vanguard blog 211 items | updated May 17 2012

Correspondent Christof Putzel tweeted live commentary during the East Coast premiere of "American Jihadi."

+ @KajLarsen and I arrived in Mogadishu before the airport opened by hitching a ride from Nairobi on a World Food Program plane.

+ I was surprised to learn that a lot of people we met in Daphne had never heard of Omar Hammami. [Watch Christof's behind the scenes commentary.]

+ I hopped around bars + restaurants in Daphne for 3 days before I finally met someone who remembered Omar.

+ I hooked up with Bernie after meeting a waiter at a restaurant who had run into him at a Wal-Mart a few weeks earlier.

+ Omar had a reputation in Model UN of only choosing Muslim countries (such as Pakistan and Indonesia) to represent.

+ McMeans also included Omar’s name on tests she would give to her students, comparing Omar to Richard Reid, “the shoe bomber.”

+ Omar Hammami goes by the name Abu Mansour Al-Amriki. Al-Amriki means “the American.” [Watch a video about Omar's messages posted to internet forums.]

+ Bernie’s friends were disappointed that he’d found a new friend and was no longer interested in smoking pot and skipping school.

+ After 9/11, Omar condemned the terror attacks.

+ Omar and Bernie spent all their time studying Islam, sparking other Muslims in the community to mock them, nicknaming them “the Dixies.”

+ Since there were so few pictures of Omar we relied heavily on a few pictures of him we found in a Daphne High School yearbook.

+ Canada has one of the largest Somali populations in the West, with the census reporting 37,785 people claiming Somali descent.

+ I was surprised when after this interview the owner called me asking permission to sell bootleg copies of Mogadishu Madness in his store.

+ One of the best parts about hanging out with Bernie in Toronto was that he knew all the best Somali spots to eat!

+ Andrea Elliott wrote an excellent profile on Omar in the New York Times.

+ Sadiyo is an incredibly charming woman and we were honored that she granted us her first on-camera interview.

+ Sharon serves up a mean key-lime pie. While we were filming in Daphne, a Muslim gentleman from Toronto who Sharon had met online flew down to meet her and propose.

+ In Mogadishu Madness, you can see our first encounter with guys from Al Shabaab back when they were the military wing of the ICU. 

+ Omar’s first hip hop track, “First Stop Addis,” can be heard in its entirety here: http://tinyurl.com/27gbl7c

+ In April, Omar released another video with Al Shabaab entitled, “Festival for the Children of the Martyrs.” [Watch an extended version of one of Omar's recruiting videos.]

+ Almost nobody in Toronto’s Somali community was willing to talk on camera about the men who allegedly left to join Al Shabaab.

+ Shirwa Ahmed earned the unique distinction of becoming the first American suicide bomber.

+ We were with Bernie and Sadiyo when news broke that one of the missing men was killed in Somalia fighting with Al Shabaab. [Watch a video about Al-Shabaab recruiting Westerners.]

+ Moe spent six months fighting alongside Al Shabaab in Somalia. He is starting an organization entitled Generation Islam dedicated to radicalizing young Muslims.

Watch a trailer for "American Jihadi" after the jump.

After reading about an American youth who converted to Islam and joined an extremist insurgency in Africa, I realized he and I had unwittingly crossed paths a few years before. In Current TV’s “American Jihadi,” a new episode of the Vanguard documentary series airing Wednesday, I go looking for the young man pictured above. I wanted to find him, if not in the flesh, at least to trace his route from small-town high school boy to anti-American warrior.

I was in the war-ravaged city of Mogadishu in 2006, one of the first American TV correspondents to see the place in years. An Islamic coalition calling itself the Islamic Court Union had seized control of the Somali capital and imposed an uneasy peace that at least possible to get inside the chaotic “failed state.”

To me and many other Americans, Mogadishu was best known as the site of the military tragedy and movie “Black Hawk Down.” Twenty-six years old and no stranger to hot spots around the world, I was drawn by the spirit of adventure and a journalist’s curiosity, despite warnings from others—including my father, a seasoned war correspondent, that the story wasn’t worth the risk.

It was. My colleague, Kaj Larsen, and I found Somali expatriates streaming back to their homeland by the thousands to pick up their lives in a spirit of hope and renewal, despite the ruins and hair-trigger tempers that were the legacy of a 15-year civil war. I interviewed Islamist leaders who had captured the city and listened to their pleas for peace and a chance to re-establish a nation. Accusing the Islamic Courts of having ties to Al Qaida, the U.S. government branded them as terrorists.

Shortly after my return to the United States to put together my piece, “Mogadishu Madness,” Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia with U.S. military support and drove the Islamists into hiding. Somalia plunged back into war.

As it turned out, in the flow of people arriving at the reopened international airport in Mogadishu during that brief period of peace was another twentysomething American. Drawn by a passion to help establish an Islamic state in Somalia, Omar Hammami had left his wife and family in Egypt and arrived in Mogadishu shortly after I did. Like many Somali Muslims who answered a call for jihad to fight off the Christian invaders from Ethiopia, Omar joined Al Shabaab, one of the most ruthless and determined factions that had previously fought each other but were now united against the foreigners.

After rising to become a top field commander, Omar is now a prominent Internet propagandist for the Somali allies of Al Qaida who helps recruit other young Muslims from the West to enlist in the cause. In the past three years, at least 30 American and Canadian citizens have turned up fighting in Somalia with Al Shabaab, more than have joined any other extremist group affiliated with Al Qaida.

