In high school, I tried to bypass my school’s security blocks with proxies I found online. My attempts never worked—the filter was way too stringent, and the system was smart enough to catch on as soon as I visited Facebook. When I graduated, I was happy to no longer have to worry about a digital nanny nagging me about the NSFW articles I wanted to read, but many Christian kids never escape digital parental controls.

Covenant Eyes is a small internet filter company based in Owosso, Michigan. Ron DeHaas founded the company 13 years ago, because he wanted to keep his teenage sons away from porn, while prompting a discussion about why nobody should ever watch porn. The company supplies users with software allowing them to block websites and track internet activity, along with e-books and articles about porn addiction, such as “My Husband is Addicted to Porn!” and “Do Women Who Watch Porn Feel More Shame Than Men?” Most of these blog posts include personal stories from pastors, moms, and Covenant Eyes users, reminding readers that they’re not alone in their need to bust a load on a computer keyboard.

Via Skype, the company’s community manager, Luke Gilkerson, told me, “Covenant Eyes is against pornography.” The company believes pornography damages the mind, making people unproductive and changing the way people see and treat women. Luke said most users fit into one of two groups: parents who are looking for something more than just a filter, and adult men who have “felt a strong temptation to look at pornography” and didn't like the way porn “consumed their lives.”

A few weeks ago at work, my co-worker mentioned belonging to the first category of Covenant Eyes users. He lives with a super-Christian family (essentially his landlords) that use Covenant Eyes to prevent him from viewing “unholy” web content. As part of their living agreement, he’s forced to connect Covenant Eyes to his phone and laptop. The app then sends the family patriarch weekly reports detailing all the sites my coworker has visited. Although my co-worker has found a few ways to get around the app, he's still confined within its limits.

I was unsure what qualified as “unholy” web content (other than, you know, porn), so I decided to try Covenant Eyes.

Covenant Eyes offers three payment options. (What, did you think being pure came for free?) A simple website filter costs $4.99 per month and allows the administrator to block certain websites; for $8.99 per month, the Accountability package monitors a user’s internet activity, rates the websites they go on, and then sends a report back to the administrator. (The report is optional, but is the main point of this payment option.) If you’re feeling really anxious about a Christian’s internet activity, you can buy Filtering and Accountability together for $10.49 per month. As a bonus, the final package also allows you to restrict the amount of time a user can spend online. You can install the packages on most computers and smartphones, but the Filtering option isn't available on Android devices.

Eager to see how sacrilegious Covenant Eyes rated my internet activity, my girlfriend Erica and I signed up for the Accountability and Filtering option.

I downloaded the app on my phone and computer. (I made my username “sassy,” because “badgurlsinner” seemed like a dead giveaway. )The set-up was relatively easy. It asked me who I wanted to receive my online activity reports. I made Erica my accountability partner.

Afterwards, the app gave me the option to change the “sensitivity level” of the reports it would send Erica. I chose Youth.

Next, I set up the app on my iPhone. Once again, I downloaded the app and logged in. For the app to stalk me, I had to use the app as my browser—it only records which websites you go on with Covenant Eyes, meaning the report wouldn't include sites I viewed on my phone’s web browser.

After I finished installing the app on my phone and computer, I restarted my computer, and Covenant Eyes prompted me to log in. Covenant Eyes had become the only administrator on the computer, and if I didn't log into it, I couldn't access the Internet until I uninstalled the software.

The app blocked porn, so I went on Facebook, because I am boring, but it was also blocked. I went to click on a link to Lights's blog so I could look at her pregnancy photos, but once again, the app had blocked the site I wanted to visit. 

I changed my sensitivity levels to Teen. Suddenly, I could no longer view my Amazon Wish List. I went on the Covenant Eyes Twitter account and clicked on a link called “How I Shut Down Two Porn Shops.” Covenant Eyes blocked that too. It also blocked VICE, but I expected that.

Since I made my own account, I was unable to access my online reports whenever I wanted and had to wait till Covenant Eyes sent it to me. When I checked the report, it showed me what times I was most active online (6 and 7 PM), my most visited websites, each site’s rating and description, and the date and time I accessed certain sites. Because I set my sensitivity level so low, Covenant Eyes blocked nearly every site I tried to visit, but I don’t think any of these sites could actually cause any teenage boys moral “harm.”

Yeah, I have vibrators on my Amazon Wish List, but kids are going to discover vibrators eventually, and the software also blocked Google, Facebook, and Tumblr. In other words, Covenant Eyes considered most of the internet unholy. The company's employees and users seem to have good intentions—they're trying to protect children—but porn and social media are probably less dangerous than what most kids encounter at school. Software can prevent Christians from seeing “unholy” web content, but it can’t stop them from encountering the realities of life—the good, the bad, and the pornographic—or rubbing one out in private without watching porn.

@sofiesucks

Recently, it occurred to me that Weediquette isn’t my first venture into cannabis-related writing. In college, I was an aspiring rapper who filled notebook after notebook with rhymes about smoking joints, rolling blunts, and possessing mass amounts of weed (which I did not). Obviously, this wasn’t an innovation—rappers have used weed-smoking prowess as a topic of pontification since the birth of hip-hop. This has led to amazing tracks, like the Pharcyde’s “Pack the Pipe,” Madvillain’s “America’s Most Blunted,” and of course, Luniz's “I Got Five On It.” Listening to these songs and other rap classics about weed the past couple of weeks inspired me to do something a little different for this week’s column.

My rapping days are far behind me, but I thought I’d blow the dust off the mic and give music another go. I whipped up this beat and laid down a few bars about procrastination, wake and bake, and the guy who played the farmer in Babe. If this sticks, perhaps I’ll record a Weediquette mixtape.

@ImYourKid

What do you know about Newcastle, besides the fact that Newcastle Brown Ale, the world’s best brown ale named after Newcastle, comes from there? If your answer is, “what are you talking about?” or, “I know absolutely nothing about Newcastle,” then you were just like us roughly six months ago. But for the better part of 2013, the crack team here at VICE Canada has been planning a trip to the Geordie capital thanks to our friends at Newcastle Brown Ale. So give yourself a pat on the back, sponsor!

Anyway, the result of this friendly partnership is a five-part series designed to show you all the dry wit, brown food, Brown Ale, crazy partiers, football fanaticism, live bands that don’t suck, and club DJs that don’t suck—because Newcastle truly is one of the most fun places we’ve ever been to. It’s a beautiful old city that’s full of fun, often very weird people, who welcomed us with open arms and only the occasional cocked first.

So check out episode 1, wherein our clumsily charming host Adam Jackson drops in straight from Toronto to meet Gavin Webster, a man whose face likely appears beside Northern Englander in the dictionary. Gavin, a comedian, toured Adam around to help him get his bearings in Newcastle—then shoved him on stage to perform at a comedy night marketed as humour about Northern England. Clearly, Adam was completely prepared to perform.

It was quite the day, and we hope you enjoy watching it.

Photo via Wikipedia Creative Commons

After a torrid six-year courtship, Charles Manson is finally making an honest woman out of his 25-year-old girlfriend, Star. Like me, you all probably thought it would never happen. Charlie’s not exactly known as a “one woman man.” Plus he already has a family, so I wouldn’t have guessed he would’ve been eager to start another one. And yet, here we are, less than a week after Manson's girlfriend revealed the pending nuptials.

Star said, “I'll tell you straight up, Charlie and I are going to get married. When that will be, we don't know. But I take it very seriously. Charlie is my husband. Charlie told me to tell you this. We haven't told anybody about that.”

Chuck, like any other single man living in a party house with a bunch of bros (in this case, a maximum security party house with 3,000 bros), he’s downplaying the commitment. He said, “That's a bunch of garbage. You know that, man. That's trash. We're just playing that for public consumption.” I know what that means. I see through the dismissive rhetoric to the truth of what he’s trying to impart. He doesn’t want his guy friends to think he’s soft.

I was in a similar situation once. I lived with three other guys, but I also had a girlfriend that demanded all of my time. “No, you can’t go lift weights in the yard with your friends,” she’d scream. I’d threaten to stab her eye out with a piece of broken glass and pour battery acid into the gaping wound. It was not a good scene, because all my buddies thought I was pussy-whipped.  The next thing you knew, I wasn’t showering for two weeks because I didn’t want to get my skull smashed with a lunch tray. In short, I get it, Charlie. Women are difficult. They nag, they control, they get you brutally beaten within an inch of your life. It’s not easy, but as someone who is also engaged, I can tell you that it’s worth it.

Charlie and Star, from mansondirect.com, your one-stop shop for all things Chuck

There will be moments where Manson will long for the simple pleasures of solitary confinement. If you thought trying to bring about an apocalyptic race war was hard, try deciding what to watch on TV on Tuesday night. What you have to remember about monogamy though is that it’s a huge comfort to have someone there when you come home. Knowing that another human being cares about you and is always thinking about you is a special feeling. It’s sort of like when the guard comes by your cell to make sure you’re going to sleep and not carving a shank out of a metal spoon or masturbating on your cellmate’s head. It’s that concern for your well-being that’s so reassuring. What I’m saying is that being married is like getting to fuck a prison guard.

On the subject of sex, without doing it on a regular basis, even the best marriage is doomed to failure. Without a healthy coital routine, a couple can fall into the abyss of petty squabbles, resentment, and emotional distance. Unfortunately, Star revealed that Manson is not allowed conjugal visits because the state of California doesn’t permit them for inmates serving life sentences. I happen to believe that there are ways around that restriction that will keep the marriage healthy. Obviously, sexting is out of the question, but consider erotic drawings. I’m sure with a little practice, Star could draw a pretty accurate version of her labia. It’s really all about shading and depth. Without those subtle details, a labia could easily turn into a steak dinner, and there’s nothing sexy about red meat.

Women love a man who can play an instrument.

The most important thing that a marriage requires is patience. You’ll get annoyed or frustrated with your spouse. They’ll grate on you with their quirks, quibbles, and foibles.  Maybe they don’t wash the dishes. Perhaps they leave the toilet seat up. Maybe they forced a bunch of people to cut a pregnant woman’s stomach open. Everyone has issues. At some point, we all end up wanting to escape marriage and live freely again. I implore those brave souls in a relationship to resist that temptation to flee. In the case of Charles Manson, that shouldn’t be too hard. The barbed wire, electric fences, and snipers do a great job of keeping a husband from getting antsy.

