VICE correspondent Jordan Redaelli heads to a tiny Romanian village in the foothills of the Carpathians to hang out with the Cazan family, master brewers of a fiery tequila-like drink called palinka. There he samples the 70-proof hooch, visits a Gypsy disco, and attempts to mix up a palinka based punch for an impromptu post-church party, Romanian-style.
In La Paz, Bolivia, Vice correspondent Jordan Redaelli meets a pair of female wrestlers (Cholitas) who like to beat each other up for the fun of it. He’s also introduced to the world’s strongest alcohol, the 96% Caiman liquor – or ‘firewater’ as it’s known to the locals. After the big grudge match Jordan attempts to make a drinkable cocktail out of the potent brew, hoping it’ll restore some peace between the fiery combatants in the process.
VICE correspondent Jordan Redaelli travels to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to learn about an indigenous drink called poyo. Poyo is said to hold mystical properties, bestowing money, power and fierce erections to those who drink it. Later, Redaelli hits the beach to mix up a poyo-infused cocktail.
While in Bajaur, Pakistan — considered the main refuge and supply-route for Taliban insurgents — Shane Smith from Vice gets a first-hand look at what a raid operation with Bajaur Scouts looks like.
Vice traveled to Kabul in search of illicit gambling rings where men bet on quail fights, buzkashi (like polo, but with a headless goat), and dog fights. First in a three-part series.
Fraudsters in West Africa show Vice how they use internet scams to steal thousands of dollars from unsuspecting victims all over the globe.
While Nigeria’s 401 scammers may have written the book on West African internet fraud, their shtick looks like Compuserve compared to what’s going on in Ghana. Unsatisfied with the meager winnings from emailing thousands of random Westerners in hopes of convincing one poor sap they’re the treasurer of the Ivory Coast, Ghana’s scammers decided to stack the odds in their favor the old-fashioned way—witchcraft.
Taking a page from cyberpunk, traditional West African Juju priests adapted their services to the needs of the information age and started leading down-on-their-luck internet scammers through strange and costly rituals designed to increase their powers of persuasion and make their emails irresistible to greedy Americans. And so “Sakawa” was born.
Drug runners. Good cops. Bad cops. Hot women. Even hotter, souped-up trucks. Shane Smith, the founder of Vice, travels South of the Border to introduce Mexico’s Narco cinema. To add a layer of realism to his reporting, Smith plays a walk-on role in a drug- and action-packed movie shot in Tijuana.
So Colorado approves decriminalizing pot and now we’re hearing that its San Luis Valley has become the nation’s hotbed for UFO sightings. Just goes to show you how wrong all those ’50s sci-fi movies could be. The aliens don’t want to attack Washington, D.C., or mess with Wall Street. They’re after the weed. H/T Vice
Vice visits with the diminutive Wendy Sulca, the biggest YouTube sensation of the Spanish-speaking world. At 12 years old, the Peruvian folksinger took the internet by storm with her hit single “La Tetita” (“The Tittie”), which exceeded 4 million online hits. Written by her widowed mother Lydia Quispe, the song is an ode to breastfeeding sung in the new Andean Huayno style. At 13, she followed up with a new hit single “Cerveza, Cerveza” (Beer, Beer) and the brutally honest track “Yo Soy Pobre” (“I Am Poor”). But despite being recognizable to all young Latin American internet users, Wendy still lives in the outskirts of Lima, in a shack on the side of a hill without running water.
Vice surveys the conservative resistance movement — from Tea Parties in Texas, to Oathkeeper rallies in Massachusetts, to the followers of faux-libertarian Alex Jones, with his dire, conspiratorial warnings of a pending New World Order. How dangerous is the threat of a totalitarian government, and can the public mobilize to safeguard our freedoms? Are we on the brink of a 2nd American Revolutionary War?
