Protesters smash off chunks of Lenin's statue in Kiev. Photos by Konstantin Chernichkin.

Protests in Kiev on Sunday evening finished with a theatrical flourish, as the pro-EU, anti-Russia demonstrators toppled the statue of Lenin that stood on a broad avenue in the center of the city. The news spread quickly online and people rushed to the location. When they arrived, they found that a protester had clambered atop the pedestal and was waving the Ukrainian flag, as well as the red and black flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).

As the crowd pressed closer, trying to get a glimpse, people issued a warning to Ukraine's current leader: “Yanukovych—you are next, you are next!” By Monday morning, the pedestal on which Vlad used to stand had been covered in graffiti.

Despite the crowd's elation, the incident has prompted concerns that the authorities could use it as a pretext for another crackdown, following the use of force seen the previous weekend. At the time of writing, police are closing in on the city's main protest site. There has also been condemnation from pro-European supporters, among them, Ukraine's Eurovision-conquering singer Ruslana, who has been actively involved in the protests. “We are supposed to act in a civilized way!!!!” she wrote in a blog post for Ukrainska Pravda, adding that the show of dissent should not be sidetracked by the felling of a statue.

Police guard a pro-government rally

There seems to remain a desire among the demonstrators to do things in as proper a way as possible, and protesters have repeatedly been warned to be wary of provocations. In the evenings, volunteers guard the entrances to the camp on Independence Square, where people huddle around fires and activists ladle out portions of soup and tea. Here and there, people wear helmets for protection. On Sunday, riot police were sighted in Kiev's Mariinski Park, where the pro-government Party of Regions was holding a rally. Apart from that, there was hardly a policeman in sight—odd, considering that last week Prime Minister Mykola Azarov was publicly readying himself for a coup.

Sunday's protest followed a meeting on Friday between Yanukovych and Russia's president Vladimir Putin in Sochi, on Russia's Black Sea coast. That night, there were rumors that Yanukovych had agreed to join the Russia-led Customs Union—a move that would sicken and enrage the pro-EU protesters. The information was not confirmed and Western media could only report that the two presidents had been discussing a “strategic partnership treaty.” Either way, it was enough to bring thousands of people back out onto the streets of Kiev.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters fill Maidan Square

But how many thousands? Opposition leaders claimed that they had met their target of a million marchers, but the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior calculated that it would have been impossible to fit a million people on the streets surrounding Independence Square. Using an electronic map of Kiev, they estimated that a mere 100,000 people would have been able to cram themselves together in their scarves and puffy jackets. Most of the media reported figures somewhere in between the two estimates.

Several dozen people managed to climb on to the metal frame built on the Maidan for the annual Christmas tree, offering unparalleled views of the crowd below. The stage below featured the usual cast of opposition leaders and celebrities. The daughter of Yulia Tymoshenko—Ukraine's imprisoned former PM and leader of the Fatherland Party—Yevhenia, read a letter from her mother.

Protesters guard their new barricade outside the Cabinet HQ

From the stage, some of the protesters were instructed to start occupying the city's government quarter. They built a barricade on the street leading up to the Cabinet headquarters—a massive white building shaped like a hemisphere. By nightfall, it had been joined by a handful of tents, looking strangely vulnerable on the road leading up to other government buildings, but Sunday night passed without any violent incident.

However, a cloud was cast over the peaceful day of demonstrations by the news that the Ukrainian security services, the SBU, has launched a criminal investigation into several opposition politicians accused of “activities aimed at overthrowing the government.” No names were given, but this could be bad news for opposition leaders Arseniy Yatseniuk, Vitali Klitschko, and Oleh Tyahnybok.

This morning, Kiev woke up to a layer of snow on the ground. Everything seemed calm, but as riot police gathered near the Maidan and word spread that the authorities might try to clear the occupied city hall, it seemed like it may just have been the calm before another storm.

Follow Annabelle on Twitter: @AB_Chapman

Mayor Rob Frod vs. the media. via Twitter.

The past week (just like every other week) has not been kind to poor ol’ Mayor Rob Frod. He's been accused of doing heroin and also exchanging marijuana for a phone he lost, rather fittingly, on 4/20. Instead of speculating, we here at VICE Canada called up our good friend Rob Frod to clear up this whole mess for us. So here you have it, without further ado, Mayor Rob Frod in his own words...

Folks, you have no doubt heard many new outrageous allegations against me, none of them proven, and all of them false. This smearing of my blameless character is part of an agenda by that fancy downtown elitist, Sylvia Stalin and her gaggle of lying liberal cronies. It’s a conspiracy of what I call Prada-style journalism, practiced by sharply-dressed journalists, police chiefs, judges, and drug dealers. As a result, I want to clear the air and tell you the truth about all that’s happened this past year, beginning with the loss of my cellphone back in April.

On April 20^th, I was at a public event to clean up Colonel Sam Smith Park, picking up empty bottles of vodka and Gatorade strewn about the grounds. I left my cellphone on the hood of my car, and it must have slid off and fallen into the pocket of a young man from Dixon Road who was there to drop off some fried chicken. Apparently he didn’t notice he had my phone, and went back to his crackhome to await instructions from Sylvia Stalin.

I realized that my phone was missing when I tried to contact my good friend and driver Sandro Lisi to arrange one of our nature walks. It was a very disturbing discovery, because I hadn’t locked my phone and it contained all my Angry Birds high scores. Fortunately, my Escalade is equipped with an OnStar phone system*, so I was able to call Sandro from that and told him what happened. He told me not to worry, and began dialing my cell number, in case someone had found it and might answer.

As luck would have it, my cellphone was eventually answered by Liban Siyad, a young entrepreneur in the import business. After consulting with his partner, a friendly guy named Juice Man, Mr. Siyad agreed to meet my buddy Sandro at a nearby donut shop. I suggested that Sandro bring him a nice gift in recognition of his honesty, so he brought Mr. Siyad some kush—which is a delicious Italian pastry baked by Sandro’s mother who lives upstairs from him. So that’s how I got my cellphone back, folks: there was nothing sinister at all about that, no matter what the Toronto Police’s fancy schmancy wiretaps may indicate.

There have also been allegations that I have used heroin, which is completely untrue and, from what I've been told, unfashionably retro. This smear is based on a complete misinterpretation of a comment by another entrepreneur (and amateur bullet-catcher), Abdullahi Harun, who said he “has so much pictures of me doing the Hezza.” It so happens that the Hezza is actually a traditional high-kicking dance that I learned from my wife’s Polish relatives, and there are already publicly available photos of me dancing the Hezza, as you can see here.

Rob Frod doing the hezza. via methylprednisone on Reddit.

But the most ridiculous allegation of all is that I offered $5000 and a car to drug dealers for an incriminating video of me smokin’ rocks. This video does not exist, as I’ve always maintained, and I call upon the police chief to release it to the public. According to the latest bestselling novel by Sylvia Stalin, “Information to Obtain Search Warrant Pursuant To Section 11 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act” (I admit, it’s a catchy title), that claim was made by another young entrepreneur, Mohamed Siad. He just happened to be overheard by some nosy detectives who should have been minding their own business. But that quotation was taken out of context, it was never said, and it doesn’t mean what you think it means, folks. Here’s what really happened.

Mr. Siad is a hard-working young man trying to operate a humble delivery business. I’ve enlisted his services many times in the past, particularly when visiting my friends, the Bassos, at their charming home on Windsor Road. Fabio and Elena spend so much time caring for their beloved mother that they sometimes forget to buy groceries, so now and then I’ve arranged for Mr. Siad to deliver various foodstuffs to them, because that’s the kind of generous, warm-hearted person I am.

One night, I was at home, watching a football game. My wife was relaxing on the couch with an icepack over her eye, as she often does, when suddenly the phone rang. This was my home phone, rather than my cellphone or my OnStar or any of my secret phones registered to Deco Labels and Tags Inc.. It was Mr. Siad on the line. He was sobbing with despair because his delivery van had been stolen (a lot of the neighbourhood kids have turned to crime ever since I stopped coaching them at football), and he’d lost a big contract as a result.

My heart was about to burst for this poor fellow. Although I’m not a rich man (compared to Donald Trump for instance), I immediately offered to help him out with an interest-free loan of $5000, and the use of one of our “laundry” vehicles from Deco Labels. That shows how much I care about small business owners and their struggles.

So you see, folks, there’s an innocent explanation for everything you’ve heard in these documents. Don’t let yourselves be brainwashed by the muckraking Prada fashion police of Sylvia Stalin. Last I checked this is still a democracy, not some right-wing communist tree-hugging gravy-slurping gay dictatorship. And last I checked, I’m still mayor. And I haven’t been charged with any crimes yet. And even if I am, it wouldn’t go to trial before Oct. 27, 2014, when you can re-elect me: Mayor Rob Frod.

Frod More Years! God bless Frod Nation.

* OnStar is a subsidiary of General Motors that provides subscription-based communications, in-vehicle security, hands free calling, tum-by-turn navigation, and remote diagnostics systems throughout the United States, Canada and China. One of its features is it gives your vehicle an assigned phone number that you can give out to callers. When they call on that number, it will ring inside your vehicle's hands-free system. Mayor Frod's motor vehicle (Cadillac Escalade) is a General Motors brand.

Illustration by Julia Scheele

Until July I shared an apartment in England with two cousins, Lorenz and Alessandro. When I moved out at short notice, I was worried that I'd left the pair in the lurch, but as it turned out my timing couldn't have been better. "We're moving to Romania to open a catering business," they told me. That plan seemed a little unusual, not to mention completely economically unviable, but they assured me that they had it all worked out. They knew a guy who was already running a similar operation in Bucharest, they said.

Come September, I got a message from the cousins asking if I could help out writing up some sales copy for their business. "Sure, tell me more about it," I wrote. "Well, it's a secret," replied Alessandro. It's tricky to write about secrets, I told him, and after some coaxing he revealed, unsurprisingly, that it wasn't really a catering business they had opened at all, but a studio full of stripping, pouting, masturbating camgirls and camboys. I told the pair that I didn't feel comfortable writing sales copy for that kind of thing. Not to worry, they said, before inviting me out to stay with them. Which is exactly what I did at the beginning of last month.

Webcam studios are to bedroom masturbators what brothels are to Johns. And if the internet had a designated red light district, it would be Romania, where there are currently an estimated 2,000 studios in operation. The cousins’ studio—Kazampo—is the latest addition to that digital den of sin. It’s housed on a Bucharest backstreet in a building that can accommodate up to 11 "models" at a time, all masturbating in the direction of a webcam for lonesome, horny Americans thousands of miles away.

I was feeling pretty anxious about the 21-hour train journey from Belgrade to Bucharest. I was expecting to turn up at the house and find a disgusting nest of cyberpunk depravity—beautiful tragedy-eyed boys and girls in varying degrees of undress hoovering internet drugs off each other as they jigged about to whatever Western club music is currently setting the cultural pace in Romania (Steve Aoki?). But what greeted me upon arrival was disappointingly pedestrian.

I got there at noon, which would ordinarily be lunchtime. Except lunchtime in a studio like this is 9 PM, because 90 percent of paying "members" (the webcam world shares the IRL sex trade’s love of euphemisms) live in North America, meaning that 90 percent of a Romanian studio’s clientele are anywhere between seven and 12 hours behind the models. Peak working hours in Kazampo are between one and 7 AM.

That suggests that America is starting to outsource an impressive amount of its hands-off sex trade to Romania's webcam industry—solitary men are swapping tables at stripclubs for laptops in bed. Which I suppose makes a lot of sense; it's private, reliable, and arguably more intimate: members are able to check back in with their favorite models whenever they like. Webcams are also more or less completely detached from reality, meaning they don't have to drive anywhere or interact with anyone who's not on a screen.

