The town of Srebernica

This article originally appeared on VICE Serbia

On July 11, 1995, a few months before the Bosnian war drew to a close, Bosnian Serb military forces, under the leadership of General Ratko Mladic, descended upon Srebrenica—a predominantly Muslim town that the UN designated as a "safe haven"—and proceeded to carry out the slaughter of some 8,000 men and boys. The mass killing has been called the worst atrocity committed on European soil since World War II. The brutal mass execution has been ruled a genocide by the UN's two highest courts, but the term has been hotly disputed by Russia. This Saturday will mark two decades since the atrocity.

Even though we were basically toddlers living on the other side of Serbia when the massacre of Srebrenica happened, our opinions on the matter have still been heavily tainted. Growing up, television and radio has bombarded us with a flood of semi-information and noisy political propaganda about what actually took place on that gruesome day.

Ahead of the 20-year anniversary of the killings, we wanted to travel to Srebrenica and see the city before it was overrun by international press. We wanted to get an impression of everyday life in the town, but we knew it would be hard to remain unbiased and steer conversation clear of politics once we got there—especially given that, on the day we arrived, a former Bosnian military commander was arrested in Switzerland.

Our main aim in heading there was to get a clear answer to one question: Who are the people of Srebrenica?

Srebrenica is a mere 105 miles from the Serbian capital of Belgrade, but for some reason, we couldn't find a single person able to tell us how long it would take to get there; it seemed as if it were some forbidden place that people would prefer to forget about. After talking to a handful of fellow journalists, who'd either visited the town or lived there during the war, it quickly became apparent that none of them had been back since leaving all those years ago.

Our naivety got the best of us when we assumed that Google Maps would stand a chance at navigating Serbia's un-signposted roads—our trip took about two hours longer than it should have. When we finally managed to make it to the Serbian side of the Bosnian border, police ordered us out of our car and told us to show them all of our personal belongings.

"Just a routine check-up," we were told.

The police frisked us from top-to-toe and made us empty our pockets and bags. They counted our cash, checking each note meticulously to see whether or not it was real. Every inch of our car was also given the once over.

Eventually they wished us a safe trip and sent us on our way. We crossed the Drina, the river separating Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, hoping that the Bosnian border police would be a little more accommodating. But it wasn't to be.

"Our Serbian colleagues told us to check the vehicle," the border guard chuckled. Apparently that was just local humor, because he immediately waved us through. A confusing entrance to the country, to be sure.

The first town we got to was Bratunac—a place populated in the late 1990s by Bosnian Serbs fleeing areas ruled by the government in Sarajevo. Bratunac was made famous by a propaganda video where General Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military leader accused of both genocide and crimes against humanity, declared the town a present to the Serbian people.

The streets of Srebrenica

On our way out of the city, we picked up a hitchhiker (we'd heard that hitchhiking was an important means of public transport in the country). Vasilije, who was also heading to Srebrenica, hopped into our car. He seemed vexed when we explained where we were going.

"There's nothing there," he said. "What are you guys actually after in Srebrenica? A bar, or something? There's a few there, but we all go to Bratunac to party." Ten miles down the rickety road, we realized exactly what he meant.

Srebrenica was desolate. The old town was in better shape than pictures we'd seen of it, but it wasn't far from the ruins that it had been. For all intents and purposes, Srebrenica is simply a main street and a bunch of houses scattered throughout its hills. That's it.

Before the war, the town was quite affluent and prospered from tourism—it also had mines, an industrial zone, and a spa that it was famous for. Today, it has three factories, one solitary supermarket, two stalls in what used to be a booming local green market, two corner shops, and three bookies. There's also a single bank where you can exchange your money into the local currency. About a month ago, the last bakery and butcher shop closed down.

"Not sure if you guys have heard, but we have a school here now," our new hitchhiker friend told us. "I have absolutely no idea who studies there, though."

Wherever we went, people stared at us—but not in an intimidating way; it seemed to be more out of genuine curiosity. Our initial impression of Srebrenica was that it reminded us of the part of Eastern Serbia where we'd grown up. It was so similar that, while walking around, we completely forgot that we were treading on soil that had previously been used as killing fields. The bullet holes in the houses were the only reminder of what had happened two decades ago. There's a memorial center named Potočari only a few miles away, but, in Srebrenica itself, there isn't a single monument or sign marking the event—a fact that added this extra air of bleakness to an already empty town.

"I guess we are our own living monument," one resident told us.

Bullet holes in the house walls

We decided that it wouldn't make any sense to get the opinions of the town's leading politicians—we knew that they'd never be able to explain why Srebrenica was still in this state of disrepair. How would they ever be able to explain where all the foreign donation money had gone? Why it wasn't spent filling in the bullet holes in the city's walls. Instead, we decided to go out in search of everyday folks on the street. Which wasn't the easiest task, given the fact that there wasn't really anyone on the streets.

We introduced ourselves to the owner of a coffee shop called Bato who'd moved to Srebrenica after the war. When he found out that we were journalists, his mood took a rapid turn. He went from being quite sedate to almost hysterical. He was pissed, angry, and hurt—he kept saying that Serbs were stupid and had no idea how to organize themselves as a nation.

At another bar, we met a man called Marcus. Originally from Holland, he told us that he owned one of the town's factories. Employing 40 people, he had both Serbs and Bosnians on the payroll. He insisted on treating us to some coffee and ice-cream. About a year ago, Marcus blew some life into Srebrenica by opening a pellet factory. As he regaled us with stories of how his Serbian wife had convinced him to move to the city, some of his employees came and joined us. It seemed as if everyone in Srebrenica was aware that we were journalists and wanted to know what we were up to. Everyone wanted to know what we thought of the place.

"It's as if the town has just been abandoned," we told them.

The owner of the coffeeshop, Bato

It's usually right about there that the conversations in Srebrenica turn to war.

"If all the foreign donations had actually ended up in Srebrenica instead of the politicians' pockets, this town would be very different," Dragan, one of the factory's managers, told us. "I'm only here so I can work, feed my children, and save up enough money so they can afford to go to college. As soon as I'm done, I'm selling my house and leaving."

Working in Srebrenica, the differences between Serbs and Bosnians tend to fade away pretty quickly. It goes back to the way it was before the war, according to the workers. "There's not much to do here. We both have the same problems—no jobs, no money. We all work together when we can. There's no room for being a dick head," said Dragan.

Employees at lunch in the factory

Dragan also explained how he left university in Belgrade so he could travel to Sarajevo and join the Bosnian Serb army. "I was seduced by all those epic Serbian poems, you know? They were all about bravery and fighting for what is yours. It all sounded so beautiful," he admitted.

These days, he works with the very people he was probably aiming his guns at.

As the darkness of night crept in, we decided to take a walk downtown. The place looked the same: completely empty.

The next day we ventured toward the memorial in Potočari. There was no curator at the graveyards's entrance so we just walked in. We were immediately met by a seemingly endless sea of white tombstones. Walking around, one feels the urge to say something, but the eerie silence doesn't allow it. Reading name after name on those tombstones was harrowing—it brought everything we'd been told about on television to life.

Aside from us and a few cleaners, there was only one old lady at the memorial. We had a short chat with her, and she explained to us that her son and five of her cousins had gravestones there. When we explained to her that we'd come to the town to write a story about what happened, she seemed touched.

The memorial in Potočari

"Thank you so much for coming. It makes me so happy," she said softly. Listening to her story, it was hard not to feel completely helpless. Miserable, we crossed the road and headed to a special memorial room that had been built in a disused battery factory. At the entrance, there was a guestbook full of signatures and short messages. The book appeared to be completely devoid of any Serbian names. We took a pen and wrote: "Let's not let this happen again."

There was no curator here, either. We took a short walk around and had a look at the photos. All two dozen of them had really powerful words, like "aggression" and "genocide," written in the descriptions hanging beneath.

As we were leaving, we took another look at the guestbook. For some reason, somebody had scribbled: "An eye for an eye" right below our message. We were confused. This person was expressing genuine hatred in a place that should serve as a stark reminder of the ills that hate can accomplish.

Visiting Srebrenica as a journalist is quite strange. You quickly get the impression that you're irritating every single person you talk to. There's this strange guilt, because you're fully aware that you are unintentionally poking at wounds that haven't even healed yet. But after a while, you begin to realize that these locals are used to it—especially in the run-up to the commemoration.

The only place in town where you got the feeling that something was happening was Misirlije—the bed and breakfast we stayed in. We sat down for a chat with its owner, Avdo, who'd lived in Srebrenica his whole life.