In “American Jihadi,” I retrace Omar’s path from Bible Belt Christian to Islamic extremist. I flew to Daphne, Alabama with practically no leads and spent three days cruising bars and restaurants—local hangouts where I thought people Omar’s age might hang out. At a Hooters, I met a patron who vaguely remembered playing soccer with Omar as a kid, then another who believed her fiancé may have taken a class with him sophomore year.

Discouraged, I mentioned my quest to a waiter at a sports bar and grill on my last day in town. He had recently run into Omar’s best friend, a man named Bernie Culveyhouse, at a Walmart and remembered the street where he lived.

I went there, looking for a house that might offer some clue, and asked a 14-year-old playing outside if he knew the Culveyhouse family.

“You mean the people with rags on their heads?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I guessed.

“They stick out because we don’t have that many Jews around here.”

No one was home so I left a letter on the doorstep with a DVD of my work and requested that we meet to discuss my assignment.

As I was boarding a flight home to the West Coast with no story in hand, Bernie called my cell phone. He said he’d turned down every request for an on-camera interview but liked what he’d seen of my work and would agree to meet. I walked out of the airport and spent that evening with him, watching “Lost” and talking about “Mogadishu Madness”—and his dear friend Omar.

It was the first of many visits, including a trip to Toronto to meet Omar’s ex-wife, a Somali-Canadian, and the sister of Bernie’s wife. Bernie had taken much of the journey with Omar, beginning with their conversion to Islam in Daphne, to the Somali community in Toronto, and ending in Alexandria, Egypt, where they expected to find comfort and happiness in an Islamic country.

Bernie went home to Daphne with his family; Omar slipped away and was next seen on the Internet as a guerrilla fighter in Somalia.

Bernie and I still struggle to understand why.

Vanguard’s “American Jihadi” premieres Wednesday, June 30 at 10 p.m. on Current TV. Watch a trailer after the jump.

Watch a special encore of Vanguard's "Missionaries of Hate" on Wednesday, June 23 at 10/9c.

In March 2009, three American evangelicals traveled to Uganda to headline an anti-gay conference. Soon after, legislation was proposed that would make being gay punishable by life in prison or, in some cases, death. The anti-homosexuality bill drew international condemnation, with both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama weighing in.

And while many American evangelicals released statements criticizing the bill after the controversy erupted, at least one of them traveled to Uganda in person. In May, Lou Engle, founder of TheCall Ministry and a chief campaigner for Proposition 8, the measure that outlaws same sex marriage in California, traveled to the east African nation to headline a prayer event.

Before he left for Uganda, Engle sent out a press release saying that he was not going there to promote the anti-homosexuality bill. Weeks after returning, Engle sent out another press release voicing his regret that the bill was promoted at TheCall Uganda event and says that it happened after he had left.

As we show in Vanguard's "Missionaries of Hate," during TheCall Uganda, Engle surrounded himself with some of the key backers of Uganda's anti-gay legislation, including Pastor Julius Oyet, Minister of Ethics and Integrity Nsaba Buturo and the bill's author, MP David Bahati.

Others have already pointed out how Oyet actually spoke in support of the bill before Engle with Buturo following just after. We showed a bit of what Engle said in our documentary, but many have been wondering what else he said during his sermon at the prayer event.

Here's a bit more of the man in his own words:

Darren Foster is a producer for Vanguard.

If the BP oil spill happened in Nigeria would it still make a sound? Apparently, not. But some kidnappings might.

The New York Times did a great story from the Niger Delta, where on average an Exxon Valdez disaster happens every year… for the last 50 years. In 1989, the Valdez spilled nearly 11 million gallons of oil into the waters off Alaska. The latest estimates of the BP disaster say that up to 2.5 million gallons a day may be pouring in the Gulf of Mexico. That’d make it the worst in US history, but rather pedestrian for the Niger Delta.

Perhaps no place on earth has been as battered by oil, experts say, leaving residents here astonished at the nonstop attention paid to the gusher half a world away in the Gulf of Mexico. It was only a few weeks ago, they say, that a burst pipe belonging to Royal Dutch Shell in the mangroves was finally shut after flowing for two months: now nothing living moves in a black-and-brown world once teeming with shrimp and crab.…

The oil spews from rusted and aging pipes, unchecked by what analysts say is ineffectual or collusive regulation, and abetted by deficient maintenance and sabotage. In the face of this black tide is an infrequent protest — soldiers guarding an Exxon Mobil site beat women who were demonstrating last month, according to witnesses — but mostly resentful resignation.

In 2007, I traveled with Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller to the Niger Delta in Nigeria to look into a growing insurgency there. We visited at the height of a kidnapping for ransom campaign, where rebels were regularly attacking oil facilities and taking foreign workers hostage. The rash of violence managed to capture some international attention, but we wanted to know what was behind the unrest in one of the US’s most important energy suppliers.

For many of the delta’s residents, the violence was 50 years in the making, ever since oil was first discovered in the country.

The two big takeaways from my trip were:

1. Despite becoming one of the world’s leading oil producers, Nigeria has very little to show for it. The Niger Delta, for example, is responsible for 80 percent of the entire country’s total revenue, but it remains one of the poorest regions. Most of its inhabitants live on less than $1 a day.
2. For many communities in the delta, the failed promises of development are nothing compared to the environmental damage oil has caused.

Since it was first pumped in Nigeria, more than 1.5 million tons of oil has spilled in the delta, that’s more than 500 million gallons or about 50 Exxon Valdez disasters. One a year since oil was first pumped in 1961.

Activists in the delta have for years been trying to attract international attention to this environmental devastation and to make oil companies accountable, but to no avail.

The sight of oil company executives being brought before Congress for a tongue-lashing—or, better yet, setting up a $20 billion fund to pay damage claims—must seem as foreign to Nigerians as a bunch of masked rebels attacking oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico would be to Americans. But all things are not equal.

