DANGEROUS THEATER | CELEBRATING MANDELA | BIRTH CONTROL MYTHS
THE HUFFINGTON POST MAGAZINE
DECEMBER 15, 2013
WEAPON OF MASS DETECTION Inside the One-Man Digital Intelligence Unit That Exposed the Secrets of Syria’s War By Bianca Bosker
ON THE COVER: ANWAR AMRO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; THIS PAGE FROM TOP: COURTESY OF ELIOT HIGGINS; GEORGES DEKEERLE/GETTY IMAGES
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Enter POINTERS: Remembering Newtown... Person of the Year JASON LINKINS: Looking Forward in Angst DATA: What We Don’t Know About Birth Control Q&A: Eva Longoria HEADLINES MOVING IMAGE
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THE DECODER “I think Eliot has done a lot more for Syria than the U.N.” BY BIANCA BOSKER
PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH: The Final Word on Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas OLIVIA COLE: To the Three White Students Who Filed a Discrimination Complaint QUOTED
Exit CULTURE: The Danger of Watching Too Much Immersive Theater THE THIRD METRIC: The Ultimate Holiday Survival Guide EAT THIS: Why Your Pancakes Never Turn Out Quite Right MUSIC: Dog Ears TFU
‘THECelebrating LASTNelson GREAT LIBERATOR’ Mandela’s life and legacy. PHOTO ESSAY
FROM THE EDITOR: Internet Intelligence ON THE COVER: Photo Illustration
for Huffington by Troy Dunham
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Internet Intelligence N THIS WEEK’S issue, Bianca Bosker tells the story of how one man uncovered the secrets of Syria’s chemical warfare against its citizens. Eliot Higgins, an English blogger, belongs to a group of unofficial intelligence experts who cull through thousands of videos on social media to piece together details that can reveal crucial pieces of evidence about global conflicts. As Bianca writes, the answers to some of the biggest questions about the Syrian atrocities — such as which rebel groups were collaborating and what guns they used — were readily available on the Internet. Sifting through videos and social media, Higgins uncovered more information than professional journalists and analysts, who were either too skeptical or
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didn’t have the time to obsessively dig into social media. “If you’re in intelligence and you want to know what your enemies are armed with, just watch their YouTube channels and see what weapons they’re waving around,” Higgins told Bianca. Among his many discoveries, Higgins’ most impressive was his work unscrambling the mystery of rocket strikes in Zamalka, which, as Bianca explains, played a key role in convincing the world that Bashar al-Assad’s forces had launched a chemical weapons attack. As major news outlets gradually endorsed his work, Higgins’ blog, Brown Moses, jumped from 3,000 readers to more than 25,000 after the attacks.
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Elsewhere in the issue, Mallika Rao explores the immersive theater scene in New York, where plays are staged in unusual settings and often involve audience participation — a once-popular gimmick that may have exhausted itself, Mallika writes. Viewers are now suffering from a condition British theater critic Alice Jones describes as “Site-Specific Angst — that woozy, stomach-clenching feeling you get when you embark on a show and you have no idea what is going on,” Jones explains. Coming up on its fourth year in New York, Sleep No More — the show that launched the immersive craze in the States is now more of a tourist attraction than the revelatory theater experience it was lauded as when it first opened. In our Voices section, Paul Raushenbush puts to rest the manufactured controversy over
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saying “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays.” “If you know someone is a Christian who is celebrating Christmas you should say to them ‘Merry Christmas.’ Likewise, say
Higgins uncovered more information than professional journalists and analysts, who were either too skeptical or didn’t have the time to obsessively dig into social media.” ‘Happy Hanukkah’ to a person you know is Jewish, etc.,” Paul writes. “This courtesy and respect should be part of what it means to live in a pluralistic society and it is easy for all of us to offer to those to whom we are close.” Finally, as part of our continued focus on The Third Metric, we offer eight ways to reduce stress during the holidays.
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REMEMBERING NEWTOWN 1 Saturday marks the first anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., which left 20 children and six adults at the school dead, as well as the gunman’s mother at home and the gunman himself. Local officials have urged the media to stay away from the town on Saturday, and have not announced any formal event to mark the day. Earlier this week, the families of those killed in the tragedy gathered to ask people to perform an act of kindness on the anniversary. “We hope that some small measure of good may be returned to the world,” said JoAnn Bacon, whose daughter was killed in the school. Efforts to pass new gun control legislation in the wake of the massacre remain stalled in Congress.
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General Motors announced Tuesday that Mary Barra will be the company’s next CEO, making her the first female CEO to lead a major U.S. automaker. Barra is currently GM’s senior vice president for global product development, and has worked at the company for over 30 years. Current CEO Dan Akerson hinted earlier this year that Barra could be his successor, the Associated Press reported, telling a women’s group in Detroit that a “car gal” would soon run one of the major U.S. automakers. Barra will start in the top job in January.
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Tens of thousands of South Africans came together Tuesday to celebrate the legacy of Nelson Mandela in a memorial service at a stadium in Johannesburg. Nearly 100 heads of state and government leaders attended the event. Speakers included President Barack Obama, who called Mandela “the last great liberator of the 20th century.” The event was the first major memorial honoring Mandela since his death at age 95 last week. On Wednesday, thousands more lined up to see Mandela’s body, which will lie in state for three days before his funeral Sunday.
Congressional negotiators agreed Tuesday to a modest budget deal that will avert another government shutdown in January. The budget increases military and domestic spending by relieving some of the arbitrary spending cuts known as the sequester. The plan will fund federal agencies through the fall of 2015. House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) negotiated the bipartisan agreement, which now heads to the House and Senate for a vote.
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‘CULTIVATING FREEDOM’
Uruguay will become the first country in the world to legally regulate the use, cultivation and sale of marijuana after the nation’s Senate approved a measure Tuesday. President Jose Mujica, who is expected to sign the bill, wants the market to begin operating next year, the Associated Press reported. Adults over 18 will be able to buy up to 40 grams of the substance from pharmacies under the regulations. Supporters of the law gathered near the country’s Congress Tuesday, with one sign reading, “Cultivating freedom, Uruguay grows.”
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Pope Francis was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year on Wednesday, beating out NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden for the top honor. The magazine has awarded the distinction since 1927. “What makes this Pope so important is the speed with which he has captured the imaginations of millions who had given up on hoping for the church at all,” the magazine’s cover story read. The pope has called for the Catholic Church to focus more on spiritual revitalization and concern for the poor, and to move away from an obsession with issues like gay marriage and abortion.
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YOUR CHILDHOOD NIGHTMARES COME TO LIFE
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‘ENGAGEMENT SEASON’ ISN’T ALWAYS THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF YEAR
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AMERICANS STILL DESPERATELY TRYING TO GET LAWMAKERS INTO THIS WHOLE ‘MASSIVE UNEMPLOYMENT’ THING OR THE UMPTEENTH time since a cascade of financial cock-ups ravaged the global economy and plunged the United
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States into a seemingly intractable unemployment crisis, respondents to a poll have indicated yet again that they would really, really like someone — anyone, really — to tackle unemployment, using whatever ideas or means they have at their disposal, they don’t
Americans stand in line during a job fair at the Miami Dolphins Sun Life stadium on May 2, 2013, in Miami, Fl.
Enter really care, just straight up effing do something about it, for the love of all that is holy. The most recent iteration of this phenomenon was reported in the National Journal: More than anything else, voters would be happiest if Congress and President Obama focused on creating jobs, according to the latest United Technologies/ National Journal Congressional Connection Poll. And they don’t care if lawmakers use Republican or Democratic ideas to do so. By more than three to one, Americans said they would be “very pleased” or “somewhat pleased,” rather than “somewhat disappointed” or “very disappointed,” if the chief executive and lawmakers worked together to create jobs — either by cutting taxes and regulations or by increasing federal spending on infrastructure projects. National Journal’s Alex Roarty says of this, “The survey is a wake-up call for Congress.” Ha-ha, wow, that is hilarious, Alex Roarty. You mean like the May 2013 wake-up call? Or the
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December 2012 wake-up call? Or the July 2012 wake-up call? Or the December 2011 wake-up call? Or the July 2010 wake-up call? Someone must have their finger on the snooze button, because that is a lot of wake-up calls. The last time so many people said the same thing for such a long time, and so loudly, and so often, was ... never. It was bloody “never,” for Pete’s sake.
Respondents to a poll have indicated yet again that they would really, really like someone — anyone, really — to tackle unemployment.” From time to time, President Barack Obama sort of mentions something about maybe doing something about joblessness, and even elucidates an idea or two of his own. Those moments deserve scrutiny — Are the president’s solutions feasible? Practical? Are they serious cures or simply political posturing? And if they are serious, why won’t the House GOP get in the game? As the National Journal indicates, the American people aren’t picky about
Enter who gets involved: “respondents showed little variation when they were asked if they preferred cutting taxes (a conservative priority) or boosting spending (a liberal preference) to create jobs.” Most of the time, the media sort of looks at Obama’s efforts to jump-start a conversation and says, “LOL, he is ‘pivoting to jobs again.’” Everyone has a giggle, because what is the deal with unemployment, am I right? And in poll after poll, the American people say, “Hey, chumps, maybe after you’re done having yourselves a good chuckle, you might look around and see that nobody else is laughing?” The National Journal also reports that the “two least popular options were top GOP priorities: reducing the federal deficit and repealing the Affordable Care Act.” There is nothing new here to see, folks! Old news! Non-news, if we’re being honest. Though it’s perhaps unfair to refer to deficit hysteria as merely a GOP priority. Generally speaking, I think it’s fair to say that the GOP most ardently wants to reduce the deficit, but in the past few years party leaders on both sides of the ideological divide have jumped on the deficit reduction
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game like it was a pair of UGGs on Black Friday. And debt mania has been the obsession of every glassy-eyed centrist-sociopath pundit and editor in Christendom. When the U.S. Senate failed in its attempt to form a bipartisan deficit committee during the massive unemployment crisis (because the bill’s GOP co-sponsors — momentarily forgetting that it was a “top GOP priority,” I guess!
