Illustrations by Ole Tillmann

One purpose of a so-called shell company is that the money put in it can't be traced to its owner. Say, for example, you're a dictator who wants to finance terrorism, take a bribe, or pilfer your nation's treasury. A shell company is a bogus entity that allows you to hold and move cash under a corporate name without international law enforcement or tax authorities knowing it's yours. Once the money is disguised as the assets of this enterprise—which would typically be set up by a trusted lawyer or crony in an offshore secrecy haven to further obscure ownership—you can spend it or use it for new nefarious purposes. This is the very definition of money laundering—taking dirty money and making it clean—and shell companies make it possible. They're "getaway vehicles," says former US Customs investigator Keith Prager, "for bank robbers."

Sometimes, however, international investigators are able to follow the money. Take the case of Rami Makhlouf, the richest and most powerful businessman in Syria. Makhlouf is widely believed to be the "bagman"—a person who collects and manages ill-gotten loot—for President Bashar al Assad, who during the past three years has helped cause the deaths of more than 200,000 of his citizens in the country's civil war.

Besides Assad, there are few people more hated in Syria than Makhlouf. He's the president's cousin and the brother of the chief of Syrian intelligence. Using these connections, Makhlouf built a business network that spanned from telecommunications to energy to banking, and by the time he reached 40 he had accumulated a fortune estimated to be in the billions. When the uprising against the regime began in early 2011, protesters torched a branch of his mobile-phone company and chanted, "Makhlouf is a thief!"

In 2006 the British magazine the New Statesmen said "no foreign company can do business in Syria without Makhlouf's approval and involvement," and a classified 2008 cable from the American embassy in Damascus released by WikiLeaks described him as the "poster boy of corruption in Syria." In that same year, the US Treasury Department banned US companies from doing business with Makhlouf, saying that he'd "amassed his commercial empire by exploiting his relationships with Syrian regime members" and "used Syrian intelligence officials to intimidate his business rivals."

When the Syrian civil war kicked off in 2011 and state security forces began gunning down Assad's opponents, the US and the European Union put Makhlouf on a list of regime cronies whose international assets should be traced and seized, because, as the Treasury Department put it, he'd grown rich by bribing and "aiding the public corruption of Syrian regime officials."

If Makhlouf was a bank robber, his getaway car was a company called Drex Technologies SA. In July 2012, the Treasury Department identified Drex—a dummy entity with a British Virgin Islands address—as the corporate vehicle Makhlouf secretly controlled and used "to facilitate and manage his international financial holdings." In other words, say Makhlouf had skimmed a few million dollars off the top of a secret business deal with a crooked Syrian official. He wouldn't put it into a bank account that he could be linked to; instead, he'd funnel it through Drex so the money couldn't be connected to him.

In late October, I obtained several documents about Drex from the British Virgin Islands business-registration office. The records reveal very little—Makhlouf's name, for example, is nowhere on them. It was only because the Syrian civil war had prompted international investigations to try to track down and freeze the assets of Makhlouf and other Assad regime bandits that the US Treasury discovered that he controlled the company and was its owner, officer, and shareholder. But by the time the Treasury Department did it was too late, as Drex had by then disappeared from the British Virgin Islands' corporate registry. In other words, Drex Technologies SA was a vehicle that hid Makhlouf's shadowy financial activities, and before that was discovered Makhlouf had had plenty of time to move its operations and assets to another offshore jurisdiction.

Across the globe, there are vast numbers of competing firms, and many of them register shells that are every bit as shady as Drex. 

Yet who makes these fictitious entities possible? To conduct business, shell companies like Drex need a registered agent, sometimes an attorney, who files the required incorporation papers and whose office usually serves as the shell's address. This process creates a layer between the shell and its owner, especially if the dummy company is filed in a secrecy haven where ownership information is guarded behind an impenetrable wall of laws and regulations. In Makhlouf's case—and, I discovered, in the case of various other crooked businessmen and international gangsters—the organization that helped incorporate his shell company and shield it from international scrutiny was a law firm called Mossack Fonseca, which had served as Drex's registered agent from July 4, 2000, to late 2011.

Founded in Panama in 1977 by German-born Jurgen Mossack and a Panamanian man named Ramón Fonseca, a vice president of the country's current ruling party, it later added a third director, Swiss lawyer Christoph Zollinger. Since the 70s the law firm has expanded operations and now works with affiliated offices in 44 countries, including the Bahamas, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Brazil, Jersey, Luxembourg, the British Virgin Islands, and—perhaps most troubling—the US, specifically the states of Wyoming, Florida, and Nevada.

Mossack Fonseca, of course, is not alone in setting up shell companies used by the world's crooks and tax evaders. Across the globe, there are vast numbers of competing firms, and many of them register shells that are every bit as shady as Drex. Proof of this includes the case of Viktor Bout, who, in the 1990s, peddled arms to the Taliban through a Delaware-registered shell. More recently, in 2010, a man named Khalid Ouazzani pleaded guilty to using a Kansas City, Missouri, firm called Truman Used Auto Parts to move money for Al Qaeda.

Scattered news accounts and international investigations have pointed to Mossack Fonseca as one of the widest-reaching creators of shell companies in the world, but it has, until now, used an array of legal and accounting tricks that have allowed it and its clients to mostly fly under the radar.

(The company disputes this claim and asserted in an email that "there is no court or government record that has ever identified Mossack Fonseca as the creator of 'shell' companies. Anything tying our group to 'criminal activity' is unfounded, inasmuch as we have not actually been notified of the existence of any legal proceeding... thus far.")

But a yearlong investigation reveals that Mossack Fonseca—which the Economist has described as a remarkably "tight-lipped" industry leader in offshore finance—has served as the registered agent for front companies tied to an array of notorious gangsters and thieves that, in addition to Makhlouf, includes associates of Muammar Gaddafi and Robert Mugabe, as well as an Israeli billionaire who has plundered one of Africa's poorest countries, and a business oligarch named Lázaro Báez, who, according to US court records and reports by a federal prosecutor in Argentina, allegedly laundered tens of millions of dollars through a network of shell firms, some which Mossack Fonseca had helped register in Las Vegas.

Documents and interviews I've conducted also show that Mossack Fonseca is happy to help clients set up so-called shelf companies—which are the vintage wines of the money-laundering business, hated by law enforcement and beloved by crooks because they are "aged" for years before being sold, so that they appear to be established corporations with solid track records—including in Las Vegas. One international asset manager who talked to Mossack Fonseca about doing business with them told me that the firm offered to sell a 50-year-old shelf company for $100,000.

If shell companies are getaway cars for bank robbers, then Mossack Fonseca may be the world's shadiest car dealership.

Last March, I flew to Panama City, home to Mossack Fonseca's headquarters. Victor, a local journalist, drove me around town, past the lush golf courses and mansions in the old US-run Canal Zone, by dingy apartment buildings in the shantytown of El Chorrillo, and through the skyscraper-lined central business district. At the time of my visit Panama was preparing for national elections, and campaign posters plastered every telephone pole and whitewashed wall. Victor offered a running commentary as we drove. "That guy's an asshole," he said, pointing to a billboard for a candidate for the national assembly who, he claimed, was linked to the local drug trade. "Well, they're all assholes. But he's a real asshole."

Panama has been run by assholes for more than a century. In 1903, the administration of Theodore Roosevelt created the country after bullying Colombia to hand over what was then the province of Panama. Roosevelt acted at the behest of various banking groups, among them J. P. Morgan & Co., which was appointed as the country's official "fiscal agent," in charge of managing $10 million in aid that the US rushed down to the new nation.

American banks helped turn Panama into a financial center, and the country emerged as a tax and money-laundering haven in the 1970s after the government passed some of the world's strictest financial-secrecy rules. That likely encouraged Mossack Fonseca to establish itself here in 1977. The financial-secrecy rules didn't just promise foreign investors confidentiality—they made it a crime for banks to disclose any information about clients unless they were ordered to by a court in a case that involved terrorism, drug trafficking, or another serious offense (tax evasion was specifically excluded from that category). These laws attracted a long line of dirtbags and dictators who used Panama to hide their stolen loot, including Ferdinand Marcos, "Baby Doc" Duvalier, and Augusto Pinochet.

When Manuel Noriega, commander of the Panama Defense Forces, took power in 1983, he essentially nationalized the money-laundering business by partnering with the Medellín drug cartel and giving it free rein to operate in the country. Noriega reliably supported American foreign policy in the region—and for years the CIA had him on its payroll—but the US lost patience when he opposed American efforts to topple the leftist Sandinista government in neighboring Nicaragua. That helped lead to the 1989 invasion of Panama that ousted Noriega and returned to power the old banking elites, heirs of the J.P. Morgan legacy. 

The new government of President Guillermo Endara, a corporate lawyer who was sworn in on an American military base a few hours after the invasion began on December 20, 1989, offered a kinder, gentler face than Noriega's regime. But since then he and his democratically elected successors have done little to address the country's most obvious problems: corruption and poverty. A recent US government report said that Panama is "plagued" by fraud and international tax evasion, all of which are "major sources of illicit funds."

"You can go to any law firm in the city, from the smallest to the biggest, and open up a shell company with no questions asked."

Today, Panama's financial laws remain extraordinarily lax. Foreign firms can bring unlimited amounts of money into the country without paying taxes, and an International Monetary Fund report earlier this year said that of 40 recommended steps countries should take to combat money laundering and terrorism financing, Panama had fully implemented only one. In September, the New York Times reported that cronies of Russian president Vladimir Putin had funneled money offshore though shell structures in Panama. "When it comes to money laundering, we offer full service: rinse, wash, and dry," said Miguel Antonio Bernal, a prominent local lawyer and political analyst. "You can go to any law firm in the city, from the smallest to the biggest, and open up a shell company with no questions asked."

In Panama City I was comfortably shacked up in a mammoth 16th-floor studio suite at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, a glittering tower with a panoramic view of Panama Bay. I'd timed my arrival to coincide with a two-day conference at the hotel of about 70 international financial consultants to the über-rich—high-net-worth individuals, in financial-industry parlance—and I'd discovered that one of the featured speakers was Ramses Owens, a lawyer and financial expert who had worked for Mossack Fonseca.

On the second morning after I arrived, I awoke and lifted my head from one of the fluffy feather pillows on my king-size bed, climbed out from under the 300-thread-count sheets, dressed, and took the elevator down to the conference locale: the hotel's Diamond Ballroom.

Although the affair was private, I was able to snoop on the proceedings and get a list of participants and copies of talks and presentations. Seated at tables topped with pitchers of ice water and flower-filled vases, the attendees were overwhelmingly middle-aged men with graying hair and thickening waistlines, dressed in dark wool business suits that would have induced immediate heat stroke on the sweltering streets of Panama City but were just right in the Diamond Ballroom, which was chilled to about 65 degrees.

There were corporate tax attorneys, accountants, bankers, and trust administrators, and they faced a small stage with a podium for speakers and a screen to show PowerPoint presentations. About half the attendees were Panamanians; a quarter had flown in from the United States, Europe, and South America; and another quarter had come from traditional offshore havens like the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Bahamas, St. Lucia, and Belize. These are "really bad people," Jack Blum, a former US Senate investigator and Washington lawyer specializing in money laundering, had told me before my trip. "And they want to learn how to become even worse people."

"I see you're playing the Lone Ranger," ruddy-faced Edward Brendan Lynch, a Bahamas-based financial adviser, said to me during a break in the proceedings. I sat at the bar spying on attendees, and he waited for a Scotch on the rocks. "Where are you from?"

When I told him I hailed from Washington, DC, Lynch, who looked like Thurston Howell III from Gilligan's Island, said he'd visited the city many years ago. "Saw the cherry blossoms," he reminisced. "Lunched at the Jockey Club. Lovely place."

Americans are believed to hold more than $1 trillion secreted in offshore havens, with annual losses to the IRS alone coming to some $100 billion. 

Back in the Diamond Ballroom, Ramses Owens took to the podium. Immaculately dressed and groomed with hair that was perfectly trimmed and parted, he embodied the banality of modern financial evil. Owens, who was billed in the conference program as a master of "tax planning," joked with the audience that he preferred to describe his work for clients as "asset optimization."

When he worked at Mossack Fonseca, Owens drew on his expertise about the competitive advantages of incorporating companies on the South Pacific island of Niue. In 1996 the firm won exclusive rights to set up shell firms on the island, and within four years, 6,000 shell firms were registered there, some reportedly controlled by Eastern European crime syndicates and international drug cartels, according to international investigations and news accounts. The findings led to the imposition of international sanctions in 2001 that forced the island to shut down its corporate-registration business five years later. Mossack Fonseca turned lemons into lemonade for its clients by moving their accounts out of Niue and into other secrecy havens, including Samoa and, as revealed in court records that Mossack Fonseca was ordered to turn over, Nevada. (There is no proof that the firms they moved were engaged in criminal activity, though the identities of the owners of those companies remain unknown.)

The crackdown on Niue was part of a broader international effort led by the US, Britain, and other Western nations. Originally prompted by concerns about terrorism and organized crime, the initiative has intensified recently due to hemorrhaging budget deficits, which have swelled in no small part because of widespread tax evasion. Americans are believed to hold more than $1 trillion secreted in offshore havens, with annual losses to the IRS alone coming to some $100 billion. In 2010, the US government passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act after hitting Swiss giant UBS with a $780 million fine for helping thousands of American account holders hide their assets (in one case, a UBS banker smuggled a client's diamonds across borders in a toothpaste tube). FATCA, which is being rolled out in stages and whose full implementation has been delayed due to fierce opposition from the financial industry, already requires foreign banks to notify the IRS about accounts held by US taxpayers.

Naturally, FATCA was worrying to those seated in the Diamond Ballroom—among them Marie Fucci, an adviser to American and European clients who righteously denounced the act as a form of financial "apartheid"—but Owens sought to calm their fears. As he clicked through PowerPoint slides with images of bank vaults, piles of hundred-dollar bills, and other financial-porn shots, Owens outlined ways to evade onerous and annoying international regulations. FATCA, he confidently averred, wouldn't bring down the offshore system, and it certainly wouldn't do so in Panama, where lawyers, accountants, and other shell-firm enablers have powerful political allies (like the country's then finance minister, who also spoke at the event). Owens estimated that nine out of every ten business entities registered in the country were foreign-owned and said that Panamanian private foundations—a local creation that in the offshore world is as beloved as traditional favorites like the Swiss bank account—would still be able to hold money anonymously, even when FATCA is fully implemented. Audience members wagged their heads in approval.

The morning after Owens's speech, I headed out of the Waldorf to the offices of Mossack Fonseca. I had no expectation of meeting with anyone at the firm, as I'd made numerous requests for an audience and had been politely but firmly rebuffed. "We have decided not to participate in this interview," spokeswoman Lexa de Wittgreen wrote me in a brush-off email, which at least demonstrated that Mossack Fonseca is capable of performing due diligence, on journalists if not clients.

I was using a hotel map and soon got lost in Panama City's crowded business district, which resembles a miniature Hong Kong in tropical tones. As I looked around to orient myself, I saw a young man dressed in dark slacks and a green pinstripe shirt stride out of an office building—Edificio Omega—and open the driver's door of a black Mitsubishi Sportero pickup.

