NEWSLETTER

Cover photos by Roe Ethridge and Michael Yon

VICE MAIL Letters - The Gangs Issue Slavery Is Back, Israel Tease, Nonfiction Workshop, A Cry in the Wilderness...READ MORE

WACO SHAKEDOWN A New Davidian Prophet Splits the Branch Thirteen years after it went up in an apocalyptic blaze, the site where the Branch Davidians' Waco compound sat-and where a new Mt. Carmel Church was built in 1999 with help from famed radio nutbar Alex Jones-remains at the center of a bizarre conflict involvi...READ MORE

WE TALKED TO DAVID KORESH'S GIRLFRIEND Last year, an independent label in Otho, Iowa (Junior Motel Records) released a post-humous recording by David Koresh. The CD, Voice of Fire, contains two songs and a 40-minute sermon by the self-proclaimed son of God. The cover plays up the exploitation facto...READ MORE

ISRAEL-LITES I Expected Rage and I Got Nerds Do you know about the Black Israelites? They are a cult of black people who dress like biker-gang wizards and hold public "we hate white people" rallies in front of Macy's. We spent about two weeks coaxing three Black Israelites out of the internet and into a ...READ MORE

I WAS A CRIP ... SORT OF I'm pretty sure I was a member of the blue-wearing gang, the Crips, from 2001 to 2002. I was on a lot of drugs then and have a piss poor recollection of all things, but I got a good feeling I was in the gang. At the very least I was an honorary member. A pseud...READ MORE

HAND JIVE How to Talk With Your Gang Hands Setting aside for a moment the cred supremacy of inner-city housing projects-if the ghetto had a ghetto of its own, it would be Herschelwood. It is basically your favorite ghetto's favorite ghetto. Herschelwood's parent neighborhood is South Park, a primarily ...READ MORE

FALUN GONG AND ME Xingxing in the Park Chinatown: New York's Seward Park is a riot of incredibly fit senior citizens by 6 AM every day. Near the north end of the park, a tai chi group of about 40 members practices to a stereo blasting pentatonic music. Some of them are especially limber, and their ...READ MORE

VICE RECOMMENDS Before we start, let's just point out that the aim of this column is to tell you about music videos that you can watch using a computer or whatever you use to connect to the internet. Since some of you have been unable to fully comprehend this previously, we'r...READ MORE

THE DOWNSIDES OF COCAINE Are Many And Terrible A few weeks ago I got a call from my dad saying my cousin had been murdered in a Colombian cartel slaying. He was found in a jeep abandoned on a highway, its engine still running, along with two other bodies. ...READ MORE

CULT RAPTURE Skullflower Keep The Pain Of The 80s Alive The overwhelming, grey shittiness of Margaret Thatcher's Britain and its depressing soundtrack of soft rock, manufactured pop and pretentious indie is to blame for the cult of what we now know as "noise" music....READ MORE

VICE FASHION - GANGS OF OLD NEW YORK We had a gang that started in high school. We called ourselves the Italian Dukes. We were so fuckin' broke, we had six jackets and maybe 30 guys. So every day somebody else would wear the jackets at school. We went to Seward Park High School, and it was mostly...READ MORE

AMERICAN AGHORI An Introduction to Kapal Nath The fundamentals of Aghor-perhaps the most extreme religion in the world-are fantastically simple, though nonetheless repugnant to most. Repugnance, or rather the quest to overcome it, is in fact a central tenet of this belief system. Aghor is an extreme sect ...READ MORE

GRIMEWATCH Wow. Where do we start? A lot has happened since the last Grimewatch update. So much in fact that we don’t have time to talk about Mercston getting put on a lengthy lockdown following an incident with a 15-year-old girl at the Prince’s Trust music festival. Al...READ MORE

GANGS & CULTS Teenage Chinese Dyke Gangs Chongqing is the fastest growing urban center in the world. According to The Guardian, its population increases by half a million people each year. So is it any wonder that there are probably around a hundred lesbian gangs scattered around the city? ...READ MORE

