Dan Jones

Zombie Head Cookie Jar

 

Reuters

World News

06.29.14

After months of gaining territory, weapons, and cash, ISIS is putting its global credibility on the line in a play that could backfire spectacularly.

On Sunday morning, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, or ISIL, if you must) pronounced the reformation of the caliphate—the historical Islamic state that once stretched over much of the modern-day Muslim world—with ISIS emir Abu Bakr al Baghdadi as the man in charge.

It’s arguably the boldest move yet by the group, which renamed itself simply The Islamic State. But if ISIS isn’t careful, this could be the moment when all of its gains in Iraq and Syria are squandered; when would-be allies are alienated; and when the group’s critics within the jihadi community were proven right all along.

In the statement—released in Arabic, English, German, French, and Russian—ISIS claimed that it had fulfilled all the legal requirements for the caliphate and that all existing jihadi groups and indeed all Muslims around the world were religiously obligated to swear loyalty to the new Caliph Ibrahim (using the name provided by ISIS in the course of proving that Baghdadi has the required lineage for the title).

Prior to this pronouncement, my assessment was that there was almost no way ISIS could exit June in worse shape than it entered the month, and that still holds. But July is beginning to look like an open question. ISIS, an al Qaeda breakaway group, had made a bold move to seize territory in Iraq that had resulted in tremendous gains in both equipment and money. Even if it lost all of the territory it gained in June, it would still retain many of those spoils, with new clout, status and physical assets to compete with the other jihadi groups operating in Syria and near the Iraq border.

The declaration of the caliphate is a massive gamble that puts many of these gains at risk, although the potential benefits are also substantial. Here's a quick rundown of the moving parts:

Competition with al Qaeda

As I’ve discussed previously, ISIS has been competing with the original al Qaeda for leadership of the global jihadist movement (a great history of the conflict can be found here by Aaron Zelin).

ISIS’s recent gains in Iraq projected strength and dynamism, while AQ Classic looked weak and indecisive. AQ has maintained a slim but diminishing lead over ISIS among key influencers in the movement, and more recent data suggested that it was hurting AQC in fundraising networks, although it also appeared to be diminishing enthusiasm for the jihad in Syria overall.

There is one factor that could cause all of this to work out dramatically in ISIS’s favor, but it would require a large number of variables to fall into place. That factor is U.S. intervention.

The pronouncement of the caliphate is sure to be wildly controversial on religious grounds, but ultimately it could cut either way. The backlash may harden the pro-AQ segment of the global jihadist movement against ISIS, especially with the announcement’s flat-out demand that all other jihadist groups are religiously obligated to pledge loyalty to ISIS. But it will also generate some enthusiasm from foot soldiers and different segments of the global movement that see ISIS as a rising star.

There is a risk of high-level defections from AQ to ISIS, particularly in North Africa, where several groups and segments of groups have already broadly telegraphed their sympathies toward ISIS. A significant number of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) supporters in Yemen have also been showing signs of sympathies to ISIS for some time. Since the announcement, social networks in the neighborhood of AQAP appear to be supportive.

On the other hand, Muslims worldwide are likely, on the whole, to react negatively to the pronouncement. The question here is how many currently nonviolent radicals will jump toward ISIS and how many will jump away from it. Again, this is a high-risk, high-reward scenario for ISIS. It could reap considerable benefits, but the backlash could be severe.

Regardless of how that plays out, today’s pronouncement will likely generate new streams of fundraising and fighter recruitment, even as it depresses others.

The long-term outcome is unclear, but much may depend on what happens next in Iraq.

On the Ground in Iraq

ISIS made its gains in Iraq as part of a coalition of Sunnis with grievances against the Maliki government. Those groups may have seen a temporary advantage in aligning with ISIS, but the pronouncement of the caliphate sends a clear message to all of ISIS’s Iraqi partners that they are the subordinate parties in this alliance. ISIS may have cleared this move with its key allies in advance, but if it didn’t, the power grab could splinter the very coalition that allowed it to seize territory in the first place.

More significantly, the calculus of holding territory has now changed. Prior to the pronouncement, ISIS could have fallen back to its previous domain along the border of Iraq and Syria with little loss of face and a huge increase in its war-fighting capabilities, thanks to captured weaponry and millions of dollars in stolen funds.

Now, if ISIS is driven back, Baghdadi risks being seen as the man who grasped for the caliphate, held it in his hands for one brief shining moment, then lost it all.

Such a loss would highlight the hubris of ISIS in making this pronouncement and would also seem to validate the arguments of al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri that ISIS’s methodology was flawed and that the splinter group was putting the cart of an Islamic state ahead of the horse of fighting jihad.

The question now is how confident ISIS is about its ability to hold substantial territory in Iraq (reports suggest it is under heavy pressure in Tikrit already, and the United States has yet to deploy any airpower against the insurgents). If ISIS made sure its partners are the ground would support the pronouncement and if it withheld the pronouncement until it was sure it had consolidated its gains, then it is in a position to reap benefits.

If ISIS rushed its timeline or overruled objections from local partners, it may lose its territorial gains quickly and end up condemned for an arrogant and ill-advised power grab. The wording of its pronouncement certainly reeks of arrogance, demanding an oath of loyalty from essentially all Muslims, with dissenters being labeled sinners at best, or apostates at worst.

At best, and in the absence of any surprising new information (which could certainly be coming), ISIS appears to be standing on the edge of a precipice with an adolescent faith in its ability to keep its balance.

It may be able to walk that line, but it’s a stunning and unnecessary risk by a group that could have navigated the next few months with excellent odds of an outcome that ranged from good to very good. Now it has introduced a much higher risk of an outcome that is truly bad for its long-term prospects.

AP

One Potential Path Through

There is one factor that could cause all of this to work out dramatically in ISIS’s favor, but it would require a large number of variables to fall into place. That factor is U.S. intervention.