The media sort of looks at Obama’s efforts to jumpstart a conversation and says, ‘LOL, he is ‘pivoting to jobs again.’ Everyone has a giggle, because what is the deal with unemployment, am I right?” — bailed on it), Obama resurrected the effort by forming the Simpson-Bowles Commission. “Come on, Barack,” the American people said in poll after poll, “we ain’t got time for this.” Simpson-Bowles, rather predictably, failed. But this deterred no one! As the unemployment crisis ground on, a new idea was hatched: the super committee. But there was a twist! This time,
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if the super committee failed, a set of spending cuts called the sequestration would be imposed. And the sequestration was created along this governing principle: “Hey, guys! What if we let a clinically insane person — someone without even the barest shred of human empathy — organize a set of spending cuts?” The idea here — and it really was a genius idea — was that if lawmakers knew that their fail-
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ure to act would lead to the imposition of an utterly stupid and completely psychopathic austerity package, they would absolutely get something done. Obama signed the idea into law, and Rep. Paul Ryan hailed it as the cultural change that would foster a new bipartisan spirit on the basis of avoiding punishing the American people for no good reason. Months later, the super committee said, “Whoops!” And there went another 1.6 million jobs. “Great work, guys,” said the American people.
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Applicants wait to enter a job fair on June 11, 2012, in New York City.
Enter In case you haven’t noticed, another thing that the American people have been saying for many years now is that Congress is a uniquely terrible group of people, frequently rating below uncleaned litter boxes, famous serial killers, piles of human remains left in the middle of playgrounds, et cetera. Right now, I’d bet that more Americans approve of this deer carcass, left in a garbage can in Washington Heights, than approve of Congress. Whenever an approval rating scrapes another landmark low, it touches off a lot of theorizing about the reasons why. All of those theories can be tossed in the garbage alongside the aforementioned deer carcass, to be swiftly followed by the theorizers themselves — the reason no one likes Congress is patently obvious. Typically, the media only joins the discussion on unemployment when this crisis of epic proportions can be characterized as problematic to the electoral ambitions of affluent politicians who, even if they lose, will be well taken care of in any number of profitable roles, such as “sitting on corporate boards” or “serving on the steering committee of a foundation” or “walking around
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the country giving cliche-ridden speeches” or “lobbying the Congress to do something other than fight the unemployment crisis.” Not surprisingly, in polls Americans express great dismay for and distrust of the media, too. At any rate, in a month or so another poll will likely come along that says the exact same thing about the priorities of most Americans, and people will prob-
The American people have been saying for many years now... that Congress is a uniquely terrible group of people, frequently rating below uncleaned litter boxes, famous serial killers... et cetera.” ably call it “a super, like, totally for real wake-up call, srsly.” In the meantime, it remains an open question as to whether or not Congress will act to extend unemployment benefits to 1.3 million people after Christmas. I wonder what that will do to everyone’s approval ratings if they don’t? Politics can be such an impenetrable mystery sometimes. Deer carcass 2016!
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Eva Longoria on the What the GOP Needs to Do to Adapt
“I don’t think it’s a partisan issue, I think it’s a compassionate issue. You have to put yourself in other people’s shoes.”
Eva Longoria attends the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s 2013 Installation Luncheon at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on Aug. 13, in Beverly Hills, Calif.
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SOURCES: THE AMERICAN COLLEGE OF NURSE MIDWIVES, PLANNED PARENTHOOD
BIRTH CONTROL METHODS THAT WOMEN THINK ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVE
BIRTH CONTROL METHODS THAT WOMEN ARE CURRENTLY USING
BIRTH CONTROL METHODS THAT ACTUALLY ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVE
Only 1 in 5 Women Know Which Birth Control Method Is Most Effective Most American women agree with Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) when it comes to which birth control method works best: the majority say abstinence, with only 20 percent citing intrauterine devices,
the most effective method according to the CDC. Here’s what women are thinking and doing about birth control, and what actually works. — Katy Hall
PETE MAROVICH/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES (1 MILLION ENROLLED IN OBAMACARE); AP PHOTO/MARK LENNIHAN (V-DAY); AP PHOTO/SERGEI CHUZAVKOV (REVOLT); DON EMMERT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (MANDELA IS GONE)
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The Week That Was TAP IMAGE TO ENLARGE, TAP EACH DATE FOR FULL ARTICLE ON THE HUFFINGTON POST
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Prague, Czech Rep. 12.05.2013
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A palm cockatoo baby is presented at the zoo. It is the first of its kind born in the Czech Republic.
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Tokyo, Japan 12.03.2013 A view from the bottom of the ECO Cycle system at the Konan Hoshi No Koen Parking. The system was designed to tackle overcrowded bike parking issues in urban areas of Japan. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Nanyuki, Kenya 12.05.2013 British Elite Paratrooper Corporal Andy Smith instructs Kenya Wildlife and Forest Services rangers during an anti-poaching training exercise. British paratroopers are training Kenyan Wildlife and Forest service rangers in basic infantry skills. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Keswick, England 12.05.2013 Cricketers from village teams Threlkeld and Caldbeck take part in the world’s first underground cricket match inside Honister Slate Mine. The game is one of many unusual venues the teams have played in to raise money to fix Threlkeld Cricket Club’s flood damaged ground. The match was won by Caldbeck Village. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Shanghai, China 12.05.2013 Two men fly kites at The Bund in Shanghai, where heavy smog lingered in the air, disturbing the traffic, worsening air pollution and forcing the closure of schools. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Istanbul, Turkey 12.07.2013 Turkish riot police officers take cover as Kurdish protesters shoot fireworks at them during clashes in central Istanbul. Two protesters were killed in armed clashes with Turkish police that erupted over claims that Kurdish rebel cemeteries had been destroyed, local media reported. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Kiev, Ukraine 12.09.2013 Ukrainian protestors continue to protest on Kiev’s Independence Square. As the weather gets colder, some protesters are leaving, while others wait and block the roads leading to parliament. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Tolosa, Philippines 12.09.2013 A typhoon survivor walks past damaged trees in Tolosa town. One month since Typhoon Haiyan, signs of progress in this shattered Philippine city are mixed with reminders of the scale of the disaster and the challenges ahead. Tens of thousands are living amid the ruins of their former lives, underneath shelters made from scavenged materials and handouts. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Malappuram, India 12.08.2013 A contestant in an oxen race bites the tail of one of the bulls to make it run faster in the competition held in a paddy field. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Cape Canaveral, Fla. 12.03.2013 A Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The rocket is carrying its first commercial payload: a communications satellite. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Washington, D.C. 12.04.2013 President Barack Obama speaks about growing economic inequality at the Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus. The president said the income gap between America’s rich and poor is a “defining challenge of our time.”
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PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH
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The Last Thing That Ever Needs to Be Said About Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas EVERY YEAR at the beginning of December some Americans engage in a ridiculous rhetorical ritual that recycles righteous arguments about whether people should say to one another Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas. This question is one skirmish in the broader cultural and political battle that come under the heavily ladened frame of the “war on Christmas.� On one hand I feel that all of this is nonsense and not worth engaging at all. But, giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, it is true that our country is undergoing some profound changes in demographics. We are more religiously and culturally diverse than ever before and this diversity will automatically evoke
some strong reactions. Plus, we have a rising population that does not feel affiliated with any religious tradition and this too contributes to the new cultural landscape. So, it is not surprising that those used to Christianity being the dominant religion in America feel unease in this new reality.
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Voices So, consider this a primer to help all of us “just get along” during this “holiday season.” Let’s start with the fact that there are several holidays that fall during December including Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice and the newly minted secular HumanLight. They all would like, and deserve to be acknowledged and respected. So this brings us to the Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holiday debate that is not complicated and is solved with basic etiquette. If you know someone is a Christian who is celebrating Christmas you should say to them “Merry Christmas.” Likewise, say “Happy Hanukkah” to a person you know is Jewish, etc. For example, during the month of Ramadan I say to my Muslim friends “Ramadan Mubarak” because it shows them that I acknowledge their tradition and wish them well as they observe the holy time in their calendar. This courtesy and respect should be part of what it means to live in a pluralistic society and it is easy for all of us to offer to those to whom we are close. However, if you don’t know the spiritual tradition of a co-worker, friend, or stranger in the elevator but wish to offer them a “Sea-
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son’s greeting” — a simple “Happy Holiday” is not at all an insult or a denigration of Christmas, or any other tradition. It is an appropriate and inclusive salutation that recognizes that there are many ways that people are observing the season and you don’t know enough to be specific. That is the very reason that many stores use Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas, be-
Courtesy and respect should be part of what it means to live in a pluralistic society and it is easy for all of us to offer to those to whom we are close.” cause they want to be inclusive and welcome as many dollars, ahem, people, into their stores as possible. So, using Happy Holidays is not anti-Christmas, it is pro-business, and we don’t want to be anti-business do we? Next on the list is the Holiday Tree... ok, no more Holiday Tree. The governor of Rhode Island did the right thing recently. Just call it a Christmas Tree, because that is what it is. Again, this is just com-
Voices mon sense, we don’t call it a Holiday Menorah — it is for Hanukkah, let’s just call things what they are and then it isn’t such a big deal. The trickiest part of the whole “war on Christmas” is what to do about holiday celebrations in public schools, and on public property. Here again, inclusion is the way to go. We are a nation that has continued to welcome people of all religious backgrounds and no religious backgrounds. Simultaneous religious inclusion with separation of church is part of America’s complex yet wonderful religious DNA. So, let a thousand flowers bloom — let’s have Christmas carols and Hanukkah songs, Kwanzaa lessons, HumanLight celebrations, and Pagan solstice rituals — let’s do it all. It’s so much more fun to cast a wide net where all can celebrate our traditions together rather than strip everything away to protect the delicate sensibilities of some very prickly few. And now a special note to my fellow Christians who talk so much about the war on Christmas. I get it, for a long, long time Christianity was dominant in the United States and represented the civic religion of the country. But America is about the people who are
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here now, and that is a much more diverse group. And that’s good! It is time to stop insisting that everything revolves around us. Instead, let’s join the wider circle of the many traditions that make up our country. Besides, any Christian knows that Christmas is not about displays in shopping malls, or capitals, or schools, it is about a spiritual event that we honor most in our families and our homes.