"It's not that close," he said in flawless English when I asked him if he knew how I could get to Mossack Fonseca's building. "Do you have an appointment with them? Because I do similar work and might be able to help you." He pulled out a business card and handed it to me with an ear-to-ear smile.

By coincidence, he turned out to be Alejandro Watson Jr. of Owens & Watson, where Ramses Owens is a name partner. "I work right over there," he said, pointing toward the firm's second-floor office. "I'm late for a meeting, but I can see you later today, or I can take you in now and introduce you to one of my colleagues."

Before my trip, I'd wondered if I should contact a local law firm to test how easy it would be to set up a shell company. This was too good an opportunity to pass up.

"I'm down from the States for a few days looking at real estate," I ad-libbed as traffic whizzed by and car horns blared. "I need to set up a company here to make the purchase. What sort of information would you need?" 

"All I need to have is your passport, a driver's license, something that shows your home address, and a letter of reference from any bank," Watson said. "We don't push you for information about your business. We just want to help you do business so you continue to work with us."

"Will my name appear anywhere in the paperwork?" I asked.

I thought my bluntness might trigger at least mild concern on his part—after all, it was the very same promise of anonymity that had attracted all those dodgy clients to Niue when Watson's current boss was employed by Mossack Fonseca. But he remained as cheery and eager as a Mister Softee driver dispensing soft-serve cones. "You have a FATCA problem," Watson said with a smile and a knowing look. "We can work that out. I might recommend you set up a trust, because that can be legally owned by someone else entirely."

I asked whether I'd be able to open a bank account for my shell firm so I could access my money. After all, there's no point in hiding cash offshore if you can't spend it.

"Absolutely," Watson said, enthusiastically. He reached into the Sportero and pulled out a brochure from a small stack jammed between the two front seats. "We have a global banking network," he said, and pointed to a page listing a few dozen financial institutions his firm worked with. 

The network included small banks in Panama, the Cayman Islands, Monaco, and Andorra, and brand-name players like HSBC and the diamond smugglers at UBS. A US Senate committee report described the former as a major conduit for "drug kingpins and rogue nations," and last year the bank signed a $1.92 billion settlement with the Justice Department after admitting to helping launder millions of dollars through shell firms for Colombian and Mexican cartels. There was even a US component to Owens & Watson's network: Helm Bank in Miami. In 2012, US regulators hit Helm with a consent order for multiple violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering rules.

This was a list that would certainly inspire confidence, at least if I were a crook looking to hide my money from the IRS or law enforcement.

The whole process would take only a few days, Watson said, and my costs would be negligible: About $1,200 to incorporate my shell, $300 to cover government fees, and a few hundred dollars more for Owens & Watson to provide nominee directors, if necessary. If I wanted to buy a shelf company—the aged variety—it would cost me a little extra.

"And my name won't appear anywhere, right?" I asked, deciding I might as well push as far as possible.

"No, no, no," Watson exclaimed. "That's not a problem."

Soon after my conversation with Watson I found the offices of Mossack Fonseca, which occupies the top three floors of a four-story glass building that has a dental clinic at ground level. Though I'd hoped to get inside, I abandoned the idea when I spotted a guard at the entrance, vetting all the building's visitors.

At least, I thought, I'd take a picture of the office, whose glass exterior reflected the city's landmark Revolution Tower, a hideous corkscrew-shaped office building. But Mossack Fonseca apparently guards its headquarters as zealously as it protects its clients' identities. "He's taking a picture!" a woman, who was returning to the building with a restaurant takeout bag, shouted when she spotted me snapping a photo with my iPhone. She screamed again and pointed at me. "He's taking a picture!"

Next, I decided to try my luck in Las Vegas. Mossack Fonseca describes Nevada as "one of the best jurisdictions" in the United States to set up a company because of the state's "versatility, low costs, and fast service." America is a great place for Mossack Fonseca to do business since it's the second-easiest country to register a dummy company—behind Kenya—according to a DC group called Global Financial Integrity. And crooks love registering companies here, too, because owning a US company provides them with a phony gloss of respectability that can help divert attention from their criminal deeds, Heather Lowe, the group's director of government affairs, told me.

Since Mossack Fonseca began offering services in the state more than a decade ago, it has used a closely linked local firm called MF Corporate Services to register more than 1,000 Nevada companies, most of them managed from offshore destinations like Geneva, Bangkok, and the British Virgin Islands, according to records on file with the secretary of state. Under Nevada law the only names that must appear on a shell firm's public records are those of a resident agent and a "manager," and neither has to be a human being. The resident agent is typically the company that registers the shell firm, and the manager can be yet another anonymous company. That makes it virtually impossible to discover who actually controls a Nevada shell unless law enforcement or the courts compel disclosure.

Technically, MF Corporate Services is independent of Mossack Fonseca. But in practice, court papers, incorporation records, and other confidential documents show it functions as Mossack Fonseca's local branch office, with its main employee reporting directly to Panama City. This sort of bogus separation is a tactic employed by many big shell-firm incorporators, because it allows the parent company to disavow any connection to its local offices if the shit hits the fan from a legal standpoint. It's sort of like how Walmart might operate in Bangladesh, distancing itself from sweatshops by long and complex supply chains. (Like Walmart, Mossack Fonseca has never been directly prosecuted for the actions of its affiliates.) "These are seamless, vertically integrated top-down organizations until the minute that a cop or investigator comes along," says Jack Blum, the money-laundering expert. "Then they disintegrate into a series of unconnected entities, and everyone swears they don't know anything about anyone else in the system. It's like a jigsaw puzzle that's assembled but suddenly falls apart when someone starts investigating."

Indeed, this is exactly how Mossack Fonseca has replied when questioned about shady activities it's been connected to in Las Vegas. While there's no way to know precisely who's behind the vast majority of dummy companies the firm has been helping to create there, an ongoing criminal investigation in Argentina and a related case before the United States District Court of Nevada involving the oligarch Lázaro Báez offer an idea. The investigation and court records allege that Báez is the secret owner of more than 100 shell firms that Mossack Fonseca has helped establish in Nevada. All of them were managed by Aldyne Ltd., an anonymous company that Mossack Fonseca registered in the Seychelles Islands, according to prosecutors. (Mossack Fonseca has not been charged to date in either Argentina or Nevada, but one of its operatives in Las Vegas has been deposed in the legal case, and the district court has told the firm to turn over records related to the Báez shell companies, an order with which it has refused to fully comply.)

A former bank teller, Báez built a vast business empire through contracts awarded by his close friends Cristina and Néstor Kirchner, the current and previous presidents of Argentina, respectively, and their political allies in his home province, according to news reports and investigators. Báez was so bereft when his patron Néstor died, in 2010, that he erected a three-story mausoleum to house his remains. Prosecutors allege that the Nevada shells were part of a network that Báez used to move offshore more than $65 million in funds diverted from public infrastructure projects.

The Báez-linked firms in Nevada were registered by MF Corporate Services, whose assistant manager, Patricia Amunategui, was asked by Mossack Fonseca headquarters to also serve as secretary of Aldyne Ltd., according to a source close to the issue. When questioned about the illegal activities of past client firms, Mossack Fonseca's reply was to remind me in an email that "registered agents are not liable in any way for the business transactions or any other dealings of the companies they incorporate." For her part, Amunategui—a native Chilean who previously worked as a casino cocktail waitress and, based on her Facebook page, enjoys yoga, spiritualism, and hiking and admires the Dalai Lama, the Tea Party, and former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet—has claimed that MF Corporate Services does "not have, nor have we ever had, any kind of relationship with Lázaro Báez." She also claims she has no employment relationship with Mossack Fonseca, even though a few years ago she provided a testimonial used in a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, catalogue that said right after she graduated from its paralegal program she "landed a great job as the vice president of Mossack Fonseca, an international law firm." (She claims she was misquoted.) Amunategui was the person I most hoped to meet when I flew to Las Vegas in early November.

"Your car is in space B-15," the twentysomething woman at Avis told me after I'd landed at McCarran International Airport. "B like in brothel."

Her face was expressionless, so I wasn't sure whether to be insulted or merely amused. But I'd been traveling all day from Washington, on two long flights in economy class, so at that point I didn't really care. It was good to have landed in Vegas, even if the airport is named for Pat McCarran, the casino-loving, Jew-hating, racist politician whom the corrupt Nevada senator in The Godfather: Part II was allegedly modeled on.

Nevada had become the headquarters for a variety of Ponzi schemers, corporate crooks, pump-and-dump penny-stock promoters, internet swindlers, and tax evaders.

In 2001, the Nevada legislature considered a bill that would encourage companies to incorporate in the state by shielding them from disclosure and liability laws. "We are holding up a sign that says, 'Sleaze balls and rip-off artists welcome here,'" then state senator Dina Titus said during debate on the bill, whose supporters argued that it would gin up badly needed revenues.

Titus, who now serves in the US House of Representatives, rather bizarrely proceeded to vote "Yes" on the bill, and her prophecy duly unfolded. Within a few years Nevada had become the headquarters for a variety of Ponzi schemers, corporate crooks, pump-and-dump penny-stock promoters, internet swindlers, and tax evaders. Among them were Donald McGhan, who in 2009 received a ten-year sentence for bilking investors of almost $100 million through a scam real estate venture called Southwest Exchange, and defense contractor Mitchell Wade, who used a Nevada-registered shell to funnel a bribe to then congressman Randy Cunningham. (The pair were doomed during a lunch when Cunningham diagrammed on his own congressional stationery a fatal list of bribes he'd received from Wade and the corresponding federal contracts he'd steered his way in exchange.)

The secretary of state's website offers a host of reasons for companies to incorporate in Nevada, trumpeting the lack of corporate income tax and the near impossibility of piercing the "corporate veil." Those sorts of rules have helped draw some 300,000 active companies to the state, one for every nine residents, and netted revenues of $133 million in 2012 alone. So much of that activity is potentially criminal that Deputy Secretary of State Scott Anderson says his office has taken a number of steps to clamp down on abuses, including a rule that strictly prohibits anyone from creating a Nevada corporation to commit a crime. "Granted, if someone is going to do something illegal," Anderson conceded, "they probably wouldn't disclose it."

One day during my trip I interviewed Cort Christie, head of Nevada Corporate Headquarters, one of the state's most prolific shell-firm incorporators. His company is located in an oversize, sterile office building in an area called Spring Valley. Christie is a former board member of the powerful, politically connected Nevada Registered Agent Association (MF Corporate Services is a member), which "is working to ensure the state's future as America's incorporation center," according to the group's website. It warns that if Nevada's "current tax-advantaged, pro-business environment is lost, the state's reputation... will be lost as well. Once that public trust is damaged, it cannot be easily replaced."

Last year, the NRAA lobbied against a proposal by the secretary of state that would have tightened up rules discouraging corporate secrecy. The bill, which Christie told me "would've curbed the appearance that people can come out here and hide out," was overwhelmingly rejected.

On the morning of November 4, I cruised down S. Casino Center Boulevard through the heart of downtown Las Vegas, past the Golden Nugget and El Cortez (the original mob-owned casino) and the heaviest concentration in America of restaurants offering $9.99 prime-rib dinners. Then I got on Interstate 15 and headed south to Henderson, a suburb where gigantic malls give way to a seamless blur of stucco and adobe-style tract houses.

MF Corporate Services is situated in the Parc Place Professional Complex, home to several identical, single-story buildings with red-tile roofs. There were only a few cars in the parking lot, and I didn't see anyone outside. A red-and-white metal MF Corporate Services sign, planted into a patch of rocks and cactuses, blew forlornly in the warm breeze.

As far as I could tell from public records and court documents, MF Corporate Services doesn't do any drop-in work—its only purpose seems to be setting up Nevada shells for Mossack Fonseca clients—and the remote setting did nothing to dispel that impression. Amunategui runs day-to-day operations, though internal company documents I found in court records show she works closely with Mossack Fonseca employees in Panama, such as Leticia Montoya, the custodian of record for dozens of shell firms linked to Lázaro Báez.

Montoya has quite a checkered career, having previously registered or served as a nominee director for at least six anonymous companies that were involved in major international corruption scandals. Among those is a Panamanian shell firm called Nicstate, whose beneficial owners turned out to include former Nicaraguan president Arnoldo "Fat Man" Alemán. He used Nicstate and other offshore vehicles to divert nearly $100 million of state funds into his own pockets. Montoya also helped set up Mirror Development Inc., which Siemens of Germany employed to funnel bribes to Argentine government officials who helped it win a $1 billion contract to produce national identity cards. This was just one component of a global scheme by Siemens, which also used corporate cutouts to pay off government officials in Bangladesh, Venezuela, and Iraq, where the recipients included Saddam Hussein.

I figured that my best chance to speak to Amunategui would be if I dropped in unexpectedly, so I hadn't called ahead. When I knocked on the glass door of MF Corporate Services, a man holding a clipboard, sitting in a randomly placed blue chair in the office's lobby, waved me in. A white plastic trash bag filled with shredded documents sat just inside the door, and a framed map of the world hung on a wall. There were four clocks above it, showing the time in Las Vegas, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Panama.

The man on the chair—a locksmith, it turned out—called to Amunategui when I asked to speak with her, and she emerged from a back room. Her face was splashed with freckles, and she wore her long brown hair in a bun. She frowned softly and declined to talk when I told her I was a journalist interested in MF Corporate Services' work for Báez. "Give me your name, and I'll see if our attorney can talk to you," she said while shaking a finger in the negative.

"The attorney for Mossack Fonseca?" I asked.

"No, my company's attorney," she replied, referring to MF Corporate Services. "They're separate."

I stood there for a moment beneath the bright glow of the ceiling lights, desperately trying to figure out a way to keep the conversation going. There was so much I still wanted to know, and Amunategui was the closest I'd come to being able to speak directly with someone actually affiliated with Mossack Fonseca.

I wanted to ask her about specific people who'd been linked to Mossack Fonseca–incorporated shell firms by the US government, court records, international investigators, and my year of research: Billy Rautenbach, an alleged bagman for Robert Mugabe, the longtime ruler of Zimbabwe; Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister and oligarch nicknamed the "gas princess"; Beny Steinmetz, an Israeli billionaire who'd reportedly used a Mossack Fonseca–incorporated shell firm in the British Virgin Islands to pay a bribe to a wife of the homicidal dictator of Guinea, where Steinmetz was seeking (and subsequently got) a huge mining concession. I even wanted to ask her about Mossack Fonseca's feel-good Facebook page and Twitter feed, which feature pictures of smiling recipients of the firm's charitable contributions and platitudes from the likes of Thomas Edison and Dr. Seuss ("Today you are you! That is truer than true!").

But Amunategui wouldn't say a word after taking down my contact information. She promised she'd pass it on to her lawyer. She didn't even bother to escort me out the door but ducked into her personal office, sat at a desk sprinkled with a few folders and FedEx packages, and picked up the phone. I could hear her talking from the hallway, and though I couldn't make out what she was saying, she was clearly speaking in an agitated manner, presumably with the company's aforementioned lawyer (whom I never heard from).

Amunategui's refusal to answer questions was frustrating, but unsurprising. When you work with Mossack Fonseca there are a lot of dirty secrets to keep, so being tight-lipped is perhaps the most essential part of doing your job.