The prospect of a U.S. military intervention, most likely in the form of air strikes, was already problematic. While there are many who understandably favor hitting ISIS in order to deny it control of territory in Iraq, such a strike would bestow on ISIS the one thing it has until now been unable to definitively claim—legitimacy. A potential new line of jihadist argument then emerges: The caliphate was restored, but it was directly destroyed by the United States.

(Iran could also possibly fill the villain role here, resulting in a different possible tectonic shift in the global movement. And I suppose the Israelis could also intervene, which would probably overturn the entire playing board and start a new, very unappealing game.)

Even before today’s pronouncement, there was a substantial risk that U.S. strikes on ISIS would bolster its standing in the global jihadist community, allowing it to gain ground against al Qaeda in the battle for hearts and minds.

U.S. strikes could also subvert the trend in recent years toward the localization of jihadist conflicts or unite the currently splintered jihadist movement against the U.S. as its primary enemy once more, with ISIS subsequently holding a central position in a unified global struggle.

If the pronouncement of the caliphate is received as legitimate by some significant number of jihadists and their stay-at-home supporters worldwide and...

If the United States is seen to be the most important contributor to destroying that nascent caliphate...

...there could be cascading consequences on a scale we have not previously seen. It could result in waves of terrorist attacks in the West, a surge in foreign fighter recruitment and fundraising, and significant instability in the Middle Eastern states that aren’t already experiencing it.

But those are two extremely large ifs.

If this has been ISIS’s plan all along, it is audacious but borders on the insane. It is an all-or-nothing gambit. ISIS has meaningfully put its existence on the line with today’s pronouncement. It is playing the lottery, and while the odds are stacked against it, sometimes people win the lottery.

Above all else, it is clear that ISIS is an adrenaline addict. If the group survives, it may be emboldened to take even greater risks, and our strategy needs to be informed by that understanding.

The article originally appeared at Intelwire, which delivers breaking news, primary source research, and critical analysis on terrorism, homegrown extremism, and national security.

Facebook caused a stir over the weekend with the revelation that it had been altering the content of some users' News Feeds in an attempt to study the psychology behind what causes people to post emotional material. Now Adam Kramer, Facebook data scientist and co-author of the study, has posted an explanation of the motivation behind the research, which he says serves as Facebook's statement on the matter.

"The reason we did this research is because we care about the emotional impact of Facebook and the people that use our product," says Kramer. "We felt that it was important to investigate the common worry that seeing friends post positive content leads to people feeling negative or left out. At the same time, we were concerned that exposure to friends' negativity might lead people to avoid visiting Facebook."

"In hindsight, the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety."

Kramer notes that the study affected 0.04 percent of users over one week in 2012, though at Facebook's scale that covers hundreds of thousands of people. The study's findings contradicted conventional wisdom, according to the scientist, as seeing positive emotions on Facebook was found to encourage similarly positive content. In a separate statement provided to The Guardian, Facebook said the research was designed to "improve our services and to make the content people see on Facebook as relevant and engaging as possible."

"Having written and designed this experiment myself, I can tell you that our goal was never to upset anyone," says Kramer. "I can understand why some people have concerns about it, and my co-authors and I are very sorry for the way the paper described the research and any anxiety it caused. In hindsight, the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety." Kramer says that Facebook has improved its internal review practices since 2012, and future research will take the reaction to this study into account.

ADOLESCENCE is practically synonymous in our culture with risk taking, emotional drama and all forms of outlandish behavior. Until very recently, the widely accepted explanation for adolescent angst has been psychological. Developmentally, teenagers face a number of social and emotional challenges, like starting to separate from their parents, getting accepted into a peer group and figuring out who they really are. It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to realize that these are anxiety-provoking transitions.

But there is a darker side to adolescence that, until now, was poorly understood: a surge during teenage years in anxiety and fearfulness. Largely because of a quirk of brain development, adolescents, on average, experience more anxiety and fear and have a harder time learning how not to be afraid than either children or adults.

Different regions and circuits of the brain mature at very different rates. It turns out that the brain circuit for processing fear — the amygdala — is precocious and develops way ahead of the prefrontal cortex, the seat of reasoning and executive control. This means that adolescents have a brain that is wired with an enhanced capacity for fear and anxiety, but is relatively underdeveloped when it comes to calm reasoning.

You may wonder why, if adolescents have such enhanced capacity for anxiety, they are such novelty seekers and risk takers. It would seem that the two traits are at odds. The answer, in part, is that the brain’s reward center, just like its fear circuit, matures earlier than the prefrontal cortex. That reward center drives much of teenagers’ risky behavior. This behavioral paradox also helps explain why adolescents are particularly prone to injury and trauma. The top three killers of teenagers are accidents, homicide and suicide.

The brain-development lag has huge implications for how we think about anxiety and how we treat it. It suggests that anxious adolescents may not be very responsive to psychotherapy that attempts to teach them to be unafraid, like cognitive behavior therapy, which is zealously prescribed for teenagers.

What we have learned should also make us think twice — and then some — about the ever rising use of stimulants in young people, because these drugs may worsen anxiety and make it harder for teenagers to do what they are developmentally supposed to do: learn to be unafraid when it is appropriate to do so.

As a psychiatrist, I’ve treated many adults with various anxiety disorders, nearly all of whom trace the origin of the problem to their teenage years. They typically report an uneventful childhood rudely interrupted by adolescent anxiety. For many, the anxiety was inexplicable and came out of nowhere.

OF course, most adolescents do not develop anxiety disorders, but acquire the skill to modulate their fear as their prefrontal cortex matures in young adulthood, at around age 25. But up to 20 percent of adolescents in the United States experience a diagnosable anxiety disorder, like generalized anxiety or panic attacks, probably resulting from a mix of genetic factors and environmental influences. The prevalence of anxiety disorders and risky behavior (both of which reflect this developmental disjunction in the brain) have been relatively steady, which suggests to me that the biological contribution is very significant.