[Happy Holidays] is an appropriate and inclusive salutation that recognizes that there are many ways that people are observing the season and you don’t know enough to be specific.” So, Merry Christmas, Christians; Happy Hanukkah, Jews; Super Solstice, Pagans; Hurray, Human Light Humanists; Joyous Kwanzaa to African Diaspora and to everyone all together — Happy Holidays. See you at the party! There. The war on Christmas is officially over. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is the senior religion editor of The Huffington Post.
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OLIVIA COLE
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To the Three White Students Who Filed a Discrimination Complaint Against Their Black Teacher HI GUYS. Before you ask, I’m white too. Someone wise said social activism tastes better when the waiter is white, and while this
is unfortunate, you clearly aren’t listening to your professor, Shannon Gibney, so I thought I’d take a moment to clear some things up, mano-a-mano. You know, Caucasian-a-Caucasian. Let me make something clear
Gibney’s students filed a complaint against her after a discussion of structural racism in her class.
Voices right up front: You have no real idea what it’s like to be discriminated against on the basis of race. Neither do I. You know why? Because we’re white. We’re white people in America, and that means almost every aspect of the country we live in is geared toward us: 99 percent of books, television, film, magazines, and even porn, is made for us and represents us. Maybe you read (though for some reason I deeply doubt it) my article on the absurdity of #WhiteGirlsRock. It’s absurd because white people don’t need an extra reminder of their value... because it’s reaffirmed for them (for us) every single day by the people we see in the media, by the people that run this country, and yes, even by the people that act as our educators. American education has long been under fire by people who use their brains over the continued teaching that Christopher Columbus was a great dude and a hero and someone we should all celebrate year after year. But you probably still think that, don’t you? Probably before you got to college, most of your teachers taught the version of American
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history that high schools are wont to teach: Columbus was like Mr. Rogers with a (crappy) map, the Pilgrims sang Kumbaya with the Native Americans, and slavery just wasn’t that bad. I imagine college courses might have been a bit of a shock for you, with discussions that maybe didn’t valorize violent coloni-
That feeling of being on the spot?... Of being blamed for things that other people of your color do, even if you have not done them yourself? That’s not a classroom for people of color. That’s life.” zation and actually shone a light on the perspective of people who weren’t white. Is this where things started to get uncomfortable for you? I imagine the first lecture on America’s legacy of brutality and oppression left you in shock. Maybe you thought that particular professor was just a wayward nut job. But then another class discussed institutional racism, and another. And
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you began to squirm in your seat because whoa this wasn’t just one time where your whiteness — the thing that you might have squeaked by on for the entirety of your short life; the thing you’ve unconsciously relied upon to get you out of trouble with the campus police, out of detention and on the honor roll in high school; the thing that might have gotten you your consecutive summer jobs — that
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thing, that whiteness, is being criticized, not just once by one random professor who your privilege enables you to ignore, but more than once. You see petitions and articles on the Internet talking about racism and bias and... gasp... white privilege. And you’re sick of it, right? Because who wants to sit in a room full of people, people who don’t all look and sound like you, and talk about the ways that you are flawed? That’s uncomfortable. That’s awkward. That doesn’t feel good. It feels like be-
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Minneapolis Community and Technical College, where Professor Gibney teaches communications.
Voices ing singled out; it feels like being held accountable for things you don’t feel responsible for; it feels like being defined by the color of your skin; it feels like being blamed; it feels like being... discriminated against. But it’s not discrimination, boys. And here’s why. Because this is one classroom in your entire life. One speck of discomfort in an ocean that is your life of privilege. Because white supremacy dictates that your skin — and let’s not forget your maleness — will make things fundamentally easier for you than for a person (and especially a woman) of color. That feeling of being on the spot? Of being defined by the color of your skin? Of being blamed for things that other people of your color do, even if you have not done them yourself? That’s not a classroom for people of color. That’s life. There’s no walking out of class. There’s no transferring to a different professor. There is only more of the same, with the hope that dialogue, education, and activism will pull the collective ostrich head from the ground, bit by bit, until that structural racism that you don’t
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like talking about is eradicated. Look, guys. I see why you’re uncomfortable. You have been taught your entire life that white is always right. Your formal education has revolved around the valorization of colonization, the championing of racist brutes, and the marginalization of people of color. You have grown up insulated from racism and
You see petitions and articles on the Internet talking about racism and bias and...gasp...white privilege. And you’re sick of it, right?” discrimination and what those words truly mean. You have been trained to see your whiteness as the norm, the default, the center of the world: you think that Other people have a race, but you are just... you. Your whiteness has been an invisible tool that you have wielded your entire life, mostly without really realizing it, but now that people are criticizing the invisible tool, you are pissed, defensive, and maybe
Voices even afraid. I would say that’s normal. Everything you’ve been taught is being contradicted, so a little discomfort is expected. That’s what you said, right? That the discussion of structural racism made you uncomfortable? That you felt the classroom was hostile? That you didn’t like that “we have to talk about this all the time”? I have a simple question for you: how do you think people of color feel? What if that classroom that you felt was hostile was your world, your life? You have now filed a formal discrimination complaint with your college against your professor, which I’m sure in your mind is some kind of activism, but by filing that complaint, you are attempting to silence a voice speaking out against discrimination. It’s odd, you see. It’s odd that you want your voice to be heard and your pain acknowledged, but you don’t want to acknowledge the suffering of people of color. You want to talk about discrimination against yourself — but you don’t want to talk about discrimination against people of color. Interesting. Maybe if you’d actually paid attention in that lecture
OLIVIA COLE
on structural racism, you’d have learned that discrimination in the context of 21st century America has political, social, and economic ramifications. Your hurt feelings, your 90 minutes of discomfort, are just not included in that, fellas. Bottom line: I want you to be uncomfortable. It means you’re being challenged. And that’s what college is for, isn’t it? I’m not a
I want you to be uncomfortable. It means you’re being challenged. And that’s what college is for, isn’t it?” teacher, but I know that mental growth, like physical growth, comes with growing pains. It’s not always easy. It’s not always fun. It’s going to hurt and you’re going to come out the other side bumped and bruised... but better. Shannon Gibney is trying to make the world better. She’s trying to make you better. What have you done lately? Olivia Cole is a poet, author and activist.
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Voices
QUOTED
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“ Dogs have owners, cats have staff.”
— HuffPost commenter JScott
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: WILL HART/NBC/NBCU PHOTO BANK/GETTY IMAGES; GETTY IMAGES/ FLICKR RF; GETTY IMAGES/FLICKR OPEN; ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES
“ Plain and simple: Mean people need Jesus.”
on “Your Cat Really Doesn’t Care What You Have To Say, Study Shows”
— Carrie Underwood
on Twitter, in response to critics who slammed the Sound Of Music Live! star’s performance
“ You wonder, why don’t they just get a life?” — outgoing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
on critics of his Spanish, to radio host John Gambling
“ Christian is a verb not a noun, either you act like one or don’t call yourself one.”
— HuffPost commenter evalela on “Bishop Dresses As Homeless Man To Teach Lesson”
Voices
QUOTED
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“ [Virtual games] “are an opportunity!”
— an NSA document
arguing for the surveillance of online games played by millions of people
“ Going by this list, I’m surprised I’m still alive.”
— HuffPost commenter annaheiser09
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: EVARISTO SA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; ALAIN JOCARD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC/GETTY IMAGES; ERIC CHARBONNEAU/INVISION/AP
“ OK, government, come get us.”
on “11 Things You’re Doing That Could Shorten Your Life”
— Journalist Glenn Greenwald
told Rolling Stone in an extensive profile, on his work with Edward Snowden
“ It’s wrong and disgusting to follow children around and take their picture and sell it for money.”
“ Last time I checked, tyrants are able to do whatever they want without any opposition from a group of people that don’t agree with them.”
on the paparazzi, in an interview with Playboy
on “David Mamet: Obama Is A ‘Tyrant’”
— Ben Affleck
— HuffPost commenter knight7se7en
AP PHOTO/MANU BRABO
12.15.13 #79 FEATURES
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H WEAPON OF MASS DETECTION H
IN S IDE THE ON E - M A N IN TE L L IG E NC E U NI T T H AT EXPOSED TH E ATRO CITIES O F SY R I A’S WA R
MUZAFFAR SALMAN/AP PHOTO
BY B IANCA B OS K E R THERE WAS SOMETHING strange about the rockets that landed on Zamalka, a town south of Syria’s capital, just after two in the morning on Aug. 21. They didn’t explode. Yet even lodged into walls of homes or injected into the dirt fully intact, they proved lethal. Hundreds of people sleeping near the landing sites were killed instantly and bloodlessly, as if choked by invisible hands. A cloud of death spread quietly, ending hundreds of other lives. Just after dawn the following day, Muhammed al-Jazaeri, a 27-year-old engineer who had joined a coalition of activists fighting to take down the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, felt an urge to document what had occurred. He found one of the rockets protruding from a patch of orange dirt behind a mosque a mile from his home. Recalling later
that he was determined to reveal to the world the “real picture” of life in Syria, he used a handheld Sony camera to capture a short video of its twisted remains. That same day, he uploaded his clip to a site that has become an intelligence hub for war-watchers and a time-killing venue for bored teenagers: He sent it to YouTube. Several hours later and 2,300 miles to the northwest in Leicester, England, a shaggy-haired blogger named Eliot Higgins peered at his laptop and clicked play on al-Jazaeri’s video. It was one of scores Higgins turned up that day as he trawled Twitter, Google+ and the more than 600 Syrian YouTube accounts he monitors daily. From his living room, Higgins was racing to solve the same whodunit confronting world leaders amid claims that Assad had unleashed chemical weapons against rebel sympathizers in the suburbs of Damascus. Was Zamalka a victim of such an attack? If so, who was
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is pictured in large banner, in Damascus, Syria, in December 2011.