SURF GANGS Of the Amazon To find the Amazon surf gangs and their incredible music you have to go to Belem, in the state of Para, several days up the river from Manaus. One surprising thing about these cities is they used to be among the richest in the world. In the late 1800s they had...READ MORE

I JOINED THREE CULTS SIMULTANEOUSLY Vice made me join three cults for this issue: Adidam, the Moonies, and Aleph. Since Adidam tops the list of "controversial groups" at cult watchdog Rick Ross's website, I figured it'd be the best place to start. Also, their whole deal is worshiping a gu...READ MORE

HEY LADIES The Slits Return In 1976, fourteen-year-old Ari Up ran into her friend Palmolive at a Patti Smith gig. That night the two girls, inspired by the punk scene exploding around them, decided to form a band. Along with their buddies Tessa Pollitt and Viv Albertine, they started the...READ MORE

STOMPERS REUNION A Roundtable Discussion-Looking Back On Anger In June 2006, between 20 and 30 students from a technical college in Bangkok, Thailand, were gathered at a bar. A man who did not know these students made a disrespectful comment to one of them close to midnight, and his comment led to a physical confrontation...READ MORE

ELECTRIC INDEPENDENCE Although it's not quite been done to death, there's only so much to say about the continuing vogue in dance for rehashing and re-editing cosmic disco and flipped-out space-rock before you start to sound like a bearded bore with an eBay addiction and a signed p...READ MORE

FILIPINO GANGS The Sputnik gang is the biggest in the Philippines. It's so enormous that it's difficult to keep track of all the smaller, weaker branches at the bottom of its hierarchy. The lowest rungs are more like local vigilantes watching over the neighborhood while thei...READ MORE

THE PASHTO COWBOYS Hanging With God's Children In a town called Peshawar in the wild west of Pakistan, there's a gang that call themselves God's Children. They are rough guys, some as young as 13, armed to the hilt with Kalashnikovs and six-shooter revolvers, who cruise around doing good deeds in the name ...READ MORE

BLOODY KOOL-AID Jim Jones Does it All Yes, this is yet another Dipset article. But when we're dealing with gangs and cults, how could we omit Jim Jones, the infamous cult leader of the Byrd Gang? Also known for his Gainsbourg beard, motorcycle jackets, extra medium shirts and abundance of red band...READ MORE

TIDBITS A Monthly Look At Things We Love - The Gangs Issue CHUNKY CHAT When you feel like there's no one else you can talk to and you're not really into getting a therapist, go get yourself a fat person and give them a "face full of verbal" as Steve Jones once said. Chubbies don't really get to talk to peo...READ MORE

CULT OF RUNNING Sri Chinmoy Knows Shoes Most runners have one brand and make of shoe they've been buying for the past 20 years. They get locked in and never try anything different. But we had a hunch that if they were to test-drive a new-fangled shoe, they'd prefer it. That's why we sent some of the...READ MORE

FLYING SOLO Ariel Pink Makes A Racket Until not so long ago, Ariel Pink spent the better part of eight years sitting in his LA room, recording all kinds of variations on his amazing, vaguely melancholy, fuzzed up, lo-fi melodies that sound like they're from the future but are somehow being played ...READ MORE

IN THE NAME OF MAO India PIcks Up the Slaughter If you're going just by natural resources, Chhattisgarh is India's richest state. Hardwoods like teak and saal come from here, and there are huge supplies of steel, bauxite, diamonds, and gold. In spite of all that however, Chhattisgarh is jam-packed with Indi...READ MORE

VICE FASHION - FIX UP LOOK SHARP Sharpies emerged from Melbourne's suburbs in the early 70s and evolved out of existence by the end of the decade. They wore jeans and tailor-made cardigans, which they would design themselves in an attempt to outdo all the other sharpies. They got their name f...READ MORE