Hostel owner Avdo

"Believe it or not, we lead normal lives here. We're ordinary people. I'm on good terms with my neighbor. But at the same time, nothing is normal here. Eastern Bosnia is in deep misery. It's really sad. I blame it on the destructive politics of both the Republic of Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation," he told us.

"I'm Bosniak, and I live in the Republic of Srpska. I don't feel particularly safe here. A guy got arrested in Banja Luka because he walked through the city center holding the Bosnia and Herzegovina flag. How should I feel about the fact that, after those shootings at that police station in Zvornik, cops started stopping cars and searching Bosniaks?"

His fear of authority figures dates all the way back to "that" July in 1995. Avdo was only ten years old at the time. His father used to be a well-respected culinary instructor in the area and a member of Doctors Without Borders. He was part of the team that negotiated with General Ratko Mladic.

Aldo showed us a video of his dad on YouTube. It had been recorded inside the UN base on the 11th of July, 1995. Having been threatened and pressured, his father was recorded saying that the Bosniaks were grateful that Mladic and his army "saved" them from Muslim terrorists. Aldo smiled at us while we sat watching the video.

"After they finished recording the video, they told him: 'Listen, teacher, you were a good professor, but this could be your last class.'"

The Serbs of Srebrenica have a different view on the whole matter: the genocide label is a bit much for them. That said, nobody seems to deny the fact that men were separated from the women and children and then systematically killed. What they argue is the numbers. "Bosniaks bring bodies from the rest of Bosnia, pretending that those people were killed here. They think we are a genocidal nation," Dragan had told us at the factory earlier.

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Nobody around here denies that Srebrenica was a crime, but the Serb community seems bitter about the fact that every year the world's eyes are pointed toward Potočare and Srebrenica but not Bratunac—where they mark the anniversary of the killing of Serb civilians in 1992. The general consensus of Serbs seems to be that Bosniaks are overprotected and have more rights than them. Even the mayor of Srebrenica is a Bosniak. That said, it seems as if most Bosniaks in Srebrenica don't exactly like the fact they live in the area.

Having spent time in the town, it's hard to imagine a solution to the underlying feelings of hate and resentment—it seems as if there may not be one for a long time. The war and its wounds are still apparent in Srebrenica. It could easily be because when people here talk about their town, they discuss politics. July 11, 1995, and everything that happened after it, has left a deep impression here, and the small part of the town that's still alive may very well one day end up being destroyed by politics.

RIP Conrad the raccoon. RIP any damn common sense we once had. Photo via Twitter

Yesterday in downtown Toronto, the mysterious death of a city raccoon flooded social media feeds of residents all across The 6ix. The dead raccoon lying in the middle of a residential sidewalk in the downtown core was reported to the city shortly after 9 AM, however it was not until around 11 PM that the animal was finally removed from the scene.

As the day wore on, the raccoon gained a following. It started with a note, a rose, and grievance, but turned into a full-fledged memorial service and candle-lit vigil as citizens began to feel the city cared less and less.

Here are the most important unanswered questions left in the wake of #deadraccoonTO, the death that has brought so many in the city together.

How did the raccoon die?
Although many were on scene throughout the day, no witnesses have come forward with details as to how the victim died. City officials have not released any information in relation to the death, and there doesn't appear to be any sort of ongoing investigation. Many witnesses claim that it is unclear whether this was an accident, and are calling on the city for action. But since the body was already disposed of, without any proper autopsy procedures, we may never truly know how the raccoon ended up dead on the city street.

How did it get there?
One of the most concerning aspects to this whole debacle is how the raccoon appeared on the corner of Yonge and Church. It is unlikely that the raccoon simply died and rolled over in that position on the sidewalk. Without any visual cuts or wounds on the surface of his fur, we are left with many more questions surrounding the circumstances. The city has yet to release any possible video footage that could answer some questions of what took place around the time of death.

Who the fuck named it Conrad?
Conrad is a terrible name for a raccoon. Are we even sure it's a boy raccoon? I see no indicators of it being a boy raccoon. Someone also decided to name it "trashpanda" as indicated on the donation box next to the body. "The proper authorities will only move this little fella when enough funds are raised. Please! Donate generously to help get trashpanda moved into a proper burial," read the box at the memorial.

Is there such a thing as anti-smoking rac-tivism?
A photo posted at around 8 PM shows the raccoon with an unknown object in hand that appears to be a cigarette or joint. It's obvious that the raccoon didn't put it there, because it is dead. And raccoons don't smoke. Was this an attempt to subliminally convince passers by that smoking really does kill?

Who bought the picture frame?
Someone had time to purchase a frame, print a picture of the raccoon, and come back to the little guy on the street? It's almost as if they knew the raccoon would be sitting there for all that time. How did they have a picture of the raccoon from its earlier years? If this person knew the raccoon so well, why hasn't he come forward with more information involving the death? I summon you to come forward, pedestrian.

What would have happened if Rob Ford was mayor?
If Rob Ford had been around, how long do you think that raccoon would have been lying around there? Not long at all. Rob Ford is a long-time Etobicoke resident, so it's no secret that he knows how to deal with raccoons. These damn city folk don't know shit about how to handle their dead wild life (talking about you, downtown-condo, chi-chi-lifestyle Tory). Ford would have been down there himself to move the little guy, full tracksuit and everything. Ford would have called out the downtowners for their lack of experience and balls to just move the cadaver themselves. He would have done the deed graciously, even though Ford probably has more than enough to move at home.

Was all of this the doing of Norm Kelly?
Although many once thought that Norm Kelly was the boring old uncle of City Hall, he has proven otherwise with his well-curated Twitter feed. Kelly has become known for his humour and online spunk, and was one of the forces behind making the #deadraccoonTO go viral—mainly because of his notable fondness for tweets of Photoshopped raccoon-human hybrid businesspeople. However, if you think about it, if he was the one driving this movement the most, that's fishy. As fuck. Not to mention, the optics seem pretty bad when you think about it.

What has happened to the raccoon since?
There's no sense in beating around the bush. It's probably been burned somewhere. RIP.

Was this all a stunt for a reboot of The Raccoons?
This has not been ruled out and we approve this stunt if it means we get an EDM reboot of the greatest song in Canadian television history.

Is Toronto fucked up?
OK, so our city is a little fucked up. We were able to come together over a dead raccoon on the side of the street. We didn't just give a shit, we gave many, many shits about this dead rodent. Maybe next time one of these guys try to attack you on the side of the street, or knock over your green bin and trash your entire porch, you'll think twice—and think about the one that got away.

We collectively gave so many shits about this dead raccoon on the street that it went viral and started trending on Twitter. Maybe Toronto can do the same for the death of Andrew Loku,a black, mentally ill Toronto man who was killed Sunday by police. Torontonians have an opportunity to actually attend a real vigil tonight, at Gilbert Parkette with Loku's family.

It would be good for us all to have a real conversation for a change.

Follow Sierra Bein on Twitter.

Jo Brocklehurst in Rome, 1966. Photo courtesy of Fershid Bharucha

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

A tiny woman in a blonde Dusty Springfield wig sits with a large drawing pad on her lap, sketching furiously. On her head are three pairs of glasses: a pair of spectacles resting on her nose, a pair of sunglasses over the top, and another pair of spectacles above, presumably a spare.

Surrounding her on sofas and chairs in the small studio on a quiet North London street are several punks in full regalia sipping tea out of fine china. All except one, who is sitting motionless with her eyes fixed on a spot on the ceiling. She's bemused, but delighted that the artist who lives down the street from the squat wants to draw her and her friends, luring them in with the promise of bottomless Earl Grey. She allows herself a slight smile.

This was a common scene in the West Hampstead home of Jo Brocklehurst in the early 1980s. The figurative artist, who died in 2006, is perhaps best known for her drawings of the punks who lived—along with Brocklehurst—on Westbere Road. They were part of the anarcho-punk set that congregated around the Centro Iberico squat in Notting Hill and the Wapping Autonomy Center, putting together celebrated zines like Kill Your Pet Puppy. Crass and early Adam and the Ants were the scene bands.

Brocklehurst's "Tension," 1982

Brocklehurst had considerable success with these drawings, showing twice at the Francis Kyle Gallery in London in 1981/1982, and later with Kyle in New York City. But very little is known about her career after this, at least in the UK. You won't find much online, apart from two national newspaper obituaries written by individuals from her inner circle. Ownership of much of her work is the subject of an ongoing legal dispute, though there are pieces dotted around London in the homes and garages of friends, including some of those I interviewed for this piece, as well as a couple in the V&A archive.