Watch Vanguard's "Rebels in the Pipeline" after the jump.

Correspondent Mariana van Zeller and producer Jeff Plunkett both live tweeted the premiere of "Soccer's Lost Boys."

MarianaVZ In 15 mins you'll have new perspective on soccer. I'll be live tweeting, so you can tweet me to hell for ruining your #worldcup glee.

MarianaVZ  Did anyone see the #uru #rsa game? It was sad to see Bafana bafana lose, but looks like Uruguay might be the hidden gem of the #worldcup

JKPlunkett Of the African World Cup teams, only Ghana looks likely to advance. That will make many of the people you're about to meet very happy.

MarianaVZ Francis is 1 of the sweetest people I've ever met. We met him shortly aftr we arrived in Morocco and spent the rest of our time there w/ him

MarianaVZ Didier Drogba just played against my country's team #por . He's good friends w/ my fave player Cristiano Ronaldo.

MarianaVZ I retraced some tracks for this story. A few years, ago I reported on African migration to Europe via Morocco + Mauritania.

MarianaVZ Thats when I first heard of soccer players being abandoned. [Watch Mariana reporting from Morocco in 2006.]

MarianaVZ I knew Africa was soccer crazy, but Ghana beats all. On arrival at airport there was huge crowd watching game on TV. Filming started immediately

JKPlunkett Ghana is one my favorite places ever. Such good people...at least most of them.

MarianaVZ We met Coach Smith on the sidelines of a soccer field on our 2nd day in Ghana. He thought we were soccer agents initially.

JKPlunkett Coach Smith kept the player cards in the cushions of his couch. Along with family photos. [Watch Mariana interview Coach Danny Smith about buying and selling players.]

MarianaVZ People wld come up to us while we were filming pickup games and ask if we were agents. Even aftr we insisted we were journos.

MarianaVZ Coach Smith was a soundbite machine, a real natural on camera. I didn't need to ask much as he loved 2 talk + explain how all works.

MarianaVZ Wait to end of piece and you'll see how Coach Smith takes over my job :-)

MarianaVZ We heard many heartbreaking stories of families torn apart because of false promises of soccer stardom. But still for most the dream remains

JKPlunkett Love Essien. So fun to pick what goal to use for that shot.

MarianaVZ Also retraced some old steps for this part. In 2006, I was in the same neighborhood covering the Paris Riots...

MarianaVZ My undercover producer is @jkplunkett. [Watch Mariana go undercover in a black market pick-up game outside Paris.]

JKPlunkett My cameo in the piece.

MarianaVZ . @jkplunkett knows a sh.t load about soccer and plays too. He has the "touch", as our African friends said. Means he's a talented player.

MarianaVZ This interview in an underground parking garage in Paris was one of the saddest intrvws I've ever done.

MarianaVZ This interview in an underground parking garage in Paris was one of the saddest intrvws I've ever done. It was so hard to keep my composure.

JKPlunkett I was outside the car shooting exteriors and had no idea what was going on inside the car. Such a strange experience.

MarianaVZ You'll soon meet Francis parents. They haven't seen their son in over 7 months

JKPlunkett Get ready to meet Francis's parents. You'll quickly understand why Francis is so sweet.

MarianaVZ I love this moment when Francis' dad talks about not liking his son's new dyed hair. It's so typical of dads all over the world.

MarianaVZ Stephen Appiah played for #gha in their first game of the #worldcup

JKPlunkett I love that Francis in Morocco and these lucky players at the academy are both wearing Man U gear.

MarianaVZ Right to Dream was such an inspirational place to visit. Aftr wks of reporting on ugly side of soccer it was gr8 2 see it can do good.

JKPlunkett Such good kids at Right to Dream. Amazing academy. I want to go work there.

MarianaVZ If you'd like to find out more abt Right to Dream academy - http://www.righttodream.com/. They're doing wonderful work. [Follow Right to Dream on Twitter.]

JKPlunkett Right to Dream has 4 players right now on full scholarship at UC Santa Cruz.

MarianaVZ The sage last words of coach Smith, when he takes over my job. He nailed it in the head -"It always comes back to what happens in Africa..."

MarianaVZ Thanks for watching "Soccer's Lost Boys". All the credit goes to @darren_foster and @jplunkett - incredible producers!

Mariana van Zeller is a correspondent for Vanguard.

Every four years, I look forward to the World Cup. It's the one time where my small country, Portugal, commands a little respect on the world stage. But this World Cup is different...I know too much.

Over the last six months, I've been investigating a particularly heartbreaking scandal for a Current TV documentary called "Soccer's Lost Boys," airing next Wednesday. The story took me from the dirt soccer pitches of Ghana to the migrant ghettos of Morocco and finally, to black market soccer games in Paris.

It's estimated that 20,000 young West African players are currently stranded throughout Europe--trafficked there by predatory agents who snatch them off the fields of Ghana and Senegal and Cameroon promising contracts with big European teams and then abandon them when those tryouts either don't materialize or don't go well.

Jean Claude Mbvoumin, one of the few advocates trying to help these kids through his small Paris-based organization Foot Solidaire, told me that 70 percent of the tryouts that took place in France last year were "uninvited," meaning that--like door-to-door salesmen--these agents just show up with a player--or three or 10--from parts unknown, hoping to get them in front of coaches. Not surprisingly, this approach leads far more often to heartbreak and suffering than to the fame and fortune promised these youngsters.

If you're reading this in the US, you may not be aware of what big industry soccer has become. Money on par with the salaries in the NFL, NBA and MLB are being paid to players from around the globe to play for teams in the UK, France, Italy, Spain. Soccer, or "football" as the rest of the world knows it, is the most global of sports and these days, there's perhaps no bigger market for promising new players than Africa.