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responsible for the deed? On paper, Higgins — a 34-yearold with a 2-year-old daughter — brought no credentials for the job. He had no formal intelligence training or security clearance that gave him access to classified documents. He could not speak or read Arabic. He had never set foot in the Middle East, unless you count the time he changed planes in Dubai en route to Manila, or his trip to visit his in-laws in Turkey. Yet in the 18 months since Higgins had begun blogging about Syria, his barebones site, Brown Moses, had become the foremost
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source of information on the weapons used in Syria’s deadly war. Using nothing more sophisticated than an Asus laptop, he had uncovered evidence of weapons imported into Syria from Iran. He had been the first person to identify widelybanned cluster bombs deployed by Syrian forces. By The New York Times’ own admission, his findings had offered a key tip that helped the newspaper prove that Saudi Arabia had funneled arms to opposition fighters in Syria. His work unraveling the mystery of the rocket strikes of Aug. 21 played a key role in bringing much of the world to the conclusion that it was indeed a chemical weapons attack, one unleashed by
Eliot Higgins, right, is interviewed by Channel 4 News’ Paraic O’Brien in March 2013.
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Assad’s forces. That conclusion led to a diplomatic deal under which the Syrian government submitted to international inspections and pledged to destroy its stocks of chemical weapons. “I saw the U.N. got the Nobel Prize for Syria,” says one weapons expert, referring to the United Nations-backed Organization for the Prohibition of Chemi-
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analysts have honed a novel set of sleuthing skills that fuse oldfashioned detective work with new sources of intelligence generated by cell phone cameras and spread by social networks. Syria’s war, widely considered the most documented conflict in history, has turned social media into a weapon of mass detection — critical both for fighters on the ground and for
BY THE NEW YORK TIMES’ OWN ADMISSION, HIS FINDINGS HAD OFFERED A KEY TIP THAT HELPED THE NEWSPAPER PROVE THAT SAUDI ARABIA HAD FUNNELED ARMS TO OPPOSITION FIGHTERS IN SYRIA. cal Weapons, who declined to be named on account of his own work with the international body. “I think Eliot has done a lot more for Syria than the U.N.” Higgins belongs to an obsessive coterie of self-appointed military intelligence experts who use social media to piece together critical details of faraway conflicts, often well ahead of seasoned professionals. Frequently self-taught and operating far outside the militaryindustrial complex, these amateur
faraway observers trying to make sense of the conflict. “All parties to the conflict in Syria realize that social media is an important front in this war,” says Peter Bouckaert, an expert in humanitarian crises and the emergencies director for Human Rights Watch. “There is a war for the truth as much as for territory.” Many government agencies, private research groups and newsrooms are still wary of analyses based on the Facebook status updates or viral videos of Syria’s opposition groups. Such “open source intelligence” — so-called
S HAAM NEWS NETWORK, FILE/AP PHOTO
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by the U.S. military — is deeply biased and difficult to verify, its critics say, often amounting to meaningless chatter. “I personally don’t really have the time to go through the social media in Syria so as to start knowing which sources, which sites, which media, which individuals are credible or not,” said Yezid Sayigh, a senior associate at
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the Carnegie Middle East Center. “All that takes time and continuous follow up. “ But in an age in which social media produces seemingly limitless streams of information, some people are proving obsessive enough to go rooting through it all in search of small nuggets of undiscovered reality. People like Higgins. After a temporary job reviewing orders at a ladies’ lingerie maker came to an end in February, he dispensed with looking for
This file image provided by Shaam News Network on Aug. 22, 2013, purports to show dead bodies after an attack on Ghouta, Syria.
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another so that he could devote himself to blogging full-time. His wife admits she does not read his blog and yearns for a time that he will return to “a real job.” But as Higgins sees it, he is consumed with the realest job of all, sifting through a digital goldmine disdained by those who lack the patience for the work. “If you’re in intelligence and you want to know what your enemies are armed with, just watch their YouTube channels and see what weapons they’re waving around,” he advises. “You’ll find out all sorts of information — and not necessarily the stuff they intend to show you.” HIGGINS OPERATES from his command center in a narrow, two-story home just down the street from a Salvation Army and a community center, in a town about 100 miles north of London. His “office” alternates between a cream leather couch in the living room and an Ikea chair with a lap desk in an upstairs bedroom. His standard uniform is jeans and white T-shirts layered with darkcolored V-necks. Born in 1979 to a Royal Air Force engineer and a caterer, Hig-
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gins describes himself as an avid gardener and budding cook, but his core passions have always centered on a fascination with screens: During his schooling years, he engaged in marathon sessions playing video games and argued ceaselessly on Internet forums. These two pursuits trumped his attention to schoolwork, filling his report cards with Cs. Throughout his life, Higgins has taken hobbies to illogical extremes. After his brother introduced him to the iconoclastic rockstar Frank Zappa, Higgins rushed out to buy all of his fourdozen albums. As a video gamer, Higgins pressed well past casual bouts of World of Warcraft, staying up late to lead teams of 40 players in complex online raids. Even now, he feels compelled to systematically beat each new video game before he can start another, in this fashion gradually making his way through strategy and role-playing games like Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, Total War: Rome II and Command and Conquer. Before getting married, he was known to game for 36 hours at a stretch. “It’s like he’s got tunnel vision,” says Higgins’ brother, Ross. “He latches onto something and gets kind of obsessed about it. Most people don’t think like my
BULENT KILIC/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
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brother does.” After dropping out of university midway through a media studies degree, Higgins moved through a series of jobs with no relation to munitions, Syria or blogging. He worked as a data entry clerk at Barclays bank and then managed invoices for a process management firm. When that task was outsourced overseas, he helped asylum seekers find housing. His next, and most recent, job was working on women’s undergarments.
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Yet in his off hours, Higgins morphed into “Brown Moses,” a fastidious online commenter who challenged strangers to heated debates over protests in Egypt or the veracity of videos showing civilians shot down in Libya. He took his alias from a Zappa song and his avatar from a portrait by Francis Bacon of the howling Pope Innocent X flanked by animal carcasses. “I was always interested in that sort of counterculture stuff,” Higgins says. He lists as his favorite authors Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and Nick Davies. Higgins also brought a long-
A Syrian youth stands next to a rebel waving a pre-Baath Syrian flag used by the opposition during an anti-regime protest in the northern city of Aleppo on March 22, 2013.
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standing interest in media and American policy in the Middle East. He attacked this interest, like every other, with a fanatic intensity. In 2011, “Brown Moses” became an active voice in the online comments section of the British newspaper The Guardian. Almost
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“I just got obsessed with it,” Higgins says. But what drove this obsession — Idealism? Politics? “Boredom at work more than anything,” Higgins says. “And I guess I’m a bit argumentative.” It was an online argument that
“IF YOU’RE IN INTELLIGENCE AND YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOUR ENEMIES ARE ARMED WITH, JUST WATCH THEIR YOUTUBE CHANNELS AND SEE WHAT WEAPONS THEY’RE WAVING AROUND.” as soon as The Guardian would publish a new story on its website touching on the Middle East, “Brown Moses” would be the first to leave a comment. Initially, this was purely by chance; later, as Higgins confesses, he would get there first just to annoy people irked by his obsessiveness. By latest count, Higgins has left a total of 4,700 comments on The Guardian’s site. That’s just a fraction of his activity on Something Awful, one of the oldest forums on the web and a favorite of Higgins’ for more than a decade. In just over two years, he posted 10,000 times to a live-blog chronicling the twists and turns of Libya’s revolution.
got Higgins mulling over the idea of a blog. A Guardian commenter challenged him to prove that a certain protest had actually been filmed in Libya. In piecing together evidence from satellite images and social media, Higgins experienced a series of epiphanies. When viewed in isolation, the micro-dispatches posted to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube tended to confuse and overwhelm anyone trying to make sense of events. But if you viewed such posts together, Higgins realized, the photos and videos could yield detailed accounts of events across the globe. The posts could be used to fact check claims, providing clues far beyond what cameramen had intended to show. Arguments could be won, myths disproved, rival
AFP PHOTO/LOUAI BESHARA
Syrian men inspect an alley packed with debris in the aftermath of a car bomb explosion in Jaramana, a mainly Christian and Druze suburb of Damascus, on Nov. 28, 2012.
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commenters put in their place. Most people were failing to scrutinize such material in a systematic fashion. The answers to big questions were out there — such as which rebel groups were working together, what guns they carried, and how much force they could rally against Assad. Yet confronted with so many thousands of videos and contrasting depictions, observers threw up their hands. Too much information became no information. Journalists and analysts lacked time to dissect YouTube clips, or figured there was nothing to gain there. Higgins came to recognize a form of “snobbery” and “dismissiveness” toward social media, which meant that crucial evidence was disappearing into a morass of “likes,” tweets, shares, uploads and updates. In the spring of 2012, Higgins created a small site, Brown Moses, where he could save some of this digital material for his own future reference. A pet project, nothing more. He fell into a routine of writing about weapons purely out of convenience. His early blogs were less focused, ranging from analyses of the Murdoch phone hacking
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scandal to a critique of a tasteless tweet. Drawn to the action in the Middle East but unable to speak Arabic, Higgins was attracted to analyzing munitions videos, which transcended all languages. Higgins also craved daily fodder for his blog, and it seemed every day he delivered a newsworthy video about rocket launchers or warheads in Syria, a country then becoming more volatile. In the course of just three days in July 2012, for example, Higgins’ blog posts included the following: evidence of an increasingly wellarmed Free Syrian Army packing heavy assault rifles and truckmounted Soviet machine guns; videos of al-Farouq Brigades rebels showing off tanks captured from the Syrian Army; and documentation that Syrians were being hit with cluster bombs, controversial and widely-outlawed munitions that pose high risks to civilians. Higgins got a rush from being the first to spot things that no one — outside, perhaps, Assad’s army — knew existed. And it helped that with each month, more and more powerful people were taking their talking points from his blog. Even before the attacks this past August, Higgins’ audience had grown to include members of the Defense Department, the State Department, the United Nations, the U.K.
