Ryan Jacobs is a senior editorial fellow for Mother Jones in San Francisco. His work has also appeared in the Bay Citizen, Sierra magazine, the Point Reyes Light, The Chicago Reporter, and others. During his short reporting career, his coverage has ranged from the discovery of a potentially new species of phytoplankton to the scene of a quintuple homicide.
A toxic pool of crude oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon.
After two decades of contentious court battles, a group of indigenous Ecuadorian communities clinched a $19 billion judgment against Chevron in 2011 for the destruction its subsidiary Texaco oversaw in the Amazon rainforest. Chevron has fought bitterly against the enforcement of the payout—one of the largest ever handed down in an environmental suit—and is attempting to build up evidence for a fraud case it's leveling against the Ecuadorians, their legal advisor, and his associates.*
In its latest effort, Chevron has effectively sucked a whole cast of environmental activists, attorneys, and journalists into the vortex of the litigation with a series of wide-reaching subpoenas for private email data. Most of the dozens of targets of Chevron's massive "fishing expedition" are not directly tied to the original lawsuit against the company or its current legal claims; they include the plantiff attorney's summer intern who only worked on the case briefly in 2007, a writer who worked for a non-profit on behalf of the affected Amazon communities, and an environmental activist in Ecuador who fears that Chevron could use information about his whereabouts to intimidate or harass him or pass it along to third parties "that could do the same or worse."
Revealing data for more than a hundred private email accounts over the span of nine years will fall into Chevron's hands if federal courts in New York and California fail to dismiss what legal experts call "sweeping" and "invasive" subpoenas the oil giant has issued to service providers Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.
Deep within the Orwellian milieu of California prisons, gang investigators operate with almost total discretion when placing inmates into solitary confinement. Artifacts an outsider might deem innocuous can prove inmates' association with prison gangs and warrant indeterminate periods in Security Housing Units (SHUs). The following excerpts from hundreds of pages of lawsuits, internal reports, and validation documents highlight seven shocking items used in this process, offering a firsthand look into a procedure that normally remains hidden behind bars.
1. A Christmas card: In the yuletide season of December 2009, the investigative services unit at Pleasant Valley State Prison intercepted an outgoing piece of mail from inmate Sean Dunne, a suspected associate of the Northern Structure prison gang. Of particular interest to prison officials was the appearance of stars in an illustration on a Christmas card, which also featured a Santa hat, Hershey's Kisses, a prominent candy cane, and carol notes. In a photocopy of the drawing below, an assistant institutional gang investigator labels each of the "Northern Stars," explains how they are symbolic of Dunne's association, and concludes that the card will count as one source document in his validation.
2. Political books and writing from black sources: Officials from Centinela State Prison informed inmate Ricky Gray in May 2005 that his possession of the following literature was jeopardizing "the safety and security of the institution" and represented his "continued association with the Black Guerilla Family [BGF] and their beliefs." Most of the titles mentioned in the report are written by or relate to the experiences of black prisoners, like the late George Jackson.
3. The huelga bird and the number 14: Former inmate Ernesto Lira was validated as a Northern Structure gang member on the basis of a drawing which featured the huelga bird, the number 14, and, again, the "Northern Star." This excerpt, which describes the illustration, is from a judge's ruling to expunge Lira's gang validation in September 2009, after he had been released on parole.
Former San Quentin Warden Daniel Vasquez testified that the huelga bird and the number 14, both popular symbols in Mexican American culture, were unreliable validation evidence. Vasquez couldn't locate the "Northern Star."
4. Newspaper article: According to prison regulations, at least one of the three items necessary for a gang validation must demonstrate a "direct link" with another gang member or associate. The gang investigator who prepared inmate Dietrich Pennington's validation package cites Pennington's possession of a newspaper clipping from the San Francisco Bay View, an African American weekly, as evidence of BGF association because it is written by another validated inmate. In this response to Pennington's legal petition, California Attorney General Kamala Harris describes the actions of prison officials and argues that his case should be dismissed.
5. Dragon Tumbler:Another item cited in Pennington's validation was a drinking cup with a dragon etched on it. According to the investigator, the dragon is "the most common identifying symbol" used by BGF. In Harris' response, she included a poorly photocopied image of the cup.
