A coal mine is currently burning the hell up in Australia. For obvious reasons, fires in coal mines are extremely problematic—the exposed coalface burns, just as coal should, and smolders through the underground seam, where it’s safely protected from any firefighting. For the power plant town of Morwell, two hours east of Melbourne, this all began with a bushfire on February 9. Police are chasing a suspected arsonist who lit a fire beside the Strzelecki Highway, which then burned through a timber plantation and into the mine. From the start, firefighters and the mine operator knew it would be a bitch to put out. A mine spokesperson told MiningAustralia.com.au that it’d take at least two weeks to extinguish. "You can drop a bucket of water over it,” he said. “And it looks like the fire is out, but it will come back as a smoldering fire." Until they can figure out what to do, the residents were told to stay inside while the local council started handing out face masks. Today, the fire is still burning, and around 25,000 masks have been distributed.

Driving to Morwell, you can see it from way back. It appears as a hump of smoke on the horizon, and then your eyes get itchy. Of course, Morwell produces 25 percebt of Melbourne’s power from brown coal, so it’s always a bit like that. Hazelwood power station, for which the coal mine was built, was also named the least carbon-efficient plant in 30 countries by WWF in 2005, but given that, the locals still seemed pretty worked-up about the smoke.

“It’s bad,” said Tony Morgan, owner of the local laundromat. “The only good thing is business. Everyone’s clothes end up stinking, so I’m getting people washing day and night.” When I was at the laundromat, business did indeed seem to be booming. Some of the customers were wearing masks; some weren't. “But you’ve actually come on a good day. You should have seen it yesterday,” he said. Tony showed me foul, brown panoramas of the town from his phone. “It’s all about the wind. Some days I can’t even see across the street.”

Down the street at Noodle Paradise, the owner, Bill, repeated the same thing. He too had a dozen smog photos, including the one above, taken from his front lawn. “It wakes me up,” he told me. “I just wake up, and I feel like there’s no air, and I know it’s the smoke outside. We close the windows, the doors... Nothing works.”

Bill seemed particularly angry. “I just don’t know why it’s taken three weeks to put out," he said. “The CFA say another week, another week, and in that time we’re just told to stay inside.” Unfortunately for Bill and his neighbors, coal fires aren't easily extinguished. As mining safety expert David Cliff explained to ABC radio, “Unlike timber, coal when it gets hot has massive thermal mass, which is very hard to extinguish. There are a number of places known as 'burning mountains' in Australia, where there are old underground coal deposits and cracks to the surface with smoke issuing from them. It will burn and continue to burn and can be very difficult to put out because the access to it is very deep." In the interview, David points to Burning Mountain in New South Wales, which was lit up by a lightning strike about 6,000 years ago. It will continue to burn at a meter a year for the foreseeable future.

The mine is easy enough to find. It’s a drive out of town and a climb over a barbed fence and there it is. The place smells like a steam train in a pioneer village and the ground is warm to the touch. Across the pit, fire trucks head up and down the tiers, spraying water as best they can. Along the top of the mine is a firebreak cleared by bulldozers. Beyond that is blackened scrub from the fires. Peering into the scrub, I can see a number of fires still raging.

There a several cracks in the earth, running parallel to the mine rim. I climb in from the firebreak and realize that the cracks are an exposed coal seam, burning underground.

Snapping the perfect selfie wasn't easy. In the time it took to take this, my shoes started to melt, and I suddenly realized that falling into a hellish crevasse of burning coal was a very real possibility, so I left.

The burning mine glows in the dark, giving you a better visual idea of the hellscape we're dealing with here.

I stood and watched for a while, impressed with the wind fanning the coalface. Like wind on water, the embers glow and ripple, sometimes sending up sparks.

A headache kept me awake for the drive home. A lot of people have left, and there have been panicky calls to evacuate. In the meantime, firefighters claim that “observational reports from ground and aircraft have indicated significant progress has been made.” Experts have been called in to review strategy, and everyone seems confident the fire will be out within weeks. But for the moment, if you find yourself in Australia, avoid Morwell. It’s just not a healthy town.

@morgansjulian

Egyptian actor Khalid Abdalla is one of the chief protagonists in the documentary The Square, which was nominated earlier this month for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. His new film, In the Last Days of the City, is going to be even better. Last Days tells a story that roughly echoes Khalid's own life: It's the tale of a documentarian who is trying to make a film about his city, Cairo, and according to Khalid, "a group of friends of his from Iraq and Lebanon come to visit and spend nights out talking to each other about their cities and growing up in instability and living and creating art in those circumstances." 

Born in Scottland and educated at Cambridge, Khalid quickly became a succesful actor, with roles in United 93 and Green Zone. He divided his time between Egypt and London, but when his native country erupted in an uprising against dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011, he returned to Cairo and formed a media company called Mosireen, which he's used to document the ups and downs of the Egyptian revolution from the front lines.

A few weeks ago, on the eve of the third anniversary of the revolt against Mubarak, I headed to downtown Cairo to speak with Khalid about his films and his activism. It was a dark moment in the long arc of Egypt’s uprising. Earlier that day, four bomb blasts killed six people. The downtown area was nearly deserted save for small groups of pro-government demonstrators. We sat in an apartment as the sun set. Helicopters thumped low overhead.

VICE: When you returned to Egypt from England in 2011, at the height of the uprising, were you conscious at that time that you were about to participate in a revolution?
Khalid Abdalla: I remember when I got the news that [the occupation of Tahrir Square] happened. ‘Can they keep it? Can they keep it?’ That was the question. When the square was forcibly evicted that night the real question was, tomorrow, would people continue?

There was the sense that this was an opportunity that we either take or don’t. And people heard the call and responded to it, and as ever it was state brutality that fanned the flames. And I remember meeting at Mustafa Mahmoud—the mosque, that was the point of departure that I left from on January 28—and I remember this slow collection of people, and remember before that evening the extraordinary collection of police everywhere.

And then these trickles appeared. A woman and her daughter who were in a car saw us and said, "Are you going to march?" And we said yes. And she said, "Do you think it could really work?" And we talked to her, and she said, "I’m going to park my car and come with you." She came, and she was pretty much with us the whole way up until the first major dispersal on Qasr al-Nil Bridge.

That night, there was this kind of apocalyptic, dark scene, all these burning cars, the smokiness, the tear gas, small groups of people going around chanting. You’ve got government headquarters in flames, and these tanks moving around. And also this big question mark: What is the army going to do?

A lot of people talk about that moment as one of transformation. Do you think you changed during that time?
Absolutely. There is no doubt that there is something miraculous about revolutions. It’s a moment, in one form or another, of epiphany within a national psyche. It’s a moment in which the sense of the possible completely shifts, and at that moment you also encounter your own sense of responsibility toward what you now believe is possible, and I think all of us, whether we’re pro-revolution or anti-revolution or indifferent, are living the consequences, either in our personal lives, or as political forces, as ideologies, of that moment.

This is the beginning of an era. You’ve got a vast population. You’ve got two thirds of the country under the age of 30, who have come of age at a moment of revolutionary possibility, who, at least for the next 40 to 50 years, will be living under the shadow, or under the shade, of that experience, and the sense of how that moment righted itself, and also how that moment is written about.

It’s one of the sources of great optimism, for me, because I find it ludicrous that any revolution could succeed or fail in a matter of a few years. It’s a struggle, and it’s a struggle whose point of beginning is the attempt to thwart complete disaster. A revolution doesn’t begin because people are happy. A revolution begins because you have an entire state mechanism that is corrupt, dysfunctional, brutal, that does not give its people the smallest promise of a life they deserve.

And Egypt is in one of those moments now?
Undoubtedly. And we’re at one of those moments, but it is also matched with absolute frustration, with a deep national antipathy toward the Muslim Brotherhood and a great deal of fear. On top of which the polarization of the country has made it difficult, intellectually, to exit from the polarization of discourse. You’ve got two sides that are against each other [the Muslim Brotherhood and the military].

That’s a space that’s very hard to open. If we can succeed at this stage, and undoubtedly it will take some time, that will be the true beginning of the collapse of Mubarak’s state, because Mubarakite ideology is built on the idea of "Either it’s me, or it’s chaos. It’s the police state, or it’s the Brotherhood."

The idea that a false, brutal, enforced stability is preferable to the brutality of a fascist, Islamist state—unless we can break out of the mindset that those are the only two alternatives, then we’re still living under the ideology of Mubarak. I believe very firmly that this revolution was begun by people who want neither.

Part of the major misapprehension internationally about what is happening here comes from bad ideas about how change happens. I think there is this projection of political frameworks that exist in the US or in Europe onto an Egyptian context, and this reading of the decisions that take place here as if we had a system of checks and balances, and as if we had a multi-party system, and as if our infrastructure worked.

One of the major breaks internationally in terms of people understanding what’s happening occurred at the time Morsi was deposed. Morsi made himself the sole executive authority in the country. Theoretically, if that happened in the US or elsewhere, you could impeach. We don’t have that. Eventually, the only place left for you is the street.

Watch the trailer for In the Last Days of the City here.

Follow Jared on Twitter @Jmalsin.

Peter Mansbridge, working for his money. via Facebook.

Peter Mansbridge has been the news anchor of CBC’s The National since 1995, which makes him the longest serving anchor in the history of this crazy country. Currently, Peter's found himself in a bit of a controversy as news broke earlier this week through a Saskatchewan based environmental scientist named Sierra Rayne that Peter was paid to speak at an event thrown by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), raising some serious questions about the integrity of the nation’s most entrenched, mainstream newscaster receiving money from the oil industry. Sierra was able to find out Peter had been at the CAPP event simply by checking out CAPP’s Facebook page—where a photo of Peter standing behind a podium with a big CAPP logo on it in December 2012 only resulted in a few Facebook likes.