Speaking to these people nearly a decade after Brocklehurst's death, a picture emerges of a strikingly beautiful, but immensely shy, person who lived to draw. She lived the artist's life in the traditional sense, selling here and there to fund trips and buy materials. She was fascinated by subcultures at a time when the art establishment wouldn't touch them. She was also a woman, who refused to paint the pretty pictures expected of her. Instead, her work recalled the taut muscular limbs and enlarged extremities of the paintings of early 20th century Austrian enfant terrible Egon Schiele. Thus, she was an outsider in the art world from the get-go, and remained so. You get the feeling that's the way she liked it.

In a way, she was used to it. Born in England in the 1930s—she never revealed her exact age, even to her closest friends—she was the illegitimate daughter of an English mother and a high-ranking Sri Lankan politician who "had his face on a stamp," I was told. She faced prejudice from an early age, revealing to friends how she never quite felt English enough. Patricia Buckley, an artist friend, recalls an illuminating exchange from her later years: "I didn't know for ages that she was half Sri-Lankan. We were walking up Piccadilly one day and I said how English she looked, and she said, 'Oh, I like to pretend.' She had a very posh voice, like Joanna Lumley. I think she went to boarding school. Her real father probably paid for that."

She was brought up in Dorset by her mother and aunt, and was by all accounts a superb athlete in her youth. Her passion and eye for the proportions and details of anatomy was honed at Central Saint Martins, to which she gained a scholarship at the age of just 14, and where she learned to draw at an extraordinary pace. Starting out as a fashion illustrator, she was feted by the artists and musicians of bohemian London and spent much of her time drawing in nightclubs, documenting the emerging counter-culture.

"She would never divulge her age," says Isabelle Bricknall, a designer, artist, and model, who was Brocklehurst's muse and friend for many years. "I wouldn't even have entertained asking her. It would've been totally inappropriate, because as far as she was concerned, it wasn't important. She saw herself as timeless and ageless." Bricknall's facial features are strong and feline, and despite her being wrapped in several layers when we meet at a pub just off London's Old Bond Street, I imagine a muscular yet feminine figure, like a dancer. I can see why Brocklehurst wanted to draw her.

They first met in the early 1980s through Colin Barnes, the late great fashion illustrator, a mutual friend who she would often sit for. "Colin used to do all the illustrations for the couture shows. I was wearing a Christian Lacroix couture outfit, a totally over the top tweed number. Jo thought I was wild looking. She said, 'I've got to draw her.' Colin had a bit of a hissy fit and said, 'OK, let's both draw her at the same time.' His made me look like the epitome of grace and elegance, hers like I'd just escaped from an asylum. I loved both."

One of Brocklehurst's works from 1983

Brocklehurst started to accompany Bricknall to the London fetish clubs the latter frequented, such as Skin Two at Stallions in Soho and the early Torture Garden. The weird and wonderful characters of this fledgling scene—before "it went all reader's wives," according to Bricknall—were a natural draw for the artist.

"Jo had been drawing people in clubs since the 1950s. I told her where we were going and her ears pricked up. I knew she'd be game and that she'd want to be there with her pad," she says. "She was very discreet. You wouldn't be aware that she was there. She always wore a black velvet jacket, 70s style, the wig, the shades. I used to think, 'How the hell can she draw in a dark club?' But she could. Later down the line I realized she had a gift."

Many on the fetish scene were making their own costumes. Bricknall had begun designing and making solid steel body armor with her then-metalworker boyfriend, and Brocklehurst would often ask her to wear these creations when she sat for her later on.

"I wore the first piece to the Skin Two Rubber Ball [in 1992]. I had all these strange creatures throwing themselves at me thinking it was plastic, and then realizing they were impaling themselves on metal. Even then, that was funny because people got off on it," she remembers.

Interested in fashion, are you? Check out i-D—it's full of it.

Soon, the fashion world was taking notice. A strong fetish influence was seen in the collections of both Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler at the time.

According to Bricknall, the earlier punk shows at Francis Kyle Gallery, though successful, had left a bad taste in Brocklehurst's mouth. She was able to pay off her relatively modest mortgage but felt her work had been under-valued and misrepresented. Speaking now, Kyle sees it differently: "Jo sold well. We probably didn't charge enough money, but I always took the view that if you're showing an artist, it matters equally to both of you that they make a living from it," he tells me down a crackly phone line from Suffolk. When I ask why they didn't work together again, he says: "She simply said that she had new statements that she wanted to make."

Soon after this, Brocklehurst began to spend more time in Europe, especially Amsterdam and Berlin, where she was held in high regard. "If you're going to succeed in the arts in any shape or form, sometimes going abroad is easier, because you're an unknown quantity and you're celebrated much more than in your country of origin," says Bricknall. "She liked Berlin because it was very punk in a lot of ways; it was before the Wall came down. There's so little known about her here, but in Germany and Poland at the arts festivals, they all knew her. She played artist in residence—she'd be sketching on a daily basis for newspapers such as Berliner Zeitung, drawing different acts from theater to art. She also made some very good friends in Berlin, some really out there types of people."

Some of Brocklehurst's works. Images via Kill Your Pet Puppy

She also made frequent trips to New York City, staying there for extended periods. It's been difficult to trace her associates in the city, but from what I can gather she was involved with the Guerrilla Girls, the feminist art collective established in 1985 as a reaction to perceived sexism in the industry, and became friendly with Keith Haring, the late activist artist.

In London, Brocklehurst had, for years, been regularly attending costume life drawing classes at Saint Martins as a guest. Sue Dray, a student there in the early 1970s, now the course leader of BA Fashion Illustration at the London College of Fashion, remembers "a small woman behind huge drawings... getting exactly what she wanted from the model. She was very much a feminist, with a strong opinion about women's roles as artists and how we were recognized. I think that's why the drawings were so brutal. We weren't going to romanticize anything about the models. It was about extracting character. She was working in a period when the subculture was still the subculture."

From the late 1990s, Howard Tangye, then-head of womenswear at Central Saint Martins and a close friend, invited Brocklehurst to teach life classes with his students. Inside his house-cum-studio in Hornsey, several Brocklehurst pieces sit alongside his own artwork. "She'd had a lot of hard bumps," he says. "She wasn't quite the pure English rose, and I think she copped quite a bit of prejudice."

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He describes her as "extremely beautiful, mesmerizing, but incredibly self-conscious about it. She would do anything to make herself not beautiful." There were boyfriends, some serious, but she remained unmarried, though she did express regret in later life at not having had children. She enjoyed teaching, he says, and the students responded to her.

Towards the end of her life, Brocklehurst was curating a museum of her own work at Westbere Road. Though she owned the house, she was far from well off—though unhesitatingly generous—and lived very frugally, skimping on heating and making home repairs herself, as Tangye remembers: "Once, she'd built a little extra bit on to the back of the house, and there was a huge hole in the roof. When it rained it was like someone had a shower in there. I bought this big tarpaulin and we secured it on the roof, to at least keep out the water. She wasn't bothered about it. I was up there and we were trying to fix this tarpaulin, and this great wind blew up. We had enormous fun trying to fix this thing on the roof. Then I convinced her—I said, 'Jo, I want to buy a couple of your drawings.' I bought two of her drawings, and with the money she got the roof fixed. She didn't save up money—her life wasn't about that."

"She didn't give a shit about impressing people," says Bricknall. "Her sketchbooks were like her diaries. She drew every single day. She was driven to create. I think there are a lot of great artists that can slip through the net because they're not all about the cash. The only time she'd sell stuff would be because she needed the money to facilitate a trip. She was the real deal. She was extraordinary."

Follow Tom Jenkins on Twitter.

Check out Esther Pearl Watson's website, Instagram, and get her books from Fantagraphics.

In a 1990 episode of The Cosby Show, Cosby's character, Cliff Huxtable, hosts a barbecue for his friends and family where he feeds them barbecue sauce that—unbeknownst to them—makes people horny and docile. Toward the end of the episode, at around the 20:53 mark in the video above, Cosby smirks when his wife says, "Well, now it certainly is nice to see them work things out for themselves," referring to the guests who had been fighting over women's issues before the meal but are now snuggling and kissing each other. "They haven't worked anything out for themselves," Cosby responds. "It's my barbecue sauce... Haven't you ever noticed after people have some of my barbecue sauce, after a while, when it kicks in, they get all huggy-buggy?... Haven't you ever noticed that after one of my barbecues—and they have the sauce—people want to get right home?" He then tells his wife that he's got a cup of it up in their room on the night table.

