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Turning Corpses into Diamonds

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Turning Corpses into Diamonds

The Mexican Doctor Who Leads a Militia Against the Cartels

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"I attend to my patients every day from seven in the morning till noon, but after noon, I go to war," said Dr. Mireles at his Tepalcatepec office last November. All photos by Hans-Maximo Musielik

Michoacan, the fertile agricultural state in western Mexico, is in the midst of war. There are three main players: the cartel known as Los Caballeros Templarios (the Knights Templar), the Federal Police and Mexican Army forces, and the armed civilian groups that have emerged in Michoacan—as well as other states—in the absence of peace and safety.

A sort of moral leader has arisen from these militia groups. Dr. Jose Manuel Mireles Valverde heads the General Counsel for Self-Defense and Community Police Forces of Michoacan. Since communities in the region took up arms to defend their towns from crime last February, Dr. Mireles has been their public voice, appearing on magazine covers and in televised interviews, defending every Mexican’s right to protect themselves from lawlessness.

Last week, photographer Hans-Maximo Musielik spent five days with Dr. Mireles, getting closer to the leader than anyone before. He documented Dr. Mireles, as well as his guards and commanders, as they kept road blocks and sought the expansion of the territory under the command of the self-defense council. On December 29, they peacefully overtook the municipality of Churumuco. Everything remained calm until January 4 when the community police forces took over Paracuaro, the tenth municipality to be added to the self-defense zone. But unlike Churumuco, the arrival of the self-defense groups met resistance, leading to fatal fighting. At least two gunmen for the Templarios were killed during the reported shootings. Two Mexican Army soldiers died in an ambush nearby. Hans-Maximo's photos also capture the death of one member of the self-defense forces, a killing that was not counted in the major news reports.

After the taking of Paracuaro on Saturday night, Dr. Mireles was traveling on a light aircraft from Guadalajara when it crashed in the municipality of La Huacana. The leader, who took up arms with the community police of Tepalcatepec, survived the accident. So far, it looks like there was no foul play involved.

Dr. Mireles is currently recovering in Mexico City, under the custody of the Federal Police. The federal government has stated that they are granting protection to Dr. Mireles because, basically, he has become a national political figure. Without him, the communities who now trust the self-defense council would be left without a figurehead who symbolizes the people’s fight against organized crime.

But in Michoacan, the threat of a cartel carries more weight than just any criminal gang. Hans-Maximo's photos show that the Templarios, as well as their predecessors, La Familia Michoacana, are a social force. Some citizens of the conflict zones wear their loyalty to the cartel on their sleeves—or, in this case, on their shirts.

"It's a rebellion," said Hans-Maximo, who has traveled to Michoacan several times in the past year to cover the conflict. "It is an historical event.”

Introduction by Daniel Hernandez

Sunday, December 29, 2013. Churumuco, Michoacan.

10:03 AM. On the basketball court in the town of Churumuco, Michoacan, Dr. Mireles speaks to the townspeople, explaining the reasons for the takeover and guaranteeing his support in the fight against Los Caballeros Templarios.

"Today, the community of Churumuco is officially taken over by the citizens’ movement. Anyone who wishes is welcome to bear arms to defend their family and town. If you are carrying weapons and come across the Federal Police or Army, do not run. It is Los Templarios who should run. The Army and Federales are our friends. Show them respect by lowering your weapons when they pass through. "

About 20 vehicles, lead by Dr. Mireles, went into the town at 9:30 AM. There were no registered incidents.

11:38 AM. After taking over the town of Churumuco, Dr. Mireles [sitting, right, with an escort and another commander] talks with the mayor of Churumuco, Gildardo Barrera Estrada. Dr. Mirales informs him that, upon the town's takeover, they will remain there to "clean up the town of Caballeros Templarios."

11:48 AM. A mother and her children from Churumuco make their way through the self-defense forces, who have just taken over the town. The mother's T-shirt is defiantly opposed to the arrival of the new forces: "Congratulations Father, on your day, thank you for being a Father, and for being Templario."

12:40 PM. After the takeover, two members of the miltia, armed with assault rifles, patrol the road to the village of Poturo from the back of a truck. They have built barricades to defend the townspeople against any attacks from the Los Templarios cartel.

1:07 PM. Dr. Mireles' bodyguard, known as El Siete ["the Seven"], salutes victoriously after the successful takeover of Churumuco.

Monday, December 30, 2013.

9:00 AM. Zicuiran, Michoacan. Dr. Mireles looks at his phone and a map of the area in front of him. On December 18, the self-defense groups under his leadership took control of the community of Zicuiran in the municipality of La Huacana. Since then, they operate out of a local restaurant.

3:23 PM. El Chauz, Michoacan. Two self-defense guards rest near the main barricade at El Chauz, a few miles away from Zicuiran. The barricade is located over the main Patzcuaro-Apatzingan highway. The guards take turns surveilling every two to four hours. They will remain in the barricades for days, resting, eating, and bathing near the checkpoints. They rarely go home.

3:40 PM. El Chauz, Michoacan. A self-defense guard, sleeping.

4:37 PM. El Chauz, Michoacan. Another self-defense member, resting a bit.

4:40 PM. El Chauz, Michoacan. At El Chauz's main barricade, every vehicle is subject to an inspection—even trucks belonging to candy and soft drink companies.

4:50 PM El Chauz, Michoacan. A self-defense guard picks up his AK-47 at the main barricade for El Chauz as he prepares to begin his shift.

6:00 PM. Zicuiran, Michoacan. Dr. Mireles reads a story in the local paper on the peaceful takeover of Churumuco at his temporary operating base. He appears in a photo on the front page.

6:58 PM. Zicuiran, Michoacan. Two of Dr. Mireles' bodyguards, El Siete, center, and El Tormenta, right, shoot pool near the temporary operating base in Zicuiran.

Tuesday, December 31, 2013.

2:09 PM. La Huacana, Michoacan. A self-defense member known as Mi Rey holds his assault riffle as his truck arrives at La Huacana.

3:17 PM. La Huacana, Michoacan. Papá Pitufo ["Papa Smurf"] wears his custom-made holster while he keeps guard at La Huacana's City Hall, awaiting Dr. Mireles' arrival. It's common for self-defense members to personalize their weapons.

3:31 PM. La Huacana, Michoacan. Tormenta's holster as he climbs into his truck.

3:50 PM. El Ciruelo, Michoacan. A self-defense member ready to test-shoot his AK-47. El Ciruelo's barricade is one of the most strategic and dangerous. It controls the access to the Lazaro Cardenas-Uruapan Highway, which enters Tierra Caliente and comes very near to Apatzingan, the Templarios's base.

3:55 PM. El Ciruelo, Michoacan. A self-defense guard rests behind El Ciruelo's barricade and recharges his cell phone battery.

5:07 PM. El Ciruelo, Michoacan. About seven hours before the new year, Dr. Mireles visits El Ciruelo's barricade to personally congratulate the team and the supporters of the self-defense movement. Two days earlier, the Caballeros Templarios spread rumors of an imminent strike that night in an attempt to psychologically exhaust the fighters. The attack never took place.

Saturday, January 4, 2014.

3:06 PM. Paracuaro, Michoacan. A self-defense member in the aftermath of a confrontation with Los Caballeros Templarios during the takeover of Paracuaro.

4:04 PM. Paracuaro, Michoacan. A self-defense member takes cover behind a truck during a confrontation against Los Caballeros Templarios in the town of Paracuaro, where one self-defense member died. Others take cover behind a palm tree.

4:58 PM. Paracuaro, Michoacan. A self-defense member shows a book authored by Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, a drug-trafficker and founder of the cartel La Familia Michoacana. The book was found during a raid of the home of a Caballero Templario in Paracuaro, following the takeover of the town a few hours prior.

5:56 PM. Cuatro Caminos, Michoacan. Military units guard the stretch of the highway blocked by Los Caballeros Templarios. This was in reaction to Paracuaro's takeover by Dr. Mireles' self-defense group a few hours earlier.

Growing Opium Is All the Sinai Bedouins Have Left

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An opium crop in the Sinai

When spring-time dusk falls in Egypt's Sinai mountains, the opium share-croppers leave their gardens—a profusion of pink, purple, and green against the arid landscape—and light fires for the evening.

Clusters of young men or families gather round the embers to make bread and brew tea outside makeshift shelters with low stone walls and roofs of tarpaulin or palm. They sleep early, rise early, and tend to their plants while the light lasts. My hosts for the evening say this remote, illegal work isn't their profession of choice, but with precious few jobs available there aren't many other ways to make a decent living. Their story is emblematic of that of Sinai Bedouin as a whole: a community which has been all but shunted out of official economic development by the government and private developers, and survives with one foot in the black economy, smuggling cars, guns, people, petrol—and drugs.