The timing of this could not be worse for Peter, really, as it was only last week that another CBC personality, Rex Murphy, was criticized for his speaking engagements at oil events that line his pockets nicely. Jennifer McGuire (no relation), the editor of CBC News, responded to Rex’s scandal on her blog by dismissing the possibility that there was anything unethical about one of their pundits—who is known for defending the oil sands on CBC News—receiving money to speak to the same oil industry types he so proudly defends on television. Jennifer stated that Rex is not a “regular reporter,” but rather a freelancer, and at the CBC, freelancers “have more freedom to express their views in ways that full-time journalists at CBC News do not.” She concludes by saying, “I want to say explicitly that we're comfortable with the content Rex has done for the CBC.”

This response was not satisfying to various journalists. The Globe & Mail’s former national security editor Andrew Mitrovica has been researching Rex Murphy’s oil industry speaking engagements since January, and he described one such speech as “a hyperbolic pep talk about the virtues of oilsands development” in a recent piece for iPolitics. Andrew’s attempts to interview Rex Murphy were denied, and he went as far as saying that Jennifer McGuire’s statement was “a hollow, self-serving bit of exculpatory nonsense.”

Sierra Rayne, the scientist who originally blew the whistle on Peter’s CAPP appearance, says that Andrew has missed the point. In a series of tweets, he responded by saying: “It's not about disclosure, it's about rigorous objective journalism being all that ever appears on CBC. The parade of partisan talking point morons routinely appearing on the CBC do absolutely nothing to educate the public on key issues. Thus, who cares if a ‘journo’ discloses linkages to industry? That doesn't even come close to tackling the problem. The answer is to remove the linkages and/or remove the journalist… Focusing only on Rex Murphy is textbook discrimination. Peter Mansbridge has given speeches to industry as well. Fair is fair. So, in short, if Rex Murphy gets kicked off CBC/forced to disclose, the same has to apply equally to Peter Mansbridge. Good riddance to both.”

Earlier this afternoon, Sierra also pointed out that Ian Hanomansing, another CBC News anchor, was a featured speaker at Oilweek Rising Stars alongside characters like Jim Carter, the former president of Syncrude Canada, and Doug Jackson, the Vice President of Gas and Mining Operations for TransAlta. The Rising Stars event, which sounds more like a talent-search reality show than an oil conference, is described on its website as an event that looks “for the brightest and the best up-and-comers in the Canadian oil and gas industry.”

I reached out to Peter Mansbridge and Jennifer McGuire today to see if Peter Mansbridge had in fact been paid by CAPP and if it fell astray of CBC’s Code of Ethics—given that Jennifer’s statement about Rex Murphy seems to state he’s in the clear because he’s a freelancer. Peter Mansbridge is, of course, the furthest possible thing from a freelancer I can think of. Instead of responding, they bounced me over to Chuck Thompson, the CBC’s Head of Media Relations.

In an email, Chuck wrote: “I can confirm Peter received compensation and permission for his speech to CAPP. For the record, Peter clears all of his speaking engagements with Senior News management.” Chuck added: “Peter is encouraged by management to speak on a regular basis, it's part of an outreach initiative in place for many of our hosts that ensures CBC News and in this case our Chief Correspondent is talking to Canadians in communities across the country. By the way, earlier today he spoke to a grade five class.”

When I asked about the content of the speech Peter gave to CAPP, he responded by saying: “Peter makes it clear to all those who ask him to speak, whether it's for charity or not, that he sticks to what he know best—journalism. He doesn’t pretend to be an expert on anything else and that's conveyed to the organizers and to the audience. Peter's speeches draw heavily on his journalistic background and experiences. He talks about the evolution in the country during his time covering it. He talks about the way in which information is assembled, stories are told, and the fundamentals of how journalistic storytelling works in modern Canada.

In laying out these observations, Peter draws on anecdotes from decades of experience covering the news and does not give advice on how those he speaks to should advocate. Peter does not weigh in on matters of current controversy or sensitivity, and goes out of his way to make clear that the nature of being a ‘news’ journalist is about being there to assemble information and tell an honest story, no matter who it pleases or who it offends. And of course Peter would not, does not, and has not, given a speech either promoting oil sands development or opposing it.”

This is a highly reasonable and believable explanation for why Peter Mansbridge would be speaking to a CAPP crowd. It’s not as if he’s known for radical oil opinions—like his colleague Rex Murphy—nor is there any reason to believe this speech influenced The National’s reporting in any way. That said, given the CBC’s flaky response to the Rex Murphy scandal, and their open acceptance of having their most famous anchor give paid speeches to the petroleum industry, this story is not a great PR look for the CBC News team at the very least.

On top of that, Jennifer McGuire’s defense of Rex Murphy having more power to state his personal opinions than a full-timer like Peter Mansbridge highlights the very obvious gap in the CBC’s reporting that there’s no far-left pundit to balance Rex Murphy out. And as far as Peter goes, it’s really great to hear that he still takes the time to chat with fifth graders, but it’s understandable why people might have questions about the ethical objectivity of The National (and CBC at large) when their most spotlighted anchors make decent cash on the side, by giving speeches to the oil barons of Canada, as they sit side-by-side with an oil sands cheerleader like Rex Murphy, who’s well-known for his simplistic, corporate minded attitude about the tar sands.

@patrickmcguire

The blood of protesters in the Maidan, Kiev

Severely beaten and many of them close to death, scores of injured lay across Kiev’s Mariinsky park as temperatures hovered well below freezing.

Earlier that day in January, tensions between authorities and anti-government protesters had escalated. Angered by the draconian laws introduced by embattled president Viktor Yanukovych—dubbed the "dictator laws" for their restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly—thousands of demonstrators rallied in Kiev, while opposition leaders called for the crowds to ignore the new legislation.

It wasn't long before a pitched battle kicked off between poorly armed activists and the government’s elite police units, the Berkut. The cops were supported by hundreds of sportswear-clad thugs (known as titushki), who were hired by Yanukovych’s regime to coerce and intimidate crowds. At that point, the day's clashes were the biggest display of violence the two-month EuroMaidan demonstrations had seen.

Marina

In the center of the park was Marina, a 25-year-old English teacher who abandoned the new life she'd created for herself in the Netherlands when she saw reports of the demonstrations and the state-sponsored violence that surrounded them. Returning home in mid December, she had joined the protest camp on Hrushevskoho Street, where she volunteered as a medical assistant with the Maidan self-defence force's "Fifth Squad."

Protesters at the barricades were loosely organized into groups of about 100, known—logically—as the "Hundreds." The Fifth Squad had suffered heavily during the clashes, forcing some to disperse, while others lay around Marina, screaming in agony.

"We have to evacuate them—can you not see they’re injured?" Marina begged police and titushki. But they refused. And when she persisted, she was met with a tirade of vile abuse. "You bitch! You fucking whore!" they screamed at her, before joking and laughing about all the casualties they had caused

In spite of their threats she persisted, all the while fearing that her fiancé, Igor—the Fifth Squad’s 28-year-old second-in-command—was among the wounded. An Orthodox priest later joined her in her pleas, and eventually the injured were allowed to be removed from the park. Covered head-to-toe in dirt and stained with the blood of the injured, Marina left and headed down into the Maidan.

She told me about these events in a matter-of-fact way, but the lines on her face illustrated exactly how exhausted she was from the weeks of consistent violence. "When you feel so strongly like this, it's not bravery," she said. "You do what you have to do."

Sergei

Sergei, a 48-year-old doctor from the nearby Poltava region, was in charge of the Fifth Squad's medical operation. As a trained traumatologist, he brought much-needed medical expertise to the situation, though his work at a private medical practice was a long way from conducting surgical operations on the front lines of Ukraine's worst unrest since the fall of the USSR. Nevertheless, Sergei and his team treated hundreds of wounded—including 12 gunshot victims in a single day—without once losing a patient.

Speaking through Marina, Sergei shared further details of the clashes that started on January 19 and continued for three days. Particularly disturbing was the news of an unknown, powder-based chemical of Russian origin being used by riot police against the protesters. Scores of blinded people with severely irritated corneas were brought in, but attempts to clean the eyes with distilled water or eye drops only exacerbated the problem.

The team was at a loss as to how to deal with the growing number of victims. And to make matters worse, the chemical was blowing into the tent and affecting the medical staff. All Sergei could do was wear a peaked fur cap to try and catch some of the dust, hoping it would reduce the amount blowing into his eyes or falling onto the already injured patients. After a few hours, the team stumbled across a simple remedy: alkaline, lidocaine, and corneal gel. Luckily, no one reported any long-term damage from the mystery powder.

Patients with eye injuries were among the most common in their medical tent, Sergei explained, before rattling off a list of injuries and treatments. One man had taken a shotgun pellet to the eye. Fortunately, he was blinking at the time, which pushed the pellet downward and away from the eye itself, lodging deep in the soft flesh between his eyeball and its socket.

Protesters in the Maidan, Kiev.

Many patients checked into the tent covered in white powder, with shrapnel wounds to their eyes, face, neck, and chest. The white powder was likely aluminium or magnesium-oxide residue left after the detonation of stun grenades. The Berkut were issued non-lethal flashbang grenades, but in order to increase their deadliness, often duct-taped nails and other pieces of shrapnel to the devices.

It was this tactic that caused a string of injuries and deaths. One man had taken shrapnel from a modified stun grenade to his neck and was placed, screaming, onto a stretcher. But the shrapnel had pierced his carotid artery, and he bled out before he could reach the tent.

"Leave him—he’s dead," cried the protesters. "You’re medics; we need you for the living."

Along with shrapnel wounds came a series of horrific injuries from blunt-force trauma—shattered limbs, crushed skulls, fractured cheekbones. On January 21, a group of Cossacks charged the police lines with little more than their traditional clubs, bulawa, which resemble medieval maces. They were soon overwhelmed by the police, whose lines pushed closer to the medical tent. Sergei drew me a picture of one of the clubs that had been seized from a Cossack and used against him, puncturing his skull.