One of my patients, a 32-year-old man, recalled feeling anxious in social gatherings as a teenager. “It was viscerally unpleasant and I felt as if I couldn’t even speak the same language as other people in the room,” he said.” It wasn’t that he disliked human company; rather, socializing in groups felt dangerous, even though intellectually he knew that wasn’t the case. He developed a strategy early on to deal with his discomfort: alcohol. When he drank, he felt relaxed and able to engage. Now treated and sober for several years, he still has a trace of social anxiety and still wishes for a drink in anticipation of socializing.

Of course, we all experience anxiety. Among other things, it’s a normal emotional response to threatening situations. The hallmark of an anxiety disorder is the persistence of anxiety that causes intense distress and interferes with functioning even in safe settings, long after any threat has receded.

We’ve recently learned that adolescents show heightened fear responses and have difficulty learning how not to be afraid. In one study using brain M.R.I., researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and Stanford University found that when adolescents were shown fearful faces, they had exaggerated responses in the amygdala compared with children and adults.

The amygdala is a region buried deep beneath the cortex that is critical in evaluating and responding to fear. It sends and receives connections to our prefrontal cortex alerting us to danger even before we have had time to really think about it. Think of that split-second adrenaline surge when you see what appears to be a snake out on a hike in the woods. That instantaneous fear is your amygdala in action. Then you circle back, take another look and this time your prefrontal cortex tells you it was just a harmless stick.

Thus, the fear circuit is a two-way street. While we have limited control over the fear alarm from our amygdala, our prefrontal cortex can effectively exert top-down control, giving us the ability to more accurately assess the risk in our environment. Because the prefrontal cortex is one of the last brain regions to mature, adolescents have far less ability to modulate emotions.

Fear learning lies at the heart of anxiety and anxiety disorders. This primitive form of learning allows us to form associations between events and specific cues and environments that may predict danger. Way back on the savanna, for example, we would have learned that the rustle in the grass or the sudden flight of birds might signal a predator — and taken the cue and run to safety. Without the ability to identify such danger signals, we would have been lunch long ago.

But once previously threatening cues or situations become safe, we have to be able to re-evaluate them and suppress our learned fear associations. People with anxiety disorders have trouble doing this and experience persistent fear in the absence of threat — better known as anxiety.

Another patient I saw in consultation recently, a 23-year-old woman, described how she became anxious when she was younger after seeing a commercial about asthma. “It made me incredibly worried for no reason, and I had a panic attack soon after seeing it,” she said. As an older teenager, she became worried about getting too close to homeless people and would hold her breath when near them, knowing that “this was crazy and made no sense.”

B. J. Casey, a professor of psychology and the director of the Sackler Institute at Weill Cornell Medical College, has studied fear learning in a group of children, adolescents and adults. Subjects were shown a colored square at the same time that they were exposed to an aversive noise. The colored square, previously a neutral stimulus, became associated with an unpleasant sound and elicited a fear response similar to that elicited by the sound. What Dr. Casey and her colleagues found was that there were no differences between the subjects in the acquisition of fear conditioning.

But when Dr. Casey trained the subjects to essentially unlearn the association between the colored square and the noise — a process called fear extinction — something very different happened. With fear extinction, subjects are repeatedly shown the colored square in the absence of the noise. Now the square, also known as the conditioned stimulus, loses its ability to elicit a fear response. Dr. Casey discovered that adolescents had a much harder time “unlearning” the link between the colored square and the noise than children or adults did.

IN effect, adolescents had trouble learning that a cue that was previously linked to something aversive was now neutral and “safe.” If you consider that adolescence is a time of exploration when young people develop greater autonomy, an enhanced capacity for fear and a more tenacious memory for threatening situations are adaptive and would confer survival advantage. In fact, the developmental gap between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex that is described in humans has been found across mammalian species, suggesting that this is an evolutionary advantage. This new understanding about the neurodevelopmental basis of adolescent anxiety has important implications, too, in how we should treat anxiety disorders. One of the most widely used and empirically supported treatments for anxiety disorders is cognitive behavior therapy, a form of extinction learning in which a stimulus that is experienced as frightening is repeatedly presented in a nonthreatening environment. If, for example, you had a fear of spiders, you would be gradually exposed to them in a setting where there were no dire consequences and you would slowly lose your arachnophobia. The paradox is that adolescents are at increased risk of anxiety disorders in part because of their impaired ability to successfully extinguish fear associations, yet they may be the least responsive to desensitization treatments like cognitive behavior therapy precisely because of this impairment.

This presents a huge clinical challenge since young people are generally risk takers who are more prone to exposure to trauma as a direct result of their behavior, to say nothing of those who were exposed to the horrors of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the mass shootings like those in Newtown and Aurora. Many of them will go on to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, which is essentially a form of fear learning. Now we have good reason to think that exposure therapy alone may not be the best treatment for them. A recent study of children and adolescents with anxiety disorders found that only 55 to 60 percent of subjects responded to either cognitive behavior therapy or an antidepressant alone, but 81 percent responded to a combination of these treatments. And in another study, there was preliminary evidence that adolescents responded less well to cognitive behavior therapy than children or adults.

This isn’t to say that cognitive therapy is ineffective for teenagers, but that because of their relative difficulty in learning to be unafraid, it may not be the most effective treatment when used on its own.

And there is potentially something else to worry about with our anxious adolescents: the meteoric rise in their use of psychostimulants like Ritalin and Adderall. In theory, stimulants could have a negative impact on the normal developmental trajectory of anxious teenagers.