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO GANGLAND UK Illustrations By Jiro, Text Assisted By Berna LEEDS Apart from hooligans like the Leeds Service Crew, Leeds has been spared organised gangs over the years. With the influx of foreign nationals eager to control the drug and prostitution trade, that trend appears to be changing....READ MORE

HARLEY HOUNDS Aussie Biker Gangs Broken Down In the month I spent hanging out with outlaw biker gangs in Australia, I was threatened at least three times with various grisly forms of death and/or maiming. First, a Hell's Angel threatened to bury me on the club's property in Broadford. Second, a Gypsy Jok...READ MORE

RIDING WITH A HEROIN GANG On The Trail Of Bobby Brown Selling drugs is wrong and illegal, but is it fun? I wanted to find out, so I found a gang of heroin dealers from one of the most economically deprived areas in London and hung out with them for a night so I could find out the answer to the above question. Her...READ MORE

GAMES Gangs of London & Dead Rising GANGS OF LONDON This is worth getting if only for the way you can drive around London for more than five minutes without being stuck in a traffic jam. Ever since Ken Livingstone installed his amazing anti-traffic congestion policies, the congestion...READ MORE

THANK YOU LITTLE G-SUS! CSS and the Snowball Church Cansei De Ser Sexy. Ever heard of them? All the style magazine articles about how they're like "a cute version of Peaches" or "the ultimate favela party band"? That's them. We were going to give them a miss until we remembered that they come from Sao Paolo, Br...READ MORE

VICE FASHION - ELITE BOYS' CLUB GANG RITES Cambridge University is renowned for its elite clubs and societies which offer exclusive rights to its members, as well as huge networks of alumni in the best paid and influential jobs in the country. These people run the world....READ MORE

KIWI CONGREGATION Sobering Up At Destiny Church Now, before I continue let's get one thing clear, this is NOT a beat up on religion. Let's work on this premise; you don't shove your shit down my throat and I'll agree not to tell you to fuck off. It's really that simple....READ MORE

VOODOO MUSIC Gang Gang Dance Get Money from God The new Gang Gang Dance record sounds like something a cult leader might play to new recruits so as to hypnotise them and ease them into cutting off the rest of the world and never having any contact with their family members ever again. Does this sound like a...READ MORE

DRESS THE PART! Gangs and Cults by Design Rules, rules, rules. That's what gangs and cults offer their members. And that's what the members want. People who join gangs are looking for a family, which means they are looking for a mommy and a daddy, which means they want to be told how to do everything,...READ MORE

RECORDS Music Reviews - The Gangs Issue DEAD MOON Echoes of the Past Dead Moon are the survivalists of rock. They press their own records, used to put everything out on their own label, and even built their own house...READ MORE

PREGNANT FOR 10 YEARS And Other Quirks of Being a Laestadian Laestadians are a Scandinavian version of the Amish. Modern life and all the deliciously sinful things that belong in it, like music (apart from hymns), dancing, TV, radio, the internet, and magazines are strictly verboten. Laestadians don't register themselve...READ MORE

VICE FASHION - CHRISTIAN BLACK METAL PRAYER WARRIORS Photos by Tomas Leth...READ MORE

CAMBODIAN RETURNEE GANGSTERS Are One Big Family In 2002, Cambodia and the US had a meeting and Cambodia agreed to take back its refugees. Cambodian refugees who were released from prison that year had a choice: They could return to Cambodia or try to receive immigrant status from the US. The chances of a Ca...READ MORE

LAUGHTER YOGA Is Medicine? I was in Mumbai a little while ago, so I visited the Laughter Yoga club. That's this type of yoga where they meet in the park every morning and basically have group hysterics. It's not a club or anything-it's just a bunch of guys who get together and go "HAW H...READ MORE

RICH-KID GANGSTER ROUNDTABLE Saratoga Springs is a little college town in upstate New York where we know some kids from the lecture series we put on for the Kids Issue. Figuring their sleepy little hamlet must be rife with street violence, we went back and asked them to tell us about the ...READ MORE