Ken Silverstein is a reporter for First Loo​k Media

(Image via PornHub)

Stop what you're doing: PornHub has released more data about the way the world wanks. This time, pulling in data from its 60 million-strong user-base, the porn site focused on what women want – which makes sense, considering the female PornHub population is now at around 24 percent.

Taking a look at the global stats, it seems that we overwhelmingly like lesbian porn – bar ladies in Russia, who are very noticeably into butt stuff, and women in many African countries, who are searching for "ebony porn".

This is all well and good. We now know that women in Central Asia are into big dicks and that women in East Asia love hentai more than any other category. But what we don't know is why. In the UK, like the majority of the rest of the world, lesbian porn came out on top, so we spoke to a few British women about whether or not they feel that represents their tastes, and asked them how exactly their tastes have developed.

The porn star has to kind of look like me and be having the type of sex I'm having in real life.

I watched porn for the first time when I was probably about 13 or 14 on the laptop my whole family used. I assume they must have been out of the house, but who knows? Maybe I was into the risk?

I used to watch a lot of lesbian porn and "mainstream" stuff, but I don't any more, and I'm also really put off by anything that looks too fake or where the women don't look like they're having a good time – basically the "30 minutes of blow jobs and one solid thrust in the vagina and she's come" stuff. Now, the porn star has to kind of look like me and kind of be having the type of sex I'm having in real life, or would like to experiment with in real life. I assume this is because I'm a bit more self and sex positive than I was when I was a teenager and know what I want a bit more. If I want a quickie, it's always a guy going down on a girl.

At the moment I prefer POV porn and a bit of dirty talk and mild BDSM... plus, I'm quite into interracial porn. I'm really not into anal at all because it all just looks a bit painful. Also, I don't like fake boobs; I find jiggly boobs a turn-on, so solid ones put me right off.

- Steph, 26

Some of the porn I watch is a bit soft, but it's better than the stuff that makes you burst into tears.

I've started watching female-friendly porn. Some of it's a bit soft – like a woman is reading a book at a table and something is happening under said table – but it's better than trawling through porn sites trying to find something that doesn't make you burst into tears.

My first porn experience was when my ex boyfriend at uni tried to get me into watching porn with him, and I'd make him find very specific 1970s stuff where everyone looks very happy. That was my only request. We found a great one set on a boat, where everyone is having an absolute whale of a time. I'd have to put Post-It notes over the side of the screen where the adverts pop up so I didn't see any "wet teen sluts". It was usually two teen girls kissing a bit, but a) they couldn't kiss properly because they were too busy looking at the camera, and b) they were covered in sperm.

At uni, my next door neighbour was watching porn and there were lots of men with huge penises and a girl on top and she was touching herself. They said to each other: "I can't believe she's taking that massive dick and she still has to touch herself!" and it made me so frustrated – a lot of porn just propels a myth of female sexuality. That's why I now watch lesbian porn; I can imagine I'm in that scenario, whereas, with heterosexual porn, I don't want to be the girl! She's getting rammed loads, someone comes on her face. Not everyone enjoys that.

- Jess, 27

I'm kind of surprised the Welsh are so into teen stuff, but otherwise it seems about right.

The first porn I watched was Debbie Does Dallas when I was hanging out with friends. I think I was about 17? I didn't find it sexy at all – it was mainly funny interspersed with boring. It put me off seeking out porn actively for a couple of years.

One of my former partners – with whom I was in a reasonably long-term open relationship – and I used to watch porn together quite a lot. He was unusual, though; I've found most of my partners, male and female, aren't that interested in making it a regular shared activity. I mainly watch on my own now, and less regularly than when I was single. I pretty much only watch lesbian porn, preferably real couple stuff/produced by lesbians. I used to sometimes watch straight porn, but I realised a while ago that while I'm attracted to men and women in person, in the abstract/my fantasy life I'm basically only into women.

I'm not into degradation stuff at all. Light bondage is fine, but anything beyond that isn't for me. A good friend works as a dom and is genuinely into it in her private life, and she's talked me through some of the stuff she's into as a sort of boundaries-testing exercise, and it felt totally alien to me.

In terms of those stats, I'm kind of surprised the Welsh are so into teen stuff, but otherwise it seems about right.

- Bobbi, 28

My porn watching has changed over the years; it takes more to get me off now.

I watch black men a lot because, sometimes, with white men, they can remind me of male friends or people's dads – or worse, my dad. I don't want that in my mind, so black men are a "safe watch" for me.

Watching lesbian sex is quite "safe" – I know many friends who've had bad male sex experiences, including me, so sometimes you just want to get off but not have to deal with a penis in your face. I think I use porn more because I'm single. I have casual partners, and I can get off to thoughts of them, but I use porn when I need to get on with it. I will watch about five to six videos and have many orgasms, just because I can.

My porn watching has changed over the years; it takes more to get me off now. I went through a phase of lesbian porn and POV. I went through a phase of really rough, almost violent sex, but I think this was because I was in a weird place in my head in my early twenties and had issues with controlling older men. I then moved to more woman on woman.

If I want a gentle experience without men, I watch lesbian. I don't like women with long false nails, big heels, aggression, arrogant college kids who do disgusting, degrading things to girls, any man wearing socks or trainers while having sex, massive fake boobs, or blow jobs where the woman chokes.

- Jane, 34

@5tevieM

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Photo via Flickr user Ethan

Within a few minutes of strapping into the mock Chevrolet being used to test the effects of driving stoned at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), I had swerved violently twice and nearly killed a jaywalker. And I wasn't even high.

Called the Virage VS500M, the sophisticated driving simulator includes a cabin with a driver's seat, steering wheel, brakes and acceleration, and three 52-inch LCD displays to provide a view of the road and surroundings. It's been used to train student drivers and in rehabilitation, but participants in the CAMH study are trying it out "medicated" to see how well they perform.

So far, about 100 people aged 19-25, have had their driving abilities recorded before and after smoking a joint containing either THC or a placebo. Blood samples taken at the time let scientists know how high they are.

"We can measure how well you respond to challenges, like what do you do when somebody jumps out in front of the road," lead researcher Dr. Robert Mann told VICE. (I, apparently, scream and clip them.)

The study is double blinded, meaning nobody, including researchers, know who is high and who isn't.

But early findings show test subjects who've smoked cannabis have trouble under "divided attention conditions," e.g. when they're asked to count backwards by threes while driving, something that's arguably a lot simpler than remembering to check your blind spots or how to parallel park.

"It makes the driving task more complex," said Mann.

While there's tons of research on the impacts of drinking and driving, much less has been said about driving stoned, and for many people, the latter isn't taboo.

Almost without exception, every friend who learned I was doing this story responded with, "I've done that. It's not that bad," or, "I just drive slower." Mann said because of people's tendencies to drive slower when baked, there's a misconception that they're being safer than usual.

But with legalization in Canada pending, there's been a push from substance abuse experts and law enforcement to get more information on the potential dangers of cannabis impairment, including slower reaction times, shortened attention spans, and a hindered ability to accurately judge time and distances. Colorado and Washington State, both of which have legalized recreational weed, have seen increases in both the number of fatal car accidents and the percentage of drivers involved in those crashes who tested positive for cannabis, though a definitive link has not been made.

While just five percent of Ontario students reported drinking and driving in 2015, according to a CAMH survey, 10 percent said they drive under the influence of cannabis. A survey by the Partnership for a Drug-Free Canada revealed 32 percent of teens didn't consider driving stoned to be as bad as driving drunk, and about 25 percent of parents of teenagers agreed.

Data looking at the impact of cannabis on collisions, however, indicates there's a real risk. One meta-analysis published by Dalhousie University in 2012 said stoned drivers nearly double their chances of being in a crash.

But cannabis impairment in drivers is harder to detect than alcohol, and therefore more difficult to set restrictions around. In Canada, if cops suspect you're driving stoned, a drug recognition expert, of which there are currently 600 in the country, might be called in to issue a standardized field sobriety test. The tests are comprised of simple tasks, like asking someone to walk a short distance and turn around.

Those who are stoned sometimes "forget what the instructions were—they can't concentrate," said Supt. Paul Johnston, an Ottawa police officer who is on the drug abuse committee of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

Johnston told VICE police are expecting an spike in cannabis-impaired driving once legalization kicks in. He's adamant that it's just as bad as drinking and driving ("it's not only physical, it's cognitive"), and says a strong education-based framework needs to be in place before the laws change.

As of this minute, there's no breathalyzer equivalent police can use to tell how high a driver might be. But Johnston said RCMP are testing out three different oral fluid testers, which use saliva to answer that question. Canada is also lacking a per se law—a THC-blood level (similar to a blood-alcohol limit) over which it would be illegal to drive. In Washington State, the limit is five nanograms per millilitre of blood.

Part of the problem with weed is people don't know how much THC they're consuming in any given product, Johnston said, adding we need to study how long it takes for cannabis to dissolve in the system, i.e. how long after consumption before it's safe to drive.

"If you've smoked marijuana you could get anywhere from three to 17 percent . If you smoke dabs, the concentration could be 80, 90 percent."

Due to (unfortunate) "ethical reasons," I wasn't allowed to drive the mock Chevy high. While I found it to be pretty realistic—the seat actually vibrates—I also felt nauseous while driving and afterward, apparently a common side-effect.

Asked how that might impact the results, Mann said "at first it seems different or perhaps more difficult, but after a while you get used to it. There is a lot of research now that validates simulator measures as strong predictors of driving performance."

The testing phase of the study will be wrapping up shortly, Mann said, with findings to be published thereafter.

Johnston told VICE that Canadians are well aware of the dangers of drinking and driving, but when it comes to cannabis-impairment, "we haven't done as good a job of explaining the risks."

Research, training of police officers, technology, and awareness campaigns should make up a part of the government's plan for legalization, he said.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Image via YouTube

Most of us get to a point in our lives where we start to thinking about our loved ones dying. Mother, father, brother, sister, boyfriend, girlfriend – they're all going to die. You start to think about what you will do when this happens, how will you deal with the sadness, what will your life become without them in it. Bam Margera, a man who earned his millions by debasing himself and the people he loved, had seemingly not considered it. Last week, a clip from Bam's appearance on a TV show called Family Therapy with Dr Jenn surfaced. As far as I can work out, it features celebrities in a house with their loved ones trying to get the help they need. Among them is Tiffany 'New York' Pollard, Dina and Michael Lohan, someone from Teen Mom and of course, Bam with his mother April.

When Jackass started in 2000, Bam was a promising young pro skater and the central figure of a crew of friends in his hometown of West Chester, Pennsylvania. After Johnny Knoxville and perhaps Steve-O, Bam was the most popular member of the Jackass crew, and was certainly the most prone to having his life constantly filmed: Viva La Bam, Bam's Unholy Union, Bam's World Domination, Bam's Badass Gameshow... His was the brand of the miscreant that became so popular, an endless stream of footage with Bam and his pals causing trouble. It, much like Jackass at first, made you want to be part of it, part of the jokes, part of the chaos. But it was always centred around his rousing spirit of mischief. Though there would often be semi-severe implications of this constant, unending barrage of pranks, gags, stunts and whatever else, it was all quite light in tone. It had an edgy fratboy feel, not a torturous Saw vibe. Bam Margera was born to be on TV, but perhaps not to the extent that he now finds himself.

Bam's boyishness died with his best friend. In 2011, the much-loved bearded goofball Ryan Dunn crashed his car into a tree at high speed after drinking heavily. The crash killed Dunn and Zachary Hartwell, a production assistant on Jackass Number Two. Dunn was 34. At the side of the road, where flowers were being laid by shocked and aggrieved friends and family, Bam Margera was interviewed on camera in near hysterics. Standing in total confusion and anguish, as if he was trapped in a film, this intimate moment of incredible loss available for the world to consume. A man who spent his life on reality TV getting you to watch and love him and his friends, cornered in the same medium when the closest one to him dies.

Bam was not the same after that, and how could he be? In the short clip made available of his newest TV, venture he says that he had never considered someone close to him dying, and that the shock of Dunn's passing sent him into a drinking spiral. He says it all wild-eyed, slurring, hand bleeding from punching a car window in. His boyish confidence had been transformed into an anxious confusion. The life of Riley he'd built from slapping his dad while asleep and filming it now became broken and unfamiliar, pointless. He began to gain weight, and the sprightly young skater morphed into a bloated, weeping mess.

And now once again he finds himself, along with his, I'm sure, long-suffering mother on reality TV, trying to find help for his addictions, his problems. Many would say that this is no way to help someone, in front of cameras, constant judgement from pernicious viewers. But this is his home, this gives a sense of stability, of familiarity. After Viva La Bam, his shows gradually decreased in popularity. His last TV effort, 2014's Bam's Badass Game Show, was a far cry from the extreme stunting of his Jackass days. Gone were stunts like jumping head first into a trashcan, or getting a wedgie from dropping out of tree. That great format people loved was now transformed into a chintzy game show, with lame gags, ill-fitting cast members, and irritating contestants.

In Family Therapy, Bam is, presumably, allowed to be what he actually is, which is an emotionally troubled and very sensitive man - and that side of him came out even on Jackass. His extreme fear of snakes, used by other cast members to elicit terrified reactions, showed vulnerability. Him being trapped in a trailer with a cobra is probably the only time anyone cried on Jackass not as a result of intense vomiting.

It's horrible and heart-rending to see how the death of one young man ruin the life of another. But it goes to show how just how destructive it can be. Bam Margera had everything, but without Ryan Dunn, what did it all mean? It must have been compounded by the conviction of his uncle Vincent 'Don Vito' Margera as a sex offender, and his subsequent death from alcoholism in 2015. Bam created a brand around him and his family and friends on reality TV, but when actual reality stepped in an over him, he couldn't cope.

Bam's descent into alcohol-fuelled malaise is terrifying. It shows that the people who are most important to us could leave us in a state of total disrepair if something were to happen to them. How we deal with a cataclysmic tragedy is dependent on the individual. Some of us might fall apart in the futility of life; some may be more resilient. Bam Margera does not appear to possess that resilience. Still, tune into VH1 to see a broken man cry in his mother's arms.

@joe_bish

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All photographs Raymond Depardon/Magnum

In 1980, French photojournalist Raymond Depardon was commissioned by a British newspaper to shoot a story in Glasgow. He knew nothing about the city and didn't speak any English.

The result was a poetic and eerie photo series capturing everyday life in some of the city's most deprived neighborhoods amid the grind of Thatcher's Britain. His stills show ball games in between boarded-up houses, family strolls along barren concrete walls, and elderly couples waiting for the bus opposite burned-down tower blocks.

Depardon's photos are well known in France. As part of the Magnum photo agency, he documented the Algerian war, national liberation fighters in Chad, Angolan street kids, and landscape shots of the Nigerian desert. But his Glasgow series was never published, and the rolls of film lay dormant in a box in his house for over 30 years. 

Now—they're having a second life, as part of the Barbican's Strange and Familiar exhibition. We caught up with Depardon to talk about Thatcherism and poverty.

VICE: How did you find yourself in Glasgow in the 80s?
Raymond Depardon: I'd just got back from a previous assignment in Beirut for a German paper when I was contacted by the Sunday Times. They wanted to show contrast; seeing the way rich people in Glasgow lived on one page, and poor people on another.

I went to the wealthy neighborhoods from Glasgow, but these areas were not very interesting. I went to golf courses, to tearooms, but I couldn't get anything. Wealth there couldn't be seen as easily. It was discreet. A Glaswegian bourgeoisie did exist, but a Mini Cooper next to a golf course with a guy in a cashmere jumper does not really make a photograph.

Do you think that being a foreigner helped you?
Before this assignment, I'd only worked in the Middle East and in Africa, so I arrived in Glasgow as if I had landed in the desert: A red car might as well have been a camel for all I knew. I suppose I saw things differently from other photographers. Everything was so new for me. I didn't overcomplicate things, or fall into the trap of trying to capture everything.
 It did help me to be a stranger, because I didn't come too close. I was almost scared of people—in a good way. And I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying.

Do you remember who you met?
I did two separate trips that each lasted for ten days. The first characters I came in contact with were some kids. They took me by the hand and led me to their den. At that time, photographing children was allowed. We couldn't understand one another much, but it wasn't a problem: We didn't need words to communicate. Having their photograph taken was a bit of a game to them.

How did Glaswegians react to being photographed by you?
They were extremely kind, so I had a lot of freedom. Coming back from the Middle East, it was gift in comparison to men armed with Kalashnikovs banning me from photographing them. So Glasgow was bliss.

What do you think these images tell us about Britain today?

At the time, I didn't know much about Thatcher's government and British politics. But now I see how these images show the violence of the era—especially the closure of industrial zones and mass unemployment. Because I did not respect the rules of the assignment, these pictures were never published. But I'm glad British people are able to see them now.

Glasgow by Raymond Depardon is out now published by Seuil. Strange and Familiar is showing at the Barbican in London until June 19.

All photos by Jake Lewis / @Jake_Photo

Dark Souls III is in my PS4. This is a big thing, because back in February, on this very site, I declared that I was totally done with the Souls series. I received both slurs and sympathy as a result, and ultimately decided to attempt to "git gud," for a fourth time.

Bloodborne helped, a little. I began FromSoftware's spiritual brother of all things Dark Souls, inspired somewhat by VideoGamer.com's Simon Miller livestreaming his own progress on the game, a campaign that began with him hating the series. But I just wasn't clicking with it, and that was putting me off my return to Dark Souls with its second true sequel. Then, suddenly, an unexpected party offered a challenge. He wanted to make me appreciate the game that he loved.

Actor, comedian, writer, and Dark Souls fan Peter Serafinowicz invited me to his London studio to play Dark Souls III, and we inevitably got talking about his love for the Souls series. Actually, calling Serafinowicz a "fan" is probably too weak a word, judging by the signed FromSoftware poster in his office and various other pieces of merchandise on display. Serafinowiczalso played a character in Dark Souls II, Mild-Mannered Pate, and that's him providing the grunts as your character dodges many swords, flaming arrows, and man-eating chests in the 2014 title.

Before we meet, we speak on the phone to find some common ground: me, the man who must be turned; and Serafinowicz, the advocate whose personal history of gaming is not too dissimilar from my own. But it wasn't until we physically sit down together in Kensington that we find our first connection, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

"It's one of my top three games," Serafinowicz tells me. "That was a game that me and my now wife—we'd been together about a year then, and she wasn't a gamer—that was a game that we played together. It realized that thing of a game being like a cartoon that you could control. When I was a kid, about ten, there was Dragon's Lair, the one by Don Bluth, the ex-Disney animator. It was in the arcades, and it looked like a cartoon that you could control. But it wasn't, at all. It was many little video sequences that were triggered by yes/no choices on a joystick; it was the most disappointing thing. But Wind Waker, that was a staggering achievement, it was unbelievable. And then we also played Resident Evil 4. It's the perfect Resident Evil game, and my theory is that all the Souls games are like Zelda crossed with Resident Evil 4."

This connected with me, because one of the games I really enjoyed when I was younger was Alone in the Dark. In it, you (as Edward Carnby) explore a house filled with supernatural danger around every corner and jump scares aplenty, surrounded all the time by a wholly strange environment. Everything in Alone in the Dark and the Resident Evil games is out to get you. And I discovered that I like that idea in Dark Souls, too. Wherever you turn, you're never safe. One wrong step, and that's it. It really allows the tension to boil to the surface.

As we sit, a controller in my hands, I really want to get to the bottom of why Serafinowicz feels so passionately about this franchise. I've read countless testimonials, but actually being in the company of someone who loves this game, and being gently guided thorough its unwelcoming world, is a revelation. It's incredibly intimate, and I'm quickly finding things that I do enjoy about this experience. We create our character, Viceroy (yes, it's a little play on words), a mature knight who doesn't dabble in magic, leaving his axe alone to destroy hollows. As the game's tutorial-style first area plays out, Serafinowicz recalls his first encounter with the games.

"I can't even remember why I bought it. In the original Dark Souls (released in 2011), you were in this castle with these weak-powered zombies who are just shambling around. And you're thinking, I'm in this dilapidated castle, blah de blah. But then suddenly there's this massive boss who is about fifty feet tall with a massive axe, and he fucking kills you in a second. So I thought this game was way too hard for me, and I put it away for like two months. Then my friend and brother-in-law Graham Linehan asked, 'Have you been playing Dark Souls?' I said yeah, but that I couldn't get past this particular boss. And he said, 'Oh no? It's really easy.' He explained how, when you first see the boss, you're on a ledge. So you jump on him and attack, and that's a third of his health gone. Then you just move around him and take pot shots when you can, and he's actually quite easy. And then, these creatures take you to Firelink Shrine, and that's where the real Dark Souls begins."

Just before we come upon the first boss in Dark Souls III (discounting that crystal dragon beast), we pause at what Serafinowicz affectionately calls a "bonnie," a bonfire, to top up our health-restoring Estus Flasks. This safe space is atop a cliff, and I can't help but stop to admire the view. A mountainous vista spreads across the screen; just beyond the bonfire is a castle-like structure, and it's in there that we'll fight Iudex Gundyr, a fast-moving, player-dwarfing enemy who'll only explode into life when you remove a sword from his prone, bowed form. And just like that, after three games across two generations of gaming consoles, I get it. And Serafinowicz is more than happy to oblige my fascination with the game's visual splendor.

"One of the things Hidetaka Miyazaki says is that if you can see something, like that castle, you can go there. It's one of the things that used to bug him as a kid, that he couldn't go there. He's influenced by English fantasy books, and as a Japanese kid, he learned rudimentary English. So you have this medieval, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston thing. It's that fantasy, that English fantasy world, sort of filtered through all that Japanese culture."

I agree with Serafinowicz, wholeheartedly. I offer: you do look at these things, and write them off as high fantasy, but they're not. You've got this deep tradition from English literature, like the Greek legends, like Pan, and how they relate to the fantasy genre. So much of The Lord of the Rings is pastoral; it's so much about the love of everything around it. Studio Ghibli, for example, has so many films that visually are, well, not rejecting modern Japan, but looking at and accepting the beauty around it. And in this case, with Dark Souls, it doesn't matter if it's horrible or brilliant, so long as there is beauty.

I turn once again to the view. It really is a beautiful, inviting, and mysterious world. You see it and you think: This is where I want to be; this is what I want to do with the spare time I have for the next ten years.

Iudex falls, quickly, and we open the doors that lead us to Firelink Shrine, a place that Serafinowicz knows very, very well. "I've said this before," he tells me, "but sometimes, if I can't sleep, I'll imagine that I'm going around Firelink Shrine." We take the coiled sword that we have earned for our battle and stab it into the ground, creating a new bonfire, at which we use our 7,000-or-so souls (the game's form of currency, effectively) that we've collected to level up. And then it dawns on us both. Serafinowicz has been guiding me with bits of advice on dodging and when to smash, as any player does when they see someone else play a game, but we both realize that I haven't died yet. Not once.

Before meeting Serafinowicz, I watch a video where Iudex falls to a guy who's simply punching him. I've read reports that this game has already been beaten by a speed-runner in Japan in one hour, 42 minutes, and ten seconds. I've been playing Bloodborne, of course, but beside Serafinowicz, it becomes apparent that I'm actually rather good at this game. Better than either of us was expecting. I ask Serafinowicz about the difficulty of the game, and these outrageous completion times.

Article continues after the video below

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"I'm not, like, a super amazing gamer, and I'm not someone who plays competitively. I'm terrible at playing Call of Duty with mates, or with my brother who's just on a prestige loop the whole time. I'm just ridiculous. I get fucking compassionate discharge. I'm just ridiculously poor at it.

"I'm not a speed-run guy, either. It's not something that interests me, other than as a curiosity. I like to enjoy the game. With Dark Souls, there's a mechanic whereby if you die, you go back to the last checkpoint, and you lose all the souls, which you've collected up to that point. You can go back to where you died and collect them; however, there's also another thing that has happened to me where my save has corrupted. In that instance, I have been a little disappointed but I think, Oh fuck it, I'll start again. It's that enjoyable for me to start again."

We search around Firelink Shrine, a much bigger and rather-more-in-one-piece place compared to the ruin seen in the first game. I hear a banging. The tap, tap, tapping of my eternal distraction, the fucking blacksmith. There he is, the smug bastard, hammering away, not knowing the way his constant noise was a constant feature of my playing the first game, as explained in my previous article. Serafinowicz and I have a laugh at this and, despite not being able to do anything with the blacksmith. Yet we still have to talk to him. "I admit, I had a little tear when I saw that he was back for this game," Serafinowicz says. "He's great, I love him." Having played a role in Dark Souls II, Serafinowicz is well positioned to comment on the ambiguous nature of the characters. "I like the cryptic way in which the characters speak. There are so many things that are oblique. Not even I know, truly, what Pate's intentions were."

I get distracted, as I often do, by more scenery. This time it's a tree outside of an arch of the Shrine, and I feel Serafinowicz senses my admiration for the game growing. I tell him that, as a writer, I would look at this picture and say: That's the story I want to write. The tree isn't just scenery though, as Serafinowicz explains.

"That tree there, if you look at it, it's got a hollow face. This is called a Seed of a Tree of Giants. Sometimes it'll have this thing, like a big fucking walnut, and you can take it. Like, what the fuck does that mean? I don't understand it fully now, but I love the strangeness of it.

"I'm friends with Alex Garland. I've been a fan of his for years, and I became friends with him recently because of Dark Souls. That was the thing that bonded us, because he is just a huge Dark Souls fan. So we played Bloodborne together, and we loved the old Victorian look about it, but a thing that Alex said is that Bloodborne isn't as strange as Dark Souls. In the original Dark Souls, once you've rung the second bell and you're at Firelink Shrine with the flooded, ruined acropolis... I looked at the pool in the flood, and I heard this grumbling sound, and then this big serpent that looked like Eraserhead came out. And you think, What the fucking hell is that? It's like you're so used to this place, and it's your home in the game, and suddenly there's this big thing. You try to attack it, but it's just this big friendly thing with what sounds to me like Patrick Stewart's voice, and that was wonderful for me."

We move on out, to the High Wall of Lothric, and Serafinowicz carries on with his recollections of the first game after killing the Asylum Demon—the boss who can be attacked from above—and traveling to Firelink Shrine.

"I killed this boss, and I'm there and I'm like, Wow, great. So I go one way, and there's a graveyard and loads of skeletons, and they kill me in a second, and I'm like, Shit, this game. Then there's this path that meanders up the hill and zombie soldiers that are reasonably hard, and I decided of the five ways I could go, this is the way that I should go now with my character because I'm not too powerful. You kind of hack and slash your way through there. So I go up the hill, and I try this for about a week. It takes me that long to learn that I can lock onto enemies. I was playing with my friend, Benedict Wong, and I remember making that lock-on discovery with him. So you carry on, and you fight a boss or two, and your character gets a bit stronger, and then you come to a bit of an impasse, and you think, Shit, I can't get past this particular bit, like the ghosts. So you decide to go back down the skeleton graveyard, and suddenly you realize: Shit! Good. I can kill these now."

Maybe I get complacent, or perhaps I overreach my ability, but after 52 minutes of playing the game, talking about our experiences, and also discussing the similarities between the movie Edge of Tomorrow and Dark Souls, I come upon a zombie that mutates into something that, as Serafinowicz puts it, looks like "a big black dick with a mouth." And it's here that I encounter my first death. But for the first time in playing these games, I'm not disappointed. I'm not upset, or depressed, or angry, or ambivalent, or anything. I realize that it was my fault, respawn at the bonnie, and I carry on, killing the "dick" in question and avoiding being "dick slapped," in order to recover my lost souls. Soon, a dragon's in my way, and I spend a good five minutes admiring the sound design of the guttural churning of the beast. It's a terrifying sound that elevates the creature out of the television fiction we've experienced in the past years, particularly in Game of Thrones.

Serafinowicz and I play Dark Souls III for an hour and a half before we have to go our separate ways, but we really could have sat there all day. I look to my interview notes and on the top, in capitals and underlined many times, is a sentiment that I've had from the start of my Dark Souls adventure: "I WANT TO LIKE THIS." And, finally, I do. Serafinowicz's infectious enthusiasm for everything around the game spread through me as efficiently as the common cold. This wasn't about reams of tweets calling me a scrub or telling me to "git gud"; this wasn't someone telling me that I'm "not good enough" to play this game. It was real assistance, given in a personal way, and I've benefitted massively from it.

Ninety minutes of Dark Souls III is enough to feel like you need a break—but I've found my way into the game now, and I'm not about to stop. "The doors that you should be scared of in this game are the open ones," Serafinowicz tells me, as a final piece of advice. It might have taken me longer than most, but consider my own door into Dark Souls well and truly unlocked.

Dark Souls III will be released for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on April 12, worldwide (the game is out now in Japan). For more information, head to the game's official website. Thanks to Peter Serafinowicz for freeing up time to speak to us.

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Receptionists to some, Hell's Gatekeepers to others. Image via

This article originally appeared on VICE France

"I didn't go into my last job thinking I wanted to get fired. I studied Engineering and when I graduated I was very motivated. I wanted to work," Benjamin tells me in a coffee shop in the French city of Le Mans, where he moved after he left Paris.

Benjamin is now 31. In 2013, he founded Sortirdutravail.org—a website for people who want to quit their job and have no desire to find a new one. On the website, he offers some practical tips on how to survive without a job in a society that expects you to work.

Benjamin worked long hours at a start-up for two-and-a-half years before he negotiated a part-time position. "There was a guy there on a training contract, and my bosses were horrible to him. I stood up for him but that backfired," he says. His working conditions got so sour, he decided his only way out was to get fired. "First I made sure everybody saw my motivation was gone, and then I started making huge mistakes. I emailed a shareholder—with my bosses on cc—inviting him to lunch to talk about my grievances with the company. My email account was blocked in less than an hour." In November 2014, he was fired for serious misconduct and he hasn't had a job since. Not because he couldn't find one but because he never looked.

With 7.9 million people unemployed in the US, leaving a stable job because you just didn't feel like working can seem reckless to some or a complete dick move to others. Benjamin has been called a scrounger many times but that doesn't bother him: "I now have time to help anyone with anything—when they're sick, sad, or need a hand. I'm never tired and I am very happy with my choice. But that's what makes people angry, too—that someone young, who didn't suffer long enough, chose to stop working and is happy with that choice." He says that his life isn't one big decadent blowout on taxpayers' money: "I'm not living on much and maybe I'll have to get back to a certain form of work one day but I have no definitive plans about that yet. All I know is that I'm feeling more alive living with less than I used to when I earned a lot."

Image by Kate Haskell via

Benjamin's not alone: Vincent (37) used to make £4,800 a month as a project manager in IT so quitting his job meant a radical change: "I was completely devoted to the company but I had a burnout in 2003. I tried to commit suicide, so they gave me three weeks of sick leave. I got better for a bit but went in the same direction four years later. So I just quit in 2008." He worked as a scuba diving instructor in Egypt and returned to France a year later, when his outlook on life had completely changed. "I've become an anti-capitalist. To me, there is no option but to actively fight this system." He now divides his time between working in a self-sufficient eco-village and activism: "I help set up permaculture projects, rebuild the roof of a mansion, or build a greenhouse with waste material—that kind of thing."

He lived on his savings for a while but today he lives on the RSA (the French Jobseeker's Allowance) and some resourcefulness. "Having money kept me from making the radical changes I needed to make in my life. I hardly have any money now but I'm much happier." To minimize his expenses further, He plans to move from his social housing and live in a truck: "I'll buy cigarettes and other small things. I bought a headlamp recently. But I do distance myself from money because as soon as my actions focus on money, I feel trapped."

The reasons for leaving the rat race were also political for Claire (32), who has a BA in European Project Management: "I started getting some critical distance during the G8 and G20 protests, which led to me to ask myself whether my job was right for me." She decided to take a break and travel for a month but didn't come back refreshed and ready to get back on the horse. "When I saw people's stress, the absence of meaning, and how sad all that makes us—I knew it doesn't have to be like that, and that my life could be more meaningful outside of the office."

She enrolled in a Masters program in Geographical Research. "I started feeling alive again, so I decided to stay unemployed for a year. I wasn't very comfortable for the first three months of unemployment—my old values kept popping up. I kept asking myself, 'Are you really happy sitting on your ass while others are looking for a job?' It took a while before I could admit to myself that the answer to that question was 'Yes!' Now I don't even consider going back."

Elise (31) was disappointed by her job as well but she found a compromise: "For 8 years, I've been working intermittently as an executive in the Public Sector with periods of paid unemployment." French people who lose their jobs can get around 70 percent of their old pay for the amount of time they worked for that salary. There are still some requirements: you'll need to be employed for at least 122 consecutive days and not have been fired fired for gross misconduct. On top of that paid unemployment you can qualify for the RSA.

Elise now works the number of days necessary to get the unemployment compensation that equals 70 percent of her standard pay. When that money's through, she goes back to work. "Of course, when I say 'I work to get unemployment,' it doesn't sit well with people." Her parents worry that she's wasting her potential, and she often feels stigmatized when talking to people about the way she handles her career. "But usually people with full time jobs are a bit jealous of me."

In recent years, alternative ideas to the concept of 'Work → Money' have gained popularity—Finland is trying out a trajectory of universal basic income later this year, for example. But it'll probably be a while before society can step away from the idea that you're only entitled to money if you're working for every penny. Money still makes the world go round, so it's likely that Benjamin, Vincent, Claire, Elise, and others like them will be considered freeloaders for a little while longer.

This article was originally published by VICE Poland.

Thousands protested in front of the Polish parliament on Sunday, after the conservative Prime Minister Beata Szydło announced she'll support the Catholic Church's efforts to completely ban abortion in the country. The protest was organized by the recently established left-wing party Razem, in collaboration with Polish anarchists and the Liberal Committee for the Defense of Democracy.

"Personally I'm against abortion, but every woman who needs it should have access to a safe procedure, without needing to spend a fortune to have it done in some basement," said Kasia, who came to the protest with her 5-year-old son.

Many of the protesters waved wire coat hangers, as a symbol for the tens of thousands of abortions performed illegally each year in Poland. The hangers were left adorning the trees in front of the parliament as a reminder for the ruling parties who are currently debating a new anti-abortion legislation proposed by pro-life organizations.

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Consequence, a memoir by Eric Fair, is a powerful book from a man with a story to tell. While he was a private contractor in Iraq in 2004, he participated in the interrogation and what he now calls the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Gharib. This was after the infamous photos of naked detainees came to light, sparking an international scandal, but the authorities there were still making use of controversial techniques to extract information.

"At the time, we were calling it enhanced interrogation, but that's a phrase I don't use anymore," he wrote recently in the New York Times. "Stress positions, slaps to the face and sleep deprivation were an outrage to the personal dignity of Iraqi prisoners. We humiliated and degraded them, and ourselves."

Later, Fair was haunted by guilt and dreams, and his conscience led him to speak out against America's use of torture in a number of op-eds and essays. Consequence is a confession, but it's also an examination of what leads ordinary men to commit acts of cruelty, and what happens to them afterward.

Below is an excerpt that details what it was like for Fair to arrive at Abu Gharib.

In the morning, we are taken to the Interrogation Control Element (ICE). The ICE is a plywood structure adjacent to what soldiers call the hard site, the facility where the Army holds high-value prisoners. Throughout the complex there are auditoriums, cafeterias, offices, meeting rooms, and cells where Iraqi prisoners and guards worked and lived during the days of Saddam. There is ample space, but Army engineers are unsure about the buildings' structural integrity. They're not sure how they will stand up to the mortar fire and rocket fire. They're afraid the buildings may collapse if hit too many times, so they build temporary plywood structures instead.

The interrogation booths are part of a small plywood structure just outside the ICE. There is a central hallway with six interrogation booths on each side. A two-way mirror runs the length of the hallway. We walk down the hallway and observe our first interrogations. The two-way mirrors don't work. The detainees stare at us as we make our way down the hall. Mortars land outside and we scurry into one of Abu Ghraib's concrete buildings.

We are taken back to the ICE, where we receive our work assignments. Bagdasarov and I are put to work immediately. I am assigned to the team responsible for debriefing former regime elements. These are the men who worked closely with Saddam Hussein. Henson works with me as an analyst. It's never entirely clear how the Army determines whether any of us have the proper security clearance.

Some employees are told they have "interim clearances." Others are told they'll receive theirs soon. Others aren't told anything. No one from the Army ever asks. No one from the Army ever requests documentation. We let CACI handle it. I am handed a folder and told to be ready to get to work first thing tomorrow morning.

I walk back to the cell where we sleep. I pass by the dining facility, which isn't serving hot food. Loud pops. Some scurry for cover. Some don't. Those who don't seek cover laugh at those who do. They say, "That's outgoing, not incoming." These are US Army 120mm mortar teams. They are positioned in an open field not far from the dining facility. I watch and listen as they send mortars out into the neighborhoods surrounding Abu Ghraib.

I walk past Camp Ganci. Peter Ganci was a NYC firefighter killed on 9/11. The army has named a detention facility inside Abu Ghraib after him. Ganci holds four thousand prisoners. They live in tents. There are concrete bunkers near the edge of the camp where they can hide during mortar attacks. I stand near the barbed- wire fence. Prisoners gather and stare. The crowd grows. A young soldier in a guard tower says, "Careful sir, I only have a few rounds." I walk away. There is a single incoming mortar round. The prisoners don't run to the concrete bunkers.

It is Sunday. I'm scheduled to conduct my first interrogation. The Army has set up a room full of computers, adjacent to the dining facility, where soldiers can access email and the Internet. The Army calls this an Internet café, but it is nothing more than a bunch of dusty desks and old Dell computers. I stand in line for fifteen minutes of internet time. It's just enough to download one email from my sister. My four-year-old nephew had to be taken to the emergency room. He stuck a bean up his nose and couldn't blow it out. Thirty miles away, in Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonates a vehicle and kills more than twenty Iraqis.

From the internet café, I walk to the ICE. There is a large expanse of macadam where Army helicopters land to deliver prisoners. I watch a mushroom cloud rise above the walls of Abu Ghraib as ordnance-disposal teams detonate an IED. I pass by the makeshift chapel. I have time for the opening hymn. I sing "Blessed Be the Tie That Binds." I place the hymnal under the folding chair and reach for my body armor. I work the Velcro straps on the armor as slowly as possible, so as not to disturb the other worshipers. The straps make a terrible tearing sound.

On my way to the ICE, I stop and rest near the HESCO barriers near Camp Ganci. I pray. I've not pursued prayer in some time. But as I sit in a prison in Iraq and prepare to interrogate prisoners of war, it seems appropriate to pray to God. Presbyterians are taught to pray with the Lord's Prayer in mind. We begin with praise, then move on to requests and confessions before closing with words of thanks. My prayer outside Camp Ganci ends quickly. As I move toward requests, I feel a terrible sense of shame. I cannot ask God to accompany me into the interrogation booth.

In Scripture, God often works in prisons, but he is never on the side of the jailer. He is always on the side of the prisoner. The realization brings on a physical reaction. My hands shake. My face warms. I feel nauseated. The sensation is terrifying. Prayer in Iraq is dangerous. I am beginning to realize I'm not on God's path. I'm on my own.

Henson walks by on his way to the ICE. He says "Let's go, Jesus, time for work."

Left: Eric Fair (photo by Amy Cramer) Right: the cover of 'Consequence'

Henson and I sort through dozens of manila folders containing information on the men I've been assigned to interrogate. We know nothing about any of them. The screeners who conducted the initial intake interviews determined that these men were associated with Saddam's regime, but how, why, or at what level remains unclear. Henson says he'll spend the day reading up on the files and try to work out whom we should be spending the most time with. He closes his eyes, pulls a folder from the middle of the pile, and says, "In the meantime, good luck."

There is no discussion of policy or procedure. As at the processing center at Fort Bliss, and the convoy briefing at Camp Victory, everyone is left to essentially carve out their own way forward. As a contractor, I'm expected to know how to do the job. But I don't.

I wait in a plywood interrogation booth while soldiers locate and deliver my first prisoner. In the booth are three plastic chairs and a plywood table. A steel hook is embedded in the floor. One of the chairs has plastic zip ties secured to the rear legs. My Arabic isn't yet strong enough to let me conduct interrogations on my own, so I work with a translator from Sudan. I struggle to understand his English.

A young soldier working as an MP escorts an old detainee into the room. Like all prisoners, he is handcuffed and hooded. I remove the hood from his head. The MP struggles with the lock on the handcuffs. He drops them and they fall to the floor. The detainee reaches down and picks them up for him. The young MP says, "I'll be right outside."

The ICE has provided every interrogator with a list of critical questions that need answers. These are called priority intelligence requirements (PIRs). PIRs are written by different units and cover a variety of topics. Smaller units may want specific information on the threat level of a particular intersection. Larger units may want information on entire villages or towns, while the top-echelon groups look for trends and demographics.

The most important PIR in January 2004, however, is information on the location of chemical weapons. I prepare a list of questions based on the PIRs. I ask: Sunni or Shia? Baath party? What level? Occupation? Rank? Family? Sons? How many weapons in your house? How many weapons in your car? Why were you detained by Coalition forces? Did you fight during the invasion? What do you know about the regime's chemical weapons program?

The answers are "Sunni," "Yes," "Firqa," "Driver," "Sergeant," "Three children," "Two sons," "One," "One," "I don't understand," "I went home," "I don't understand."

My Sudanese translator struggles to understand my English. The detainee struggles to understand the dialect of the translator. The translator struggles to understand the Arabic of the detainee. I struggle to understand the English of the translator. It takes nearly two hours to collect enough information to write a report that says, "Detainee doesn't seem to understand questions about chemical weapons."

For the next week, I interrogate men who cannot understand my translator. I write short reports that detail the detainees' military records and service in the Baath party. They all have weapons in their households and they all deserted their units and went home during the invasion. None of them know why they have been detained. None of them understand the question about chemical weapons. At the end of each report, there is a section where the interrogator offers an assessment of how great a threat the detainee poses to Coalition forces. For the first week at Abu Ghraib, I misunderstand this question. I assume that it refers to the threat level inside the prison. None of the men I interrogate seems to pose a threat to Army personnel inside the prison. At the bottom of each report I write, "Detainee is not a threat to Coalition forces."

Eventually my supervisor pulls me aside and explains that this is a recommendation for release. There is an interrogator at Abu Ghraib who is assigned to review reports and process detainees for release from the prison. When reports indicate that detainees do not pose a threat to Coalition forces, the reports are sent to him for approval. He meets with me about the large number of detainees I've accidentally recommended for release. I explain my confusion. He says, "I figured it was something like that." He returns all of my files. I do not want to appear as though I do not know what I'm doing. On my next interrogation report I write, "Detainee is a threat to Coalition forces."

The Iraqi dialect is difficult to pick up, but not as difficult as the Sudanese dialect. After two weeks I find myself translating for the translators. Their Arabic is enough to point the detainee in the right direction; my Arabic is enough to finish the questioning. I begin to learn a great deal about Iraq, the Baath party, Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, the Iran-Iraq War, Sunnis and Shiites, and the Iraqi military. In those first few weeks, I don't answer one PIR.

At night, the five of us return to our cell and pretend we aren't at Abu Ghraib. We make fun of Blee for being too young. We make fun of Bagdasarov for being a Communist. They make fun of me for writing in my journal and being a pastor. I tell them I was rejected by seminary. They make fun of me for this, too. We make fun of Henson for not knowing the difference between Iran and Iraq. No one makes fun of Kutcher.

We disappear into headphones and drown ourselves in music. Kutcher steals our headphones and tells the others what we are listening to. We laugh at Blee for Britney Spears and the Black Eyed Peas. We laugh at Bagdasarov for Harry Chapin. I take significant punishment for Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith. I'm given some credit for Zeppelin, but then Kutcher finds Sinéad O'Connor. He says, "I thought you loved Jesus. Faggots can't love Jesus." Kutcher and Henson are happy to show us their music. They introduce us to System of a Down. It is aggressive and deafening. I enjoy being surrounded by friends.

Watch the VICE News interview with the architect of the CIA torture program:

I make other friends, too. Friends like Ferdinand Ibabao.

Ferdinand is a former police officer from Guam. He served in the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division. I meet him for the first time in mid- January, during a convoy back to Baghdad to collect supplies from CACIville. Kutcher recruited him to be our driver. Ferdinand is overweight. He makes fun of himself for this. But Ferdinand is not soft. He is strong and intimidating. He has thick black hair and a dark complexion. We make fun of him for looking like a fat Iraqi insurgent, but only because he allows it.

Ferdinand tells funny stories. He has his own catchphrase. When he slows down and says, "Hey, man," you know he is about to tell you the best part of the story.

He tells this story about driving back through the gates of Abu Ghraib after a supply run to Camp Victory. He says U.S. soldiers in the guard tower mistook him for an Iraqi driver. He says "Hey, man." They ordered him to stop, but he thought they were shouting at another vehicle, so he drove faster. They fired warning shots into his engine block. Now, when Ferdinand's coming back into Abu Ghraib, we make him hide in the backseat under a blanket.

In late January, Ferdinand and I ride together during a convoy back to Baghdad. I'm glad to have him in the vehicle. I drive while he handles the foreign-made weapons. We head out onto the roads of Iraq and avoid the US Army convoys, which have become frequent targets of IEDs. We buy liquor in Baghdad and deliver it to the soldiers stationed at Abu Ghraib. In return, the soldiers give us access to large caches of captured weaponry. The entire transaction is illegal in the eyes of the military, but no one cares, and no one disapproves. It's a fair exchange for everyone involved. Ferdinand knows a great deal about foreign weapons. He chooses the best. We head back out onto the roads of Iraq with other CACI employees and stop on an isolated stretch of highway so we can test-fire the weapons into a highway berm.