Over the last decade there's been a surge in the number of Africans playing at big European clubs. To take the top English league for example, in 1989 it had only four players from Africa, all of them white Africans. In 2009, the league had 60 African-born players, nearly all of them blacks from West Africa. A handful, like Didier Drogba from the Ivory Coast or Michael Essien from Ghana, have risen to become global super stars and fabulously wealthy in the process. These rags-to-riches stories now serve as inspiration for thousands of young African boys who see soccer as their way out.

But the same desperation that drives many young Africans to pile 70 people in a fishing boat meant for seven to make the dangerous sea crossing to Europe, also makes them easy targets for unscrupulous agents, conmen and other unsavory characters. At the embassy of the Ivory Coast in Rabat, Morocco, the consular general pulled out a thick blue book--like an accountant's ledger--filled with the names and faces of young footballers who had been scammed and abandoned in Morocco. I stood in shock as page after page of young African faces stared back at me. My initial worries that we might be stretching some isolated, anecdotal cases of player trafficking into something bigger vanished on the spot. This problem was real--and real nasty.

I like to think of this story as an African Hoop Dreams, although a similar story could be told from South America or even Eastern Europe. Anywhere in the world where a passion of football is paired with the desperation of poverty, the conditions are ripe for the exploitation of young talent. As South Africa hosts the World Cup--the first African nation to do so--it's important that people realize that the growing popularity of European leagues around the globe has come at a cost.

The reason that FIFA, the governing body of the sport, has decided to hold the World Cup in Africa for the first time has nothing to do with the beauty of safari Africa--featured so prominently in ESPN's promo package--with its epic vistas and silhouetted giraffes. The passion for soccer in Africa lives in less picturesque places, like the war-torn Ivory Coast and the coastal slums of Accra. The World Cup is being held in Africa because the future of soccer is very much entwined with the future of the developing world.

The trafficking of young African players may be news to soccer's many millions of fans, but it's an open secret among those who oversee the sport. A few years ago, Sepp Blatter, FIFA's president, even accused top European clubs of "social and economic rape" in their search for new talent in Africa. But despite those harsh words, little has actually been done.

Now that FIFA is raking in billions of dollars in TV rights and sponsorships from the Cup in Africa, perhaps it's time to give a little back. The most popular sport in the world shouldn't be turning its back on thousands of its own.

"Soccer's Lost Boys" premieres on Current TV Wednesday, June 16 at 10/9c. Watch the episode trailer after the jump.

+ This was a hard story to get myself psyched about doing. Hard to look forward to being surrounded by shit

+ Raw sewage = everything that you flush down your toilet. The toilet paper breaks down, shit breaks into tiny pieces, ends up here

+ Sewage goes through several treatment processes, and the ‘cleaned’ water is piped 5 miles into ocean

+ India has a population of 1.14 billion people; 600 million don’t have toilets. [Read more from producer Lisa Biagiotti here.]

+ India has the second highest toiletless population in the world, behind China

+ This river runs through the heart of the city. It’s not far removed from where many people live

+ The smell was completely overwhelming. Was hard to breathe.

+ I think i had bad food and bad water that morning, so I’m already feeling pretty shitty

+ I made the stupid mistake of making a protein shake using tap water..smart, I know.

+ It was like there was a layer of bubbling scum on the water

+ Not sure what was worse, staying on toxic river, or wandering onto shit-covered ground

+ There goes my chocolate protein shake! My producers were very happy as I threw up [Watch more from Adam about how he got sick.]

+ And an FYI, I did immediately deliver some articulate standups right after I threw up, and interviewed a couple folks

+ That was just day 2 of my trip!

+ Slums exist just underneath the shadow of massive construction across the cities

+ Met a man who was defecating up on the train tracks, ear nearly sliced off by oncoming train. The defacto slum toilet is the train tracks

+ We only saw one person in the public toilet, which people have to pay per use

+ Shooting in the slum was very difficult. Very chaotic, narrow spaces to navigate

+ This is what it means when people talk about lack of clean, fresh water. There’s shit in the water.

+ While filming, we saw a child fall into the sewer

+ That wall right behind this man is a home

+ Haryana state has started a program called ‘no toilet, no bride’ which encourages women to demand toilets when marriages are arranged

+ lack of toilets is not just an issue of poverty; money often gets diverted to other priorities

+ Dr Pathak runs a kitchen powered by methane (giant fart)

+ He gives these dried shit balls to school children to play with. The shitballs are dried/decomposed, so it’s not hazardous to touch

+ Jack Sim wants to make toilets “sexy.” He grew up in Singapore when it was very poor and toiletless. Today, cleanest place in the world.

+ Jack Sim named his org the WTO, in hopes he’d get sued, and bring publicity to toilets

+ These waterways are right in the heart of Surabaya, 2nd largest city in Indonesia

+ At sunrise and sunset, people come out to defecate

+ We’d often see people defecating in the river, see kids swimming, and men fishing 20 meters away

+ A preferred method of defecating is on suspended beams over rivers; downstream, people drink the same water

+ People like Sumadi are making cheap toilets and is trying to help jake create toilet shops as ubiquitous as 7-11s

+ In many villages, having a toilet has become something akin to having a Mercedes or an LV purse

+ This is where we get dirty

+ “Hey, lemme show you cesspool of feces in my backyard”

+ In case you’re wondering, they made me wear that ridiculous shirt – my uniform to work. And it smelled like shit

+ I dropped our microphone cover in the canister of shit

+ The moment I’d been waiting for this entire shoot: to play with shit

+ It took days to get all the crud out from underneath my fingernails

+ It was hard not to laugh at times, but this anti-defecation ceremony was a big deal, an important milestone