Camelia, Alessandro's girlfriend and the studio's maid-cum-madame, playing Farmville.

Outside of working hours, the house is a fog of cigarette smoke and 80s power ballads. No one talks very much and the models spend a lot of time in the kitchen, either playing Farmville on a communal computer or Clash of Clans on their smartphones. Since nothing much was going on when I arrived, Lorenz sat me down to watch a half-hour interview with President Jose Mujica of Uruguay, who was imprisoned until 1985 for his activities as a communist guerrilla. Since then, he’s gone from enemy of the state to Pope Francis’s favorite atheist and South America’s most popular weed-legalising Marxist. Lorenz was silent the whole way through the interview. His face is constantly set in the thoughtful, brow-scrunching expression of a deeply conflicted Catholic saint. Once Mujica had finished his measured critique of Western capitalism, Lorenz told me his dearest wish: violent socialist revolution.

The cousins come from privileged backgrounds and grew up nearly 10,000 miles away from Bucharest (they asked that their home country be kept confidential, for fear of being identified). As a kid, Lorenz was a firm believer in the right-wing politics of his parents. After going off to college in his homeland’s capital, he "started [to get] to know different realities of life" after mixing with kids from poorer backgrounds and doing some reading and thinking for himself.

Without finishing his degree, Lorenz left for Europe to learn the art of self-reliance. He credits the experience of joining the "labor class" in what he described as "a real socialist country" for his radicalization. He came to see that the wealthy prosper from the suffering and poverty of the lower classes. In his words, "I came to see that if you are able to share—that is, work together for a common interest—things can be really good." In short, he found socialism.

"If only everyone would stand together then they would be able to change things," Lorenz said. Since he's so passionate about revolution, I asked him why he isn't manning the barricades. He answered with a pimp’s pragmatism: "If I tried to live my life according to my ideals, I don’t think it would be possible. I’m just one person." And does he regret turning his back on his homeland? "If I’d stayed at home, this," he said, waving his arm around Kazampo’s Ikea-furnished office, "never would have happened."

By which I assumed he meant he never would've had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move to a country where the average monthly wage is less than $300 and exploit young people who will do just about anything for money.

I asked him if he sees any contradiction between his socialist ideals and his decision to enter the digital equivalent of the world’s oldest profession. He didn’t quite get it. I pointed out that, as a webcam studio owner, he owned the means of production and that the models were the oppressed workers. He thought about it for a minute before explaining that, no, that doesn’t apply at all. You see, "We’re not managers, because the models aren’t employees," he explained. "They pay us part of their earnings in return for us providing the facilities. We're facilitators."

According to Lorenz, he's not in it for the money. "This is not strictly a business," he said, "it’s something I’m going to enjoy and use to make myself a better person in different ways. I don’t want to become rich, I just want to get to a place where I don’t have to worry about money." Which I’m pretty sure is the definition of rich.

Raffi, the Kazampo studio dog.

While Lorenz is idealistic, Alessandro is a little more capital-driven. While we were out picking up groceries one day he gave me a rough primer on the economics of webcam studios. "I know a studio that has 15 models, all guys," he said. "Every period, that place turns over €25,000 ($34,300). A period in this business is two weeks. Now, you think that guys only make half what girls make; imagine you have 15 girls working for you—that means you’re making 50 grand every two weeks. That is my dream."

As we stood outside the supermarket finishing our cigarettes, a girl walked past and Alessandro switched from mathematics to aesthetics: "This girl, her face—she can make money. I look at their faces and I see money."

At the house there were aspirational books scattered all over the place; Richard Branson's autobiography, a translation of a book by a German financial wiz called How to Be a Millionaire in Seven Years—that kind of thing. Lorenz might have got into the webcam game for a slightly confusing set of spiritual reasons, but Alessandro’s eyes are always on the numbers. Neither cousin seems motivated by sleaze. Alessandro eventually wants to be able to hand over the reins of Kazampo to a manager and pursue other ventures, and Lorenz had promised me, "We’re not going to take the pimp attitude. For us and them, it’s just a job. As our workers, they deserve respect." To these ends, Alessandro has employed his Romanian girlfriend Camelia as maid-cum-madame. In his words, "It’s good to have her, because when the models get out of line she can shout at them and bring them in line, and I don’t look like the bad guy."

Despite their slightly skewed view on what constitutes being the bad guy, the cousins both hope that their studio can inspire some small changes within the Romanian webcam industry. For one, they both make much of the fact that they only take 40 percent of their models’ earnings, compared to the 60 to 75 percent that is the norm in Bucharest. They spoke of this as though it were an act of charity. Actually, it’s a commercial necessity; webcam modeling is so widespread in Romania that it’s actually quite hard for a new studio to find models.

It’s so tough, in fact, that Kazampo only had three models working for them at the time I came to visit at the beginning of November. That left eight of the 11 workstations lying dormant.

One of the rooms in Kazampo.

Those workstations resemble something between a teenager’s bedroom and a private booth in a low-end strip club. Each room has a square bed facing a computer and comes complete with that trusty signifier of eroticism: a bottle of disinfectant cleaning product. The walls behind the beds are painted pink and covered in strips of pink and gold wallpaper, usually sporting a motif based around love or something equally saccharine. The other walls—the ones that the camera will never see—are left bare.

Lorenz was embarrassed by the half-arsed job that had been done on the rooms—except for the one with the pole. The previous tenants, who had also been running a studio, were in such a rush to depart they’d left pole dancing equipment in one of the rooms. That had clearly gone down well with the cousins, as they'd invested extra money in what had been left behind, installing a disco ball and a laser to shine at it. I never properly met the girl who worked in there, but whenever I passed by dance music was filtering out under the door.

In an attempt to fill the remaining empty rooms, Alessandro has been making 700-mile round trips to Belgrade—where webcam modeling is nearly unheard of—to try to recruit new faces. The mass acceptance of webcam modelng in Romania has its roots in the country’s experience under communism, so the Serbian capital seems as good a city to enlist models from as any other in the former Eastern Bloc.

Belgrade was the capital of what used to be communist Yugoslavia, which broke away from Moscow in 1948. Their experience of communism was one of cultural and economic prosperity, and to this day it’s pretty common to find portraits of former leader Josef Tito in people’s living rooms, or even hanging in anarchist squats.

Romania, on the other hand, didn't shake off the Russian yoke quite so quickly. After the communist takeover of the country at the end of World War Two, a number of "SovRom" (Soviet-Romanian) companies were set up to generate funds for reconstruction, with both parties supposedly receiving equal amounts of revenue. However, the ventures were mainly designed to guarantee the Soviets access to Romania's natural resources, which they exploited for a decade before the Romanian authorities dissolved the SovRoms between 1954 and 1956.

Then, once things had finally picked up in the 80s, the Romanian Communist Party decided its citizens deserved to be fucked over by their own government. Food production in particular had never been so efficient, yet General Secretary Nicolae Ceaușescu forced his people to subsist on starvation rations while building himself the ironically named “Palace of the People/” It still holds the world record for being the largest administrative building in existence.

Marius and Anica—a couple who are both models at Kazampo—told me that Romanians don't think about tomorrow. When a girl makes her first €1,000 ($1,370) webcamming, she doesn’t set any of it aside to pay her rent—she spends it all on a swanky clothes and fancy perfume.

A child of the revolution, 24-year-old Marius was in the army before he became a model, but the pay was so bad that he used to moonlight in the private sector on his days off. He told me, "In this country, in this business especially, people are not thinking about the future, just what can they have today." So what money he does make, he spends immediately.

He drives a small BMW that would have been called a sports car when it rolled off the assembly line in 1993. Now it coughs and splutters at the slightest touch of the accelerator thanks to a cracked exhaust manifold that there’s never any money to fix. This suits Marius just fine, though; in another life he would have been a rally driver, and he guns through the streets of Bucharest like he’s playing Need for Speed, dodging between oncoming trams and traffic.

Driving through Bucharest with Lorenz and Marius.

If they're not splashing it on shoes and cars, Romanian students often use modeling as a way of funding their education. Anica has a degree in tourism management, but there’s nothing she could do with it that would earn her more than she gets webcam modeling. "It’s common to do this, but it’s even more common to fuck for money," she said—which is where she draws the line.

I asked Anica and Marius if they’d ever thought of performing together. Marius’s eyes lit up until they met his girlfriend's. She looked slightly downcast. "The money is not enough for how much you are hurting yourself," she said, the usual bounce absent from her voice. I changed the subject and asked how she got involved in webcamming.

Her career in the webcam world began as a non-adult model, where members pay for conversation only, she said. Oddly, the money she now makes as an erotic performer isn’t much better than what she made when she was starting out, which speaks to just how lonely the client base is.

The bread-and-butter of a model’s income is earned through "privates," sessions where members pay $2 a minute for a one-on-one webcam chat with a model. Some of that normally goes to the hosting site, then 40 to 75 percent goes to the studio, leaving the models with between 60 and 25 cents a minute, depending on what studio they work in.

The key, even for erotic models, is to keep your clothes on for as long as possible, which isn't too difficult because ejaculation is less of a priority for members than you’d imagine. Most of them are divorced men looking for a little companionship. From Anica’s description, modeling sounds a lot like working in sales: ask them lots of questions about themselves and be interested in what they say and they’ll love you forever—or at least until their money runs out. Eventually they might ask you to take your clothes off, at which point you’re expected to lie back and get it over with.

Making $15 to $36 an hour wouldn't be terrible under normal circumstances, but given the nature of the work, it’s a good thing there are alternative revenue streams available to models.

The first of these is tips. Members can tip models in and out of private chats to try and coax them into giving a little extra in their performance. While working in another studio, Marius alternated shifts with a female model. At the end of every shift she’d leave her water glass in their shared room, making her the webcam equivalent of the housemate who always leaves dirty dishes on the kitchen counter. One night, a member offered Marius a big tip to piss on camera. A little creeped out by the request, but not seeing the harm in it, Marius looked around the room for something to piss in, and there it was—the glass. If modeling sounds like easy work, try finding someone who’ll pay you to piss on your housemate’s dirty dishes.

Then there’s Skype, the use of which allows models to keep 100 percent of their earnings by circumventing the studios and websites. They also make more per minute by telling members that chatting in their free time will cost them more. The sites have rules against this; models and members are forbidden from exchanging contact information—but that isn’t to say it doesn’t happen, and it can be very profitable for the models when it does.

Marius's working room.

One day, Anica told me about a member named Clarence, who works as an administrator at a North American university. He makes $15,000 a month and is madly in love with Anica, so much so that he flew to Romania this spring to meet her in the flesh. She’s always honest with her members, so she brought Marius with her, introducing him as her boyfriend and explaining that, while Clarence is her "best friend" (OK, maybe she's not entirely honest), if he ever lays a finger on Marius she’ll slit his throat. Undeterred, Clarence continues to put $1,000 a month on a credit card he sent her; he's also given her an iPad and pretty much anything she asks for.

It’s easy to point out that the studio owners and the members are using the models’ relative poverty to exploit them sexually. This is true, and the industry is unethical at the very least. But the models too are exploiting the loneliness and frustration of their clients halfway across the world—a fact that’s not lost on Anica. "Of course I feel guilty, but I need the money," she explained.

Marius knows of love-struck or addicted members who have drained all their financial resources keeping models in private chats all night, every night. He told me about one member who would take out credit from anyone who would give it to him to keep a model in a private chat every night. When the cash runs out and the members beg for some time in private, the successful models usually stay strong and refuse to contact them until they can pay again. It sounds cruel, but a model's got to eat.

