Photo via Flickr user Nan Palermo

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Virtual reality, we're constantly told, will revolutionize how we go about our daily lives, ski-goggle headsets permanently strapped onto our faces. Soon, immersive 360-degree games and films will be nothing but unremarkable. And as that smug conference photo from February suggested, Mark Zuckerberg will presumably wield full control over our most insignificant thoughts and feelings.

But maybe I should take back my snark, because portable headsets may have the potential to help treat certain mental illnesses. At this stage, in the UK at least, we don't know fully how effective "virtual reality therapy" really is, but we may not be far off from seeing it in National Health Service (NHS) clinics around the country.

Let's go back for a bit. Therapists have been using VR therapy to treat arachnophobia, fear of flying, fear of public speaking, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for about 20 years.

People with PTSD are "cutting themselves off from their emotions" says Professor Barbara Rothbaum, a clinical psychologist at the Emory University School of Medicine, who created a VR simulation program to treat combat servicemen and women who'd been stationed in Iraq. "So the advantage with virtual reality therapy is that it becomes such a potent stimulus, that it's harder to avoid."

A screenshot from a combat simulation for PTSD sufferers. Photo: Virtual Iraq.

So far, therapeutic VR has mostly treated PTSD and anxiety disorders through exposure therapy—where you try to desensitize a patient by gradually re-exposing them to their fear or trauma. But recent studies have shown VR could also be applied as a therapy for people with bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorders, eating disorders, addiction, and depression.

A paper from the British Journal of Psychiatry's online publication, for example, found in February that immersive VR could encourage people suffering from depression to be simultaneously less self-critical—a crucial depressive trait—and more compassionate towards themselves. The process involved a technique known as "embodiment": a sort of body-swap where a participant's avatar would flip between representing themselves and a distressed child. The person in the scenario would comfort the child, then change to "being" the child and hearing the comforting words their original avatar had just said.

Dr. Caroline Falconer, a research fellow at the University of Nottingham, was one of nine authors on the paper, where nine out of 15 participants in the UK reported a reduction in self-criticism after this eight-minute therapy. "We were basically hypothesizing that in that situation the participants were giving compassion towards themselves," she says—a hunch that now looks to be correct.

Falconer and her colleagues plan to trial the therapy with more people, then personalize the avatar scenarios, with an aim to next focus on people living with personality disorders. "Given how you can shift perspectives so easily using VR," she says, "you could model some sort of interpersonal situation and allow someone with a personality disorder to embody another avatar and that may help them understand their point of view."

Dr. John King, a clinical psychologist at UCL who also worked on the recent depression study, says hopes NHS clinics will soon pilot the technology. "What's really exciting for us is that, in the two or three years since we started this project, the cost of entry into this kind of technology has completely transformed," with prices for the equipment they used dropping, he says, from around £50,000 in a few local clinics."

A look inside the UCL empathy-based trial

If this trial's successful, it's still unclear where such therapies might fit into the NHS: In a GP surgery? Or a specialist mental health service? For the moment, they just don't know. "There's still a lot of work to be done within the NHS," says Falconer. "Some people there aren't comfortable with the technology—maybe because their tech or computer literacy isn't quite up to scratch—so that's something else we need to tackle." She also stresses that she sees VR more as a complement to existing therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) than a treatment in itself. "From my perspective, this isn't about replacing. It's about trying to enhance what's already there, and also having something that's really engaging for patients."

For King, meanwhile, VR could be an extra tool that therapists use before another, more established treatment becomes available—and as waiting lists for psychotherapy continue to swell, this new shortcut could prove incredibly helpful.

So with prices of VR headsets now plummeting and big guns like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive finally up for public consumption, might these therapies one day evolve into a mass-market method of treatment, to pick up from Superdrug, or Boots? "It is increasing interest in the area," says Falconer. "The gaming industry is really driving the tech and this is lowering costs, so it may give us the opportunity to implement this technology within in an NHS setting. Or, dare I say it, for people to implement it within a home setting."

"As well as being able to do something in the clinic, we might be able to give them something which they could take home and plug their smartphones into," adds King, referencing plug-in headsets pioneered by the likes of Google Cardboard. "It's exciting times," he says, "and we're only really just beginning."

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Check out Ida's Tumblr, blog, and Instagram.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

When Edda Tasiemka was about ten, she was interrogated by the Gestapo. She's fairly matter-of-fact about it now. "My oldest brother's been in a concentration camp, my father's been in a concentration camp, my mother's been in prison," she says, now 93-years-old and casually sipping some tea.

We're in her living room, in the north London suburbs of Golders Green, surrounded by antique furniture and shelves of dusty red books. But this is no ordinary house. It's filled with a sprawling collection of newspaper and magazine cuttings, on everything from the Kray twins and Spice Girls to Ryan Giggs. Edda's archive has earned her the corny but fairly accurate nickname the "Human Google."

Edda and her husband Hans started the collection in the 1950s in their three-story home, and she registered it in 1979 after Hans' death. Manila files bulging with cuttings line every corridor, while stacks of yellowing newspapers teeter in piles. There are files everywhere: politics in the living room, medicine in the kitchen, sport in the loo, religion in the bedroom, three rooms of showbiz, and an attic crammed with crime and fashion.

Edda's closed the archive to the public now, though journalists and authors used to rely on it (for a small fee). We spoke to her about making sense of the archive's chaos, people's obsession with showbiz gossip, and what she's going to do now that the internet has just about made her collection of clippings moot.

VICE: You've had quite the journey to get here. I've read that you lived through Nazi occupation in Germany.
Edda Tasiemka: Looking back, Nazi Germany was like life on a different planet. Especially if you weren't one of them. Mummy and I lived in a block of flats, and we would never speak to our neighbors, because instead of saying 'Good Morning' you would have to say 'Heil Hitler!" Mummy and I couldn't bring ourselves to do it.

We had terrible times. One time the Gestapo came every week searching the house because we weren't in the party and never had any uniform. They always came when I was alone as a child. I can see them now—men in big trench coats would bang on the door and shout "open up or we'll trample the door in!" So I'd open the door and they'd push two big Alsatians inside, which would roam all over the place. As I say, people can't imagine it.

So you were at risk, even as a German national?
At the school I went to outside Hamburg, I was the only child of over 300 who wasn't in the Hitler Youth, so I didn't have a uniform and couldn't march with them. From time to time my mother had to visit the headmaster Herr Honko. He would always try and talk her into getting me into it. "Such a clever child, not in the Hitler Youth..."

My father was a Communist MP and was arrested soon after the Nazis came, then released at the Christmas Amnesty in 1933 – by mistake, as we learnt later. He was warned by a local policeman that he would be rearrested, so he had to ski into Czechoslovakia. Then the Gestapo came one day and arrested Mummy. They sealed the flat, but I stayed with a friend who lived opposite. It was dangerous though; he was a Jew you see. So I stayed with long lost relatives. Life under the Nazis wasn't normal life as you know it.

How did you end up in London?
I'd met Hans in Hamburg, while he was stationed in the British Army towards the end of the war. He'd been a journalist in Berlin before the Nazis came and always had bits of paper falling out of his uniform pockets. I remember asking him what all the paper was. 'They're cuttings!' he replied. He would send them to London to a friend, who kept them for him. That's how all this started.

Hans was naturalized, then de-mobbed in 1949, so we decided to get married and he got me over to England. At first we lived in a boarding house at Mrs Beasley's and kept cardboard boxes under the bed. When we had a furnished flat of our own the cuttings just grew and grew.

So then you started the archive?
At first Hans worked for the Foreign Office for their German department, and wrote articles for the publicity section. He started supplying cuttings to magazines and those journalists told others about Tasiemka, so he started charging.

I worked for a while in journalism too, though I was into civil engineering before I met Hans—I was a technical draughtswoman. We worked on the archive together and eventually the cuttings library took over and I gave up journalism.

We had to move to Golders Green in the early 60s to get more space. We have a storage unit full of files too—dead bodies, as I call them. People that have passed their sell-by-date.

How does the archive filing system work? There's just so much ... stuff.
We catalogue anyone who's been written about lots in the papers. All the files are ordered alphabetically, and if one of the files gets too fat, then it gets a special file of its own. We used to have beautifully organized rooms, but now it's all got too much!

People want the old clippings, because all the new information can be found on the internet. We have some dating back to Victorian times. Years ago I bought a stack of The Illustrated London News, so heavy you could barely lift them, from an old bookshop in south London. They'd been keeping them in the cellar. I still have some left to cut!

What are some of the subjects that you get the most requests for?
British personalities, I suppose. Showbiz: that's what people want. OK, HELLO, Tatler, and all the daily papers as well—The Mail, The Express, The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, everything. Nowadays, about half our customers only want magazines because they can't get them on the internet.

We keep a record of what everyone requests and what we send to them in our 'red book.' The last requests we've had include Julian Fellowes, Helena Bonham Carter, Lord Lucan, Mindy Kaling, Lady Kitty Spencer, the Queen—perhaps in time for her 90th birthday celebrations. We've got the Ecclestone sisters here, Peaches Geldof, WAGs, 'rich kids.' Someone was looking for royal ghosts here... we do have a lot on the supernatural.

A German journalist here was asking after the Krays, and we've got two huge files on them. I remember the Kray stories would be all over the newspapers: double spreads in The News of the World and The Sunday People. They were notorious, you know. Criminal gangsters. They ruled the East End completely, and people were terrified of them.

What's going to happen with the archive? I know you were looking for a buyer for it years ago.
I wish I knew. Robert Maxwell expressed an interest but there were never any firm negotiations. I didn't want to sell it at the time. I would sell the archive now, yes, but I don't think anyone's as silly as me! It would have to be sold in one lot, though. Otherwise if you sold it off in bits and pieces, where's the value? People would ask, why is this subject missing? I'd be very sad to see it go, though.

Sean Yeaton used to work at VICE before he became the bassist for Parquet Courts, a band whose catchy-yet-cryptic songs single-handedly got me interested in guitar rock again and have catapulted them into fame (well, at least Letterman and my dad are big fans). Even after he went on his "rock star sabbatical," Sean's stayed in touch—he served as Music Reviews Editor of VICE Magazine for a stint I remember for the manic, middle-of-the-night emails he sent me while out on tour whenever he forgot to ask other people to write reviews. Regardless of whatever time zone Sean was in, it was clear his sleeping schedule was skewed and he was sorta losing his mind.

It turns out that at least part of his problem is a recurring stress dream he's had for years since he started touring regularly. Or, at least it's his psyche reminding him that there's a larger, existential Goliath he's yet to confront. And Sean's currently on tour with the Courts cause their new album Human Performance (pure heat) is out soon, and there's a strong likelihood this dream might pop up again. The nightmare involves wandering in an immense public transportation labyrinth in hopes of reaching a vague destination, before getting sidetracked by exploring a crappy, equally-serpentine mall. It actually reminds me of a lyric from a Parquet Courts song called "Content Nausea": "Life's lived least when you don't let go/Of a memory, of a dream/Like an hometown better seen/On a screen or at a distance." Heady, right?

In an effort to decipher the dream, I asked Sean to describe it and take a stab at what it could mean. Then, I had my friend Morgan Stebbins, a certified Jungian analyst and Director of Training of the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association, give a professional's take on the recurring "mind maze" that clogs Sean's brain during his REM cycle.

Sean Yeaton's Recurring Dream:

This dream usually pops up when I'm stressed OR during a rare stress-free lull. In the case of the latter, it usually marks the beginning of a healthy stretch of mangled anxiety. It doesn't really wake me up but I remember it first thing when I wake up... So maybe it does wake up me up?

Every time, I find myself on this endless public transportation system, but it's kind of built up out of all these other public transportations systems that I've been on—and they're all blended together. I'm on a mission to get to this place or destination, but this place is never defined because the anxiety of reaching it is more overbearing than the end itself. At the same time, this dream is so familiar that it's not even that stressful. It's more of a mundane, simmering thing.

For example, I'll find myself at a New York subway entrance and I'll go down its steps. I'm always my current age and by myself, plus the locations I end up in are a lot less hectic than what they'd typically be like in reality. When I get to the platform, it will look like, say, the Boston T's platform, but when I get on the subway car, it'll resemble something like the Berlin U-Bahn. There's always this moment where I realize I'm on the wrong train, and as I get off and head towards the vague destination I can't remember, what always stays the same is the blended transportation systems, even if the next location changes.

In these dreams, I often find myself walking through all these corridors and flights of stairs in an increasingly-complex train stop before I end up passing through this weird mini-mall. I'm still underground, and this mall is all underground, so I've come to think the next space is based on some memory I have of this shitty, dirty mall I went to years ago in Mexico. I think it's also based on this area of Penn Station where it transitions from being a normal NYC subway to this weird mall with like an Aunt Anny's before you get to Amtrak. That transition—in both real life and the dream—gives me the same feeling as when you're swimming and right when you think you're about to get up out of the water to get fresh air, there's just a little bit of water left before you break through the surface. It's like you've misjudged when you'll experience relief. I'll always find the Amtrak in reality, but in the dream I'll never find the real destination or even know exactly where I'm going.

In the dream-mall, I always see the Mexican equivalent of like a head shop or a Hot Topic or a bargain electronics store that doesn't exist anymore—like Sam Goody. It's all the same shit you'd see at a normal mall but way crappier. In my mind, malls have always been portals for all this gross crap—free-floating spaceships where you can live off the stuff in them. But they're never really permanent or home. I often lose focus of reaching my original destination as I go into this mall, and I'll get sidetracked and walk into one of the stores.

One time, I remember going into a costume superstore—like those ones that pop up before Halloween, though it wasn't close to October when I dreamt this. In this instance, I found myself wanting to get a grim reaper cloak, or one of those Scream masks. Whether I'm in this store or another, I never end up really buying anything, though this time I left with this weird staff or a walking stick. Another time, I remember going to a movie theater and it had a red carpet in it as if a premiere was happening—but there were no concessions, and the dingy theater (which had no stadium seating) was empty and the lights were turned up really bright during the screening.

The feeling of being in this labyrinthine dream-mall is like being in a video game glitch—like when your avatar gets stuck in the side of a building. You can turn off the system, pull out the game console, blow on it, and the glitch gets fixed when you turn it back on. For me, it's like a psychedelic or psychological error in a digital realm, but the realm is my brain where the dream's going on. It's like a glitch-y mind maze.

What Sean Thinks His Dream Means:

The more I discuss the dream, the more I realize the themes of misdirection and impermanence are pretty much a straight-up allegory with regards to my current life. A goddamn one-to-one relationship.

I don't really feel like I have a home because I'm on tour a good chunk of time—at least a week or two per month. I moved to Philly not so long ago, and I haven't really had an opportunity to make a life for myself there. I think part of me is convinced I'll get back to NYC at some point, but who knows. If I had to guess what this fucking dream means it's probably just that I am in dire need of light at the end of the tunnel!

What a Jungian Analyst Thinks the Dream Means:

A repeating dream wants to be taken seriously. Its apparent beginning is also important—though most likely something like "the beginning" has happened even before then. We repeat and repeat until we get it right! Although he identified the start of the dreams with the beginning of touring, I would bet that in past times of stress he would have faced similar dreams, and made similar life choices. And, when we are stressed or very relaxed the psyche can ease its way through our conscious control and show up—that is, the veil between worlds is thinner at those times!

What's a subway? We must always ask ourselves the same three questions with dream images: 1. What is the image in its functional sense, 2. What does this represent psychologically, and 3. Where is that true for me?

A public transit system is a way of getting from here to there, so it's like a conscious plan or a habit—it's our way of doing things, and it's collective, meaning everyone does it the same way. So, the subway in the dream could translate to "I do what I've always done the way everyone else does it," (which also means, "I do what some bit of the collective value system expects")... and it turns out it doesn't get him anywhere! Round and round he goes, and he can't get off. This is like the cycle of illusion that, in most Dharma traditions, imprisons us on the mundane plane. It's important to remember that sometimes the common way is fine. After all, usually the subway gets you to work. In this case, the psyche is saying something else...

The blended aspect of the transport systems is partly what clues us in to this being a psychological dream. What I mean by that is sometimes if you dream of a place, you might need to go there, but other times you are being called to look at what it represents. If an image is abstract or blended, the psyche is emphasizing the non-personal and symbolic aspects of it.

The part where he talks about losing focus of his original destination and entering a store in the strange mall is pretty direct. It's asking the dreamer: How do I get sidetracked by crap? Instead: Where is my home—both in a literal sense, but also in terms of knowing myself, of coming back to myself. As T.S. Eliot says, the end of all of our travels is to return home and know it for the first time.

In other words, the sidetracking is two things. One, it's trying to undermine the conscious desire (reaching a destination) in order to leave room for a new way of being and deciding. We almost always overvalue our conscious desires and tend to think we can control how we're built... but it's like controlling how tall you are—nope!

Two, he's going to have to get sidetracked from his current behavior to find both his literal, outer home (more important for some than others—some people are totally 'at home' when they are 'on the road') and, critically, the feeling of at-home-ness.

He wants to try on a Halloween mask, and masks are what Jung calls the persona. We wear a version of ourselves in all sorts of different places. There's no problem there, but there are two pitfalls: One is when the mask is so far from ourselves that it causes psychic pain from its fraudulence, and the other is when we believe that the mask is actually who we are. This is a common problem among public figures of any kind.

When he describes his dream as psychological glitch, it sounds like The Matrix—the brilliance of which was to point out the virtual nature of human perception and communication. If we can understand that reality has many aspects, we can begin to take responsibility for our role in our own lives. There's a fine line between using technology as a tool that enhances our humanity and having it become the driver of our needs and wants. The latter way leads, of course, to suffering.

He gets his dream pretty well, though maybe not in all details or in terms of the importance of it (both to be expected). That means the dreamer has the capacity to both gain more insight into the situation and to do something about it. He's close! The question is always: how important is it to do what needs to be done before it happens to us? As Jung says, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

Follow Zach on Twitter, and visit Morgan Stebbins's website for more information about his Jungian analysis practice.

Seems legit. Photo via Flickr user Daniel Julià Lundgren.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

A few weeks ago, I received a distressed phone call from a friend. This isn't unusual—Bilal's always ringing for advice after a row with his lady. This time, he sounded particularly distraught: "I've really gone and done it. I think I've accidentally divorced my wife."

He explained that in the denomination of Islam that he follows (Sunni, Hanafi school of jurisprudence), saying "I divorce you" three times to your wife means that you're immediately over in the eyes of God. This is known as "triple talaq." Ideally, the phrase should be said on separate occasions with time in between, but it's still binding when said in a single sitting. Typically, couples would then take their case to a UK court for it officially count as a divorce under national law, Bilal said.

"The triple talaq is considered binding by the majority of Muslims, as is a talaq under anger," a spokesman for the Islamic Council for Meditation and Arbitration, which specializes in marriage and divorced-based issues, told VICE. Shahid Raza of the Muslim Law Shariah Council UK also said that in cases of extreme anger, when a guy's lost control of his senses, a divorce can be declared invalid, but in situations where there the triple talaq is used due to "moderate and normal" anger, it's still valid.

Bilal had shouted the words during a row whilst furiously angry. I originally questioned whether or not the triple talaq is still binding when that happens, but according to the Islamic Council for Meditation and Arbitration, the fact that the words were said in a fit of rage is no excuse. To qualify as "extreme anger," the husband basically needs to have been furious to the point where it drove him temporarily insane. Bilal had said the words during a run-of-the-mill domestic row, so this definitely wasn't going to get him off the hook.

At first, it seemed a bit harsh that something said during a fit of rage could have such long-lasting consequences—but actually, most so many breakups stem from anger anyway, don't they? We got in touch with Vali Hussein—a Muslim imam with experience counseling guys in the UK at Scotland's Inverness masjid—to find out how much of this was hearsay nonsense and what women make of being ditched like this.

VICE: What happens in situations when a man's unsure if he's said the triple talaq?
Vali Hussein: If there are no witnesses to it and he's not sure, then this is a matter between him and God. The judgement will be down to the man, and if he is faithful, his consciousness will provide him with the best answer to whether he said it or not.

But what advice would you usually give to guys who've divorced their wives like this?
I'm not sure what advice you can give to someone in that situation. They've usually learnt their lesson, but obviously, they can't come back to that person again unless the woman gets married to another person and then divorces. A fit of rage can also cost a man the dowry, and the children are his responsibility, not that of the woman.

How do guys approach you about their accidental, verbal divorces? Sounds like quite the chat.
People come to me quite a lot and say "I said it in the moment," "I was angry," or "I said all three talaqs in one sitting, so it can't be binding." But according to the majority of the scholars that I'm aware of, it is binding in those circumstances.

What about women?
They are often upset, and if they came over from Pakistan, they sometimes know that they'll be going back there now that the marriage is over. In some cases, they feel that they provoked the husband to the point where he gave the three divorces, and are regretful about that.

It gets trickier when volatile emotions come into the picture. How do you approach cases where women are divorced by their husbands in anger?
I normally advise for her to be patient and understand and accept what the Almighty has ordained. Most people know that three talaqs is like a non-revocable divorce, accept it, and move on.

How would you typically console a man post-triple talaq?
Usually people have regret, so I say, "Unfortunately, this is the verdict in Islamic law." In most cases where people divorce through saying three divorces, there's been a trail of abuse, and it's been an unsteady relationship. At the time, they still think they may be better off together, but at the end of the day, the divorce was their fate, and they will have to eventually come to terms with it.

WATCH: Heartbreak Hustle – Inside America's Lucrative Divorce Industry

How often do you come across triple talaqs voiced during fits of rage?
Although divorce is allowed in Islam, it's very disliked by God. It used to be a taboo, and you wouldn't hear about it, but nowadays, unfortunately you hear about it a lot more. Sometimes it's for good and valid reasons, but sometimes it's just because it's become part of our culture. Our parents and grandparents would have tolerated a lot of things that people perhaps wouldn't today, and nowadays, even small things can break up marriages.

What advice do you give to Muslims to safeguard them against the possibility of divorcing during a fit of anger?
It's very important for them to consult an imam and to educate themselves. Most imams talk about the consequences of different types of divorce in their lessons and sermons.

Thanks, Vali.

Follow Nick on Twitter.

Images courtesy of Danny Roew and the Asylum

Casting based on actors' similarities to or relationships with each other is a tried and true format in film at this point. The original Ocean's 11 brought together five members of the Rat Pack. ATL tapped multiple fixtures in the city's hip-hop scene. The Expendables series has an elite class of action stars from the past 25 years fighting on the same squad. Coen Brothers movies always feature actors who've appeared in past Coen Brothers movies.

A couple years ago, Easter Sunday fell on 4/20, another sacred holiday involving candy and other munchies. To celebrate then, we re-imagined Easter as psychedelic freakout. Flash-forward two years and the world is a very different place. The planet's physically warmer, we're in the midst of a shitstorm of a presidential election, and everyone's even more certain that sugar and corn syrup are really bad for you. So this year, we interpreted Easter Sunday a little differently.... enjoy!

Photos: Liz Renstrom
Styling: Pricilla Jeong
GIFs: Marissa Gertz
Assistant: Jacob Z. Gross

Photo via Facebook.

It's Easter Sunday, a holiday when Christians across the globe revisit and retell the story of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection. FOX tried to cash in on all of that with their broadcast ofThe Passion on Palm Sunday. In terms of quality, it was about as good as you'd imagine a live musical featuring Chris Daughtry as Judas singing Evanescence would be. Ratings were down 42 percent from Grease: Live, FOX's last live musical. The drop could mean people simply think The Walking Dead is a better watch. Or maybe it's just that the Bible's account of Jesus's final days on Earth is getting kind of played out.

I'm not saying that the elements that comprise the Passion story are wack; sacrifice, betrayal, resurrection, and ascension are the essential stuff you need to make up any great story. I'd just prefer to get all of that stuff with the added bonus of aliens or explosions, where the surrounding story is different, but most of the basic concepts are the same.

The following selection of resurrection stories below weren't ripped line-by-line from the scripture like The Passion, but their characters do follow the same narrative arc. While none of them are even close to being as popular or influential as the "reason for the season," I'd take them over seeing Jim Caviezel get flagellated any day.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

In this 1951 classic, an alien visitor named Klaatu lands on Earth and announces to the world that he comes in peace. Of course, it doesn't work out. He ends up shot, distrusted, and shot again by the humans he's trying to help. But after being put out of commission, the ET is brought back to life. Instead of a holy miracle, Klaatu gets resurrected for a limited time by a domineering robot. But just like Jesus, post-resurrection, he still hopes the best for the humans. Of course, it's all a thinly-veiled threat, because the humans will destroy the world if they don't get their shit together.

RoboCop (1987)

Robocop is very of its time and ahead of its time. There's a lot of 80s camp, but it also features a Detroit ravaged by counterproductive institutions. In other words, it's 2016 Michigan without the robotics and (maybe?) the violent double crossing. But where corporations and governments can't save the populace, RoboJesus RoboCop can. Alex Murphy is a well-to-do human cop before he gets shot up so badly that it makes Alonzo Harris's gunshot wounds look like boo-boo scratches, It's also worth noting his body is splayed in a crucifix formation as he's taking those bullets.

Murphy is resurrected as a cyborg officer focused on justice, not vengeance. Described by director Paul Verhoeven as an "American Jesus," RoboCop sets out to rid Detroit of sin. But this is the American Jesus, so he does it with violent gunplay instead of forgiveness. RoboCop also walks on top of water at the movie's climax. It's not a display of the power of faith though, since he ends up catching a body in that same scene.

The Matrix (1999)

The bible says nothing about human beings who live naked within wombs as they're "plugged in" to a virtual reality. Yet, it's The Matrix that entrenches itself deeper within biblical mythology than most. Before becoming a wise-cracking grandfather on network television, Laurence Fishburne was Morpheus, whose faith in Neo's messianic destiny parallels John the Baptist's faith in Jesus. Before getting bodied in The Sopranos, Joe Pantoliano was Cypher, the crew's Judas.

Then there's Keanu Reeves, who plays the prophetic savior who beats death in his quest to save humanity. Neo ascends into (virtual) heaven at the end of the film after roaming the Earth. A lot of digital spiritual miracles going on here.

The Green Mile (1999)

Wrongly convicted inmate John Coffey isn't resurrected after his execution—he's still, tragically, very dead. But Coffey does fit the Jesus role in that he's a miracle worker, albeit one who does it simply because he can, not because of any religious testaments. He heals the sick, resurrects the dead, and grants Tom Hanks's character—a death row officer—an unnaturally long lifespan. Unfortunately, it's not enough to get him off death row. So, Hanks has to do his his job and oversee Coffey to the electric chair even though he knows the gentle giant is guilty. Hanks basically played Pontius Pilate the same year he played a toy sheriff.

This analogy is actually Dick Gregory approved. During a lecture, the comedian-activist noted Jesus Christ and John Coffey share the same initials (although Stephen King said he got the name from an Emerson College professor), compared Coffey's healing powers to casting away demons, and emphasizes how two prisoners were executed before Coffey (Jesus was hung between two thieves). Gregory also claimed he sawThe Green Mile13 times, a Herculean task for a three-hour film.

Lord of the Rings (2001)

Gandalf had what would've been one of the greatest deaths for a wizard in written history in the famous "You shall not pass" scene, when he falls to his death while fighting a demon. He does this so his companions can survive, which is a literal embodiment of John 15:13: "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends."

But through circumstances that are essentially the equivalent of a heavenly video game respawn, Gandalf the Grey returns as Gandalf the White, bathed in heavenly light to lead the forces of good. Thankfully, his return isn't like Michael Jordan and the Wizards; he puts in work in through the following two films.

And after Gandalf does his thing in his godly white and helps defeat Sauron's forces, he doesn't spend time dilly-dallying in post-retirement. He soon departs for the unseen Grey Havens, which could be a allegory for Jesus's ascension to heaven.

Alien 3 (1992)

Ellen Ripley makes a Christ-like sacrifice in Alien 3. After killing the murderous alien, she has to deal with the monster growing inside of her belly. To save others, she voluntarily falls in crucifix formation into a pit of molten lava. And then she's reborn. Instead of in a few days, Ripley comes back 200 years later as a clone in Alien: Resurrection.

All-Star Superman (2005-08)

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Houthi fighters, Sadah City. All photos by Spencer Chumbley

We've traveled to Yemen twice in the last two years. Once in 2014, prior to the Houthi takeover, and again in late August and early September of 2015 after Saudi airstrikes had decimated much of the country. Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the beginning of the Saudi military campaign in the country. The UN special envoy has said that the warring parties have agreed to a ceasefire starting April 10th, and a new round of peace talks beginning in Kuwait on April 18. The below is an account of our time reporting from Yemen in 2015—the people we met and the destruction we witnessed firsthand.

We were walking down a street in the center of Sanaa, Yemen's capital, feeling relaxed for the first time since we had arrived two weeks earlier. Most of the city was dark, except for a few windows, gently lit by candles, or the headlights of cars driven fast by nervous men with a reason to risk being out at night.

We'd celebrated making it to the end of a tense and often terrifying shoot by visiting the old city for kebabs. The young men cooking the skewers of minced meat on glowing charcoals smiled at us, waving their hands dismissively as anti-aircraft tracer s lit up the sky and the now-familiar thud and boom of airstrikes followed. The missile strikes in Sanaa weren't as frightening as the ones we had seen in the north, mostly because they came in predictable batches and hit generally the same areas, which people in the capital knew to avoid. There would be about half a dozen late at night , then another half a dozen or so just before dawn.

As we walked back to our hotel, our bellies full, a fighter jet flew in low and seemed to suck the air from around us. A terrific whooshing sound instantly filled the street, like a scream as loud as thunder. Suddenly, the earth seemed to tilt sideways . Something exploded just ahead of us. The other silhouettes on the street vanished and we staggered into a nearby shop as broken glass fell to the floor. I was carrying a friend's four year-old nephew on my shoulders and struggl ing to stay on my feet.

We ran back to the hotel and everyone took cover in the stairwell. The staff and a few families looked terrified as each blast shook the walls around us. They had been experiencing this for eight months, but hadn't been able to get used to it.

A plane wreckage at Sanaa's airport

You see the results of this bombing campaign as soon as you arrive in Sanaa. At the city's main airport, several destroyed planes still sit on the tarmac next to the main runway. Nearby, military bases, officer academies , and weapons depots have all been obliterated.

Civilian homes have also been hit, sometimes seemingly at random. Basic infrastructure has been targeted as if the pilots of the fighter jets or their paymasters are becoming frustrated by the fact they are still far from any kind of victory. Sometimes targets that have already been hit many times are hit again; a house belonging to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's son was hit several times over the course of a few weeks even though it had already been flattened. It seems wrong to call a bombing campaign that has so far involved over 40,000 air strikes petulant, but that it is how it often seems. The morning after we'd been caught out in the open we found out what the target had been: a cemetery.

According to the UN, at least 6,000 people have been killed so far in Yemen's civil war, roughly half of them civilians. That number only includes those who died in a medical facility so the actual number is certainly much higher. The majority of deaths have been caused by airstrikes launched by the Saudi-led military coalition.

Yemen's war is a complicated and grave affair. It started when the Houthis, a Zaydi Shia group from the north of the country, took over Sanaa and placed the country's elected president under house arrest. Hadi escaped to the southern port city of Aden; the Houthis, backed by military units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, sent men to capture him and pilots from Yemen's creaky air force to drop a bomb next to the presidential palace.

In Yemen's northern highlands, people had largely accepted the Houthi-Saleh takeover after several days of fighting on the outskirts of Sanaa. But in Aden, and in the city of Taiz in the west, civilians took up arms to fight them off. President Hadi called for the leaders of the neighboring Gulf states to intervene in the war.

Ben Anderson examining US-made cluster bombs

Saudi Arabia has long viewed the Houthis as a Hezbollah-like proxy for Iran, their great regional rival who they believe is intent on gaining the regional balance of power by consolidating its control over Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Fearing encirclement, the Saudis helped Hadi escape the Houthi-Saleh advance and announced that it would lead a military coalition of Sunni-majority states to oust the Houthis and reinstate Hadi. The U.S. was wary of the prospect of another regional proxy war, still it agreed to support the coalition as part of a general attempt to smooth its relationship with the Gulf states , including Saudi Arabia, in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal.

In the early days of the war the Saudis confidently predicted a quick victory as the Houthi-Saleh alliance struggled to take on the mass of fighters who would rally to Hadi's side. But their optimism was misplaced. The conflict has dragged on, coalescing into a series of battles involving the Houthis, Saleh, and an array of local groups that the Saudis and Hadi have struggled to bring under a single banner. And while anti-Houthi fighters have taken back significant swathes of territory over the past six months , most analysts think the war has now reached a stalemate.

The Houthis have indiscriminately shelled civilian populations in Aden and Taiz, preventing food, water, fuel, and medicine from entering the cities, calcifying regional and sectarian rivalries into hatred that may take decades to undo. But in the northwest, where we visited, there has been little fighting on the ground and the main experience people have had of the war is from the sky, in the shape of bombs dropped by the Saudi-led coalition and supplied by the US. Local ire is largely directed at Riyadh, and at Washington and the UN, for allowing bombs to fall with impunity, collectively punishing the civilian population for the actions of a militia and a corrupt former president whom they had no interest in supporting but could do little to resist.

In late September of last year we walked around the old city, on cobbled streets that snake around the tall thin houses, ornately decorated with bands of geometric shapes. Along with over a hundred mosques and Turkish baths, many homes there date back to before the 11th century , some of the first multi-story buildings ever built. The Old City is a UNESCO World Heritage site, supposedly protected because of its outstanding value to humanity. We saw five houses that had been blown to pieces.

The old market, Sadah City

An elderly man called Mujahid al-Aini was sitting on a small dusty rug next to the rubble from one of the houses, keeping watch. The house belonged to his brother and he said he'd been there every day since it had been struck, shooing kids away because the remaining walls or surrounding houses could collapse at any moment.

"My brother was relaxing and having dinner with his children and a jet dropped a missile and it killed ten people," he told me. "Everybody was killed. 4 toddlers, 4 girls, and also the mother and my brother."

He said he had come to the house as soon as he heard the news. Along with his neighbors he had dug through the rubble, looking for any survivors. They started digging at 10 PM, and didn't stop until 7 AM the next morning, when they pulled out the last body. I asked him what his brother did for a living. "He had no connection to the Houthis," he said. "My poor brother used to sell veggies and tomatoes. He didn't belong to any party!"

Locals confirmed that Mujahid's brother sold vegetables next to the nearby Al-Fulaihi mosque out of the back of a van. The houses near the Al-Aini home were badly damaged, and looked abandoned. Most of the family's neighbors, Mujahid told me , were too afraid to stay in their damaged homes. "The entire neighborhood is gone," he said.

A coffee and spice trader in his destroyed shop, Sadah City

The destruction in Sanaa was nothing compared to what was happening in the north, we were told. In Sadah, the Houthis' northern heartland, entire towns and village were apparently reduced to rubble. In the early days of the war, the Saudis had dropped leaflets telling residents to leave because the entire province had been declared a military target.

The Saudi-led coalition was enforcing a land, sea, and air blockade on Yemen, leading to drastic shortages of fuel and other basic goods. The cost of living, including the cost of transport, had soared as the economy collapsed. Many people couldn't flee if they wanted to. Some residents we met couldn't afford the fare for an hour-long bus ride to the nearest town with a clinic. Although the blockade has eased somewhat since the fall, many aid agencies in the area warn that much of Yemen is now on the brink of famine.

We had plans to head north when we heard news that a wedding party had been targeted near Mokha on Yemen's Red Sea Coast. We drove south to the village the next morning. When we arrived , residents were still panicked. A stick-thin old man with a long red goatee introduced himself as Saeed Ali. He led us around frantically, trying to explain everything at once as he showed us where three missiles had struck. Almost as soon as he had started, a jet roared above us. People ran from the nearest cluster of buildings, their heads and shoulders hunched forward, their faces terrified.

A gas station that was hit during an airstrike, killing 21 people, Sadah City

After the jet passed, Saeed continued his tour, speaking manically and gesturing wildly with his arms: "There is flesh everywhere. This is a skull. This is all human flesh." He was pointing to black lumps all around us on the ground. He walked to some trees and bushes. "These trees are filled with flesh. Still there are legs, arms..." We could see lumps of burnt skin hanging from branches. I found a jawbone with the bottom row of teeth still attached. Another jet, or perhaps the same one, flew over head.

A tiny old woman wrapped from head to toe in a green shawl approached us with what looked like part of someone's brain in her hands. It was burned black. "The planes left this and went," she said, throwing it to the ground. The men quickly covered it with sand and urged her to go back indoors. She began to walk away but kept stopping and wailing back at us, pointing to the sky. "They killed everyone. My children, my sister, and all my family."

One of the targets was a shack where men had gathered before the wedding. It was barely ten feet wide but the missile had landed right in its center. The cushions that had been laid out for the guests were caked in blood and covered with flies feasting on human remains. I was told that the first strike was quickly followed by a second close by and that the women had run inside another hut.

The huts were little more than circular walls of tree branches stuck into the sandy ground with thatched roofs attached. A third strike hit the hut that the women were in, Saeed told me. It struck "like an arrow" one of the men said a s he showed me the crater that the blast had created. Again, it was in the center of where the tiny wooden structure had been.

A man holds shrapnel following an airstrike, Sadah City

"We just found bits and pieces," said one of the villagers, picking up yet anther piece of charred flesh. He showed me where they had found the lower half of one woman's body, then the torso of another. He picked up what he said was someone's sternum.

The villagers told us they had gathered the human remains, put them in cloth sacks, and buried them nearby. They showed us the graves. One for the body parts and a separate one for the closest thing to a complete body they had found. They said that , even as they were filling the graves, the jets circled over their heads.

Another man asked us to come to his house. One small concrete building had another wooden shack next to it built from branches, with no doors. Inside was a mangled bed. Dark , wet patches of blood soaked into the mud floor. The man said his 70 year-old mother had been almost cut in two when a large piece of shrapnel flew through the branches and into the wall of the main building. He said two children had been on the floor, and they , along with his mother , had also been killed. His brother and sister had died inside where the missiles had landed. Large pieces of flesh and body parts were still stuck to the wooden frame of the tent. We heard another jet above us.

Children standing in the trench they slept in for 2 months, holding the tail fin of a US made cluster bomb, Sadah City

"They've been flying over us for 20 days now, 24 hours a day, constantly," the man said, crying. "Day and night. The children are going crazy. We, the adults, are going crazy . Because of the jets. We don't sleep at night."

Soon after speaking with us, he got onto the back of a motorcycle . He was going to see some smugglers to ask if they would take him and what was left of his family across the Red Sea to Djibouti.

Brigadier-General Ahmed al-Asiri, a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, denied responsibility for the attack in Mokha, telling Reuters: "There have been no air operations by the coalition in that area for three days. This is totally false news."

The next day we drove north towards Sadah city. Every bridge along the main road had been destroyed a long with countless gas stations, fuel trucks, and roadside buildings. At a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) who had fled the heavy bombing campaign, many told us that their villages in the surrounding countryside had been flattened. The camp, on a dusty patch of barren land, was home to 600 people living in makeshift tents with just two temporary toilets between them. They were forced to burn plastic bottles and polystyrene to bake bread because fuel had become too expensive.

IDP (internally displaced person) camp, Amran province

I asked Abdo Ali Salem al-Obali , the self-declared "sheikh" of the camp, what they had fled from. "Wherever these bombs hit, everything is gone," he said. "People died. No one was left. No stores were left. Nothing was left. We ran away with nothing in our hands. They burned our village and now we are here."

In an MSF-run hospital, where the staff looked shattered by the massive influx of injured or malnourished patients, a family gathered around a wailing baby girl whose right leg was just a short, bandaged stump. Her whole body was covered with burns and cuts. Her mother, who was also covered with small shrapnel wounds, described what had happened.

"My child has died and the other one had her leg amputated," she sobbed. "They didn't attack any military camps. They killed women, children, the elderly, and young. They haven't left anything undamaged. They've forced people to flee their homes."

The general justification for the level of destruction visited upon Yemen by the Saudis and their allies has been that they are working to restore Yemen's legitimate government to power and nullify the threat of future Houthi attacks across its southern border. But last week the Saudis announced that "major combat operations" would soon be coming to an end even though the Houthis still control most of the territory they had at the beginning of the war, and have even pushed into Saudi Arabia, taking several small towns and military bases there. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have hardly succeeded in showing the world, or its regional rivals, that they are a potent fighting force.

Men syphoning fuel, Sadah City

What they have shown is that they are able to inflict widespread destruction on a neighboring state while building resentments that will last for generations. As we've documented elsewhere, the US and UK are complicit, both supplying the Saudis with weapons and helping them run the aerial campaign in Yemen. Neither country seems particularly interested in getting to the bottom of allegations that the richest country in the Middle East is bombing some of its poorest people with apparent disregard for human life.

When we finally got to Saada city, the provincial capital, we saw what everyone had been talking about. We'd last visited the city 18 months earlier and it was now unrecognizable. On some streets, every building had been hit by an air strike, badly damaged if not completely destroyed. Apart from the roads themselves, which had been swept clear, entire streets of once bustling shops, restaurants, and homes were now just piles of broken bricks, concrete, and mangled steel.

Even the ubiquitous Houthi "sarkha" banners were almost all gone. In 2014, the city had been plastered with them, some higher than buildings: crisp white rectangles with bright red and green Arabic letters saying, "God is great. Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse the Jews. Victory for Islam." Now the remaining banners were ripped, hanging in shreds, or faded and dirty.

Children and Houthi supporters used to sing out the sarkha whenever they saw us. We didn't hear it once on this return trip. Houthi checkpoints within the city had largely been abandoned. Those that did still exist were manned by the old, the wounded, or very often by fighters who looked like they had yet to reach puberty. Anyone able -bodied and willing (and in some cases, we were quietly told, unwilling) was off fighting on the frontlines.

Houthi fighters at a checkpoint, Sadah City

The tiny juice bar we had visited two years earlier was shuttered, the family who had proudly served us fresh smoothies was long gone. The coffee shop once run by a mature and unflappable ten-year-old boy was no more.

One flattened gas station still had two lines of mangled mini-buses, "dabbabs," as the Yemenis call them, leading up to it in an orderly line. It was easy to imagine what it must have looked like in the moments before the missile hit. Eleven minibus drivers had been lining up to get fuel. Two of them were at the pumps, filling their vehicles. One mini-bus seemed to be trying to jump the line , and you could almost hear the other drivers b eeping their horns and shouting. Several cars had also been lining up from the other entrance. Then a missile had landed right on the small roof covering the pumps. Every vehicle had been burnt into black and rust colored skeletons. Only the bodies of the drivers and passengers had been removed. We were shown video of their blackened, skinless corpses being carried away: 21 people had been killed in the air strike. The only reason they were there at all, desperately trying to access some scarce fuel, was because of the blockade enforced by the same people who had then blown them up .

The Imam Al-Hadi mosque is one of the oldest in the world. It had been open more or less continuously for 1,300 years . It was now closed, we were told, for the first time in its history.

Many of the surrounding buildings, including the once thriving market, were destroyed. The walls around the mosque were damaged, but the building itself had not been hit. Not far away, every local government building—the Post Office, the Agricultural bank, a lecture theater—had been destroyed, but there too, the mosque was untouched, except for some broken windows. The coalition could clearly strike, or spare, whatever they chose.

Anderson stands next to the ruins of a barber's house in Sadah City. Twenty-seven members of the barber's family were killed

I sat on the edge of a huge crater next to the mosque and looked into the houses that had been skinned by bombs. I saw a retro TV, a dresser , and the tiled walls of bathrooms and kitchens. In one house, I saw a cheap suitcase, crammed full with clothes, but not yet closed , like someone had tried to squeeze in as much as possible and had struggled to get the suitcase shut. Maybe the bomb had landed at that very moment. Maybe the anti-aircraft fire had given them enough time to flee, but they didn't have time to take their belongings. There were so many possible stories of loss and misery.

We drove to a warehouse that had been struck. It had been leased to Oxfam, the international NGO. As with most of the strikes we had seen, the missile had landed right in the building's center. The roof and everything inside had been destroyed, but the walls were still standing , held up by emergency steel poles.

Via email, Sajjad Mohammad Sajid, Oxfam Country Director in Yemen, told me:

"The contents of the warehouse had no military value. It only contained humanitarian supplies associated with our previous work in Saada, bringing clean water to thousands of households. Thankfully none of our staff were present at the time but thousands of Yemeni civilians have not been so lucky."

A child holds the remnants of a US-made cluster bomb, Sadah City

As I was peering through cracks in the building, an old woman, hunched over a walking stick and wearing a dusty black shawl that covered everything except her eyes and hands, approached me.

"Oh my son," she said, "they bombed our tents. They were full of mattresses, lots of food and our clothes. We have nothing now."

Carrying a white cloth sack with a saucepan in it, she led me to what was now home for her and her family. It looked as though someone had just piled all the debris from the warehouse into one corner, but it was actually two makeshift tents, with sheets of white corrugated iron laid against the outer walls and weigh ed down with rocks to stop the wind from blowing everything away.

The woman showed me inside, where she had a small gas stove, about twenty tiny and filthy tomatoes, and a pile of old clothes that she slept on. A gaunt ginger and white cat sniffed around looking for food. "We don't have a withered leaf of khat. No mattresses and no blankets. Not even one riyal. We are refugees, my son. They burned us and we have nothing." She insisted on making us tea, and kept asking that God prevent us from being harmed.

Anderson examines the remnants of a missile fired on a wedding party in Mocha, on the Red Sea Coast of Yemen

The family had fled the north of Saada during a period of intense air strikes around the village where they lived, she said. They had lived in two makeshift tents on the empty lot opposite the Oxfam warehouse. The whole family was home when the missile struck, she said, and everything they owned, including the tent they lived in, caught fire. They had rebuilt their home with scrap metal from the wreckage of the warehouse. No one was injured. For this, she said she was grateful.

Her son and four grandsons sat down next to us. One of the boys draped himself across my back, then onto my leg, hugging me with his arms. He would look ecstatically happy one moment, cackl ing and stroking my beard, and terrified the next.

"He can't concentrate like before. He sits like he is not here. He saw the explosion, he was alone, and he lost his sanity. From that day, he never went back to normal," said his father.

"He is an insane man," said one of his brothers.

The Saudis have some of the most advanced weapons in the world and can clearly target their missiles with pinpoint accuracy. Their targets have included schools (159 so far, according to the UN) , hospitals, gas stations, ports, civilian homes, shops, and food storage facilities. On March 15 an air strike hit a market in north west Yemen, not far from where we were in the fall, killing an estimated 120 people. It was one of the deadliest single attacks since the war began, and the second time in two weeks that a market had been hit. MSF, who we visited during our trip, have had their facilities hit four times. In October, shortly after we left Yemen, an MSF-supported hospital in Haidan, Saada, was destroyed by a series of air strikes. MSF told us the hospital was the only health facility in an area inhabited by more than 200,000 people. MSF have reopened a clinic in the staff room of the hospital—the only part of the building to escape the attack unscathed—but are struggling to convince their staff that it is safe to return.

Pablo Escobar, left, and Jorga Luis Ochoa, right with hat, the two leaders of the Medellin cocaine cartel, are shown at a bullfight in Medellin, Colombia, in 1984. (AP Photo)

Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal was a drug smuggler who, in the early 1980s, orchestrated the importation of thousands of pounds of cocaine and marijuana into the United States via a remote airstrip in rural west Arkansas. But while working with the Ochoa Brothers from Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel, Seal was busted in Florida, in 1983. The Louisiana native soon went snitch and started working for the feds; the Philadelphia Inquirer later dubbed Seal "the most important witness in the history of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)."

Not long into his career as an informant, a front page story in the Washington Times by Edmond Jacoby seemed to out Seal as a government agent. (It may also have contributed to the brewing Iran-Contra scandal.) Now that he was no longer useful as a snitch, the DEA cut Seal loose, and not long after, he was arrested by the FBI in Louisiana, where the Baton Rouge US attorney's office had prepared drug kingpin charges. Seal was eventually slapped with five years probation, along with six months at a local halfway house.

That's where, on February 19, 1986, Barry Seal was shot and killed in his parked Cadillac by a Colombian assassin toting a Mac-10 machine gun.

The smuggler was romanticized as a soldier of fortune type hung out by the feds when Dennis Hopper played him in the 1991 movie, Double-Crossed. But the realities of Seal's life are fleshed out in Smuggler's End: The Life and Death of Barry Seal, a new book out April 1 by former Marine and FBI agent Del Hahn.

A Clevelander who spent 22 years with the FBI working cases involving racial violence, corrupt officials, white-collar crime, Hahn says he first saw cocaine in 1967. But before drug task forces started sprouting up under the Reagan administration, he'd never worked a drug case. The former agent, who played a key role in the FBI's Baton Rouge operation and now works as as a private investigator, says he saw a few wild rumors circulating on the internet about his old mark, and wanted to set the record straight. Here's what he had to say.

VICE: Tell us how you met Seal and how he was busted—and flipped—by the feds.
Former FBI Agent Del Hahn: He was dealing mostly in drugs and marijuana in 1983, when the DEA was running Operation Screamer—an undercover operation—in Florida. The undercover was Randy Beasley, a DEA agent. One of Seal's smuggling cronies got caught up in Operation Screamer, later cutting a deal with the DEA and agreeing to give them Seal.

Shortly after he was indicted, Seal got in touch with Beasley and the assistant US attorney handling the case, Bruce Zimet, offering to cooperate and give them the Ochoas from the Medellin Cartel. But he wanted no jail time, he wanted his co-defendants to be cut loose, and he wanted to do it without telling his attorney. He was arrogant and demanding and I guess Beasley and Zimet were turned off. They turned him down.

He went back to Baton Rouge and tried to talk with our US Attorney, Stan Bardwell. Bardwell didn't trust the attorney-go-between and refused to see Barry. So he flew to Washington, DC, and went to the office of the Vice President's drug task force and offered to be an informant. They sent him to the DEA in Miami, where Agents Joura and Jacobsen became his handlers. March 28, 1984, is the date of the letter of agreement he signed with the US Attorney in Miami.

Throughout the book, Seal comes across as a fun guy. What'd you make of him at the time?
We knew we were dealing with an aircraft smuggler. We knew where his planes were kept. We knew from Randy Beasley and Operation Screamer that Seal did a lot of business over pay phones. We didn't learn where and when a load of cocaine was going to arrive, but we got some good intelligence information and three solid criminal counts of using the phone for smuggling. I interviewed William Earle, Jr., the guy on the other end of those three calls. He had agreed to testify, and was in custody in New Orleans on a bust of a plane load of marijuana—and he wanted to help himself. The three calls all dealt with Earle flying a Piper Navajo to Mena to have an illegal fuel system installed. The Navajo was a new plane Seal was adding to his air force.

I had two personal meetings with Seal after I retired. Each time he was personable—he had a sense of humor. But he was not as smart and clever as he thought he was. For example: One of his helpers probably drowned during the recovery of a drug delivery. Another of his lackeys was providing information to the LSP and DEA. Seal got arrested in Honduras and spent almost a year in prison. He often used pay phones because he thought they were secure. But through surveillance, we were able to identify his favorite pay phones and get wire taps on ten of them. And he thought his DEA pals in Miami could help him—they didn't.

Seal was right in the thick of it when cocaine was pouring in from Colombia. How did you approach the case against him, having never worked a drug case yourself?
I learned enough about the drug smuggling business to know how it generally operated. I knew Seal had a lot of help, and we knew who most of them were. Most good drug cases are made by undercover operations, good informants, and by wire taps, or a combination of all that. Also, the Louisiana State police narcotics people and the DEA had some good reliable informants who dealt with Seal.

We were after a Continuing Criminal Enterprise (CCE) conviction and a life sentence. Conviction for a CCE violation requires three prior related drug convictions. Almost from the start, we had two of the required three: (1) The conviction from the Operation Screamer indictment that went to trial, and (2) his guilty plea to the second Screamer indictment, which took place when he became a DEA informant. We knew how he was money laundering in Mena and we found the same activity in Baton Rouge.

How complicit, if at all, were the CIA and the other federal agencies when it came to the drug trade?
The only federal agency Seal ever worked with was the DEA. Seal's sworn testimony was that he had no knowledge of ever working for the CIA. In debriefings, after his plea bargain, he never told me or anyone else he was a CIA asset or had worked for any agency other than the DEA. Our task force never developed any evidence that the CIA was involved with Seal in drug smuggling. There is not one iota of credible evidence that Seal ever worked for the CIA or assisted them in any operations. And CIA denied any connection with Seal.

My book doesn't deal with allegations that the CIA was involved in the drug business, except to report what the Kerry Committee findings were—four pilots who worked for the CIA hauling some arms and humanitarian supplies were also known to be involved in drug smuggling. I fault the CIA for not vetting these pilots. If they had, they would have easily learned of their drug smuggling connections. They could then have not used them and avoided a lot of accusations and conspiracy theories. I believe the CIA was desperate for pilots and didn't care what they might do when they weren't flying on a CIA project.

What do you know about the circumstances leading up to his killing?
He finally signed a plea agreement with us in the . He already had a ten-year sentence in Florida. His plea agreement with us specified that his sentence in the Middle District, on one count of possession with intent to distribute 200 plus kilos of cocaine, would not exceed the ten-year sentence he had already been given in Florida. On the second count of our indictment, for money laundering, it was agreed that he would be sentenced to probation. On a sentence of probation, the law allows the sentencing judge to order the defendant to spend time in a half-way house.

Judge Polozola went along with the plea agreement with great reluctance and agreed to the ten-year sentence and probation. He required that Seal spend his nights from 6 PM to 6 AM in a half-way facility run by the Salvation Army. Seal and everyone involved knew the Ochoas had a contract out on him to murder him. And they eventually sent a team of killers to Baton Rouge and killed him while he was seated in his car in the parking lot of the Salvation Army facility.

Given how high-profile he was, why didn't this guy have protection once he was outed as an FBI informant and prosecuted?
Seal thought he was smarter and cleverer than the Ochoas. He underestimated their will to kill him and overestimated his ability outwit them. And a defendant can't be forced to take witness protection—a judge can't order it. It is strictly voluntary and is managed by the US Marshals Service. Arrangements had been made to transfer his probation to New York or Florida. He refused New York, and Judge Palozola didn't think his going to Florida was a good idea

We learned later on from Seal's pilot that he planned to jump his probation and flee to Costa Rica—and continue his cocaine-smuggling business—the very next day.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Check out the book here.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.

Screenshots via Steam

"Kill this dumb fuck." That's what's written on the wall. Next to it stands a lone gang member, his back to you, coughing, hacking and swearing to himself. In your hand is a blue plastic bag.

You likely know all about the controversy, how it's been banned in New Zealand, confiscated in Germany, and blamed for a murder in the UK. You've heard rumours that it can only be sold in a paper bag. But you don't care. You wanted to play in the dirt. And now it's time to get dirty. Kill this dumb fuck.

I adore 2003's Manhunt by GTA developers Rockstar North, first released on the PlayStation 2 and just made available for the PS4. When I first played it, at the age of 13, I adored it because it terrified adults. It felt truly dangerous, a video game capable of unnerving not just my parents, but also teachers, newspaper reporters and politicians. The white supremacists' dialogue was over my head, as was the game's sleazy antagonist Lionel Starkweather ("you're really getting me off"). But Manhunt was powerful. Simply by owning it, I could make the entire adult world worry that my mind was being warped.

Now an adult myself, I love Manhunt because it's daft, funny, and crass. Only a 13-year-old boy—and a hysterical media—could take it seriously. In one mission you're chasing a guy dressed in a bunny suit. In another, a dead body, filled with gas from decomposition, suddenly sits up and moans. Manhunt is the lowest of the low brow, a wretched little game that beckons you, irresistibly, to roll around in its mud.

Even the "hardcore" moments put a smile on my face. Those neo-Nazis are a joy to bludgeon—kicking to death a racist, in a junkyard, is as encapsulating a snapshot of Manhunt you could ask for. And when you chop the final boss's arms off and he falls to his death, then walk into Starkweather's office and cut him open with a chainsaw, like a sack of grain, it's the perfect end to the party.

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2007's Manhunt 2 wasn't bad, but it ended on a weird, introspective note, a literal psychological battle between the good and evil sides of the playable characters' personalities. That kind of hand wringing would creep steadily further into games. I admire and enjoy contrary, original approaches to violence, but when Lara Croft, the star of Tomb Raider, proclaims "I hate tombs," or Spec Ops: The Line tries to make players feel guilty after forcing them to kill dozens of civilians, it seems as if game-makers are trying to have their cake and eat it; to relish violence, as always, but then act all concerned and prissy. It's inauthentic, and neurotic.

Manhunt is pure sleaze. But in the end, when there's no catharsis, no moralizing, just a swift gory sequence to cap everything off, you can see that it's honest. And honesty is a virtue that Rockstar unfortunately, for me at least, has long since lost.

Or maybe never had. I'd be curious to know: Did the makers of Manhunt really think they were creating something shocking, something near the knuckle? "Kill this dumb fuck" is a deliciously blunt opening prompt, and the multiple angle kill-cams, capturing from the perfect vantage point—every single time—the moment a guy's head pops open or his blood gushes out, suggest Rockstar revled in Manhunt's violence as much as I do.

But then there's that interview with Jeff Williams, a former Rockstar staffer, where he describes the team feeling "icky" about Manhunt, and almost staging a "mutiny." I get the impression that the supremacist bad guys and later the escaped lunatics are genuinely meant to scare and shock. I've described Rockstar in the past as like a teenager who thinks he's a bad boy because he's grown a little mustache and smoked his first joint, and I wonder, when playing Manhunt, whether it really was meant to be as preposterous and joyful as I like to think.

Rockstar's possible MO, especially with the Grand Theft Auto series, is to act like it's pushing boundaries while in fact rehashing old ideas to whip up empty controversy. I like Manhunt because, for the most part, it seems eager and bereft of consternation. If I discovered the team behind it really was neurotic, it'd lessen the game's reckless, wanton appeal.

But that's not to say I enjoy nihilism, or that Manhunt is—or ought to be—nihilistic. Manhunt is wretched and fecal, but by painstaking design. Whatever doomy worldview one might extract from its constant, bloody violence certainly isn't present in its high standards of production. Rarely will you play a game with such rich sound work. Every weapon, melee or projectile, clatters and thumps with absolute clarity—lord knows what went into getting the plastic bag kills to sound how they do.

The levels are largely dark, industrial waste grounds, but each one has clearly been redrafted time and again to facilitate stealth. Starkweather's mansion in particular is the perfect playground, ebbing and flowing between corridors designed for sneaking and larger spaces made for shootouts.

The soundtrack is suitably frightening, providing ominous low hums while you're stalking, panicky synth when you're being hunted, and the game is deliberately paced. When in the later levels Manhunt leans out of stealth-'em-up and into third-person shooter, it feels exactly right. You learn the tools, you build your confidence, you lose patience with Starkweather, and you go on the offensive.

At times you're put up against too many bad guys—the body count in later missions undercuts the game's opening stages, where just one enemy can spell your demise—but generally Manhunt is proof that Rockstar, contrary to reputation, does its best work on linear experiences. For me, Max Payne 3 is the studio's greatest game; The Warriors, perhaps because it's a film tie-in, is its forgotten gem. Bleak and spurning though Manhunt might seem, it's focused, and singularly intended, in a way I'd love to see Rockstar pursue more fervently. Open-world games have grown so tired. It's evident when you play Manhunt exactly what Rockstar is capable of.

Follow Ed on Twitter.

Jamie Oliver has a lot to be pleased about now that the government has created the sugar tax he's long been campaigning for. His celebration might have seemed annoying, but are you allowed to be annoyed at Jamie Oliver, what with all the good he's done, for the kids and that? Or is it fine because he's so awful? To come to some sort of conclusion, VICE's Sam Wolfson and Joel Golby debate the big question of our age: is Jamie Oliver the worst?

Sam Wolfson: On the spectrum of cool, Jamie Oliver ranks somewhere just below Absolute Radio and above the Ben Shepard gameshow Tipping Point. He has become the most successful chef in Britain, not through experimentation or innovation, but through remorseless accessibility.

In the late 90s, this involved little more than travelling places by Vespa, listening to Feeder and dispensing with the measuring apparatus that traditionally helps you be good at cooking. I cannot defend this Jamie Oliver.

Can't tell if Jamie Oliver or James from Busted. The Naked Chef/BBC

But something about his inoffensiveness allowed him to become an incredibly effective activist, reminiscent of Jesus, whose whole thing was being totally chill and the opposite of offensive in any way.

He's worked tirelessly to make British kids eat healthier, to get fresher food to people on low incomes, to erase the rot off junk food in the UK and to improve education for excluded young people. He doesn't, as many people assume, do this from some high upon tower, patronising the plebs. On Jamie's School Dinners, Jamie's Ministry of Food and Jamie's Dream School he works patiently with people, understanding their concerns about change, and has time and time again been incredibly effective in moving people and governments to make life-changing alterations. School dinners are healthier, we now have a sugar tax and both the British and Australian governments have helped fund his Ministry of Food centres, which use his techniques to get people into healthy cooking. Those kids who were about to get kicked out of school and went to his weird celebrity academy thing where Cherie Blair taught law nearly all went back into education or employment after the show ended.

He didn't have to do that; he could have just become Gordon Ramsay and opened 27 steak restaurants per minute in America. But Oliver has really made something of his position, and for that I feel like he deserves a break.

Jamie Oliver's Sumer Food Rave Up. Yep. Channel 4.

Joel: No. You're close, but no. Because I can sense you want to hate Oliver. You're close to understanding the duality of the man, and falling into a common trap along the way. This is the thing: a lot of people, when they step up to hate Jamie Oliver, get confused, wobble on the home plate and fuck the landing – they hate the icon, not the man; the chef, not the person who says "pukka" a lot. This is wrong. As a seasoned Jamie Oliver disliker, I can see and correct these rookie mistakes from afar. Come with me – let me loop my hands around you, let me curve the clay of your hatred, Ghost-like, into something porcelain and real:

You need to understand that Jamie Oliver is two men at once. One half of Jamie Oliver is a man who legitimately still thinks beaded surfer-style necklaces are alright; another is a wholesome celebrity chef who cares truly about the health of your family. You need to discount the chef, thin him out in the wash. The nugget of gold we want to blaze with fury must be washed of his sand.

This is where people went wrong when he turned up last week, on a moped, outside Parliament, arms in the air in celebration, bouncing from foot to foot like a toddler on a Ribena high: this is a man who has identified a very real source of additional, empty sugar in children's diets; has rallied to have it taxed at a higher rate as a way of pushing big soda into addressing their recipes; a man who wants you and your children to live long lives with strong teeth. You cannot hate that man and the good that he does. You cannot have a go at him. The Jamie Oliver who cares about you is a perfect angel – a martyr, almost; a saint willing to die in battle on a hill for your right to live a long and happy life. He doesn't want your hard Rotherham mum passing you chip cobs through the grated fence of your school. He wants you to live past 45.

Unfortunately, this man inhabits the same body as one who thinks Toploader are good.

And so to the conundrum: which strand of Oliver to hate? In a way, you have to hate all of him – the core of the warm-hearted chef is wrapped in threads of the man who made this full-body cringe of a video starring Ed Sheeran, Alesha Dixon, the dying gasps of Paul McCartney's credibility and every single size-L checkered shirt Fat Face has ever stocked.

You cannot respect one half of Jamie Oliver without acknowledging the dick-headery of the other. You cannot like a man who made a rap video with Ed Sheeran.

Sam: But that's the problem: his ability to do good for our nation's nutrition is not a coincidental sideshow to him being Tim Lovejoy with an overbite. It's because of his uncool, dad-like qualities that he's able to soothe our unique culinary maladies. We're greedy. We want Keith Floyd being hilariously chauvinistic on a boat while cooking something in three litres of butter. We want Marco Pierre White losing his mind over an incorrectly filleted bit of swordfish. But what we need is someone to show us how to rub a bit of allspice into some chicken thighs so they don't taste like Playmobil.

This is a country where children eat nondescript carbohydrate shaped into smiley faces for their lunch. Where delicacies include sausage meat wrapped in flavourless gelatine wrapped in breadcrumbs, and tinned tuna and sweetcorn squidged onto white bread. Where our national dish, our pride and joy, The Roast, basically means sticking a whole bit of meat in an oven for three hours, boiling some vegetables and then layering the whole thing in dehydrated flavour granules and boiling water.

We need to walk before we can run, and Oliver is the chef equivalent of one of those push-along strollers that toddlers use. He is the man for the Tesco Metro generation, the people who never have more than one meal's worth of stuff in their fridge. His 30 and 15-minute meal series gently introduced the idea of nice, shared salads and properly seasoned rare meat under the sneaky guise of "fast food". He has accepted that times are bleak – that most of us don't have all weekend to roast a pheasant – and he is making the best of that with his "Soy-Baked Salmon with Zingy Salsa" and his "Kinda Sausage Cassoulet".

Think of Jamie Oliver as Stansted airport. Not classy, not charming, not somewhere you'd ever go if you had the choice, but somewhere you can get a decent sandwich, and something you're just going to have to put up with if you want to have a cheap flight to Marbella/not watch our children die of obesity.

Joel: You are close to convincing me – so close. But you have made a fatal mistake: you have forgotten about the "Lamb Curry Song":

Look at that. The weakest clapalong in human history. A cod-Caribbean accent saying "whack it in". The words "my friend ginger" sung without irony. The intense and exhausting Oliver drum solo. The way he's dressed like that one guy who bought a whiteboard to hang above his bed to document how many girls he shagged in fresher's week, but meekly has to take it down four months later when the only thing drawn on it is a permanent marker cock. This is the true demon that lives within Jamie Oliver's chef-lad body. A personality vacuum who thinks capers are "cheeky".

What makes the line "my friend ginger" so pertinent is the fact that, by all accounts, Jamie Oliver doesn't have any mates. I remember reading an interview with him in Men's Health circa 2009 where he admitted as much, saying he didn't really have any idea of what it was like to go to the pub with the lads because his wife and kids are his only friends. Nobody has ever gone on record as being Jamie Oliver's mate. Nobody has gone public and said, "I am friends with this man." He exists in a friendship vacuum. His Facebook account is sending Candy Crush invites to no one. Is he so unbearable that no human being other than the ones who absolutely have to can bear to hang out with him?

It almost makes you feel sorry for him, doesn't it? Jamie Oliver, a lonely old lion, roaring to no one on an abandoned savannah, drumming alone in his special little drumming room, calling the members of Toploader up one-by-one and getting the cancelled number dial tone, stripped to the waist now, saying "nice one, dude!" into a full-length mirror. That's a little twinge of sympathy, wracking through your body, isn't it? Only, you're forgetting the "Lamb Curry Song".

@samwolfson and @joelgolby

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Photo via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

US News

Trump Threatens Lawsuit Over Louisiana Delegates

Donald Trump is angry about Ted Cruz swaying ten extra Louisiana delegates to his camp despite Trump winning the popular vote in the state by 3.6%. Trump said it showed how "unfair Republican primary politics can be," and also tweeted, "Lawsuit coming."—CNN

Lawsuit Planned Over Transgender Bathroom Ban

Civil liberties groups are launching a lawsuit to stop North Carolina from enforcing a controversial new law banning transgender people using bathrooms aligned to their gender identity. The American Civil Liberties Union and Equality NC will reveal details of the suit in Raleigh later today.—NBC News

Possible Pipe Bomb Blast Near Disneyland

Bomb squad personnel are investigating an explosion after reports of a pipe bomb detonation three miles from Disneyland. Police were called to a block in North Anaheim where an explosion had taken place in an alley. A building was damaged, but no injuries were reported.—USA Today

New Jersey Considers Ban on Text-Walking

Pamela Lampitt, a New Jersey assemblywoman, has introduced a measure to ban walking while texting, leading to a $50 fine or a possible penalty of 15 days in jail. Lampitt says she wants to stop "distracted walking" because it becomes dangerous when crossing roads.—New York Daily News

International News

Taliban Group Claims Lahore Attack

A Pakistani Taliban splinter group has claimed responsibility for Sunday's suicide bomb attack on a Lahore park that killed at least 70 people and injured more than 300. Jamaat-ul-Ahrar said it targeted Christians celebrating Easter, but police are still investigating the group's claim.—BBC News

El Chapo Money Launderer Arrested

The Mexican authorities have arrested Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's top money launderer, Juan Manuel Alvarez Inzunza, nicknamed "King Midas." Inzunza was detained while in the southern state of Oaxaca, and is likely to be extradited to the US.—The Guardian

Belgian Police Break Up Street Protest

Belgian police briefly used water cannons to control several hundred people on the streets of Brussels Sunday night, after they ignored a call not to march through the city. Right-wing nationalists carrying anti-Muslim banners had hijacked an event intended to commemorate the victims of the recent bombings.—VICE News

China Says Dalai Lama Making a Fool of Buddhism

The Dalai Lama is "making a fool" of Tibetan Buddhism with suggestions he may not reincarnate, or reincarnate as something inappropriate, said a Chinese official. Zhu Weiqun, chairman of an advisory body to China's parliament, accused the Tibetan leader of disrespecting his own religion.—Daily Mail

Everything Else

Batman v Superman Makes $424 Million Over Easter

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has taken $424 million at the global box office in its opening weekend, despite dismal reviews. It becomes the sixth-highest US opening weekend ever, taking $170 million.—The Hollywood Reporter

Facebook Apologizes for Safety Check Bug

Facebook has apologized to US and UK users who received notices asking if they were safe after Sunday's suicide bombing in Pakistan. "It looks like you're in the area affected by The Explosion," read the messages, explained as a "bug."—CNN

PEZ Easter Egg Hunt Turns Nasty

PEZ Candy was forced to cancel its annual Easter egg hunt in Connecticut after parents broke the event's rules, broke baskets, and began pushing kids around: one child even got a bloody nose. "Good intent quickly turned into a mess," said PEZ.—Hartford Courant

Driverless Taxi Gets Backing in Singapore

American startup NuTonomy's self-driving taxi has passed its first obstacle test in Singapore. The company will now test more cars in a busy business district of Singapore, since the city-state is keen on driverless technology.—Motherboard

Trump Effigies Burned in Mexico

Some Mexicans celebrated Easter by burning paper mache effigies of Donald Trump. The symbolic destruction is part of a traditional Catholic or Orthodox ritual, but the effigy is usually Judas Iscariot.—VICE News

Parquet Courts' Subway Dream Dissected

Sean Yeaton, bassist of Parquet Courts, has a recurring nightmare about a labyrinthine subway system with a destination he never reaches. A Jungian analyst thinks it's about searching for a home and being sidetracked by crap.—VICE

The reviews are in, and critics are saying Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is really, really bad. With reviews calling the movie "joyless," "overstuffed and preposterous," and "a disgrace," director Zack Snyder responded, "It is what it is." Batman Ben Affleck simply looked bummed out.

However, the movie wasn't meant to be pretty. Rather it was intended as an unpleasant lambast of the government and the popular reaction to 9/11. In doing so, Snyder has created the most original, visually-striking, and well thought-out superhero movie in years. Rather than being incoherent, he uses the superheroes and their backstories to convey a batshit America amid bitter infighting and divisions.

The film opens with an incredible action sequence. Remember the big fight at the end of Man of Steel, where Superman (Henry Cavill) and Zod duke it out, flattening Metropolis? Here Snyder poses a question that superhero movies usually shy away from: What about all the actual people in those flattened buildings? Snyder gives us a grim-faced Bruce Wayne speeding to his downtown offices, only to arrive too late. Wayne's understandable reaction is to immediately hate those who have brought such death and destruction, but he doesn't take the time to see that Superman (a.k.a. Clark Kent a.k.a. Kal-El) was actually doing good, protecting Earth from the villainous Zod. Wayne only sees aliens who have arrived from a foreign land, bringing their problems to American soil. For him, Kal-El is just as culpable as Zod.

While watching Wayne leading an incensed crowd, shouting 'Go home! Go home!' at Kal-El, I couldn't help but think of all the Muslims being attacked and blamed for the actions of a mindless, nihilistic minority who don't represent us at all.

This is the language many hear Trump using when he says he will ban Muslims for coming into America, or that America should build a wall along the border with Mexico and mass-deport undocumented workers. All of a sudden, I could see Kal-El, with his Arabic-sounding name and alien origin, as a symbol for all those who see the values that Superman is supposed to uphold—"truth, justice, and the American way"—being diminished in an era where hate is on the rise.

As a writer who is Muslim, I find it rare to see a protagonist that represents me in American film, but Batman v Superman positions Kal-El as an unfortunate victim, tarnished because of the actions of others deemed to be his contemporaries. While watching Wayne leading an incensed crowd, shouting, "Go home! Go home!" at Kal-El, I couldn't help but think of all the Muslims being attacked and blamed for the actions of a mindless, nihilistic minority who don't represent us at all.

The next scene, taking place in an Islamic stronghold in Africa, also resonated. What this action had to do with the destruction of Metropolis is never clearly linked. But my greatest pleasure came from the man saving the day, Kal-El, an outsider who supports the American dream and lifestyle, enough to do battle for the flag, just like so many of America's troops.

This scene reinforces that Batman v Superman is about the confusion that America has been in since 9/11. Indeed, when the movie returns to this moment, it's through journalist Lois Lane's (Amy Adams) discovery that weapons used in this war have come from a secret deal with a corporation—just like so many actual tales of government officials landing contracts in Iraq. Yet Lane can't publish the story because the military man that can back up her story is not foolish enough to be a whistleblower. And who can blame him, in a world where Chelsea Manning goes to jail and Edward Snowden has to flee to Russia.

As for the promised battle royale of the title, viewers after a UFC smackdown are in for a disappointment. Instead, what we get is more along the lines of an ideological chess match between two opposing visions of America. In one corner stands Metropolis, where workers send checks home to their moms and have misty-eyed reminiscences and dreams of Smallville, the fictional town with its emphasis on faith, family, community, and strong morals. In the other corner is Gotham, the haunted, joyless world of Bruce Wayne. Ever since Tim Burton gothed up the wonderfully cornball Batman of Adam West, Gotham has largely been a bleak, godless place, where the richest man in the city lives underground and the only heavenly illumination comes in the form of a bat signal. This Gotham simply cannot comprehend the world of Metropolis, and vice versa.

Snyder has never been big on plotting and dialogue, and his chief success is that he tells this story in symbols ("I'm a comic book guy," he told Yahoo). As he jumps between dreams, reflections, and action, some of the scenes are a bit jarring narratively, but they become comprehensible when viewed as metaphors for modern American discourse. Lex Luthor becomes a symbol for the internet generation, where his chief aim seems less about doing evil then entertaining himself. Why not have Batman battle Superman for lolz?

You mad, bro? Photo courtesy of Warner Brothers

Once these semiotics are understood, even the overblown second half of the movie, where Snyder has to set up a Justice League movie, bring in Wonder Woman, and have a titanic battle with a Doomsday monster, makes sense. The film goes to the only place a story about a post-9/11, web-addled America can go, to polarized confusion, where fascism is on the rise and it doesn't matter how good you are—if you're from the wrong planet, you can be banished. It's an ugly world: A place where viable presidential candidates can push for banning Muslims from coming to America or targeted patrols in Muslim neighborhoods. A place where if the election goes Trump's way, people like me would no longer be welcome, until Trump can "work out what's going on."

Many have been slamming Batman v Superman for this very darkness. Yet, to me, the film tackles head on the travails of an increasingly fractured American society, which Snyder holds a mirror to. The end of Batman v Superman , far from being the hot mess some claim, is a condemnation of what America is becoming, a place where immigrants, especially those unfairly tainted because of the mass destruction caused by a few, are no longer part of a viable American dream. Perhaps it isn't Zack Snyder who's lost the plot, but everyone else who has.

Follow Kaleem on Twitter.

Paying good money to take in that giant Jesus sculpture. All images: mybalcony

This article originally appeared on VICE España

It's that time of year again, when Spaniards flock to cities like Málaga, Córdoba, or Seville to enjoy their legendary Easter processions. Some people do it barefoot, others wearing "capirotes" (pointed hats) as a gesture of humility.

All told, thousands of Nazarene Christians watch people holding holy pictures, flowers, and crosiers pass them by in the procession, to the pace of beating drums. But the people I admire most are those who watch the holy spectacle from balconies turned into makeshift theater-like boxes. These are the clever ones: they can enjoy the best views and the best company. But some even know better than that.

Of course, I am talking about the owners of those balconies, who make the most of Easter goodwill to earn some good hard cash by renting their small spot of land in the sky. Seville, for example, is known to be the city housing some of Spain's poorest neighborhoods, although it probably also has the highest rent price per square meter over Easter. Fun fact: enjoying the best views of the processions can be as expensive as renting a whole apartment for two months.

That being said, Valencian architects Fran and José have decided to digitize the whole balcony-rental process, becoming Spain's first specialty balcony rent agents, a business they've been running for five years.

They came up with the idea during Italy's popular El Palio festival in Siena. "There were a lot of people, but the most privileged ones were those who saw everything from a balcony. We wondered how one could rent a balcony, and found no information about it on the internet. It was then that we decided we could launch a website to offer balcony rentals for special festivals and holidays, especially with the Fallas in mind for a few hours."

The true and utter glamour behind the balcony

After talking to them, it was time to take a look at the most expensive balconies and see what exactly they had to offer, for people to be willing to pay so much.

First floor on Sierpes Street, Seville. A narrow strip of space. Price: £1,420 . RENTED OUT. Capacity for 12 people. Conditions: Occupants must be there one hour ahead of the first procession and leave the balcony 30 minutes after the last one.

I am fascinated by the idea of being able to filter the types of balconies by wifi availability or whether you can smoke, or bring pets.

Let's check another one: Granada Street, in Málaga. Balcony with a "food experience" included, on the first floor of a building strategically located at the very heart of the procession route. The price for renting it on the Thursday before Good Friday? About £160 per person. According to the internet ad, if you stretch out your arm from that balcony, you can even touch one of the holy figure's thrones.

There's another lower-class, although not necessarily cheaper, balcony in the same building. Both the second and the third floor cost about £950 in one night.

We find another gem in the city center. The ad says the balcony's equipped with heating. In the photo there's a woman looking down at the crowd under her feet. The image quality is so bad that we'll spare you having to look at it.

I wonder what the people who'd spend a fortune renting a balcony for such a brief moment would look like. Of course, everyone spends their money the way they please, but this feels particularly odd. Curiosity led me to dial one of the advertised numbers.

On the other side of the line I spoke to José Antonio, who hadn't managed to rent out his balcony yet, when the celebration was just two days away. He typically lets the balcony for a whole week of Catholic joy for about £5,530 . I asked him how big his balcony is and he replied that that's not the way it works: a balcony's importance is measured by its location. His is at the very heart of Seville and measures about 10 square meters. This is the first time he has decided to rent it out. His parents died, so now he's in the apartment on his own, but he said he's only letting it out for certain fairs and at Easter.

He made the decision following his neighbors' advice. According to José Antonio, tourists and families that come to Seville from all over Spain normally rent balconies to watch the processions. I hung up, daydreaming about what I would do if I suddenly found myself £5,500 richer, as if by a miracle. Which would be quite appropriate, given the time.

Screencap—and what a common sight it is—via MouserSoul's YouTube channel

Winston Churchill supposedly once said: "If you're going through hell, keep going." Assuming he did, he was most likely having a vision of the future to come, of Dark Souls and its siblings.

The deranged difficulty of FromSoftware's Souls series—Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and its sequel, Bloodborne, and now Dark Souls III—has been explored time and again. But at least the hardships regular players endure can be soothed somewhat by turning to a guide. Which leaves the curious to rightly wonder: Who the hell helps the people who make the guides? Nobody, basically.

To understand the special kind of masochism necessary in your average Souls series guide maker, I spoke to Wil Murray, senior editor at publishers Future Press, and series luminary (and fellow Future contributor) EpicNameBro. As a highly ranked Soulcalibur player, Wil is no stranger to wielding eviscerating weapons, and it was while chasing the edge in the 2000s that he was recruited into the Future Press team. EpicNameBro, a.k.a. Marcus Sanders, is a Mississippian who spent his mid-20s playing Japanese games in Japan. He was one of the first YouTubers to post English-language walkthrough videos of Dark Souls, but his rep in the community didn't ignite until he pieced together the deep and opaque lore of the series. He now has over 357,000 subscribers.

Now settle by the bonfire, uncork your Estus, and hear a tale of woe and wonder.

VICE: How do you even begin a new guide, when a new Souls game comes out?
Wil Murray: You assemble a team and start making level maps. These are as helpful in-game as they are in real life. With those done, we play the game for about a week. Then we request an exhaustive list of assets from the developers—it's usually way more than we know we'll get. But if we don't create it, no one will. There were plenty of things in Dark Souls that the community wouldn't have known if we hadn't printed it.
EpicNameBro: We do our best not to waste FromSoft's time and resources, and From knows that when we ask for an asset, we really need it. Everyone on the guide team has to be comfortable with debugging features and willing to do our own tests. We dig into the guts of the game, figure out how it works, decide what we want to say about it, and then have FromSoft check what we're doing.

What kind of hours were you putting in, the first time around?
WM: We switched on what debugging tools we could and would aim to get through the game twenty times a day, until we were sure we'd got absolutely everything. We only had two weeks, and we had to figure out half of the content, at least, on our own. We didn't get all the armor and weapon upgrade stats, like you normally would. So we had two guys taking it in turns to upgrade all their equipment—and they would do that all day long, for three days solid.

It sounds like you take a rigorous approach to the whole thing?
WM: Other publishers don't, but we are more than happy to put the time in.
ENB: I approached the guides thinking: What can I tell players about this game that they wouldn't otherwise know, and how can I summarize information in a way that is easy to understand and fun to absorb? Some information is really cool to know, but is better left to the imagination. It's a hard balance, and a lot of our early meetings were pretty heated. Everyone really cared about what we were making, and we had to butt heads to find the best ideas that were actually feasible.

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch the first episode of VICE Gaming's new Open Worlds series, made possible by NVIDIA SHIELD: playing 'GTAV' with Big Narstie

How do you know when a guide is done? Is it a deadline, a matter of detail, or both?
WM: It can be a matter of planning if the detail is good enough, but generally, it's the looming deadline. We normally have to get everything ready to print a full month before the game is released.
ENB: A lot of people don't realize, but game guides in Japan often release months after the games. There are different cultural expectations from guide buyers. In Japan, no one expects a day one guide at all; in the West, many people write a guide off completely if it isn't day one. But from a production perspective, most Japanese game companies are used to providing guide support after the game is complete and shipped; that doesn't work for a day one guide at all.

Do you specifically approach the Souls series differently to other games?
WM: We knew Dark Souls was a bigger game than normal, and that we had less time. So we tried to be as well organized as possible. That said, nobody got any sleep or any kind of break for six weeks. In most games, you walk around in God Mode and your character won't take any damage and you don't have to worry. In Dark Souls, that doesn't really help because, for example, if you walk through some lava without a certain ring equipped, you will lose all your armor.

How do you think strategy guides affect the enjoyment of playing a game?
WM: When I first started making guides ten years ago, it was incredibly fun, because you got to play the game before anyone else. But the longer you do it, the harder it is to enjoy a finished game, because you look at it in terms of how it was built. It's still worth doing as you get an understanding of the game that you couldn't any other way.
ENB: There are a lot of people who get more out of the game with a little bit of guidance. I think it's exceptionally tricky with the Souls series. They exist as these sort of communal puzzles, and it's hard to make sure the players know everything they need to know but not so much that it ruins that aspect of the games. The lore of Bloodborne in the Old Hunters guide (book) was extremely delicate to handle. The story is complicated enough that a lot of people really needed some help sorting it out; but if we said too much it would detract from the role-playing and sleuthing that the people most invested in the community like to do. The format had to respect the readers, the game, and FromSoft's wishes. Ultimately, the guide should enhance the game rather than detract from it.

How do you think strategy guides affect the game's community? Are they still relevant in an age of wikis? And how lucrative is the guides business?
WM: It can be lucrative if you don't care too much about which games you work on. The Dark Souls guide is a rare example—it outperformed for us financially, and it was massively enjoyable to play. But typically if you want to make money in the business, you have to work on the huge triple-A titles that sell the most, regardless of whether you have any real interest in them. We try to avoid that scenario, and very often go after less successful games just because we want to play them, like Vanquish and Bayonetta. If you're just doing it for the money, then the product won't be as good; it really is essential to enjoy playing the game you're creating a book about.
ENB: A well-done guide will always have a place. The reason is simple: A well-done guide presents the players with information that they can't get on their own. The existence of a good official guide ends up promoting better wikis. Just compare the data that is available online for weapons in Bloodborne compared to other Souls games. A lot of the info you'll find on weapons from the original version of Bloodborne comes straight from my work on the official guide—even the notation format and terminology. I'm really pleased that this level of information is available, particularly where it inspired people to perform original research on the weapons. It does irk me a bit, though, when people don't give credit or say things like, "Who needs guides, it'll be on the wiki anyway." In some cases, it won't without the official guide.

OK, so is working on Souls guides the hardest job you've ever had?
ENB: I actually relish tackling a new game, tearing it apart, analyzing it, and presenting my findings. That's my jam! But constantly balancing the needs of the community, FromSoft, the game publishers, Future Press, and anyone else, that's hard. Dealing with the reactions after the guide is released is also difficult. I'm just kind of a critical person by nature; it's easy to focus on the negative comments. It's even more difficult when people point out legitimate flaws or omissions, particularly when I know the reason for it but can't actually acknowledge it. It puts me in the painful position of having to ignore people's criticism and have them think I don't care when absolutely nothing could be farther from the truth.

Actually, after thinking about it, this is a hard fucking job. Particularly if you're passionate about these games and their community. And if you're not, you shouldn't be doing this anyway, you know?

So as the First Flame fades once again, we've learned that playing Dark Souls is tough, but writing an exhaustive guide under tight deadlines is even tougher. Decide for yourself whether or not you need help with Dark Souls III when it arrives in the US and UK on April 12.

Follow Ben Oliver on Twitter.

All photos by Christian Werner

A version of this article appeared in the March issue of VICE magazine. Click HERE to subscribe.

Since 2013, a civil war has escalated in the Central African Republic between the Muslim rebels of Séléka and the Christian anti-balaka forces tenuously aligned with the government.

On February 14, 2016, Faustin-Archange Touadéra of the Union for Central African Renewal was elected prime minister, though many doubt his ability to unify the fractured country. The gold mine in the city of Ndassima is a prime example of the difficulties that lie ahead: For the past three and a half years, Séléka soldiers have forced civilians to dig up the precious minerals, and then used the profits to fund their ongoing insurgency against the government.

A poster for Merian C. Cooper's 1933 adventure film 'King Kong' starring Fay Wray and Bruce Cabot. (Photo by Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images)

This story was co-published with The Marshall Project.

A federal trial judge in South Carolina this month overturned the death sentence of a man convicted of stabbing his victim more than 70 times with a screwdriver. The sentencing phase of the trial of Johnny O'Landis Bennett was so infected by racial animus by the prosecutor and a juror, US District Judge Richard Mark Gergel concluded, that Bennett was deprived of his constitutional right to due process.

The granting of habeas relief is a rare thing these days, but Judge Gergel's order in the Bennett case is remarkable for two other reasons. First, it highlights the lack of meaningful judicial review capital cases like this receive from state judges in South Carolina, jurists who time and again in Bennett's case excused the racist theme of the hearing. Second, the judicial rebuke marks a fitting epitaph for the professional career of Donald v Myers, a legal legend in that neck of the woods.

Myers, also known as "Doctor Death" and "Death Penalty Donnie," sent 28 people to death row in South Carolina during his decades as the state's most flamboyant prosecutor. In doing so, he earned public praise and the scorn of countless defense attorneys whose clients endured Myers's courtroom theatrics. Once, grieving the death of his own son in 2003, Myers pressed for the death penalty against Robert Northcutt, who had confessed to killing his four-year-old daughter because she wouldn't stop crying. Here's how one reporter in 2006 chronicled what happened at the trial:

"Myers snubbed the defense attorney by reading the sports section of the State newspaper when the attorney questioned witnesses. Myers bent a doll's back over a crib's rail to show jurors how Northcutt broke his daughter's back.

In his closing argument, he covered the crib with a black cloth and wheeled it past the jury box like a funeral procession. In the crib was a sheet that belonged to his son. "He was always with me," Myers said, fighting back tears. "That was a way of keeping him close to me. "Myers cried at least 16 times during his closing argument, according to an appeal of the case filed with the state Supreme Court.

Northcutt's lawyer, David Bruck, said Myers was out of control. Bruck objected 20 times during Myers' argument, including when Myers said a life sentence would "declare open season on babies in Lexington County."

Earlier this month, after his second drunk driving arrest, but before Judge Gergel admonished him, Myers announced that he won't run again when his current term expires in January. And now Bennett's fate is again uncertain. A black man convicted of murdering another black man, Bennett was first sentenced to death in 1995. That conviction was overturned in 1997 when the lawyers learned that a juror had been seated in the capital trial even after he said he would "go with the majority of the jury," even if he had doubts "as to whether the defendant should get the death penalty."

Bennett, a large, hulking man, then was re-sentenced to death in 2000 by an all-white jury in Lexington County. When one witness, a white woman, testified that Bennett had attacked her weeks before the murder, Myers asked the witness if she had dreamed of anything while in a coma. Yes, she told jurors, "Indians were chasing me trying to kill me, and the thing I thought was they were black." Both before and after that answer, Bennett's lawyer objected and moved for a mistrial. It was denied; the prosecutor had not elicited the "black Indian" dream testimony, a state judge subsequently (and erroneously) ruled.

Later, Myers introduced testimony that Bennett had had sex with a female prison guard while awaiting his trial. During his cross-examination of the witness, Myers identified the guard as "the blond-headed lady." Again, Bennett's lawyer immediately objected and asked for a mistrial, arguing that Myers had improperly signaled the all-white Southern jury that the big black defendant had a white lover. The trial judge again overruled the defense, declaring in open court: "Maybe it just the way things are these days, but when somebody says blond, I don't necessarily see a white woman." All of this was a precursor to Myers's closing argument. Bennett's lawyer had claimed his client had been a compliant prisoner, that he would not pose a future danger if given a life sentence. To this Myers responded by calling Bennett "a monster" and a "caveman" and a "beast of burden" before telling jurors this:

"If you give him life, the real Johnny will come back. You give him life and he'll come back out. Meeting him again will be like meeting King Kong on a bad day."

Another request for a mistrial. Another denial by the trial judge. And Bennett was sentenced to death. Then, six years later, one of Bennett's post-conviction lawyers asked one of the jurors from that 2000 sentencing why the juror had thought Bennett had killed his victim." "Because he was just a dumb nigger," the juror candidly responded. "I apologize for saying that word," the juror then said under oath, "but after going through that thing for an entire week and all the evidence piling up against him, that was just the way I felt about it."

Even this admission from one of the people who put Bennett on death row did not sway the South Carolina courts. The juror's post-trial statement did not justify granting Bennett relief, state court judges concluded in 2006, because it did not establish that the juror was "racially biased at the time of the re-sentencing trial." Seven years later, in 2013, the South Carolina Supreme Court refused to reconsider that issue. One year after that, Bennett's attorneys filed their federal habeas petition.

Which brings us back to Judge Gergel. "It is notable that none of the reviewing (state) courts evaluated the potential impact of these various racially-charged calculated effort to introduce the challenged evidence." But the federal judge saved his most pointed analysis for Myers's King Kong reference during closing argument. He wrote:

"The Court is mindful that the state courts have characterized immense size without any racial overtones. The Court finds such an analysis involves 'an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence...'

The fact that is a very large black man makes the King Kong reference even more odious and inflammatory in this case because it plays upon a racist stereotype of the bestial black savage that seems calculated to animate and excite the all-white Lexington County jury."

Judge Gergel also tackled the issue of the juror who had called Bennett "just a dumb nigger." The South Carolina courts had failed here, also, to protect Bennett's constitutional rights to a fair trial free from racial animus. "If this blatant statement of racial hostility does not amount to evidence of constitutionally impermissible racial bias," the judge wrote, "it is hard to imagine what evidence could meet that standard."

Myers promised last week to appeal Judge Gergel's order, and it's likely that this appeal, to the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, will outlast the remainder of Myers's career in public office. He did not respond to a request for comment from the Marshall Project. Meanwhile, for all the bluster, six of Myers's 28 capital defendants have been executed. Another 12 have had their sentences shortened to life without parole.

This article was originally published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

Photos and gifs by Elizabeth Renstrom and Alex Thebez of Gifriends

Like many people who came of age in the late 90s and early aughts, I spent countless hours watching the Japanese manga series Sailor Moon on TV after school. I read all the comics, watched as many episodes as I could find, collected Sailor Moon dolls, backpacks, and no fewer than eight Sailor Guardian toothbrushes.

Unfortunately, the episodes that aired on US television were dubbed and heavily edited. Queer characters were portrayed as straight, and entire story lines were often restructured or rewritten. If you wanted the good shit—uncut Japanese originals with subtitles—you had to work for it. This was back in the days of dial-up, long before Hulu or Apple TV, and for me, getting those unaltered episodes meant sending a bunch of blank VHS tapes to some guy named Glen in Canada who made illegal copies for other Western fans just for the cost of shipping. This was damn near a full-time job for him, and he did it purely out of a deep love for the series.

Once Kazaa became a thing, I often spent four to eight hours (on a good day) waiting for a two-minute clip to arrive on my hard drive. Once I had the clip on my computer, I would edit it into a music video for Aqua, Enya, or Kitaro, my favorite musicians as a tween.

This level of obsession with the series wasn't unusual. Being a hardcore Moonie meant a devotion to the show bordering on pathological. So when Moonies met up IRL, typically at anime conventions, the energy and good vibes were palpable.

These conventions were the first time a lot of early 00s teens saw queer and trans people express themselves fully without being concerned about the homo- and transphobia common in the US at the time. "Crossplay," the practice of dressing up in a costume of another gender, was enthusiastically received.

Queer teens could chat freely about the legendary lesbian pairing of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, the tragic love of gay villains Kunzite and Zoicite, and the gender bending Sailor Starlights, who magically transformed from male civilians to female. Keep in mind this was happening at the same time the Christian right boycotted the Teletubbies because one of them was purple and carried a purse.

As such, I don't think it's a coincidence that so many of my most open-minded, creative, and dedicated art weirdo friends were Moonies themselves and remember their days spent in the Moon Kingdom fondly. Last summer, a gaggle of Moonies got together to celebrate our shared childhood love at the International Sailor Moon Day in New York City. Below is a series of gifs from the day, and you can watch a short film about the festival and its LA counterpart here.

Alex Thebez is a photographer and artist living in NYC. You can follow his work here.