+ During the shoot, we went into dozens of homes to look at toilets. Most people beamed with pride when showing them

+ Villagers sometimes catalog and collect all the defecation in the village, transport to town square, to show how much shit is out there

+ Part of Ruli’s job is to make people feel uncomfortable, even embarrassed about openly defecating

+ Most of the people in this Indonesian village shit outside, or by waterways

+ Ruli demonstrates how flies collect on shit, shits gets onto food and water

+ I need to throw away the shoes I wore on this toilet shoot

+ Indonesia felt like a sauna/steam room. This was the first time I’d worked out in 2 weeks

+ Rumyati is the community health leader, but even she has problems getting her son to stop openly defecating

+ Rumyati had a Sid Vicious sticker, next to an Osama bin Laden sticker, on her cupboard

+ This was like home #30 whose toilet I inspected

+ It’s a major challenge to get people to respect their environment and stop polluting

+ For the record, Los Angeles is not open-defecation free

+ Homage to the toilet!

+ Jack Sim believes finding celebrity spokespeople to push toilets is key in raising awareness about this public health issue

+ Oh look, it's Russell Brand. Here's why I think his co-star Jonah Hill should be named World Toilet Spokesperson. [Read Adam's blog here.]

Watch more from Adam about shooting "The World's Toilet Crisis" -- including why he really threw up -- after the jump.

Lisa Biagiotti is the producer of "The World’s Toilet Crisis,” which airs Wednesday, June 9 at 10/9c on Current TV.

Scribbled across the white board in Yasu Tsuji's edit room are the words: "A toilet is not just a toilet." The ridiculousness of this phrase has haunted poor Yasu since I wrote it (and repeated it often) back in late March when correspondent Adam Yamaguchi, producer Mitch Koss and I returned from the field.

It's a silly statement, but for nearly half of the world, a toilet needs to be more than just a toilet -- it must be exalted as a symbol of modernity, success, status -- even sex.

When people practice open defecation, children get sick from fecally-contaminated water. As a result, parents miss work caring for children suffering from complications of chronic diarrhea. Medical bills mount. When teenaged girls begin menstruating, they must leave the cities and return to rural villages where there is more privacy. The cycle churns.

But preventable diarrhea deaths of 4,000 children every day, the loss of money and job opportunities and the stunting of girls' education are not enough to get people to change behavior and adopt toilets.

We visited India to show the magnitude of the problem -- 600 million open defecators -- in crowded, septic cities. We traveled to Indonesia because it's where we saw real progress with national and local governments recognizing the problem, private and public sectors collaborating to solve it, toilet entrepreneurs inventing a sanitation industry, and most importantly, people desiring to end open defecation.

It turns out, the toilet crisis isn't really a poverty problem or a shortage of toilets problem -- it's an emotional, behavioral and cultural problem. It's why governments and NGOs are trying to solve it with Advertising 101 tactics -- creating an image to spark demand, developing the supply side and then repeating the messages to reinforce the sale of the image and the product.

We spoke to hundreds of people in reporting this story. We'd like to thank all those who eagerly led us through open fields, along river banks and around street corners to show us proof of human waste...and thank you to those who invited us into their homes for the sole purpose of toilet inspection.

Below are some special thanks and links to more toilet and sanitation information.

• Therese Dooley and the UNICEF staffs in New York, India and Indonesia
• Djoko Wartono and Vandana Mehra of the World Bank's Water and Sanitation program
• Suryani Amin and the staff at Mercy Corps Indonesia
  Water Aid in New Delhi, India
• John Sauer of Water Advocates
• The Singapore staff of the The World Toilet Organization
• Anita Jha and Guarav Chandra of Sulabh International
• Jyoti Sharma of FORCE NGO
• Rajeev Singh of the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations 
• Dowstream by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
• Department of Public Works (Los Angeles)
• Citra Diani for leading us to the amazing duo -- Lexy Rambadeta and Dhanny Tantri
• Laura Sperrazza and Josh Novak for the month-long stay on the couch

Thank you. We hope when you watch the documentary, you'll dream about the possibilities of toilets. We do. Even Yasu does.

Watch a Flickr slideshow from Lisa's photos here.

I didn’t start off wanting to make a gross-out movie. But two days into shooting “The World’s Toilet Crisis” for Current TV’s Vanguard documentary series, I had to admit that I was pretty disgusted.

From a massive sewage treatment plant just south of Los Angeles to India’s once-sacred, now polluted Yamuna River, my team of producers and I had set off on a mission to track how the lack of sanitation in many countries has had a devastating impact on public health.

I could tell you we were looking for clean water amidst the contamination, but that’s just being polite, and being polite is part of the problem. It’s a very big part of how even in the 21st century, some 2.6 billion people—40 percent of the world’s population—are still defecating in the open rather than in toilets connected to a proper sewage treatment system.

We went to India and Indonesia because we were looking for shit. When people defecate in rivers, fields and gutters, the water becomes contaminated with shit. Food gets contaminated. And people get sick. An estimated 2 million deaths a year, largely among children, could be prevented by improving access to toilets. And yet very little has been done to end the world’s toilet crisis.

One reason for the inaction is that few people—and almost no one with the political or popular cache to command international attention—have stepped forward to speak plainly about what’s happening and what’s at stake. Jack Sim, a businessman who founded the World Toilet Organization, has spearheaded efforts in Indonesia to make toilets both affordable and desirable. But as Sim told me, there’s no “Angelina Jolie of toilets.”