I first heard about the opium fields of South Sinai last spring in a smoky bar in downtown Cairo. The story intrigued me because while the Mujahideen of North Sinai get plenty of attention for blowing up gas pipelines, killing conscripts and the like, not a lot is heard about the less populous south. The extent of the region's drug economy has barely been reported—when it does make the news, it's mostly due to implausible NGO schemes to tempt drug farmers into herb gardening.

But, I found on my visit, the decline in tourism and retreat of the police since the January 2011 uprising has occasioned a bloom in the opium crop that is changing the society of South Sinai, and flooding the country with cheap opium.

Mohammed Khedr, coordinator of the South Sinai Community Foundation, which researches the local economy, estimated last spring that the production of opium and marijuana has doubled since 2010 to provide some 45 percent of South Sinai’s Bedouin men with employment at some point during the year. Other locals put the figure higher.


An opium farmer checks a young crop

Although there have been both private- and state-led developments in Sinai, they almost entirely exclude Bedouin—as do the police and army. Delta Egyptians are imported to staff the factories, government offices, and coastal resorts; a form of economic apartheid which leaves Bedouin scrabbling for jobs at the fringes of Egypt's tourist economy. Tourism was hit hard by the start of the global economic crisis in 2008, and even harder by the revolution. One of my hosts in the opium fields used to be able to get work a few times a week at a local attraction, but since the revolution, it's all but dried up.

According to a report published by the American University in Cairo, 81 percent of South Sinai Bedouin experience food poverty and their children are three times more likely to be malnourished than Egyptians as a whole. Half live below one dollar a day. I asked one farmer what he would do if they destroyed his crop: "Sit inside and not eat," he said.

"If the government just found a way to [incorporate] Bedouin into the development of Sinai, of course the Bedouin would leave the drugs behind," Mohammed told me. "Because for us, drugs are forbidden but it is also forbidden to let the children starve."

When revolution broke out in Cairo, Sinai Bedouin saw a chance to play their part and take revenge against the repressive security apparatus. Police stations were attacked in some places, and police driven out of town. Back in Cairo, I met with a veteran anti-drugs squad officer who had worked in Sinai until the revolution. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Even before the revolution, he said, police surveillance planes were fired on; in those days there would be a "huge retaliation operation" on the ground. But with heavy weapons flooding in to the peninsula from Libya, operations to retaliate or destroy crops became inordinately dangerous, "a tightrope between fighting drugs and sustaining casualties." For a year, the operations entirely stopped, and have only resumed on a significantly reduced scale. He said that drugs were smuggled into mainland Egypt through several routes, including boats with loads of opium roped underneath.

According to US State Department figures, in the year before the revolution, 534 acres of opium were destroyed. In the year after, none.


A man shows off the gun he brought with the opium cash

Crouching round the fire in the narrow valley, the young opium farmers passed each other photos on mobile phones showing pictures of the things they had bought with the proceeds of their work, which they said they would not otherwise be able to afford: pickup trucks, a new house to raise a family, a few guns.

“Of course I’m afraid [of prison],” said one. “There was a man [who] wrote his name in rocks above his field, State Security took him and tore out his fingernails. The army and security are not doing anything now at all, in the future... maybe they will.”

But they aren't the big winners in this business. Most of the land that drugs are grown on is technically owned by the army, but those who own the land in the eyes of local tribal law take half the crop, workers take the rest. The opium season lasts from November to May. In other months they might do casual work or work on the summer cannabis harvest.

Aside from an injection of extra cash, the industry has two predictable side-effects on the community: addiction and the threat of violence.

In at least six of nine instances in which foreigners have been kidnapped in Sinai since 2012, kidnappers demanded the release of prisoners held on drug-related charges, according to local news reports at the time. Most recently, in April 2013, a Hungarian member of the UN's Multinational Observer Force was kidnapped for precisely this reason.

All the kidnappings have ended swiftly, often under pressure from local tribes, and the captives report excellent, if nerve-racking, hospitality. One kidnapper made dire threats about “scorpions, snakes and monsters,” but then released his captives after being reminded that he would not like to be kidnapped himself.

There have also been a spate of armed attacks on checkpoints in the vicinity of the major opium-growing areas. No one has claimed responsibility, but locals believe that gangs involved in drugs trafficking are once again the culprits.

On my way back down the valley, I saw a teenager harvesting opium behind his father and older brother. He wielded a scraper fashioned from an old tin. Looking up briefly, as if to check they weren’t watching, he scooped a little gum with his finger, and licked it. There is a local saying: "He who grows poison will eat poison."


What raw opium looks like once harvested

Addiction is a growing problem locally, not only to opium itself, but to a byproduct, jurouz, made from the dried and crushed sufoof [orb]. It gives a cheap hit and is often passed around freely on social occasions.

My guide cheerfully explained that men also take it before sex in the belief that it improves their performance. “They take it for the first time they sleep with a woman if they want to do something good. Then they keep on taking it. For two years, they are like a donkey. And then it doesn’t work, so they look for something else.”

The community's women often bear the brunt of men's addiction. The drug tends to make men lethargic, and often they borrow money to sustain their use. Very few women are financially independent, making them wholly reliant on the income and spending of their husbands. One woman married to a Bedouin man told me that men's social lives revolve around opium, "where taking opium... is as normal as smoking a cigarette." There are no reliable statistics on usage or addiction, but several locals I asked thought that between 60 and 90 percent of men used some form of the drug.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimated in 2010 that 60 megatons of opium were consumed in Egypt annually, indicating the presence of 10,000 hectares (nearly 25,000 acres) of production. It isn't clear whether the opium grown in the desert mountains of Sinai is being converted into heroin. The police officer I spoke to said that virtually all heroin is imported, but a contact in North Sinai told me that smugglers claim raw opium is trafficked into Israel and heroin brought back the other way, suggesting that the conversion might be done in factories inside Israel. I haven't been able to confirm this.

The young men camping out in the mountains don't know, and they don't ask the brokers who buy their product. For them, it's just a way to make a living.

“There’s no work, I don’t have any qualifications,” said one. He threw his arm in a wide gesture over the opium fields and grinned, continuing, “but in this, I’m a professor.”

@tom_d_

Coachella Celebrity Deathmatch

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Coachella Celebrity Deathmatch

An Erotic Encounter with an Egg Sandwich

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Egg sandwich photo by the author

Reality, like trash in August, stinks at dawn, when night no longer cloaks it in dreams or darkness. The light is harsh, the subways are late, and last night’s deeds flood back like dust floating in through a sunlit window. What you did or had done to you, and to or by whom, barges in unbidden to your mind. “I’ll never do that again,” you say, and you won’t... at least for a few more hours.

On mornings such as these, there inevitably arrives that moment when you can choose to embark upon a salubrious new life or slump into the filthy patterns of the past. Nowhere is this choice more pronounced than at breakfast. Homeade granola with non-fat yogurt drizzled with wild honey is the clear path to betterment. A deli breakfast sandwich—greasy eggs, half-melted American cheese, and lukewarm bacon on a soft boulder of bread—is both delicious and a slide to dissolution. I go for the egg sandwich every time.

There are so many things wrong with a breakfast sandwich, so many taboos transgressed and health codes flouted. It has no business being as pleasing as it is. There is the largely unremarkable fact that by eating at a deli, you are entrusting the first meal of your day to a business that makes most of its money selling lottery tickets and cigarettes. This, in itself, is perverse, like going to your bartender for your taxes because he knows how to use a cash register.

Then there are the ingredients to consider. There are only four in a proper deli breakfast sandwich—a hard roll, eggs, cheese, and bacon—but each are sensory horsemen galloping toward a cardiac apocalypse.

Long before you got up in the morning, and long before you went to sleep, that steel dish of bacon was festering on the side of an unclean, greasy, flat top grill. Inside, strips of pre-cooked meat are crammed like lobsters in a tank, awaiting their demise. For these pieces of former pig, it is a long, porcine purgatory. Fat commingling from the early morning until late at night under unnatural lighting, the bacon yearns to meet his griddle again, if only to end the pain for eternity.

Nearby, dozens of eggs form high-rise apartments in their pallets of cardboard. One shudders to think of the lives led by the chickens who laid them. At least with bacon, the pig can no longer suffer, though others shall replace it. Eggs, on the other hand, are the license plates made by chicken inmates doomed to serve life sentences in hellish cages.

A happier story is to be found in the American “cheese” that constitutes the binding agent between the eggs, bacon, and the hard roll. The cheese does not feel pain. It was born in a laboratory. It is no cheese, this, but a pasteurized cheese-food product, a task-oriented abstraction from dairy. It is invincible, unspoilable, and can never die, for it has never lived. This plasticine mess that has been dubbed “American” is bad for the country.