The episode is creepy no matter how you watch it, but the scene is freakishly reminiscent of the sexual-assault allegations against the 77-year-old comedian, who is currently under investigation by the LAPD.

The rest of the episode is about Cliff's son Theo sparking a debate by trying to hire a stripper for his future brother-in-law's bachelor party. The debate loads the episode up with quotes that are are pretty horrifying in their own right when presented without context, such as, "There we go again! Male domination!" and "You're willing to watch a woman be used as a man's plaything."

Just watch the whole thing and feel weird.

Blech.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Gummy bear mugshot. Photos via Laval Police Service

The war on drugs in Canada has a chewy new target—gummy bears.

Police in Laval, Quebec issued a warning on their Facebook page Friday afternoon, asking for citizens to be vigilant about the "possible circulation of drugs which look like candy."

More specifically, bear-shaped jujubes laced with THC—the illegal chemical in marijuana plants that gets you high.

VICE spoke with Laval police Sergeant Frédéric Jean, who said that the discovery was the result of a routine pot arrest on May 14 by patrollers in Chomedey. The officers noticed two 19-year-old men smoking marijuana in a car.

"They approached the two individuals and proceeded to their arrest. The vehicle was pretty filthy which means it would have been a pretty long search of the car. So the patroller asked one of the young men if they had any other drugs in the car and one of the suspects handed a bag of jujubes to the officer.

"At first they thought it was a joke, but they seized it anyway and sent the gummy bears to Health Canada who confirmed that there was indeed THC inside them."

So —to be clear—the three centimeter-tall bears are not drugs disguised as candy. They are actual candies with drugs inside.

"We've seized synthetic drugs in the past which had the appearance of candies, but this is the first case of a jujube. It's a candy with THC inside."

Jean said that the seizure was a first not only for the city, but maybe even for Canada.

"They've received muffins, cakes, brownies in the past but never jujubes. It was the first time."

Jean said that the reason for the Facebook post was to protect children and drug addicts but mainly to find out where the mysterious bears came from.

"We don't know who made them or where they came from," Jean told VICE. "Based on our findings, we can assume it's not a small batch but a pretty serious production. We want the public to help us find out who is producing and selling these jujubes because the two suspects would not tell us."

In an effort to uncover the origins of the ursine contraband, the Laval police have assured the public that "any information on the origin of these jujubes will be treated confidentially."

Follow Nick Rose on Twitter.

John Comer, Delano Handy, and Perry Hopkins rallying for voting-rights reform in front of Maryland Governor Larry Hogan's Baltimore office. Photo by Stacey Mink

Perry Hopkins, a 54-year-old ex-felon living in Baltimore, remembers how he felt the night Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

"Everyone was running around rejoicing that we had just elected our first African American president," he told me. "But I was left with a very empty feeling." Someone stopped in front of Hopkins, looked at him, and asked, "Well, did you vote?"

Hopkins had not. In fact, he'd never seen the inside of a voting booth in his life.

Last month, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan vetoed a bill that would have granted Hopkins and 40,000 Maryland ex-felons like him the right to vote when they return home from prison, rather than having to wait until after their probation and parole sentences have ended. Though other states place even more restrictions upon ex-cons voting, in the wake of protests and rallies following the death of Freddie Gray, and amid an ongoing national conversation about racism and police brutality, the governor's veto hits the local African American community particularly hard. Nearly two thirds of those who can't vote because of a felony conviction in Maryland are black, more than a third of Maryland's state prison population comes from Baltimore, and Gray's Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood has the highest incarceration rate in the state.

Yet the connections between disenfranchisement, violence, poverty, and brutality are drawn all too infrequently.

"They're trying to cheat me out of history again," Hopkins said in reference to the 2016 election. "In my heart of hearts, I believe we may have the first female president of the United Stands, and this law will deny more than 40,000 Marylanders the opportunity to participate in that election."

Nicole Hanson has been working on criminal justice issues for as long as she can remember, well before she acquired a criminal record of her own.

"My grandma was a local community activist in Baltimore, so I just grew up around politics," the 32-year-old told me.

In 2007, Hanson successfully helped push Maryland to eliminate its lifetime voting ban, as well as the three-year waiting period ex-offenders were subjected to after their full sentences. These efforts restored voting rights to some 50,000 Maryland residents. "It was a huge victory at the time," Hanson says proudly. But with remaining restrictions in place for returning citizens—a.k.a. ex-felons—she couldn't rest for long. Hanson now serves as a board member for Out4Justice, an organization that helps mobilize ex-offenders to advocate for issues that impact them.

Felony disenfranchisement laws vary significantly throughout the country. Currently, 13 states and Washington, DC, allow citizens to vote after they leave prison, regardless of whether they're on probation or parole. Just two states—Maine and Vermont—permit current inmates to vote. Other states, like Florida, Iowa, and Kentucky issue lifetime voting bans for certain crimes or repeat felony offenders.

According to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit advocacy group, as a result of voting reforms enacted between 1997 and 2010, roughly 800,000 citizens have regained the right to vote. However, that still excludes 5.85 million American citizens with felony convictions (including some 2.2 million blacks). "That's more than the individual populations of 31 US states," former US Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech last year calling for an end to these restrictions.

Watch our documentary about an ex-con trying to put his life back together:

Twenty-four-year-old Delano Handy has been on parole and probation since he was 18. As a result, he's never cast a ballot. "I want the right to vote for me and everyone else because if we're allowed to pay taxes, why aren't we allowed to vote and have a say in what you do with the money?" he asked.

Handy is involved with activists like Hopkins through Communities United, an organization that helps empower low and moderate income Maryland and DC residents to work on social justice issues. Over the past several months, Handy has gone door to door to get Baltimore residents to sign petitions in support of the voting rights bill. Out4Justice has also led legislative workshops all over Maryland for ex-offenders—teaching them how to call their legislators, organize one another, lobby in the state capitol of Annapolis, and more.

"Part of our mission is helping returning citizens learn how to advocate for themselves, and we also want to change the perception of what people think returning citizens look and sound like," Hanson explained.

Diamonte Brown, the director of Out4Justice, told me they've trained about 200 people through these workshops.

In the wake of Governor Hogan's veto, reformers are working alongside #BlackLivesMatter activists in hopes of building up support for a legislative override in January. "So many of the people that can't vote are the same people affected by police brutality," said John P. Comer, the co-director of Communities United. "We are out in the same neighborhoods as the uprising and we continuously organize the same people who marched for Freddie Gray."

On August 6—the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act—Communities United will be holding a rally to protest Hogan's veto and push for an override. The group is also focusing on public outreach, voter registration, and turning massive numbers of people out to the polls.

"I'll be honest, I spent two days in depression over the veto," Hopkins said. "I went through a lot of different emotions, from rage to anger to depression to helplessness and hopelessness."

Now, Hopkins added, he's at a place where he's more committed than ever. "Hogan won that battle, but this is war."

"I think being able to vote would do a whole lot for these young guys on parole... Right now they think nobody is going to listen to them, and feel as though what they say don't matter." –Stephen Taylor

Governor Hogan told legislative leaders that the current law, which enfranchises felons only when parole and probation are up, "achieves the proper balance between repayment of obligations to society for a felony conviction and the restoration of the various restricted rights." (Hogan's office declined VICE's request for further comment.)

But the politician is going up against a growing body of research that suggests removing voting restrictions earlier offers critical benefits to ex-cons.

Carl Wicklund, executive director of the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA), which represents 40,000 people in pretrial, probation, parole, and community corrections, testified in support of the Maryland bill's passage. There is "no credible evidence that continuing to disenfranchise people who have rejoined the community serves any legitimate law enforcement purpose," Wicklund said. Moreover, the APPA argues civic participation is integral to successful rehabilitation and reintegration efforts. Given that voting remains the most potent symbol of participation in our democracy and civil society, restoring that right for ex-felons represents a powerful demonstration of civic redemption. Wicklund also cites one recent study that finds voting within a package of pro-social behavior that is linked to a decrease in crime.

Tomas Lopez, counsel for the Democracy Program at NYU's Brennan Center, who also testified in support of the Maryland bill, points out that disenfranchisement laws may depress voter turnout even among people who are eligible to vote. Since voting is a learned activity, something young people are encouraged to do by watching their parents, the next generation stands to lose quite a lot when the adults around them are unable to cast a ballot. Removing these restrictions, in other words, would impact not only the 40,000 Maryland residents who are currently disenfranchised, but could affect their families and neighbors, too.