On one return trip to Abu Ghraib, we encounter an Army convoy that has been struck by an IED. The explosive device was buried in the road and paved over. There are no injuries but the lead vehicle has been disabled. The convoy is waiting for reinforcements before advancing on a series of buildings in the distance whose occupants must have known something about the IED and the highway equipment used to conceal it. They say there are almost certainly more IEDs down the road.

Ferdinand insists that we move forward. The driver of another vehicle says we should either stay put or head back to Baghdad and wait until the road is cleared. Ferdinand says the road is never cleared. Ferdinand says the worst thing we can do is stay with the Army convoy because it will attract small-arms fire. We have no armor. Eventually the other driver decides to return to Baghdad.

That night at the prison, CACI leadership calls a meeting to discuss the incident on the road. A shouting match ensues about one group leaving another group behind. Someone says we need to follow orders. Someone else says no orders were given. There is another argument about whether or not we take orders from the Army. Ferdinand says, "You're not soldiers anymore. You don't give orders, you don't take orders." Someone says, "Who gives orders in the interrogation booth?" No one has an answer for this.

A photo from inside an abandoned Abu Gharib facility in 2003. (Photo by Benjamin Lowy/Getty Images)

Throughout the first two weeks of January, I go back to the interrogation booth and fail to answer PIRs. I turn in reports that say, "Detainee is a threat to Coalition forces." Most interrogators are having the same results and writing the same reports. We begin to question the process.

There are doubts about the number and quality of the detainees being processed at Abu Ghraib. There are doubts about the effectiveness of an interrogation program that prohibits interrogators from spending more than an hour or two with any one detainee. There are doubts about the presence of chemical weapons. There are doubts about the security of the prison. The number of detainees at Abu Ghraib is growing. The number of interrogators is not. There are thousands of detainees who will never be processed. But there are no doubts or questions about the way we are handling detainees. My interrogations have been direct and civil. Like any interrogator, I'm certain prisoners have lied to me, but I don't have any means or reason to retaliate for this. There are too many interrogations to conduct. I simply move on to the next prisoner. I've raised my voice and become argumentative in the booth, but in January 2004, I have no reason to believe I or anyone else has done anything wrong.

Soon that will change. Higher-ups are not satisfied with results coming out of Abu Ghraib. We are still struggling to find chemical weapons. The number of IEDs and mortar attacks is increasing at an alarming rate throughout the country. Coalition forces are beginning to take casualties the way they did during the invasion. There is talk that fighting may last through the summer.

The Army calls a meeting in the ICE. The captain and the first sergeant stand up front and lead a class on interrogation techniques. They talk about planning and preparation, the approach phase, the questioning phase, and the termination phase. There is a lecture about proper reporting and paperwork. They hand out copies of the Army field manual covering interrogations. Every Army job has a "how-to" field manual. There are field manuals on cleaning weapons, maintaining military vehicles, and properly wearing the uniforms. There are always soldiers who can tell you exactly what the field manuals say. They tell you what it says about your uniform violation, or that you're using an unauthorized tool to clean your weapon, or that you failed to give your vehicle's engine enough time to warm up. The soldiers who rely on field manuals are called barracks lawyers. No one likes barracks lawyers. No one likes field manuals.

When the captain and first sergeant finish with the refresher class, another soldier stands up front and reads a directive about the proper way to spell "Abu Ghraib" on our interrogation reports. There must be uniformity. There are questions about this. Some say it needs to be spelled with a "y." Others insist there should be a silent "e." There is talk of teaching everyone how to write it out in Arabic script. Someone wants to know what the field manual says. This discussion goes on for nearly an hour. We'll revisit the proper spelling of Abu Ghraib in future meetings.

We take a break and reconvene for another class on creative solutions. The first sergeant says you can't just read questions. You can't just be a robot. You need to be creative. He talks about Hanns Scharff. Scharff was a German interrogator during World War II who questioned downed American pilots. He was fluent in English. He took his prisoners for walks through the woods. He befriended them. He gained confidence. He acquired information. After the war, his former prisoners invited him to Christmas dinner in the United States. He became an American citizen and eventually taught interrogation techniques to the US military. The first sergeant tells us to emulate Hanns Scharff. He says, "It doesn't mean take your prisoners for a walk in the woods. It means to think outside the fucking manual." The first sergeant introduces a civilian interrogator who has been getting results. He says we should pay attention and learn from the guys who are managing to get things done. He introduces Steven Stefanowicz.

There are naked men in the cells. Naked men handcuffed to chairs outside the cells. Naked men standing in lines.

I see what's outside the fucking manual for the first time later in the day, during my first visit to the hard site. Steven Stefanowicz takes me on a tour of the hard site. He chooses me because I speak Arabic, have a security clearance, and worked for the NSA. He says, "You're the kind of person we need working on the guys in the hard site." The hard site contains a relatively small number of Iraqi prisoners who have been deemed more valuable than the thousands of others languishing in the outdoor camps. The interrogators who work with detainees inside the hard site often spend weeks, as opposed to hours, questioning their targets. Those of us who haven't been inside the hard site think of it as a better work environment than the cold plywood interrogation booths.

The hard site is a two-tiered building with an open bay running down the middle allowing full view of all the cells. As Stefanowicz leads me into the building, I see naked men. There are naked men in the cells. Naked men handcuffed to chairs outside the cells. Naked men standing in lines. There is a man on the floor who is being told to get naked. When he refuses, someone grabs him by his pants and drags him along the floor on his back. The pants come off and he is naked. The hard site is cold. Stefanowicz waits while I return to the ICE to retrieve my jacket.

Stefanowicz takes me to a windowless cell where he and an analyst have been working on a detainee. This detainee is from Yemen. The cell is long and narrow. I hear muffled music from inside the cell. There are two doors, one behind the other. Both doors are covered in plywood and spray-painted black. You can close the first door before opening the second. That way, you ensure no light enters the cell. Today, Stefanowicz opens both doors. The music is louder. Stefanowicz shuts it off and has a short conversation with a naked detainee. He tells him he will see him tomorrow. In Arabic, the detainee says, "Please, please, spend more time, no music, a little more time." The translator turns the music back on.

Stefanowicz says,"Annoying stuff, right?" He closes both doors and says, "We'll let him stew for a few days."

I tell Stefanowicz about System of a Down. I say, "Deafening crap, just total crap." Stefanowicz tells me that is exactly what he's looking for. I tell him I'll talk to Kutcher and Henson.

We walk back through the hard site and I see more things. Stefanowicz says once I spend a few weeks learning the basics with the former regime element (FRE) guys I'll be able to come in here and help him out. He says, "We need your language. We need to be able to talk to these guys on our own." Then Stefanowicz shows me how to fill out the paperwork to gain approval for this type of interrogation. He says never to proceed without approval. We fill out forms and use words like "exposure," "sound," "light," "cold," "food," and "isolation." We put them in a bin where they'll wait for signatures. Stefanowicz says, "Be creative. Don't be stupid."

Later that afternoon, I have lunch with Ferdinand. We've agreed to meet and talk about the IED incident on the highway and the CACI meeting that ensued. We agree we made the right decision about moving forward on the road. We end up talking about Steven Stefanowicz. Ferdinand doesn't think Stefanowicz is qualified to do the job. He thinks he may have faked his résumé. He says, "You know the type." He tells me not to spend time with Stefanowicz. He says, "Hey, man, keep your distance." He tells me to stay away from the hard site.

I never go back inside the hard site. I try not to remember the things I didn't like. The smell is something I try not to remember. The sound is something I try not to remember. The naked man is something I try not to remember. The dark cell is something I try not to remember. I gave Stefanowicz a copy of the deafening music. I try not to remember that, either.

Consequence: A Memoir, by Eric Fair, comes out from Holt on April 5. Buy it here.

"Poor, oppressed pirates," says Sully, facetiously. "All they wanted to do was murder and pillage in peace."

"No, no," retorts Sam, Nathan Drake's brother and Uncharted series newcomer. "No, they wanted to live as free men."

"Freedom" seems to be the buzzword with Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, but you'd be forgiven for being skeptical about whether the series could manage to unstick itself from the linear cement that usually keeps its movie-like storytelling intact. PlayStation's flagship franchise has been a benchmark for its consoles for almost a decade now—a must-buy for everyone who owns one, and something for those who don't to view with envy. But, alongside the resurrection of Lara Croft and ever-increasing expectations from players, developers Naughty Dog have had a lot to do in order to keep surpassing expectations for Uncharted's PlayStation 4 debut proper.

In order for this to happen, several huge shake-ups had to permanently disjoint the status quo. The most shocking was that Amy Hennig, the series's long-term writer and creative director, and Justin Richmond, the game director on Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, both departed Naughty Dog. Their exit left A Thief's End under the stewardship of Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley, the co-directors of 2013's multi-award-winning and critically revered The Last of Us.

Initial reports stated that Hennig was "forced out" of Naughty Dog, and this further aroused suspicions about the state of Uncharted 4. Creative parties appeared to be butting heads, and after the success of The Last of Us, it wasn't hard to imagine the Druckmann/Straley dream team wanting a changing of the guard to steer Uncharted in a new direction. But some alterations in main cast talent, a report that Druckmann scrapped eight months of Hennig's work on the game, and several subsequent delays to its release all added up to a bad situation, from an external perspective. A Thief's End looked troubled.

However, against all odds, it seems that Uncharted 4's shaky development may have been just the reroute it needed in order to continue pushing ahead. Naughty Dog's biggest talking point over the past 12 to 18 months has been its newfound focus on player freedom, and that is looking like A Thief's End's greatest strength. There's freedom to move, explore, and experiment on a level unseen in any Uncharted before this one. There remains the sense that this is a globetrotting adventure that successfully utilizes the immense writing talents of its development team, but that it also wants you to feel like you're more in control, rather than everything being on rails.

A short but varied 45-minute hands-on preview demonstrates the main tenets of A Thief's End—from its new openness and the expertly written personalities of its main characters to the speed and dynamism of its combat. The demo is set around a third of the way into the game. We see Drake, Sully, and Sam chasing new villain, Nadine, and her group of bad guys, Shoreline, across the Madagascan savannah to the Twelve Towers—a collection of pirate lookouts that all lead to the summit of a massive, extinct volcano.

The details on events preceding the chase are light—all Naughty Dog will reveal is that A Thief's End follows Nate and his pals as they search for the long-lost treasure of Henry Avery, a 17th century sailor who, after participating in a mutiny aboard the ship he was working on, was then elected captain, renamed it the Fancy, and subsequently became one the most notorious pirates in human history. Known by his contemporaries as the "King of Pirates," he quickly became the most wanted man on the planet after he found, and successfully vanished with, the largest haul of pirate treasure ever discovered, rumored to be worth around $400,000,000 in today's money. Quite the guy.

A Thief's End feels like a pure treasure hunt from get-go. "Gentlemen, we're on a pirate adventure," says Sam, playfully, as the trio blasts through a waterfall into a hidden cavern. "What are you, seven?" teases Nate. Racing across the savannah in a hefty 4x4, Drake, Sully, and Sam exchange quips and one-liners with perfect comic timing, and there's a welcome sense that this is Uncharted as we expect it—light hearted and just occasionally ridiculous. Sam asks Sully how his antiques business is going, but Sully's remorseful at the fact that he much prefers meeting clients face-to-face. You know, to "get a read on 'em," but that it's quite difficult "when you're talking to AnquityMaster87 through a screen."

Article continues after the video below

Related: Watch VICE's new film on Guatemala's drunken horse race

The 4x4 itself feels like a natural extension of the new, broader Uncharted. As you drive around the savannah, through sand, mud, and water, the vehicle slips, slides, drifts, and skids. Unlike vehicle sections in its predecessors, the jeep is genuinely satisfying to control, and doesn't become an action-interrupting annoyance. Instead, it allows you to quickly zoom off in whichever direction you want to, to explore hidden caves and ruins to find treasures and secrets, and you can get out and investigate wherever and whenever you like. It all organically blends together—from driving, to climbing a ruin, to using your new grappling hook to find out-of-reach items, and then even using the 4x4 to solve environmental puzzles to progress. Time will tell whether it's worthwhile to venture into the open, but it all lends to more liberating experience.

Approaching one of the preview's main towers, A Thief's End suddenly morphs into something surprisingly similar to Metal Gear Solid V, offering up a large area with numerous options at your disposal. Nate is able to sneak up on enemies, using long grass to hide in before snapping necks and knocking goons unconscious. By aiming your reticule over enemies, you're also able to mark them to keep tracks on their movement, and a behavior icon signifies when each adversary is suspicious, alerted, or aware of your whereabouts. Get detected, and you can swiftly shift out of the line of sight to reenter stealth, providing you're quick enough.

The grappling hook comes in handiest when traversing the ruins, allowing Nate to get above enemy patrols or across gangways. It's a smart, fluid system that works because of the broader scope: You can go from shooting an enemy to shooting a red barrel, to running across a parapet and flinging yourself off the edge, to swinging across a gap to melee another bad guy in the face. It's fantastic, and invites you to experiment with it.

Climb up high, and you can use the sniper rifle you found earlier to take down an entire squad while Sully and Sam run around below you, providing cover fire. Or you could go all-out and drive straight in, detonating the explosives the enemy has set up, to cause maximum chaos. Destructible cover not only looks fantastic as you shred wood apart, but it creates constantly changing battlefields, and you've got to stay on your toes.

The game's AI really helps, straddling a deliberately fine line between the enemies being smart—they're capable of flanking you and putting the pressure on when things get hairy—and also on the fun side of dumb. They won't notice an unidentified jeep in the vicinity, and they take just a little longer than your average mercenary should to spot someone swinging toward them on a rope. But rather than feeling jarring, this allows you to have much more fun while utilizing the game's new systems.

It's not surprising that Uncharted 4 looks or plays as good as it does, but it's relieving that its numerous new ideas feel so immediately natural. The game's new degree of depth made me feel like I was creating my own set-piece moments around its templates, rather than being siphoned into scripted sequences that frequently tug control away to show you more beautifully produced but non-interactive cut-scenes.

It's difficult to gauge how Druckmann and Straley's direction will affect the outcome for Nate and company. But what's so wonderful is that, despite how or where this (reportedly) final adventure for Drake will end, and however grave the stakes become, A Thief's End is simultaneously Uncharted at its wittiest and at its most free and fresh. Going on this sample slice of what's to come, it's a game that feels grander in scale but no less focused on telling a great story about a riveting, relatively unknown portion of history. Gentlemen, we're off on a pirate adventure.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End will be released for PlayStation 4 on May 10. More information at the game's official website.

Follow Sam on Twitter.

Photo via Facebook/Diego Saul Reyna

Donald Trump has stirred up a lot of anger and discussion about racism on both sides of the border over the last few months. In the US, violence at his rallies and attacks on minorities are becoming ever more frequent. While Islamophobia was a significant topic during Canada's election last year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has often spoken aspirationally about diversity in his country but has avoided directly calling out Trump for his comments (or being a fascist.) But given that American media coverage is part of Canadian culture, Trump was bound to get a reaction north of the border.