6. Journal Musings: Pennington's third questionable validation item was a notebook, in which he had pondered the oppression of prison life and copied quotes from black prisoners, like George Jackson. Here's a sampling:
7. Statements from confidential "informants": After inmate Ricky Gray was validated in 2006, a warden asked a staff assistant to review the package. Crucial statements about Gray actively recruiting other BGF members came from two confidential informants. When interviewed later, they maintained they did not know Gray or the officer who purportedly interviewed them.
In his investigation of solitary confinement in California prisons, Shane Bauer describes a system in which inmates are held in near-total isolation for years, often due to their alleged status as members or affiliates of prison gangs. But when we started looking for details of other states' solitary confinement policies, the information was impossible to find. Not surprisingly, prisons guard facts about their inner workings almost as intensely as they guard their inmates. To get a more complete picture, we contacted every state prison department in the country and asked about their gang and solitary confinement policies. The maps below are based on the replies we received; you'll see that some information is fairly detailed while some is vague or nonexistent. All text in quotes is taken directly from prison press officers' responses or from policies they cited.
Which States use Solitary confinement?
At least 38 states hold prisoners in solitary confinement for various reasons, including breaking rules, posing a security risk, or being a gang member. (Death-row inmates may also be segregated in single cells.) Some state prison departments provided information on inmates' average length of stay in solitary.
Which States keep Inmates in Solitary Indefinitely?
California inmates may be held in single cells indefinitely; in Pelican Bay State Prison, 89 have been in solitary for 20 years or more. In at least 19 other states, inmates may also be kept in solitary without definite release dates.
Which States track Gang Members in prison?
Forty-two of the prison departments that responded to our questions say they identify or "validate" inmates who are members or associates of prison gangs (also known as Security Threat Groups or STGs). Policies and procedures differ, but most are based on inmates' own declarations of gang affiliation, tattoos, possession of gang paraphernalia, and information from police, prison officials, and confidential informants.
Which States Put Gang Members in Segregation?
At least 13 states put inmates in solitary confinement or remove them from the general population due to their gang or STG status. However, most states that provided information about their segregation policies say that behavior and rule violations, not gang affiliation, are the primary cause for putting inmates in segregation.
Source: Mother Jones survey of state prison departments. To see the data behind these maps, see here.
Two black rhinos walk through the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania.
The scene of a rhino crime
On a grassy expanse somewhere in South Africa's Kariega Game Reserve in March, a male rhinoceros struggled to its feet, hobbled several paces, and then thudded back down under its own weight. The beast's iconic horn had been macheted off by poachers, and all that remained was a mound of raw, mutilated flesh. Not too far off, the carnage was even worse. Sprawled beside a bush, a female rhino heaved for air on a patch of grass damp with her own blood. "I just thought surely we can't save this one," says wildlife veterinarian Dr. William Fowlds in the footage below, as he examines the bull's injuries and tends to the aftermath.
After making surprising steps toward recovery, the male rhino, Themba, drowned in a watering hole. Miraculously, the female, Thandi, fought against the odds and successfully survived her brutal skull hacking:
A soldier wounded by a roadside bomb is evacuated from the Kandahar province
A military analyst hunches over a laptop. His screen flashes with real-time data of the war unfolding on the sands outside his base. The machine hums and then quickly spits out a color-coded map forecasting impending violence. Eyeing the contours, he radios a caravan of humvees and informs the soldiers that, according to the calculations, they will be ambushed in roughly twelve hours. The unit veers onto a bushwhacked road, lies in wait, and at the crack of dawn captures its would-be attackers without taking any injuries.
A sci-fi writer's napkin scribblings? Or a peek at the future? Well, according to research published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, such a scene might not be far off.
Drawing from the 77,000 confidential US military logs released in Wikileaks' Afghan War Diary, researchers compiled data tracking the activity of armed opposition groups (AOG) in Afghanistan between 2004 and 2009. They then used "spatiotemporal" statistics to model the intensity and location of future violence, down to the provincial level, through the end of 2010 (a year after the leaked data ends). A comparison of the results with safety reports from the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office showed that their predictions were strikingly accurate:
