I guess it’s OK to jauntily perch atop an old lady’s bike if you look like the French Dennis Wilson (I want that jacket).Comments/Enlarge |
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Everybody's got their dicks in a knot about Chinese bootleggers and how they're ruining our movies but I think they did a pretty good job with "Oh God!"Comments/Enlarge |
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Cover photo by Yobert Younan
VICE MAIL Letters - The Iraq Issue The Girls Issue Saved My Life, Hungry for Pailful Dull Rants, Out or Our League, Change of Heart, Man Like Me Loves Man Like Him...READ MORE
IRAQ FROM ABOVE Do you know that thing Denzel Washington said in Philadelphia, where the mean older lawyers would be equivocating (that means lying) and he'd go, "I don't get it. Tell it to me like I'm a five-year-old." When he said it, he meant, "Cut the shit." But when we s...READ MORE
BIRD'S-EYE ON BAGHDAD Keeping up with the daily, nightly, weekly, and yearly suicide bombs and gunfights and political machinations in Baghdad neighborhoods with names like "Makes-No-Sense" and "Complicated-to-Read" is starting to confuse us. If you are a smart person who makes a l...READ MORE
PICTURES OF CLERICS ON MY BEDROOM WALL This is a Basra street vendor who sells posters of Shia holy figures. About 60 percent of Iraqis are Shia, and about a third of that percentage are super-duper into it. These hardcore little gangs run the show in Iraq. They're militant, young, puritanical, and...READ MORE
DOCTOR DOOM Iraq's Health Care Is Blown Apart
Thirty years ago, Iraq's health care system was one of the most stellar in the Middle East. It was devastated by repeated conflicts and 13 years of embargo, and the invasion destroyed anything that was left...READ MORE
KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY A Mom and Her Son Do Their Time Even after the guards got caught stacking naked prisoners like a hairy, human-rights-violating cheerleading team in 2004, very little changed in the awful conditions at Abu Ghraib. The prison had to be completely emptied in March 2006 to remove it from "worst ...READ MORE
GOAL! Soccor the Iraqi Way Iraqi people have always really liked soccer. In any neighborhood you go, you'll find kids and men alike playing the game passionately, as though great kingdoms depend on the outcome. After the game is done, they'll sit in a café drinking tea and talking about...READ MORE
SKINEMA By Chris Nieratko ASSRAELIS: ISRAELI EROTICA
I’m a big fan of war. What can I say? I’m an asshole. I’m not so big on all the blood and guts and our boys dying over there but I do enjoy the comedic aspect of saying...READ MORE
SUNNI OR SHIITE? Speak Up! After the fall of Saddam's regime in 2003, the army was dissolved, and former high-ranking Baath Party members were removed from their positions. Newly bereft of economic and political power, many young Sunnis-especially in the very conservative region of Anba...READ MORE
INSURGENT VS. INSURGENT In Iraq, Everyone Fights Everyone Abu Omar cleans his machine gun with an old checkered Arab headdress that he also uses to conceal his identity when he's fighting on the streets. But this insurgent hasn't fought the Americans in two weeks. The growing influence of al-Qaeda in the Sunni city o...READ MORE
RECORDS Music Reviews - The Iraq Issue OMAR SOULEYMAN
Highway To Hassake: Folk and Pop Sounds of Syria
This is the kind of album people would play on a raucous desert trip, blasting across the sands. Arabic music in general is an acquired taste because of its use of quarter-tones, ...READ MORE
COUNTERFEIT IRAQI From Visas and Passports to a License to Fuck For many years, I've known this guy who makes counterfeit documents. He's not the only one in Iraq doing it, but he's one of the best. He can fake anything from a passport to a visa. When my friends and I were in the Iraqi army and wanted out, he forged papers...READ MORE
FARAHKCHI PRIDE Iraq's Gays Know No Shame I know one gay guy. I met him about eight years ago at the Baghdad fine arts college. It's weird because he is married and has very cute twins, but all his friends know he is gay. We call him farahkchi which means "boy fucker," but we call all of our friends t...READ MORE
LIFE IN HELL A Bahgdad Diary Running for your life from fundamentalist bandits, helplessly watching innocent women being shot in the street, and car-bomb explosions that shatter your bedroom window... Just another humdrum day in the life of a student in Baghdad...READ MORE