I don’t think the movement needs an Angelina Jolie. I think it needs someone like Jonah Hill—who in “Get Him to the Greek” spends what seems like half the movie mired in scatological humor—or any of the other actors in hit gross-out comedies who have made a living and a name for themselves making fart jokes.

Let’s face it, talking about toilets would be a classy step up from this:

If we want to seriously address the fact that 40 percent of the world’s population lack a simple flush toilet—which The Lancet, a British medical journal, called the most important health innovation of the last 150 years—we’re all going to have to be willing to get a little grossed out.

The World’s Toilet Crisis” airs Wednesday, June 9 at 10/9c on Current TV.

SHIRLEY SHEPARD/AFP/Getty Images

Correspondent Christof Putzel has reported from Somalia for Vanguard. This season he investigates the recruitment of American Muslims by terrorist groups.

Two New Jersey men in their early 20s, Mohamed Mahmood Alessa and Carlos Eduardo Almonte (shown above, left to right, in a sketch from a courtroom appearance Monday), were arrested this weekend at JFK airport as they began making their way to Somalia with the stated intention of joining Al-Shabab, an Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group.

From The New York Times coverage of the arrest:

The emergence of homegrown terrorists — highlighted by the recent arrest of Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized United States citizen born in Pakistan who attempted to set off a car bomb in Times Square, and the arrest of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born Muslim and an Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas — has alarmed officials.

But these are just the stories of the men who have been caught, in this case by an extensive and ongoing joint effort between the FBI and the NYPD.

In the summer of 2006, I traveled with Kaj Larsen to the Somali capital of Mogadishu to report on the momentous, if brief, measure of order that was instilled by an Islamic insurgency that had just seized control of the capital. Kaj and I were arguably the first Americans to enter the city after 15 years of anarchy, but not long after we got there another young American arrived. He came to Somalia for very different reasons.

Four years later, for this season of Vanguard, I began my own investigation into videos posted online of a jihadist fighting on the battlefields, leading militants, and lecturing them—in English. The man who arrived in Somalia soon after I had was Omar Hammami, raised in Alabama, now known as Abu Monsoor Al-Amriki. As a high ranking member of Al-Shabab, he has become a potent propagandist with an increasingly familiar target audience: disaffected young Muslims in the West.

These two men from New Jersey—and Shahzad, and Hasan—are unlikely to be the last suspected “homegrown terrorists” we see in the headlines. But we’re still trying to glean answers to the more complicated questions of how and why those raised in America—often in innocuous, assimilated communities—instead turn to extremist leaders and ideas.

Vanguard’s “American Jihadi” airs Wednesday, June 30 at 10/9c.

The new cover story in The New York Times Magazine, “How a Soccer Star is Made,” is a long and detailed article about the intense training that has grown up around youth soccer academies in Europe and what American soccer organizations can learn from their way of doing what has become very big business.

[Dutch soccer team] Ajax puts young players into a competitive caldron, a culture of constant improvement in which they either survive and advance or are discarded. It is not what most would regard as a child-friendly environment, but it is one that sorts out the real prodigies — those capable of playing at an elite international level — from the merely gifted.

From a very early age — sometimes even before a boy has even started school — these players’ careers are contracted, licensed and traded — or in the typical parlance of the sport, bought and sold.

As the New York Times reports:

No one pretends that its business is other than what it is. “We sold Wesley Sneijder for a ridiculous amount of money,” [trainer Olav] Versloot said. “We can go on for years based on what he was sold for.”

...

[British team] Fulham, like Ajax, is often a seller of talent. It recently sold a 20-year-old to Manchester United for seven million pounds, or more than $10 million. “It’s a little ugly talking about the financial terms,” [Coach Huw] Jennings said. “I don’t like to do it. It feels not too far off from the slave trade.”

With an estimated 10,000 boys being trained by clubs in England alone, the demand for young players — in quantity, at least — may be greater than the number of interested UK youth.

Jennings said that his scouts, in response to the “unsuitability of the indigenous population of Britain” — children who are too sedentary and spend their time with video games — were increasingly focused “on the inner city of London, among Africans, Eastern Europeans and Caribbeans.”

But the outreach extends beyond the immigrant communities of inner city London. European clubs have long been scouring the globe looking for the best talent.  Six of the last ten FIFA  World Players of the Year Awards, for instance, have gone to European club players who hail from either Argentina or Brazil.  But increasingly, the sport’s fastest rising stars are coming from Africa.

Recently, I returned from the continent where a generation of kids drawing inspiration from the rags to riches stories of players like Didier Drogba, who was born in Ivory Coast but has since become an international superstar while playing for Chelsea in England.

Even Drogba’s injury, which may keep him out of the World Cup, won’t stop poor boys who grew up playing soccer in dirt fields from wanting to be like him.

For an upcoming episode of Vanguard, “Soccer’s Lost Boys," I travelled to Africa and Europe to examine the dark side of this growing network of recruitment, and to track down the ambitious young African players whose dreams make them an easy target for shady scouts. Unlike European academies where players pay very little to train, these kids’ families are bilked of their meager savings with promises that their boys could be the next Drogba.

What happens after that—boys abandoned along the way, often without any money, papers, or ability to return home to their families—is the tragic, ugly underbelly of the beautiful game.

Watch the trailer for “Soccer’s Lost Boys,” premiering on Current TV on Wednesday, June 16, at 10/9c, after the jump:

Mariana live tweeted the east coast premiere of "Rape on the Reservation." Here are some of the reflections and extra information she offered during the show:

+ It was minus 3000 degrees in SD. OK, maybe exaggerating a bit, but South Dakota is so, so cold in the winter [Read more from producer Joanne Shen about the cold—and hot—side to South Dakota.]