It’s not all gloom and exploitation, though. Every night Camelia and Anica would prepare dinner for the models, the owners and me, a meal that was the highlight of my day. One night Marius said to me, "Hey, check out my friend’s new house," passing me his smartphone, which displayed a white-picket-fence American house. "He’s a member?" I asked. "No, he’s my friend," he replied. Marius was the first webcam model the guy had ever spoken to; now their relationship is completely chaste.

Marius's friend is almost 30 years old and lives in the southern United States. He hasn’t come out to his parents as gay yet, but Marius is coaching and supporting him through the process. Their relationship is non-transactional as well as non-sexual—Marius’s friend tries to wire him a couple of hundred dollars to help him out when he can, but Marius insists the friendship would continue even if the money stopped.

The cousins aren’t the only foreigners running studios in Bucharest. The internet is full of people from America and Western Europe looking for advice on setting up a studio in Romania, and plenty of studios were founded with foreign investment. There’s nothing particularly glamorous about the business, but the return on investment can be phenomenal. A talented model can generate $13,000 of revenue in a month, which is big money in one of Europe's poorest countries.

Officially, the Romanian government is not a fan of adult entertainment. The law requires that anyone starting a porn site in the country must password protect it, and multiple laws have been proposed over the course of the last decade to allow for the blocking of adult websites. Unofficially, someone's put a lot of work into the country’s telecommunication infrastructure, with the result that Romania now has a faster download speed than any G20 nation. Like it or not, webcamming is a great way of getting foreign capital into Romania, and that’s not going to change until someone finds a better alternative.

Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals mentioned in the story.

Update 12/9: A previous version of this article was unclear about the nature of post–World War Two relations between the USSR and Romania. The paragraph in question has been revised to provide more detail.

Follow Jack (@jackoozell) and Julia (@juliascheele) on Twitter

More stuff about sex and the sex trade:

Meet the Woman Who's On a Quest to Have Sex with 100,000 Men

This Guy Is Losing His Virginity in Public for an Art Project

Women from All Over the World Are Being Sex-Trafficked into Greece

Still from CANAL+'s holiday TV spot

Tis the season when big advertisers roll out “emotional” commercials to try and guilt you into buying your loved ones shit they don’t need. Many people call this “the most wonderful time of the year.” You and I do not.

Despite my seat at the opposite end of the seasonal cheer pendulum, my job requires me to sit through every single one of these big Christmas ads. Since October I’ve suffered through this soulless parade of animated animals and fake home movies and supermodels and Helena Fucking Bonham Carter—and I feel anything but merry after watching these spots designed to get us into the (shopping) spirit. I can’t wait for December 26.

Thankfully this year, there are a few holiday ads—four to be exact—that treat consumers like sentient beings and eschew the hackneyed faux feel-good hooey. Here they are, in creative countdown order.

4. Roku

Fictional spokespeople are always a risky ad strategy, because the public might just hate the living fuck out of him/her (see Burger King’s “Herb” and for me, personally, Progressive’s “Flo”).

But I like this “Ukrainian,” this “Moxkat Grvida.” The theme here—gift yourself; fuck everybody else—is not a breakthrough idea (see Harvey Nichols, #3, below). Yet this strategy fits the product perfectly, and I love perfect-fitting strategies. I’m an old school Mad Man dinosaur. Too many of today’s campaigns are focused solely on getting the most “eyeballs” possible—damn the strategy, full speed ahead. These campaigns are not building the brand, and will not be remembered three months from now. They are metrics worshipping dead ends.

Back to Moxkat and Roku. Why he has a trampoline is a bit of a puzzle. Maybe he self-gifted it to himself? In one of the shorter secondary ads, Moxkat reveals some of his favorite movies, a predictable list. In another, he bemoans the year he got cargo pants instead of a hunting rifle. This has nothing to do with Roku, but who cares.

This is the only campaign of the four in this list that appears only online, meaning it probably won’t hit as many of those precious eyeballs as the other three. I don’t know how many Rokus it will sell, nor do I give a shit. It put me in the right frame of mind for December, that being, this consumerist-driven world is a fucked up hellhole. Good job, Roku.

(Note: I have a Roku, and recommend it.)

Ad agency: Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners.

3. Harvey Nichols

The UK luxury department store chain usually avoids seasonal mushiness in their Christmas spots. In 2011, they received a sleigh-full of complaints for their holiday party “Walk Of Shame” commercial, an ad that nonetheless won a Silver Lion at Cannes.

This year, they went with this “Sorry I Spent It On Myself” campaign. The TV spot is good enough by itself, but they went all in with the selfish “fuck seasonal generosity” strategy. You can actually buy the shitty gifts featured in the commercial, online and in stores.

Ad agency:  adam&eve/DDB London.

2. Aldi supermarkets

Discount market Aldi has smartly played on its low prices via a long running, economical but funny TV campaign tagged “Like Brands, Only Cheaper.” (Here are two of my past favorites, “Gin” and the darkly funny “Tea” spot, which also involves gin.)

This Christmas, they spent a few more pounds on production and a hot male model. Note: Aldi’s cheap champagne even won a recent taste test against Moet and Veuve Clicquot.

Ad agency: McCann Manchester.

1. CANAL+

And here’s the clear winner, via French pay TV channel CANAL+. If Sarah Palin happens to see it, she will need to helicopter-murder a wolf pack to properly vent.

CANAL+ and their ad agency BETC Paris have a history of creating entertaining TV spots, including “The Bear” and my favorite, “The Closest.” This reimagining of the Bethlehem Nativity scene was shot in Morocco, and directed by the Glue Society’s Gary Freedman. Bravo.

So the takeaway this season is that instead of buying your loved ones a fancy new iProduct with planned obsolescence, buy yourself something nice and to hell with everyone else. God is dead and Jesus is a CANAL+ subscription now anyway.

The Washington, DC, headquarters of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Even among federal agencies, the ATF's incompetency stands out. Photo via Flickr user Mr. T in DC

At a bare minimum, it would be nice if the authorities didn’t go out of their way to trick mentally disabled people into doing illegal things and then send them to prison. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) can’t live up to even that low, low standard of behavior, according to an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published last week. The newspaper discovered that the ATF regularly set up shady pawnshops and smoke shops in cities across America in order to catch criminals, then engaged in some questionable behaviors that included employing—and then arresting—mentally handicapped individuals, destroying property, and losing track of guns. It looks as if the dangerously incompetent operation in Milwaukee the Journal Sentinel exposed earlier this year was not the anomaly the agency claimed it was.

The ATF set up storefronts in at least six cities all across the US, including Pensacola, Florida; Portland, Oregon; and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Undercover agents would sell cigarettes and designer jeans for cheap as well as actual stolen goods and guns while trying to get criminals to sell them drugs and weapons. Over the past six years, in at least four cities, they used mentally handicapped individuals in operations, then had them arrested.

Tony Bruner of Wichita, Kansas, who reportedly had an IQ somewhere in the 50s, was hired by undercover ATF agents to do odd jobs around one of their pawnshops. The 20-year-old called the law enforcement agents his friends, and eventually his “friends” encouraged to set up gun deals. He got three years in prison, and was advised by a judge to consider himself lucky he wasn't handed a harsher punishment. A brain-damaged drug addict in Albuquerque was similarly coerced into finding and buying machine guns by agents, and he got eight years when he brought them one. Most bizarrely, a pair of teenagers in Portland were paid to advertise Squid’s Smoke Shop, another front operation, by getting a neck tattoo. (A judge was so disgusted by this that he ordered the ATF to pay for the tats to get removed.) The investigation also showed that agents engaged in drug and gun stings within 1,000 feet of schools and churches in several cities, as well as allowing minors to smoke weed and drink alcohol in other stores. Landlords allege that some operations resulted in thousands of dollars of destroyed property, and that agents left without paying or leaving any forwarding address. In essence, ATF agents pretended to be criminals by becoming criminals.

Agents are also accused of selling guns to violent felons then letting them leave the store without any plan to track them, and of talking their targets into buying or selling guns that would bring more severe sentences. This speaks to a general sloppiness in ATF-run operations—in the gun-buying operation in Milwaukee, many of the charges were later dismissed, the store lost tens of thousands of dollars in merchandise when it got robbed, and agents misplaced a machine gun.

The ATF has lost guns before, most notably in Operation Fast and Furious, during which the agency lost track of hundreds of weapons, including one that was used in the killing of a Border Patrol agent in December 2010. A Congressional investigation mostly concluded that the mistakes made were the fault of rogue, local agents. The ATF has been dogged with controversy before that, though—in the 80s and 90s the agency was accused of discriminating against female agents, and it played a key role in the disastrous raids at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas. Unsurprisingly, conservatives tend to particularly dislike the bureau, and Republicans have blocked nominees for a permanent head for seven years. (Liberals tend to see that as fighting dirty over gun control.)

The FBI has also faced accusations that it creates criminals—or at least drags them into bigger loosely-defined-as-”terrorist” plots—but the ATF seems to have a special knack for being both ineffective and dangerous in its methods. Meanwhile, the Journal Sentinel isn’t getting all the answers it wants. The agency has refused numerous Freedom of Information Act requests for details on their internal investigation into the allegations. You have to wonder what else they’re trying to hide.

Now on to the rest of this week’s bad cops:

- A 46-year-old Brooklyn man filed a criminal lawsuit last week claiming that his constitutional rights were violated during an April encounter with the NYPD. Robert Hankins was searched and arrested on ecstasy possession charges, in spite of, he claims, his repeatedly telling officer Sean Nurse that the “illicit substance” the cops found was nothing more than breath mints. According to his complaint, Robert was held for 30 hours before being released and was required to go to court several times before charges were dropped in October. Robert is stressing that Sean was supposedly an expert at drug identification and therefore should have known better. Mistaking a banal substance for drugs is not new to policing, or even the NYPD. Cops have been known to mistake talcum powder for coke, or herbs for weed. And another Brooklyn man filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in October alleging similar wrongdoing by the NYPD when they brought him in on meth charges even though all the drug in question was Jolly Rancher candies that were still in their wrappers. The arresting officer in that case made much of his narcotics expertise, according to the complaint. Maybe new NYPD Commissioner William Bratton should start offering a training seminar to his officers informing them of the existence of candy.

- In an even more disturbing lawsuit filed against the NYPD in Novermber, a Staten Island mother of ten children alleges that police smashed in her door, beat several members of her family, crushed a pet bird, and arrested her kids for no reason. According to court papers, on September 2 of last year police officers questioned 26-year-old Edwin Avellanet about a traffic cone being used to save a parking spot in front of the family home. Avellanet refused to show ID to police, then ran into the house after one officer grabbed him by the arm. Officers began breaking windows and walked inside the house after 57-year-old Evelyn Lugo, Avellanet’s mother, opened the door in response to the noise. Lugo’s daughter Alba Cuevas, an asthmatic, was allegedly arrested for going into another room so she could get away from the pepper spray floating in the air. At one point during this chaos, says Anna Freebles, another daughter of Lugo, police knocked over the cage of the family’s parakeet, Tito. One officer said, “Fuck the bird!” and stomped him, according to the complaint. Lugo’s son George and a family friend were allegedly beaten on the head with batons—there are photographs of the injuries seemingly taken at least a few days after the events—and Lugo says she was thrown to the floor. After all of this, Avellanet wasn’t even arrested. Everyone who was cuffed by the cops later had all charges dropped against them, and the family is asking for unspecified damages related to excessive force, malicious prosecution, and unlawful search. The NYPD had no comment, as usual.

-Uh, so, the FBI arrested a bunch of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and is accusing them of hiding an FBI informant from federal agents. It’s not clear what exactly is going on, but somebody fucked up pretty bad, evidently.