The injuries had already been horrific up to this point, but the worst was yet to come.

The current makeshift medical center, a vacant shoe shop on the edge of the Maidan

On February 18, a month after the "dictator-law" clashes, police launched a coordinated assault on the Maidan in a final attempt to drive demonstrators out and bring an end to the protest. Using tear gas and live fire, Berkut and titushki thugs advanced from the high ground on the east of the square, destroying everything they passed. The medical tent, despite being clearly marked with red crosses, took direct hits from Berkut Molotov cocktails; the Fifth Squad had just enough time to evacuate the wounded and take as many medical supplies as they could before the tent went up in flames.

The team then set up camp in the concrete Trade Unions Building. They felt they would be secure on the third floor of the building, as it also housed both the EuroMaidan kitchens and press office. But their time there didn't last long, as the building was almost immediately razed by targeted firebombing from the authorities.

Hours after the destruction of their second home, the Fifth Squad relocated to a vacant shoe shop on the edge of the Maidan. The location was perfect: Clean white walls and diffuse lighting provided ideal conditions for emergency surgery, and the shop's ample shelving and storage space were filled with medical supplies donated from across Kiev.

From their new base, the team continued to treat the wounded. Their workload peaked on February 20—the pair estimating they saw more than 100 patients that day.

Inside the medical center

Of all the cases described to me, one in particular stands out as perhaps the most gruesome. A young man who had been confronting police from on top of the Fifth Squad's barricade was hit by the unknown Russian irritant power. Blinded, the man was then shot through the hip by a round from a police AKM assault rifle. The impact of the weighty 7.62mm bullet knocked him off balance, sending him plummeting to the ground and shattering his spine.

While he screamed and convulsed from the pain, the team dealt with his gunshot wound and stemmed the bleeding—a move that saved his life. The severity of his spinal injuries, however, demanded immediate hospitalization if there was to be any hope of preventing paralyzation. But the man refused to go to hospital, terrified that by doing so he would be referred to the authorities, who would subject him to even more brutality.

Mercifully, since the removal of Viktor Yanukovych on February 22, violence has subsided and the Maidan has returned to peace. But though they've won the battle, activists fear the war will continue, as those responsible for the corruption that triggered the uprising—as well as the subsequent massacre of civilians—have yet to be brought to justice.

For now, Marina's fiancé, Igor, along with his squad of volunteer troops, will continue to man their barricade until justice has been won and elections have been held.

Follow Maximilian on Twitter: @MTIClarke.

In part two of our Ed Templeton episode, Ed takes us through joining Schmitt Stix Skateboards, losing his virginity to the sound of The Smiths, and putting out his first video part in New Deal’s highly influential Useless Wooden Toys video. Enjoy!

Human appetizer. Photo via

People who eat people are generally not considered “good people.” If you have any doubts, spend an afternoon searching the world wide web and peruse the “Cannibal Top Ten Lists,” which are occupied by the Milwaukee Monster Jeffrey Dahmer, Japanese exchange student Issei Sagawa, and child-killer Albert Fish. And news of the insane and psychopathic hits our home pages on the regular, such as the recent story of a hotel restaurant in Nigeria shut down by police for serving human flesh as an “expensive treat.” 

The dispatches we have from a pre-internet era are no different. With the torch lit by Greek historian Herodotus in the 5^th century B.C., carried on by the likes of Captain Cook and his crew in the Pacific, and still not yet extinguished by those traveling through Africa in the early twentieth century, a significant portion of European history is dedicated to documenting encounters with the bloodthirsty man-eaters of the far corners of the globe. 

Tinged with varying degrees of racism, many of these accounts are just xenophobic hearsay. A surprising number, however, have actually been verified as true. As it turns out, anthropophagy, the technical term for eating thy neighbor, is a relatively common and socially acceptable occurrence in many human cultures, from the Neolithic to the present. One contemporary example is the Fore people of the highlands of Papua New Guinea, who ritually consume the corpses of their recently deceased friends and family.

But while some groups frequently enjoy eating people with people, the modern West is decidedly not one of them. Cannibalism is the ultimate culinary taboo, one that we claim only the criminally insane, the so-called “savages,” or the starving and desperate participate in. But like the many other stories that we tell ourselves to cope with the fact that we are all just sacks of meat, this too, is false. There is a fourth group of people who eat people that also live among us who are known as the “cannibal curious.”

In early 2013, David Playpenz, a British bondage furniture maker, had his finger amputated following a motorcycle accident. Instead of leaving it at the hospital, Playpenz brought his severed digit home, boiled it on his stove, and promptly ate it. When asked why he dined on his own finger, he responded simply that he had “always wondered what human flesh tastes like.”

In 2012, Japanese transsexual chef Mao Sugiyama offered a much larger digit up for consumption: his newly removed male genitals. Five guests attended the banquet in which Sugiyama cooked and served himself up for dinner, reportedly paying $250 each for their meal. 

In 1988, performance artist Rick Gibson took the action of eating people into the streets of London and consumed a jar of preserved tonsils a friend had given to him at the Walthamstow Market, becoming what he claimed was the “first cannibal in British history to eat human meat in public.” Whether or not he was a pioneer, he was undoubtedly the showiest man eater in recent English memory, as he ate the canapé while wearing a sign asking everyone to “meet a cannibal.”

These are just a few of the dozens of examples of people in contemporary society whose culinary inquisitiveness takes them much further than most. But little cannibal curiosity may hit more than just some of us and you don’t have to actually eat human to wonder what it tastes like. Thankfully, those who have partaken in this unusual feast have been more than willing to share their experiences.

The most widely-cited account in this morbid food writing genre is that of William Seabrook, an intrepid twentieth century New York Times reporter who allegedly obtained a piece of recently deceased flesh from a surgeon friend at the Sorbonne. In his 1930 book, Jungle Ways, he writes, “It was like good, fully developed veal, not young but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted.” Infamous German man-eater Armin Meiwes, who claimed that his online posting about looking for someone to kill and eat received around 400 responses, had a slightly different take on the flavor, stating, “The flesh tastes like pork, a little bit more bitter, stronger. It tastes quite good.” A considerably less-violent dining experience corroborates the excellent flavor of human. In 2007, Chilean-born artist Marco Evaristti had his own fat removed via liposuction and mixed it with ground beef to make meatballs. The taste: “Even better than my grandmother’s.

Most people, for obvious reasons, have not and will not ever eat the meat of a human being, regardless of how delicious people claim it tastes. The idea is simply too morally or physically repulsive. But what if cannibalism could occur without horrific killings or the loss of one’s own body part; all of the human flavor with none of the human guilt? Enter science. 

Last year, a team from Masstricht University in the Netherlands grabbed headlines with a $325,000 hamburger made exclusively from laboratory-grown cow tissues. Although still in the development stages, this “in vitro” meat aims to remove the animal almost entirely from the edible and produces only the desired cuts of a creature for consumption. Test-tube meat holds such promise to revolutionize animal agriculture that even P.E.T.A. has gotten behind it, offering $1 million to whomever markets the first successful line of cultured meat products. 

The next obvious step for the gastronomically adventurous among us is in-vitro anthropophagy: the consumption of human meat grown in a lab exclusively for the dinner table. Future food hypothesizers have already predicted it as a twenty-first century hipster foodie trend, picturing culinary faddists munching on “celebrity cubes” made from the cells of today’s biggest stars or spending a romantic evening dining on their favorite parts of their lover. 

With no murder or mutilation required to serve man, or at least to serve man parts, all of our cannibal curiosities, big or small, might just be allowed to run free. So if and when that day comes and a scientist could bring you a hot and steaming plate of you, would you eat yourself with some fava beans and a nice Chianti?

About a month ago we promoted Nick Gazin from resident mouthbreather to art editor, and one of his first orders of business has been to ratchet up the number of serialized comics on VICE.com. Last week saw the first installment of Anya Davidson's Band for Life, and today we are happy to premiere the first of Alex Schubert's new series, Blobby Boys. Give it a read below, and check back for part two next Wednesday. 

Keep your eyes peeled for new episodes of Blobby Boys every Wednesday from here until the end of time. Or until Alex gets sick of working with us.

Behold, dear reader: a message from VICE founder and CEO Shane Smith about our new news website, VICE News, which is now in Private Beta. Join now at vicenews.com.

Hello, my diamonds,

Welcome to the VICE News Private Beta!

We invited you here because we are still testing the site and really want your feedback before we go public. We want to build it with you, our beloved and beautiful audience. So please let us know what you like, what you don’t like, and what you think is just sort of “meh.”

Since we haven’t fully launched yet, there won’t be the depth of content that you will see when we're out of Beta, but we will be adding more every day. Soon, there will be enough in there to get lost in, bathe in, and fall down 100 different newsy rabbit holes.

It’s all "in the pipe," as they say.

All of our videos will also be available on our VICE News YouTube channel, so please subscribe to follow our latest news programming.

Stay tuned for breaking stories from Venezuela, Russia, Ukraine, Syria, Central African Republic, Mexico, Thailand, and Brazil, as well as stories from Western Europe, the USA, and China.

We are launching with an English-language site these first few months (simultaneously translating content for our other countries), but over the coming months we will be rolling out full local-language editions.

We couldn’t be more excited to launch this site, and hope that you will help us make VICE News as good as we can possibly make it. We are in this together, and as they say in French, “L'Union Fait la Force,” or “Unity Makes Strength.” So let's go out there together and change the world.

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Illustrations by Alex Schubert.

No one wants to work 12-hour days cold calling random people in hopes of getting their money. At least I didn’t. But I was an American trying to stay in Quebec. I graduated from McGill in 2004, and in order to get a work permit (which would last a year) I had to find a job related to my studies within 90 days. I majored in film, and it was impossible to find a job in that competitive field within that time limit—especially in a French-speaking province. So I concentrated on my minor, marketing, and soon found a financial planning firm that wanted to hire me as a “junior financial adviser.” A letter would be sent to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration to the effect that I was hired for a marketing job, and I’d stay in Montreal with my boyfriend for the foreseeable future. It sounded like an OK deal.

