered city in which one has flipped the social order is hard. Moreover, when she locked two of her dragons in the basement and Drogon flew away, Daenerys cut herself off from the one thing that made her truly unique. But her story is moving in a positive direction, despite all the bloodshed.


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Tyrion and Jorah have arrived. Their scene in the ruins of Valyria, followed by the battle with the Stone Men, may have been the best shot sequence of the season. After a slow voyage through ruins, the two men found themselves in a claustrophobic space under a bridge, as plague-spreading enemies dropped down from above. Somehow, they had to fight them off without being touched, a task at which Jorah failed. Still, Tyrion did make it to Daenerys, and his hushed conversation with her, a discussion about power, foreshadows her possible emergence as a queen truly worth following. And now she's riding a dragon.

One quibble—remember when the Unsullied were the greatest warriors in the world? Do you think the greatest warriors in the world might, first, realize that spears are not optimal weapons in close quarters, and second, be able to fight a bunch of amateur guerilla soldiers wearing masks that limit their vision? At any rate, it's clear that Khaleesi's potential is not bound up in her soldiers' prowess, but her ability to command dragons to breathe fire on her foes.

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Kit Harington as Jon Snow in 'Game of Thrones.' Photo courtesy of HBO

And from fire to ice, we finally arrive at the North. Jon Snow remains heroic, which is to say he resists temptations of sex and power, clings to his principles, takes on dangerous and foolhardy missions, defeats lieutenants of the Big Bad, and is prepared to do anything in order to find allies. On the bright side, his wolf, Ghost, is back. On the dark side, it doesn't seem likely that the uneasy peace between Wildlings and Nights Watchmen can hold.

And if the Wall falls, if Stannis's army is obliterated by the Boltons, if King's Landing dissolves into a radical theocracy, if Daenerys loses all her supporters, then what will stop winter and the undead from covering the whole world?

The season finale to Game of Thrones airs this Sunday on HBO.

Follow David on Twitter.

Blood, Sugar, Sex, Tragic: Why Teens Can't Get Enough of Supernatural Romance Novels

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He was wolf and passion as much as he was man. She let out a groan as he covered her body with his, burying his face in her neck, and pressing his lower body between her legs. He so wished he wasn't wearing jeans, wished he could be inside her. Yet could he really do that to her? She was so pure, and he wasn't. Still it didn't seem to matter, Brother Wolf wanted to be with her.

The passage above is from Alyssa Brandon's The Hard Mate, a romance novel chronicling the relationship between a 16-year-old werewolf and a 200-hundred-year-old pack alpha with baggage. It's been read over 22 million times on the online publishing platform WattPad and is currently making teenyboppers weak in the knees on SwoonReads.com, a site that exclusively publishes romance novels for teenagers. Right now on SwoonReads, The Hard Mate boasts a nine out of ten score for having what the site's subscribers call "heat," which is kidspeak for steamy romantic scenes.

SwoonReads has more than 27,000 subscribers, who gobble up books like The Hard Mate, which are uploaded in manuscript form by their authors. In addition to heat, the subscribers can rate these books on Swoon Index's in categories like tears, laughs, and thrills. Once the community is hooked on a manuscript, Macmillan Publishing, the site's owner, can choose to publish the manuscript. Since the site is courting teenage readers, the characters are typically between 14 and 19 years old. There's also a section for new adults, between the ages of 19 and 23, who are still eligible for love according to SwoonReads' Submission Guidelines. I, at 24, am SOL.

Being 24 meant I was also one of the oldest non-chaperones at the Swoon Reads Party this year's BookCon, the publishing-slash-pop culture convention in New York City's mammoth Javits Center. By 10 AM on a Sunday—a little early to be thinking about romance, especially with a werewolf—groups of girls with caffeinated parents in tow were lined up and ready to answer trivia questions about books and meet their favorite authors.

One such fan was 15-year-old Caroline, who ticked off her favorite romance writers, books, and characters on her fingers as if she was writing her grocery list, but said she couldn't find the time to finish To Kill A Mockingbird, which she had been assigned to read for class. Caroline is a publishing executive's living proof that the vampire-werewolf-human romance trope is still dominating the all-powerful teen realm. A longtime fantasy reader, Caroline switched over to romance once the plots started featuring versions of her beloved supernatural characters.