Getting involved in the political process to push for this bill is already helping some ex-offenders in Baltimore reintegrate into public life. Stephen Taylor, a 46-year-old ex-felon who has been out of prison since 2007, was rallying in support of the voting rights legislation earlier this year when he started getting calls from guys in his neighborhood asking what he was doing. Once Taylor explained what he was up to, they all started asking how they could get involved. "I think being able to vote would do a whole lot for these young guys on parole," he said. "Because right now they think nobody is going to listen to them, and feel as though what they say don't matter."

Opponents of Maryland's bill insist that ex-felons haven't fully repaid their debt to society. Delegate Neil Parrott, a Western Maryland Republican, led an organized protest in the form of an online letter-writing campaign urging the governor to veto the bill. "They haven't earned back the right to vote yet," Parrott declared.

But given that civic participation has been linked to reduced recidivism—and the United States' long history of instating voting restrictions to prevent blacks from voting—those arguments look thinner by the day.

"We will win the override in January," said Nicole Hanson. "If we don't, well, that will be the governor's last time being governor."

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A drug called Truvada is the first FDA-approved means of preventing HIV infection. If an HIV-negative person takes the pill every day, he or she is nearly 99 percent protected from contracting the virus. Controversy continues to surround the broad uptake of Truvada, but the landscape of safer sex and HIV prevention changes fundamentally from this point forward—particularly within the gay male community, the population hit hardest by HIV in America. In this episode of VICE Reports, VICE explores the future of the Truvada and its revolutionary impact on ending HIV/AIDS.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

If you've ever been to your GP with depression, chances are you're aware of, or have been offered, CBT. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, to give it its full name, looks at the links between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and helps you develop techniques for challenging negative patterns of thinking. It has long been the treatment of choice for many people suffering from depression, as well as for pretty much every other mental condition out there thanks to studies demonstrating its efficacy. But could its halo be slipping?

A recent study suggests CBT's effectiveness as a treatment for depression has been falling steadily since the 1970s. With more of us now on antidepressants than ever before, what does this mean for the future of treating depression?

There are various theories about what's gone wrong. With CBT long hyped as a "gold standard" treatment, one possible reason it's not hitting the spot anymore is that more and more novice therapists are joining the CBT bandwagon without proper training or experience, and there's no guarantee they're all very good at it. With the exception of psychologists, arts therapists, and psychiatrists, there's currently no statutory regulation of therapists in the UK, so anyone can practice, and accreditation by a professional body like the British Association for Behavioral & Cognitive Psychotherapies (BACP), which demonstrates therapists meet industry standards, is often voluntary.

Researchers also suggest that the placebo effect, which is always stronger with innovative new treatments, could have dropped off as, over time, we've become more pessimistic in our expectations of CBT.

Consultant clinical psychologist Professor Eric Davis agrees: "CBT was initially a sort of great white hope; people were attaching a lot of importance to it, and various commentators and practitioners were saying how marvelous it was. But CBT is not a panacea. There's a facile notion that the latest therapy must therefore be the best and possibly only therapy, but of course that doesn't stand up, because any therapy has strengths and weaknesses."

However, if a positive belief in CBT is key to its effectiveness, self-described "CBT swot" Calum is top of the class. He's had CBT several times over the last ten years and suggests that it's more about what you put into it than anything else. For him, completing the "homework," such as mood diaries or specific tasks set during sessions, is central to that.

"I found CBT extremely effective, but I do think it's one of those things where you have to know how to make it work for you," he says. The most effective CBT program he's been on, he adds, "felt very much like school, or like a training program.

"There was a lot of time given to discussing the homework, giving feedback about what you'd learned, and if you hadn't done it there was a sense that you weren't really making the best of it," he says. However, particularly in group CBT sessions, Calum felt some people didn't really bother.

Perhaps the longer CBT's been hyped as an effective treatment, the more people go into it expecting a miracle cure, without really understanding what's involved. There's little doubt that if you walk into CBT expecting it to work like a pill, you probably will end up feeling short-changed. Could there be a link between this desire for a quick fix and the fact that antidepressant prescriptions have increased by 97 percent since 2004?

"I think secretly we're all looking for a quick fix," says clinical psychologist Louise Watson. "That was one thing CBT offered that previous therapy didn't. With psychodynamic therapy, it was all about staying in therapy for a year or two, whereas CBT promised this six-to-12-week fix, which I think is very seductive."

Maybe we're more impatient than we were in 1977, expecting our therapy to be like Netflix, providing instant results without too much effort on our part. But it's also clear that the availability and quality of CBT is pretty variable.

For Louise L, who didn't want group therapy, telephone therapy was the only type of one-to-one CBT available on the NHS in her area. "I didn't find it particularly effective at the time because talking to somebody on the phone wasn't enough. I felt like I needed something that was a bit more of a personal intervention."

However, she adds, "What I would say is that about three months after the therapy had finished, I did notice I had actually started to feel more aware of how I was feeling and how to prevent myself falling into a low mood, probably due to CBT having introduced the concepts to me."

Even when it's available and done well, CBT still isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. As Calum says, "The behaviors, qualities, and attitudes you need to have in order to engage and make it work properly are often those that people who are depressed don't have in abundance. I think if I'd gone when I was in a much lower mindset, I might not have got as much out of it."

Meanwhile, older psychoanalytic approaches, which look at past experiences, are increasingly difficult to access because they tend to last longer and therefore cost more money, but Louise L feels these approaches could help to fill in the gaps that are missed by CBT's "here and now" focus.

After her disappointing experience with phone CBT, she now favors what psychologists call "integrative" therapy, which draws on different approaches tailored to meet your individual needs and tackle depression from different angles.

Besides the older therapeutic models, there are new techniques emerging as CBT falls out of favor, which Watson sees as part of an evolution, building on and learning from what went before.

As Professor Davis explains, "CBT says 'You can change anything you want to,' but actually sometimes you can't. That in itself can be a problem because, if you're prone to depression, you end up being hard on yourself and thinking 'I should have been able to change all this by now.' Acceptance can actually be a more positive outcome."

Mindfulness, which blends CBT with traditional Buddhist meditation practices, is fast becoming the psychological treatment du jour and having its own moment in the spotlight, with advocates including comedian Ruby Wax, who has a master's degree in mindfulness-based CBT from Oxford University.

More broadly, there's a general move towards ideas of mindfulness, acceptance, and compassion, as seen in therapies like dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), which was originally developed to treat borderline personality disorder but can also be helpful for depression, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and compassion-focused therapy.

Like plain old CBT, mindfulness-based therapies aren't a universal hit, with many praising the approach as a miracle cure and others feeling it does nothing for them. Mindfulness acknowledges CBT's limitations, but neither approach can or will have the same effect on everyone. As Watson points out, regardless of the treatment, a positive relationship with a well-qualified therapist probably remains the factor most likely to influence a recovery from depression.

We're touring German prisons with The Marshall Project. For behind-the-scenes photos and observations from the road, follow Maurice Chammah on Twitter.

On Sunday, bleary after an overnight flight from New York, a group of American criminal justice professionals squeezed into a private room in a downtown Berlin restaurant. They were preparing to visit German prisons and meet German prison officials. The trip, organized by the Vera Institute, a think tank based in New York, is all about studying another system so that we might better understand our own.

From the brief introductions, it was clear that this trip would be as much about the United States as about Europe. Germany's system of sentencing (15 years is the longest most people go to prison here unless they are demonstrably dangerous) and incarceration (open, sunny prisons, full of fresh air, where prisoners wear their own clothes) serves as a reference point for reflecting on the punitive mentality that has come to define the US justice system.

In Germany, then, we would see ourselves—but through a looking glass.

The American travelers—corrections officials, district attorneys, academics, and activists—represent the variety of perspectives that fall under what journalists have taken to calling the " emerging consensus" on criminal justice reform. There are the guys who run prisons and worry about recidivism numbers. There are elected district attorneys wondering how the public responds to such short sentences. And then there are reform activists determined to see prisoners treated humanely.

Their responses to German prisons offer a rich window into what these groups value and exactly what it might take to reduce incarceration and improve the American criminal justice system. On Sunday, Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, which helped organize the trip, said he hoped the experience would offer a "stress test" to help us all understand "what this moment of opportunity really looks like." He expressed hope that the travelers will "take back ideas to fuel the..."

He paused. "Well, what are we fueling?"