I worked under a “senior adviser” I’ll call Karen in a large boiler room with about 60 other people—mostly other young immigrants who were straight out of college, and, I assumed, in situations that resembled mine. We were told to be there making cold calls from nine in the morning until nine at night, Monday through Friday—60 hours a week, and we’d be getting paid solely on commission. Naturally, nearly everyone hung up on us; the ones who didn’t were invited to come into the office for a free consultation. The goal was to get them to invest some of their money to the company, and if they did, we’d get a cut of that money.

We were taught to be aggressive and relentless. The boss removed the microwave from the kitchen, saying that bringing in homemade food was for losers. We were encouraged to eat out and spend money, because if we behaved like we were rich, we would eventually become rich. If this sounds insane to you, you haven’t been spending all day getting hung up on by annoyed strangers. I’d take three buses to and from work every day, looking like an asshole in my $300 power suit. I wouldn’t normally get home until 11 PM, at which point I’d gorge myself on my boyfriend’s leftover food, too hungry and tired and broke to eat out. I figured in a year I could purchase a Porsche like my bosses had—all I needed to do was work harder and I’d be out of debt, maybe even pay off my university loans early. That’s what happens when you’re young, broke, and naïve as fuck.

My mother had died a year prior, my dad had been laid off around the same time, and my brother was getting ready to go away to college, so my family’s financial situation was in pretty rough shape. Even so, my dad was suspicious of my new gig and its promise of riches (as he should have been). He told me it sounded unstable and shady. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t just go back to Vermont, where I grew up, and get a “real” job. I kept reassuring him that it would all work out as long as I worked hard. I thought that not only would I be able to support myself, but help out my family too—and buy a luxury car on top of that. I’d sell investments, I’d make money, I’d save my family and never have to worry about anything again.

Ehab, a young Egyptian man who worked there with me, remembers the same cracked-out culture of consumption at the firm as I experienced. “New joiners are sold a dream, including a visit to the garage to get a glance of the (leased) luxury cars that senior members have earned,” he said. “As a rookie, you are used and abused as your 'inexperience' justifies it.” He looks back on his time there as the most cutthroat work experience of his life, “a real-life example of the pyramid structure, with everyone in the chain getting a piece of the action. Anyone who leaves is mocked and considered a failure.” Almost all of us failed, of course—cold calling is a nightmare where you fail, over and over again, to sell anything. Sometimes you make over 300 calls and fail on every one of them.

In a lot of ways—the cold calling, the worship of wealth, the sense that riches were just around the corner—Ehab and I were in a “real-life version of the movie Boiler Room,” as he describes it. And it did feel like we were at the bottom of a pyramid scheme, too. Heck, we were literally working in a pyramid-shaped building. The only difference was that the business wasn’t a scam at all: The stocks and bonds we hawked were legitimate (in fact they were a pretty stable and conservative way to invest). Advisers would even purchase the same financial products they sold. We weren’t scamming anyone.

On the other hand, we were getting scammed a bit ourselves. In Boiler Room they get rich; I made just $6,500 that year, which was pretty standard for a lot of us. Maggie, a Chinese coworker of mine, made even less. When I got in touch to reminisce with her, she told me that working there was “the darkest moment [of my life] up till now. No money. No results. Long hours.” Like me, she did it all to stay in Canada on a work visa.

I should note that I wasn’t actually terrible at my job. During my first few weeks, a man I brought in via a cold call transferred a large sum of stocks to the company and I got a big fat $6,000 commission. I spent nearly half of it on a laptop that I thought would improve my work experience and business suits that were required for work. I also threw $300 away on a “professional looking” haircut. I assumed that $6,000 checks were going to be a regular thing for me.

Often I would bring in potential million-dollar clients and they would seem interested in signing over their assets. But when that happened, before the meeting where I was supposed to close the sale, Karen would tell me not to take that meeting. I looked too young, she would tell me, adding that I would only be a distraction. Every time I was pushed out of these meetings, Karen would claim afterward the person didn’t sign, so no commission for me. I began to suspect Karen was lying to me and taking my cut.

Meanwhile, 12-hour workdays (which were actually more like 14.5 hours when you factor in the commute) were eating away at my relationship with my boyfriend, which was already on the rocks—he was mean-spirited, and one night an argument ended in physical violence. That was one thing I had promised myself I would never tolerate in a relationship, yet I stayed with him, and kept working at my awful job to remain in the country for him. I was going deep into credit card debt, I was 21 years old and worked all day for nothing, and I was too exhausted to ever enjoy the city around me. I was desperately unhappy, but nobody was forcing me to stay in this situation. All I had to do was leave my job and my boyfriend and take a two-hour Greyhound ride back home to Vermont, where I could find a job that paid me actual money, not vague promises of commissions. But I didn’t do that. I guess back then I thought I deserved that kind of treatment. I cringe when I think about how low my self-esteem must have been.

I stayed at the financial planning company for the full year, until my work visa ran out, after which I went back to Vermont, like I should have done long before. A few years later, I got an email from Karen, who told me she was being audited and wanted me to sign some paperwork claiming I had been paid $30,000 that year. I pretty much told her to fuck off and didn’t think any more about it. I had moved on with my life.

While I was writing this piece and thinking back to that strange episode in my life, however, it seemed to me like that company was doing something seriously illegal. I called Julie Taub, an Ontario-based lawyer who specializes in immigration, and she told me the situation “sounds like fraud” since Karen was clearly claiming to the government that she was paying her workers a salary, when in fact she was paying them straight commission.

Taub added that it was suspicious that the company seemed to prefer using immigrants and young people who wouldn’t realize how badly they were being used. “It sounds like exploitation of people who are not well versed in the country’s law and labor legislation,” she said. “It’s exploitation, fraud, and the exploiting of worker’s ignorance.”

For this article, I called the company I worked for and told them I was curious about my time there and the money I earned. The accounting department told me that I technically never worked there—really, I had been a sort of subcontractor for Karen, who, they said, hadn’t done things as she should have, and was no longer an employee. So I called Karen at her new job and left her a voicemail. Her husband called me back and contradicted what the financial-planning company said—I had never technically worked for Karen. What’s more, he claimed that I had been paid $30,000 for that year and that I must be forgetting that I received that money (why I would lie in this situation was left unclear). He added that if I wrote anything bad about his wife or him he would “crush” me.

But my point is not to accuse anyone of specific crimes—that’s water under the bridge, and I don’t want to get involved in a protracted legal battle with an asshole like Karen. This is no expose; it’s a cautionary tale about what happens when you’re young and broke and desperate and don’t value yourself. Don’t take shady jobs from Craigslist, don’t drift along at a job that’s exploiting you if you can help it, realize that people will lie to you—even people who are older and richer and appear to know better than you. And if you’re making cold calls in some miserable boiler room right now, just quit.

Gina Tron is the features editor for Ladygunn magazine and the creative director for Williamsburg Fashion Weekend. She is currently in the process of completing a book. Follow her on Twitter: @_GinaTron

The barbed wire fence at the village of Gogeti, Georgia.

"Three days ago, they moved the fence 30 yards closer to my home," says Georgian farmer Georgi Chatlitschvi. "The Russian border guards told me my orchards were no longer mine—they were part of South Ossetia, not Georgia. Those apples were my livelihood. Now they sit behind the fence, on land they tell me is part of a different country."

Georgi continues, his face washed out with exhaustion. "We are scared. I haven’t slept for days. Maybe tomorrow I will lose my house. This is our land—we’ve lived here all our lives—and it's being stolen from us."

I'm told that, during the summertime, the hills, valleys, and farmlands around the Georgian village of Gogeti are lush and beautiful. Today, a bone-shearing December wind blasts along the Tskhinvali Valley. The muddy, half-thawed expanse in front of us looks like a wasteland.

In the near distance, the green, motion-sensitive fence erected by the Russians runs the entire length of the horizon. Behind it, on the South Ossetian side, sits the towering hulk of a Russian military base. Further on, the Caucasus Mountains run northward, all the way into Russia.

Local residents who live in close proximity to the fence, which moves closer to their home every day.

Since Russia began building the fence in 2011—establishing a de facto border between Georgia and the self-declared independent state of South Ossetia—injustices like the one Georgi describes have been a daily occurrence.

Dubbed a "rural Berlin wall" for all the villages it's split in two, the fence is advancing further and further into Georgian land, dividing families, destroying livelihoods, and casting a worrying sense of uncertainty over the entire region.
 
"I am a cattle herder—I don't know [about] these politics," says 54-year-old Elguja, as he stands among his cows. "Our village relies on these animals for income. If they wander across the border while grazing, I cannot get them back. I will be arrested for trespassing, and they will be gone forever."

In 2008, South Ossetia was the focus of a brief but brutal war between Russia and Georgia. When the Georgian government refused to accept South Ossetia’s independence, they tried to recapture it, invoking a massive Russian air and ground assault that lasted only five days but claimed over 400 casualties, with 133,000 civilians displaced.

Since then, Russia has maintained a vast military presence in the region and continued to back South Ossetia and the neighboring breakaway state of Abkhazia, both economically and militarily.

A Georgian local being interviewed by EUMM.

I’m out on patrol with the EUMM, a civilian monitoring mission established by the EU in 2008 to observe developments in the region. Their daily patrols record the ongoing construction of the fence (which now totals over 20 miles in length) and its daily effects on villagers like Georgi and Elguja. They also help to facilitate the release of Georgian nationals who are constantly detained by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).

As we lumber through the backcountry in a convoy of armored Landcruisers, EUMM field office chief Hans Schneider explains the other problems the fence creates for locals. 

"In unfenced areas, people just don’t know where the administrative borderline starts. And in most fenced areas, it’s actually around 15 yards in front of the [barbed] wire. Just walking up to the fence means you’ve already crossed over and will be arrested. It’s a trick to keep people from tampering with it. We have to use a GPS to find the administrative line’s actual location."