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Foreign Commonwealth Office, Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, The New York Times, The Guardian, as well as countless think tanks and Russia’s state-run news channel. “Brown Moses has been carrying a lot of hod in the coverage of the Syrian war,” CJ Chivers, a New York Times reporter covering
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used as he raised funds — about $17,000 — so he could support his family while devoting himself to the blog full-time. He raised the sum quickly. Half came from the crowdfunding site Indiegogo, and the other half from an anonymous donor. Higgins also began picking up occasional contract work doing social media forensics for groups that track weapons use overseas,
THE ANSWERS TO BIG QUESTIONS WERE OUT THERE... YET CONFRONTED WITH SO MANY THOUSANDS OF VIDEOS AND CONTRASTING DEPICTIONS, OBSERVERS THREW UP THEIR HANDS. TOO MUCH INFORMATION BECAME NO INFORMATION. Syria, wrote on his personal website in the summer of 2012. “So c’mon, let’s say it: Many people (whether they admit it or not) have been relying on that blog’s daily labor to cull the uncountable videos that circulate from the conflict.” (Chivers himself had based a story for The Times in part on Higgins’ work tracking Yugoslav weapons in Syria.) In April 2013, Chivers delivered another endorsement, providing a promotional blurb that Higgins
like Human Rights Watch and Action on Armed Violence. Still, six months after his fundraising campaign, Higgins was having doubts he could pay his mortgage analyzing YouTube videos. He figured he had just a few months of finance left before he once again needed to find the steady income of a full-time job. Yet in the course of Brown Moses’ lifetime, Higgins has created an indispensable news source by doing what no news organization can: devoting virtually unlimited time to digging through the endless detritus of YouTube in the
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hopes of possibly coming up with something interesting to say on some or another niche topic. And he shares his loot. Unlike journalists, who guard their scoops, Higgins works like an open source Sherlock Holmes, asking questions, bouncing ideas off other people, soliciting tips and generally thinking out loud. The obsessiveness that has framed much of his life has a new channel. He spends his days on seemingly arcane minutiae — analyzing the welding on the lip of a rocket, reconstructing how metal folds over the edge of a warhead’s column, compiling endless YouTube playlists, or clicking playpause-play-rewind-play in rapid succession on numerous videos to freeze the precise moment when a blurry rocket appears for just a few seconds in Syria’s sky. “I love it when there’s a new bomb used in the combat,” Higgins says. “Well, not love. But I see a new bomb and I’m like, ‘Oh! Great! There’s something new to look at.’” THE MORNING OF AUG. 21 delivered something new to look at. Something so new, no one knew what it was.
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Like most mornings, this one began with Higgins reaching for his Nexus 4 smartphone while still in bed so he could check Twitter before getting up to care for his daughter. His Twitter stream was full of frantic dispatches claiming that a chemical weapons attack had been directed at several suburbs of Damascus, killing what seemed an impossibly large number of people — more than 1,000. After Higgins had downed a black coffee, changed and fed his daughter, his wife, Nuray, took over. Nuray, who is Turkish and works part-time at a post office, happened to be home that day, and she tended to their daughter so Higgins could watch YouTube videos in peace. While his daughter played, Higgins settled on the couch in his living room and quickly assembled nearly 200 videos of the victims into a YouTube playlist. He sent his findings to chemical weapons experts he’d come to know in the course of writing his blog, asking them to opine on whether these clips were consistent with a nerve gas strike. Probably so, the experts agreed, but they could not say definitively. The world would have to wait for the United Nations to test samples collected from Syria. Waiting was the last thing Hig-
AFP PHOTO / FRANCISCO LEONG
Syrian rebels celebrate on top of the remains of a Syrian government fighter jet, which was shot down at Daret Ezza on
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gins planned to do. As he saw it, a “ridiculously huge” number of people had been killed, and no one knew how, or by whom. Waiting seemed tantamount to letting a criminal get a head start. There was also the issue of nerve gas. If chemical weapons had been used in the attack, the party responsible had violated nothing less than an international
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— more in depth than any newspaper article, but more open than any think tank or government agency. The world needed answers, and he was singularly able to help find them. “I can’t imagine there are many people in the world who know more about this than I do,” he says matter-of-factly. “It became my mission to find out everything about these things
HIGGINS GOT A RUSH FROM BEING THE FIRST TO SPOT THINGS THAT NO ONE... KNEW EXISTED. AND IT HELPED THAT WITH EACH MONTH, MORE AND MORE POWERFUL PEOPLE WERE TAKING THEIR TALKING POINTS FROM HIS BLOG. ban on munitions “justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilized world,” in the words of the Geneva Protocol. And the stakes could not have been higher. President Barack Obama had declared that chemical weapons usage constituted a red line that, if crossed, could trigger American military intervention. That moment was potentially at hand. Higgins sees his one-man intelligence unit as a vital source of information for the general public
because no one knew anything.” That day and into the next, his research surfaced hundreds more videos, including Muhammed alJazaeri’s video clip from Zamalka. The photos and videos Higgins tracks down online are posted by scores of different sources in Syria: armed rebel groups, like the Environs of the Holy House Battalions, Ahrar al-Sham and Liwa al-Islam; local news outlets run by the opposition, like “Darya Revolution,” “Erbin City,” “Ugarit News” and the “Adra News Network”; and individual activists, like al-Jazaeri. Thanks to this
S HAAM NEWS NETWORK, FILE/AP PHOTO
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near-real-time feed, Higgins can describe activity in Syria as if he’d seen it from his own window. “Today there’s been a lot of mid-29s flying around Damascus,” he observed recently from the security of his kitchen table. The proliferation of this material attests to how Syria’s opposition has embraced social media as a PR tool, a form of subterfuge, a propaganda apparatus and a crucial fundraising mechanism. Activists and armed battalions have assembled a sophisticated media
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arsenal, having long ago realized that their online presence can affect their offline success in forging alliances, raising funds and securing weapons. Their press offices carry out online brand-building campaigns complete with up-tothe-minute press releases and carefully edited highlight reels of successful attacks. The social media guru is the newest recruit in the fighting army. “It’s sort of like a social media arms race,” said Nate Rosenblatt, an analyst for Caerus Associates, a research and advisory firm. “They continuously try to innovate and improve on the uses and
This file image provided by Shaam News Network, authenticated based on its contents and AP reporting, purports to show several bodies being buried in a suburb of Damascus, Syria, during a funeral on Aug. 21, 2013.
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purposes of social media to stay ahead of their opponents and gain an advantage.” The Free Syrian Army unit Suqur al-Sham, for example, boasts a media staff of eight. In addition to keeping up a steady stream of posts on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, it maintains three dedicated websites and last year added training in social net-
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rebels have used these videos as a kind of resume-booster intended to show off their strength and brand them as heir-apparent to the Assad regime. Brigades also hope their highlight reels — often meticulously edited with Instagram-style filters and custom animation — will convince wealthy, sympathetic donors to part with their cash. For Higgins and other
UNLIKE JOURNALISTS, WHO GUARD THEIR SCOOPS, HIGGINS WORKS LIKE AN OPEN SOURCE SHERLOCK HOLMES, ASKING QUESTIONS, BOUNCING IDEAS OFF OTHER PEOPLE, SOLICITING TIPS AND GENERALLY THINKING OUT LOUD. working for Suqur al-Sham press staff. Its YouTube channel — like those of many other rebel groups — features clips of soldiers leading attacks on enemy outposts. Most follow a predictable formula. There’s a close-up of men firing machine guns or loading warheads into rocket launchers, then a cut to the target being destroyed with off-camera voices shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”). With so many Syrian opposition groups vying for dominance,
armchair analysts like him, these videos serve a very different purpose: They can offer valuable glimpses at what weapons are being used in battle, or who’s leading the charge. Professional analysts often discount this kind of footage because so much of it can be faked. One opposition group’s footage of a Syrian Army helicopter shot down mid-air, for example, turned out to be a video of a Russian craft that had been filmed in the Chechen conflict. But Higgins is undeterred, having refined his skill in separating
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the real from the bogus. He has determined that not all social media is created equally. Tweets and Facebook posts are no good because text is far easier to fake than photos. He distrusts footage of casualties or bombed-out buildings. “People will say, ‘Oh well that person just wrapped bandage around their head, they’re faking it,’” Higgins says. “And, you know,
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hung everywhere, also atypical for the group’s videos. Then there was the issue of the T-shirts. Liquid sarin can kill through contact with skin, Higgins knew. Would these rebels really be hanging around a deadly toxin in short sleeves? Higgins credits this attention to detail to the many years he’s spent arguing with Internet commenters — the harshest, most meticulous
HIGGINS BELONGS TO AN OBSESSIVE COTERIE OF SELFAPPOINTED MILITARY INTELLIGENCE EXPERTS WHO USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO PIECE TOGETHER CRITICAL DETAILS OF FARAWAY CONFLICTS, OFTEN WELL AHEAD OF SEASONED PROFESSIONALS. fair enough. But when you’ve got an unexploded bomb stuck inside of someone’s house, that’s a lot harder to fake.” He was immediately suspicious when an anonymous tipster sent videos purporting to show Liwa al-Islam, an opposition group, firing chemical weapons on Aug. 21. Liwa al-Islam produces highquality videos, but these had been filmed on a blurry cell phone camera, Higgins said. Flags with the Liwa al-Islam emblem had been
and most relentless critics on the planet. In martialing evidence for analysis on Brown Moses, Higgins tries to imagine every disagreement from some ticked-off stranger online, and preemptively strengthen his argument’s weaknesses. “If you want someone to really question your work, just post it on the Internet,” he says. “There are plenty of people who’ll want to tell you you’re an idiot and you’re wrong.” AS HIGGINS TRAWLED through videos the day after the attacks, he saw, over and over again, long,
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cylindrical rockets with fins on one end and a round plate on the other, and red numbers stenciled in between. Hello, I know I’ve seen these before, Higgins thought. He did a mental inventory of the thousands of YouTube videos he’d watched over the preceding eight months, trying to remember where else he’d come across these hunks of metal.