On Monday, as we visited Heidering Prison—and struggled to pronounce its German name, "Justizvollzugsanstalt Heidering"—it took a while for the differences to come into focus.

Bernie Warner, the corrections secretary of Washington, noticed the faint smell of smoke—all the prisoners can smoke here, unlike their counterparts in the US. Inmates live in rooms and sleep in beds, not on concrete or steel slabs with thin padding. They have privacy—correctional officers knock before entering. Prisoners wear their own clothes, and can decorate their space as they wish. They cook their own meals, are paid more for their work, and have opportunities to visit family, learn skills, and gain education. (Inmates are required to save money to ensure that they are not penniless upon release.)

Related: Pollution, Prisons, Sickness, and Raves: Inside Russia's 'City of the Colorful Sky'

There are different expectations for their corrections officers—who are drawn primarily from the ranks of lawyers, social workers, and mental health professionals to be part of a "therapeutic culture" between staff and offenders—and they consequently receive more training and higher pay. There is little to no violence—including in communal kitchens where there are knives and other potentially dangerous implements. And the maximum time inmates spend in any kind of punitive solitary is eight hours.

"Find a [security] camera," Gregg Marcantel, the corrections secretary of New Mexico, said as he walked through the prison's main corridor. "There aren't any!" When he heard that prisons in Berlin have 33 physicians to care for 4,200 inmates, Marcantel's response was a hearty, "Good God!" That's a ratio of about one doctor for 127 prisoners. In Virginia's state system, according to a recent count, there was one doctor for every 750 inmates.

We walked through pristine white cells that looked more like dorm rooms at a liberal arts college than the steel and concrete boxes most US prisoners call home. The toilets and sinks were white and ceramic, nothing like the stainless steel bowls bolted to the wall in many US prisons (Heidering Prison opened in 2013, but such toilets have been installed in older prisons as well). Most prisoners have knives and forks in their cells. Though the prisoners cannot access the internet, they have telephones in their rooms, and they can call anyone—even the media.

"We have nothing to hide," Detlef Wolf, vice governor for Heidering Prison, said with evident pride.

As the tour took turns walking through the cell, I briefly met a 24-year-old prisoner named Bryan Meyer. He was wearing his own clothes—cargo shorts, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a black baseball cap. One of the most visually striking aspects of German prisons is how prisoners wear regular street clothes. It adds to the sense that the only thing being denied them is their liberty.

Check out our documentary on Giwar Hajabi, aka Xatar, a German rapper of Iranian descent who was released from prison last December.

Administrators here freely work terms like "human rights" and "dignity" into speeches about their prison system, and Germans appear to view people who commit crimes as medical patients (the word "prognosis" came up a lot to describe the status of an inmate). There is little stigma after prisoners finish their sentences—employers in Germany generally do not ask job applicants if they have a criminal record, according to Michael Tonry, a University of Minnesota professor on the trip who's studied corrections systems in the US and Europe. In some cases, the cultural norms were so foreign that it was pretty much impossible to imagine them taking root in the US.

Once the shock wore off, the questions came, and they reflected the political and professional concerns of those doing the asking. Many of the leaders here who have been elected or appointed—including Marcantel of New Mexico and Jeff Rosen, the elected district attorney in Santa Clara, California—wanted to know about victims. Do their desires for retribution play any role in sentencing here? (In the US, they are often allowed to read "victim impact statements" before juries assess punishment, and prosecutors often consult with them). Do sensational murders lead to the passage of more punitive laws?

The Germans had trouble making sense of these questions. There were a lot of blank stares. In Germany, prosecutors and judges are not elected. As career civil servants, they are insulated from public opinion. Their work is more "technical," said Gero Meinen, who directs the prison system in Berlin. The role is to protect the rational system of correction—which aims to restrict freedom the least amount necessary—from the retributive impulses that individual victims and society in general might feel.

Now it was the Americans' turn for blank stares.

Besides the surprise, other emotions lingered just below the surface. A few travelers were skeptical, and will be looking for ways in which things might be worse than they appear throughout the rest of the week.

Shaka Senghor, who went into Michigan prisons for second-degree murder at age 19 and emerged after 19 years (seven of them in solitary confinement) to become a public speaker and activist, was as surprised and skeptical and curious as everyone else. But he was also angry. He's the only member of this delegation who has been incarcerated in the US, and it was galling for him to see how different things could have been for him in Germany. He could have been paid ten to 20 euros a day instead of the 23 cents an hour he got paid working in a prison kitchen.

"It's a lot to take in," Senghor told me. "I went to prison at 19, and it was like, 'Your life is over.' Here, I see the way it should be."

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

This photo after Dylann Roof's June arrest was not his first mugshot. Photo via Charleston County Sheriff

On Friday afternoon, FBI Director James B. Comey revealed that 21-year-old Dylann Roof should not have been able to purchase the gun he allegedly used in the Charleston massacre on June 17. The feds had three business days to look into the 21-year-old's background after he first tried to purchase the gun on April 11, and they failed to obtain a local police report showing he was ineligible, as the New York Times reported.

"We are all sick this happened," Comey told reporters at a Friday press briefing. "We wish we could turn back time."

In 30 states, when someone tries to buy a gun, federally-licensed gun dealers enter the wannabe buyer's information into the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which is connected to federal databases, as well as state and local records. Within about 30 seconds, the retailer will get a response that either the request can proceed, is denied, or is delayed.

The system can typically rule out a convicted felon right away or clear someone with no history of arrest. But in the case of Roof, raw human judgment was required, because he had a case pending against him. And when the feds take longer than three days to disqualify someone, retailers are allowed to go ahead and sell that person a gun regardless, under what's known as "default proceedings."

Back in February, Roof was arrested at a mall in Columbia, South Carolina, for freaking out employees by asking strange questions. When police caught up with him, they found he was carrying Suboxone, a drug that's used to treat opioid dependence. Unlawful users of controlled substances, as well as people who have admitted to being addicted to them, aren't supposed to be sold firearms under federal law.

Because Roof hadn't yet been convicted, the FBI examiner had to do a little bit more digging to rule him out. For some unknown reason, as CBS News reported, the FBI examiner believed Roof had been arrested by the Lexington County Sheriff's office, when in fact he was nabbed by local police in Columbia, which is a municipality within Lexington County.

The confusion was reportedly compounded when the background checker reached out to police in West Columbia, which is another city in Lexington County, rather than the Columbia cops. Apparently, her contact sheet did not include details for the latter and local prosecutors never got back to her with clarification.

Amid the confusion and delays, Roof was able to go back to the store on April 16 and purchase the gun.

"The law really requires the FBI to make a rush judgment on really delicate issues," says Ari Freilich, an attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "This default proceed provision allowed 3,722 prohibited purchasers to buy guns in 2012."

While Roof's uncle initially told the press that the .45 caliber pistol was a 21st birthday gift, the alleged shooter's friends have since said that he was actually given money to purchase the gun himself. As the Times reports, big-box stores like Walmart often won't sell people a gun unless the FBI clears them—regardless of how long it takes—but smaller retailers will sometimes exploit the loophole to make a sale and pocket the cash.

When reporters descended upon Shooter's Choice in West Columbia last month, they were chased off the property.

"We don't give information out like that!" a worker apparently shouted. "I don't know anything about it. Just go!"

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Photo via WikiCommons

Every so often, someone can come into your life and change the way you look at the world and the way you feel about yourself. Although I never met Christian Audigier—the fashion designer who sparked the Von Dutch trucker hat trend and helped expose the world to the beautiful tattoos of Don Ed Hardy—he was one of those special people for me. Unfortunately, Audigier died from cancer at 57 on Friday.

Since end of the dystopian Bush era, the public has treated Audigier's post-9/11 designs as a joke. Mocking Jon & Kate Plus 8 star Jon Gosselin's endorsement of Don Ed Hardy became a tabloid staple. And America has come to regard Paris Hilton and other starlets' Von Dutch hats as the Guantanamo Bays of the 2000s style—a disgusting example of the pop culture-hungry neoconservatism that took over America after the Twin Towers fell. Today, Audigier's designs seemed vapid, empty, and gross to many. But this perception is completely wrong—Ed Hardy and Von Dutch matter.

I first discovered Von Dutch in my mother's tabloids. Somewhere around 2004, all the girls—Britney, Paris, Nicole—rocked Von Dutch hats in US Weekly, so I knew trucker hats well. My parents owned a very successful puppy store in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and our puppy truck drivers wore trucker hats, naturally. Those hats were a symbol to me of my family's work and what I represented in my community. You see, everyone made fun of me for belonging to a doggy dynasty. At Catholic school, nobody respected my family's wealth because they associated our pet store with dog shit and trailer trash.