Russia claims that this border is based on a 1984 Soviet administrative map of the territory, when Georgia was still under Soviet occupation. In reality, the '84 map, the current administrative borderline, and the fence’s actual route bear little resemblance.

"There’s nothing in the way of trends or patterns. Moscow seems to interpret the geography without any logic," explains EUMM spokesperson Ann Vassen. "It’s an extremely volatile situation. Freedom of movement is a huge issue, and detention cases are around five to six per week. It’s a crisis."

The road out of Dvani Village. The metal on the side of the road is remnants of people's abandoned houses.

Now, after Russian forces began dismantling them, the de facto border only has two checkpoints, effectively sealing South Ossetia from entry. Many villagers who've found themselves fenced in on the South Ossetian side are forced to cross "illegally" to access schools, jobs, healthcare, and relatives in Georgia. The EUMM estimates that there are between 500 to 1,000 of these crossings every week, one of the most widely used points being the Liakhvi River. "People drive cars and trucks through it. They get stuck. Children have to swim it every day just to get to class," continues Hans as we pull into the village of Dvani.

As we dismount, Hans checks his GPS and I’m told to stop 20 yards from the crude wooden cross and bright green sign displaying the entrance to South Ossetia. Construction was resumed in Dvani on September 22, 2013, the fence moving 500 yards into the village and appropriating 25 acres of agricultural land.

Dvani received a brief flurry of media attention in the run up to the Georgian elections; potential candidates rushed to the fence and gave panicked press conferences, attempting to nurture pre-election support from the Georgian public. But since Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili was elected on November 20 of last year, the fencing has received little further acknowledgement. Both NATO and the US State Department issued a call for Russia to dismantle the fence, but Putin's forces have continued building at will.

An EUMM patrol member surveilling Tskhinvali for activity.

On the last section of the patrol, we come to the Georgian military stronghold overlooking the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. The whole city resembles some deserted, post-apocalyptic movie set. The buildings are skeletal, pockmarked with shells, or completely torn in half. There’s no movement, and the green fence and surveillance cameras along its southern edge seem an odd show of technology for such a desolate place. Looking at Tskhinvali, the idea of it as the seat for autonomous regional power in South Ossetia seams completely unfathomable. More so considering that it contains almost zero natural resources, and little worth such heavy Russian investment.
 
"It’s not really about South Ossetia," says Irakli Porchkhidze, Vice President of the Georgian Institute for Strategic Studies and Deputy Minister for re-integration. "Russia’s not interested in having them or Abkhazia becoming independent states. If that happens, Russia’s out of ammo when it comes to leverage on Georgia. By funding South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia is able to maintain a substantial military presence there. It’s a projection of power.

"It creates the perception that Moscow is omnipotent and can always influence the situation on the ground. By building the fence, they are testing not just their opponent’s reaction, but the international community’s, too. Russia is a vast country, and by doing this to Georgia it is saying, 'You are weak, you are vulnerable; I can destabilize you any time I choose.'"

Children from a Georgian village after being handed warm coats and a football as gifts from anti-fence protesters.

"But why such overt interest in destabilizing Georgia?" I ask Irakli.

"Georgia’s a success story," he replies. "And Georgia seeking entry into NATO shows Russia that an alternate, Western mode of state development can potentially succeed in an ex-Soviet territory, on land Russia considers to be theirs by privilege. If Georgia gains weight politically and economically, following a different path to Moscow, Russia fears it could have a domino effect in the neighborhood."

"Weakening Russia’s influence in the region?"

"Exactly. And Georgia’s also a pivotal state when it comes to the energy-rich Caspian Basin," he continues. "Two of the only transit routes to Europe for Caspian oil and natural gas are through Georgia, or Russia. Georgia’s seeking to massively increase its role here, and if it’s free from Russian influence, that means Europe’s likely to be less dependent on Russian energy."

The next day, I head back up to the fence with a group of protesters from Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, led by local architect, Gogiko Sakvarelidze. As we trample back across the mud near Gogeti, I ask him how people in Tbilisi see the situation.

"They see, but they don’t want to see," he says. "Even the new president doesn’t want to acknowledge it. This is an occupation, but to admit that there’s a problem would force him into a resolution. With the 2008 war, plus what’s happening in Ukraine, everybody’s nervous about Georgia’s stability."

Georgian protesters at the fence.

We’re made to stop a good way off from the fence by the Georgian army. In the near distance, a gaggle of Russian soldiers stand in line as protesters—draped in Georgian flags—wave banners, and spray-paint SOS across a giant length of white fabric. Afterwards, I join Gogiko in his Jeep as he distributes warm clothes, toys, and handfuls of chocolate to the villagers.
 
"These people feel abandoned. We must show them we are listening; that we care," he says, handing a football to a small, rosy-cheeked boy. Nearby, a woman and her daughter are drawing water from a well outside their sprawling shack house. It’s cold, and she wears that same exhausted expression as the other villagers when I ask her what’s been happening.
 
"It’s the holiday soon, and I cannot visit my family on the other side. It’s too dangerous. I will be arrested. We can control nothing. It's the same everywhere, and every day they make it harder for us. Look... the fence is over there," she says, pointing towards it. 

"It's not far. It's moving always forward, and we are all scared for tomorrow."

Follow James on Twitter: @mrrippingale

Vince Li, soon after his arrest in 2008, via. 

After sawing off a man’s head with a Rambo knife six years ago, Vince Li will soon be able to leave the psychiatric unit behind for short periods of time and take a bus around the nearby Selkirk community on solo visits.

We all remember Li as the well-documented public transport nightmare from our not too distant past: the Greyhound bus killer who murdered, decapitated, and mutilated his seat mate—a sleeping 22-year-old man named Tim McLean—during a bus trip from Edmonton to Winnipeg in summer 2008. Police later discovered that Li pocketed Tim’s nose, ear, and tongue. It goes without saying that the incident takes top prize for the worst things that have ever happened on Greyhound buses.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the idea that Li’s eventual reintegration will inevitably result in him leaving his meds in the dust and going on a killing spree has been dominating comment sections on many Canadian media outlets. Carol de Delley, Tim’s mom, told the Winnipeg Sun that she’s concerned of what might happen if Li chooses to stop taking his meds once he is out for good and becomes violent.

“The system will go ‘oops, this was not statistically supposed to happen. He’s been a model patient,'” de Delley said.

I called up Chris Summerville, CEO of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada, executive director of the Schizophrenia Society of Manitoba, who also considers himself a friend of Li’s. Chris conducted the only interview Vince Li himself has ever given to media. We talked about his relationship with Li, whether the general public should fear that Li will go off his meds once he’s free, and trying to explain mental illness to people who believe that if you kill someone, you should be locked up for life, regardless of mental health issues.

VICE: Describe your relationship to Vince Li.
Chris Summerville: It’s been a relationship of rapport and developing a friendship, providing self-help services to him, peer support services, and helping him understand his mental illness. Basically, being a non-therapeutic person for him. Everybody’s asking him therapeutic questions, he needs somebody that can just talk to him as a personal one-on-one.

Vince Li’s psychiatrist from the Selkirk Mental Health Centre, Dr. Steven Kremer, says Li runs a low risk of reoffending once back in the community. What does that mean?
It means the psychiatrist does risk assessment. What they evaluate is whether or not he has insight into his illness. And he does have insight into his illness. They also evaluate whether he is compliant with his medication and understands the need to take the medication, which he is and does. Also, [assessing whether] he has any addiction problems, which he doesn’t. Does he have any sociopathic traits? He doesn’t. He’s an ideal patient, he hasn’t had any altercations with any of the patients since he’s been [at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre] for six years, so he’s really an ideal patient.

How can psychiatrists be sure that Li will not kill again once he’s back in the community?
They do that risk assessment and they do the best they can. We know that recidivism rates are very low, and they do psychological exams. His chances of reoffending are less than one percent. On average, people who are released from the forensic unit who are found not criminally responsible (NCR), their recidivism rates are about seven and a half percent. Mr. Li’s is less than one percent. Because he’s doing so well.

When Li is reintegrated into the community, what kind of a system will be in place to ensure he is taking his meds?
He will probably be released conditionally, which means there will be conditions on his discharge. That means where to live, who to hang out with, who to meet, staying away from the victim’s family. He’ll be monitored in terms of his medication through regular appointments.

What happens if Li stops taking his medication after he’s released?
He’s learning how to monitor that. Just like how at the Schizophrenia Society of Canada we teach patients how to know when there’s warning signs, that they might be deteriorating, where there’s beginning signs of psychosis. You don’t just become psychotic in a moment, or overnight. There’s warning signs that build up to it. He will learn those warning signs, just like people who learn how to manage their chronic illnesses. People who have other chronic illnesses—Parkinson’s, epilepsy, MS—they learn their signs and symptoms. Mr. Li will learn that. He has learned that, and he’ll know when he needs to check with his doctor. He won’t be psychotic at that point, he’ll just realize he needs additional help.

Should members of his soon-to-be community be afraid of Li?
No. I don’t think people in the community should be afraid of him. I have a brother with schizophrenia, and if he was doing as well as Vince Li that’d be great [laughs].

Why has the public responded so negatively to the idea of Li’s release?
The primary reason they are up in arms about it, or alarmed about it, is because of the brutal nature of how Mr. Li killed Tim McLean. If he had just shot him, we wouldn’t even be talking. It was a unique, one-of-a-kind, first-ever-type murder in Canada, in which Li ate Tim McLean’s body parts.

Secondly, the public is concerned about his release because, well they say ‘how do you make sure, how do you guarantee, that he’ll stay on his medication?’

What does the public’s response to the idea of Li’s potential release say about how we, the public, treat people with mental illness?
It tells us that the Canadian public, number one, is not informed about the review board; what it does, and the risk assessment. [They are not informed] about the statistics about recidivism rates, that those statistics are very low.