Dalia Dippolito waits for a ruling by Judge Jeffrey Colbath during her original trial in 2011. (AP Photo/ Richard Graulich, Pool)

Yellow tape blocks off the entrance of a two-floor beige townhouse in Boynton Beach, Florida, as the sun breaks on August 5, 2009. Shaky, grainy video shows a police technician taking photographs. Soon, a thin, olive-skinned woman—her raven-black ponytail tucked under a baseball cap—enters the frame.

Dalia Dippolito walks up to a beefy cop in jeans and a green polo shirt bearing the insignia of the Boynton Beach Police Department. The detective relays the grim news that Dippolito's husband, Michael, has been murdered. She wails and begins hyperventilating as the officer tries to console her.

But later that day, the police department's media relations bureau posted the raw footage on its website and on YouTube. The clips were eventually used as evidence against Dippolito, whom law enforcement officials in Broward County successfully prosecuted in 2011 for attempting to have her man assassinated. But the alleged femme fatale has always maintained that she was simply auditioning for a chance to become a reality TV celeb.

Meanwhile, the now ex-husband—convicted conman Michael Dippolito—remains alive and well.

The police department staged the fake homicide scene as part of a criminal investigation that caught Dalia Dippolito on video apparently seeking out a contract killer through an ex-lover, Mohamed Shihadeh. She also met with an undercover cop posing as the hitman to close the deal. Overnight, the recordings transformed the woman into one of those viral villains featured on American awfulness porn mainstays like Nancy Grace.She also had the starring role in an episode of COPS that was all about her case.

Here's where this twisty Florida crime caper gets weirder.

During a February 23 hearing to have her case dismissed before a new trial, Dippolito took the stand for the first time since she was arrested seven years ago. Under oath, the now-33-year-old alleged black widow claimed that she was acting the entire time she was under surveillance, and that her then-husband and Shihadeh—who once appeared in an episode of Burn Notice—were in on the stunt. (At a January hearing, Shihadeh denied Dippolito's Hollywood-style version of events.)

"We were trying to simulate the episode he was on," Dippolito said. "It was a murder for hire episode. It was somebody who had faked, um, their murder for hire, and it wasn't. It was an actor who had faked it."

To no one's surprise, the judge rejected her dismissal request. Despite the wild defense that the plot to whack her man was just an elaborate acting project gone off the rails, it's a defense strategy Dippolito has stuck to for the entire half decade she's been in the criminal justice system. Her former husband, Michael, took the stand five years ago to refute these claims, but back then, Dippolito chose not to testify in her own defense—and a jury found her guilty. Now she's hoping questionable behavior by Florida law enforcement will get her off the hook.

"She was desirous of starring on a reality TV show and knew the cameras were rolling at the time," Mark Eiglarsh, one of her defense lawyers, tells me. "It is extremely ironic that my client desired to be in the limelight, and as a result of this case, she is certainly now in the public eye, which we believe hindered her ability to get her fair trial."

Dippolito certainly gave a convincing turn in the surveillance video showing her meeting with the undercover cop posing as the killer-for-hire. The footage shows her sitting in passenger seat of the investigator's car, where Dippolito agrees to pay $3,000 in cash (and later $4,000 more) for the hit and assures the fake assassin she won't crack when the cops start asking questions.

"I am a lot tougher than what I look," she says in the undercover footage. "I know you think, Oh, what a cute little girl. Whatever, but I'm not. I just need to make sure everything is going to be taken care of."

However, Eiglarsh and his celebrity co-counsel, Brian Claypool, hope to bolster their client's defense by painting the cops and the prosecutor who took down Dippolito as fame-mongers who engaged in bizarre conduct. Besides the whole posting-evidence-online thing, one of the cops admitted to misleading Dippolito into signing a waiver, so her footage could appear on COPS. The defense team also alleges that Shihadeh, a police informant, was threatened by cops, and in turn used a gun to scare Dippolito into meeting the fake hitman. (Shihadeh denies that charge.)

Finally, the attorneys are going after former Chief Assistant State Attorney Elizabeth Parker. After handling the original prosecution, she wrote a book about the case and even took on the ex-husband as a client in her private practice.

Two years ago, Dippolito won a reprieve when an appeals court overturned the 2011 conviction, along with a 20-year prison sentence, on a technicality. The judge in the first trial did not allow her attorneys to individually interview the jurors and gauge their outside knowledge of the high-profile case.

Eiglarsh says his client, who has been on house arrest since her first trial, expects to take the witness stand again during the second go-around later this spring.

During a hearing in March of last year, a judge allowed the defense to interview Detective Alex Moreno, who led the case, about recordings and notes that were allegedly not turned over to Dippolito's attorneys, as the Sun Sentinel reported. But her defense lawyers' were denied their request to re-interview two investigators they believed were not being honest about their relationships with Shihadeh and the intended victim, Michael Dippolito.

In a statement to VICE, Boynton Beach Police Chief Jeffrey Katz defended the department's probe. "We stand behind the principled work our detectives did on this investigation," he said. "We trust in our state attorney to successfully prosecute this case, and we are confident we have given his office sufficient evidence to meet the state's burden."

A spokesman for Palm Beach County State's Attorney Dave Aronberg declined comment.

The Sun Sentinel reported that Dipplito's lawyers allege a "pattern of prosecutorial misconduct" and a possible "conflict of interest" by Parker, the former Palm Beach County prosecutor who led the case against Dippolito. In February 2014, BenBella Books published Parker's tome about the case, Poison Candy: The Murderous Madam: Inside Dalia Dippolito's Plot to Kill.

In Poison Candy's prologue, Parker writes that Dippolito was "sharpening her talons for the first easy score she could sink them into," while her hubby, Michael, was "a good-natured, hapless ex-con with a war chest of cash and a nagging weakness for cocaine and call girls." It's not until the epilogue that Parker—who became a private lawyer shortly after Dippolito's original conviction—reveals that Michael is now her client. Parker did not return a phone message and an email seeking comment.

"She wrote a book about her experience on the case that paints a very unflattering portrait of my client," Eiglarsh says. "Its publication will make it even more difficult to secure an untainted jury."

Robert Jarvis, ethics law professor at Nova Southeastern University, says Florida Bar rules do not prohibit lawyers, including ex-prosecutors, from writing books about cases they worked on—as long as they don't disclose privileged information without a client's consent.

"However, If there's a chance for a retrial, you really should wait," Jarvis tells me. "But at some point, the book is no longer timely. Publishers and television networks always want to get the story out as soon as is over."

Follow Francisco on Twitter.

Do it. Photo via Facebook

Thomas Mulcair did not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Local women at a Sulawesi funeral. All images by author

The funeral is a half hour motorbike ride into the hills beyond the town of Rantepao, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. We park next to some rice paddies and follow our guide down a muddy road. I'm not sure it's ethical for us to have paid to come here, but I guess we'll find out. For about $30 each, my girlfriend and I have become "funeral tourists."

Torajans are the indigenous people of south Sulawesi, and they are renowned for their burial rites, which are some of the most complex in the world. Their traditions include such rites as filling trees with dead babies; building life-size effigies of the deceased; pulling bodies out of coffins every five years to change their clothes; and leaving dead family members in their homes and treating them as "sick" until they can afford to throw them a proper funeral, which can sometimes be up to two years later.

This is the reason Sulawesi locals can charge money for tourists to check out their funerals—their funerals are very interesting. Our guide Erwin is leading us into our first Torajan death ceremony, replete with ritual animal slaughter, rice wine, and scores of local guests—some somber, others smiling.

Locals carry a pig for the funeral feast

When I raise my concerns about the commodification of death, Erwin assures me that having lots of guests at a funeral is considered an honor. "A lot of local people who don't know the family come to the funeral anyway," Erwin tells us.

A dead pig is on the ground, blood leaking from its nose and mouth, while three men, equipped with what seem to be flamethrowers, sear the animal for several minutes. When they roll the pig over, its body has gone into rigor mortis and its hair has burnt away. Erwin is giving us facts and explanations, but we're too intrigued and too horrified to listen. Instead, I concentrate on the dull hum of the flamethrowers.

I wasn't sure if these were real flame throwers, but then throwing flames seemed to be all they did.

"These pigs are gifts from people who are here to attend the funeral," I overhear Erwin say to my girlfriend as the men exchange their flamethrowers for machetes and begin creating a pile of blood, flesh, and bones. The guts are thrown to a couple of lurking dogs. Three other pigs, very much alive, are tethered by all four legs to lengths of bamboo, helplessly awaiting their turn. They are visibly trembling, possibly aware of what is about to happen.

Killing animals is a central aspect of any Torajan funeral, and buffaloes are the most sacred and important. One funeral guest describes the buffalo as the "entry ticket" to the afterlife. The sacrificed animals are believed to provide the exiting soul with transport, milk, and meat in heaven. According to Erwin, the lower class Torajans can sacrifice up to three buffaloes at their funerals, the middle class from six to 12, and the highest class will have at least 24. At some funerals, over a hundred buffaloes are sacrificed over the course of a few days.

A Torajan man holding a flamethrower

We've been told the extravagance of these funerals means it's important to bring gifts. One local man says his family saved for five years for a relative's funeral. And while this may seem quite excessive, funerals feed a whole village, and it's customary for everybody to take a portion of meat home. On a practical level, it's a way of redistributing food to those who need it. In a land without state supported welfare, I guess it serves a valid purpose.

Locals hack up the meat with machetes

Erwin is unperturbed by the death and butchery of the pigs and seems eager that we explore the rest of the funeral and mingle. The guests are sitting inside bamboo huts drinking locally grown coffee, tea, and homemade palm wine. In the center of the festivities is a tongkonan (a traditional Torajan house), which is occupied by the deceased.

We are offered seats in a small bamboo terrace and introduced to the dead man's cousin. As instructed, we thank him for having us—a badly pronounced attempt at the native tongue—and hand over the carton of cigarettes we brought as a funeral gift.

Me hacking up meat with a machete

Another pig is emitting its last blood-curdling squeals as a plate of rice- and bamboo-smoked pork is placed in front of us. My girlfriend pleads vegetarian, but they insist we try the meat. We oblige, both feeling a bit confronted, but silently acknowledging that it seems the respectful thing to do.

The deceased's body, held in the tongkonan

After lunch, we enter the tongkonan in which the deceased has been placed. The body is wrapped in bright-red fabric. He didn't have much of a family, we're told, but another of his cousins, an elderly lady, is sitting at the foot of his resting place. She is weeping quietly.

"They wrap him up like an Egyptian mummy," says Erwin. "Just like they did to Jesus before they put him in the cave." Erwin goes on to explain that many of the Torajan rites are a hybrid of animism and Christianity. Before the Dutch colonized Indonesia, bringing their religion with them, Torajans practiced animism—believing all entities have souls, even non-human entities.

I'm scribbling this down in my notebook as the elderly woman points at me and asks Erwin a question. She wants to know why a couple of foreigners are crashing her cousin's funeral. He explains that we are learning about Torajan culture, to which she brightens momentarily.

"Thank you for coming and learning about my culture," she says in her dialect. Erwin is positively beaming as he translates this to us, smiling. We smile and thank her back, relieved that she doesn't think we're intruding, while still aware that we kind of are.

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Photo by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete

For many people, coming out is a process of revealing their true identity—whether it's being gay, trans, or a Democrat in Texas. It isn't always easy, and there isn't a pre-written script explaining how to do it, but coming out can be freeing.

When you have a sexual fetish, though, should you always "come out" about it? How do you decide who to tell and from who to keep it a secret? And when you do decide to tell someone, what's the best way to explain: "Mom, Dad... I like to be electrocuted during sex"?

We posed these questions to a few people who have come out about their fetishes. Some are publicly out (and working in fetish porn), while others have only told their closest circles.

Related: How to Tell Your Parents You're a Porn Star

Thendara

Some of my kink interests are bondage, impact play, and electrical play. A few quick definitions: Impact play is when one person is struck by another person for sexual gratification; electrical play (also known as erotic electrostimulation) is like impact play, but with electrical toys that give off a jolt of energy to your body parts.

I first discovered my fetishes some 20 years ago, while going through a divorce. I was actively chatting with people in online chat forums, and I went to my first dungeon party—a place for people with various kinks to gather and openly express themselves. It was just mind-blowing. Some of the stuff I saw shocked me, repulsed me, but also turned me on. Through this dungeon, I got to know a lot of people, and discovered they were regular people who just had an unusual hobby.

After that, I was like a kid in a candy store. I wanted to tell everyone. I was working in a commercial insurance job, and I even told my boss, who was also a friend of mine. It turned out she had a kinky history too. So for special occasions after that, she'd get me gift cards to a local kink store.

I also came out to my sister. I figured since she had had multiple partners in college and seemed open, she would be fine with this news. "Someone wrapped me up in saran wrap, cut out holes, and used ice on me," I told her. She told me that my kink was "dangerous." After that, we never talked about it again. She still has no desire to hear about my lifestyle. If I had known it would upset her, I wouldn't have told her.

Now, I'm more conscious of whom to come out to. I don't come out to someone unless I have received some kind of encouragement to do so; I also feel that my friends and family have the right to not know this side of me. It doesn't bother me that talking openly about fetishes is off-limits information for lots of people because for me, this is a bedroom activity, not a 24/7 lifestyle.

Watch: Our documentary on "financial domination"—an extreme form of submission where you give away thousands of dollars for sexual gratification.

Kevin

I'm told that when I was still only about one years old, I was obsessed with pulling the diapers off the boy next door. Freud wrote about toddlers getting stuck in the "anal stage," and I guess that was me. When I was a little older, I dared the boy next door to take off his clothes, bend over, and spread his cheeks so I could see what was between them. I'm not sure it was a "dare" as much as it was my own sheer curiosity. And when I saw an asshole for the first time that day, I might as well have heard hosts of angels singing. He turned around and saw I had an erection.

I'm a gay man who's obsessed with butts... but I'm not interested in fucking them. I like licking, spanking, and fisting them. I like poking them with electro zapping thingamajigs and plugging them with fruits and vegetables and opening them up with proctology kits. I like playing with rim chairs and enema bags—and I'm not afraid of a mess—but that standard way of playing doesn't do it for me. For a while, I kept that a secret, since gay men nowadays seem so obsessed with conformity and either/or-ing, and the vast majority use language on Grindr and other apps like "TOTAL TOP!" or "100 PERCENT BOTTOM!" as if there isn't a single sexual activity gay men have discovered besides inserting a penis into an anus.

I host a podcast called RISK! where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share in public. About a year and a half into the show's history, someone dared me to go to Dark Odyssey, a kink camp in Maryland, for a weekend. I did, and it was a transcendent experience for me. I came home and created a 90-minute true story called "Kevin Goes to Kink Camp" for the podcast. It was the most "out" I'd ever been about any part of my sex life up to that point—not only to the strangers who listen to my podcast, but my friends.

My parents don't know about my fetish. They don't know how to download podcasts, so they're not exposed to RISK! I think they're mainly just thrilled that I'm finally doing something that is successful and meaningful, even if they don't wanna know all the nitty gritty.