Then came Audigier. He took trash symbols, like trucker hats and gaudy men's shirts covered in sparkles, and turned them into something to be coveted and desired. Throughout the mid 2000s, Paris Hilton—an old money heiress—was wearing fashion inspired by new money and working-class culture. Suddenly, my family's new money doggy dynasty seemed chic, or as Paris would say, "hot."

Audigier's reinvention of trash started when he helped Von Dutch owner Kenneth Howard take the then-struggling fashion brand and turn it into a national icon. All it took were some of Audigier's celebrity friends to rock Von Dutch, and trucker hats became hot, trashy fashion items. Everyone from bros like Justin Timberlake to Paris wore his hats, and Von Dutch became a must-have for both ultra masculine bros and hyper feminine women.

After leaving Von Dutch, Audigier moved on to Ed Hardy, where he created an even gaudier, more masculine brand. He crafted a new style for Ed Hardy, comprised of thick, mens shirts covered in sparkly materials mixed with the legendary art of Don Ed Hardy. The clothes often looked like Lisa Frank approximations of subversive biker culture, but bros adored it and wore it to clubs as if it was Armani. Brilliantly, Audigier made them think wearing a shirt with animals and glitter was as wild as actually getting a sleeve tattoo and riding a Harley. And in a way, it was. Audigier appropriated trash and sold it for millions of dollars. He was tacky, he was audacious, he was a genius.

As I write this, I am crying, wearing a vintage Von Dutch hat and an American flag shirt, and listening to Paris Hilton's "Stars Are Blind." The early 2000s sucked (wars typically do), but Christian Audigier symbolized all the aspects of the early 2000s that allowed trashy people, new money kids, and other culturally-mocked people to shine. Although Audigier was French, he understood America more than anyone, and he embodied everything great about America while living in the age of the Iraq War and freedom fries.

He gayified bros and broified homos and their idols—women like Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, and Britney Spears. With trucker hats, the power of glitter, and his keen eye, he took symbols of new money and trailer trash and, for a brief time in the early 2000s, transformed them into a style that even old money had to wear to seem trendy. Whether you're a puppy mill princess like me or a drug baron's new money daughter, you probably owe your self-esteem to Audigier's designs. And for that, Christian, we will always be thankful.

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Karl Ove Knausgaard is an unlikely literary celebrity. The Norwegian novelist is the author of the best-selling, six-volume, novelized memoir My Struggle—Min Kamp in Norwegian—a title deliberately borrowed from Adolf Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf. As Knausgaard readily acknowledges, they are books without much of a plot, where quotidian events are described with exacting, and sometimes exhausting, detail. In Norway, a country of 5 million people, My Struggle has sold 450,000 copies. English-language critics regularly compare him to Proust and await the translation of each new volume with child-like anticipation. We met Karl Ove in New York, days before the release of My Struggle: Book Four.

Photo of FtoorCom, an Algerian entrepreneur conference, courtesy of Chouaib Attoui

A staggering 97 percent of Algeria's exports and 60 percent of the government's income come from oil and gas—numbers that are all fine and well, when the price of oil is high.

But oil prices tumbled to nearly half their value a year ago, and have remained stuck there ever since. Algeria is now struggling to find a way to make up lost revenue, since the country heavily subsidizes electricity, food, and other necessities for their citizens.

Some Algerians are hoping to use the crisis an opportunity to form companies of their own. Their obstacles—as well as the potential payoffs for the government, entrepreneurs, and investors—are considerable.

Their projects include launching the first video production studio complex in Algiers, advising Algerian advertisers on media planning strategy, and creating their own startup consultancies, think tanks, and conferences, where the more battle-tested among them can coach and coax newbies through the growing pains every entrepreneur endures, and those that are more unique to Algerians.

Indeed, budding Algerian Sergey Brins and Elon Musks face many hurdles their counterparts in the developed world do not. "As a young entrepreneur, I had to make many mistakes and waste money and time I could have avoided wasting if I had had access to more information about how to found and manage a company," Abdellah Mallek, an Algerian entrepreneur, told VICE.

And unlike the flush corridors of Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley, and Silicon Roundabout, securing funding for technology ventures is often prohibitively difficult. Algerian companies are not allowed to take on foreign debt, and as a result, funding is primarily raised through family, personal savings, or a few government programs and startup competitions. "Unfortunately, in Algeria we don't have venture capitalists or business angels," Otaku Events co-founder Chouaib Attoui told VICE. Like a true entrepreneur, Events spoke to me in the early hours of the morning, Algiers time, after his tech conference FtoorCom had just wrapped. He proudly relayed that #FtoorCom had been the top trending hashtag in Algeria that day.

Abdellah Mallek, an Algerian entrepreneur and startup blogger

"It is really difficult to find funding for new tech businesses," Mallek agreed, "especially compared to fields like small industries and services, where government funding programs are doing the job. These kind of programs should be adjusted for startups."

Another barrier to engineering a roaring Algerian tech scene is internet access. According to the World Bank, only 16.5 percent of Algerians are connected to the internet, a figure roughly on par with Honduras, El Salvador, and Libya, and far below Algeria's neighbors Morocco (56 percent) and Tunisia (43.8 percent). "We have immense Internet connection issues," Marhoun Rougab, co-founder of communications consultancy Allégorie, wrote in an email. "We thank God for the emergence of the 3G that has changed our lives (this email was sent using my 3G). The government must at all costs work on a strategy for the future. High speed Internet should be available for all."

But Mallek pointed out that for tech startups to be a real game changer for the Algerian economy, connecting more people isn't enough. Despite the millions of connected Algerians, he said, "We're not producing that much, we're just consumers. To switch to producer status, we need to boost e-payment, fund programs for startups, and support the development of tech culture in the country."

Algiers, Algeria. Photo courtesy of Flickr user lomaxe

But some cards are better stacked in Algerian startups' favor.

Mallek is a passionate blogger, chronicling his experiences in the Algerian startup world and offering prescriptions to investors and inventors. He has blogged elsewhere that "North Africa is a promising market, with little or no competition, where everything has to be built: a real opportunity and a fertile ground for innovation. The tech market is really at its early days, and the one who will penetrate it first will have the biggest market share." (For that to happen, Algeria will have to remove protectionist restrictions on foreign investment.)

Geography is on Algeria's side: It is a "gate to Africa," Rougab said. "Europe is in front of us, and flights are short to most European cities."

And notwithstanding two recent and gruesome terrorist attacks, Algeria is also safer than many of its neighbors. The country went through its own version of an Arab Spring in the 1990s as the Algerian government squared off in a protracted and bloody civil war against Islamist militias that left 200,000 dead. The experience left Algerians wary of upheaval, for better or worse. "People want to live peacefully and normally now," an Algiers doctor told NPR in the early days of the Arab Spring. "And we want to become more prosperous, too. I think once we've done that, we'll think more about democracy."

The Ftoorcom team

But despite its stability, proximity, and blank slate of a market, necessity may prove to be the ultimate mother of invention in Algeria, as its formerly oil-reliant economy is forced to diversify or wither on the vine.

Before the drop in the price of oil and gas, the government was "still thinking old school and along the lines of the classic economy," Attoui said. "Now the government is trying to think differently and reshape the private sector's scene and regulations. Since the economic situation became so critical the government has not had the choice of avoiding the startup ecosystem in order to boost the country's economy and break its dependence on oil and gas."

"Since oil prices dropped, the government has started to promote other industries," Mallek said. "Before that they were talking about diversification but without actions. And I think everyone—politicians, the media, universities, developers—has to contribute in raising political interest."

There is no shortage of good foot soldiers. "The younger generation in Algeria is very creative and full of energy," Rougab said. "Their potential is immense and we trust in them to transform this country sooner or later."

Inside the offices of Allégorie. Photo courtesy of Marhoun Rougab

The government has begun to do its part. One program, ANSEJ, provides funding and extremely competitive financing for entrepreneurs whose companies will employ at least three people. Another, the Incubateur at the Sidi Abdellah Cyber Park, offers free legal and business development advice, entrepreneurship and marketing training, and low-cost state office space.

As Rougab pointed out, these are not particularly revolutionary ideas, nor do they need to be. "We do not need to reinvent the wheel; models like free economic zones exist everywhere. Why can't we just copy what has worked around the world?"