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Alleged Chemical Attacks, and began a hunt to rebuild them using everything that had been shared about them online. His methodology recalls the card game “Memory,” in which players overturn two cards at a time trying to find a pair. But instead of finding clubs or hearts, he’ll try to match a mystery object — a blurry warhead, a kind
“I LOVE IT WHEN THERE’S A NEW BOMB USED IN THE COMBAT. WELL, NOT LOVE. BUT I SEE A NEW BOMB AND I’M LIKE, ‘OH! GREAT! THERE’S SOMETHING NEW TO LOOK AT.’” Daraya, Adra, Homs, Higgins realized. He quickly pulled up videos filmed in three other cities, on four different dates between January and August, and embedded them in a blog post. The rocket he’d seen after the strike the day before had also been spotted after four separate attacks, two of which were suspected to have involved chemical weapons, he wrote. Higgins still had no idea what it was. And neither did the arms experts he consulted. He christened the weapons UMLACAs, short for Unidentified Munitions Linked to
of rocket launcher — to an image of something that’s known. Earlier that month, Higgins had debunked a rumor that pouches of glass tubes, widely documented online, were proof that chemical weapons had been used in Syria. He did so by matching the vials captured in videos to photos of a Cold War-era chemical weapons testing kit for sale on eBay. In the week following the bombing outside Damascus, Higgins spent hours a day at his computer, breaking only to feed his daughter and perhaps catch an episode of Columbo, the detective TV series, with his wife. (Higgins says he feels like he and the TV
AFP PHOTO/ ADEM ALTAN/GETTY IMAGES
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detective are “kindred spirits in some ways.”) One crucial challenge was figuring out exactly where the rockets had landed. If Higgins could determine where a weapon had crashed, he’d have a better chance of finding where it was shot from. And, in turn, who fired it. He zeroed in on one well-documented rocket labeled “197” that he knew, from a Twitter follower’s tip, had fallen somewhere approximately between the towns of
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Zamalka and Ein Tarma. To narrow that down further, he began studying images of “197” to see what landmarks he could make out in the background. He tried to sketch a rough map of the area beyond the twisted metal. A building here, an apartment there, an empty plot of land just in front. Next, he compared his makeshift diagram to satellite imagery of the Damascus suburb on Google Maps and its open-source equivalent, Wikimapia, hoping he’d find an area that matched it. It was like “finding a key and matching it to a lock,” Higgins
A Free Syrian Army soldier poses holding a rifle and a Syrian flag at the Bab alSalam border crossing to Turkey on July 22, 2012.
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says. Imagine being given a snapshot taken at a backyard barbecue somewhere in Tacoma, and being asked to match it to a house on a map in Washington state — an area roughly the size of Syria. He couldn’t find an exact likeness. Yet there were five images that corresponded well enough. After some back-and-forth with
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the north, Higgins concluded. He didn’t fail to point out what was located just 6 to 8 kilometers in that direction: a missile base belonging to the Syrian Army’s 155th Brigade. ON AUG. 31, 10 DAYS after the attacks in Damascus, President Obama convened reporters in
SYRIA’S OPPOSITION HAS EMBRACED SOCIAL MEDIA AS A PR TOOL, A FORM OF SUBTERFUGE, A PROPAGANDA APPARATUS AND A CRUCIAL FUNDRAISING MECHANISM. Syria-watchers and journalists on Google+, where Higgins often turns to ask for help and second opinions, Higgins wrote a blog post that walked through his best guess of where “197” had crashed. He presented five composite images, each juxtaposing a still taken from an activist’s video with a screenshot of satellite imagery. To each, he added red lines and small numbers meant to indicate which spots matched up, along with a brief explanation. Based on the maps and the way the rocket buckled on impact, the weapon must have been fired from
the White House Rose Garden. The United States had evidence Assad’s army had fired chemical weapons on opposition groups outside the country’s capital, he announced. He was calling for a military strike against Syria. By then, Higgins had published nine stories on the attacks. He had identified not only where one of the rockets had landed, but had also shared proof that they resembled munitions used in prior suspected chemical attacks. He’d argued that the Syrian opposition’s “Hell Cannon” couldn’t have been used to fire rockets like those in the Aug. 21 strike; that Assad forces had been using “DIY weapons,” previously linked
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to chemical weapons; and that United Nations inspectors in Syria had examined an artillery rocket, collected after the strikes, that could be used as a chemical warhead and loaded with more than 4 pounds of sarin gas. He shared high-resolution photographs of activists holding a tape measure over a rocket recovered in Damascus after the attacks — the first time anyone had offered clear measurements of the weapons. And Higgins also posted a video that showed Assad’s Republican Guard — recognizable from its red berets — had loaded and fired munitions similar to
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those linked to chemical attacks. Visitors to the Brown Moses blog had reached an all-time high, growing eightfold in the days and weeks following the attacks, from about 3,000 daily readers to more than 25,000. News networks were regularly airing videos Higgins had featured on his blog and Human Rights Watch had tapped Higgins to help compile its report on the alleged nerve gas attacks outside Damascus. The group was drawing liberally from the YouTube footage and Facebook photos he’d gathered. What made his analysis so compelling, even to those in government or with security clearance, was its detail. While the White House’s case for a chemi-
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cal weapons attack had included vague references to “independent sources” and “thousands of social media reports” in the fourpage document it released to the public, Higgins had pointed people directly to the sources them-
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“The U.S., U.K. and France produce a one-page report saying, ‘We have this evidence, we can’t show you it,’” he says. “That’s frustrating in this modern era where we have access to all this open source information.
VISITORS TO THE BROWN MOSES BLOG HAD REACHED AN ALL-TIME HIGH, GROWING EIGHTFOLD IN THE DAYS AND WEEKS FOLLOWING THE ATTACKS, FROM ABOUT 3,000 DAILY READERS TO MORE THAN 25,000. selves. His readers didn’t have to believe rockets were fired. They could look at them in dozens of videos and photographs Higgins had compiled. The White House asked the public to trust them. Higgins’ instructions? “Go see for yourself.” Higgins sympathizes with the pressures that prevent journalists from scouring social media the way he does. But he says he has little patience for political leaders and their tendency to offer vague assurances that they have proof of weapons of mass destruction — in Iraq, in Syria, wherever — while refusing to make the goods public.
People don’t just want reassurances that the evidence is there. They want to see it.” Higgins plans to keep revealing it. Even months after Obama’s showdown with Syria, and after Syria’s chemical weapons have largely faded from headlines, Higgins is still scouring social media to expose dark secrets and cruel acts. “No one cares anymore because the chemical attack was two-anda-half months ago,” he says. “But I’m still looking into it. You do get the feeling there are people who have this obsessive nature. And then there are the normal people.” Bianca Bosker is the executive tech editor of The Huffington Post.
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Ahead of Nelson Mandela’s funeral this Sunday, we pause to reflect on the life and legacy of South Africa’s first black president through compelling images. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Durban, South Africa 04.14.1994 African National Congress youth wait for ANC President Nelson Mandela atop a billboard prior to an election rally. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Pretoria, South Africa 06.16.1964 Eight men sentenced to life imprisonment, among them the anti-apartheid Mandela, leave the Palace of Justice with their fists raised in defiance through the barred windows of a prison car. The men were accused of conspiracy, sabotage and treason. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Cape Town, South Africa 03.23.1995 Queen Elizabeth II and the South African President meet in Cape Town. According to Mandela’s personal assistant Zelda la Grange, Mandela would informally call her “Elizabeth” when he paid her visits, and commented on her dress and weight, Reuters reported this week. The Queen “quite enjoyed it,” la Grange said. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa 07.20.1996 Michael Jackson poses with Mandela. The two became friends when Jackson began performing in South Africa regularly. When the star died, Mandela described him as “a close member of our family.” PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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South Africa Date Unknown Mandela and his then-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. The two were married from 1958 to 1996 and had two daughters together. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Matanzas, Cuba 07.27.1991 Cuban President Fidel Castro, right, and Mandela gesture during a celebration of the 38th anniversary of Cuba’s revolution. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Johannesburg, South Africa 07.18.1988
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Winnie MadikizelaMandela addresses a crowd in celebration of Mandela’s 70th birthday.
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Cape Town, South Africa 1987 During his time as a political prisoner, Mandela fell ill with early signs of tuberculosis and was hospitalized at Tygerberg Hospital. Protesters and wellwishers gathered outside to show their support for him and the apartheid struggle.
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Mandela smiles during a photo session at his first press conference following his release from Victor Verster Prison in Paarl, South Africa, after 27 years of detention.
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Johannesburg, South Africa 07.19.2007 Bill Clinton leans down to whisper to Mandela during a visit between the former presidents at the Nelson Mandela Foundation. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Cape Town, South Africa 02.02.1990
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A young man holds a local newspaper announcing that ANC is unbanned during a demonstration of anti-apartheid marchers demanding the release of all the political prisoners in South Africa, including Mandela.