It also tells us that many people do not believe in NCR. In other words, they don’t believe in such a designation. They believe that if you kill somebody like Tim McLean, the way that Vince Li did, that it was a criminal act and that you are criminally responsible. They don’t believe in the designation NCR because of a mental disorder. That perpetuates stigma, so it buys into people’s fears and their own social prejudice. It confirms their stigmas that they’ve seen on television or Hollywood movies, because most people portrayed as mentally ill in Hollywood movies or even children’s cartoons, most are portrayed as being violent and untreatable. People watch television and it simply confirms to them that these people are looneytoons, crazy psychos that do not recover.

On Cracked, for example, you will only see one side of the picture, oftentimes they show a sick person when they’re sickest, but they hardly ever show when a person is well.

Tim McLean’s mother, Carol de Delley, told Global News, “I don’t think it should matter whether you’re mentally ill or not mentally ill. If you kill someone you should lose your freedom, period.” How do you explain mental illness in the context of the law to people who feel that way?
You’re not going to explain mental illness to people like that, who don’t understand the science about mental illness. It’s fruitless to try to convince them.

@kristy__hoffman

Teresa Scott taken during her modeling career. Photo courtesy of NiceButNaughtyGirls.com

"It was just a normal day. I'd been out having sex with some girls, and then I saw Jesus," said Teresa Scott. After 14 years in the adult-entertainment industry—which included her own show on Television X and roles in such smut blockbusters as D-Cup Discipline, Barefoot Temptations, and Foot Frenzy—the British porn star quit the business and became a born-again Christian.

Now she tours universities, giving talks about her past career in lesbian porn, and explains how she reconciles her old life with her newfound love for the Lord. We caught up with her after a recent lecture to ask her some one-on-one questions.

The cover of Teresa Scott's album, Born Again, Photo coursey of teresacareychristian.blogspot.co.uk

VICE: How did you get into the porn industry?
Teresa Scott: I was 17 when I started modeling with an agency in London, and they shipped me out to America as soon as possible. You start doing topless modeling, which is nerve-wracking at first. Once that’s normal, you start doing nude, then you start kissing girls, then you start touching girls. You don't really see the transition; it just creeps up on you. I worked at Television X. I'd be walking around their office nude, and all the other girls would be nude. I didn’t feel shocked, as it wasn't on my radar any more. When that becomes normal, the next step doesn’t seem so major. But all of a sudden I was doing full sex videos with girls. It’s only when you’re doing a three-girl shoot, and you’re all linked together, that you think, How did I get from being shy to taking my top off, to this?

What pushed you to make this transition to porn?
Constant offers of money. At first I said no. I remember being really nervous the first time a male photographer asked me to take my top off. I ran home scared and didn't do the shoot. I met my husband while working at Television X. He didn't mind my work. To be honest, we just saw dollar signs. We thought we could deal with it all and just earn a lot of money, thinking, Who cares?

What kind of porn did you do?
My porn was with girls—lesbian sex. I never did stuff with men. Actually, I did, but only once, with my husband, and that did feel strange. No little girl wants to be a porn star. No little girl grows up saying, "I want to be used in that way." Girls are enticed by the modeling side of it. I don't know one porn star who isn't a model. The whole "I'm-going-to-be-in-a-magazine" and "I’m-going-to-be-made-to-look-pretty" side of it is enticing, but it’s all rubbish and complete fakery. It’s understandable that some people go into this industry, because God put in women a desire to be desired, but that has been warped in this world. Desire is meant to come from a husband, but the sanctity of marriage has broken down in society. If we had still had that, the fix that girls need would be taken care of.

Teresa speaks at a university. Photo by Elise Dodsworth

When did you find Jesus?
My husband and I were sitting in our computer room at home, where we’d been uploading videos to the internet. Then something weird started happening to us. We were transported to this most amazing place, where there were green fields and hills everywhere. We could see colors—they were breathing and pulsating in brightness and radiance. I could see a man in white, but I knew he wasn’t Jesus, and I knew he was talking to people because he was on the summit of a hill, so we were moving to this man. There’s a huge hill behind him, and he invites us in. The hill opens up, and we fall into complete blackness.

And then what happened?
The moment I came up, I was face to face with Jesus. He had fire in his eyes that burnt straight through my soul. But it was a fire of love, of burning love, not of condemnation. It was made known to me that I was the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. I am forever and I have always been. And Jesus has always been with me. [Teresa starts crying.]

And what was the message?
The message was that he wants me to tell people that you are not condemned, that no matter how bad you think you have lived your life, he is able to take you out of it and lead you into better things. My eyes were fixed on his. His words came into me.

Photo via NiceButNaughtyGirls.com

How did your family react to your discovery of God?
It split our family in two. Porn, they could deal with, because they could just brush it under the carpet. But they couldn’t deal with me talking about finding Jesus. We didn’t speak for seven years. My dad thought I was on drugs. It took years for them to be able to see that my life wasn’t getting worse; it was getting better. They now know that I’m speaking at universities to intelligent people, even though I had no education, and they’re wondering what’s got me here. But it’s a higher thing. It’s Jesus who got me here.

Did people you knew in porn react in the same way?
People in the porn industry thought I was mad. When you’re working and you’re on set, doing "the business," there isn’t much time to talk about Jesus. All they knew was that something happened to me, but that was as far as it went. I saw Jesus in 1999, but it was only in 2009 that I got all of my [industry] contacts and deleted them. I didn’t work for a year, but I needed that year to readjust to my faith. I now have no contact with anyone from the porn industry or America. There’s also no real community in the porn industry—you’re on your own.

How have you dealt with equating your former views as a porn star with views promoted by the Christian faith? What are your views on homosexuality, for example?
For years, I thought there was nothing wrong with homosexuality. God gives us free will, so he loves a gay person as much as he loves a straight person. But he puts guidelines in for our own protection. He puts them there because, if the whole world became gay, it would be detrimental to life. God doesn’t want his children to feel condemned or pressured. Gay people are going to have a hard time, and God doesn’t want that. I’m not for homosexuality; I’m certainly not for it.

And abortion?
I've had one. It was before I became a Christian, so I can speak from experience. At the time, I thought I wasn’t ready—there was too much strangeness going on in my life. I was entering into porn, and it just didn’t fit. But now I do wish I kept it. I thought at the time, No, it's my free will—a woman should be allowed to decide. But it’s difficult, because while every woman should be able to decide, it’s also another life. You're deciding the fate of another. The world is messed up. It’s like learning yoga—you gain strength from within. The change has to come from the deepest root, and that is our relationship, our reconciliation, with God, the Creator. Abortion is a symptom of all that is wrong in the world, and I believe homosexuality is the same.

Teresa lectures at a university. Photo courtesy of Student Life

What about the sex industry? Is that also a symptom of all that is wrong in the world?
Yes, it is. I believe in Jesus, and therefore I believe in Satan. The Bible tells us, and I feel it anyway, that he is in control of the world at the moment. The evidence is everywhere. I’m talking about war, starving children, people dying... I mean, that’s really messed up. People are distant from God. Satan has got control, and he’s at the root of it.

How do you respond to people who say that the sex industry is empowering for women?
I used to think that. But our society is fed on sex, and women will put on a front. It seems normal for those women who adopt that role, and they say they’re in control of it, but a woman is never in control when a guy is doing it to her. The woman inside will know it, but she won’t admit it. The moment you admit it, you have to do something about it.

Since turning to Christianity, have you made any effort to help others get out of the porn industry?
Not yet. You never really saw girls [in the industry] more than a few times. I would want to do something like this. though. Lots of people have been asking me, so I think it’s a sign. God is pointing me towards this path.

A girl came to me at one of the talks I gave, saying she’s been doing webcamming to pay for her tuition and that it’s breaking her heart. She’s got a boyfriend, and he doesn’t know. I feel like I've got to do something. She asked me how to get out of it, but I can't tell her how. It took me ten years, and I could only do it with the help of the Lord. He’s got the answer. We might stumble across it, and glory to God if we do, but more often than not, we don't.

Do you think Jesus will come again?
I know he will. I 100-percent know that he's coming again. I don't know when, but I feel it's really soon.

I look forward to it. Thanks, Teresa.

Follow emily (@trippemily) and Antonia (@aepaget) on Twitter.

Founded in 2007, the Museum for Contraception and Abortion, in Vienna, Austria, is the world's most thorough collection of the different methods and objects humans have used to prevent the birth of other humans. Recently I was given a tour of the museum by Christian Fiala (pictured below), the abortion provider who founded the museum, and this is what he told me as we walked through the exhibits.

There is, of course, a backstory as to why I started working in this field [of abortion and contraception], which is considered a big taboo in Austria—even more so in the Alpine region of Tyrol, where they wouldn't even rent out an apartment to my girlfriend and me because we weren’t married.

Back then, I had just started attending med school and was shocked to discover that loads of my colleagues didn't know how to protect themselves from STDs and unwanted pregnancies, despite their professional education.

How to insert an old-timey pessary into the cervix

After spending a year in Thailand, where I saw women dying on a daily basis during failed self-induced abortions, I decided to take action. I wanted to help and support the victims and help educate their partners about the risks and possibilities—especially when the choice isn't fatherhood.

Austria has one of the highest numbers of terminated pregnancies in Europe, with an estimated 30,000 women per year seeking abortions. Also, Austria’s health-care system is the only one in Western Europe that doesn’t cover the costs of abortions, even though they're legal. The national legislation concerning birth control is also very conservative and hypocritical.

So the main goal of the museum is to educate visitors about birth control and the horrific history of abortion through time and the absurd beliefs that have surrounded it.

Left: A fish bladder condom of the type that King Minos of Crete was supposedly using in 1200 BC. Right: The caption reads, "'Diva condoms, made of silk rubber. My legally protected condom stretched out!"