A New York kaiser roll is nothing but a glorified caloric box. Hard on the outside with an air-filled body, the only thing it delivers is short-lived pleasure and empty calories. But in a deli sandwich, it finds its true purpose.

A New York City deli via.

As for the cook at the other end of the spatula, my deli chef is a man named Allah. He’s a devout Muslim. On one particularly hairy morning, I asked to use the deli bathroom and walked past a neatly arranged row of prayer mats in the back room. Allah does not dig on swine, making this culinary experience heavy and horrible. Allah is preparing something for me that he finds profane.

It’s a filthy thing, a deli breakfast sandwich. But I defy you to tell me that you are not tempted by the flesh-colored roll peeking from the loosely closed tin foil or the virginal white paper sheath, the stench of desire emanating from the sandwich. There it is, that glorious doughy fold with a hint of eggy effluvia, like a woman’s most private moist hobby lobby mixed with the scent of the Venice canal. It’s all you can do to refrain from ripping off its aluminum corset and ravishing it with your mouth organ in front of the disapproving eyes of the deli man. “Haram!” he says. “Haram!

But wait you do, shuffling in line painfully erect as the woman in front of you picks with irritating deliberation each of her futile lottery numbers. Inside you are so gnawed with anxiety—what if the cheese annoyingly adheres to the interior paper when you finally do unwrap the sandwich?—you can hardly breathe. (Cheese is a fickle mistress, one who will adhere to almost any surface.)

Payment isn’t more than tuppence for this momentary pleasure. But where to enjoy it? Can you, could you, do you, want to wait for privacy? No, you open the black plastic bag and immediately unwrap the foil, momentarily glancing at whatever sick cover adorns the day's New York Post. For inside your pouch, perfectly halved and now shorn of its prophylactic foil, awaits your breakfast.

Another view of the egg sandwich. Photo by the author

Pry apart the two halves and peer inside. It’s like Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde. Bacon labia enmeshed between the doughy thighs of a hard roll. Glistening white, the egg appears like slick porcelain, a word that comes from the Italian term porcellina, or pig vulva. That cheese goops and gleeps onto the roll. It gloms and grabs onto the bacon. The egg is the conscientious but filthy id that is even more perverse for wanting to be there, knowing this desire is wrong.

So you grasp the roll for a better grip, and bring the thing to the precipice of your lips. Squeeze it between your fingers as it spurts just a little yolky cheese ejaculate that dribbles down the side of the roll. You bring the oozing eggy porky breakfast concoction to your mouth and take a ravenous bite. You are wallowing in your filthy delight. And all the stinking trash in the world, all the incinerating rays of the sun, and last night's misdeeds can’t—and won’t—stir you from your bliss.

Sluts

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Moncler jacket, vintage necklace; Carhartt shirt, vintage necklace

PHOTOS BY RICO SCAGLIOLA AND MICHAEL MEIER
STYLIST: LARK RING

Left: Moncler jacket, April77 pants, vintage necklace and belt

Left and Right: Patrice Catanzaro tank top, April77 pants, Jean Paul Gaultier boots, vintage necklace and belt; H&M tank top and jeans, Dr. Martens boots, vintage necklace and watch

Left: Moncler jacket, vintage necklace. Right: H&M tank top and jeans, Dr. Martens boots, vintage necklace and watch

Levi’s jacket, H&M jeans, vintage belt, American Apparel socks

Taji's Mahal: Rilgood Is Brooklyn's Self-Proclaimed King of Nigeria

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Photo by Cheney Orr. Video by Taji Ameen. 

For this week's Mahal, photographer Cheney Orr and I hooked up with our friend Rilgood—a rapper who calls himself “the King of Nigeria.” Rilgood immigrated from Nigeria to New York and has established himself as a musician known for his music that he says is “as subtly African as it can get.” While discussing his immigration experience and drinking a bottle of whiskey, Rilgood showed us his neighborhood in East New York. Check out our interview above and Rilgood's new music video for “Corruptor.”

@RedAlurk

This Sex Offender-Spotting App Sounds Like a Really Bad Idea

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This Sex Offender-Spotting App Sounds Like a Really Bad Idea

Could This Christian Horror Film About a Demon-Possessed Porn Magazine Be 'The Room' of 2014?

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Rich Praytor and Beverly Banks, the producers of The Lock In. Photo courtesy of Holy Moly Pictures. 

“There is a correlation between pornography and demon activity.”

That is a direct line from one of the characters in The Lock In, a The Blair Witch Project-like Christian horror film made for the web by Holy Moly Pictures, a Christian startup company. In the movie, high school seniors attend a church lock-in. One student brings a pornographic magazine to the lock-in, and the magazine is possessed by a demon. According to the Holy Moly Pictures' synopsis, from there “...the boys must come to terms with the pornographic images themselves in order to be truly freed from the demon.” (At one point, they throw the porn rag into the garbage, and the magazine's demon causes the trash can to shake.) 

These unironic scenes will probably seem hillarious to secular, porn-loving audiences, who will probably see the movie more as the new The Room than as 2014's A Nightmare on Elm Street. Since last month, the film’s trailer has generated a fair amount of negative criticism. One YouTube user joked, “Wow. If one porno mag can start a hell invasion, I wonder how I survived going on Pornhub for so many years.” 

But to Christians, the horror movie is a much more serious film. Producers Rich Praytor and Beverly Banks (she also wrote the film) anticipated commenters’ skeptical remarks and said they don’t believe that masturbating to a Pornhub video is actually going to summon a demon. Their goal for the low-budget project is to present a compelling family-friendly film that reflects their belief that pornography has the potential to disrupt families' lives.

This week, the film became available for streaming on the production company’s website for $7.99, and I spoke to Rich and Beverly about their motives for making the movie, experiences with pornography, and expectations for The Lock In.

Stills from The Lock In courtesy of Holy Moly Pictures.

VICE: What is the message that you’d like the film to convey?
Beverly Banks: The question was “What topics will actually tear families apart that most families don’t wish to talk about?” We actually set out to create a movie that was really fun that families could watch together and that would inspire conversations about real world issues. Pornography tends to objectify women; it tends to do more harm than good in terms of a family unit. The first topic that really came to mind was pornography.

Did personal experiences with pornography inform the film's ideas?
Rich Praytor: Beverly had been wanting to do a film like this for years—I guess she had gone through some stuff with some of her family members. We wanted to do a movie, and we didn’t have the money to do a full-length feature film. So we thought, What is the film genre that is the cheapest to make? We said a horror film. Anytime you do a film that is faith-based, you want the theme to be something powerful, so we thought, What's a better theme and what's a more controversial theme—as far as for a horror movie—than pornography?

Do you think pornography is against the message of Christianity?
Beverly: I’m not going to say that it necessarily goes against Christianity. I believe that you can watch pornography and still make it to heaven. It’s not one of those big issues that would cause someone to lose their faith necessarily. But it had come to my attention that women in a family can tend to feel very unnerved—almost censored—in their role as a wife and a mother when the males in the family watch and participate in pornography.

Was it easy to get people on board to fund the project?
Beverly: Yes. The idea of there being a Christian horror film is a relatively new one, and I think that things that are new to the market excite people. I think on that merit—and the fact that the purpose of the film is really to bring families together—[people wanted to fund the project].

What are your expectations for the film now that it’s available to stream?
Rich: It's kind of doing what it’s expected to do—raise a little bit of controversy. We’ve gotten a lot of both negative and positive feedback. Anytime you’re dealing with porn or horror or Christianity, people are always going to have an opinion.

What has been the most surprising feedback you’ve gotten?
Rich: I think we’re just surprised at how—and I think it’s always surprised me—anytime someone sees something they disagree with on YouTube or online, they take the time to make the most ridiculous comments about stuff. (It’s kind of funny that people are saying they’re going to watch the film and masturbate to it.) I think the Christian community doesn’t know what to think about it yet, because there aren’t very many Christian horror films, and there aren’t any [horror films] that deal with pornography.

What do you hope people will get out of the movie?
Rich: That there’s another choice, but also to build a conversation around the issue and to discuss why porn is bad and how it can lead to certain behaviors that are not super healthy. It’s geared towards teenagers as well, and that’s why we centered it around a lock-in. Sometimes not everything we see on the internet is a great choice to be involved with.

Watch The Lock In now at the film's official website

@GideonResnick

Comics: Pecan Sandy

Breakdancing Against Violence in Haiti

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Life on the streets and narrow alleyways of Cité Soleil, Haiti’s largest and most notorious slum, can be grim. Children scavenge for recyclable materials in putrid canals; dusty, fatigued women carry baskets on their heads after a day of selling under the grudging sun; and groups of unemployed young men sit idly in front of buildings pockmarked with bullet holes.

But in the midst of all this, in a roofless abandoned house, a group called Cyborg Dance offers young boys an opportunity to escape the chaos of the shanty town through breakdancing. Spread out across the floor, the dancers perform one move after another. A few focus on jerking pop-and-lock sequences, some practice their acrobatics, and others rehearse choreographed dances in small groups.