- For our Good Cop of the Week, we have to go with Icelandic police Chief Haraldur Johannessen. Last Monday, when cops in Iceland killed a suspect for the first time ever, (!) Haraldur apologized, saying, “Police regret this incident and would like to extend their condolences to the family of the man.” The victim, a 59-year-old named Sigrid Oscar Jónasdóttur who was reportedly mentally ill, fired a gun in his Reykjavik apartment, drawing police to the residence. The first responders were unarmed, as are nearly all police in Iceland, and Sigrid shot at them. After they tried and failed to disarm him using tear gas and an armed SWAT-like team was also fired upon, police shot Sigrid. The cops took him to the hospital, but he couldn’t have been saved. It’s possible we’ll find out otherwise, but so far this police shooting sounds justified by any reasonable standard—the man was clearly attempted to kill other people and the cops had made an effort to stop him through nonlethal means. Even in those circumstance, the chief of police still said he was sorry it happened. Compared to US cops, Icelandic ones seem like they’re from another planet. (On the other hand, Sigrid's sister says there was nowhere for her mentally ill brother to go. Iceland is not a paradise.) Still, expressing sorrow over a death is a very compassionate, very human gesture that few American law enforcement officials ever make in public.

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

Previously: Homeland Security Is Afraid of Mentally Ill Canadian Tourists

One of the most eagerly anticipated culinary events of the year in Los Angeles is Beefsteak. Organized by Tim & Eric's Eric Wareheim, Cort Cass, and Matt Selman, Beefsteak is a throwback to all-you-can-eat soirees from the 19th century. Men from all walks of life would gather in a beer hall or other large event space to consume massive amounts of beef, drink beer, and carouse.

The tradition fell out of favor in the middle of the last century, but Wareheim and company (along with noted chef Neal Fraser of Grace and BLD fame) sought to revive the practice for the modern era, while adding an element of philanthropy. All proceeds from the invite-only event go to the LA Food Bank, which seeks to end hunger in the Los Angeles area.

We assembled early for cocktails at the venue, Vibiana in downtown Los Angeles. We were greeted by a genial balloon maker who promised to make me a hat in the shape of a cow. The cow is, of course, the animal the Lord commanded us to eat with great joy and gratitude. I wasn't sure about this balloon maker's credentials, but fortunately, I came to see that I was in good hands.

If you're the best, you better let the world know you're the fucking best. This lady was definitely the best.

When you wear a balloon hat in the shape of a cow, you need to treat it seriously. Thankfully, my friend here took that advice to heart.

After a few hours of copious drinking, we were let into the dining hall. Seating was a free-for-all, and I managed to end up with a spot at the end of the room. Sometimes, you have to learn the hard way to be punctual.

Entertainment is a major part of any traditional beefsteak, and we were treated to the jazzy stylings of the Chris Walden Big Band. I did my best to refrain from asking them if they could play "Blurred Lines."

Traditional beefsteaks also keep the menu simple. Our first dish was nothing more complex than rare sliced steak with au jus and horseradish sauce. The steak was accompanied by broccolini and fingerling potatoes. Simple, but the meat was seared nicely on top while also staying juicy in the middle. That's no small feat.

I probably could have eaten an entire tray of this if I was alone in a dark room watching SportsCenter at 3 AM. As I was most certainly not alone—Chef Fraser informed me prior to the meal that they were preparing enough food for 600 guests—and at no point could I find a TV playing ESPN, I ate only a moderate amount of food. That didn't stop me from spilling all over my sport jacket. Beefsteaks don't have forks, knives, or napkins, and I'm all thumbs. Not literally, though. If I had ten thumbs, I  would not have been allowed in the event. There was a strict two thumb maximum. 

I wasn't expecting a fish course, but we got a whole mess of salmon about an hour into the meal. From the way that thing was mauled,  you can tell I had quite a field day with this dish. I think I still have some pink meat in my beard.

The waitstaff was attentive, as you would expect at an event of this nature. When one tray was finished off, they'd quickly bring another full of meat. The tray here featured expertly prepared pork chops, which were probably the easiest thing to eat, since you could grab onto the bone of the chop. That's the only thing I didn't spill on myself.

Toast was provided for those who wanted to carb up. If you ever attend a beefsteak, I recommend making liberal use of the bread. It's the one thing that will help soak up all the alcohol and keep you on the cheerier side of sober.

Seeing a giant skull staring back at you will also go a long way toward sobering you up, and I came in contact with this macabre-looking beast around the witching hour. This skull was your "heads-up" (pun most certainly intended) that you had arrived at a special section of the room. 

This was the head cheese station. The dish was served with a bit of mustard for flavor. Only the most adventurous beefsteak attendees dared eat this, but I consider myself lucky to have gotten a taste before heading home.

Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk gave his best scowl for this photo op with the stilt lady. I can't say for sure who was more starstruck, Tony or the stilt lady.

Beefsteak is a great place to find true love, and this woman made friends with this fish head. Not sure if they went home together that night, but they were certainly very chatty.

I'm no food expert, so when I received my ticket for Beefsteak 2013, I put in a call to my friend, Zachary Pollock, chef at one of LA's premier restaurants, the southern Italian inspired Sotto, to give me a more refined perspective on the meal. I learned that Zach actually started his culinary career in Chef Fraser's kitchen, which made the event all the more special for him. Despite what it looks like in this picture, I can assure you that he did not, in fact, "eat the bones."

Beefsteak 2013 was truly a night to remember, full of happy folks, great food, and enough liquor to kill a stable of horses... twice. Plus, it's all for a good cause. If you attend Beefsteak 2014, be sure to dress to impress like this fellow, and maybe sneak in a wet nap or two. Trust me, it'll help.

@dave_schilling

Screencaps via

By now you've seen what Buzzfeed is calling "the most elaborate prank-with-a-message of the year": Tom Mabe's "Epic Don't Drink and Drive Prank." It was blowing past 1 million views when I started writing this, and by dinner time your grandma will have seen it.

In the video, a gruff-looking guy wakes up, ostensibly after passing out drunk, and finds himself in an elaborate hospital set, where he's told that he's been in a coma for ten years because of his bad decisions. We all learn a valuable lesson. Share if you hate drunk driving. Like our page for more inspiring vids. 

If you need a refresher, here it is:  

The problem with this video is that it looks like it might be fake. Obviously the doctors and nurses are fake, and the coma is fake. But the part about the guy "being tricked" is pretty questionable. That's not a problem if you call this a "sketch," rather than a "prank," but Mr. Mabe labeled this as something with an element of truth and gravitas to it. If this ends up being phony, then I'm going to be plenty pissed.

Here are seven elements of the video that made us skeptical:

1. The part with the mugshots:

Judging by his facial hair/garment seam placement, these two mugshots seem to have been taken on the same day. Also, why was he wearing an orange prison jumpsuit at the time of his arrest/booking? Was he drunk driving in a jail?

2. The recorded phone call:

The recorded phone call plays over time-lapse footage of Mabe's crew putting together the hospital set, which provides backstory. How hard would it have been for this "Ray" guy, who was apparently out drinking with the drunk guy, to get some phone video of the drunk guy getting wasted right before all this happened?

For that matter, if there were a time-lapse camera over the bed, where's the part where we see Tom Mabe and Co. dragging this big lummox into the room, changing him into a hospital gown, and tucking him into the hospital bed? It's not there because that guy probably walked into the room and got in that bed under his own power. Too bad, because who doesn't want to see footage of people struggling to get a 300 pound drunk guy changed and into a hospital bed? That's comedy gold.

3. The part with Dr. James:

The big lug is theoretically hungover, and that's supposed to explain his counterintuitive reaction to all this. He asks, "Where's my daughter at?" I don't care how hungover I am; If I wake up in a hospital and hear there's been a car crash, I would be all over two big questions: "Was anyone killed, and do I have a spinal injury?" He's supposedly been in a coma for 10 years, but he's flaling his legs around like a turtle on its back. I don't think anyone is stupid enough to think that they hadn't walked in a decade, but still had full use of their legs.

4. The second fake newscaster part:

This part is neither here nor there as far as credibility. I just wanted to say that these Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, and Hillary Clinton jokes are so unfunny it's kind of depressing.

Also, who has an entire fake-hospital set, a green screen, and eight people they can call on to help last-minute and overnight?

5. The slapping part

His WWE-style head bob when the fake doctor slaps him is pretty suspect.

6. The tickle fight part:

So two seconds ago this guy thought his life was in ruins, but now he's up for some rassling with his buds? Maybe where these guys come from, this is how you intervene with people's serious issues. You horse around, but make sure to keep yelling how many DUIs they've had.

7. The part where it gets all serious:

"Dude you gotta fuckin' stop this shit. Look you're fuckin' laughin'," is a mercifully brief closing lecture, since all we wanted was a prank video. But if this guy really is drunk driving after five DUIs, intervening is probably the right thing to do. The concerned friend finishing this whole elaborate prankervention by throwing a glove at the guy and storming out just doesn't compute. You can edit out the elaborate group therapy session that would ensue after this if it were real, but at least show us that it happened.

If this video is fake, then I'm sure Tom Mabe wanted to steer people to his YouTube channel with a touching PSA, and make a name for himself at the same time, kinda like that whole Kony 2012 thing. Let's just hope Tom Mabe uses his newfound internet fame to bring us something as unintentionally hilarious as Jason Russell's naked San Diego meltdown:

@MikeLeePearl

The Book Report is a series that promises to deliver exactly what it promises: reports on books by the people who’ve read them. Catch evenings of live, in-person Book Reports that will remind you of the third grade in the best possible way with hosts Leigh Stein and Sasha Fletcher every month at The Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street in New York. The next one is Tuesday December 10, and will feature reports by Gabrielle Moss Gili Malinsky, and Hilary Leichter. Everyone should go! 

Visar speaking to the media ahead of recent elections

Visar Arifaj is a 26-year-old Kosovar graphic designer with a Richard Pryor moustache and a gift for mocking politics. He is also the leader and self-proclaimed "Legendary President" of the satirical political party Partie e Forte—or "The Strong Party"—that has managed to gather more Facebook Likes than any legitimate party in the Balkans.

Set up after a drunken chat among friends, the party rapidly picked up support online, to the point where Arifaj and his fellow members have now managed to secure a seat in the town council of the Kosovan capital, Pristina. Essentially, their modus operandi is to out-absurd every other political party in the Balkans. This is a pretty tough task, so Arifaj and his team have to go to pretty extreme measures—their selection of ludicrous campaign promises included vows to legalize corruption, outlaw serious diseases, build universities in every neighborhood, and rename an old clock tower in Pristina after Rita Ora, Kosovo's most famous export.

Not only did people vote for them after hearing their ridiculous plans, some of Arifaj's opponents didn't get the joke and took the proposals seriously. When, for example, he pledged to magically create 12,000 new jobs in a country with a 55 percent youth unemployment rate, a candidate from a rival party tried to outdo him by claiming he'd create 20,000.

I thought it would be worth having a chat with the Legendary President about his party.

Visar on the campaign trail

VICE: Hi, Visar. I read that your ultimate goal is to become president of Kosovo.
Visar Arifaj: Of course not. That would be quite unambitious. Being in power in a country is never enough—one should always think about going beyond borders, or maybe completely global. That said, we as a party have to be quite cautious when we choose what official position to take. Currently, the party has decided that it is best to just have a seat in the municipal assembly.

That's probably sensible. Now that elections are over, how are you and your party members going to keep people happy?
We will make sure that we are left alone in our political business and will keep the citizens happy by separating them from politics as much as possible. Just a couple of public appearances on seemingly important issues every now and then will be sufficient for the next six months. 