+ My first pow-wow. Loved it. Incredible to see how much of their culture the Lakota have been able to maintain. [Watch a clip of Mariana at the pow-wow.]

+ This is a staggering statistic. 1 in every 3 native American women are raped in their lifetime. [Read more from producer John Henion about faulty rape statistics.]

+ This was a really tough story to report. I'm used to traveling around the world, but it's tough to know that this is happening right here.

+ St Francis is an all Indian high school, meaning all students are native American. They have a great varsity basketball team. We went to one of their games. Unfortunately they lost that night, but it was fun.

+ These kids told us how there's not much to do on the res, except basketball, drinking + partying, and that's where a lot of the rapes happen

+ We spent several hours on this tribal police ride along. Most of the time was spent speeding from one call to the other. This is because there aren't enough officers on call. Less than a handful patrolling an area the size of Rhode Island.

+ There should be many more of these shelters. The White Buffalo Calf Woman Society is great example of how people can make a difference.

+ In 2006 the feds declined to prosecute more than 65% of major crimes cases on Indian reservations. This is incredible. The Attorney General of SD sees the shortcomings of the federal govt, when it comes to prosecuting crime on Indian land. [Watch an outtake about tribal courts, often the last resort for rape victims.]

+ Has anyone tried Indian nachos? They’re soooo good. They’re made w/ buffalo meat and u can find them all over the res.

+ Antonio's views are shocking, but it says a lot about this cycle of violence that kids grow up with on the res. [Watch Antonio and his brother talk about being abused by their father.]

+ This Indian retreat was held in Bear Butte, SD. It's so beautiful there.

+ I didn't know what to expect from therapy session w/ Indian sex offenders, but amazing how most were willing to tell us their stories. And surprising to find out that almost all of them were sexually or physically abused themselves.

+ Martina has made it her mission to burn the abandoned houses around the res. Houses like the one where her 19-yr-old daughter was murdered. [Watch Mariana talk more about Martina's mission.]

+ The fed govt has promised to take action, by spending more money on prevention and law enforcement to combat crime on Indian reservations.

+ "Auto-pilot for self destruction," said Indian sex offender we met. He says if they go back to their roots, they can be beautiful ppl again.

+ Sadly, the house still stands. Martina's still working to get rid of abandoned houses. Her way 2 try to prevent more crime ag Indian women.

Watch Mariana's behind-the-scenes commentary after the jump.

Joanne Shen co-produced "Rape on the Reservation," premiering as part of Vanguard's fourth season on Wednesday, June 2, at 10/9c.

A few weeks before Christmas last year, my co-producer John Henion and I flew to South Dakota to begin researching the story that would become “Rape on the Reservation.” We landed in Rapid City and drove three hours east to two of the poorest reservations in America, Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, home to members of the Lakota (Sioux) nation. The point of the trip was to make contacts and figure out if it was even feasible to do a television documentary about the sexual assault on Indian reservations. We had been repeatedly warned over the phone that outsiders were regarded with suspicion and it would it would be especially difficult to get people talking about such a sensitive subject like rape.

First impression: in the dead of winter, rural South Dakota has got to be one of the coldest places in America. The poverty makes it feel all the more bleak. The impoverished conditions that many people on the reservation live under are among the worst I’ve ever seen in the U.S. A trailer home will be packed with more than a dozen adults and children living under one roof. Sub- zero temperatures are exacerbated by the fact that some residences still lack electricity or indoor plumbing.

I remember going with the Pine Ridge police department on a ride-along. We entered the home of an elderly man when neighbors complained that his young nieces had been partying on the premises (alcohol is illegal on Pine Ridge, a so-called “dry” reservation”). I noticed that all four gas burners on his stove were on full-blast, which I thought was odd and dangerous, considering there were 2 or 3 toddlers running around the premises. I pointed this out to the man because I thought he might have left the stove on accidentally. He ignored me. Later, I learned that this was one of the many creative ways people on “the rez” kept their houses warm.

Like any shoot, this one had its own logistical challenges. When we go to foreign countries, we know we have to play by someone else’s rule—and visiting an Indian reservation is no different. Reservations are legally recognized sovereign nations within the geographical boundaries of the U. S. and the rhythm of life is definitely different. They call it “Indian time,” and it means that schedules are fluid. Television producers live and die by adhering to strict schedules so that they can pack as much filming in a day as possible.

But, as with almost every Vanguard shoot I’ve ever been on—efficient Japan being a notable exception—being super-flexible to work with your subject’s schedule has usually paid off with getting great access in the end. Before you do, you’re likely to spend some time that feels wasted, like standing outside for half an hour in bracing 20-below weather waiting for a source to show up at a traditional Lakota funeral, as we did. Or braving the other temperature extreme—an Indian sweat lodge—in the hopes of convincing a medicine man to let us film a traditional healing ceremony. It was no easy feat, considering I was 23 weeks pregnant at the time. In the end, I literally couldn’t take the heat and left my co-producer to sweat it out (pardon the puns) with our subjects.

Ultimately, we met amazing individuals who were brave enough to share their stories with us. In spite of the dark subject matter, I was frequently struck by the resilience of the people we met along the way. I remember interviewing one of our subjects about the murder of her daughter. She’d be in tears one moment and then, in the very next moment, be able to laugh genuinely at some silly joke I’d crack out of sheer nervousness.

Later on, Tillie Black Bear, the head of White Buffalo Calf Woman Society, an important women’s organization on Rosebud Reservation, told me that this was characteristic of the Lakota—to be able to switch quickly from deep sorrow to moments of joy and laughter—and it was probably one way they have been able to survive psychologically, in the face of their traumatic history. And that’s the way I remember my time there: hearing countless heartbreaking stories from some of the toughest people I’ve ever met.