The world is a lonely, cold place, and whenever two people find each other, it’s beautiful. As a great man once said, “Love is patient, love is kind.” Mazel tov to Charles and Star. May all your wishes come true.

Well… not all of them. I’m not sure I want to know what Charles Manson wishes for.

OK… maybe none of them.  May none of your wishes come true. 

Dave Schilling's new book, Letters from my Therapist, would make the perfect wedding present for any newlywed couple. It's on Amazon and iBookstore, and is a way better gift than a crockpot.

@dave_schilling

Come Inside Schilling:

The Whitest Vacation Destination in America

Survivng an Election Night Panic Attack

The Murdering Psychopaths of Black History

Dear people who love to look at stuff,

My name is Nick Gazin, and I write about comics, art, books, nerd stuff, paper, and anything related to fan communities I find meaningful. Mostly, I review comics.

Here are some reviews.

Biobuddy
Anya Davidson
Self Published

Anya Davidson silkscreened this comic’s cover and pages and designed a unique drawing on each copy’s inside-cover. Although Picturebox sold these for $5 each, I expected their minimum price to be $40. Anya's stuff reminds me of Luis de Moscoso Alvarado, Gary Panter, and Jack Kirby, but not in a way that detracts from her work's individuality. She's an artist to watch.

Exorcise Book
Heather Benjamin
A Bolha

This is a really nice zine collecting Heather Benjamin’s recent drawings. If you don't already know about Heather's work, she draws intense scenes with women who have great hair and earrings, but also have hairy bodies, lots of menstrual blood, and fangs. Her comics include mutilation, bondage, bizarre sexual fantasies, and nightmares. The images are equally deranged and beautiful—she creates each image with delicacy and care. I am fairly certain that Heather will continue her ascent and become a big, big deal.

Buy her book here.

50 Girls 50
Al Williamson
Fantagraphics

This is the kind of thing that makes me really excited and fills me with severe object lust. It's hard for me to fool myself into thinking that object ownership can bring me any real joy, but if something is sublimely beautiful, it can fill a need that’s much deeper than compulsive collecting.

Fantagraphics has been gathering up the work that the EC Comics Library put out in the 1950s, and instead of reprinting the work in collections organized by title, they are collecting the work by artist. This book collects the work of Al Williamson from Weird Science and Weird Fantasy. Most of the comics are sci-fi stories involving space travel. Although Al created most the work, he was occasionally assisted by other artists, most notably Frank Frazetta. No disrespect to Al, but the comics which Frank helped him create are the best comics in the book.

Buy 50 Girls 50 here. 

Cowabunga Schnauzer
Marc Bell
Half-World Books

Marc Bell gave me this at the NY Art Book Fair. I’m so happy I live in a wonderful world where one of my favorite artists knows I exist and wants me to have his work. 

These images are like a weird version of The Busy World of Richard Scarry, and every page of every Marc Bell comic is chock full of original concepts and strange uses of language. I still love Shrimpy and Paul above all his other work, but I think Shrimpy and Paul is one of the best comics of the past 20 years. 

These Two Zines
Heather Benjamim

Someday, I'll tell younger people I had the opportunity to buy Heather Benjamin originals for almost nothing, and they’ll go, “Aw man!” This is simply a one-page fold-over zine, but it’s still beautiful. I have zero bad things to say about Heather's work, because her art is perfect. 

Celebrity Facial
Jennifer Kornder

A nice lady in a dress gave me this photocopied zine at the New York Art Book Fair. The zine collects grotesque portraits of celebrities like Paris Hilton and Paula Deen. 

Drawn in a loose and experimental style, these portraits show both Jennifer’s humor and her artistic control. She’s a hot talent to watch out for.

You can fine her stuff here.

Dian Hanson's History of Pin-Up Magazines
Dian Hanson
Taschen

It’s funny that teenagers make fun of each other for masturbating. As an adult, it's hard for me to think of anything cooler than jerking it. Look at this book for proof. This three-volume boxed set includes books with covers from jacking-off history. I don’t want to jerk off to these books too much, so I’ll probably give the collection to a dumb slut who’s into cornball burlesque bologna. 

The Best American Comics 2013
Edited by Jeff Smith with Jessica Abel and Matt Madden

I think it's really, really, really cool that Jeff Smith, the brains behind Bone and one of America’s best cartoonists, edited this. I didn’t expect to like this book, but I was jazzed to see work by Alison Bechdel, Brandon Graham, Sam Alden, Michael Deforge, Sammy Harkham, Kate Beaton, Michael Kupperman, Paul Pope, and Gabrielle Bell. The rest of the contributors were average.

Behind Every Curtain
Marcel Dzama
David Zwirner

This is a nice little Archie Digest sized book of Marcel Dzama's new work, which includes drawings, paintings, and stills from his movies. It only costs $20, so I bought a few. 

Buy it here. 

The Flowers of Evil Volume 1
Shuzo Oshimi
Vertical

The Flowers of Evil is the first in a series of mangas about Takao, your standard nervous high school pervert. He reads high-minded books, including Charles Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, and thinks this makes him special. He has a crush on Nanako, the star pupil of his class, and one day he steals her gym clothes when nobody’s around. Nakamura, the school weirdo, witnesses his crime and uses this information to blackmail and bully our hero. Meanwhile, he actually starts spending time with the object of his affection. 

A lot of manga tends to be the same, but I liked this one. It's not the best I've ever read, but if you're a perv or would like to read about pervs, you will enjoy The Flowers of Evil. 

@NicholasGazin

The Arch of Reunification in Pyongyang, North Korea. All photos by Gareth Morgan.

For the past decade, New Zealanders Joanne and Gareth Morgan have been living the semiretired lifestyle of their dreams, traveling around the world on motorcycles alongside a few of their closest friends. They’ve traversed all seven continents on their bikes, with routes as varied as Venice to Beijing, Florida to northern Alaska, and South Africa to London, just to name a few. Gareth funds his own trips, many of which he uses to pursue philanthropic endeavors, particularly in the social-investment space. He is able to do so with money he’s made as an economist and investment manager—one who has earned the reputation for criticizing unethical practices in New Zealand’s financial-services industry.

In late August, the Morgans embarked on their most ambitious journey yet, at least physically. The real journey began years ago, when they decided they wanted to ride the Baekdudaegan, a mountain range that stretches the length of North and South Korea’s shared peninsula. After countless hours of negotiation and coordination with both governments, they were granted permission. It was, the Morgans believe, the first time anyone’s ever traveled through both countries like that since the partitioning of Korea in 1945. By making the trip they hoped to demonstrate how Koreans can come together over what they have in common. To symbolize this, the Morgans took some stones from Paektu, a holy mountain in the North, and brought them to Hallasan, a similarly sacred peak in the South.

Joanne and Gareth shot the entirety of their trip, the footage from which they have graciously allowed us to cut into a short film that will premiere on VICE.com this month. In some ways, the footage makes the Korean coast look alternately like California, China, and Cuba. It’s a beautiful view few foreigners have seen, and even if planning the road trip straight through the Demilitarized Zone required working within parameters set by the highly choreographed and restricted confines of North-South Korean diplomacy, this was a journey worth documenting from start to finish.

The Morgans pay homage to Kim Il Sung, the “liberator” of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

VICE: Do you think negotiating your trip constituted a form of diplomacy? Would you like to be viewed as diplomats?
Joanne Morgan: Gareth as a diplomat is actually quite funny. Gareth says exactly what he thinks, and I definitely wouldn’t put him into any diplomatic role.
Gareth Morgan: With this trip, the real point [for us] was just to understand the Korean people. What spins their wheels? What’s their sense of identity? How are they handling this 68-year interruption to their 5,000-year history?
Joanne: In the 80s, when I was standing in the DMZ on the south side looking across to the north, I saw a group of old men standing there gazing north and crying. It was very emotional and I couldn’t quite understand it. That’s always stayed with me, that huge longing that they had to reunite their families.

What are your thoughts on the North Korean government?
Gareth: [The West] doesn’t like the North Korean regime—but there are a lot of systems around the world that we don’t like, yet nations have normalized relationships with one another. Even though they’ve got totally different regimes than we have in New Zealand, we have pretty normalized relationships with China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia—a whole lot of regimes that do not value human liberty and individual rights anywhere near as much as we do in a liberal democracy. North Korea fits into that camp. The interests of the state override the interests of any individuals. There’s no freedom of speech, there’s no freedom of association, and no freedom of representation. Those are all things that we, from the liberal democracies in the West, value hugely and would never give up.

South Korea has really come from a dictatorship-type regime, and it’s moving more and more to a liberal-democracy ideal… The issue is, do we go forward with the relationship by isolating and escalating the differences, or is it better to engage and allow normalized relations to occur, particularly between the two Koreas? Through the osmosis that comes from trade, investments, and cultural relationships, the regimes will come a bit closer together perhaps. I think that’s what all Koreans want.

Five riders, four guides, and our host reach the summit of Mount Paektu.

Do you find it strange that two New Zealanders were able to make a trip like this when the majority of Koreans would never be allowed to do so?
Joanne: All the young people of South Korea [we’ve met] say, “We want to travel the whole Baekdudaegan as well; we want to travel the whole length of Korea.” And you could see that, apart from all the other issues with North Korea, they’re desperate to travel it.
Gareth: They were quite disturbed about the fact that we’d been able to do this. And one of the projects that we’re looking at going forward is to actually get some motorcycles from Seoul and ride through the DMZ, up to Pyongyang, and back—with South Koreans with us. That’ll be a big breakthrough.

How strict were the North Korean officials about letting you explore the mountains and seaside? Did they allow you to deviate from the predetermined path?
Gareth: We chose the route we would ride, [but] we obviously had to agree on a route with the North Koreans many months in advance. We chose one that would follow the Baekdudaegan; that’s the part that binds [both] Koreas, and it was pretty symbolic to follow it. Once we were on the road, we were escorted the whole way by a ginormous motorcade with security vehicles in front of and behind our five bikes. We’ve been through China with the same sort of [escorts]. So we’re old hands—a standard tactic for us is for the last motorcycle to go quite slow so the sweeping vehicles behind them have to stay behind it… That would open up a big gap in which the motorcyclists in the middle could stop and take photos. They woke up to that after a few days. They were generally quite tolerant, but there was no way we would’ve been able to turn off the road and go down on our own… The rationale they would give for that was [North Koreans] are not used to vehicles coming down the road, particularly big motorcycles and foreign vehicles. You’d come around a corner and there’d be animals or whatever on the road, and that was true—that’s a fair rationale.
Joanne: Also, the children were fearful. They said to us that the children will see you and they will be fearful because they’ve never seen a foreigner before. Some of the areas we went to had huge crowds in the streets, and we’d slow down and wave to a kiddie or to a mother and child and some of them would be absolutely delighted and others would just be terrified.
Gareth: This society has become, over 68 years, pretty self-sufficient, agrarian, and traditional. There’s not much machinery around at all because of the sanctions and so on. So there’s sort of a serene peace to the society in terms of the way they go about their daily tasks. It’s actually quite lovely. It’s like going to a medieval village. So I can sort of understand the issues there in terms of the disturbance we caused.

All photos by Gareth Morgan.

Watch the Morgans and their friends roll through North and South Korea in a new episode of The VICE Guide to Travel this month.

More from this issue:

Deep-Fried America on a Stick

The Act of Puking

Black-Gold Blues

(Photo via)

Indian nuclear scientists haven't had an easy time of it over the past decade. Not only has the scientific community been plagued by "suicides," unexplained deaths, and sabotage, but those incidents have gone mostly underreported in the country—diluting public interest and leaving the cases quickly cast off by police.

Last month, two high-ranking engineers—KK Josh and Abhish Shivam—on India's first nuclear-powered submarine were found on railway tracks by workers. They were pulled from the line before a train could crush them, but were already dead. No marks were found on the bodies, so it was clear they hadn't been hit by a moving train, and reports allege they were poisoned elsewhere before being placed on the tracks to make the deaths look either accidental or like a suicide. The media and the Ministry of Defence, however, described the incident as a routine accident and didn't investigate any further.    

This is the latest in a long list of suspicious deaths. When nuclear scientist Lokanathan Mahalingam's body turned up in June of 2009, it was palmed off as a suicide and largely ignored by the Indian media. However, Pakistani outlets, perhaps unsurprisingly, given relations between the two countries, kept the story going, noting how quick authorities were to label the death a suicide considering no note was left.

Five years earlier, in the same forest where Mahalingham's body was eventually discovered, an armed group with sophisticated weaponry allegedly tried to abduct an official from India's Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC). He, however, managed to escape. Another NPC employee, Ravi Mule, had been murdered weeks before, with police failing to "make any headway" into his case and effectively leaving his family to investigate the crime. A couple of years later, in April of 2011, when the body of former scientist Uma Rao was found, investigators ruled the death as suicide, but family members contested the verdict, saying there had been no signs that Rao was suicidal.   

Trombay, the site of India's first atomic reactor. (Photo via) 

This seems to be a recurring theme with deaths in the community. Madhav Nalapat, one of the few journalists in India giving the cases any real attention, has been in close contact with the families of the recently deceased scientists left on the train tracks. "There was absolutely no kind of depression or any family problems that would lead to suicide," he told me over the phone.

If the deaths of those in the community aren't classed as suicide, they're generally labeled as "unexplained." A good example is the case of M Iyer, who was found with internal haemorrhaging to his skull—possibly the result of a "kinky experiment," according to a police officer. After a preliminary look-in, the police couldn't work out how Iyer had suffered internal injuries while not displaying any cuts or bruises, and investigations fizzled out.   

This label is essentially admission of defeat on the police force's part. Once the "unexplained" rubber stamp has been approved, government bodies don't tend to task the authorities with investigating further. This may be a necessity due to the stark lack of evidence available at the scene of the deaths—a feature that some suggest could indicate the work of professional killers—but if this is the case, why not bring in better trained detectives to investigate the cases? A spate of deaths in the nuclear scientific community would create a media storm and highly publicised police investigation in other countries, so why not India?

This inertia has led to great public dissatisfaction with the Indian police. "[The police] say it's an unsolved murder, that's all. Why doesn't it go higher? Perhaps to a specialist investigations unit?" Madhav asked. "These people were working on the submarine program, creating a reactor, and have either 'committed suicide' or been murdered. It's astonishing that this hasn't been seen as suspicious."

Perhaps, I suggested, this series of deaths is just the latest chapter in a long campaign aiming to derail India's nuclear and technological capabilities. Madhav agreed, "There is a clear pattern of this type of activity going on," he said.

INS Sindhurakshak (Photo via)

The explosions that sunk INS Sindhurakshak – a submarine docked in Mumbai – in August of this year could have been deliberate, according to unnamed intelligence sources. And some have alleged that the CIA was behind the sabotage of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

Of course, the deaths have caused fear and tension among those currently working on India's various nuclear projects. "[Whistleblowers] are getting scared of being involved in the nuclear industry in India," Madhav relayed to me. Their "families are getting very nervous about this" and "many of them leave for foreign countries and get other jobs."

There are parallels here with the numerous attacks on the Iranian nuclear scientist community. Five people associated with the country's nuclear programme have been targeted in the same way: men on motorcycles sticking magnetic bombs on to their cars and detonating them as they drive off. However, the Iranian government are incredibly vocal in condemning these acts—blaming the US and Israel—and at least give the appearance that they are actively investigating.

The same cannot be said for the Indian government. "India is not making any noise about the whole thing," Madhav explained. "People have just accepted the police version, [which describes these incidents] as normal kinds of death."

If the deaths do, in fact, turn out to be premeditated murders, deciding who's responsible is pure speculation at this point. Two authors have alleged that the US have dabbled in sabotaging the country's technological efforts in the past; China is in a constant soft-power battle with India; and the volatile relationship with Pakistan makes the country a prime suspect. "It could be any of them," Madhav said.

But the most pressing issue isn't who might be behind the murders, but that the Indian government's apathy is potentially putting their high-value staff at even greater risk. Currently, these scientists, who are crucial to the development of India's nuclear programes, whether for energy or security, have "absolutely no protection at all. Nothing, zero," Madhav told me. "Which is amazing for people who are in a such a sensitive program."

@josephfcox

More nuclear stories:

We Asked a Military Expert if All the World's Armies Could Shut Down the US

Geriatric Nuclear Reactors Could Kill Us All

They Weren't Joking, North Korea Tested Another Nuclear Bomb

A bowl containing beaten kif.

Until the Spanish occupation of northern Morocco in the 1920s, Chefchaouen was basically a closed city. In fact, when troops first arrived, they found Jews in the area speaking a medieval form of Castilian Spanish that hadn't been heard on the Iberian peninsula for around 400 years, and a population that was more opposed to Christianity than reddit's entire swamp of militant keyboard atheists. 

But thanks to the Spanish valiantly wiping out decades of cultural heritage, the city has now opened up to become a popular tourist spot. Backpackers flock in from around the world to take selfies next to its beautiful blue-washed architecture, eat its famous regional goat cheese, and—more than anything else—take advantage of the thriving local hash industry. 

Chefchaouen.

Morocco is said to produce nearly half of the world's hashish, and it's estimated that around 800,000 Moroccans work in the industry—mostly in the Rif, the mountainous region of northern Morocco where Chefchaouen is located. The debate about decriminalizing that industry has been bubbling away in parliament for a while, with a member of the opposition saying in August that his party hopes to legalize cannabis production within the next three years.   

Its illegal status is no small problem in a region where so many people depend on it for their primary source of income. Quoted in the Independent, a spokesman for Morocco's Istiqlal Party said, "There are villages in the Rif where men are nowhere to be found because they are either in jail or wanted by the police." The same argument currently sweeping through the US and UK is being made in Morocco by pro-legalization campaigners: that taxing production could save the country's economy from its current deficit, save money on policing, and basically make everything easier for everyone involved.

With this in mind, I decided to visit Chefchaouen for myself to exist exclusively on goat's cheese for a weekend and find the world's best hash in its birthplace.

Weed we bought almost instantly and very easily when we arrived.

Turns out that last one isn't too difficult. If you smoke weed and you can't score in Chefchaouen, then you're probably smoking far too much weed. Rifi Berbers—a Berber ethnic group who inhabit the Rif—accost you, smiling, at almost any time of day, offering you a bunch of stuff you might want: "Hash? Kif? Girls? Opium?" etc, etc. They will not take your first, second, or third "no" as any kind of legitimate answer.   

I brought two friends along with me, one of whom was a Chefchaouen veteran. When we arrived, he called a friend he'd made on a previous trip and set up a tour around a hash farm for the next day. With everything in place, we headed to the hostel—Hotel Souika—which was full of all the cliches you'd expect in a utopia for hash smokers.

There were male backpackers wearing beards, female backpackers wearing beads, and the standard-issue stoner pilgrims wearing Berber fleeces waffling away about drugs, while on drugs, to anyone else who looked like they might be on drugs and was unfortunate enough to be within earshot. More unorthodox were the cooing Spanish and Japanese couple who started and ended every day with a huge joint and spent about half an hour each evening brushing their teeth in absolute darkness on the balcony.

Our first full day in Chefchaouen started as badly as any day in Chefchaouen can. Our guide picked us up at the hotel and we walked about a hundred metres, with him telling us how he was going to show us rooms packed with weed, before a man grabbed him by the shoulder and led him away. I turned around and caught my friend's eye. "Start walking," he said, "he's getting arrested." I heard handcuffs clink behind me and started ambling forward, trying, very badly, to look as if I had nothing to do with him. I felt bad, yes, but I really wasn't prepared to be thrown in a cell for the day for the crime of walking down a road next to a man I'd just met.

Back at the hostel, the receptionist told us that wouldn't have been an issue. "It was the tourism police, and he isn't a registered tour guide," she told us. "They arrest him every day—it's no problem for you. They will question him and he will say, 'I don't have a job. Do you want me to steal?'"

Our perma-arrested guide isn't alone in his jobless plight. Morocco's unemployment rate is around 9 percent, but rises to 30 percent for those under the age of 34. That number wouldn't be nearly as high if the now clandestine hash trade was legalized, forcing farmers to keep records of the estimated 800,000 industry employees and potentially create more jobs as the market grows.

The view of Chefchaouen from the Spanish mosque in the hills.

After the hostel's receptionist explained the fate of our first tour guide, another man approached us, told us he'd seen what had happened and offered to show us around instead. We followed him through the mountains for a good 40 minutes, taking a break at a Spanish mosque and admiring the pastel, blue-washed city below us.    

Eventually, we reached a farmhouse at the top of a small hamlet in the hills. We were led to a courtyard and given chairs to sit on while chickens pecked around our feet, making noises that didn't sound like they should be coming from chickens. "They eat the marijuana seeds," our guide told us. "They go crazy."

Kif being beaten into hash.

One of the workers brought a large bag of kif—which is the THC crystals once they've been separated from the marijuana buds—into the courtyard, which had apparently been harvested the month before. A bowl was covered with tights, the kif was placed on top of that, covered with another fabric then beaten so a fine powder was left in the bowl. The powder was collected in a little baggie, scrunched together and rubbed against a trouser leg; then the hash was ready. The farmer told us it takes him around 25 minutes to get through a kilo of kif, from which he can make around 10 grams of hash. 

We were told that what we wouldd see being made would be in the European market next year, but I was also told by other Moroccans that Chefchaouen's hash is mainly consumed by the domestic market.

The hash we made at the farmhouse.

The farm we visited was a family-run business; as we were making the hash a little girl ran around among the chickens, smiling and laughing. It was kind of a weird sight, but testament to the fact that the farm has been owned and operated by the family living there for over 40 years. Chefchaouen's economy revolves around tourism and hash, and a good deal of the tourism is either because of the hash or—among the older tourists I met, at least—because the city has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The legalization and legitimization of a workforce as large as the hash industry's could not only help Morocco's national and local economies, but could help to better integrate the Rif region, known for its Berber tribalism and antagonism towards the central Moroccan government.

It's an industry that already employs close to a million people, has reportedly been in operation in Morocco since the 15th century, and one that members of the police force have been accused of being a part of in the past. Everything points to decriminalization making sense, but there are clearly still obstacles to overcome.

Cannabis legalization in Morocco would be a first for any Arab country. The main question is whether a conservative society—though comparably tolerant, for the region—would tolerate full legalization, and then how the European Union would react, considering Morocco has already been flooding the continent with shipping freights packed with hash for the past half a century.

International pressures considered, it seems unlikely for now—but the potential benefits for Morocco itself is plain to see.

Follow James on Twitter: @duckytennent

More stories about weed:

I Just Want My Big Bag of Weed Back

WATCH – High Country

Algorave programmers writing musical code, all photos by: Paul Cantrell

For most people, the only type of code involved in clubbing is a dress code. However, it turns out there's a whole musical subculture based around watching people who love computers and create dance music with live computer coding. "Algorave," or algorithmic rave, is a scene and club night that has defined its music as: "sounds wholly or partly characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive conditionals."

Let's face it, it's a shit sell; you can't imagine too many people being lured from big-name clubs by promises of repetitive conditionals. While it would be pretty easy to ridicule algorave, it's new and it exists, so I thought I'd go along to check it out for myself. Besides, I didn't want to look back in 30 years and realize that I was that guy who bullied the Belleville Three at school because they were computer-loving nerds who weren't listening to The Ramones.

An algorave set recorded in Barcelona

The promoters of the Algorave night take their keyboard parties all over the world and have previously put on events in places like Canada, Slovenia, Mexico, and London. Tonight, they're in Sheffield, a city that has a proud tradition of siring innovative electronic music, with a line-up of artists whose descriptions sound like captchas. "Glitch cellular automata," "algokraut," and "ambient gabber" are some of my favorites.

Before the night kicked off, I spoke with one of the Algorave founders, Alex McLean, who performs solo as Yaxu and is a member of the laptop three-piece, Slub, about the movement's origins. "Live coding didn’t really exist," Alex told me. "So we kind of had to invent it," added Slub co-member Nick Collins, who also performs solo as Sick Lincoln.

"I’m a live coder, and over the last ten years I’ve been writing code to try to make people dance. That’s my aim," Alex said. Writing code to make music has been a decade-long interest for Alex and Nick, but the epiphany to transport it into a club environment didn’t come along until a couple of years back. "Nick and I were driving up to Nottingham for an event, and we tuned into a pirate radio station called Rogue FM," Alex said. "DJ Jigsaw was on, playing loads of happy hardcore, and that sort of influenced our set that night. At that point, it became algorave."

By their own description, "Algoraves embrace the alien sounds of raves from the past, and introduce alien, futuristic rhythms and beats made through strange, algorithm-aided processes." Alex attempted to breakdown the function of live coding in simplistic terms: "It’s a bit like making a knitting pattern or something; you come up with this usually quite simple way of describing patterns—this is my approach—and then use this as a sort of language for describing your music."

This is what algorave looks like

"Because you have a computer there that's following this pattern as you’re typing it, it’s the writing of the pattern that's making the music. You’re not writing a pattern that generates a whole piece, you’re just writing a pattern that describes one loop, and then to change the music you change the loop. It's very cyclic. It’s writing text, but what I'm doing is quite simple, really. Other performers, like Nick, actually get involved with synthesis—so describing graphs and operators that work together in a big network to create live sound. I work on the level of patterns, but other people performing tonight will be going all the way down to sample level."

In essence, the aim is to put programming at the forefront of the club experience, to present the act of live programming as an art form in itself.

I returned to the venue later that evening to see what turning programming into an art form looks like. Glasses, walking boots, and backpacks form the universal dress code, and pretty much any conversation I overheared revolved around something tech-related. It's not an atmosphere that would give your traditional club bouncer much trouble, and it doesn't feel like much saliva will be exchanged on the dancefloor.

Alex, AKA Yaxu 

Alex performed first, as Yaxu. He sat on the floor, cross-legged in socks with his keyboard on his lap, staring up at the giant projected screen that's gradually filling with code. His fingers glide over the keys like one of those Taiwanese child prodigy pianists who turn up on YouTube every so often. The audience’s eyes were glued to the screen as Yaxu somehow turned lots of numbers and digits into a glitchy fusion of dub, bass ,and techno. Heads bopped and people smiled, not necessarily in time with—or as a reaction to—the music, but in gawping awe of the code unfurling in front of them. Some performers went for a more visual approach, hiding their code behind graphics in an attempt to draw focus to the results rather than the process.

Curious Machine is a good example of the latter, spewing out a scattered, Autechre-esque melee of ambient glitch behind a bunch of visuals that mask the coding. Leeds-based Section_9 reels off code so fast that everyone—even someone like me, who doesn’t have a fucking clue what's going on—can’t fail to be impressed. Young students point at the screen, attempting to dissect the code, working out what's going into the loops and beats gradually filling the screen.

People are locked into the Matrix, but there aren't many little blue pills going around. Hedonism doesn't appear to be at the heart of this movement, at least not tonight anyway. As I walk through the fairly scattered crowd, it's more real ale and appreciative nods than Malibu and MDMA. At some point someone shouts, ironically, "Has anyone got any ketamine?" and that's the closest the night comes to depravity. Another thing that's noticeable about the movement is the spontaneous nature of it all. Codes are built from scratch live and can easily become volatile or unstable because there's often no back-up infrastructure to support or reinforce them. 

"The code gets quite complex and I can change it, but I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen when I change it. It becomes something that I’m just playing with," Alex said. In fact, during Section_9’s performance, lines on the giant screen suddenly start turning red, and with each red line a different sound, loop or beat dies. The sound crumbles away line by line and then dies completely. 

"It’s crashed," he said to the audience. But, within seconds, he came back at it and a beat returned. While danger might not be something you instantly associate with coding, the live set-up meant that the results teetered precariously between spot-on and an absolute fucking disaster. Which is probably aided—at least, in my ill-informed view—by the fact the screen looks like it's displaying a giant electrical malfunction at all times. As a result, the sounds throughout the night, even by one single artist, varied greatly. Occasionally it was inconsistent, clunky, and incoherent; other times it was exciting, unpredictable, and absorbing.

Luuma, masking code with visuals

It's been said that algorave acts as a junction at which hacker philosophy, geek culture, and clubbing all meet, but very little of what most people would recognisz as "clubbing" went on that night. A handful of people break into some kind of motion that extends beyond standing rooted to the spot, but it's pretty tame.

It's not so much about the music—writing code or no writing code, artists like Luuma would likely fill plenty of dancefloors—but to date algorave hasn't managed to pair the bedroom isolation of coding with the empathy and euphoria of communal club culture. While it's currently little more than a computer club with strobe lights, Alex seemed fine with that. For him, for now, the code remained the star attraction and one that Sheffield's small band of algoravers had no problem immersing themselves into.

This article was amended to represent the fact that the artists mentioned weren't creating music with HTML.

@DanielDylanWray

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Shacks in the ghetto

The colored neon lights and the music pumping from the speakers rip through the silence of the countryside near Foggia, in the region of Apulia, southern Italy. I should be in the middle of nowhere but there’s actually quite a lot of traffic here: cars, motorbikes, and people coming and going. It’s around 10 PM and after almost two hours wandering in the roads around Foggia I find myself in front of what the locals call “The Big Ghetto,” or more simply the Rignano Ghetto.

The "ghetto" was spontaneously formed more than 15 years ago, after the evacuation of an abandoned sugar mill, which had served as accommodation for foreign men working in Foggia's “slavery triangle.” Exploitation of migrants in agriculture is not particular to Apulia—it is common all over Italy, especially in the south. A 2012 report by the Flai Cgil (the Italian General Confederation of Labor’s affiliated Agro-industrial Workers’ Union), said that 700,000 regular and irregular pickers work in the fields and about 400,000 of them are recruited irregularly for very low wages.

Inside a shack

Over the last decade the Rignano “village” has expanded. The demography of the ghetto changes depending on the season and the demand for work in the tomato fields. During winter it hosts around 200 immigrants (mainly coming from French-speaking African countries), while during summer the population rises to 800. Some of its inhabitants arrived in Italy by plane 20 years ago, while those who arrived recently had to cross the desert and pay thousands of dollars to travel in rickety fishing boats across the Mediterranean, hoping they wouldn’t lose their lives like those in Lampedusa recently.

Once they succeed in crossing the Mediterranean, day laborers in southern fields are forced to camp out in abandoned factories, with no money and a daily dose of violence from landowners who make enormous profits out of their work. The work conditions border on the Medieval.

And although the ghetto is illegal and the police know all about it, they rarely intervene. The logic is typically Italian: if you don’t make a scene, I’ll pretend nothing ever happened. The inhabitants just quietly go about their day-to-day work as almost-slaves.

The Apulia regional government has started providing the area with drinking water just a few years ago, after some associations had been lobbying local politicians about the issue. In the past, as Frontiere News reports, the lack of drinking water caused the death of many immigrants who “drowned in irrigation tanks while trying to clean themselves and get some water.” The same goes for the toilets, which were installed in 2011: before that, as Nigrizia remembers, “teens, women, children, and adults were urinating and defecating in the open fields, transforming the whole village into an open-air toilet.” In November 2012, a fire started by a candle destroyed around 30 shacks without killing anyone.