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Qunu, South Africa 07.18.2012 Mandela is wished a happy birthday by his granddaughter, Swati Dlamini, as he celebrates his 94th birthday with his family at his home. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Johannesburg, South Africa 02.11.1990 Soweto residents celebrate as Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison. The city was his home before his 27 years of imprisonment. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Johannesburg, South Africa 07.24.2007 Mandela laughs while celebrating his birthday with children at the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, which aims to help help those in need from birth to age 22, especially orphans of the AIDS crisis. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Hammanskraal, South Africa 12.06.2013 The statue of “The Father of the Nation,” first unveiled in 1999 at Nelson Mandela Square. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Cape Town, South Africa 02.11.1990 Mandela and his then-wife Winnie raise clenched fists upon his release from Victor prison. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Kimberley, South Africa 02.25.1994 Mandela salutes the crowd in Galeshewe Stadium before a people’s forum. Mandela was on a three-day campaign swing through the Northern Cape Province for the nation’s first democratic, all-race general election. Mandela called on supporters to stop chasing white President F.W. de Klerk from black areas, saying the ANC could win the election “hands down” without help from hecklers. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Johannesburg, South Africa 07.17.2006
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A beaming Mandela prepares to celebrate his 88th birthday.
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Potchefstroom, South Africa 01.31.1994 Mandela reaches out to the crowd greeting him during his two-day campaign swing throughout western Transvaal for the all-race general elections. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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Johannesburg, South Africa 12.07.2013 Mourners holding illuminated balloons showing the face of Mandela marched and sang to celebrate his life, on the street outside his old house in Soweto. Thousands of mourners flocked to sites around the country to pay homage to the icon. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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South Africa 12.10.2013 Members of the public attend Mandela’s memorial service at the FNB Stadium. More than 60 heads of state traveled to South Africa to attend a week of events commemorating his life. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
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CULTURE
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The Danger of Watching Too Much Immersive Theater Actress Tori Ernst in Dutchman, at the Russian and Turkish Baths in New York.
BY MALLIKA RAO
Exit HIS SPRING, the British theater critic Alice Jones diagnosed herself. She’s a sufferer of “Site Specific Angst — that woozy, stomach-clenching feeling you get when you embark on a show and you have no idea what is going on, what your part in it is supposed to be, where you should put your coat and when it will end.” Herein lies the danger of watching too much immersive theater. We’re all susceptible now. The genre is exploding, with more and more productions staged in hospitals and back alleys, and more audiences asked to perform as much as the performers. In England, the birthplace of the phenomenon, the backlash is starting. “What, on initial encounters, felt like an exciting, experimental trend can start to feel predictable and hackneyed,” wrote Charlotte Higgins recently, reviewing a play that required she be blindfolded. So typical was the gimmick that the Guardian writer found herself not “haunted” (it was hyped as a scary production), but “bored.” Americans should take heed. This summer, Playbill counted nine immersive shows of note in New York City, including a pro-
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Site Specific Angst — that woozy, stomach-clenching feeling you get when you embark on a show and you have no idea what is going on, what your part in it is supposed to be, where you should put your coat and when it will end.” duction of Alice In Wonderland staged in an actual mental ward. Jones may as well write this one off now: “Visitors may find themselves brushing Alice’s hair and discussing first loves with her,” promises the roundup. It’s not only audiences who should be wary of overkill. Theater companies have something to lose
Kevyn States in the racially charged play Dutchman, staged at the Performa Festival this year.
Exit too. Look no further than Sleep No More, the granddaddy of transatlantic immersive sensations. When the British import opened in a converted Chelsea warehouse dubbed the McKittrick Hotel in 2011, there was at least some mystery to the mythology drummed up by Punchdrunk, the company at the helm, of a century-old, ghost-infested hotel, reopened for service. Any verisimilitude is now long gone. Coming up on its fourth year in Manhattan, the production, ostensibly an adaptation of Macbeth, is more tourist attraction than dramatic revelation. Corporations can rent out the set for private parties. One blogger, reviewing the show this year, penned the unlikely line: “I had already been to the McKittrick Hotel for a rather cool business school party.” How to get your audience to suspend disbelief, then, when you’re peddling the sort of show people may grow weary of before they’ve even arrived? Alex Ernst, the assistant director of Dutchman, a play staged for this year’s Performa Festival in the Russian and Turkish Baths of the East Village, says the key is knowing when to stop.
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Dutchman was written in 1964 by the African American poet LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka). The action is intense, static and racially-charged: a white woman propositions a black man in increasingly needling ways, sitting beside him on a train. Restaging the play in the stifling heat of the saunas made sense dramatically, Ernst said. Spectators followed the actors from room
What, on initial encounters, felt like an exciting, experimental trend can start to feel predictable and hackneyed.” to room, and of three contiguous sets, the last was the hottest of all. As the drama intensified, so did the experience of watching it. Meanwhile, anyone who knows the voyeurism of riding on a train will appreciate how well the stadium seating of a sauna approximates that effect. By the end, the proximity is almost claustrophobic. Throughout, audience members, dressed in bathing suits and the brown robes standard to the place, were encouraged to douse
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themselves with water (jumbosized bottles were provided). Volunteers cooled the final room as much as they could before performances, using a built-in vacuum system and flapping towels to fan out the air. The idea was to push the crowd into a state that enhanced their collective experience — a nobler proposition, one could argue, than orchestrating individual jaunts through a Shakespearethemed haunted house. That’s not to say people weren’t drawn to Dutchman because of its concept. It had a
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sold-out run, despite mixed reviews of the actual acting. But Ernst and Rashid Johnson, the play’s director, aren’t looking to create the city’s next attraction. While a tour of the nation’s bathhouses is on the table — Ernst said Chicago, Johnson’s hometown, would be the first stop — Dutchman won’t be putting down roots anywhere. “Sometimes it’s important that things are not accessible to everyone,” Ernst told HuffPost. “People keep talking about it, and it lives on as legend.” Plus, she added, “the bathhouse is probably ready to kill us right now.”
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Nicholas Bruder as Macbeth and Sophie Bortolussi as Lady Macbeth during a performance of Sleep No More in New York.
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The Ultimate Holiday Survival Guide BY ANN BRENOFF
Exit HAT’S THAT FAMOUS quote about the definition of insanity? The one that had something to do with repeating the same actions and expecting a different outcome? Well, there’s probably no better example of insanity than what happens to us around the holiday time. Year after year we do the same things that result in us being miserable, stressed out and mad at ourselves for knowing better. And so, in following the lead of retailers everywhere who insist on putting up their Christmas items before Halloween, here goes our list of eight things we hope we don’t do (again) this holiday season.
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1. Don’t entertain in a way that is more work than fun. We love to cook and have people over. But boy is it ever work to shop, clean, cook and clean up again. The re-emergence of the potluck dinner was probably the one good thing that came out of the recession, so don’t be afraid to ask people to bring a side dish or dessert — or even a main course. And as for the clean-up, learn to say “yes” when your guests offer to help. Four hands
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in the kitchen gets the job done twice as fast as two. Also, stick to your own entertaining schedule and lifestyle. If what you enjoy most is Sunday brunch, then don’t throw a Saturday night cocktails and dinner party. I have a friend who says she won’t enjoy herself if her feet hurt so she refuses to wear any-
The re-emergence of the potluck dinner was probably the one good thing that came out of the recession, so don’t be afraid to ask people to bring a side dish or dessert — or even a main course.” thing but her comfy UGGs; when we go there for dinner, I know it will be casual dress — Saturday night or otherwise.
2. Don’t stay up past your bedtime if doing so leaves you a wreck the next day. If you love your synagogue’s Chanukah concert, by all means go. But if the idea of staying out until 11 p.m. on a Tuesday night when
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you have work the next day means you’ll be a basket case, then sit by the exit and leave by 9:30 p.m. The older we get, the more we appreciate early weeknights. We are happy to put on our dancing shoes on weekends, but we know some folks who just flat out say ‘No” to all things during the week.
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3. Don’t have inflated family expectations. Yes, your great-aunt is going to say your turkey is dry because that’s what she says every year. Someone else will ask if you’ve put on some weight or want to know why you are still in that job you hate so much. Take deep breaths and remember they mean well. And for the ones who don’t, well, where is it written that you have to invite them next year? Ridding your life of the people who suck the air out of the room for you is the best gift you can give yourself. Sorry if that sounds like something you’d read on Facebook. It happens to be true. Last year, someone I know decided to sit out Christmas week on a beach in Hawaii. They skipped the gift-giving and surfed on Christmas Eve. Best holiday ever, they said after. When it
comes to fight or flight, sometimes fleeing works best.
4. Don’t say “yes” to everyone. You can’t please everyone, so why try? This is the season when people tend to throw more parties, arrange more events, make more demands on your time. Just say no. Get real. Not every “group” in your life — carpool moms, soccer team moms, bridge club, book club, golfing buds — needs to have a special holiday gathering. You see half these people on a regular basis anyway, so can’t you just say “happy holidays” at your next pilates class and skip the group lunch after?
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5. Don’t follow the crowds. This is just common sense: Fighting for parking spots, waiting in long lines, feeling suffocated by the in-a-hurry masses — none of that is good stuff. It raises your stress level, wastes your time and in general zaps your soul. Don’t hit the mall at peak shopping hours. Shop online, patronize small local merchants who gift wrap for free. And instead of seeing The Nutcracker at the big arts center in the city, maybe the local community version would be
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more enjoyable, not to mention convenient.
6. Don’t exempt your employer from #4. Many of us secretly wish that the money the company spends on the office holiday banquet was instead deposited in our paychecks. If you feel this way, urge your company to think “holiday bonus” instead of party. We already spend more time each week with our co-workers than we do with our spouses and children. Or, if an employer really insists on giving workers a holiday treat, how about at least
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doing it on the work-clock instead of after-hours?