“Dancing is like a virus,” says Wendy Lazaire, a founding member of Cyborg Dance. “There are too many kids in Cité Soleil that have an empty stomach and an empty mind. We at least need to plant the dancing virus in their minds.”

The group came together in 2004, in the epicenter of the crisis created by the crumbling of Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s government. At the time heavily armed gangs controlled many of the capital's most popular neighborhoods, and picking up a gun was the only prospect for many young boys. The Cyborgs, however, found refuge in breakdancing.

“Everywhere you went you found kids carrying machine guns and fighting with rival gangs,” Wendy remembers. “In the mornings, you would find bodies lining the street. We realized we could stay away from that lifestyle by dancing. We chose dancing as our weapon against violence.”

Over the years, the organization has transformed from a small group of dancers into something resembling a breakdancing school that seeks to prevent youth gang involvement in Cité Soleil. Every week dancers go out into the streets to give visibility to the organization and encourage new kids to join their classes. They perform in different neighborhoods all over Cité Soleil, as well as other impoverished areas in Port-au-Prince, such as Bel-Air and Martissant.

Thankfully the levels of violence in Haiti are far lower today than they were during the 2004 crisis, but the work of the Cyborgs continues to be crucial for the youth in Cité Soleil. In the shanty town of over 300,000 people, the lack of opportunities for the tens of thousands of kids continues to make them vulnerable to gang involvement.

“All of the boys that you see on the dance floor harbor an overwhelming feeling of frustration. Most of them can’t go to school, don’t have a job, and see no way out of their situation,” said Mario Senat, a 32-year-old instructor involved with the group. “Dancing gives them an identity and makes them feel good about themselves.”

The group regularly impresses crowds at festivals and parties around the country. Ronaldo Guerrier, a 16-year-old dancer and one of the most recent additions to the troop, told me, “A couple of months ago, when the Cyborgs danced on the street in front of my house in the Bwa Neuf neighborhood, all the kids were screaming with excitement, cheering on the dancers after each move.” Winning over the crowd is no small ahievement, as the dancers have had to fight an arduous battle against the strong stigmas Haitian society has assigned to youth from Cité Soleil.

“I can’t even count how many doors have been slammed in our faces just because we’re a group of young guys from Cité Soleil,” Wendy told me. “If we are young and we live in the slum, we must be thugs, right?”

The dancers’ unrelenting perseverance in the face of adversity is reflected in their name.

“That’s why we’re called Cyborgs! We need to put our emotions, our fear, our grief... all of those human traits aside if we want to keep on dancing. We need to become robots—cyborgs of sorts—if we are going to keep dancing,” said Wendy.

Yet the group will have to overcome countless more obstacles before their dream of running a fully-functioning dance school materializes. The original members of Cyborg Dance themselves, most of them now in their 20s, put their meager financial resources together to run the dance school while struggling to support their families.

“It’s hard to keep the kids coming. They dance and work out, and we don’t have money even to give them a small refreshment after practice,” Mario said.

During periods of increased gang violence, rehearsals can be suspended for several weeks, because most dancers can’t walk to practice without risking their lives. Still, they keep breaking.

“If the gangsters knew how to dance they would drop their weapons immediately. If a kid knows how to dance, he will never pick up a gun,” Wendy told me. “Dancing got us through hellish times. We have a debt to the younger kids so they can get through their rough moments, too.”

Felipe Jacome is an Ecuadorian photojournalist who currently lives above the Bronx Documentary Center

VICE Special: Ant and Rat Tribes in Beijing

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In Beijing, an estimated hundreds of thousands of people live in dark and unsafe underground dwellings, like disused bomb shelters, parking lots, and service tunnels that were never meant for permanent human habitation.

The causes of this trend date back to 2008. In the run-up to the 2008 summer Olympics, Beijing experienced an unprecedented amount of construction and urban development, beyond anything seen during the previous decade of economic snowballing. The sudden injection of hotels, shopping districts, and luxury apartments caused property prices to soar and created a quick need for human resources.

Encouraged by Beijing’s promise of riches, students and young professionals have migrated to Beijing from all over China, hoping to secure their fortunes. Many of them have taken accommodation in cramped subdivided dorms in densely populated areas on the city’s outer ring. These dwellings and the furiously hardworking nature of these young migrants have made them become known as “the Ant Tribe.”

At the other end of the spectrum, hundreds and thousands of unskilled service and industry workers have also flocked to Beijing. Because they tend to work closer to the city center, where property values have skyrocketed, they must be willing to make even bigger sacrifices if they want to find housing. Thanks to the high demand and low supply of housing, many landlords have profited from renting out underground homes to migrant workers. These migrant workers have become known as the “Rat Tribe.”

Unlike the Ant Tribe, whose dwellings are found in poor or deprived semi-suburban areas, Rat Tribe homes are found all over Beijing and often in stark contrast to their locations. Recently, VICE Japan visited one such underground home—a former air raid shelter that was four stories below a luxury apartment block in central Beijing. Where the cost of an apartment is about $500 a month, a typical underground room only costs $80.

Because underground homes exist in spaces that were never designed for permanent human habitation, they lack decent ventilation and proper safety infrastructure—basically, it's unhealthy and dangerous to live in these spaces. For this reason, there has been a government clamp down on Rat Tribe homes, and several spaces have disappeared in the last couple of years. 

VICE Japan’s new documentary “Ant and Rat Tribes in Beijing” takes an investigative look into the subterranean living conditions of the new entrenched social classes born out of China’s rapid economic growth and migrant culture.

Buzzkill: A Chat with the Researcher Behind High-Free Weed

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Buzzkill: A Chat with the Researcher Behind High-Free Weed

Fresh Off the Boat: Shanghai - Trailer

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In this episode of Fresh Off The Boat, Eddie gets inside the guts of Shanghai by having a red pork cook off with famous Shanghainese chef Andrew Zhao, going into the homes of local street vendors, and spending time in China's fabulous counterfeit malls.

Weediquette: Blazing in the Woods

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Photos by the author.

This past Christmas, I unwittingly lit a joint in the first place I had ever smoked weed. A distinct memory didn't strike me when I lit up. Instead, I was hit by a sense of déjà vu. As I crouched by the back door in my dad's garage, I was as scared about the garage door opening and my father catching me as I was when I was 14 years old. As an avid Weediquette reader, my dad probably wouldn't give me too much shit about it now, but at age 14, I would have faced some pretty serious wrath—that's why I had to find refuge in nature.

I was the new kid at the school where my dad lived, and I still hadn't made any friends by the time spring rolled around, so I joined the track team, so I had something to occupy my afternoons. As a newbie to organized sports, I was completely unprepared for how serious people treated physical activity. Our coach was a short man whose athletic days likely ended with his discovery of unbranded supermarket pies. He forced us to run, jog, and skip for what felt like hours, and he could tell the slackers from the go-getters—I was late to almost every practice, including the day they gave out uniforms. As a result, I spent the season in a medium-size girls uniform. I was slipping into it before practice one day (I was late as usual) when a kid from my math class strolled through the locker room. He saw me and said, “Hey, new kid from Afghanistan or whatever, you wanna ditch practice and smoke a bowl?” I knew he wasn't on the track team, so I was the only one taking a risk, but I agreed anyway.

As we walked out towards the woods next to the track, I noticed that there were twice as many people on the field as usual, and half of them were wearing different uniforms than the ones my team wore. “Oh shit,” I said to the math-class kid. “I have a fucking track meet today.” He laughed, and we continued into the woods. We found a spot and smoked three bowls and a cigarette in about 15 minutes. The whole time I was panicking, getting more and more stoned, knowing that I was probably supposed to compete in a few track events. Finally, I thanked the kid and heroically said, “I've got a race to run,” and then bolted out of the woods.

The coach spotted me as soon as I emerged from the trees. I sprinted towards him, and when I got close enough, I saw his irritation on his face. He definitely knew I was high on something, but he didn't say it or even send me home. He said, “You'd better run pretty god damn well in the 400 relay. It starts in 90 seconds.” He pointed me towards my three teammates on the track, who also wore irritated expressions on their faces—they were not expecting much of a performance from T. Kid. It turned out that I exceeded their expectations with a mediocre second leg that neither won us anything nor embaressed us. To me, this was a solid victory on my track record.

From then on, I blazed in the woods with various people before every track practice and meet, while always wearing my girls uniform. It was the first time that smoking pot led me to meeting friends, and it would become the basis of almost every friendship from then on in my life. I was also enjoying getting away with being stoned at practices, but before long I got sick of running while stoned—I quit the track team about halfway through the season, freeing up my afternoons to bask in greener pastures.

That summer, I moved to a different town, where the woods were a hotbed for teenage drug activity. The cops were wise to it (as mentioned in a previous Weediquette), so the woods were no longer a sanctuary. I only began to reconnect with nature when I moved to Philadelphia for college and spent some time in the largest—and perhaps most lawless—municipal park system in the country. In most of Fairmount Park, you can freely smoke a blunt or commit any number of other criminal acts without being seen or hassled. However, it is rife with reminders that you are not really in the wilderness; blunt guts, beer cans, and used condoms litter every popular spot. You can hear the buzz of the highway in even the more remote parks. 

Despite all its shortcomings, I especially missed Fairmount Park when I moved to New York—here the parks are incredibly restrictive. In my mind a park is not a park unless you can freely drink, smoke, and throw a longpass without ruining a picnic. It's impossible to find a secluded spot in New York's parks, particularly on nice days. This leaves me perpetually smoking while trapped indoors, leading me to more drastic measures to get my nature fix—an urge that seems to grow stronger as I get older.

One of the first times I hiked the Delaware Water Gap, I was on acid, and it endeared those woods to me forever. Since then, I've made several trips there with the express purpose of chilling and blazing in the woods by myself. Every time I find a new cliff over the river or a particularly dope fallen tree, I plod down, light a huge joint, and appreciate my surroundings for a few minutes. Bad weather seems to scare off most visitors, so I've been trekking out in the snow and rain, deeper and deeper into the woods. I'm possibly risking a 127 Hours-type situation each time I do this, but if catastrophe ever befalls one of my blazing hikes, I'll instagram a peaceful scene like the one above and scream for help in the background.

Inevitably, I always find myself back in the city, sandwiched between vast walls, involuntarily eavesdropping on stupid conversations no matter where I go. When I'm not working, I'm patiently awaiting the next opportunity to drive away from the chatter and into the woods, where no one talks and clouds of smoke move extra slowly as they float away.

@ImYourKid


Inside Schilling: Stop Fat-Shaming Chris Christie!

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Photo via Flickr User Gage Skidmore.

All the hot political chatter this week has been over the burgeoning scandal overtaking the administration of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Christie's Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly engineered an alleged scheme to reduce access to the George Washington Bridge to punish Fort Lee, New Jersey Mayor Mark Sokolich for not endorsing his boss during his reelection campaign. Pundits on the loony left are claiming that Governor Christie's chances at winning the White House in 2016 are greatly diminished by this trumped-up, media-engineered controversy.

There's absolutely no link between Governor Christie and Bridgegate, other than the fact that the idea was created by senior members of Christie's staff who were freely communicating about it through his office's email system in an effort to damage the reputation of their leader's political enemy. People act like that's a big deal or something. Just because this all happened under his watch doesn't mean it's his fault. It's like saying George W. Bush should be blamed for 9/11 and the financial collapse happening during his presidency. Ummm, no. Those were Obama's fault.

Typical liberal dirty tricks.

I just don't have time in my busy schedule for straw-man arguments and sensationalist distractions. I'd rather focus on the real issue here, which is that this whole scandal is sticking to Chris Christie because he's overweight and Democrats can't handle a Hungry-American in a position of authority.

You call him “Chub Chub” or “Tub Girl” or “Optimus Prime Rib” like that's funny. You think it's cool to send internet memes of Governor Christie eating a large sandwich at the Republican National Convention to your friends and co-workers, without realizing that you are perpetuating a culture of hate. He sweats through five shirts in the course of surveying the damage of Hurricane Sandy and you chuckle. The left saw this mudslinging tactic work on Rob Ford in Toronto, and now they're trying it on Governor Christie here in America. It's blatant hucksterism masquerading as political discourse.

Fat-shaming goes international.

As soon as an overweight person gets anywhere close to power in this bigoted nation, the media's knives come out, eager to carve him like a plump, moist, tender, succulent, juicy Christmas ham. Then, when they're done cutting him up into large, meaty portions, they pour hot, thick hate-gravy all over his delicious remains and chow down. The pressure of being large killed John Belushi, Chris Farley, John Candy, William Howard Taft, Elizabeth Taylor, and countless other famous Hungry-Americans. Now, the angry mob is coming for another innocent soul. They can't debate Governor Christie on his policies, so they make up stories like Bridgegate. 

What the liberal media doesn't want is for the more informed voter to cut through the coded rhetoric to get to the true meaning of their slander. When a pundit says, “Chris Christie has no control over his underlings and is an ineffective, potentially crooked manager,” they're really saying, “Put down that hoagie, you fat bastard!” This is the kind of dog-whistle fat-shaming that the Democratic Party is famous for. I can't even remember the last time the Democrats sent an overweight person to Washington. I guess Barney Frank was kinda chubby, but that doesn't really count. I'm talking about legitimately obese people. I can't name one. Where's that “big tent” the Democrats are always talking about? Seems more like a very narrow cubicle with no windows, a small door, and not even one mini-fridge stocked with food and beer. Any political party that doesn't offer free Hot Pockets is no party I want to be a part of.

Let's also not forget Michelle Obama's shameful, offensive “Let's Move!” program, which blatantly institutionalized fat-shaming. Last time I checked, this was America, where fat people are still in the majority, despite the efforts of the loony left to turn this into an apartheid state where only thin people get to roam freely. The First Lady's initiative should have been named “Let's Move... to the Soviet Union and Break Rocks in the Gulag!”

If you want to be like Salon.com's Joan Walsh and count out Governor Christie, you're in for a rude awakening. I have supreme confidence that this is not the last you'll hear of Chris Christie. He'll weather this storm, as he did with Sandy, dust himself off, and get back to the business of helping the people of New Jersey (so long as they don't fuck with him). “The Mouth” will rise again! Christie/Hot Pockets 2016!

Next week, Dave's back with a new think piece on why Lena Dunham just doesn't have the body to get naked on premium cable TV. In the meantime, Dave's new book, Letters from My Therapist, explains more about how to fight back against the fat-shaming industrial complex. It's available on Amazon and iBookstore.

@dave_schilling

All Bad News Considered: The Insane Clown Posse Sued the FBI and Justice Department

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Image via

This week, the Insane Clown Posse partnered with the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the FBI and Justice Department for categorizing Juggalos as a “loosely organized hybrid gang.” The ICP believes the designation's unwarranted and has led to continual harassment by law enforcement. For those of you who have been away from the internet for the past decade, Juggalos are the ICP's fans who dress in baggy jeans and clown make-up and head to Cave-in-Rock, Illinois every August to participate in the annual Gathering of the Juggalos, where they ride in helicopters, wrestle, and get made fun of by the roughly 13,000 bloggers who also attend the event. But does this warrant the FBI profiling Juggalos? Probably not. 

Image via

Humans shouldn't fear sharks. On the one hand, sharks don't kill that many people. (In 2010, there were only 79 unprovoked attacks worldwide according to the National Geographic Channel.) On the other hand, if you're that scared, stay out of the water. As comedian Ian Edwards put it, there's no such thing as a shark attack. “We live on the land. Sharks live in the water,” he said. “If you get caught down there, you're trespassing.” Yet this week, new research claimed great white sharks can live as long as humans, and this scares the shit out of me. Remember the last time you saw a shrunken, disoriented geriatric behind the wheel of a car? Now, turn the car into a monster that's 20 feet long, over 3,000 pounds, and has, oh yeah, 300 teeth. You can guess why I'm sticking to lakes until my memory puts this factoid in the same misplaced box as my friends' birthdays. 

Image via.

This week, American Colleen LaRose (better known by her self-chosen name “Jihad Jane”) was convicted of conspiracy to murder Swedish artist Lars Vilks, and sentenced to ten years in jail. (Colleen wanted to kill Lars because he drew Muhammad as a roundabout dog—a big no-no to Islamic fundamentalists.) But maybe the most important thing to take away from this case is from the first section of Colleen's Wikipedia bio: “She had married at age 16 and never finished high school. After a quick divorce, she later married again at age 24, and divorced after a decade. She had moved from Texas in 2004 to live in Pennsburg, near Reading, Pennsylvania. After personal losses and attempting suicide in 2005, she converted to Islam.” Colleen did something terrible, but she also had a rough past. Maybe she needs friendship, understanding, hugs, and bonding over non-alcoholic beers to lighten her up and make her stop conspiring to murder controversial Swedish artists. 

Image via.

In the BCS National Championship Game, the Florida State Seminoles defeated the Auburn Tigers 34-31, winning their first championship since 1999. The eventual victors were down 21-3 in the first half, but they put together one hell of a comeback under the leadership of Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Jameis Winston. When he wasn't winning championships this season, Jameis's hobbies included playing baseball and defending himself against a rape allegation. Luckily for him, State Attorney Willie Meggs was too chicken-shit to pursue the case. Unluckily for Jameis, his accuser isn't backing down—she's going forward with a blanket lawsuit against local butt-cakes (a.k.a. Jameis, the school, and the city's police department). Let's hope she gets her day in court before Jameis makes his first million playing football on Sundays.

@RickPaulas

No God? No Problem

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Sanderson Jones, the atheist preacher who hopes to see hundreds of his Sunday Assemblies all over the world in the next two years, is at the forefront of the godless-congregation movement. All photos By Devin Yalkin

On November 7, Nashville, Tennessee, got its first-ever atheist church. The rhinestone-studded “buckle of the Bible Belt” is home to hundreds of Christian congregations, but a Sunday Assembly, as the gathering of nonbelievers calls itself, was novel enough to attract news teams from a couple of local TV stations. Getting atheists on camera was rare, one of the reporters told me—it was common for Nashvillians to hide their lack of belief to avoid getting harangued and persecuted by the region’s ruthless and plentiful evangelicals.

The service began like an ordinary church service, with a hymn, a rousing and easily sung selection. But instead of “Abide with Me,” or “Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” it kicked off with the Youngbloods’ “Get Together,” played by a band specially assembled for the occasion. They followed it up with “Folsom Prison Blues.”

The congregation clapped along, a little hesitantly, a bit off beat. (Atheists aren’t particularly known for their sense of rhythm.) Then the preacher bounded onto the stage—tall, bearded, and long-haired, he’s Jesus Christ’s second coming reimagined as a camp counselor.

His name is Sanderson Jones, and he was extremely excited to be there.

“I hope you’re ready for an hour and a bit of just celebrating that we’re alive!” He grinned at the 100 or so cheering souls assembled before him. “We should probably explain what the Sunday Assembly is, how we got here, and what’s going to happen afterward.”

Sanderson told them they were all a part of a “godless congregation,” the goal of which was an attempt to “help everyone live this one life as fully as possible.” Then he gave the floor to a local organizer who read a poem, which was followed by some words from a sexologist that seemed to make some people slightly uncomfortable, then a spirited sing-along rendition of “Hey Jude,” then the passing around of a collection plate, and finally, a brief, contemplative silence that resembled prayer. At the end, many congregants marched in near unison to a bar down the road, where they talked about their lives to strangers who had the potential to become friends. In this hostile environment, the amassed atheists and agnostics shared their stories of being nonbelievers and made plans for the following month’s Assembly. For a new church to prosper, it must function as a community, as a family—as a microcosm of the entirety of world.

Scenes like this are what Sanderson and his partner, Pippa Evans, are trying to create all over the world. They birthed the Sunday Assembly only a year ago, but already they’re planning to turn it into a planet-spanning secular religion.

Sanderson and Pippa have told their story in so many interviews, crowd-funding videos, sermons, and conversations that it’s become worn smooth with use. In 2011, the two English standup comedians were driving to Bath when they got to talking about an idea that had been independently bouncing around inside both their heads: What if there were a church for people who didn’t believe in God? Over the course of the car ride, they became convinced that the world needed such an institution, and that they should be the ones to found it.

They kept thinking and discussing, and last January they held their first Assembly in a former church in London. The idea, they told reporters later, was “part atheist church, part foot-stomping show, and 100 percent celebration of life,” and “all the best bits of church but with no religion.” To their surprise, 200 people showed up to hear the word of nothing in particular. At their second service one month later, 300 people were in attendance, and they knew they had a foothold. Before long, Sunday Assemblies were established in the UK, New York, and Melbourne, Australia, guided by an all-inclusive mission statement: “Live better, help often, wonder more.”

In October, nine months after the church’s inaugural service, the Sunday Assembly launched an ambitious expansion project: a crowd-funding page with a goal of raising £500,000 (over $800,000) to build a website to establish new Assemblies. “In the same way that Airbnb makes it easy to rent out your room, we’re going to make it easy to start your own congregation,” Sanderson told me at the time. He and Pippa made plans to travel across Europe, Australia, and the United States, hosting Assemblies across 35 cities in 40 days.

Around this time, journalists began wondering if the Sunday Assembly could be the fastest-growing church in the world. Dozens of media outlets, from the Guardian to the Economist to the Sydney Morning Herald, ran stories about an odd but seemingly successful godless faith founded by a pair of standup comedians—a quirky enterprise that practically begged to be blogged about. It didn’t hurt that Sanderson is a superb evangelist who gives away ready-made two-line quotes like candy. He’s tall and lanky and full of a boundless, golden retriever–esque energy, one of those rare souls who can deliver statements about the overwhelming awesomeness of life with a straight face and make you believe them. Being pleasantly surprised seems to be his default state of being.

A headline writer for the New Republic referred to him as “Hipster Jesus,” but that implies an edginess that isn’t part of his character. He’s relentlessly positive, and never directs snark or scorn toward religious fundamentalists, natural targets for a comedian in a roomful of atheists. He doesn’t even swear onstage—Sanderson once told a congregation in Washington, DC, “The only F-word we like to use is fun!”

I met Sanderson for the first time last summer, when he visited New York to establish the first American Assembly. The initial service was held on a sweltering June afternoon in a cramped midtown bar. It was a boozy, standing-room-only affair, with maybe 100 curious congregants rubbing shoulders in a small back room. The bartenders wore bikini tops. We sang together and listened to Sanderson preach, not against religion or God, but toward an appreciation of the wonders of existence. “Atheism is the diving board,” he shouted at one point. “Life is the swimming pool!”

The whole thing struck me as an entertaining lark, a piece of comedic performance art that pointed the way toward a tolerant, positive form of nonbelief. But this fall, when Sanderson emailed me to announce he and Pippa were hitting the road to launch dozens of new Assemblies and raise a half a million pounds, I decided to drop what I was doing and hop onboard the tour.

“We’re going to help thousands of towns, cities, and villages, and millions of people to have community without the need for religion,” he told me. Yes, millions. Sanderson and Pippa believe the time has come for atheists to stand and be counted, and that their mission is to help nonbelievers organize into congregations and support each other as religious groups do. And they think the best way to do that is by being really, really nice.

Pippa Evans, the co-founder of the Sunday Assembly, pauses for a moment during a service held in the main concert hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture.

On the Sunday Assembly’s trek across America, one of Sanderson’s recurring set pieces was to ask the assembled atheists how many of them had ever considered something like a church without God. Inevitably, a forest of hands shot up.

The idea behind godless congregations, as groups like the Sunday Assembly are known, is pretty simple: churches are about building communities based on shared values as much as they’re about worship. Studies conducted in the past few years have shown that churchgoers are happier, more optimistic, and healthier than the general heathen population. Being a part of a congregation means having more opportunities to talk to people, meet new friends and romantic partners, and make professional connections.

Perhaps the first thinker to seriously consider congregational atheism was the eccentric French sociologist Auguste Comte. In the mid-19th century, he created a church sans deity called the Religion of Humanity. He imagined it would mimic the Catholic Church, and fantasized about the establishment of a massive priesthood, services aimed at making people more altruistic, and the canonization of saint-like figures such as Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Saint Paul. Comte died before any of his ideas were taken seriously, let alone came to fruition, but today there are chapels devoted to his religion in France and Brazil. Far from being wrong or crazy, it seems he was just ahead of our time as well as his own.

In the 20th century, progressive branches of Christianity and Judaism grew to embrace nonbelievers. For example, Unitarian Universalists, the most liberal denomination of Protestantism, often hold nontheistic services and welcome atheists and agnostics; Humanistic Judaism, founded by Rabbi Sherwin Wine in the 1960s, is a similar fusion of religious traditions with an embrace of godlessness.

The Ethical Culture movement has also had success building secular congregations. Established in New York 1876 by Felix Adler, who had been a rabbi in training before renouncing his faith, it held services, provided education for the children of its congregants, and did a great deal of charity work while spreading the humanist gospel of reason, social justice, and a morality not tied to any divine authority. This fall, the New York Sunday Assembly moved its monthly gatherings from the bar in Midtown to a fourth-floor room of the Society’s stately Manhattan headquarters. (A Christian church rents the building’s larger main concert hall downstairs.)

Though some long-running godless congregations have hundreds of members, no institution has succeeded on the type of scale congregational-minded atheists have dreamed of for decades, and the popularity of evangelical Christianity compared to godless gatherings can, to say the least, cause frustration for nonbelievers.

James Croft, a humanist speaker training to become an Ethical Culture Leader (that organization’s equivalent to a priest), gets especially annoyed when he visits secular meetings held near Christian congregations. “[Those churches are] offering a message that is so much less compelling, so much less truthful, so much less ethically grounded, than the humanist message,” he said. “Yet they have hundreds of people, and I’m speaking to a group of 15.”