Madi's shop

As soon as I arrive I meet Madi, a guy from Burkina Faso who serves as the “unofficial” butcher of the ghetto. He finds me a place to sleep and offers me my first dinner in the camp: barbecued chunks of smoked mutton. With my stomach full, I go for a look around: everything is absorbed by darkness, except for a few power generators lighting blue and red neon lights.

As I walk closer to one of the shacks, I am stopped by two girls who start stroking my chin. The penny immediately drops as they invite me into what I realize is the local brothel. I decline their invitation and walk into the bar to have a beer. I am served by the first white person I see since I arrived. I can tell from his face that he is not exactly in the mood for a conversation. I pay and leave the bar, starting to wander around the main roads. People are all busy slowly walking nowhere. Some of them play table football.

Ba

I walk back to Madi’s butcher shop and he shows me my room, which is basically a mattress laid on the backyard of a blue neon “bar.” Outside the place I meet Ba, a young man from Guinea who tells me that, at the moment, he’s basically doing nothing: “There’s no more work here.” Ba spends his days waiting for the right moment to move to Rosarno, a small town near Reggio Calabria which has become well known for the slave-like conditions of immigrants working as orange pickers. In 2010, Rosarno witnessed a massive immigrant revolt after some locals shot the workers with an air rifle.

When morning comes around I start to understand the shape of the place. It’s basically a long line of plastic, metal, and cardboard shacks in the middle of nothing. Migrants build the shacks by hand. Nobody pays rent. When they leave the ghetto, their shack is given to a friend or a relative. Since the flow of African immigrants has increased in recent years, the ghetto is continuously expanding in the Apulia “desert.”

A shop

There’s almost everything in the ghetto: butchers, small shops, and "restaurants" where the few women of the ghetto hang out. At the end of one of the main roads I notice an open-air mechanic’s with four or five people working. The guys are visibly annoyed and tell me they don’t want to be photographed for any reason and "invite me" to leave the place. I follow their advice and limit myself to a discreet walk around the ghetto, talking to some residents. I stop off to eat some beans and offal (I’m not sure which animal’s) in the shack of a lady who stares and smiles at me looking a bit confused.

The ghetto mosque

The population of the Rignano Ghetto is divided into two main categories: those willing to talk about their situation and those who can barely muster a frightened glance at me before shuffling on. I meet a group of guys from Mali who explain to me how fruit and vegetable picking works: if you’re hired in a tomato field, which is the most common job during summer, you’ll earn around 2.50 to 3.50 ($3.40 to $4.75) euros per hour, unless the “white-boss” prefers to pay you by the tomato. The average daily salary for a worker is $34, and the cost of getting to Foggia is around $13.50 every day. Other locals tell me that in Rosarno you’ll get $1.30 per box of tangerines and 70 cents for a box of oranges.

Fatima's bar

I return to my accommodation. Outside I meet Fatima, the owner of the bar. She has been living in the area for 13 years and gives off the impression that she’s a sort of spokesperson for the whole ghetto. She tells me that people are sick and tired of journalists coming here filming and interviewing: “Everybody tells us they’re here to help, but then they leave and that’s that.” A man in his 50s sitting next to us says he has seen himself on TV and wasn’t too happy about it.

This shack is used to store slaughtered animals

At sunset it’s time for shopping. Every day, cars and vans from the Gypsy camp nearby come to the ghetto to sell cheap clothes, shoes, and other random stuff. There’s also an Italian man who looks like an old cowboy with a box full of shoes and a cigar in his mouth. At night, neon lights and music are turned on as prostitutes prepare for their shift. I am starting to feel hungry so I head back to camp, eating those smoked chunks of mutton from Madi’s butcher shop. The lucky ones in the ghetto can afford grilled liver with lard for dinner.

Ibrahim shows me where he sleeps

The morning after there’s a strange fog in the ghetto. The atmosphere is cold and humid, and the streets are almost deserted. Someone pops out of the shack to stretch. I drink a watery coffee and have a walk around the smaller alleys. Here I meet Ibrahim, a 30-year-old man who invites me to see his place. Ibrahim lives with eight other people and he’s anxious to tell me about his situation: “There’s not much to do here. In one or two weeks we will be collecting olives but it won’t last more than ten days. We earn 1 euro ($1.35) for each box of olives.”

After a few minutes Ibrahim changes the subject and asks me for a ride to Foggia where he says he is going to play football. As I drive him, it becomes clear that he actually wants to go betting. I take him to the first bookies we find, where he stops quickly and wins $80. We go to another betting shop and he spends a while. He plays cards, betting $27 out of the $80 he previously won. Afterward he tells me with a wry smile, “I’m not gonna eat tonight, I spent too much money on gambling.” Once we’re back in the ghetto, he tells me his dream: “Winning a bunch of money by gambling and getting married.”

Radioghetto

The only activities available to kill the afternoon boredom are table football, chess, cigarettes, and five-a-side soccer matches. They also have their own “Radio Ghetto” but there’s no one inside the building. The radio only works during summer, when the ghetto is very crowded. “Radio Ghetto” is the only way to communicate with the outside world and tell others what’s happening within the camps.

Ibrahim, a guy from Mali, tells me what happens in a pumpkin field a few miles away from the ghetto: “the 'white-boss' walks around the field holding a wooden stick, and if you stand up to light a cigarette he promptly puts you down again hitting you with the stick.” These men are employed by the landowners and farmers to make sure that everything runs smoothly in the fields. To do so, they don’t hesitate to beat or even kill the workers, as many reports have highlighted.

There’s not just the “white-boss,” but also a “black-boss”, who is basically an immigrant who recruits the workers. The problem is—as a 50-year-old African man tells me—“if the white-boss pays four euros per hour ($5.40), the black-boss tells us it’s three ($4), so he earns one euro on each one of us, every hour.” I ask him how can you become a “black-boss,” but he doesn’t know.

A toilet at the camp

Undeclared work was only recognized as a problem by the government in 2011, and is considered by police detectives as a proof of the presence of mafia groups in the agricultural field. The sector has an estimated annual turnover of 12 to 17 billion euros, that is to say about 5 to 10 percent of the whole mafia economy. Yvan Sagnet—a Cameroonian Cgil representative who was involved in one of the 2011 field riots in Nardò, in Lecce—has written that agriculture in the ghetto's province “is highly influenced by Camorra [a crime syndicate]. During the agricultural season hundreds of truck drivers travel from Campania to Foggia to illegally rent the fields to farmers and take the goods to other businesses near Salerno.”

It’s not just the working slavery that keeps the ghetto people here: four guys told me that everyday they approach the boss to receive their salary but he just procrastinates and doesn’t cough up – some workers have been waiting for more than two weeks. Many are eager to move to a city or a better slum, but without any money you can’t even reach Rosarno. Last summer a guy who worked in a field for a week summoned up the courage to report the recruiters who exploited him without paying him any money. Thanks to the support of a lawyer he managed to get his salary, but after that the “white-bosses” were reluctant to give him work ever again.

A restaurant

The night draws in. I eat those smoked meat chunks again and decide to take a look at the brothel I visited the night before. The place is pretty empty, only a couple of Italian clients are walking away with the prostitutes. After declining a couple of offers I start talking to a lady, Zahra, who tells me her story: “In 2010 I had to leave Morocco because my husband died and I didn’t know where to get the money to feed my daughter. So I came to Italy to do this job.” During the winter, Zahra works in Foggia; during summer she works in the ghetto. She also explains to me that the brothel is owned “by a white guy named Nicola. He wants 20 euros ($27) a day to use the room we work in.” Five girls sleep and work in that room. Prices are 25 ($34) euros a time for white people and 15 euros ($20) for everyone else.

Dawn in the ghetto. Someone burns yesterday's waste.

When I wake up the morning after I feel horrible: nauseous and with a sore, phlegmy throat. I deduce that these are probably the effects of the local cuisine. The animals Madi kills are dismembered, cleaned, and distributed in the ghetto. The problem is that he works in extremely dusty, unhygienic conditions, around flies that love nothing more than to defecate and vomit on the meat. I spend a day in bed fighting my temperature and feeling sick. Then I take some paracetamol and am surprised to find that it is enough to make the symptoms go away. The next day someone told me that Fatima, the woman who was hosting me, prayed for my recovery.

I am ready to leave at dawn. There’s no one around the ghetto, and you can almost breathe in the desolation. After spending four nights in this world I have one thing very clear in my mind: the Rignano Ghetto is not really in Apulia nor in Europe. It is an outpost of the exploited developing world transported to a place where nobody thought it would be possible to exist in 2013, and nobody gives a fuck about it.

Marco Valli is part of Cesura collectivepart of Cesura collective

Written with the collaboration of Leonardo Bianchi

More Ghettos:

Drugs and Sadness in Glasgow's High-Rise Ghettos

Burma's Rohingya Ghettos Broke My Heart

The New Roma Ghettos

Watch the trailer so you have a better idea of what this interview is about.

Fort McMoney is an ambitious video game and documentary hybrid about Alberta’s crude oil sands and the community that lives next to them. Created by award-winning French documentarian David Dufresne, the game recreates Alberta’s Fort McMurray as a virtual world, allowing you to explore the city and talk with many of its real inhabitants—ranging from vocal opponents of the oil sands, like the Chief of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, to proponents and representatives of industry. As you explore, you’re able to debate with other players worldwide, voting in weekly referendums that alter the fate of the virtual city. The game is the product of two years of research and includes more than fifty interviews and eight hours of footage. Fort McMoney launches today and is free to play online, thanks in part to the NFB.

We sat down with the game’s creator, David Dufresne, and game master Philip Lewis, to talk about the project. David described the game as the SimCity of the oil sands.

VICE: Why did you decide to tell the story of Fort McMurray in the form of a video game?
David: Because the video game is a tool to get people interested in this subject. I mean, nobody cares about what’s going on over there. Nobody cares about what the choice of civilization is. And maybe through a game, some people could become interested in this subject.

Do you think the interactive format will attract people who aren’t already interested in hearing about the oil sands?
David: We hope. I love documentary, classical documentary. But I think right now, thanks to the web, we can change the way we tell stories. And that’s very exciting—a new kind of narrative. And maybe some people who don’t care about documentaries or books would be interested in the multi-linear format. It’s a new way to do journalism. To me it’s as important as gonzo journalism was in the sixties—I say that to VICE, you know. Because to me that’s the same. It’s a new way to see topics and to tell stories.