He sees all the conditions for a startup-driven retooling of the economy in place, and popular mobilization as the final step that must be taken before Algeria can join the ranks of the world's great entrepreneurship nations. "Customers exist and the market is virgin. If you have customers, and you are an entrepreneur, everything else becomes peanuts. So execution becomes your challenge. Relying on governments and large companies will not allow for scalable change. It must be a bottom-up process. It is the only way."

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All photos courtesy of Sean Baker

Sean Baker doesn't just remember the movie that made him want to become a filmmaker, he remembers the exact scene: that final image of the burning mill in Universal's 1931 Frankenstein. He cites it as having immediately been seared into his frontal cortex. If you ask him about it now, he'll tell you he still can't shake it.

Frankenstein's finale gets to the heart of "otherness" and the strange reactions to figures on the fringe. Baker's new film, Tangerine, which screened at Sundance earlier this year to rapturous praise, burns down the mill in a different way. It was shot entirely on iPhone 5S, which makes for a radically fresh aesthetic. The film's audacity feels like a dare.

Tangerine takes place over the course of one day, and tells the story of best friends Cin-dee and Alexandra (Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor), two black transgendered prostitutes, who meet at a West Hollywood donut shop on Christmas Eve right after Cin-dee has gotten out of jail for a minor drug felony. When Alexandra informs Cin-Dee that her boyfriend and pimp, Chester (The Wire's James Ransone), has been cheating on her with a cis-gendered woman, it prompts a mad dash across Los Angeles that veers into something both seedy and touching.

VICE spoke to Baker about the film's origins, the power at the center of its comedy, and why he's hesitant to be the face of the iPhone movement (hint: he's not quite ready to bid adieu to film).

VICE: The film was really born out of your real-life friendship with Mya, who plays Alexandra. How did that come about?
Sean Baker: There is an LGBTQ center in West Hollywood that is really wonderful, and services the at-risk youth. There's a courtyard outside for people who might be transient or are just looking for a place to spend a day. I came across Mya and her friends there one spring morning, and there was just something about Mya even from 40-feet away that drew me in. Her aura, I don't know, but I knew I had to speak to her.

So I told her about the film we wanted to make and our intentions, and I didn't know what her reaction would be at first, but she immediately got it. Not having any other opportunities out there, these women are forced to turn to sex work. She had total enthusiasm from the moment I met her. But it wasn't until Kiki came in when I saw the two of them sitting next to each other, you could tell they're real friends. I just said, "I don't have a plot or anything, but I want to make a movie that takes place in one day, and I think you two have to be the leads."

How did you begin to reconfigure the production of the film?
Well, we couldn't shoot on film, which was the first choice. And honestly, a lot of independent films are looking the same way these days because of DSLR. And I really didn't want it to have that same old look.

Is that when the idea to shoot the entire film on an iPhone struck?
I started exploring these Vimeo channels that were focused on iPhone experiments. And I was really impressed. I know that Tangerine is getting a lot of attention for pushing the iFilm, but I am really mourning the death of celluloid. I get jealous when I read in the trades about Tarantino shooting on 70mm—that's where I would go first.

But I found this Kickstarter campaign for a company called Wolf Dog Labs, and they had created this anamorphic adapter that fits over the iPhone lens and lets it shoot in real scope, which just elevated it to a cinematic level for me. I thought, if this is going to make it different from what anyone else has done, then I'm ready to jump on board.

Was everyone else involved in the film as gung-ho?
At first my Director of Photography was a little embarrassed, and I was telling him we need to embrace it or else we'll fail. We have to create our own aesthetic. If we do that, there is no difference between 35mm and this, as long as we're confident. When I told [the film's producers] the Duplass Brothers, Mark was the one who patted me on the back and was like, "Let's do this man, it's like punk rock."

Did the actors look at it like that way as well? Or maybe as some strange experiment that could go either way?
I love to combine first-time actors with seasoned actors. So in the case of James [Ransone], his reaction was different from everyone else's. When we were actually out on the corner shooting his first scene of exteriors, it was the night of the Golden Globes. And he had friends that were actually in tuxes, in limos, heading to the red carpet. And he's on the corner of Santa Monica, outside a donut shop, while I'm shooting him on an iPhone, and he just looks at me like, Look at me. What's going on in my life?

For first-time actors, in my experience it takes a week or so to get comfortable with the idea of cameras being shoved in their face. But with Maya and Kiki, because we were using a device that they used themselves—they would literally be taking selfies of each other off-camera—the intimidation factor wasn't even there; inhibitions were stripped away, and the comfort and confidence levels were high. There was no hierarchy.

I think that the aesthetic actually helped the film feel even more confrontational, in a way. Not only have you never watched a story like this before, but you've never seen anything that looks the way this movie looks.
It's true. Because we were using this new technology to capture the images, I wanted to do that contamination where we were using mono old-school sound and start the film by looking like an early talky, with the classical music and the font of the title card. And then I wanted to immediately break out of it with trap music, and bring us into 2015.

It sort of readies you for the way the film aims to destabilize you, first in its form and then in its function, because you wouldn't expect a movie about black, transgender prostitutes to be essentially a comedy.
Mya told me, "If you make this film, you have to promise me two things: that you're going to really show the brutal realism of daily life for the girls on the street to live like this, even if it's un-PC or uncomfortable to watch. And number two, I want you to make this movie funny."

And if it wasn't for Mya, I probably would have shot this film more along the lines of something observational and distant. But after spending so much time with the girls at local fast food joints, hanging out in this Jack-In-The-Box, it was like watching stand-up every day. Kiki and Mya are so funny and witty. It was just non-stop. And I saw that a lot of these women were using humor to cope. And I thought that if we don't do that, and we just make a film about the plight devoid of humor, then we're not making a film that they themselves could enjoy. We made a film that these women would love, too.

Have you had to navigate any criticism that you, as a white, cis-gender male filmmaker, are not part of the world that you're documenting?
All I can say is: I go into these stories not imposing a script or thought. I find the people from these worlds that I can connect and collaborate with. That, to me, is the only responsible way for any storyteller to tell a story—it's not right otherwise.

Check out our interview with actor-director Rashida Jones:

Would you ever have done this film without real trans women at the center?
No. No, I would never. You know, I saw the community's reaction to Jared Leto's Oscar win, and I have friends who are trans advocates. So between all of that, I just knew there was no other way of doing it. I mean, I didn't even know what "fish" meant until we started brainstorming. That workshopping was very important.

Los Angeles is such a strange place in how its sprawl is so decentralized. Was there something about LA as a space that drew you to the story?
There's a whole other world south of Pico that goes on for 17 miles. And there are so many communities and cultures in-between there that are just never shown. From a filmmaker's point of view, there is something undeniably cinematic about a location like Santa Monica Boulevard, which is so chaotic and busy and over-stimulating. It's also sort of an unofficial red light district, and it's beginning to gentrify so there is a real "end of an era" feeling.

A lot of the film's hype came out of Sundance. What do you think of the independent film scene and the film festival circuit?
I thank my lucky stars that the film got accepted into Sundance. I don't think this film would have gotten as much attention in many other festivals, and I think that that's a problem. It's unfair that the industry is taking advantage of a film that doesn't premiere at Sundance by paying less for it, even if it's of the same quality. The films that are coming out of SXSW are incredible, and they should get the same bids that films at Sundance are getting. That's discouraging, that's wrong. And that has to change.

Tangerine is radical in a way just for starring two woman in the lead, let alone two transgender women of color. What do you think of the public's appetite for minority stories?
The more films that get made, the more we will see the public's demand. All we can do is continue making films that seem alternative in their casting. We have to keep showing universal stories that take place in different communities. We have to look at where we are in our historical time. And what I'm trying to do with Tangerine is step away from a "plight of" movie and get closer to telling stories that white guys in the middle of Kansas can identify with. That's where I think we have to go.

Tangerine is now showing in select theaters.

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According to every cliche teenage movie, prom is supposed to be the long-awaited—and best—night of your high school career. That is, unless you live in the real world and it isn't. Whether you skipped the prom entirely, got stood up, or were too drunk to stumble home past your parents, there are many reasons not to want to relive the memories. For a group of adults out on Long Island, there was reason enough to gather in the basement hall of a local hotel to celebrate the second annual Adult Prom hosted by Kay York Affairs. Unlike your typical high school prom, attendees were dressed to the nines dancing to the tunes of Madonna and the Electric Slide while perusing sex toys and getting massages in between Budweisers and a buffet dinner. Photographer Amy Lombard was on the scene to document the festivities and crowning of adult prom kings and queens clinging to their youth for one final night.