I travel a lot, and during various conferences and visits to specialists I've befriended all over the world, I've collected information as well as fascinating objects. Before Charles Goodyear invented the first vulcanized condom out of natural rubber in 1855, people used all sorts of things for contraception—fish bladders, sheep appendices, similar intestinal skins.

They felt like the real thing, but were rather unreliable.

A French douche that looks like a beer mug.

In Europe, it used to be the norm to use vaginal douches after sex for birth control. Obviously, this was extremely inefficient.

Sponges were used like diaphragms in the 1900s, and earthworms were even injected with urine to verify pregnancies. That didn't work out that well. Frogs were also actually quite common and relatively reliable pregnancy tests from 1945 to as late as 1965.

Like with the earthworms, female frogs were injected with urine from a woman who was thought to be pregnant. If the frog ovulated and extruded eggs, the human pregnancy hormone was present in the woman's urine.

As we moved into the 1960s, the tests started to look a lot different. An especially absurd agent for contraception was carbonated soda. Records show that from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1950s, Coca-Cola was used to as a foaming, vaginal douche after sex. Obviously it was impractical and ineffective, because the carbonated acid doesn’t harm sperm, as was presumed.

This is a pretty daft invention—a wooden urethra plug. Though it seems ridiculous and frankly dangerous, some uninformed men might have used it. There is nothing positive to say about that.

Until about 1900, killing babies after birth was the predominant method of birth control. From then on, and for about 70 years, the illegal termination of the pregnancy between the fourth and fifth month became commonplace.

In a lot of developing countries this is still the custom. From the 1970s on, along with legalization, the surgical termination until the tenth week of pregnancy was introduced. In the 1990s, medicinal abortion up until the sixth week was developed. Today's most powerful form of birth control is simply prevention.

In the days before abortion was legal, women died all over Europe performing brutal acts on themselves so they would miscarry.

Pretty much every substance and every object on earth was used to induce abortions.

Bosch reverberant washer—useful for any household.

Household gadgets that vibrate a lot, like this one from Bosch to do dirty laundry with, were taken into the bathtub and put on the belly to induce a miscarriage.

Tools for abortions from the Criminal Museum Dresden

Until 1975, the average hospital had three important wards. Both the gynecology department and obstetrics were the same size as they are today and just as important back then. But the third ward, the septic ward, was just as big as the other two and took care of women with sepsis and toxemia—those poisoning themselves in the hope of aborting their pregnancies.

You have to realize the levels of helplessness and psychological strain that fertile women back then had to face. Giving birth was incredibly traumatic and led to a desperation that is unimaginable for us now. People keep shaking their heads walking through the museum because the general Western public does not know such existential fears any more.

Soaps were often used for illegal abortions. They'd insert them into the cervix, usually resulting in a miscarriage. Unfortunately, the woman's death was just as common.

A lot of different things were tried—99.9 percent of those attempts were in vain, but the 0.01 percent that worked were regarded as revolutionary, like the pill. Almost at the same time as the pill was introduced in the early 1960s, the first contraceptive coils and loops were developed.

The introduction of the pill, humankind's first real quasi-domination of biological fertility, was the second most important accomplishment in human history—right after the taming of fire.

It is only because of efficient methods of contraception that we can arrange fertility around our lives and not the other way around, which is the way it had been before. People don't realize that before contraceptives, a woman would get pregnant an historical average of 15 times between the ages of 15 and 50.

Various German and Austrian condom machines

Any socio-cultural formation since 1960 would not have been possible without chemical contraception. We wouldn’t be sitting here, because we would have had children to take care of. The sexual revolution of 1968 would have been over after nine months.

Just to give you an example, we recently had a 17-year-old girl come into our clinic to have her pregnancy terminated. And she already had a family with two children. She had never used protection, and that’s the result: nature at work.

Left: The caption reads, "Woman. You are free. Your conception-free days this year." Right: A device that helps calculate the days in question.

There have never been so many methods of effective birth control as there are today, and yet a majority of women wish for “natural contraception.” It’s paradoxical. They feel negative about chemicals and hormones.

What these women forget is that "natural" equals 15 unwanted pregnancies. Nature is often seen as this glorified paradise, but that is an illusion. Nature is brutal, ruthless, and doesn’t give a shit about the individual.

Twigs and plastic hoses that were used to induce abortions and were removed from women's uteruses at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, in 2003.

Since our abortion clinic in Vienna was established in 2003, and subsequently with the opening of the museum in 2007, fanatics from Human Life International and other Christian groups have been demonstrating in front of the building. They would terrorize our patients, but since we got the police involved, things have calmed down.

Sadly, you cannot talk to these people in an objective manner. They are, if you will, psychologically confined in a certain way. Normal discussion isn’t even possible. That is the true drama. Not the abortions but the fact that to this day, people like them are allowed to stand outside our clinic scaring away women who need help. I have received anonymous death threats too.

But let's not talk about people like that any more. It doesn’t further the cause. You wouldn’t blame illiterates for reading the wrong newspaper. The only and most important thing is that experienced professionals adequately help women who are in need of support.

Graphic materials, captions, and exhibits were provided by the Museum for Contraception and Abortion.

Follow Josef Zorn on Twitter: @theZeffo.

via Kasha Jacqueline on Twitter.

Exposed! So read the headline of Red Pepper, a tabloid in Uganda whose editors saw fit to publish the names of 200 suspected gays. As anti-LGBT tensions in African countries like Nigeria and Uganda intensify, openly gay people are left feeling just that—exposed.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time the press has attempted to target and publically out people for associating, supporting or participating in the LGBT community. On February 5, The Nigerian Observer printed the names of 57 people said to be members of the House of Rainbow Fellowship, a Christian organization that reaches out to LGBT communities in Nigeria.

The newspaper advocated that the friends, family and neighbors of the ‘accused’ report them to police where they would be arrested under the crime of homosexuality. By February 6, the online article had been deleted, but arguably, the damage was already done.

A week into 2014 marked the signing of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill into law. The legislation brought forth by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan bans not only marriage, but targets those who support gay-rights and imposes a 10-year jail sentence for anyone involved with LGBT organizations of any kind.

Since the law came into effect, there have been a rash of violent attacks on LGBT people carried out by police and citizen vigilantes. Two days before Valentine’s, 14 young men were mobbed in the country’s capital of Abuja. The New York Times reported that they were dragged out of bed and beaten by a group wielding nail-studded clubs and whips.

In late January, a video was released online showing two gay men who were forced to perform anal sex in public by a mob who jeered and filmed the act on their cellphones.

The danger for LGBT people is very real in Nigeria, and things are only going to get worse—so says Jide Macaulay, the project director and founder of House of Rainbow. Macaulay is an openly-gay reverend of Nigerian descent who has dedicated years to helping LGBT people in Nigeria. House of Rainbow is primarily a Christian organization whose mandate is one of reconciliation between sexuality and spirituality. The House of Rainbow Church in Nigeria was established in 2006, before tensions over sexual orientation came to the forefront of political and social discourse in the country.

via Kasha Jacqueline on Twitter.

When word got out that The Observer had apparently outed potential members of House of Rainbow, Macaulay took to the phones. Having left Nigeria due to safety concerns, once in 2008 and again in 2011, he would have to try and control the crisis from London.

Macaulay has had a difficult relationship with the Nigerian media for years. Local newspapers would often publish the locations of House of Rainbow meetings, putting members in danger and exposing the organization to threats.

“Unfortunately, Nigerian media are ignorant,” explains Macaulay.

Journalists would also attend meetings undercover and secretly record sessions. Macaulay’s home address and contact information was published as well, and as the threats to his personal security/safety escalated, so did instances of harassment and violence.

“I had to have a military officer with me everywhere I went,” says Macaulay. In September 2008, he returned to London. Several days later, his former home in Nigeria was vandalized.

Macaulay was born in England but was raised for some time in Nigeria. He holds degrees in law as well as theology, and recently a post-graduate certificate in pastoral theology from Anglia Ruskin Cambridge.He feels that God has called him to help people in places like Nigeria, where homosexuality is seen as being contrary to African cultural values and religion.

After a few harrowing days, Macaulay was cautiously pleased to report that none of the names listed by The Observer were in fact members of House of Rainbow. Fortunately, the information collected by the paper had been inaccurate—though of course the fact these lists are being published in the first place is highly troublesome.

Weeks later, upon seeing his own name printed in the list of 200 “top homosexuals” in Red Pepper, Macaulay had seen enough. “There is no doubt of the intention of the newspaper in printing these names,” he said. “There will be backlash and further violence towards these people. This is no longer just a case for Ugandans.”

I find Richard Andreassen outside a camera store in Phoenix, Arizona, blasting thrash metal from his red pickup truck. Behind his truck is a trailer that acts as both his home and portable observatory. The outside of the trailer is covered in gorgeous snapshots Richard has taken of the night sky.

Autistic and hard of hearing, Richard doesn’t quite talk; he bellows in a turbulent inflection tinged by a nearly faded Long Island accent. He commands your attention, but even if you ignored him, you couldn’t disregard the beautiful celestial photographs he's taken—lunar phases, comets, deep space—and cemented to his mobile home using Liquid Nails and a staple gun.

“Wanna see inside?” Richard asks me. I nod eagerly. “Welp, don't tell no one, though.”

Richard has completely modified his truck into a mobile living space and observatory with some pretty ingenious tweaks. His “room” is blanketed in star motifs; even the ceiling's covered in the constellations he’s shot. A 13-horsepower gas motor is hooked up to his electronics: hand-built telescopes, an air conditioner, a coffeemaker, a stereo, and two microwaves, which he uses to heat up gallons of soapy water with which to shower.

“Ain't that [a] great idea?” Richard grins at me, describing his amenities— as the TV antenna and the fold-up La-Z-Boy chair strapped to his roof—as “luxuries.” I can’t disagree with him. Before these refinements, the trailer weighed 1,500 pounds; now it weighs nearly twice as much.

The trailer earned some recognition from the RTMC Astronomy Expo last year, awarding him the Warren Estes Memorial Award for “combining the visual, almost museum-like, appeal of [his] photos... with a utilitarian storage and transportation solution for [his] myriad astronomical instruments and accessories.”

Once a machinist for a military contractor, Richard has been on disability ever since an accident tore his rotator cuff. But when his mother suffered a stroke and needed to enter a nursing home, Richard was left to fend for himself. Luckily, she’d already set up the truck and camper for him 18 years prior. Their family doctor, whom Richard still sees periodically, agreed it would be best for him to live in the trailer from then on. Besides, Richard says he can’t afford rent and dislikes apartments because of all the drugs and smoking.

It’s obvious Richard is a little sensitive, especially to the heat. He can only show off his living quarters for so long before he starts growing beet-red and must return to the shade. It's in the low 90s—mild for Phoenix—and Richard can’t spend much time in the sun. So every year, from March to November, he packs up and heads to the woods in Northern Arizona, where he camps, spending his lonely nights stargazing, his telescopes and bootleg heavy-metal cassettes providing his company.

“I'm a single man, I have no girlfriends, I have no luck with them. Things never work out,” Richard explains. “You know what, ain't it better to be single in some ways? You get nothing but aggravation. I can't find the right person. I had girls into me. I had one girl that tried to rob me. So I have to be very careful. I don't trust no one.”

Richard was very close to his mother and brings her up every chance he gets. I learn she was almost 90 before she died, in 2010. She was confined to a wheelchair and suffered from dementia for a long time before finally passing.

“I did a lot of crying in the church. I had to stay in the forest. I don't want to go back to that day; I don't want to talk about that. I get crying too much,” Richard says. “But what do you do? We all have to go through that sooner or later. Don't that suck, though? It never goes away completely, doesn't it? I'm doing a little better. It is very hard when you lose your very close parent. I had a good stepfather. My mom married four times. All the other divorces, they were all bad, they all dead. I can't describe the feeling, but when you lose a very close mother or father, it rips you like the Devil. I don't want to go back to that day, though.”

Richard adds, “I promised my mom I would not give up.”

I don’t think I’m overreaching here when I say his mother would be proud. This guy’s degree of sustainability, especially rooted in a fervent passion he’s had for exploring the universe since he was 12, leaves me more than a little jealous.

Andreassen’s life is highlighted by astronomical events and little else. He already has travel plans for the next North American solar eclipse, in 2017. He can recall the exact day and date of all his pictures and is most proud of the above Venus transit photos from June 5, 2012. He says he drove all the way out to the desert in southern Utah and it took him 10 days to set up his equipment. He's also proud of the three weeks he spent in Australia, snapping images of the southern sky us northerners can’t see. He shows off these images and the boomerangs he’s also glued to his door. I ask to see his scopes, but was told they take too long to set up.

It’s interesting to see Richard’s interactions with other people that happen to wander by. A Jimmy John’s employee appears, giving out free mini-sandwich samples. It takes Richard a while to understand that they’re free, and when he finally gets one, he's utterly dismayed over the shredded lettuce and begins picking it out furiously.

“I can't fucking eat this,” he says. “Lettuce is deadly. It'll put me in the emergency room.”

A week later, I come back to check on Richard and see his newly developed photographs. He’s already mounting them, ready to glue them on when a scruffy-looking hippie wanders up, introducing himself as Frolic, and asks if we have any weed. I’m discussing UFOS with Richard, and he’s recalling strange objects he saw over New York in the 70s. I ask whether he believes in aliens.

“You know, there's a lot of something that did go on in the 1940s at Roswell,” he says and then contradicts himself. “Aliens been here already, they hiding. We don't know if they here yet, but…”

Frolic interrupts: “The guy that taught me how to grow medical cannabis in Northern California in the mountains, actually his grandpa was an actual government contractor for Area 51. He actually reverse-engineered the crash-landed craft from Roswell to actually make a bunch of the technology that's in use today—actually tablets and touch screens and stuff. But he was actually killed for it by the government because he had some of the technology in a private hangar of his stuff. And they were like, 'Oh, you can't have that stuff. We're going to take it and kill you…'”

Frolic goes on about Mars’s “Mayan” face (he meant Cydonia) and the nearby canyons that apparently trace the Pleiades constellation and Nibiru, the phantom planet threatening to collide with Earth. He also mentions that ancient aliens were somehow stealing gold from the “genetic slave race” they left on Earth, which was some time before chemtrails and blah, blah, blah. I’m really glad I didn't give him any of my pot.

People-wise, this is not a great recipe. All Richard agrees with is, “We're very sure Mars had some kind of life, about two, three billion years ago, when our Earth was still very, very hot... There's a lot of theories I don't like; I don't agree with them. Like there was another earth and someone bought earth and came and brought the earth here. I don't like a lot of the theories. We don't know.”

If that’s enough for Richard, that’s enough for me. I warmly shake his hand, thank him again for the fantastic tour, and go back to say goodbye. Admittedly, I look at the sky a little differently now, and I’m thinking of buying a trailer. 

@filth_filler

The entrance to Yoido Full Gospel Church

Last week, David Yongi-Cho was convicted of embezzling $12 million in funds from the Yoido Full Gospel Church. He was given a three-year suspended prison sentence (meaning he has five years until he actually goes to jail) and ordered to pay nearly $5 million in fines. The Yoido Gospel, which David founded, is the largest Pentacostal Christian congregation in South Korea, making him an icon—and not just in South Korea—the guy even has a his own celebratory name day dedicated to him by the church of New York.

In recent years, Christianity has blossomed in South Korea. The first Christian missionaries arrived in 1794, and by the 80s, it managed to surpass Confucianism as the country's top religion. This contrasts greatly with China and Japan, where Christianity largely failed to gain popularity. According to Myoung-Kyu Park, the rise of Christianity in Korea owes partly to its association with Western prosperity.

In Seoul today, the streets are adorned with more neon red crosses than McDonald's arches. But of all the churches, Yoido reigns supreme. In 2009, it had almost one million members. Needless to say, an excessive congregation makes for extravagant contributions.

Yoido's congregation

The Yoido Gospel was opened in 1973 to accommodate to the ballooning number of followers that Cho had amassed. The strongest distinction of Yoido from any other church is its "Threefold Blessing." Cho preaches that not only will members be spiritually cleansed, they will also grow healthy and wealthy. Quite an offer. 

Unsurprisingly, some people don’t buy it. Critics have labeled the Threefold Blessing as a selfish faith that contributes nothing to society. To make matters worse, Cho is regularly in the headlines for accusations of pilfering the church's money. In a piece published by the Economist, one pastor from another Seoul church remarked, “When you’re looking at assets that huge, human greed comes into play."

Growing rich and healthy does indeed appeal to me, but I was more curious to see how the churchgoers would react to the news of David's sins, so I decided to attend the Sunday service myself. The entrance to the rotunda building, though impressive, resembles more of a baseball stadium than a church. I arrived an hour early for the first sermon, so I decided to interview the crowd, even though I was slightly reluctant (I had heard that members of the church had been been present for Cho’s sentencing, and that they’d started a riot, attacking the media who were present.)

To my relief, I was spared from being bashed with Bibles. Kang Myeong-Ju told me she’s been coming here for more than 30 years. When I asked her what she thought about the charges, she said she was “shocked and distressed” to hear the news. And when I asked if she still supported him, she said, “So long as he repents his sins deeply, then yes.” She went on to tell me that the “church won’t lose members over this issue, as people are coming here to see God, not the pastor.”

In-Ho Kim, who’s a three-year member, said Yoido reached this size “because people really trust David Cho.” When I asked whether he did, he told me, “I’m not sure what to say about his private issues. But yes, I do trust him, and I will continue to give to the cause.”

Two of many ATMs located inside the church

Everyone I spoke to had heard of Cho’s indictment, and yet all were still going to donate. I was growing very compelled to see Cho’s sermon, and exactly how persuasive the enigma must be. Inside the building, it was difficult not to notice the abundance of ATMs, which were like passive-aggressive reminders to keep donation money on hand.

I was ushered to the international section on the upper balcony. Here, they offer headphones playing translations of the sermon. From my vantage point, I could appreciate the immensity of the building—it was like sitting inside Madison Square Garden. Pretty soon, every seat was occupied. The choir began an admittedly awesome performance, and the pastors took to the stage. I recognized Cho, and his shiny little head, in an instant.

The first speaker the Senior Pastor Young Hoon Lee (a subordinate position to Cho's, which he has since forfeited in the wake of the scandal). Lee made an apology for the conduct of the church, then dived straight into the most ironic topic possible—corruption. In a mystifying ramble, Lee proclaimed that “money is the true source of true evil," and “that following money is the path to corruption." At that moment, he stopped and said it was “time for the offerings."

Reverend Cho performing a sermon

An army of white-jacketed henchmen suddenly appeared, weaving through the crowd with large red baskets. I tried to make hopeful eye contact with someone around me who might also have recognized the absurdity, but alas, all of them were reaching for their wallets.

When all of the baskets were full, the collectors marched to the stage and piled them on top of each other. I didn’t want to think about how much was in it, and luckily I didn’t have to—it was David Cho’s turn to speak his piece. Dressed in a polka dot red tie, he began what can only be described as an altogether verbose discussion about suffering. He finally mentioned that the past few years have been an “ordeal for him” and that he “no longer wished for money.” But then, lo and behold, he announced it was “time for another offering.”

My head was spinning. Was this actually happening? He had neglected to actually apologize for anything—he was going to jail for swindling their money, and here they were, reaching for their second wave of donations.

The choir resumed, and I managed to break away to speak with one of the donation collectors, Isaac Ha. When I brought up the future of the church, Isaac assured me that "although David used some of the church money for personal use, he acknowledged that it was wrong today, and because of that, everyone will forgive him."