A widely cited survey conducted in 2012 by the University of California, Berkeley, found that 20 percent of American adults say they don’t identify with any religion, up from only 8 percent in 1990. In recent years, a number of godless congregations have sprouted up to turn these statistics into communities. There’s the Houston Oasis, established in 2012, and Louisiana’s Community Mission Chapel, founded last year, both the work of former Christian clergymen who lost their faith in God but still wished to foster human connections. Harvard, the first university in the world to host a humanist chaplain, is a fertile breeding ground for godless congregations—last month, the Humanist Community at Harvard opened a brand-new community center called the Humanist Hub that welcomes atheists, agnostics, and anyone else who walks in the door.

“Finding a Humanist congregation is not some oddball curiosity of an idea,” writes the organization’s founder, Greg Epstein, in his 2010 book Good Without God. “It’s not even a luxury, to be addressed after we succeed in getting ‘In God We Trust’ off the dollar bill. If [atheists and humanists] ever want to be anything more than a downtrodden minority, it is a necessary response to one of our most aching and eternal human needs.”

The problem faced by people like Greg and James is basically one of marketing. “Humanism has just the best ethical message out there,” said James. “I’m always amazed, then, to find that we have no idea how to sell it.”

The congregation in New York participates in an icebreaker game called Dutch Clapping.

Sanderson has a résumé that makes him uniquely qualified to be an atheist evangelist. Before his comedy career allowed him to quit his day job, he sold advertising at the Economist, and before the Sunday Assembly his most well-known venture was a live performance called the “Comedy Sale.” For the production, Sanderson would hawk tickets to the show on the street, quickly memorize the names of ticket buyers, research them online, and poke fun at them onstage. Most comedians go through a phase of their careers where they have to hand out flyers to get people in the doors before they can perform their acts—but, according to Pippa, Sanderson may be the only comic who ever liked the flyering part.

Maybe the most important marketing tactic the Sunday Assembly has adopted is that they are careful not to say anything that could offend potential converts. Pippa was a practicing Christian until she was 17, and she steers the group away from adopting language that’s overly churchy. They also tend to eschew words like atheism, ethical, rational, humanist, or secular, in order to avoid associations with organizations that have used those labels. “We need more normal people,” Sanderson said. “People think people who are already involved in secular organizations are weird.”

Unlike some hardcore atheists, who are ready to argue whenever anyone says, “God bless you,” Sanderson and Pippa are disarmingly kindhearted and accepting. Strolling through Midtown Manhattan, I saw them stop at a candy store on the way to an Assembly to buy sweets they later gave out to anyone and everyone who crossed their path. They’re so bubbly that, after my photographer met them, he asked me whether they were straight edge. No, I told him, they’re just very wholesome.

After spending several days with Pippa and Sanderson, I believe that their earnestness is genuine, but it’s also a useful proselytizing technique. If members of a church come off as contented, well adjusted, and stress free, it makes it all the easier to draw new converts in.

“At the moment,” Sanderson put it, “I’m the ultimate advertisement for the product.” Fittingly, he’s also the product’s spokesman. Pippa’s duties include arranging and leading the services’ musical segments and laying the foundation for the burgeoning international organization, but Sanderson is the face of the Sunday Assembly and the one who gives most of its interviews to the media. Pippa’s perfectly happy with this division of labor, and I could see why—as I trailed them through the media-saturated towns of New York, Boston, and DC, a great deal of Sanderson’s days were devoted to retelling curious reporters the same canned anecdotes over and over again.

He’d repeat, for instance, a line about the Sunday Assembly being all the best, nougat-y parts of church without the icky God thing at the center. He had one ready-made bit about how he and Pippa are the grit, the local organizers are the oysters, and the resulting Assemblies are the pearls. He also talked a lot about the time he was on a British radio show with a Christian clergyman. Sanderson mentioned that for atheists, going to churches that emphasize God is like putting on a shoe with a stone in it: “You don’t chuck the shoe out,” he told the minister. “You just get rid of the stone!”

“Well done, Sanderson!” the minister replied. “You’ve just told your first parable!”

Sanderson in front of the New York Sunday Assembly. His sermons usually touch on positive themes like thankfulness, wonder, and how amazing it is to be alive.

Not so long ago, publicly expressing disbelief in God was dangerous. Even in 20th-century America, atheists faced discrimination and hatred, especially from the right. In the 50s, anti-Communist crusaders like Joseph McCarthy essentially accused atheists of being traitors to America.

It’s only natural to respond to vitriol with vitriol, and for decades, most prominent American atheists were antitheists—militant nonbelievers who spent their lives denouncing the faithful, brainwashed masses. In the 1920s, Charles Lee Smith, the founder of the now defunct American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, made headlines after he was arrested for blasphemy in Arkansas for distributing pro-evolution, anti-Christian literature. More recently, “New Atheist” authors like Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins have publicly debated the existence of God and published best-selling books raging against the perceived evils of religion.

On occasion, antitheism has lead to hateful positions and stigmas that have damaged the reputation of atheism on the whole. Last year, Dawkins compared Islam to Nazism and the Qur’an to Mein Kampf on Twitter, prompting a heated debate among bloggers about whether these so-called rational New Atheists had crossed the line into bigoted Islamophobia.
Prejudice against atheists won’t be going away anytime soon—a 2012 poll found that only 54 percent of Americans would support a well-qualified atheist running for public office—but many young nonbelievers today don’t think religion needs to be wiped out, its humanitarian and moral aspects simply need to be separated from God.

“We could learn a huge amount from [evangelical churches] and replicate it and replace our values with theirs,” James Croft told me. “Instead of promoting antigay hatred and bullshit about women’s place in the world and nonsense about reproductive rights, we’d be promoting dignity for all human beings, a living wage, health care for everybody, and all these amazing things.”

Congregational atheists despise megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s homophobic, anti-atheist sentiments, but many profess an admiration for what he has built—his Saddleback Church, founded in 1980 in Lake Forest, California, is a congregation of tens of thousands that ranks as the seventh-largest church in the country. Its popularity is largely due to its modern services that include music and multimedia presentations, and today it has a dozen satellite congregations, streams Warren’s sermons online, manages all sorts of charity programs, and trains and nurtures its future leaders from within.

Humanism has the potential to speak to just as many young people as Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, Harvard’s Humanist chaplain, Greg Epstein, told me. He said the advantage those religions have is that “they don’t have to take the time to build their buildings, to train their leaders, to come up what they’re going to say every week, to come up with a recognizable brand… Right now, what we need to do is to have people invest in the institutions that are coming up.”

The realization of Greg’s goal will take a type of expertise that’s mostly foreign to the philosophers and writers who have so far been the public face of atheism, but those working to create godless congregations believe that they’re at the forefront of a big, big boom—all they need to do is build it, and the godless will come.

Sanderson encourages the crowd in New York to sing along during a secular hymn. Normally the band plays well-known examples of what he calls “power cheese,” like “Eye of the Tiger” or “Hey Jude.”

The challenge for groups like the Sunday Assembly isn’t dealing with criticism from religious fundamentalists, it’s convincing atheists that being part of a congregation is worthwhile. Some bloggers, like PolicyMic’s Michael Luciano, have denounced the idea that something like a religious service could offer anyone anything of value. He wrote, “For atheists, every religious service is predicated on a falsehood, regardless of whatever feel-good niceties may accompany its production.”

Following suit, many prominent atheist groups are leery of building church-like institutions. One of the organizers who helped the Center for Inquiry host the first DC Assembly told me that CFI is mostly “secular humanists,” who are distinct from the “religious humanists” who form congregations, while in the process enlightening me on why Sanderson and Pippa try to avoid labels.

Others feel that the Sunday Assembly isn’t sufficiently antitheist. Around the time of the November service in New York, some members of that Assembly broke away from the group and created The Godless Revival, a competing “no-holds-barred atheist variety show” held at a Manhattan bar.

“What started out as a comedic Atheist church wants to turn itself into some sort of centralized humanist religion, with Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans at the helm,” Lee Moore, one of the Assembly’s apostates, wrote in a blog post that also accused the pair of “trying to get rich from their new-age religion.” He went on to compare the duo to L. Ron Hubbard and called their family-friendly services “milquetoast.”

Sanderson is fond of casually dismissing most of that kind of criticism with a practiced joke about the people who say “the way I don’t believe in God is not the right way to not believe in God.” But maybe his detractors have a point: Once you take the religion out of church and the antitheism out of atheism, what do you have left?

The theology preached at Sunday Assemblies is a kind of mish-mash of the feel-good parts of humanism coupled with an enthusiastic emphasis on how wonderful life is. Sanderson’s speeches often touch on themes of thankfulness, the amazing fact of existence itself, and his mother, who died when he was ten years old—he was sad at first, he told the DC congregation, but gradually, as time went on he began to realize that he had been lucky to have her for as long as he did. “I started becoming happy that she had loved me for ten whole years,” he said.