Fair enough. Last month, Serbian nationalists disrupted local elections in northern Kosovo because they feel Serbia gave up Kosovo in exchange for future EU membership. What are your thoughts on those guys?
I have no idea what incidents you are referring to. Northern Kosovo is the greatest example of the democracy we have developed with the help of our international partners. Ethnic divisions are the key to cooperation, as there can be no cooperation in unity. Logically, you cannot cooperate with yourself. I’m sure that ours is the best model for democracy, which should serve as an example to other European nations as well.

Partia e Forte's beefed up Kosovan Eagle

Do you think people in the Balkans genuinely hate each other? Or is that a Western simplification?
People in general genuinely and historically hate each other. What might constitute a main difference between the West and the Balkans, besides geographical positioning, is that the West does a better job of outsourcing the outcomes of hatred to countries that need it most, while people in the Balkans have been struggling with internal hatred for decades. Now that we’re almost finished splitting up into better functioning nation states, we are ready to be integrated into the EU, where we can best cooperate as separate entities.

The level of apathy toward politics is enormous in all the republics that came out of Yugoslavia's dissolution. Your party is the first one in the region to pick up this discontent and mold it differently. Do you think it's possible to create a common political platform in the region?
People are finally enjoying the luxury of not having to think about politics. It's a very boring subject and is generally concerned with minor technical things that don't affect people’s lives. Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus, on the other hand, deserve the world's full attention.

You said that mocking the political class gives people the hope that change is actually possible. Do you think that, beyond the mocking, there is actually civic engagement with politics now? 
Politicians are generally hated by the people. It is a sacrifice that we make to remain in power. It's worth it, though, because in a way mocking politicians reveals the truth. It strips them of their authority and turns them into normal human beings. Once that's happened, people might just get the feeling that they can, in fact, take matters into their own hands.

We know that change is bad for the people as it implies getting them out of their comfort zones. It's why we do our best to just keep comedy on TV. Politics and comedy are a dangerous mix, as they might not only jeopardize us in power, but the whole political functioning of a country.

Visar Arifaj

How difficult it is to keep people participating in the political process?
The most important thing is to keep people believing that voting is the only democratic way to make change. And we’ve been doing a good job at that for about two centuries, no matter how the means of participating have changed since then. It's crucial for everyone to know that—although we've discovered the telephone, the TV, and, of course, the internet—the best way to be part of the decision-making is still by putting a tick on a piece of paper every four or five years. It's getting more and more difficult to maintain this idea, but somehow we are managing it.

Your party became popular thanks, in part, to social media. What do you think of the internet?
The internet can be quite a dangerous tool if it's uncontrollably offered to the masses. While it's true that we gained a large deal of our popularity through social media, we make sure that instant communication and participation through the internet aren't seen as being very serious—especially compared to the tick on a piece of paper. The internet is just about cute kittens—the other things on there are for nerds. YOLO!

Aside from the internet, can you tell me some other issues that are typically important to Kosovans, who form the youngest democracy in Europe?
Well, apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order, what more can one demand? Thanks to the visa policies of the civilized nations, young people of Kosovo don’t waste any time traveling and experiencing different countries. We’d like to encourage them to get settled, married and have children as soon as possible. They shouldn’t get curious about the rest of the world. Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkey as visa-free countries are sufficient for all the travel needs that they might have. This is also a very effective way to filter unlawful citizens, as they can’t resist going to other places illegally.

Lastly, during your political campaign you often mocked Pristina's political wet-nurse, the USA. How influential is America in Kosovo and how do they usually practice their influence?
The USA would never interfere with any political process in Kosovo. It is simply out of respect that we ask for their involvement in most issues. We also trusted the construction of our main highway to the Bechtel Corporation from the USA, from whom we have learned so much about labor rights. The employees working on the highway are paid a full €1.35 ($1.85) per hour, enjoy one break for lunch in their 12-hour working schedule, and get a full day off every month! Injured employees are released from their contract so that they don’t have to work. It's a great example for all the local businesses that want to see how progress is achieved. America: always there for us!

Thanks, Visar.

Follow Igor on Twitter: @IgorPakman

A crowd marching through Athens in remembrance of murdered teenager Alexios Grigoropoulos. Photos by Vassilis Mathioudakis.

December 6 is going to be one of those dates that eventually finds itself emblazoned on anarchist memorabilia and tattooed all over the hands of Athens' most radical left-wing activists. Because it was on that day in 2008 that Greek police shot 15-year-old Alexios Grigoropoulos dead in the centre of the city, sparking the violent protests that would tear through Greece's capital for the next month and revitalise a sense of political activism among the country's youth. 

Protesters marching past riot police in Athens

Last Friday, on the fifth anniversary of Grigoropoulos' death, over 2,000 protesters—most of them high school students—marched past the Greek parliament buildings in Athens chanting, "These days belong to Alexis." Of course, there was also some obligatory police-baiting thrown in for good measure, with demonstrators shouting one of Greece's most popular protest cries, "Cops! Pigs! Assassins!" 

Grigoropoulos has become a symbol for Greece's politically active youth—a martyr in the fight against heavy handed policing and what protesters believe to be an increasingly authoritarian rule—and the annual commemoration of his life has become a ritual initiation for those wanting to join the street battle against social injustice.  

Fittingly, it also attracts a good deal of those police each year. This time around, after people left flowers at the site of Alexandros's murder, officers contained the demonstrators near the steps to the University of Athens. There hadn't been a hint of violence—or any real reason for the large police presence—but cops kept the crowd cornered off for hours, only letting them leave one-by-one after they'd been physically searched.       

Protesters clashing with police in Athens

Ten people were arrested during the police operation and 55 were taken to police stations, but the arrests and lines of riot police weren't enough to discourage people. Later on Friday evening, a crowd of over 6,000 people—including SYRIZA members, communistsm and anarchists—marched peacefully through Athens, before a contingent of the demo split off and began clashing with police in Exarcheia's narrow side streets.

The police employed a liberal use of tear gas, doing their usual thing of drowning the neighborhood in a chemical cloud. In turn, the crowd of protesters did their usual thing of responding with a barrage of stones and Molotov cocktails.

According to several Greek media outlets, the clashes lasted for a couple of hours before police brought an end to proceedings, taking 136 people to police stations and arresting seven. 

@tsimitakis

Christiane Felscherinow

Christiane Felscherinow was still a child when she became the most famous heroin addict in the world. Her descent, aged 13, into heroin addiction and prostitution on the streets of West Berlin was turned into a book—We Children of Bahnhof Zoo—and then a grim biopic, Christiane F, in 1981.

Thanks to a cameo from David Bowie and all the footage of disturbingly young people injecting heroin, the film quickly became a cult hit. And it wasn't long before the real Christiane F was catapulted from a life of shooting up and turning tricks in West Berlin's public toilets to becoming the so-called "junkie princess," injecting heroin while hanging out with artists and celebrities in Los Angeles.  

Three decades later, aged 51 and living back in Berlin, Christiane recently published her memoir, Christiane F - My Second Life. Her health is failing as a result of the hepatitis C she contracted in the 80s, but she spoke with me about some of the stuff that's happened to her since she was thrust into the international spotlight 30 years ago.  

A trailer for the 1981 film Christiane F

VICE: Going back to 1981, what was it like seeing the film for the first time?
Christiane: The producers invited me to see the film before it was released. They told me David Bowie would be there, too. He came with his personal convoy to pick me up—I was so crazy about meeting him; I had to take a lot of cocaine to deal with it. I took a friend of mine for support, but she just collapsed the moment she saw Bowie. I started shaking when he opened the door to his car and asked me to ride with him to the movie.

But I was quickly disappointed, because he had a beard and he was so skinny and small. I loved the Diamond Dogs—he seemed to be this extraordinary figure on that. But next to me in the car he just looked little and weak, like my father. I thought David Bowie was going to be the star of my movie, but it was all about me.

Was it an accurate portrayal of your life?
On the whole, yes. But I actually don’t like the film that much; it doesn't describe how I grew up, how I was neglected by my parents. My father was a drinker and he abused my sister and me. He was choleric and my mom just did nothing, She was more into her affair with another man and her beauty. I was so lonely when I was a kid. I just wanted to belong; I was struggling with the world.

So how did the sudden celebrity status hit you after the book and film were released?
I mean, I was 16 when I did the book, and I just wanted to talk. It was therapy for me. We just thought the book would be special interest, just one book among thousands. But we were so wrong. Suddenly I was famous, but I wasn't able to work out what this would mean to my life. To the public I was the famous drug addict, like an exhibit. They all wanted to talk to me, to see me and to ask, "Will she make it or not? Is she dead yet? Is she still an addict?" They didn't want me as a neighbor or their son’s girlfriend. Christiane F is cool from afar, but not too close, please! They're not interested in anything about me, besides being a junkie. That's the reason why I regret doing the book and film.

A poster for Christiane F 

You started off anonymous. Why did you decide to break cover?
Because I was damn young and simply didn't know what it would mean to my life. And nobody took care of my interests. That's why. Bernd Eichinger [the film's producer] asked me to do promotion for the movie in the US because Natja Brunkhorst, who played me, was too young and her father wouldn't allow her to go to America. I was 19 years old and thought I could deal with it, but I was wrong.

What happened when you came to the US?
I met a lot of inspiring people. For example, Rodney Bingenheimer, the famous DJ who promoted punk bands like Blondie and The Ramones. I loved Pasadena, and I had a chance to live there, but then I was arrested with a few grams of heroin and opium, and I wasn't allowed to come to the US any more.

That sucks. When you went back to Germany you ended up going out with Alexander Hacke—the guitarist in the German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten—and living with Nick Cave, right?
Oh, he was a friend of a friend and he used my place as a hideout because he had a really bad problem with heroin back in the 80s. He didn't know where else to go, because the media gave him no privacy. He stayed at mine for a couple of months. I'm happy he got rid of his problems and has a family now.

Platzspitz – or "Needle Park", as it was dubbed – in 1992 (Photo via skatepunk.com)

In the late 80s, while you were living with some publishers in Zurich, you became a regular at the Platzspitz, a park where drug dealing and taking was completely legal. What was that like?
In Zurich, I lived between literature stars and the heroin scene. Platzspitz was the biggest open-air drug scene in Europe at the time. It was like Disney World for junkies. Zurich is a small town and its drug scene was huge in those days. On some days there were almost 3,000 junkies hanging out there, using drugs, getting drunk. I stayed there for weeks sometimes. It was like a market; they had tables offering any kind of drugs. But people started dying and getting infected with HIV and hepatitis C. The area became a heap of garbage and there was an open war between rival drug gangs, so the Swiss government shut it down in the 1990s.

There were some pretty explicit scenes of drug use in Christiane F. But then there was the Bowie soundtrack. Do you think the film scared people away from heroin or glamorized it?
Not everyone was put off by it. We soon had the problem that many young people thought that what I'd experienced was glamorous and romantic. Even when the book became a required text in schools, I noticed that kids were more fascinated than upset about what they read. So Stern [publishing] published a factbook, which they handed to teachers and parents, with information about how to deal with teens who were fascinated by the story of Christiane F. I hope that My Second Life scares people away from taking drugs more than my first book. I'm quite sure it will. It describes how much pain I've had in my life, and [explains] that I will die a very early and painful death.

What do you think draws people into your story?
I've always asked myself that and I simply don’t know. I'm nothing special. I haven't done anything special. I'm not even a special junkie—thousand of people have a similar story to mine.