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7. Don’t spend too much. Who among us hasn’t had the January hangover that comes from overspending? As much as we’d like to see the economy stimulated from a robust shopping season, we just know in our gut that we can’t afford it. More than that, spending feels more like gluttony in a season that is supposed to be about something more joyous. Instead, why not agree in advance that you won’t be exchanging gifts with every office co-work-
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er, every relative, everyone who you know? All those small gifts start to add up and before you know it, you’ve racked up a credit card bill that makes your stomach do flip-flops. Now is a great time to have that “let’s not exchange gifts” conversation because as we know, the holiday shopping season officially begins in July nowadays.
8. Don’t forget to add a little spirituality in the holiday experience. Whether it be in a church, mosque, synagogue or your favorite easy chair, stop and smell the roses. Be grateful for what you have; be generous with what you share.
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EAT THIS
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Want Great Pancakes? Don’t Make These Mistakes. BY JULIE R. THOMSON
Exit ANCAKES ARE ONE of the best things that ever happened to breakfast, second only to bacon. They’re just so light and fluffy — and they soak up so much butter and maple syrup — it’s hard not to love them. Or at least that’s the case when you make pancakes right. But not all pancakes are made properly. Actually, a lot of people botch their pancakes, and it’s time for this to stop.
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The principles behind making pancakes are simple — you just whip up a quick batter and fry them up. But so much can go wrong along the way, leaving you with dense, flat or burned pancakes. This is tragic, guys. If this happens to your breakfast pancakes, you’re probably committing at least one, if not all nine, of the common pancake mistakes. Find out what they are and put an end to your pancake misery.
DON’T SKIMP ON INGREDIENTS We know opting for all-purpose flour is the easiest option, but Alton Brown swears by mixing AP flour with cake flour for the best batter consistency. And who are we to argue with Alton Brown? DON’T ESTIMATE THE INGREDIENTS If you want perfectly fluffy pancakes, you’ll have to weigh your ingredients to make sure the ratios are accurate. We know it takes a little more work, but it’s worth it for better pancakes. DON’T MAKE THE BATTER IN ADVANCE It might be tempting to have pancake batter ready to go whenever
the urge should strike, but don’t do this. Make the batter only right before you plan on cooking pancakes. If not, the flour will absorb too much liquid and thicken the batter. DON’T OVERBEAT THE BATTER We know your instinct is to get rid of all the lumps in the batter, but this is an epic mistake. Quickly whisk the batter just until the
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dry ingredients incorporate with the wet ones, and then stop. Even if you see lumps. DON’T POUR OIL DIRECTLY INTO PAN One of the reasons you have so many duds when making pancakes is because of uneven cooking. If you pour oil directly into the pan often times it will pool in some areas while leaving other parts of the pan dry. (We’ve all seen this happen.) This creates uneven cooking which is all wrong for pancakes. They’ll burn in some areas and be uncooked in others. Instead, apply oil with wadded paper towels.
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DON’T OVERHEAT THE PAN Yes, you want the pan hot, but not too hot. Temperature is key to making good pancakes. If the pan is too hot or too cold, the pancakes will scorch or they won’t rise. Go for a medium-high heat — and don’t be shy about turning it down if it feels too hot. DON’T MESS WITH THE PANCAKES Once the pancake is cooking on the pan, give it some space. Don’t shake the pan or move the pancake because this gets in the way of it rising properly.
DON’T OVER-FLIP THE PANCAKES Only flip the pancake once. If you need to cheat a little while cooking them to make sure they’re not burning, you can gently lift the pancake to take a look underneath. Over-flipping can cause your pancakes to deflate. DON’T FLIP BEFORE THE BUBBLES BURST One of the easiest ways to know when to flip pancakes is to wait for bubbles to form and burst in the center. Have faith that the pancake will let you know when it’s ready to flip and you’ll be rewarded with perfect pancakes.
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MUSIC
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Dog Ears: The Gift of Music In which we spotlight music from a diversity of genres and decades, lending an insider’s ear to what deserves to be heard. BY THE EVERLASTING PHIL RAMONE AND DANIELLE EVIN
PERCY SLEDGE
RICKIE LEE JONES
BROTHER JOE MAY
Master soul singer/songwriter Percy Sledge was born in Leighton, Ala., in 1940. Raised on gospel music, he started singing professionally with the Esquires Combo as a teen. Before embarking on his solo career, Sledge worked in a hospital, where a patient introduced him to producer Quin Ivy. Shortly after, the historic recording “When a Man Loves a Woman” catapulted Sledge to instant immortality. He went on to sign with Atlantic and racked up countless vinyls. He’s collaborated with Spooner Oldham, Bobby Womack and Mick Taylor. Accolades include the Rhythm & Blues Foundation’s first Career Achievement Award in 1989 and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. Revisit the eternal 1966 classic “It Tears Me Up,” from The Best of Percy Sledge.
Singer, producer, and two-time Grammy winner Rickie Lee Jones was born in Chicago, one of four children, raised in a “hillbilly-hipster” household of vaudevillian stock. A solitary child with a deep imagination, she learned to sing from her father. Rickie Lee left home for California at the end of her teens and settled in Venice Beach. By her early 20s, she started making her bones on the club circuit. By the late ’70s, Tom Waits entered her life; the two forged a pivotal union, romantically and musically. Jones went on to collaborate with Dr. John, Lowell George, James Newton Howard, Charlie Hayden, and Joe Henderson, issuing a golden score of releases throughout the decades. Her 1979 debut album, Rickie Lee Jones, produced by Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman, is an astounding soundmark. Download “The Last Chance Texaco,” from Rickie Lee Jones.
Tenor Brother Joe May was born in Macon, Miss., on Nov. 9, 1912. By the age of 9, he started singing in church. In 1941, he moved to East St. Louis, where he studied with the legendary Willie Mae Ford Smith, who dubbed him “The Thunderbolt of the Middle West.” By 1949, May was discovered by J.W. Alexander and debuted with “Search Me Lord” for Specialty Records. In the late ’50s, May moved over to the Nashboro label, where he remained throughout his career. The early ’60s found May starring as the lead in Black Nativity with Marion Williams. This gospel great passed away in 1972 from a stroke. Relish Brother Joe May’s beginnings with “Our Father,” from The Great Gospel Men: 27 Classic Performances by the Greatest Gospel Men collection.
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes.com GENRE: R&B/Soul ARTIST: Percy Sledge SONG: It Tears Me Up ALBUM: The Best of Percy Sledge
TAP HERE TO BUY: Amazon GENRE: Singer/Songwriter ARTIST: Rickie Lee Jones SONG: The Last Chance Texaco ALBUM: Rickie Lee Jones
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes GENRE: Gospel ARTIST: Brother Joe May SONG: Our Father ALBUM: The Great Gospel Men: 27 Classic Performances by the Greatest Gospel Men
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MUSIC
DAVID AMRAM
GEORGE JONES
JIMMIE LUNCEFORD
Classical/jazz virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist David Amram was born in Depression-era Philly. As a child, he studied piano, yet the French horn became his mainstay. After studies at Oberlin, he graduated from George Washington University in 1952. At that time, he played for the National Symphony Orchestra, but by decade’s end, he was a major Beat movement figure, collaborating with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Amram’s other collaborations include Leonard Bernstein, Dizzy Gillespie, Dustin Hoffman, Willie Nelson, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus and Lionel Hampton. Among his theater, orchestral, opera, and film credits are Pull My Daisy, The Manchurian Candidate starring Frank Sinatra, Splendor in the Grass and The Final Ingredient. Accolades include six honorary doctorates. This true original has issued a treasure trove of releases, both as a soloist and a sideman, and continues to tour. Discover Amram’s “Elegy,” from his 1998 Triple Concerto.
Country Hall of Famer George Jones made records for over five decades, raising the bar for the everlasting genre. Brimming with humility, passion, and candor, amidst his hardscuffled reputation, he was an integral force in the history of American music. Born in Saratoga, Tx., in 1931, one of seven children, he called radio his first instrument, before taking the guitar into his arms by his teen years. At 16, he left home to follow his dream and served in the Marines during the Korean War. In the ’50s, he started marking his illustrious catalog, amassing over 40-plus releases, including his legendary collaboration with country queen and ex-wife Tammy Wynette. Among his collaborations: Gene Pitney, Brenda Lee, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Leon Russell, Dolly Parton, Shelby Lynn and Keith Richards. Jones, a National Medal of Arts winner, was honored at the Kennedy Center for his lifetime contribution to American culture in 2008. His was also awarded two Grammys, among his dozens of accolades. George Jones passed away in 2013. Remember him with his Grammy-winning “He Stopped Lovin’ Her Today,” from A Collection of My Best Recollection.
Swing Era bandleader and alto-saxophonist Jimmie Lunceford was born in Mississippi in 1902, son of a church singer. He studied under bandleader Paul Whiteman’s father in Denver and attended Fisk University in Tennessee and City College in New York. After settling in Memphis to teach high school, Lunceford founded the student jazz ensemble the Chicksaw Syncopators and took it pro by 1930. The group recorded sporadically until 1934, when it claimed a coveted spot at Harlem’s Cotton Club. Refreshed within a year as The Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, the outfit followed up with recordings for Decca. During its storied run, the swingin’ ensemble included Moses Allen (bass), Jimmy Crawford (drums), Eddie Durham (trombone) and Sy Oliver (trumpet). In 1947, a sudden heart attack took Lunceford at the much-too-early age of 45. Revisit Jimmie Lunceford with his 1935 signature track “Rhythm Is Our Business,” from Rhythm Is Our Business.
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes GENRE: Classical ARTIST: David Amram SONG: Elegy ALBUM: Triple Concerto
TAP HERE TO BUY: CrackerBarrel. com ARTIST: George Jones SONG: He Stopped Lovin’ Her Today ALBUM: A Collection of My Best Recollection
TAP HERE TO BUY: iTunes GENRE: Jazz/Swing ARTIST: Jimmie Lunceford SONG: Rhythm Is Our Business ALBUM: Rhythm Is Our Business
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HUFFINGTON 12.15.13
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HUFFINGTON 12.15.13
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