These sermons appeal to as broad an audience as possible, but they’re a little too unserious for some people, including a few of the Sunday Assembly’s allies. When I asked James Croft about the Sunday Assembly he praised the organization for being more open to displays of emotion and fun than most humanist gatherings, but added there needed to be something beyond the good times. “One of the things congregational communities should do is challenge people to be better, to challenge people to reconsider the way they live their lives,” he said. “It requires you to make them uncomfortable, to make them leave with sort of a splinter in their eye, thinking, I have to work that out.” Superlative religious services and Ethical Culture meetings balance fun and deep existential questioning; Sanderson and Pippa have yet to achieve this.

The philosopher Alain de Botton, author of a book titled Religion for Atheists, is a harsher critic. He claims that the Sunday Assembly is a blatant rip-off of his School of Life organization, which combines therapy and adult education with secular sermons. “They are, in our eyes, quite clearly just unacknowledged exploiters of the creativity of others,” he wrote to me in an email. “We believe our sermons are simply richer experiences than theirs: they combine a dignity, an intellectual depth, and a genuine community spirit in a way that theirs can only dimly ape. We are worried that their manner of execution is in grave danger of ruining a very good idea for everyone. After all, people are unlikely to try a secular sermon twice.”

This sort of battered pessimism, which assumes atheist churches must be perfect or risk alienating potential converts, is uncommon among advocates for congregational atheism. It would stand to reason that if one humanist, atheist, or agnostic gathering is good, two are better, and 2,000 are better still. The only question is how you get those numbers.

Sanderson and Pippa may dream of thousands of affiliated congregations, but so far their main achievement has been in attracting publicity, not in building infrastructure or putting asses in seats. The first Assembly in LA drew over 400 people, and the original London congregation is still going strong—it attracts hundreds to its bimonthly services, organizes charity drives, and even hosts Sunday school-like classes for kids and a philosophy discussion club. That’s in post-religion England, though. The burgeoning US Assemblies are smaller—at the December service in New York, without Sanderson and Pippa leading the festitivies, attendance was down to 50 or 75, and that’s the most established of the American congregations. The tour brought media attention to the group and emails from hundreds of people who wanted an Assembly in their town, but the crowd-funding campaign raised less than $60,000.

In a blog post published on December 4, Sanderson and Pippa admitted they hadn’t come close to hitting their fundraising target, but shrugged it off—they said that some programmers had offered to build their dreamed-of congregation-creating website, and the donations they’d gotten would help support the organization’s founders. Sanderson has stopped doing stand-up so that he can work on the Sunday Assembly full-time, while Pippa will continue her comedy career while contributing to the project in her free time.

Sanderson and Pippa told me that their next steps will be to secure funding from big-ticket donors, provide more training for Assembly leaders, file the appropriate paperwork to make donations tax-deductible, and essentially construct an international secular organization from scratch. In May, there will be an international Sunday Assembly conference in London, and in August they plan to host an assembly at the World Humanist Congress in Oxford. “We’re just gonna do that as the biggest and best smoke machine, light-and-laser show the world’s ever fucking seen,” Sanderson said. “There’s gonna be these guys who are used to lectures going, ‘Huh?’ ” In September, the idea is to open the next wave of Assemblies—and not just a handful; they plan to push out 100 chapters more or less simultaneously.

While being interviewed in November by Greg Epstein and James Croft for a podcast in Boston, Sanderson and Pippa were asked what the Sunday Assembly might look like in five years. The comedians burst out laughing before Greg finished the question. They started a single secular service a year ago to see if they could pull it off. Now they’re seeding dozens of churches around the world. A nontheistic religion was once a philosophical thought experiment. Today there are competing godless faiths. In a life so full of wonderful surprises, how could they possibly look that far down the road?

The Best Drones Money Can Buy

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The Best Drones Money Can Buy

Is Thailand Heading Toward a Coup This Week?

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Today, in their latest attempt to force caretaker Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra from office, Thailand’s anti-government protesters are calling for a shutdown of Bangkok’s commercial center.

Mass protests, made up largely of middle-class urbanites, have been taking place in Bangkok since November of last year. The demonstrations are in reaction to Shinawatra's party, the Pheu Thai Party, trying to rush an amnesty bill through parliament, which, if passed, would see her brother—controversial former PM, Thaksin Shinawatra—being able to return from exile.

Because he was widely viewed as a corrupt leader, owing predominately to the fact he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for corruption while serving as prime minister, protesters don't want that to happen, and their plan is to oust the ruling party and replace them with an unelected people's council. Their newest plan to ramp up the pressure is to move their main rally site from Bangkok’s historic quarter to the heart of the capital, sparking concerns ranging from traffic gridlock to a fear of bloodshed and military intervention.

According to protest leader and former deputy prime minister Suthep Thaugsbuan, "We will dismantle our stage, break our rice pots, move our kitchen, and open a new battlefield to take over the capital." But as the protesters prepare to move, the Royal Thai Army—generally considered to be sympathetic to the anti-government movement—has been busy ferrying troops and tanks into the city. The generals said it is in preparation for the annual Armed Forces Day, which is to be held later this month (as it is every year). However, many are sceptical, and Bangkok’s rumor mill has worked itself into a frenzy over what the influx of troops really means.

Just in case tanks and imminent city shutdowns weren't enough, the protest movement’s own astrologer has apparently nominated the 14th of next week as an auspicious day for a military takeover, which has many convinced that a coup is inevitable. That said, much of the talk about coups and the potential for violence has come from the current government and its own supporters, happy to drum up a bit of fear into the rest of the country over what they say the protesters are planning. But a bit of fear is perhaps not entirely misplaced.

There have been almost nightly attacks on the current protest camp, and fears that this will continue when they move to the city center have left many demonstrators nervous. On Saturday, at least seven protest guards were injured when unknown gunmen on motorcycles reportedly opened fired with M16 assault rifles. The day before, battles had taken place in a town just north of Bangkok when anti-government and pro-government supports clashed, leaving a number of people injured.

In almost every situation where supporters from both sides have confronted each other, violence—often involving guns—has broken out almost immediately. These outbreaks of violence stoke fears that the move further into Bangkok is a provocation designed to escalate violence, thus opening the door to military intervention—an accusation that the protesters firmly deny.

In an interview earlier this week, Army Chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha said that, "The military does not shut nor open the door to a coup. Anything can happen, depending on the situation." Other army spokespersons have since tried to allay fears of an imminent coup, but considering Thailand’s history (18 coups in the last 80 years), not many of those fears have been quelled.

The reality is that a coup is entirely possible, if not likely. It could come in the aftermath of potential chaos next week, or following an indecisive outcome in the upcoming elections, which are scheduled to be held on February 2. The elections are being boycotted by the opposition, and (if they take place at all) are unlikely to produce the required number of parliamentarians to fill the house. In this scenario, the army may well feel justified in taking over the running of the country.

However, we might not need to wait that long. Last week, the National Anti Corruption Commission found evidence for 308 lawmakers to be charged for supporting a bill that looked to amend certain workings of the government. According to at least one interpretation of the constitution, all those members are now—or will be—suspended, leaving a vacuum that, again, the army may feel obligated to fill.

And the rumours don’t stop at coups. There is talk of civil war, of a divided country: the north, run from Chiang Mai (where Yingluck lives when she's not in Bangkok), versus those in the south, in Bangkok, the power base of the opposition and current protest movement.

It could happen. It could all spiral out of control and there could be widespread bloodshed. But it's unlikely. This isn’t a grassroots revolution where the masses are rising up against the ruling, power-hungry elite. These are heavily invested, largely middle-class members of society who would have nothing to gain from a crumbling nation.

According to long-term observers of Thailand's political landscape, this whole affair is about more than removing the present government. They suggest it's wrapped up in what will happen when the current—and deeply revered—king dies, but due to Thailand’s strict lèse-majesté law, not much more can be said on the matter.

Internationally, Thailand is too deeply integrated into the global community for it to fall into bloody conflict unnoticed. It’s not a pariah state, nor a country shielding itself from globalization or the winds of international opinion. Earlier today, for the first time, it was reported that United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been holding talks between Yingluck and the leader of the opposition party in an effort to help them bridge their differences.

Ultimately, though, nobody knows what is going to happen. The city has been busily preparing itself for the shutdown, with schools closing, public transportation routes bolstered, and measures underway to help maintain some semblance of normalcy. The US Embassy in Thailand recently updated their own travel advice, suggesting that their citizens living in Bangkok stock up on food and supplies for the next two weeks. However, most people are just waiting to see what happens, with few precautions being taken by local businesses and no reports of a rush on shops.

So the shutdown could be a major inconvenience and nothing more, or it could be the start of a whole new violent chapter for Thailand. At the very least, next week should provide a little more clarity on where Thailand is headed amid its current political turmoil.


@georgehenton

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