David Bowie appearing in Christiane F

Why do you think junkies are seen as such social pariahs?
It’s stupid. You are admired, even though you take drugs, just as long as you're something special—a musician or a painter. But if you're a drug user and you have none of these talents, you're deemed useless to society. You are seen as anti-society. Society doesn't accept addicted people, but they do accept, for example, parents who drink a bottle of wine every other day and leave their kids with foreign nannies, because they want to work and to party. I don’t get it.

Three of your close friends had died by the time the film came out. Did telling your story save your life?
If anything, it has probably shortened it. I wouldn't have had all the royalty money, so maybe I wouldn't have been able to buy heroin for so many years. Maybe I would have got clean earlier and would be in a better condition today.

But you're alive…
I always kept my aspiration. I am fascinated by chances, even though I didn't always make the best of them. And I have an order to my chaos. I've always wanted to look good, to feel good, to have a shower and a home. I'm still happy about these little touching things in life.

Why do you think you never gave up drugs?
I never wanted to give them up. I didn’t know anything else. I decided to live a different life to other people. I don’t need a pretence to stop.

How is your health now?
I'm on methadone. Sometimes I have a joint. I drink too much alcohol. My liver is about to kill me. I have cirrhosis because of hepatitis C. I will die soon, I know that. But I haven’t missed out on anything in my life. I am fine with it. So this isn't what I'd recommend: this isn't the best life to live, but it’s my life.

@narcomania

Illustration by Cei Willis

Last Friday, the FDA forced personal genomics company 23andMe to stop marketing its tests to the public in their current form. Before the order came in, customers would send a spit sample to the firm, who would sequence the DNA and look for genes indicating a risk of up to 254 diseases and conditions, providing a breakdown of any issues.

The FDA cited a lack of supporting evidence for some of the claims made and expressed particularly serious concern over their assessment of the BRCA gene, which is linked to breast cancer, suggesting 23andMe's tests might result in false positives that could lead to women undergoing traumatic and unnecessary surgery. The FDA’s actions have led to an explosion of opinion across the science blogosphere, but in all of that commentary a big question remains unanswered: What exactly is the point of personal genomics?

My first experience with the industry came about three years ago, when I was offered the chance to have a test done with Navigenics, a firm since taken over by a biotech firm called Life Technologies. Being a curious sort of guy, I jumped at the chance. A sample tube arrived via Fedex a few days later, which I duly spat into and sent back for analysis.

The results came back in the form of a sort of "wall of death"—a breakdown of all the things that might harm or kill me over the coming decades, detailing how likely I am to have each condition. Drilling into the figures, I can see that I have a higher risk of prostate cancer than 95 percent of the population and a 1 in 5 chance of developing Alzheimer’s—twice the average risk. So I’ll probably get cancer, but on the plus side I'll be too forgetful to care about it.

I love data, and I’m a huge fan of the "quantified self" concept. Every day, an army of gadgets monitors pretty much everything I do: the Runkeeper app to monitor all the exercise I do, MyFitnessPal to scan all the food I eat, and so on. So you’d expect me to geek out over a numerical portrait of my genome, but I found the experience underwhelming. Sure, there was the initial excitement at finding out what’s probably going to kill me if bad wine and clumsiness don’t get there first; but beyond that it simply didn’t engage me, because the more you drill down into the results, the more pointless they seem.

My "wall of death"—the results from my Navigenics test

To illustrate the problem, let’s look at the big risks. I have a 20 percent chance of developing Alzheimer’s, so what can I do about it? Their advice tells me to get more exercise and use my brain more. How about prostate cancer? I should exercise, stay in shape, and discuss screening in a couple of decades. Heart attack? Exercise, don’t smoke, check blood pressure. Atrial fibrillation? Keep in shape, eat less, don’t smoke or drink too much, check your blood pressure. Obesity? I think you can probably guess this one.

For all the data, there’s surprisingly little information. For every major risk, the preventative measures are the same: lead a healthy lifestyle. Well, duh. Whether my risk of a heart attack is 38 percent or 42 percent is basically meaningless. My risk of prostate cancer looks high—28 percent against a population average of 17 percent—until you realize that, like most conditions, prostate cancer can be caused by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors. In this instance, the page tells me that the causes are 58 percent environmental and 42 percent genetic, which makes the 28 percent headline figure essentially a load of bullshit. That calls into question their advice to seek early screening, given repeated findings that show it makes very little difference to mortality and may lead to lots of people having unnecessary treatment. 

Then there’s the question of how accurate the tests are in the first place. This is one of the issues flagged by the FDA, and while I haven’t used 23andMe’s services myself, my friend and colleague at the Guardian, Suzi Gage, a scientist working in public health, expressed concerns to me about the results she received.

"There's info and links to the papers that they cite as evidence for each of the genetic traits they talk about," she said. "However, some of the papers are pretty shit. And a lot of them are based on a few specific genes, which have been implicated in LOADS of different traits by candidate gene studies, which are often not replicated (and not for want of trying either). The company 23andMe does make some attempt to rate the strength of evidence for the traits that they're talking about, and the ones with weaker evidence are toward the bottom of the screen, but I don't know if you might need a decent understanding of genetics to really clearly know how reliable the info presented is."

Regardless of your understanding, once you’ve had the test you’re basically on your own. Having bought the test, there’s no real need to visit the website again or spend more money—you’re done. It’s not like you can improve your genome over time. Nor can you, for example, integrate the results with Runkeeper and watch your risks change over time as you get more exercise. Having paid for this service once, there’s no need for me to spend another penny on personal genomics in the future. And if you were tempted to splash out, well, you’re better off getting a new pair of running shoes or a set of tiny plates.

That brings us to the key difference between quantified self and personal genomics companies. Runkeeper, MyFitnessPal, and the like are bent on improving the experience of a growing army of loyal users who engage with their services on a daily basis; 23andMe and its competitors will never have that kind of focus, because consumers aren’t the end game. The great irony at the heart of the personal genomics industry is that it isn’t really personal at all. Like all the richest Silicon Valley start-ups, it’s all about the data.

To understand this, consider the cost of the tests: 23andMe’s product is priced at $99, supposedly making the sub-$100 personal genome test a reality. However, that price point was only possible due to tens of millions of dollars' worth of investment sunk into the company. One recent funding round raised $50 million in financing from the likes of Google Ventures, Google co-founder Sergey Brin (whose wife, Anne Wojcicki, co-founded 23andMe) and various venture capital firms.

That level of investment makes sense when you realize that it isn’t about making cheap genome tests available to all, but money spent building the world’s largest database of genome data, happily handed over by 23andMe’s hundreds of thousands of users. In that respect, the company is following the path carved out by Google and Facebook previously: create a vast and unique lump of data—be it search data, the social graph, or genome data—then monetize it.

This was set out pretty explicitly by 23andMe board member Patrick Chung in a recent interview, "The long game here is not to make money selling kits, although the kits are essential to get the base level data. Once you have the data, [the company] does actually become the Google of personalized healthcare."

This means a couple of things. The first is that the company doesn’t really put consumers’ interests at the heart of its business. Their experiences and the advice they receive aren’t really that important in the long run—once you’ve spat in the cup, you’re of zero further interest to the firm. For that reason, it’s excellent to see the FDA—who do care about consumers—stepping in to question some of the results being issued.

The second is that there are huge implications for future research and reproducibility. On the one hand, without private funding this giant genome database wouldn’t exist; but on the other it’s now firmly in the grip of a group of venture capitalists. Will academics be able to afford the same kind of access as big biotech firms? And, if not, what does this mean for the reproducibility of any results gained from studying this data? Put simply, can we trust the claims of a company like 23andMe or its partners if we can’t see the evidence used to support them?

Regardless of the FDA’s actions, the personal genomics industry will continue; ultimately, I will be able to send my spit anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, it’s good for science journalists and bloggers to put aside the geek fandom and start asking some more serious questions about this technology. Who is it for, exactly? What would a consumer-friendly genomics company really look like, and what can they offer back to the public? And what does it mean for such an important set of data to be monopolized by a small group of people in a valley in California?

@mjrobbins

Previously: If You Think You Can Survive On 'Junk Food and Cigarettes', You're an Idiot

A view of St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Photo by Gina Tron

One Saturday afternoon this fall, the two of us drove toward Burlington, Vermont, on a narrow highway that snakes through the Green Mountains. Rolling fields gave way to hardwood forests, maple trees aflame with red and orange leaves—the kind of bucolic scenery that brings in nearly 14 million tourists and $1.7 billion of their money every year. Our destination was a small farm in Colchester that looks like something right out of a postcard: a red barn, a sign that said "Community Pig Roast," even chickens and dogs running around in the yard.

Josh was waiting for us at a table on the porch in a flat-brim hat and hoodie. He’s a Vermonter born and bred, a 23-year-old with an easygoing stoner charisma familiar to anyone who grew up in the area. The stories he told, on the other hand, sound like they could have come out of the worst drug- and crime-infested neighborhoods of a big city.

He’s run heroin to Vermont from New Jersey six times in the last 18 months. His suppliers hand Josh 25 bricks of the stuff and tell them it’s his responsibility until he gets to Vermont and to “hide it good.” Heroin is much cheaper in the big cities to the south than it is in the Green Mountain State, and Josh takes full advantage of this—he can make $600 off of $10 worth of the raw he buys. He doesn’t have much in the way of professional ethics. “I’ve ripped people off by throwing hot cocoa in an empty bag,” he told us. “Scoop a little dirt off the ground and throw that in there, dude.”

Unloading the dope in Vermont is a cinch, since practically everybody Josh knows uses heroin. “There’s nothing else to do,” he explained. “It’s easier to find heroin than it is to find weed nowadays.” Josh got into the drug when he was 21; he first tried it when a friend offered him some to cheer him up during a bad day. Now as soon as he scores dope he goes to his car and snorts it. “I don’t really care if anybody sees me because I know they probably do it too,“ he said, before shrugging and flashing a bright smile.

One time, Josh and his friends got wind of an out-of-stater who was hocking dope out of a motel room, so they kicked in the door, sprayed him in the face with WD-40, and robbed him. Another time, he watched a friend’s girlfriend overdose on his living room floor. The neighbors watched as Josh and his friend loaded her unconscious body into his buddy’s truck, “I was like, ‘Dude get her up and get her in the fucking truck and drive down the road,’” Josh recalled. “‘You're not calling the ambulance here.’” Within 24 hours she was back at his house asking for more heroin.

Josh, who says he's smuggled heroin into Vermont six times in 18 months, sitting on his neighbor's porch. Photo by Hannah Palmer Egan

Vermont has always had relaxed attitudes toward drugs. When we were growing up there during the 1990s, everyone smoked weed and some of our friends’ parents even grew the stuff. According to surveys conducted in 2010 and 2011 by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Vermont leads the nation in illicit drug use per capita. That’s not particularly surprising or alarming when it comes to marijuana, but the wave of heroin that’s surged into the state is cause for concern.

Police officers, drug counselors, and drug addicts all agree that heroin is easier and cheaper to come by than pot these days. Some people even said heroin is becoming socially acceptable the way marijuana is. On a recent trip back to our home state, we found heroin stories everywhere we looked.

From a family friend: “Jim just got back—he was up with his son, detoxing him from heroin. He was there for a week, keeping an eye on him.”

From a stepsister: “The kids I used to nanny for, their dad was really into that, he’s actually in federal prison for trafficking—drove down to Hartford to pick up a bunch of drugs and got pulled over on his way home, and I don’t know why, but he told [the cops] he was bringing heroin back up to Vermont. Guess he thought they’d let him go if he just told them or something.”

The night we arrived, we turned on WCAX, the state’s largest news channel, to hear news of a traffic stop on Interstate 91 that led to the arrest of six people for heroin trafficking. The cops found more than 1,000 bags of heroin, worth around $30,000, inside a Nissan Maxima. Just weeks before, the Vermont State Police had swept through Franklin County, in the northwestern part of the state, and nabbed 30 dealers selling the stuff.

Then, on October 18, police caught two men from New York with 9,000 bags of heroin, one of the biggest busts in state history. US Attorney Tristram Coffin subsequently told the Burlington Free Press that during the first nine months of 2013, 65 people facing heroin-trafficking charges appeared before federal judges in the state—twice as many as appeared in all of 2012, and eight times as many as in 2009.

Lieutenant Matthew Birmingham, the head of the Vermont State Police narcotics task force, which was responsible for the recent busts, said opiates are the top drug problem statewide. That makes sense—rural New England’s cold, dark winters and isolation make it ideal downer country. Oxycontin was a big problem over the past decade and a half, but when the manufacturer changed the formula in 2010 to make it harder to crush and dissolve, heroin became the drug of choice.

Birmingham told us that recently, demand for the drug has exploded. “In the early part of the last decade, we were seeing a bundle here, a bundle there, and that was a big deal,” he said. “Now we’re seeing thousands of bags at a time, multiple raw ounces and grams, levels of heroin that we’ve never seen before. That’s indicative of a problem.”

A central Vermont cop, who asked to remain anonymous because he did not have permission to speak to the press, said heroin mainly comes up from Hartford, Connecticut, and Springfield, Massachusetts. Lately, however, he’s seen dealers from New York City and Philadelphia creep into his jurisdiction. “They set up a distribution center in a cheap motel, and have the locals run for them,” he told us.

That’s standard procedure for bigger dealers, who use local users as both customers and distributors. “Addicts create this local network that’s established for any out-of-state source to come in and hook into in any location,” said Birmingham. “From there, they can distribute widely.”

The big-city dealers are also bringing their big-city problems with them. With out-of-state drug retailers coming in to meet surging local demand, competing traffickers—some of them organized and violent—are starting to stake out territory in the Green Mountains.

“There are real and legitimate organized gangs and organized criminal groups that are operating drug rings… and establishing themselves in Vermont,” said Birmingham. “It’s disconcerting to us in that you’re bringing a very different criminal element. They are usually highly organized—and they’re usually armed.”

It used to be mostly local people going down to cities to bring drugs back. Now, according to Birmingham, dealers are coming to Vermont to set up shop. “You’re dealing with guns, you’re dealing with gangs, and it becomes problematic for the citizens of Vermont, too,” he told us. “This kind of activity now exists here and with it comes violence and shootings and all kinds of different things that happen on the streets.”

Crime statistics can be misleading, but during the 1990s, there were usually between 550 and 700 incidents of violent crime in the state every year. Since 2008, that number has risen to about 900, according to the Vermont public record archive.

Now the state is facing problems familiar to any community luckless enough to find itself fighting a serious drug problem. Heroin is brought in because that’s what Vermont’s drug users want, but with heroin come turf wars, more addiction, and more people getting arrested and filling up the prisons. It’s a knot that’s almost impossible to untangle.

“We have to focus on demand reduction in this state,” Birmingham said. “If we do not focus on demand reduction, we just can’t stop the supply—like any black market. You just can’t do it.”

Anthony Pettigrew, the spokesman for the DEA’s New England office in Boston, said most of the heroin in the area is from South America and comes to the US through Mexico or Miami. In recent years, he added, there’s been a sharp increase in the drug’s purity—and since the drugs are better, more people are trying them. “People who may not have tried it before, are trying it now, because they can snort it and they don’t have to inject it anymore,” he said.

It’s difficult for police to solve the problem of heroin being so cheap and powerful that everyone wants to try it. Birmingham said demand reduction is an issue that the state as a whole, not just the cops, needs to deal with. “This is a very complicated problem, and there is not one magic solution that’s going to solve the problem," he said. "It involves addiction, it involves money, it involves controlled substances... We have such a high population [of addicts] that it has to be addressed on a medical issue, as a public health crisis. [The police] don’t deal with addiction, the courts don’t deal with addiction; that’s not our area.”

A Vermont resident shooting up. Photo courtesy of Josh

Our central Vermont source said that the city of Barre has so many corrections facilities nearby that there are always lots of people on furlough in the motels. He named the Budget Inn, located on the outskirts of downtown near the police station, as a known distribution center. He said we should definitely stay away from there; it’s been busted for heroin multiple times.

So when we get to Barre, we headed straight to the Budget Inn. We posted up in the parking lot of the deteriorating, rusting motel and smoked cigarettes and waited for something to happen. Some of the room doors had gaping holes where knobs should be. It was around noon on a Friday and nothing was happening.

Then, the door of one of the usable rooms opened. A middle-aged woman crawled out, like a sloth. She pulled herself onto a battered lawn chair and lighted a cigarette. Her blue-black eyeliner ran into the creases of her face. Soon, a man at least ten years her junior emerged from the same open door, eating a Snickers bar and drinking a tall energy drink. His body wobbled a bit in the sunlight as if unused to walking.

We went over and asked them if they knew of a cheap bar we could hit up for a drink. They were both slurring but friendly. “There are plenty of bars but you two are better off just going to the liquor store and going back somewhere to drink,” the woman said in her husky voice. The guy agreed and said the beers in the bars are too expensive. We asked how much. He said they're three bucks.

Later, we had a drink with an old classmate, 32-year-old Andria Rossi, at Jerry’s Sports Bar. It’s one of those places that you have to know about in order to find—windowless, small, and dark. Rossi has been to rehab five times and is now clean, working as a machine operator for a stonecutter. She shot up for the first time when she was 16. Back then, in the late 90s, Oxy was most people’s drug of choice, but heroin offered more bang for your buck.

“Why spend 80 dollars on an Oxy 80 when you can get a bag of heroin for 20 bucks?” Rossi asked. She said she was totally functional on heroin: she could work harder and socialize easier when high. “I function good when I’m fucked up on any opiate,” she said.

Another friend of ours, a 30-year-old now tending bar at a joint on a sleepy stretch of the Connecticut River, has a similar story. He had a prescription-drug habit that turned into a heroin habit when he couldn’t afford the pills. Even now, he said the drugs weren’t really a problem, aside from the expense—actually, they made him a better, more energetic, and friendly bartender.

He complained that the movies and television misrepresent what it's like to be on heroin: “The thing about junkies is that they're exactly the same [as everyone else]," he said. "You can't see any difference, you can’t tell at all.”

So there could be tons of people walking around here all doped up on heroin and we’d never know the difference?

“Yeah, totally—that’s exactly what I’m saying. There are tons of people around here, right now, I guarantee you, walking around on heroin and you’d never know it.”

Nancy Bassett in the AA/NA Meeting room at Kingdom Recovery Center in St. Johnsbury. Photo by Hannah Palmer Egan

The Northeast Kingdom is one of Vermont’s most beautiful areas. It’s where the country opens out into forests and lakes and rivers, where you could camp out for days without seeing another person. It’s also one of the state’s poorest regions—you can imagine yourself here, broke, jobless, without any options, and picking up a heroin habit alarmingly easily. Nancy Bassett, a co-coordinator at the Kingdom Recovery Center, told us that a lot of young people who live in poverty here slide into using alcohol and drugs. Bassett is gray-haired and wearing sandals when we meet her—she speaks gently, like your best friend’s hippie grandma. Like a few others we meet at the recovery center, she’s missing multiple teeth.

According to Bassett, back in the 70s heroin was available but not as widespread as it is today. The users are getting younger and younger, too. “In the last two or three years, it’s become more prevalent,” she said.

She knows what she’s talking about—in the 90s, Bassett and her husband trafficked small amounts of heroin up from Massachusetts. In 2000, she got arrested for it as she crossed the border, which made it a federal crime. She felt like she got caught in a “really bad TV movie,” she said. “Then, on my third day in the drug program, I get called to the chaplain’s office and I was told that my husband had overdosed and died the night before.” He was a Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD and depression—he had dropped off Bassett at prison and then went home, took his dope, and died. The loneliness was too much for him to face, she said. Their son found his body.

Bassett told us that highways 91 and 93 are pipelines bringing drugs into the area from all the major New England cities. She also said it’s very easy to spot when dealers come in from out of state to open up shop, mentioning something that a lot of times goes unsaid when people talk about heroin dealing. “This is a very white state,” she laughed.

Vermont is the second whitest state in the US, actually, with 96.7 percent of the population being caucasian. Inevitably, a lot of the dealers who roll in from New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere are black. Many people we interviewed for this article equated the influx of drugs with black and hispanic people moving into the state, which speaks to another ugly feature of life in Vermont, the under-the-surface racism.

Eric Blaisdell, a local reporter who has written about cases of prejudice in the state, said that many Vermonters don’t encounter any non-white people except for the drug dealers. “They overlook the two white guys who were caught robbing houses to feed their drug addiction,” he said, “or the white guy who was caught dealing crack and smoking it in his home a few feet from his infant.” (For what it’s worth, everyone we spoke with who admitted they were involved in trafficking drugs into Vermont was white.)

Recovering addicts outside the Kingdom County Recovery Center. Photo by Hannah Palmer Egan

One night we headed to an apartment in Barre to meet Jen. Her story is typical of that of a lot of Vermont heroin stories: Her father wasn’t around when she was a girl, her mother suffered a mental breakdown, and after one of her good friends died tragically and unexpectedly, she started drinking, smoking weed, and taking pills. When she was 15 she moved out on her own. “I started living with this guy and started selling dope to make money on the side,” she said. “I never used it at first.” At one point, she went down to Springfield, Massachusetts, with a friend who didn’t tell her that the point of the trip was to bring heroin back to Vermont. She didn't realize it until they were already doing it.

Today, the 31-year-old describes her younger self as being vulnerable and needing money. She feels like she was taken advantage of. “I could go down to the city, buy a bundle for $30, come up here and sell that same bundle for $300,” she told us. “It was what was shown to me as a legitimate way to provide.” For people who don’t have any other options, heroin is a lucrative business, far more profitable than selling pot. The problem is, it never ends well. Jen was caught with drugs in the early 2000s, when she was 19, and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison, which saved her by forcing her to give the habit up. She soon after became pregnant with her first child, who is now nine years old. “Childbirth was nothing compared to kicking heroin,” she said.

As Jen told us all this, we sat out on her balcony drinking wine and smoking weed, looking up at the unpolluted starry sky. She’s found used needles out in her yard before, and it makes her worried about whether her three children will follow her down that road into addiction. We reflected with Jen about old acquaintances that are now dead because of heroin. There are too many to keep track of.

Heroin, in Jen’s world, is like bait being dangled in front of a fish on a hook—if some people fall into that trap of addiction and violence and crime, who can blame them? “You’re gonna bite that fucking worm,” Jen said. “You’re gonna get hungry. You're gonna bite it. It’s there. It’s in your face. It’s all around. Eventually you're gonna try the shit if it’s right in front of your face.”

Follow Gina Tron and Hannah Palmer Egan on Twitter: @_ginatron and @findthathannah

More on drug problems:

Kyrgyzstan Is the Latest Victim of the Global Heroin Trade

Photographing the Grim Reality of Protest and Poverty in Athens

Buy 'Illegal!' Magazine So Its Vendors Can Buy More Drugs

Japanese silicone cock rings. Image via

It's the most wonderful time of year—the time when we jam a bunch of random crap in an oversized sock in hopes that the person we love will sleep with us. Family members aside, nothing quite says I care like sex toys, right? Whether it’s a vibrator for your eternally single roommate or a cock ring for the dude you pork on the reg, sex toys stuff stockings (and other things) in all the right ways.

Except when they're toxic. Nobody wants anaphylactic shock for Christmas, but the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) estimates an average of 2,100 sex toy-related emergency room visits a year. Getting off just became pretty high stakes.

On the whole, sex toys hang out in regulatory limbo. The FDA only pays attention to them if they fall under the category of medical devices, which means the tiny handful of vibrators that are presented as therapeutic massagers. It’s the manufacturer’s decision to classify their toys as therapeutic or not, so the majority of vibrators—not to mention all other sex toys—elude the FDA's gaze.

When I called the FDA to better understand this process, Morgan Liscinsky from their Press Office confirmed that no, they do not regulate sex toys. She politely suggested I contact the CPSC to see if anal beads and such fall under their jurisdiction. As it turns out, they do. Kind of.

The CPSC is a sort of regulatory catchall in this country, and according to their website, a watchdog for thousands of products from acetaminophen to xylene. These folks are everywhere, banning lead paint on toys and slapping the do-not-remove label on your mattress. However, whereas the FDA does pre-market testing before giving a product their stamp of approval, the CPSC does not. I spoke with Alex Filip, Deputy Director of the CPSC, to see what they do instead.

Before explaining the CPSC's regulatory process, Filip confirmed that sex toys are indeed on their list of regulated products. Filip explained the regulatory process like this: "We look for a pattern of defect, a hazard out there that is, in fact, hurting people. If we see a pattern of defect, then we negotiate some sort of recall with a company." When asked what constitutes a pattern of defect, though, Filip said there's no hard and fast delineation. "Every situation is different—there is no 'number-of-reports' threshold. When a death is attributed to a product, an in-depth investigation is more likely. We have situations in which one report resulted in a recall and other situations in which there have been several reports, but no recall has taken place." In other words, the CPSC bases their regulations on aftermarket complaints, but that's where their formalized system ends. Filip told me that between 2010 and 2012 the CPSC estimated an average of 2,100 annual emergency room visits resultant from sex toy injuries. These toys are currently left to the industry to voluntarily regulate, and that industry hasn't exactly rallied around the cause. 

Sex toy dispenser. Image via

Metis Black is the President and Founder of Tantus, the largest producer of silicone sex toys in America. Black started Tantus in 1998 in hopes of bringing silicone toys (which are non-toxic and hypoallergenic) to the masses, along with a healthy dose of education about the dangerous materials used in most toys. She told me, "Phthalates are the number one issue in sex toy toxicity—they can make up to 70% of the content." The issues don't stop there, though. Black also told me that tested toys have also been shown to contain trimethyltin chloride, phenol, carbon disulphide, toluene, and cadmium. And this is just from a random sampling of 16 toys done by the Danish EPA in 2005. Depending on the materials used in a given toy, then, the risks run the gamut from a rash to brain damage.

The Smitten Kitten was the first sex toy retailer to refuse to sell toxic toys in the world. In 2005, it's founders, Jennifer Pritchett and Jessica Giordani, started the Coalition Against Toxic Toys (Tantus is a member) to combat, as they say on their website, "socially irresponsible, environmentally and personally hazardous sex toy manufacturing and sex toy sales practices." With the physical stakes of toxic toys clearly so high and the number of adverse incidences clearly not insignificant (even if the CPSC doesn't agree), I connected with Hannah Kuhlmann, a sex educator at the Smitten Kitten, to unpack the psychological impact of adverse reactions to sex toy materials.

Just as the physical risks of toxic toys run the length of the harm spectrum, so too are the psychological risks diverse. Kuhlmann was quick to cite incidences in which a toy gave someone a rash, but instead of suspecting the toy as the culprit, the person suspected their partner. She also said, "People sometimes internalize the problem, thinking that there’s something wrong with their body, that they’re too sensitive or that it’s somehow their fault that they’re experiencing pain instead of pleasure. It’s already difficult for many people to talk with their doctors about sexual concerns, and in that situation, talking about sex toy use might seem impossible. The physical pain caused by toxic toys can compound the shame or fear that someone is already struggling with around their sexuality." Considering the high number of toy-related emergency room visits, it's easy to see that the number of adverse reactions is much higher when more minor injuries are included. Filip told me that consumers only file two reports with the CPCS each year. When considered alongside Kuhlmann's assertions about the role shame plays in navigating toxic encounters, the number of adverse reactions to sex toys each year balloons out even further.

So what are we to do? There isn't a surefire way to test toys at home, which means the safest bet is to buy from a company with an established reputation as advocates for safe sex toys. As for the toys you already have, though, or those you've already wrapped up and put under the tree, Black offers this advice: "If it smells, it is releasing gasses because its chemistry is breaking down. Don't use it. Before you put it in your body, taste it with your tongue. If it makes your tongue numb or tastes nasty, it’s letting you know there are chemicals that don’t react well with your mucous membranes—don't use it." And, of course, steer clear of phthalates.

Until the sex toy industry self-regulates or the CPSC steps up, it looks like we'll just have to buy our toys from ethical companies and, when all else fails, lick and smell our toys on Christmas morning.

Mall cops on red alert via Twitter

In case you missed it, a buzzing, cologne-drenched swarm of pick-up artists attempted to take over the Eaton Centre. Luckily they were stopped in their tracks by a flurry of Twitter activity that eventually forced the Eaton Centre itself to get involved. The event crumbled after the mall’s social media team tweeted that the “health & safety” of Eaton Centre shoppers were the top priority in the midst of forthcoming pick-up tornado. Apparently for the men who inspired this safety warning, trying to get laid at the Eaton Centre is a numbers game. If you approach x amount of women, eventually one will take you up on your proposition. Evidently though, this scattershot approach to gettin’ laid doesn’t take into account the wrath of social media or pre-emptive maneuvers from mall security.

In the video embedded above, you can hear one Toronto pick-up artist attempt to shine light on this creepy phenomenon. He explains that: “Some women who wear make-up and are desperate to meet guys—they go to the mall, hoping that guys will approach them. They show off their cleavage, they walk the streets, they do whatever to leave the house and be approached, obviously.”

This kind of pick-up artist “logic” perfectly encapsulates the problematic outlook on women that these guys have. The fundamental message of this video is that women want this. It appears that this video is attempting to rally pick-up artists in the face of the Eaton Centre's careful acknowledgement that such an organized swarm is a safety issue, while also completely failing to acknowledge the difference between being hit on by an interested guy—and being harassed by someone who’s part of a cultish pick up crew.

A quick Google search for “Toronto Pick Up Artists” will show you tons of online communities where these dudes can find each other (the same goes for “Vancouver Pick Up Artists,” or “Montreal Pick Up Artists”). Spending any amount of time on these community pages leads me to believe these pick-up artists are honing their manipulative craft to get one thing: sex, obviously.

I managed to grab a screenshot showing the original call to action for the failed Eaton Centre swarm before it was taken down. Highlights include: "For those familiar with the term, we will be 'beasting' (aka entering BEAST MODE). Defined along the lines of approaching continuously and consistently – targeting every approaching set in the vicinity."

A Toronto pick up artist's call to arms

This sounds more like sexual harassment than soulmate searching to me. The Ontario Human Rights Code defines harassment as "engaging in a course of vexatious comment or conduct that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome." The Ontario Human Rights Association says it becomes sexual harassment when, among other things, "asking for dates and not taking 'no' for an answer," "making unnecessary physical contact, including unwanted touching" and "making comments about a person’s physical appearance (for example, whether or not they are attractive)."

The event was deleted after hundreds of tweets were sent out to warn girls about the predators at the mall. These en masse pick up operations are designed by seasoned pick up “coaches” under the guise of helping insecure men come out of their shells and learn how to approach women. But for the love of god, these are not shy boys walking up to you with an endearing smile. These are well-rehearsed players who ambush woman after woman until a victim bites.

This Eaton Centre swarm began to unravel when Reddit user HoneyThyme submitted an account of a recent experience she had in a thread called "Something weird is going on at the Eaton Centre." In it, she described how men approached her twice in one day and again a few weeks later, all offering her the same pitch. The pitch is the key to the PUAs attack plan. It is supposed to make the men feel more comfortable, but it tends to have the opposite effect on their "targets." Her account is typical.

"I was in the area in front of Forever 21 when a man approached me. Very boldly he said 'you're so beautiful, where are you going today? What's your name? I'd like to get to know you more, can we shop together?' I was a little taken aback, he was so forward and way too curious for my comfort," she wrote on Reddit.

The same thing happened to her 15 minutes later. She thought she was being pranked and asked if he knew the other guy, but he said he didn't and continued with his plan. "He was way too curious and hard to get rid of, just like the other man. I got a little spooked and went home." She wrote that the experience "left me feeling very uncomfortable going there on my own."

But she wasn't the only one. Reddit and Twitter users quickly described their own experiences. A friend of mine confided she had recently met a PUA outside a bar. He asked her to go out for a drink, but he was so smooth she ended up at his apartment before she realized the potential danger of the situation and bolted. These meet-ups may help some men come out of their shells, but they turn others into assholes that use these tactics as an opportunity to take advantage of women.

Check out this video by “Big Willie Style,” a Toronto pick up artist who made this video to show less experienced pick up artist how good he is at walking around Toronto and aggressively hitting on any and all women he can encounter. Some highlights here include Willie very awkwardly and insistently going in for kisses, repeatedly using the same generic pick up lines on several women, and ostensibly recording audio of him having sex with an unnamed woman that does not appear to be consensual.

Arguably the most disturbing part of this entire pick up culture is how normal it appears to feel for the pick up artists themselves. During the planning stages of the Eaton Centre swarm, one pick up artist asked if there was a chance security would chase them out. TO that, the organizer, “Junaid,” replied: "Are you going to let some mall security stand between you and the lay? For the record though…we have never been kicked out—I pride myself in keeping it that way."

"Eaton's Centre is not a nightclub."

Unfortunately this wasn't the only pick up event scheduled on arguably the worst day ever to hold such an event, December 6, the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women; the 24^th anniversary of the l'Ecole Polytechnique massacre. Another group had one planned for Yonge and Dundas Square.

I phoned the Eaton Centre to further discuss their plan of action in the face of this pick up swarm, but no one returned my calls. Then I tried Junaid, whose number was listed on the initial meetup page, but it has since been disconnected.

Pick up artists are nothing new in Toronto. Most famous is Dimitri The Lover, a self-proclaimed sexpert and disgraced doctor with a history of sexual assault who brags about being able to "seduce and enslave sluts." He is often revered as some kind of sleazy deity among PUAs, and his relentless strategy has been appropriated into the style that pick-up artists use today. Dimitri has helped pave the way for an abundance of 20-something men who are just itching to get their beast on. And when these hungry for beast mode PUAs get together, they organize flash mobs of creepy, straight dudes who have condensed meeting women into a gamble based on a manipulative, aggressive approach.

This game really does come down to the numbers in Toronto. One in 5 Canadians live in the GTA and almost half of the downtown population is 20-39 years old, almost double that of the suburbs and definitely more than anywhere else in Canada. This is a young city (median age is mid-30s according to the Vital Signs report) with a large population who has access to the Internet. When you combine this with the fact that Toronto is also home to more recent immigrants than anywhere else in Canada, men with little clue of how to meet women in a new city and culture, then it's clear to see why it's so easy to coordinate these swarms.

The very fact that the Eaton Centre had to officially respond to such an operation is indicative of the growing popularity these guys have. Given their persistent behaviour, it’s not likely that these artists will be going anywhere anytime soon—but their flimsy, insistent approach is so easy to spot when you’ve become familiar with the pick up artist strategy, that hopefully women can start to dismiss these advances in record time.