As someone with a film background, what was it like to collaborate with a videogame designer?
David: It was a very long process and a very exciting process, with three game designers. During the shooting and during the research I worked with these designers, and we talked all the time about the project. It was difficult to find the right way to balance the documentary and game logic. And the documentary is the most important. The most important thing is to be real. The game has to be at the service of the story… A big influence was SimCity… to me it’s a magic video game. When I saw Fort McMurray, I said to myself “this could be SimCity for real.”
 

Emissions rising over Fort McMurray. Photo courtesy of the NFB.

What were your first impressions when you arrived to Fort McMurray? Does it have a distinct feeling or smell?
David: Smell? For sure! Have you been there?

No.
David: There is the smell of money. And the smell of money is the smell of ammonia and chemical products from factories, from the mine. In the game, as a player, you could ask this question to almost everybody you meet: “What is this smell?” The first time the mayor herself was driving into town, she said: “Does anyone actually live here? Is this the end of the road, the end of civilization?” But this is our road. Everybody takes this road. Everybody needs oil. Everybody is addicted to oil, so we are not here to judge the people who live in Fort McMurray. We are here to think about what’s going on and what is our responsibility.

Did your perception of Fort McMurray change during the duration of this project?
David: A lot. When you go to VICE’s website, you see some very good characters and very bad things. And when you go to Fort McMurray, you see very good characters and very bad things, but also a lot of generosity and a lot of prosperity. The city seems to be simple, but in fact it’s very difficult to understand. There is a lot of huge money and a lot of homeless people at the same corner in a very small town. People over there are very nice, but they are cautious about what we are doing—you and I and all journalists or documentary makers or singers—so it took a long time to understand this city. But beyond that, there is a mine site. And that’s another story.

You seem to focus a lot on the social aspects of life in the town and in particular the nightlife—the strip clubs, the casino, the head shop, and bars. Why is this an important aspect of the game?
David: The social impacts are very important in Fort McMurray. It’s a reason why this city is very interesting. This is a small town with all the problems that they have in big towns. For example, homeless people, drugs. There are a lot of liquor stores. It’s very remarkable to see how many liquor stores there are for the workers. So for the first week of the game you see the social impacts. And the nightlife in Fort McMurray is very important. There is a normal night life and there is an El Dorado way-of-life nightlife. . . It’s really a gold rush mentality.

The guy from Sugars, a very famous club in town, you can ask him questions in the game. This is his first interview in his life, and all TV from all over the world have asked him to do interviews. He said no, expect for us. And it’s very interesting because he said there are a lot of business contracts for millions of dollars that were signed in the strip club. Deals were closed by oil executives right there in that club. It’s important to me to be focused on people—from the homeless, to the top CEO of Total Canada—human nature is the key. If you’re only talking to experts… [makes a fart sound]. You know that at VICE.

Yes we sure do. Were there any places you wanted to include but couldn’t get access to?
David: I can’t answer that in this discussion, because one of the goals of the players is to find the key to go up north and to go into a mine site. What I can tell you is we saw things that we weren’t supposed to see.
 

The bong of choice in Fort McMurray. Photo courtesy of the NFB.

Are some characters more prominent than others? Do you have protagonists?
David: There are some protagonists you can interview each week. Like a guy called Andrew Nikiforuk, he’s a writer from Calgary. He’s against the oil industry. You can meet the mayor during two of the weeks. And Ken Chapman, the guy from the Oil Sands Developers Group, you can meet him every week too. There are some characters who are very strong, but it’s always balanced.

Philip: The game has been built so that there are many possible itineraries. You can return to some of these characters, but the game has been conceived and built to allow hundreds of different possible itineraries through the experience.

The player is given a lot of control over what happens to the town in Fort McMoney—the press release calls it a “collective experience.” Is this a strategy to make the game ideologically neutral, or would you say there’s still some sort of bias—either your own bias or the bias of reality?
David: The game is neutral. The reality is not neutral. And what the players are going to do won’t be neutral. But we’ve prepared everything so that if you want to shut down the industry you can do that, or if you want to produce more and more oil you can do that. Everything is possible, it’s your turn to decide. To play.

Where do you stand personally on this issue? What should happen to Alberta’s bitumen sands?
David: Look at this table [gestures towards plastic table]. Everything is plastic. The answer is here, not there. I think if the game called out people to understand that, that could be great. It’s too easy to say “ah, we have to shut down the industry because there’s too much pollution.” For sure, it’s very strong in pollution—but it’s not enough just to say that. We have to think about our daily life and our dependence on oil.

Philip: I think one of the things David was interested in was the idea of being a virtual citizen. So it’s like having a game that is fun and engaging and a chance to see reality in new ways, but also exercising citizenship, because you are engaging in debate. You’re voting, you’re trying to put forward your own arguments, you’re trying to counter other people’s arguments. You’re interviewing people in the community—in the virtual community. I think what’s interesting about it, in terms of a game, is that it’s a game that’s really an exercise in citizenship and democracy and collective discussion and collective action.
 

David Dufrense, in the flesh. Photo courtesy of the NFB.

Is this the golden age of Fort McMurray? What do you think the city will look like in the future?
David: We don’t know exactly, because it depends on the pipelines. They can produce a lot of barrels of petrol but they don’t know where to send it. They need to get access to the Asian market or the European market or the United States market. They are very confident about their future, they think they are going to stay. But it won’t be so easy because, for example, the United States found a new way to produce energy. It will be a big struggle for Fort McMurray and Canada. That’s the reason why there are so many travels by government of Canada people who go to Asia or Europe to lobby, to say “please, buy our oil.” There is a lot of political discussion about this. And these discussions are in Fort McMoney.

Well it seems like you covered everything in this game.
David: Yes, we are crazy. The situation is crazy. And to me the best person who said the best things about Fort McMurray is Stephen Harper.

Philip: He compared it to the Great Wall of China.

David: And the pyramids. And he said it’s bigger. Yes, no limit. So our game is no limit.

What a guy. Were there any limits placed on who you were able to film? Did you and your crew encounter any hostility from people in town or from members of industry?
David: No. A lot of people didn’t want to answer us, but they weren’t hostile to us. They were nice when they said no. And the industry was very imaginative when they said no. They’d say, “next week? Oh no, it’s not possible,” “oh you can’t come now because, safety reasons,” “oh we are very sorry but the spokesperson is sick today.” During one year we got a lot of emails and phone calls from the oil industry, very polite, to say “no.” And as a player you have to find the solution to talk to people from the industry. Except for one person, the guy from CAPP [the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers], he was very nice… his speech is very tough, he’s very proud of what they do.

CAPP advertises a lot about how industry can reclaim and restore the land used by the oil sands. They’ve had ads on television, on billboards, and playing before films in theatres. Do you think Fort McMurray will ever be remediated, restored to how it once was?
David: In the game?

In reality.
David: Play the game. Play the game and you’ll see the reality.


WATCH:

Toxic: Alberta

Good job, citizen! Photo via Flickr user OakleyOriginals

Last year, Alex Saleh, a convenience store owner in Miami Gardens, Florida, installed 15 security cameras in and around his shop—but not to protect his business, which is in a rough neighborhood of a rough city, against shoplifting or any other crime. The 36-year-old put in the cameras because his employees and customers were getting bothered so often by the police. Thanks to Saleh, countless incidents of the cops harassing and arresting the neighborhood’s mostly poor, mostly black residents were caught on tape. A Miami Herald story about the cops’ habitual and casual mistreatment of Miami Gardens residents has gone viral (it has 21,000 Facebook likes at the moment), mostly because of the incontrovertible evidence of the cameras and the outrageous details of the harassment.

One of Saleh’s employees, a 28-year-old named Earl Sampson, has been stopped by police 258 times in four years and searched 100 times. He’s been arrested 62 times for just “trespassing,” and most of those incidents happened at the convenience store itself. One arrest, in June 2012, happened while Sampson was stocking shelves. Exactly how many scores of trespassing arrests does it take for Miami Gardens police to remember where someone works?

According to the Herald piece, Saleh initially consented to participate in a “zero-tolerance” program, which meant cops could come into his business and stop or arrest anyone who was loitering or trespassing. But the shopkeeper claims he tried to get out of the program after becoming concerned about how aggressive the police were being, and the cops responded by continuing to harass his customers and workers. Saleh also says that when he first tried to bring evidence of this behavior to internal affairs, several officers came into his store and stood silent for several minutes in what seemed to him to be an attempt at intimidation.

Cameras are the best possible defense against police misconduct, as well as a way for officers to protect themselves against false allegations. It’s one reason—pretty much the only reason, actually—to appluad the fact that our society is so crowded with monitoring devices. Britain has around one CCTV camera for every 14 residents, while New York City has 2,500 cameras in lower Manhattan alone. The ACLU is not a fan of this proliferation of lenses and claims they don’t prevent crime. Others maintain cameras are effective, pointing to their use in apprehending some London train bombers in 2005 and referencing the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers, when private security cameras and citizen smartphone footage were utilized along with law enforcement recordings. In fact, a department store’s surveillance footage was where the FBI found its first usable footage of the Tsarnaev brothers.

Obviously, there are privacy concerns when there are so many cameras, especially cameras controlled by large corporations or governments that store data in massive quantities. But a business owner or homeowner choosing to install a surveillance system—especially, as in Saleh’s case, in order to protect himself against the government—seems less menacing.

As with drones, 3D printers, the internet, and many other new technologies, cameras can aid both the authorities and those who are suffering under the boot of authority. Cops can use surveillance to monitor us, but we can use cameras to gaze right back. Saleh has announced he’s going to sue the city, and since then Sampson hasn’t been arrested and the police presence around his store has been much lighter.

Now on to the rest of this week’s bad cops:

- Speaking of dubious trespassing charges, a business owner in Dekalb County, Georgia, says that more than a year ago he was arrested for loitering and carrying a legal concealed firearm on his own property. Eric Lee, who owns a furniture store, had been targeted by thieves numerous times, so he purchased a gun. One night, Lee went outside to investigate some odd noises on his property, and while he was looking around the cops rolled in and confronted him, cuffing him once he admitted he had a gun. Lee was jailed for loitering, his gun was taken away, and his truck was towed—from his own property. In their report, officers claimed Lee was drunk, while Lee says the alcohol smell was coming from nearby homeless people who were arrested along with him and who were the reason cops were initially called by a neighbor. Though a judge dismissed all charges and even apologized to him, Lee hasn't had his weapon returned, and this month he filed a federal lawsuit. He doesn’t want money, he just wants the police to apologize for what he sees as a violation of his constitutional rights, pay the cost of his towing bill, and return his firearm.