Even when there are werewolves involved, Caroline is a classic romantic: "If I'm reading romance, I want them to get together in the end," she said. For her part, she's currently single and not planning on stealing any moves from her favorite characters. "The books don't change how I act towards guys," she said, eyeing her nearby mother. Mom, Caroline's ride from Philadelphia, seemed clearly relieved.

Caroline's mom, who read John Green's The Fault in Our Stars at Caroline's insistence, has bought so many romance books for her daughter that she could describe exactly what the "Teen Fiction" shelf looks like in Barnes & Noble. She declined to participate in the mini-bookclub Caroline has going with a friend's mom, but is enough of a good sport to make the drive to BookCon.

"This is a generation that wants to be involved and included in the [publishing] process." - Jean Feiwel

SwoonReads launched in September 2013 as the pet project of Jean Feiwel, the children's publisher behind popular series like The Babysitter's Club and Goosebumps. According to Nicole Banholzer, a representative of Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, the site is now growing by 35 percent month over month. Still, Feiwel insists the decision to focus on romance was less a cash grab than a sanguine outlook for the future of YA fiction. "I felt that given the preponderance of dystopic grim fiction, I really wanted to something to end up OK," said Feiwel. "I was tired of the drumbeat of negativity. I was interested in something else."

Related: Noisey asked teens about their taste in music, and their answers were hilarious.

SwoonReads is built to take the temperature of how much potential enthusiasm will translate into book sales once a novel is published. When Feiwel noticed that one of the most popular novels on the USA Today's Best Seller List was self-published, she began to conceive of a new way to acquire the type of talent that wouldn't find their way past Macmillan's "No Unsolicited Submissions" policy. "There are fans out there so avid to read that they will read something that isn't even published yet," she told me.

A quick browse through SwoonReads' Latest Activity section shows that the authors are just as avid as the fans, often responding in gratitude to comments on their own critiqued manuscripts. The genius of SwoonReads is that it allows authors to build a fandom for themselves. "This is a generation that wants to be involved and included in the process," said Feiwel.

She also noted that many Swoon community members are aspiring writers, a fact which lends itself to the kind of editorial commenting encouraged on the site. Its blog, with posts like " How to Write a Good Synopsis for Your Manuscript," also provides guidance for authors who likely aren't getting those insider tips from an agent.

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Sandy Hall (left) and Temple West (right). Photo by Christine Barcellona

Sandy Hall and Temple West, two authors who have published novels through Swoon, said that interaction with the fans is one of the best parts of the experience. Their recent eight-city tour included a blogger party, and they admit to recognizing most of the faces and handles of their frequent commenters. "When I was a kid, you didn't interact with authors," said Hall, "But now that there's Twitter, and Tumblr, and Instagram, we get so much more interaction with fans and we get to see so much more of what they're thinking. It's made everything much more fun."

"At the heart of YA, there's always a universal story. Whether it's paranormal or not, it's often about feeling left out and not knowing your place in the world." –Sandy Hall

SwoonReads has chosen 14 novels for publication so far, many of which the party attendees seem to have already read. The first was Hall's novel, A Little Something Different, published in August 2014. By following a perfect couple and their will-they-or-won't-they, it maintains the urgency of the werewolves in The Hard Mate but ditches the pulsing heat. Swoon is publishing Hall's second book, Signs Points to Yes, in October 2015.

Other novels include Katie Van Ark's The Boy Next Door, about figure skating partners with a mutual crush, and Cindy Astey's Love, Lies, and Spies, set in the 19th Century and described as an homage to Jane Austen. Jenn P. Nguygen's The Way to Game The Walk of Shame, a title that's more progressive than it sounds, is themed around the bullying and sex-shaming that have become major issues in the high school zeitgeist.

Part of what makes these novels so popular among teens is not just the sexual undertones, but the relatable themes. In The Hard Mate, which has not as of yet been chosen for publication, Alyssa Brandon touches on teen-specific issues left and right: "Being drugged and raped at a fraternity party and being forced by magic to love someone, father a child, and then killing both the wolf you loved and your unborn child were very different," Hall told me, recounting the novel's plot. "At the heart of YA, there's always a universal story. Whether it's paranormal, dystopian, or not, it's often about feeling left out and not knowing your place in the world."