Hundreds of people have reached out to say that the RISK! podcast has saved their lives. We get emails almost every day saying things like, "I was feeling suicidal... but then I heard that story and realized I'm not such a freak after all," or, "I never thought I had anything in common with people who do such-and-such a kinky activity, but the emotional journey you took me through left me feeling changed."

Latex

I started pony play at age nine. I tied myself up every night with a wire "bit" in my mouth. I kept a large mound of wire under the bed. My amateur radio hobby was a coverup excuse for the wire.

As an adult, I first came out to a close colleague at work. We were on a business trip and were a little drunk. I was thrilled to find he shared similar interests, but it was a huge risk that could have backfired badly. I'm glad it turned out wonderfully, but I don't think I would do it again, as it could have ruined my career.

My brother, on the other hand, found out by accident. He saw some pictures of pony play on my computer. I explained what it was, but my brother didn't take it well. He said that I'm welcome to do what I want, but he didn't ever want to see that again. The rest of my family knows, but does not want to hear about it.

Lance

The first fetish I was aware of was pantyhose. I was probably four when my mom dragged me to her jazzercise classes. I had to sit in a mini-van with all her friends in their leotards and pantyhose. Then, at 12, someone told me an urban myth about a bunch of cheerleaders holding down a guy from their high school and fucking his ass with a broom stick. The story really turned me on. I wasn't masturbating yet, but I remember feeling something that I knew was horny. Later, I developed fetish interests for women wearing pantyhose, fishnets, and spandex; women arousing men while hurting them; and things like sissification (a form of erotic humiliation in which a man is feminized and emasculated) and bimboification (like sissification, but sluttier).

When I was 23, a friend of mine saw my internet browser history, which I guess "outed" me. The friend thought it was hilarious, but I was embarrassed and very defensive at the time. I was like, "I like normal porn too," when I was mostly jerking off to fetish porn. I was worried he'd tell other people, it would become a joke, and that girls would lose interest in me. I didn't want women to think, He's only going to want me to fuck him with a strap-on. I was worried people wouldn't understand.

I wasn't fully "out" until a particularly rough breakup with a girl, at which point I was just like, Fuck it. What's the point of pretending I'm someone else? I started a fetish porn company, and I filmed clips of me being kicked in the balls, jerked off, and fucked in the ass by women in pantyhose. I put them all over the internet, and I made a lot of money that way.

After the business took off, I told my brother and sister-in-law. They were surprisingly cool about it. My brother mostly just wanted to know I was being safe and legal. We both agreed to keep it from our parents.

Not long after that, my parents came to visit and were asking lots of questions like, "What are you doing for work?" and "How are you making money?" I was purposely vague, telling them I was selling software—something I did for a while before porn—but they put things together. I can't remember if they googled me or someone sent them a link, but they found out. The first scene they saw was me getting fucked by a trans lady, and they freaked out. Eventually they came around, and we're fine now, but they asked me to never bring it up again.

I don't think it's a choice to be turned on by stuff, but it's totally a choice who you tell. You don't have to tell everyone. You can still scratch that kinky itch behind closed doors.

Follow H. Alan Scott on Twitter.

Hello All,

I'm Nick Gazin, and this is the weekly VICE comics review column in which I let you know what you should read and what you should avoid. If you contact me, I can tell you other things you should do too. Let me run your reading itinerary and your whole life.

Here are ten things that I've reviewed. I include links that you can use to purchase the books directly from their publishers, but I encourage everyone to patronize their local comic stores.

#1. Amsterdam
By Simon Hanselmann (Fantagraphics)

Simon Hanselmann is perhaps the best new-ish cartoonist going right now. When trying to convince people that comics can be cool, good, fun, enjoyable, relatable, and pretty, I always use his books as an example.

If you're unfamiliar with Simon's work, you can read the stuff we've published of his on this very site. Most of this book is on this website, but the experience of reading a book and looking at a website isn't the same. Books are great, paper is perfect.

The comics in this book are about a group of friends who all seem to hate each other. There's a witch named Megg, her cat boyfriend, their giant Owl roommate, and their sociopathic friend Werewolf Jones.

A whole lot of stuff happens in Amsterdam, from Megg and Mogg chugging giant bottles of Red Bull to Werewolf Jones's nude Zelda marathons. There's infidelity, suffering, beak-breaking, and various other pains for the reader's enjoyment. At the end of the last book, Owl had a moment of isolated tranquility. At the end of Amsterdam, Megg retreats into herself with mood-stabilizing drugs. Will Mogg be alone at the end of the next book? We all die alone, and we all read comics alone.

You can cuddle up on your couch either by yourself or with your favorite drugs and just read it, touch it, smell the paper, and be in love with it. Books rule, the internet drools. Paper rules forever.

I love this book, I love Simon Hanselmann.

Buy Amsterdam.

#2. Elevator Teeth
Published by Perfectly Acceptable Press

This is an avant-garde comic that feels a little influenced by primitive computer games with its grids and silhouettes. There's text, images, figures, and things that seem to be about the Bible, the creation of man—it doesn't matter. Whatever it means, it's a nice object full of pretty colors, patterns, and images.

Buy Elevator Teeth.

#3. HAX
By Lale Westvind (Breakdown Press)

Lale Westvind has some great Hairy Who/Gary Panter silkscreen magic happening in her work. This color zine starts with some portraits of pained-faced women before launching into a wordless story that I couldn't follow but enjoyed looking at. For some reason the cover, which is very beautiful, looks nothing like the insides, which are also beautiful. I'd like to see more things from Lale that look like the cover. I'd like to see more covers that look like the insides. The cover paper is waxed and soft. Touching this book is half its beauty. When you experience a book, it should appeal to all of your senses except taste. Keep your mouths off the books.

Buy HAX.

#4. Star Wrs
By Mark Todd

Mark Todd made 70 of these so you probably can't get one now, but I still want to put Mark Todd on your radar. This fine book is a fine, fine book—as fine as a book can be.

Mark retells the story of the movie Star Wars as if he's vaguely remembering from having seen it decades ago. Dialogue is flipped, characters are flopped, but the story is told successfully with good jokings and fine, fine drawings. Mark Todd's lines are so beautiful to me. I'm all about line quality. I don't fuck around with people who have an unsophisticated line. One of the first major steps of learning to draw is learning to love the immediacy of mark-making. You have to be able to love drawing before you even get into the concept of making an image. Mark Todd, I love your line, and I can tell that you love your line too. Line lovers for life.

Buy Star Wrs.

#5. Horn Please
By Dan Eckstein (powerHouse Books)

In India, the trucks are made into beautiful art, and this book documents it. Not much more needs to be said. The whole book is pretty photos of these mundane machines that have been transformed into sublimely beautiful, giant, mobile art objects.

Buy Horn Please.

#6. The Complete Junior and Sunny
By Al Feldstein (IDW/Futurism)

Before Al Feldstein drew, wrote, and edited pornographically scary comics for EC, he wrote and drew some way-too-sexy Archie knock-off comics in the 1940s. All the female characters in this book have over-rendered sweater drapery, defining their racks in a way that makes the fabric look wet and clingy. On top of tits being the star of the comic, the main characters all have these double-bubble pompadour hairstyles that look like inflated bosoms on top of their foreheads.

There's one story in here where the fake-Betty and fake-Veronica audition to be models for a department store and model lingerie for an adult man at their high school. Check this out if you have a fetish for tight sweaters.

Buy The Complete Junior and Sunny.

#7. The Blonde Woman
By Aidan Koch (Space Face)

Aidan Koch has a lot of good ideas and some taste, but she's not pushing herself hard enough in this book.

Buy The Blonde Woman.

#8. The Hospital Suite
By John Porcellino (Drawn & Quarterly)

Reading about John Porcellino's numerous life-threatening ailments and overwhelming physical pain caused me to believe I was experiencing the same symptoms. I began to see spots, and I stopped reading about halfway through. It was too much for me. The experience of the book overwhelmed me. My gut response to this book is, "Jesus Christ, we've all got to band together to help John Porcellino! Who knew a human was capable of suffering this much without dying!?"

Buy The Hospital Suite.

#9. Sink All Night
By Caramel Bobby

I bought this sealed Caramel Bobby zine, and when I opened it I found out that I don't like Caramel Bobby. I guess that's a pretty funny trick. People talk him up so much that I thought he was good. The cover's nice, but ultimately this zine is nothing and was made by someone not trying. Trying is never cool, but very few good artists are cool.

Check out Caramel Bobby.

#10. Carpet Sweeper Tales
By Julie Doucet (Drawn & Quarterly)

Julie Doucet has made a lot of great comics, but this isn't one of them. After a long departure from comics, she's returned, but instead of doing work at all similar to her old stuff she's made a collaged fumetti made from old advertisements. The book instructs you to read the text aloud, so I did, but I was still disappointed. I applaud Doucet for taking risks, and I also didn't like this book.

Buy Carpet Sweeper.

That's it for this week. Check back next week, and I'll tell you what to do some more! Follow me on Instagram!

Dope on the table. Photo via Surrey RCMP

I wrote this sentence precisely one year ago this week: If you haven't heard, it's "shots fired" season in Surrey, BC.

I love Daniel Arnold's work and we've been lucky enough at VICE to finagle him into doing some great projects for us this past year. He's a street photographer other street photographers are envious of for his bottomless pit of bizarre encounters. Whenever I flip through new batch of his snapshots there's never a lack of amazing facial expressions, kids being superheroes, old people being adorable, and the general chaos of NYC. He has a new book about his time on Nassau Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, being published this week by Pau Wau. The book release party and signing will be at local photo lab Kubus Tuesday evening from 6 to 8 PM. Only 300 copies are available, so get there early! I chatted with Daniel to see what this project is all about below:

VICE: How long have you been kicking it around Nassau Ave?
Daniel Arnold: I moved to the top of Nassau in October of 2012, I think? In 2003 I was living on the edge of Chinatown and walked over the Williamsburg Bridge on a free day. I thought I'd walk to the Brooklyn Bridge and cross back over, but I was a brand-new idiot and went the wrong way. That was my first time on Nassau. For some reason I was sure I was a goner—I saw one of those sarcastic signs about shooting the trespassers that the dogs don't kill and took it 100 percent seriously. What a stupid young man I was!

Over how many years were these photos taken?
I've got about five years of photos in the book. I gave about 500 to choose from and mostly let go from there. Their studio is also on Nassau and I wanted to let it be as much a product of the neighborhood as a product of me.

How long have you been going to this lab?
I think it's been about two years with Kubus. There used to be a great spot called Enla on Manhattan Avenue, and in that era it was my understanding that Kubus was only doing passport photos. Anyway, Enla shut down and I went right over and started hamming it up with Andy at Kubus. We were buddies right away.

Why do you still shoot film?
I've actually been forcing myself to shoot digital for the past month or so, just to see if i can find a way to like it. So far results are mixed. I'm very attached to film and feel like a bit of a sucker every time I see something great with a digital camera in my hand. For one thing I like complications. I like things to be impossible. Unlikely success is so much more intimate and satisfying. Digital photos also just don't look as good as film. They don't come close. However, what I really got attached to with film was the process. If you're wandering around waiting for miracles, a screen is your worst enemy. In that scenario a digital camera might as well be a phone. It takes you out of the world and gives you a resting place when you're bored. Shooting film, you have no exit. The camera can only click, so it stays out of the way and lets you really be somewhere.

Why'd you choose to go into street photography?
I don't know that I really chose anything, it's just a natural inclination. I'm not into telling people what to do. I get more of a thrill out of this kinda thrift store A-team MacGyver approach, where I pay real close attention to what's lying around and try to whip it all together into some potent new combination. People left to their own devices, when they think nobody is paying attention— that's way more interesting than anything I could make up. Though I do have pretty insane dreams.

Daniel Arnold is a photographer based in NYC. You can follow his work here.

Pau Wau Publications is an independent publishing house based in Greenpoint. You can follow their projects here.

More photographs from Nassau Avenue below.

Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail in the Bronx. Photo via Flickr user Michael Vadon.

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Clinton and Sanders Agree to New York Debate
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will hold their next debate in Brooklyn on April 14, five days before the New York primary. Sanders moved a big Manhattan rally planned for that night back to April 13. His campaign blamed the "inconvenience" on Clinton's "jam-packed, high-dollar, coast-to-coast schedule of fundraisers." —The New York Times

Big Business Plans Fight Against Higher Minimum Wage
A leaked video shows how pro-business groups are strategizing to fight against the growing campaign for a higher minimum wage. In it, a director of pollster Frank Luntz's firm explains how business leaders can keep wages low by "not talking about" the issue and focusing the conversation on "creating more jobs." —VICE News

Supreme Court Upholds One Person, Ono Vote
The Supreme Court has upheld the principle of drawing up voting districts based on total population rather than the number of eligible voters. The court was considering a challenge led by a Texan conservative activist that could have shifted more power to rural Republican-leaning districts.—USA Today

Helicopter Crash Kills Five
A tour helicopter has crashed in the remote Tennessee woods, killing all five people aboard. Pigeon Forge Police Chief Jack Baldwin said the helicopter, a Bell 206 sightseeing craft, "experienced a severe crash which resulted in a fire." The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating. —NBC News

International News

Global Probes Begin Over Panama Papers
Authorities in Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Sweden, and the Netherlands have opened investigations after a leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm showed widespread use of tax havens. In Iceland, thousands of protesters took the streets to express fury at Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, who failed to disclose that he and his wife co-owned an offshore company. —Reuters

Armenia Threatens War With Azerbaijan
Armenia and Azerbaijan have ramped up the rhetoric as fighting between the countries continued in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan warned that his country would officially recognize the region as an independent state if the fighting escalated into a "large-scale war." —Al Jazeera

Two Planes Collide at Indonesian Airport
Two planes collided on the runway at an airport in Indonesia's capital Jakarta, causing the wing of a passenger to burst into flames. Authorities said there were no injuries and all passengers were evacuated safely, but the Halim Perdanakusuma airport did close temporarily. —Jakarta Globe

Suspected Singapore Arms Smuggler Extradited
A Singaporean man has been extradited to the US to face charges of illegally exporting technology. Lim Yong Nam is indicted for allegedly violating a trade ban by sending radio parts to Iran. The parts were then allegedly sent to Shia militias in Iraq and used in improvised explosive devices. —BBC News

Ronnie Spector performing in 2014. Photo via Flickr user MK Feeney.

Everything Else

Facebook Launches Photo Feature for Blind People
Facebook launches a new feature today that describes photos to people who are blind or visually impaired. Called "automatic alternative text" (AAT) it uses artificial intelligence to tell people basic things about the image. —The Verge

Tennessee Wants the Bible as Official Book
Senators in Tennessee have approved a bill that designates the Holy Bible as the state's official book. The American Civil Liberties Union says it violates the separation of church and state. —The Washington Post

Ronnie Spector Defends Kesha
The lead singer of the girl group the Ronettes, who married the incarcerated producer Phil Spector, has defended Kesha for speaking out against her own former producer. "I love Kesha and I agree with her," she says. "You have to speak up." —Broadly

FBI Says Hackers Have Accessed Government Files for Years
A confidential FBI alert shows that hackers are still roaming through US government networks. The mysterious group APT6 has "stolen sensitive information" from various government networks since at least 2011. —Motherboard

Done with reading today? Watch our new film 'How 'Sailor Moon' Fandom Became a Refuge for 90s Queer Kids'