LITTLE IRAQ The Kids Are Not Quite Alright I have two cousins that live in Iraq. Sara is 15 years old and Dani is 13. They both live in the al-Yarmouk district of Baghdad, which locals have christened "the streets of death" due to the constant attacks and random violence that plagues the area. So they ...READ MORE
I WANT MY DVDS Movie Reviews - The Iraq Issue MONSTERS AND MADNESS
Even back under Saddam, when we weren’t allowed to have email, you could still find pretty much any Western movie you could ask for (porn excluded)...READ MORE
SHHHHH! (The Vice Guide to Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll in Iraq) "Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll" is a Western concept. In Iraq, it's more about the lack of these things. Nightclubs don't exist, sex is sacred and private, and you'd have a better chance seeing two people making out in the street than you would of finding drug...READ MORE
THE VICE GUIDE TO IRAQ Iraq is more than just exploding bodies, bloodthirsty zealots, and confused American soldiers. It’s also got spicy meat soups and raisin-juice, verdant rose bushes, and centuries of culture and tradition. Here’s our guide to Iraq from Alif to Yaa’...READ MORE
TIDBITS What Does Iraq Think of America's Favorite Things? SIX PACK OF BUD
Right after the invasion or the liberation or whatever (in Iraq we call those first days "the war") there was beer available everywhere. Then the extremists started killing the...READ MORE
AFTER THE BATTLE, A FEAST An Iraqi Menu BROWNED EGGPLANT WITH YOGURT
(MSAQUA'AT BETINJAN B 'L-LIBAN)
(Makes 4 to 6 servings)...READ MORE
THIRD ASS FROM THE RIGHT Iraqi Humor Is No Laughing Matter Iraqis, after living for decades under an oppressive totalitarian regime in which one offhand remark could ensure a quick trip to the gallows, have mastered the art of the whispered political riff. In a way, secretly traded Saddam jokes provided the only means...READ MORE
IRAQI GIRLS: HOME & AWAY ZEENA ZAKARIA, 20
Vice: When did you come to London?
Zeena: I moved here from Baghdad when I was seven. My mother and father were doctors there but they decided to leave when things in Iraq started to go bad. This was a few years before the Am...READ MORE
VICE PICTURES The Iraq Issue Photos by Kevin Smith, Christoph Bangert & Yobert Younan
"I'm in the US army and I was in Iraq from April 2005 to January 2006 training...READ MORE
I WAS UDAY HUSSEIN A Stand-In Speaks The hand that rocks the oil pumps controls the world. Between 1979 and 2003, that hand was Saddam Hussein's. He would also use it to sign death warrants on dissenters, to murder his own countrymen, to plot disastrous wars with neighboring countries, and to be ...READ MORE
SADDAM H. CHRIST A Chat With Hussein's Lawyer Dr. Najeeb Al-Nuaimi was a lead lawyer on Saddam Hussein's final legal defense team. Al-Nuaimi first came to prominence defending Guantánamo Bay inmates, and recently this renowned human rights activist of the Arab world sat down to talk to us...READ MORE
WEAPONS OF MASS BEWILDERMENT How Was the Airport Battle Won? The infamous battle of the Baghdad airport took place in the first week of April 2003. It was the final battle of the "official" conquest of Iraq. Even the Iraqi army admitted it was the deathblow. We call it the Battle of al-Hawasim ("the finals"). The same p...READ MORE
BAGHDAD BROTHEL Fine Wines and Swimming Pools Allah never smiled on street walking. Under Iraq's former Baathist regime, being a prostitute was seriously risky business. If caught soliciting or even being suspected of plying your trade, a hooker would face jail, with death commonly used as a demonstrative...READ MORE
YOU CAN'T GO HOME AGAIN Iraq from the Outside In Mostafa Alshawi fled from Iraq to Sweden with his family when he was three. 20 years later he returned to his home country. He's a proud member of the Shia Islamic clan of the fishermen in Iraq, and in Sweden he is enrolled in the Police Academy. He has an Ira...READ MORE
LEAVING IRAQ Everybody's Doing It For years there has been a steady stream of people leaving Iraq. Our Iraqi buddy Isam Kalka tells us people make a pit stop in Jordan or Syria because it's close and the countries have a history with Iraq, but after that most people travel on elsewhere. Two of...READ MORE