These novels tend to be more Wuthering Heights than 50 Shades of Grey when it comes to depictions of actual sex. (As the submission guidelines state, "We are open to some sex and heat if is right and necessary for the story. However, we will not be acquiring any erotica.") And of the 14 novels chosen for publication, each of them has a heterosexual love story at its core—although Swoon accepts all romance plots regardless of gender, as long as they are "intense."

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Feiwel was quick to point out that the readers like romance no matter what the coating is. "We go through genre changes. It's dystopic or it's supernatural or historic or whatever it is. But at the core it's the romance. Literary agents were telling me, 'You can't do anything with vampires because that's been done.' But the readers are still reading vampires. Despite what trends in culture or entertainment, in book publishing, the fans are avid and will read what they like regardless of what you're saying is selling. The categories are broad."

With the joint objectives of fandom, optimism, and business in mind, SwoonReads recently published Velvet, the first book in a trilogy by Temple West. The description: "Caitlin has seen too much death. Adrian cannot die. Sparks will fly in this steamy vampire romance!" For West, who grew up hooked on the paranormal and tried her hand at novel writing six years ago as a freshman in college, the novel's publication is an exciting surprise. For Feiwel, the main character's immortality is potential for an everlasting series.

Back at BookCon, it was easy to see why the SwoonReads model is succeeding. Cat and Kelly, a pair of 20- and 21-year-old friends who are so close that they look and talk like sisters, told me their theories on why the younger generation prefers fantastical romance to flesh and blood lovers: For youngsters who came of age downing Harry Potter novels, it's a short jump to imagine the characters getting it on. Plus, as Cat Pointed out, "everyone is the same" in the real world. It's much sexier to imagine a futuristic world where you could fall in love with a robot.

Neither has had much romantic experience in real life, but these books make it clear that a meaningful relationship "could happen one day." And when you're a teen, what's more compelling than that?

Follow Leah Prinzivalli on Twitter.

Comics: Michael Reviews Anime Collectables on YouTube

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Look at Stephen Maurice Graham's website, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram.

The CIA Just Released Declassified Documents Related to the 9/11 Attacks

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The CIA Just Released Declassified Documents Related to the 9/11 Attacks

The VICE Guide to Right Now: The Last of the Angola Three Is Staying in Prison for at Least Two More Months

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Albert Woodfox in prison, via Amnesty USA

Albert Woodfox, the former Black Panther activist who's been in solitary confinement longer than anyone else in US history, is not getting out of prison. This despite federal Judge James Brady earlier this week ordering his release after 43 years at Louisiana State Penitentiary, a.k.a. Angola.

As we previously reported, Louisiana Attorney General James "Buddy" Caldwell immediately appealed the release order, and on Tuesday, a federal appeals court issued a stay that postponed Woodfox's release until at least 1 PM Friday.

Woodfox is the last member of a group of Louisiana prisoners called the Angola Three. The men were kept in solitary for decades, ostensibly because of their political activism and crimes in prison. One, Robert King, was released in 2001 after a court overturned his conviction for killing another inmate. Another, Herman Wallace—who along with Woodfox was convicted in 1974 of killing a prison guard—was released two years ago, just days before dying of cancer.

Albert Woodfox, meanwhile, remains in a cell the size of a parking space—where he's been stuck pretty much without interruption since the early 70s.

Less than an hour before the Friday deadline, a panel of three appeals court judges decided to extend the stay while the state appeals Brady's ruling. The judges on the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals did ask that those proceedings be expedited, but are not scheduled to hear arguments until late August, according to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Woodfox, 68, remains isolated.

"Given that the overturning of Albert Woodfox's conviction on three separate occasions was not enough, Judge Brady's decision to grant him unconditional release should have certainly ended this 43-year-long nightmare," Steven W. Hawkins of Amnesty International said in a statement immediately after the ruling. "Instead, he remains behind bars, fighting to prove his innocence as a result of the Louisiana Attorney General's desperate attempt to thwart justice."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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