- On Friday, a San Antonio, Texas, cop was arrested for allegedly raping a 19-year-old after he handcuffed the woman and claimed her car had been reported stolen. Officer Jackie Len Neal then ignored the woman’s documents proving she owned the car, then patted her down even though she requested a female officer. He then put her in the backseat of his cruiser and, she says, raped her. Neal’s recording equipment was malfunctioning during this time (which he would have been aware of), but GPS tracking confirmed the woman’s story that the police car was stopped for 18 minutes on a particular street. Neal has a spotty history that includes a record of (dropped) sexual assault allegations and a suspension for dating an 18-year-old who was interested in joining the police force. He’s currently free is free on bond and will continue to be paid until, and if, he is indicted.

- As part of a larger controversy over whether police mistreat minorities and others, a Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan, police officer was removed from duty after accusations surfaced that he made a mentally disabled black man “dance like a chimp” and then filmed it and posted the video on social networking sites. The officer’s punishment will be decided on next week.

- Police in San Francisco are accused of beating up a cyclist for riding on the sidewalk on November 15 then attacking passersby who tried to help the victim—who, unsurprisingly, was a young black man. The two cops were undercover when they approached 20-year-old D’Paris Williams. According to a friend of the victim, the officers grabbed Williams and beat him as he tried to enter the housing development where he lived. The cops also allegedly attacked three individuals who tried to come to Williams’s aid, at least one of whom was injured. It’s worth asking whether they bystanders knew the identity of the men beating up their neighbor, since it’s not clear whether the cops identified themselves as officers before the brawl began. Williams, who was captured on video screaming in pain and having trouble walking, was sent to the hospital. The San Francisco Police Department claims Williams failed to comply and that the bystanders who intervened were aggressive towards officers. Residents of the housing development are planning a protest against police brutality.

- Controversial incidents like these are reason to embrace a federally-funded pilot program for SFPD officer-mounted cameras. Starting next month, about 50 plainclothes cops will began wearing them on duty. Officers can’t delete footage or mess with it, but they are still the ones who choose to turn them on during a confrontation. The Bay Area transit police took part in a similar initiative in 2011 after a couple of high-profile shootings of civilians by cops, and San Jose and Oakland police have instituted pilot programs as well. The cost of putting a camera on every cop seems prohibitive, especially when you're looking at larger urban police forces, but if they can afford military technology with help from generous federal grants, they can figure out a way to equip cops with devices that will help resolve disputes between communities and the police.

- This week, our Good Cop of the Week Award goes to Charlotte-Mecklenburg police sergeant Bobby Whitley, who received his department’s medal of valor this week for a September incident during which he removed a small improvised explosive device from the neck of an unconscious man. The apparently suicidal man was airlifted to the hospital aftering apparently injuring himself, where surgeons discovered the object then called the bomb squad instead of operating. Whitley, who wasn’t wearing any kind of protection, arrived and took 15 minutes to safely remove the object. The unidentified man doesn’t face any charges, which is also good news. Hopefully he recovered and then got some help—and hopefully Whitney continues to be a badass in his other endeavors.

Lucy Steigerwald is a freelance writer and photographer. Read her blog here and follow her on Twitter: @lucystag

Previously: What Happens After the Police Shoot Innocent Bystanders?

Canada's Minister of Justice, Peter MacKay, gesticulating wildly. via WikiCommons.

The political banner of “cyberbullying” is one that I’ve found to be particularly problematic since I began covering the Amanda Todd story in October of last year. In the case of her suicide, the relentless harassment that seems to have pushed Amanda to take her own life was not simply a matter of classmates leaving nasty messages on her Facebook wall. Instead, Amanda was sexually extorted and blackmailed by strangers online, which is an insidious and hard to prosecute offense that’s inarguably more dangerous than cyberbullying. This is a difficult (but crucial) angle of the Amanda Todd story that some Canadian media outlets are only catching up to now.

Despite the complexities of Amanda’s case, the global attention and activism surrounding her death has helped stir up Ottawa to write new anti-cyberbulling legislation, a cause the Conservative government has proudly tacked onto their public agenda. Along with the tragically high profile suicide of Amanda Todd is the case of Rehtaeh Parsons—the Nova Scotian teenager who took her own life after a photograph of her, unconscious and allegedly being sexually assaulted, circulated throughout her high school for almost two years without any meaningful intervention from her school or law enforcement. Unlike Amanda’s case, charges have been laid against Rehtaeh’s alleged tormenters.

The heartbreaking stories of both Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons caused a palpable amount of outrage in Canada, which is why it may be relieving to read that the Conservative government is trying to pass Bill C-13, a law that Justice Minister Peter MacKay is presenting as a pre-requisite to fighting back against the “hurtful” proliferation of “intimate images” online. Bill C-13, however, appears to be a hybrid of some tightened protection for anyone who may find themselves at the receiving end of a revenge porn nightmare, increased online surveillance powers for law enforcement, and stricter punishments for those who steal cable TV signals—because apparently the content thieves of the 1990s are still out there splicing cable wires.

Beyond the strange inclusion of cable TV signal thievery is an even more worrying addition. In 2012, Vic Toews, Canada’s unpleasant former public safety minister, tried to turn an online surveillance bill called Bill C-30 into law. That bill—which Vic infamously defended by saying people were either on side with it or “with the child pornographers”—was described by the NDP as effectively placing an “electronic prisoner’s bracelet on every Canadian.” That law, much like Bill C-13, was sandwiched into anti-child porn legislation; but in reality it would have legalized warrantless access to the customer records of internet service providers for law enforcement. It would have also mandated ISPs to install surveillance tools, while giving police new powers to access the surveillance data it would have been forced to collect. Sounds a lot like what the NSA has done to America, doesn’t it?

It’s not a stretch to think this legislation was written in an attempt to catch up with the rest of Canada’s surveillance partners in the Five Eyes—i.e. the US, UK, New Zealand and Australia. While defending C-30, Vic Toews even said that it was simply in line with what those other four countries were already doing. And even though Bill C-30 was crushed in 2012, similar anti-privacy provisions have popped up in this new cyberbulling bill, Bill C-13.

Peter MacKay has publicly denied the accusations that C-13 is just a redux of C-30, adding that unlike C-30, access to surveillance data will require a judicial warrant. This is certainly refreshing to hear—because if this law has been designed to catch the bad guys who exploit children, as the government says, why would a warrant ever be a problem or something to keep secret?

Bill C-13 has also removed the provision from C-30 that would have required ISPs to install surveillance equipment that would intercept information in real time. However, as Michael Geist (an internet-famous academic, columnist, and research chair in internet and e-commerce at the University of Ottawa) pointed out, C-13 provides civil and criminal immunity to ISPs who “voluntarily” provide customer information to law enforcement agencies that ask for it—without a warrant—and C-13 has expanded the privilege for making such requests. This seems like a really sketchy workaround to the obviously offensive, warrantless requests of private information that C-30 attempted to make law—while still allowing the same powers to exist.

To further complicate things, the criminal implications of these new provisions that are supposed to protect subjects of intimate images from having their naked photos spread online sound like they’ll be difficult to prosecute. The Canadian Privacy Law Blog has a great breakdown of the implications that a girlfriend sending her “idiot boyfriend” a nude photo would have if that same idiot boyfriend began to spread the photo online. At what point do recipients or viewers of that photo become legally absolved, if they are unaware that the photo was spread against the initial subject’s will? How can that be proven or disproven in court? And why wasn’t it always illegal to spread illicit images of people without their consent? At least in the case of Rehtaeh Parsons—and others who may have had to face similar forms of sexual assault and harassment with less media attention—she was protected by child pornography laws.

Evidently, Bill C-13 is a complex piece of legislation that has packed in a bunch of new provisions under one seemingly simple (but, in fact, complicated) cause: cyberbullying. The Conservative government has an unpopular history of jamming many different provisions into one jumbled bill—a political strategy that, in the case of Bill C-13, has been described as a Trojan horse manoeuvre. While Ontario’s privacy commissioner agrees that C-13 is not as batshit crazy as C-30, it has stated this new cyberbullying bill will “significantly increase rather than merely maintain the state’s surveillance capacity.”

Given that cyberbullying generally amounts to name-calling and teenage harassment online—unless we are talking about a more complex, criminal scenario like what we saw with Amanda Todd, or child porn distribution and sexual assault in the case of Rehtaeh Parsons—it seems unbelievable that the government would be planning such a huge criminal overhaul to catch a few teenage bullies. Bill C-13 is expansive enough to take on cable TV thieves and terrorists, so it’s clearly unfair, and frankly sneaky, to package all of this as a cyberbullying law. Canadians should be paying attention to, and unpacking, this expansive and powerful surveillance bill because it is sure to shift the powers of Canadian law enforcement to forge an NSA-style surveillance state if it passes.
 

Follow Patrick on Twitter: @patrickmcguire

Previously:

The Canadian Government Is Spying on Behalf of the Energy Industry

Is CSEC, the Canadian Version of the NSA, Trustworthy?

The Canadian Government Is Not Bothered by PRISM and the NSA

Illustrations by Michael Shaeffer

Before I started doing comedy and writing full time, I spent over a decade working for churches. Let me preface this by saying that I am not an angry atheist, or even someone who bashes organized religion. There are so many churches doing fantastic work for their communities and truly helping people with little or no attention from the media. I’ve worked for some that I’ve seen firsthand do tremendous work and even helped me with difficult times in my life. With that said, I’ve seen some of the most repulsive, sickening behavior you could possibly imagine by men and women claiming to be representatives of God. I worked with organizations in the smallest of towns and I’ve worked with some of the biggest names in religion, so I know what I’m talking about. I’m not someone judging from the outside. I’ve been a part of it, which, at times, felt like the worst thing that could possibly happen to me.

I worked with an organization called Master’s Commission, which is basically a Bible college that combines the educational part of ministry with actual hands-on work. I had been involved with the program in Cincinnati, Ohio, and in Orlando, Florida. A pastor in Louisville, Kentucky, named Tony had seen the work that Master’s Commission had done and contacted my boss in Orlando about starting one at his church.

I was presented with an opportunity to move to Louisville with my wife at the time to run the program at his brand new church. As a 25-year-old, I was excited, but still smart enough to find out all the details. He sent over paperwork saying that the church would provide an apartment for us as well as pay us a handsome salary that was triple anything I had ever made before.

With the opportunity to return to my home state and to have financial stability doing what I enjoyed, I jumped at the chance. Tony contacted me and told me not to worry about bringing all of my old mix-and-match furniture, as they would be fully furnishing my place. I was in heaven.

That excitement didn’t last long.

Once I arrived, I quickly realized that I wasn’t just running a ministry training program, but basically every part of his church. My hours were whatever Tony felt like, which included staying up overnight burning CDs for a promotion idea he had at midnight. I pressed through all of this, because those things happen, right?

Then I realized something that wasn’t happening; I wasn’t getting paid. After a few weeks I approached Tony and asked when I would receive a check. He looked at me puzzled like I had asked some sort of ridiculous question. “Paid?” he asked. As I looked around the room for hidden cameras on what was clearly a prank show, Tony explained to me that he thought I would be raising my own salary as well as funding the ministry program and supporting his church. I had been taught to walk by faith, so I let him convince me this was possible. It was not.

I was booking services for the ministry program, driving my personal car since the church didn’t have any sort of vehicle, and trying to make my $200 love offering somehow cover my expenses for the trip, as well as my electric bill. After being forced to work on the kitchen staff at his daughter’s wedding (part of the ministry, right?) I was desperate. I brought him paperwork to sign so I could get food stamps. I couldn’t even afford to eat at this point. He looked at me, disgusted, and informed me of what an insult it was to even ask him to do this, and that if I had that little faith in God to provide for me, then I needed to do some serious soul searching. I did.

Three days later I told him I quit. Upon hearing this, he and his wife came over to my apartment and yelled at me for what was probably an hour, but felt like a year. They told me that I would never make it in ministry, or in life, if I couldn’t trust God. When they were finally done I heard a moving truck pull around out front. They were taking back all of the furniture that was given to me.

If you think he was done there, guess again. A few weeks after I moved, I received papers saying that he was suing me for the remaining cost of rent and for misrepresenting myself as someone who could do this job. Shockingly enough, Tony is no longer in ministry and his wife left him. I wonder what happened to his faith?

After a little time away repairing myself both mentally and emotionally, I got an offer to run another ministry program at the church where I had been a ministry student in Ohio. I was overjoyed by the chance to head up the exact program that had previously had such an impact on my life. We moved, and everything went great for the first year.

The number of students was up and our preview day had more attendants than any year in the history of the program. I was on fire. All of that came to a screeching halt one morning as my wife asked to meet with me, along with the senior pastor, in his office. I had no idea what was going on, but I assumed it wasn’t good judging by the tears that were building up in her eyes.

She then informed me that she had been having an affair with one of the students, who was more or less my assistant. It had been going on for a while. I said, “OK, good to know,” and walked out of the room, drove to the movie theater, and watched Shutter. It was one of the dumbest movies I had ever seen. I gathered myself together as I got a call from the pastor asking me to meet him and my wife at IHOP. I love pancakes so I figured this would be a great way to ruin my relationship, and with it, my favorite breakfast food.

He explained her feelings and issued an apology like some sort of contract negotiation, then asked if I would be OK to drive her home. I told him it would be fine. As soon as I got in the car I asked when she was leaving. She looked at me perplexed and asked what I meant. Apparently she thought I was going to let her plow my intern and then just hug her and go on about my day. I made it clear that I wanted nothing else to do with her ever again, much to her surprise.

I dropped her off at the house to pack and stayed at a friend’s place, only to be interrupted by a phone call from the pastor telling me he needed to meet as soon as possible. What happened next was truly astounding. He basically informed me that it wouldn’t look good if a single man was running their ministry program and so I could either reconcile things with my ex (I had already changed my relationship status on Myspace. It was officially over) or I could step down from my job. This is what Jesus would do, right? Thus saith the lord, if someone is down, maketh it that much worse.

I tried staying around for a few weeks after, taking a new role as an assistant in the program, but the pastor began trying to push me out. I bought a car since I had given the old one to my ex and he yelled at me for not consulting with him first on where to buy one. His assistant later met with me and told me I would be losing my health benefits and would go from a staff member to contract labor. At one point I decided to get away on my days off and go visit some friends in Louisville. I was told I wasn’t allowed to do that anymore and that I should stay in town for reasons that I’ll never understand. He was making my life hell, so I had to leave.

At this point, I was done working for churches. I moved down to Orlando for a fresh start and got a place with a couple of my friends. While unsuccessfully searching for a job, I ended up volunteering at the giant megachurch where my roommate worked. That eventually led to me getting hired as part of the staff there. These churches run like well-oiled machines, at least on the surface. Services are like rock concerts, and the thousands in attendance leave in awe.

Behind the scenes, however, it’s a different story. I saw men, women, and families fired constantly due to “budget issues.” These people made no more than $400 per week, while the senior pastor lived in a multimillion-dollar-home and had more luxury cars than Autotrader.com. Once, in a staff meeting, the pastor came in and informed the staff that, not only were none of us irreplaceable, but as soon as he found someone that could do any of our jobs for less money, he would fire us. That boosts moral, doesn’t it?

I saw families struggle to pay bills while the pastor’s daughter was given an apartment and paid a full salary to show up for maybe six hours per week. I came in every day terrified that it would be the day I would lose my job. I started absorbing other vacated jobs into my own. I would offer to take on the responsibilities of anyone who was fired, at no additional pay. I was making around $400 a week and doing the work of at least four people. 

In July 2011, the church held its annual music conference, attended by thousands from around the world. I took on a tremendous workload to try to make myself as valuable as possible. At the end of the conference we were supposed to get a few well-deserved days off. Instead, after working what was probably an 80-hour week, I was brought into a conference room and told that my season was up. That’s the spiritual way of telling you that you’re fired. I was in a new, healthy relationship, expecting a child in five months. I had just worked as hard as I possibly could, and now I was being fired. It was devastating.

Again, I’m not bitter against God and I don't hate the church, although if there’s anyone who could justifiably hate church, it would be me. It’s unfortunate that anyone can start a business and claim that they are an ambassador of God, but it’s been that way for a long time and it will continue to be that way. I can only hope that people who run churches as if they're their personal bank accounts, tossing people aside, realize the error in their ways, or have that truth revealed to them. Not all churches are bad, but the ones that are have no problem being as bad as they can be. 

@robfee

In part one of Fresh Off the Boat - Moscow, Eddie takes his first shot of Russian vodka, chows down on some "communist dogs" with one of the few black Muscovites, and discusses the country's diverse generation of millennials and their evolving ideologies.

More from Moscow:

Munchies- Alexei Zimin

Photographing the Children of Russia's Nouveau Riche

Moscow's Real-Life Fight Club Looks Insane

Australia has a reputation for being racist. And with their old-timey slaughter of indigenous people, the locking up of refugees, and rioting in Cronulla, it’s hard to say they haven’t earned it. However, they have tried to be better. The Racial Discrimination Act of 1975 was put in place to stamp out racism and has enjoyed varying degrees of success. Forty-odd years later, the Attorney-General of Australia, George Brandis, has said he wants to overhaul the act so that Australians can stop being worried about saying the wrong thing. It's about freedom of speech, apparently.

There were 997 complaints of racial abuse to the Human Rights Commission this year, half of them occurring online. That’s a 59 percent increase since 2012. On the other hand, the commission received just a handful of complaints related to freedom of expression. The Scanlon Foundation, which lobbies for social cohesion in Australia, found that one in five adults surveyed had been subject to racial abuse. Rather than try and work out why this happens (maybe the way the government talks about refugees has something to do with it), George wants to take away their right to complain when it does.

Groups who are regularly targeted because of race or ethnicity are downright annoyed. Nine groups representing the Jewish, Indigenous, Chinese, Greek, Armenian, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Muslim women communities have jointly condemned any changes to the act.

It comes at a particularly bad time for the Jewish community. Last month a group of religious Jews, two of them in their 60s, were bashed and verbally abused in Sydney.

“The government wants to ensure that laws which are designed to prohibit racial vilification are not used as a vehicle to attack legitimate freedoms of speech,” argued George in his response to concerns from Jewish groups, adding that “the two values—protecting people against racial vilification and defending freedoms of speech—are not inconsistent.” 

But the head of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Peter Wertheim, said that there are clear links between racial vilification and violence. "If you repeal or water down this law it sends a signal from the federal government that racism is permissible, to some extent. And at the end of the day, the lesson of history is that it doesn't just stop with words, it develops into conflicts between different groups.” 

It's not entirely clear what the proposed changes will be, but they are likely to relate to section 18c. This is the section that makes it unlawful to offend, insult, humiliate, or intimidate another person or group on the basis of their race, color, or national or ethnic origin. However, if you do it in good faith and are accurate in your claims, it’s permissible. And if it's for the purposes of art, no problem—section 18d was put in place to allow for this too. In short, the Racial Discrimination Act is a law which is targeted at genuine racists, not journalists, comedians, or regular people.

And it kind of works. In 2011 journalist Andrew Bolt was found to have contravened the act for saying white-skinned Aboriginal people were exploiting their ethnicity to further their careers. Then Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said Andrew was denied free speech. "You shouldn't condemn people simply for saying something other people don't want to hear," he said. But Andrew lost his case not because he's a journalist, and not because he said something truthful that was upsetting to hear. His claims that white-skinned indigenous people were abusing the system would have been lawful, so long as he had proof that this was the case. He didn't.

It would only be by removing both section 18C and section 18D that people like Andrew could make unsubstantiated racial slurs against a particular group—and get away with it. Would the government really go so far as to change the law in order to stay friends with Andrew and others who would like to use the freedom of speech argument as an excuse for racism? It sounds crazy but there doesn’t seem to be any other reason to do so. Has anyone been fined for making a joke? Do Aussies feel oppressed and mute because they're scared of offending someone? No and nope.

The President of the Human Rights Commission, Dr. Gillian Triggs, said that if the law is going to be changed, it doesn't have to be so drastic as to remove all protections from abuse. She said that removing the terms offend and insult might be a way to avoid annoying claims from people who complain about their bosses or neighbors out of spite.

The law still has to go through a review process, so if you want to start denying the Holocaust, make sure you do it as part of an art project. Or just don't do it. 

Follow Carly on Twitter: @carlylearson

More on race:

"Royals" by Lorde Is Not Racist  

Why Are People Surprised by Racist Halloween Costumes?  

"Asian Girlz" Is the Most Racist Song of All Time