According to the health care data company IMS Health, prescription sales for stimulants increased more than fivefold between 2002 and 2012. This is of potential concern because it is well known from both human and animal studies that stimulants enhance learning and, in particular, fear conditioning. Stimulants, just like emotionally charged experiences, cause the release of norepinephrine — a close relative of adrenaline — in the brain and facilitate memory formation. That’s the reason we can easily forget where we put our keys but will never forget the details of being assaulted.

Might our promiscuous use of stimulants impair the ability of adolescents to suppress learned fear — something that is a normal part of development — and make them more fearful adults? And could stimulants unwittingly increase the risk of PTSD in adolescents exposed to trauma? In truth, we haven’t a clue.

But we do know this: Adolescents are not just carefree novelty seekers and risk takers; they are uniquely vulnerable to anxiety and have a hard time learning to be unafraid of passing dangers. Parents have to realize that adolescent anxiety is to be expected, and to comfort their teenagers — and themselves — by reminding them that they will grow up and out of it soon enough.

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The USS San Antonio (James DeAngio/U.S. Navy)

Right now, a suspected terrorist is sitting in the bowels of a U.S. Navy warship somewhere between the Mediterranean Sea and Washington, D.C. Ahmed Abu Khattala, the alleged leader of the September 2012 attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, is imprisoned aboard the USS New York, likely in a bare cell normally reserved for U.S. military personnel facing disciplinary action at sea. En route to the United States for more than a week, he’s being questioned by military and civilian interrogators looking for critical bits of intelligence before he’s read his Miranda rights, formally arrested, and transferred to the U.S. District Court in Washington, where he’ll face trial. Meanwhile, the sailors aboard are going about the daily business of operating an amphibious transport ship—even as the ship’s mission has been redefined by the new passenger in their midst.

This isn’t the first time the Navy has played such a critical, curious, and largely under-reported role in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. In 2011, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a military commander for the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab, was captured aboard a fishing boat in the Gulf of Aden and detained by the Navy, on the high seas, for two months. In 2013, Abu Anas al-Libi, the alleged mastermind of the 1998 terrorist attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was held aboard the USS San Antonio—an identical ship to the one being used this week.  Both men were interrogated at sea before being flown to the United States to face criminal charges in federal courts. Warsame eventually pleaded guilty to nine counts, including providing material support to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and teaching other terrorists how to make explosives. Al-Libi pleaded not guilty to terrorism-related charges, and his case is ongoing.

In many ways, it’s not surprising that the U.S. government has been turning Navy assets into floating prisons for these dangerous men. Taking the slow route back to the United States offers interrogators the time and space to gather crucial intelligence from high-value sources like al-Qaeda-linked operatives. During the two months that Warsame was at sea, a select team of FBI, CIA, and Defense Department officials, part of the Obama administration’s High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, questioned the Somali terrorist on “all but a daily basis.” He was cooperative throughout and some reports suggest that subsequent U.S. counterterrorism operations, including a drone attack in Somalia shortly after his capture, were a direct result of intelligence Warsame provided to authorities. While al-Libi was only detained at sea for about a week—a chronic medical condition prevented him from being held on a ship for an extended period—reports suggest that similar intelligence-collection efforts were underway in his case as well.

The U.S. government has also embraced the approach because it has limited options for holding and interrogating men like Abu Khattala after capture. The Obama administration remains committed to ending detention operations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. While the facility is still home to almost 150 alleged terrorists, the United States has not sent any new detainees there since March 2008. Detaining suspected terrorists at other overseas facilities is likewise not an option. For a time, U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan were a possibility. But the detention facility in Parwan is now an Afghan-run prison, and using facilities in other countries would raise a host of legal, operational, and humanitarian concerns. Even if U.S. officials were willing to forgo the opportunity to question Abu Khattala before he’s arraigned in federal court and provided with a lawyer, flying alleged terrorists to the United States immediately presents its own set of problems. Seemingly small operational and political considerations about the ways in which the United States transports terrorists captured abroad have major strategic implications, particularly given lingering questions about U.S. rendition efforts under the Bush administration. In this context, the Navy has taken on the role of high-seas prison warden, even as lawyers continue to debate whether and what international legal rules apply to terrorists captured abroad and detained, temporarily, on a ship.

Two years ago, I stood on another U.S. warship as it pulled into the Arabian Sea, similarly tasked with holding dangerous men no one else wanted to hold. The brig below had just been cleared of approximately a dozen alleged pirates who, like Warsame, al-Libi, and Abu Khattala, had yet to stand trial. They had been captured a few weeks earlier, in the midst of attacking a cargo ship, but it was still unclear who could—and would—prosecute them. In the interim, the Navy had imprisoned them in the carrier’s brig—a barren room with a dozen bunk beds and matching small lockers, its gray walls devoid of any marks indicating where on the ship they were located. Like the guards at Guantánamo, the ship’s burly master-at-arms removed his name tag while the pirates were on board so that they couldn’t identify him. He told me that his men weren’t quite sure what to feed the pirates, or what to give them to read to pass time during their weeks in custody at sea. At least, he noted, the detainees seemed to like getting fresh air on the ship’s flight deck—and the cigarettes and candy bars his sailors provided when the pirates followed the rules. Even more curious was the impact holding these dangerous men had on the carrier as a whole. As one former Navy officer explained to me, “We ended up driving [our] ships up and down the coasts, to keep them [in international waters]. . . . Our operations were driven by having to hold onto these knuckleheads.”

Somali pirates are usually let go if no country is willing and able to prosecute them. In these situations, the Navy has no choice but to put them in life jackets and shuttle them close to the coast on small boats, where they are set free and wade to shore. The alleged orchestrator of the Benghazi attack, on the other hand, will soon face trial in a U.S. federal court. Until then, the USS New York steams west from the Mediterranean. Abu Khattala undergoes questioning. And a Navy sailor wonders what to make a Libyan terrorist for dinner.

The photos and satellite images from Tikrit provide strong evidence of a horrible war crime that needs further investigation. ISIS apparently executed at the very least 160 people in Tikrit.

Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director

(Baghdad) – Analysis of photographs and satellite imagery strongly indicates that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) conducted mass executions in Tikrit after seizing control of the city on June 11, 2014.

The analysis suggests that ISIS killed between 160 and 190 men in at least two locations between June 11 and 14. The number of victims may well be much higher, but the difficulty of locating bodies and accessing the area has prevented a full investigation, Human Rights Watch said.

On June 12, ISIS claimed to have executed 1,700 “Shi’a members of the army” in Tikrit. Two days later, it posted to a website photographs with groups of apparently executed men. On June 22, Iraq’s human rights minister announced that ISIS had executed 175 Iraqi Air Force recruits in Tikrit.

“The photos and satellite images from Tikrit provide strong evidence of a horrible war crime that needs further investigation,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director. “ISIS apparently executed at the very least 160 people in Tikrit.”

On June 12, ISIS first announced on its now-closed Twitter feed that it had “exterminated” 1,700 Iraqi troops. The same day, the group posted videos of hundreds of captured men in civilian clothes, who it claimed had surrendered at the nearby Iraqi Speiker military base. On June 14, ISIS posted roughly 60 photographs, some of which show masked ISIS fighters loading captives in civilian clothes onto trucks and forcing them to lie in three shallow trenches with their hands bound behind their backs. Some of the images show masked gunmen pointing and firing their weapons at these men.

By comparing ground features and landmarks in the photographs released by ISIS, Human Rights Watch established that two of the trenches were at the same location. By comparing these photographs with satellite imagery from 2013 and publicly available photographs from Tikrit taken earlier, Human Rights Watch located the site in a field about 100 meters north of the Water Palace in Tikrit – a former palace of Saddam Hussein next to the Tigris River. The location of the third trench has not been identified.

Human Rights Watch also reviewed satellite imagery of the area recorded on the morning of June 16. The imagery does not reveal evidence of bodies at the site with the two trenches, but does show indications of recent vehicle activity and surface movement of earth that is consistent with the two shallow trenches visible in the ISIS photos. Without visiting the site it is impossible to know if bodies are buried there or were moved.

On June 22, the Iraqi human rights minister, Mohamed Shia Sudani, said at a news conference that the bodies of some of the 175 air force recruits who had been killed were thrown into the Tigris River and that others were buried in a mass grave. A spokesman for the minister confirmed that statement to Human Rights Watch on June 23.

An Iraqi security official said that as many as 11 bodies of the executed recruits had been recovered from the Tigris River downstream from the execution site.

The execution photographs that ISIS distributed suggest that gunmen killed the men at the site in at least three groups. The photographs show one group of men lying in one trench and a second group of men lying on top of the first. A third group of men is seen lying in a second trench.

Based on a count of the bodies visible in the available photographs, Human Rights Watch estimates that ISIS killed between 90 and 110 men in the first trench and between 35 and 40 men in the second.

A preliminary review of the shadow length and angle in the photographs suggests the two groups of men in the first trench were possibly executed around 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. The men in the second trench were possibly executed around 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.

Photographs from ISIS show a fourth group of approximately 30 to 40 prisoners on, and later next to, one of the two transport trucks on the main road between the execution site and the Water Palace. The photos were probably taken later that day, between 4 and 5 p.m.

One of the photographs that ISIS distributed suggests that the group killed prisoners at a second site around the same time, but Human Rights Watch has been unable to locate that site. That photograph shows a large trench with between 35 and 40 prisoners being shot by at least 8 ISIS fighters. Based on the shadow length and angle, the photograph was probably taken between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. One of the ISIS gunmen visible at that site was also visible in photographs from the killing site with the two trenches near the Water Palace.

The photographs and satellite imagery strongly suggest that ISIS transported its captives by trucks to the two killing sites. Human Rights Watch identified the same ISIS fighters and captured men in multiple photographs, including captives who were photographed in trucks and then again being unloaded from the same trucks next to the execution site at the Water Palace.

Human Rights Watch spoke with one man who said he fled Tikrit after the killings. The man said he watched from the rooftop of his home in the Hay al-Qadsia neighborhood in the late afternoon just after ISIS arrived as armed members of ISIS loaded hundreds of captured men onto trucks and drove them away:

I saw them with my own eyes. It was late afternoon. It was a long line. I saw about 10 armed gunmen with their guns pointed at the line of men, walking them to military trucks. Some of the gunmen had masks and others showed their faces. The [captured] men were not handcuffed. They wore civilian clothes.

The man said he did not know where the men took their captives and could not remember the exact date. Tikrit residents told him later they saw bodies floating in the Tigris, he said.

During an armed conflict, the murder of anyone not taking an active part in hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those in detention, is a war crime. Murder, when systematic or widespread and committed as part of a deliberate policy of an organized group, can be a crime against humanity. Both war crimes and crimes against humanity are considered international crimes, with criminal liability attaching to those who commit or order the crime, but also those who assist, and commanders who should have known of the crime but fail to prevent it.

Human Rights Watch has previously documented serious crimes by ISIS in other areas of Iraq and Syria, including car and suicide bomb attacks in civilian areas, summary executions, torture in detention, discrimination against women, and destruction of religious property. The evidence documented by Human Rights Watch strongly suggests that some of these acts may amount to crimes against humanity.

“ISIS is committing mass murder, and advertising it as well,” Bouckaert said. “They and other abusive forces should know that the eyes of Iraqis and the world are watching.”
 

Question

Gramps,

I was preparing a talk for church and read in a book called “Our Latter-Day Hymns” by Karen Lynn Davidson that Eliza R. Snow was married to the Prophet Joseph Smith while writing the hymn “Oh My Father”. That got me curious as I had previously thought that there was no confirmed plural wives of Joseph Smith Jr. and that even Emma had stated on her death bed that he was not a polygamist. So I got online and went to Wikipedia, looked up Eliza R. Snow and read some of her history. Then things got even more confusing. It says she married Joseph on June 29 1842 even writing fondly of Joseph “my beloved husband, the choice of my heart and the crown of my life, then later that year she started a petition trying to restore his virtue and denying that he was a polygamist. She even published a certificate denouncing polygamy and denying Joseph as its founder in October 1842. As we know later she married Brigham Young, as a plural wife or for time who knows. If it was for time wouldn’t that be against the whole argument of polygamy being to seal spouses so that they can qualify for the blessings of celestial kingdom? Eliza was one of the Relief Society presidents. Help me understand how a woman who obviously had inconsistencies could have been a leader in the church. Then there’s the whole Joseph Smith possibly being sealed to woman who were married to living men…I find this topic somewhat troubling because in my mind if the men and women who founded the church were living unworthily how could they have received inspiration from Heavenly Father. This is a very troubling topic for me and I can’t just ignore it.

Kandace 

Answer

Dear Kandace,

Most of my current thinking and support about Joseph Smith’s plural marriages comes from the three volume set by Brian C. Hales entitled Joseph Smith’s Polygamy Vol 1-3. I wanted to give credit up front for these ideas. All references in support of the ideas given here could be found therein.

First, let me address the thought of no confirmed plural wives of Joseph. I think, if I understand you correctly, that you have correctly concluded that this is not true. There is a great deal of evidence supporting the fact that Joseph had plural wives.

Emma did claim in later years that Joseph was not a polygamist.  We don’t know for sure what her motivations were. There are a variety of theories. But there is pretty solid evidence that she actually attended a few of Joseph’s plural weddings. There can be little doubt that she was very aware by the end of Joseph’s life.

When Eliza Snow produced a variety of means to “restore Joseph’s virtue” by way of petition and affidavit and the like, there was some pretty interesting stuff happening by way of the man John C. Bennett. Bennett came into the church and quickly worked his way up to become moderately close to Joseph and influential in the city. He actually became the mayor of Nauvoo. But he was not one of the faithful. We don’t know exactly where he got the idea, perhaps from rumors, but he started secretly introducing the idea of “spiritual wives” around the community. This concept was that a man could have spiritual wives that he was not married to in life, but he was free to have physical relations with them. In other words, it was an excuse for adultery. This led to all sorts of problems. John C. Bennett was eventually excommunicated for adultery, and he turned against Joseph and the church. He began to smear the prophet’s name with all sorts of accusations and publications.

The church went on the defense. Almost all of the literature produced at this time that seems to be anti-polygamy was a direct defense against John C. Bennett’s lies. It also needs to be taken into account that those who accepted plural marriage as God’s law would have believed it to be absolutely and completely virtuous. In short, Bennett claimed Joseph was an adulterer. Snow was defending Joseph.

Concerning Snow’s marriage to Brigham Young — almost all of Joseph’s plural wives (except the polyandrous ones) later married others who were ranking authorities in the church. This was Joseph’s desire. He wanted them taken care of. These marriages were generally time only, where they remained sealed to Joseph.

There is no “whole argument” that polygamy was to seal people to get to the Celestial kingdom. Polygamy is not a requirement for that. The only known purpose for polygamy is to build up seed unto the Lord. We can also presume that it was meant as a trial of faith.

Polygamy can be one of the most difficult things to understand from the perspective of our day. It is so culturally foreign to us, and often we cannot help but look at it through our 21st Century lens. Additionally, critics of Joseph Smith and the church like to approach polygamy with a pre-assumed motivation of lechery. They start from a position that Joseph Smith was sexually deviant, and all of their interpretations of events are informed by this opinion. If, however, one accepts that Joseph’s primary motivation was compliance with God’s will, then a different story emerges fairly easily.

For example, when we look at Joseph’s sealings to women who were married to other men, if we presume it a foregone conclusion that he had marital relations with these “wives” while they were also engaged in the same with their legal husbands, it can be confusing. That would make no sense from our understanding of morality, both culturally and religiously. However, if we look at the big picture there are different ways to look at it.

There is no concrete evidence of sexual relations between Joseph and his wives. Every evidence we have is by way of witness. First hand witnesses exist — meaning some of Joseph’s wives testified directly that they lived as man and wife in the truest sense of the word with him, as well as second hand witnesses — those who claimed Joseph had spent the night with one of his wives at their homes and the like. There are also third hand, hearsay type witnesses aplenty, but they are, obviously, less reliable.

What is interesting to note is that  there are no first or second hand witnesses of Joseph being involved physically with any of his wives that were married to other men except two – and those two have explanations that involve things like their legal husbands having run off and left them, and the like.

Obviously this doesn’t prove anything, but it does present a different story especially when coupled with a few other interesting things.

For example, perhaps you are familiar with the famous angel-with-a-sword story. If not, here’s a quick recap. An angel with a sword (perhaps flaming) appeared to Joseph and commanded him to live polygamy or he would be destroyed. The thing is, the third appearance of this angel (the time where he had the sword and threatened) was actually after Joseph had already married several polygamous wives? Seems odd, right? But not if we understand that the sealings that had taken place before that were to women already married to other men, with a good indication that they were only “eternity” sealings and not “time” marriages. It seems that perhaps Joseph, in struggling to comply with the principle, and in a potential effort to comply without hurting his wife Emma, may have joined into sealings with women who were married to other men in order to not have the need for physical relations with them, and in order to appease Emma’s difficulty with the concept.

As you can see, the story of polygamy is not a simple one. We want it all wrapped up and tied into a pretty little bow. But it is complex, and understanding it, even to the limited extent that we can, takes a great amount of learning and understanding. Even if we do the level of research that Brian C. Hales did for his books, we still do not have a complete picture. We have to fill in the blanks a bit. It really comes down to this. Joseph was either a prophet or he was not. He either did as he was commanded by God or he did not. If we believe he was a prophet and did as commanded then we can let the things go that we do not understand, trusting that someday we will. So it is with Eliza R. Snow. We cannot fully understand her. We don’t have the complete picture. We can surmise based on the information we do have, and we can interpret that information based on our belief concerning the truthfulness of the restored gospel. What we do know is that Eliza R. Snow remained a faithful member and stood strongly in support and defense of Joseph Smith throughout her life.

For more insight in it, read the article on lds.org, Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah.

Gramps

06.26.14

As the world held its breath during the Cold War, England built a top-secret underground city to save its government in case of nuclear attack. For half a century, "Burlington" lay ready.

In case of nuclear disaster: stay calm and carry on…living underground.

In 1956, the British government began building a sprawling subterranean city two hours from London underneath the ancient, 13,000-person town of Corsham. If the nation was struck with a nuclear bomb, 4,000 government employees would be shuttled via a secret train line from downtown London to a blast-and-radiation-proof bunker code-named “Burlington”. From these emergency government war headquarters, as they were designated, Britain could resume governing while the world above burned.

The secret word for this evacuation was “orangeade,” a 1962 copy of the Cabinet Office’s War Book revealed in 2011. The code would also be told to security agents guarding the site. "Advance parties going to Burlington would be kept to a minimum and every effort would be made to maintain the cover story,” the document explained. From Burlington, the assorted agencies could plan their next moves. “The chiefs of staff will be ready to make recommendations on the use of the nuclear retaliatory forces based in the UK."

After its completion in 1961, the accommodations constructed 100-feet underground would not have made for an entirely claustrophobic existence. The 35-acre bunker had two canteens, four residential areas, a bakery, hospital, library, and a VIP suite, according to a map of the facility. There even was rumored to be a pub called Rose and Crown that was modeled after Whitehall Street’s famed and favored Red Lion bar.

With these amenities, inhabitants could live for three months without having to emerge into the chaos above ground, the Ministry of Defense predicted. Burlington was replete with 60 miles of roads—labeled with American street names like Main Street and First Avenue—that were navigable by battery-powered buggies. It had an underground water treatment plant, a power station, Britain’s second-largest telephone exchange (with updated directories maintained until the late ’80s), and a system of pneumatic tubes that hurled messages throughout the complex. The climate was set to a comfortable 68 degrees.

A BBC studio was constructed to be manned by 11 employees who, at the hour of attack, would stop normal programming and switch to “Wartime Broadcasting Service”. The station’s staff would assist then-Prime Minister Harold MacMillan in addressing the country. MacMillan and his family would be brought in by helicopter to the complex, where they had the only en-suite bathroom in their whitewashed room.

The only potential hiccup in this grand plan was that very few people knew of the bunker’s existence. Not the BBC employees pre-selected for the station, nor the majority of the government staffers who’d be living there.

The site of Burlington, or Site 3, as it later came to be known, was a former stone quarry that the government began converting into an underground factory in the 1940s. At the end of World War II, the factory closed, and the space was used for storage. As the government began concocting this worst-case scenario plan, it kept an eye out for a secure location and soon decided to use the former factory as an alternate seat of power in case of war. The area was already filling with military personnel: census records show that between 1931 and 1951, the population nearly tripled due to a large army base.

As the Cold War died down and nuclear destruction never came to fruition, the underground complex slowly slipped into disrepair. After a quarter-century of disuse, part of the bunker was converted into a “nuclear reporting cell,” again a response hub in case of an attack, which held a staff of 50 to 100, but was never actually put to use. In 1991, following the fall of the Soviet Union, when the entire site was decommissioned after the government voted against a £40 million site upgrade.

“For nearly half a century, it was ready to serve Britain at a moment's notice, waiting at attention like a dutiful agent of the crown.”

Long speculated to be a UFO research center, Burlington has been the subject of rampant conspiracies for decades. Subterranean explorers puzzled over the mysterious red door that cut off access to underground tunnels leading to the bunker. But the true nature of its existence wasn’t revealed until 2004, when it was declassified by the government. The fully stocked bunker was still intact—with stores of linens, “Top Secret” stationary, pots and pans, outdated technology, and toilet paper—and a staff of four maintenance men.

In 2005, it was put up for sale and received a number of eager bidders, but was taken off the market for reasons unknown. Today, the mysterious world underneath the sleepy town of Corsham still hasn’t been opened to the public and continues to breed mystery.

Online, commenters seeking a way in or claiming to have visited the site propagate stories about the Cold War bunker. A lucky few have gotten to explore it for themselves. “Plates & cutlery all laid out make this area look like it’s ready to be used at the drop of a hat, or as if previous inhabitants just upped and left,” a group of urban explorers writes of a 2010 visit. Another, a member of the Royal Air Force, remembers visiting in 2006 and recalls “the supply store was like going back in a time capsule.” The whole place, he says, was “like a James Bond film set.”

Unlike Bond, constantly thwarting Soviet villains, Burlington never got a chance to flex its muscle. But for nearly half a century, it was ready to serve Britain at a moment's notice, waiting at attention like a dutiful agent of the crown.

 comments

Last week, when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took to a Seattle stage to announce a new smartphone called the Amazon Fire, he spent an hour and a half describing feature after feature: unlimited photo storage, 24/7 video support, 13-megapixel camera, a 3-D-like "dynamic perspective" display, a visual-recognition shopping button called Firefly, and dozens more bells and whistles.

But there was one question Bezos left unanswered about his new device's feature set. Namely: Could it, you know, make phone calls?

Several years ago, Bezos's neglect of the Fire's phone capabilities would have seemed like a huge, glaring omission. (Remember the raging debate over the iPhone 4's poor reception?) But these days, smartphones are phones in name only. For many of us, the green, phone-shaped icon on our home screens has become just another minor feature – like a stopwatch or a stock ticker. And for others, it's completely irrelevant.

“I haven’t made a phone call on my phone in a long time,” Bezos later told the Times. “But I know people still make phone calls.”

Not so much. In fact, the use of voice calls – which has been dropping since 2007, the year Apple introduced the original iPhone – has fallen off a cliff lately. As of last year, cell providers in the U.S. are now making more money per user from data use than voice calling. (The U.S. is only the seventh nation to reach the data-voice tipping point — it happened in countries like Japan as early as 2011.) A recent survey of 7,000 U.S. high-school seniors found that only 34 percent made phone calls every day — far fewer than the number who texted or used apps like Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram. And companies like AT&T and Verizon, which saw the data boom coming years ago, have been spending more and more on new, bigger LTE data networks, while essentially giving away their voice plans for free.

In the app age, old-fashioned phone calls have become not only passé, but ominous. Today, when I get a call outside of work hours, I think: Who died? Who's trapped on a mountain? What awful global calamity is unfolding? I use apps and text messages for everything – ordering dinner, hailing cabs, telling friends I'm running late – and I rarely check my voice mail. I don't have any friends who regularly call me; even my parents have switched to texts.

All of which raises a question: Why are we still calling these things phones?

This isn't just a semantic issue. It's a marketing one. Wireless companies want us to think of our rectangular gadgets first and foremost as phones, since what their plans give us in the phone department (unlimited minutes and texting, on most carriers) is much better than what they give us in the data department (tiered caps on data use, with charges for overage). In fact, these companies make millions of dollars a year from our tendency to overestimate the number of calls we'll make in a given month, and underestimate the amount of data we'll use.

For example, take my case. For several years, I paid about $100 a month for a phone plan that gave me 900 minutes per month and allotted me two gigabytes of data. That suited me fine – I rarely went over my allowances – but this year, I found a "loyalty" plan from Verizon that cost only $60 a month, and had unlimited talking and texting with the same two gigabyte data cap. Great news, right?

Not exactly. Like most Americans, my data use has skyrocketed – from less than two gigabytes a month to more than five gigabytes on average – and as a result, I end up spending $30 or $40 each month on overage charges. The upshot is that I'm still paying Verizon about $100 a month to use my phone, even though I nominally have a better, cheaper plan. And if I wanted a plan with a bigger data allotment, I'd have to pay much more – in fact, at my current levels, it costs less to pay the penalties than move up a notch.

I'm not alone in my frustration; a 2013 study by Cisco estimated that, by 2017, the average North American mobile user will use six gigabytes of data per month. It's not wrong, necessarily, for carriers to charge more for all that extra data, which taxes their networks in a way voice calls don't. But it is opportunistic of them to encourage us to focus on the bold print in smartphone plans – the "unlimited talk and text" part – while distracting us from the more important matter of how much data we're allowed to guzzle before we're charged extra. (An exception among big carriers is T-Mobile, which doesn't charge data overage fees, though it does slow down users' data after they exceed their plans.)

Regardless of its implications on wireless carriers, it's odd to refer to these vast, all-encompassing gadgets merely as "phones." It would be like calling a car a "radio box," or a microwave a "popcorn maker." All smartphones can make calls, sure, but what makes one device different from another is how well it can do everything else.

So let's call these devices something that more accurately reflects how we use them. One idea would be to take a cue from the British and start referring to them simply as "mobiles." We could even call them "Handys," as the Germans do, or "mini-tablets," which is essentially what they are. Or we could coin another neologism, like "pocket computer." ("Pock-comp" for short.)

All of these words sound more awkward to our unaccustomed American ears than "phone" or "cell phone." But they're better descriptors of what these devices are. And when we accept the fact that our iPhones are being used for apps, rather than calls, perhaps providers will be convinced to create more customer-friendly data plans. Now that would be news worth calling home about on your mobile, Handy, or pock-comp – if you can still remember how, that is.

Kanye West is many things: a father, a rapper, a fashion designer, but sometimes he is also a seagull or a woman’s brooch. We here at Nerve operate under the assumption that every batshit, overreaching thing Kanye says about himself is true. The following list compiles every rapper, artist, entrepreneur, flora, fauna, or brand Kanye has confirmed that he is or is like, so far. We look forward to continuing to follow Kanye on his journey to expand this list to encompass every great person, animal, or mineral that has ever existed.  

Anna Wintour, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, Nicolas Ghesquière, David Stern

“I’ve been connected to the most culturally important albums of the past four years, the most influential artists of the past ten years. You have like, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, Nicolas Ghesquière, Anna Wintour, David Stern.”

- The New York Times, June 2013

Axl Rose, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix

“Cause it’s like, ‘Yo! Nobody can tell me where I can and can’t go. Man, I’m the No. 1 living and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose … I am Jimi Hendrix.’ You can’t say that you love music and then say that Kanye West can’t come to your show! To even think they could tell me where I could and couldn’t go is just ludicrous. It’s blasphemous—to rock ’n’ roll, and to music.”

- W Magazine, June 2013

Big Pun, Big L, Notorious BIG

“After I live, I wanna be compared to Big, any one: Big Pun, Big L, or Notorious,”

- from “The Glory”

Gil Scott-Heron and Miles Davis

“I am in the lineage of Gil Scott-Heron, great activist-type artists. But I’m also in the lineage of a Miles Davis — you know, that liked nice things also.”

- The New York Times, June 2013

William Shakespeare, Walt Disney, Nike, Google

“I am Shakespeare in the flesh. Walt Disney. Nike. Google. Now, who’s going to be the Medici family and stand up and let me create more? Or do you want to marginalize me till I’m out of my moment?”

- Sway in the Morning radio interview, 2013