Vice and Vbs.TV Announce The Vice Guide To Liberia

by Blitz Desk
January 22, 2010

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/433/vice-and-vbstv-announce-the-vice-guide-to-liberia

VBS.TV, the online television network owned by VICE, today announced the release of its highly anticipated Vice Guide to Liberia. The eight-part series features VICE Founder Shane Smith interviewing former child soldiers, touring drug dens and brothels, visiting with former murderous warlords, and meeting the endless victims of the civil war who are trying to piece the country and their lives back together.

The release of the series coincides with the ongoing trial of former Liberian President and accused war criminal Charles Taylor at The Hague.

The remaining episodes will air this rest of this week and next week.

In the summer of 2009, Smith, along with VICE UK Editor Andy Capper, traveled to Liberia's capital, Monrovia, to assess whether the war-ravaged country had moved past a decade of brutal violence. What they discovered is that despite the United Nation's eventual intervention, most of Liberia's young people still live in abject poverty, surrounded by filth, drug addiction, and teenage prostitution.

The former child soldiers who were forced into war have been left to fend for themselves, the murderous warlords who once led them in cannibalistic rampages have taken up as so-called community leaders, and new militias lie in wait for the opportunity to reclaim their country from a government they rightly mistrust. America's one and only foray into African colonialism is keeping a very uneasy peace indeed.

Launched in 2007, VBS sends correspondents and producers around the globe to places like Pyongyang, Baghdad, Tehran, and Darfur in search of the most captivating news. The network won acclaim after VBS correspondents clandestinely filmed in North Korea, one of the world's most tightly censored dictatorships. The network was also the first news organization to send a crew to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, hunt mutant wolves in Chernobyl, and shop for dirty bombs in Bulgaria.

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