Watch the trailer for "Rape on the Reservation" after the jump, and tune in on Wednesday, June 2 at 10/9c to watch on Current TV.

John Henion co-produced "Rape on the Reservation," premiering as part of Vanguard's fourth season on Wednesday, June 2, at 10/9c.

At Vanguard, an episode generally starts with an idea, maybe small, maybe big. It grows into a concept, then a treatment, a pitch, a production, a script, an edit, and—finally—a story. By the time we lock picture, where we started often looks like a wild and strange place.

“Rape on the Reservation,” part of the new season of Vanguard, is no exception. It started from a widely quoted statistic—that “non-Indian” perpetrators commit 86 percent of sexual assaults against Indian women (read: creepy white dudes cruise down to reservations because they know they can get away with rape against Indian women).

When I read the statistic I was floored. Article after article cited this 86 percent from two reports conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in 2000 & 2004. Amnesty International [PDF] quoted it, NPR, The Washington Post, The New York Times, everyone. It’s an eye popping stat for sure. The kind of stat that makes journalists, including myself, sit up straight and say, “now there’s story!”

But it’s not true.

After weeks of research and calling around to various women’s shelters and support groups on Indian reservations nationwide, we couldn’t find anyone who could substantiate what this statistic claimed. Mostly we heard things like, “That may be a problem off the reservation, but here, that’s not an issue. It’s usually someone from the community.”

With fewer than three million Native Americans nationwide and many of them living on tribal land, the 86 percent statistic began to seem very unlikely. It turned out I wasn’t the only one who had grown skeptical of this statistic.

South Dakota is home to nine Indian reservations and has one of the largest populations of Native Americans in the country. Former South Dakota Attorney General Larry Long was also perplexed. Based on his experience in South Dakota courts, the BJS data did not reflect the experience of the majority of Indian victims of sexual assault in his state.

Long commissioned a study to look into the validity of the BJS reports [PDF]. What he and his team found was that the BJS reports had failed to include federal case data in their research—an egregious error when you consider that the federal courts have jurisdiction over all cases considered “major crimes”—including sexual assault and rape—on Indian reservations in all but six states nationwide. This meant that the majority of crime data from sexual assault cases against Indian women (and information about who their perpetrators were) was not included in the BJS study.

In Long’s new study both federal and state crime data for South Dakota was included. The results indicated that Indian men were the perpetrators in 83 percent of sexual assault crimes against Indian women. At first, this statistic may also seem shocking, but it’s actually very similar to what you will find for all other racial groups in America. Across the board rape has always been predominantly an intra-racial crime.

And although Long’s study only deals with South Dakota, the omission of federal case data suggests that the BJS reports are flawed nationwide. This is a particularly frightening finding considering how many other studies that could inform policy someday have leaned on this questionable statistic.

So with the 86 percent stat debunked, we had to ask ourselves, “Is this a dead story? Should we move on?" But this is what I value the most about working with Vanguard—instead of dismissing the story, we said to ourselves, “OK, well this doesn’t change the fact that Indian women are being raped at a rate 2.5 times the national average. So let’s forget about trying to tell the story of 'who' and focus on how we can tell the story of why.”

Over the next seven months we learned that the answer to this question was a complex and often delicate mix of, poverty, social norms, under funding, federal negligence, legal complexities, and a history of violence that dates back to our nation’s earliest days. It wasn’t easy to untangle this web, to say the least. And even though the story looked nothing like it did when we set out, where it took us and what it says about the plight of indigenous women, made it an important journey and well worth it.

Watch the trailer for "Rape on the Reservation" after the jump, and tune in on Wednesday, June 2 at 10/9c to watch on Current TV.

Mariana live tweeted the east coast premiere of "Missionaries of Hate." Here are a few extra tidbits and links she offered during the show.

+ Pastor Ssempa [has] spoken at Rick Warren's church and in the US congress. His services held at Makarere university are always packed, mainly with young people. His services Sat night are held at the university's swimming pool.

+ Long Jones is very religious, and one of the first places he took us to was to the church he attends every sunday.

+ Video of Lively at March 2009 conf - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amVnWtpR1is

+ Bahati, the creator of the bill, was educated in the UK and has also attended Rick Warren's church in California.

+ Rick Warren's video message about anti-gay bill in Uganda: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jmGu9o4fDE

+ Anita Bryant also talked about the recruitment of children by homosexuals...in the 70's. [More here.]

+ Gerald was super brave to talk to us about being a homosexual out in the open.

+ This paper, the Red Pepper, outed almost all the gay ppl we intrvwd.

+ Rep. Tammy Baldwin is the only out lesbian in the US Congress

+ There'll be election in Uganda next year, so Pres. Museveni is in a tough spot, having to choose between pasing bill + losing foreign aid...Or not passing it and losing public support.

+ This rally [with Ssempa and Bahati] lasted 6 hours...no joke.

Follow Mariana on Twitter, and look after the jump to watch the YouTube videos she linked to.

Tonight, we’re excited to premiere the first of an all-new slate of stories I believe need to be shared with the world. Our team has traveled far and wide, at home and abroad, to bring you these documentaries.

For previous fans and viewers of Vanguard, you’ll notice a couple changes this time out. Our season will consist of six episodes, but we’ve bumped up each show to a full hour. Our hope is to be able to dive even deeper into each and every story we take up.

Tonight, Mariana van Zeller investigates the influence American evangelicals may have had in shaping one of the harshest anti-gay laws ever proposed, in Uganda.

The story begins last March, when three American evangelical Christians preaching sexual "reorientation" took their message to Uganda to speak about how gays are threatening Bible-based values. Our show, “Missionaries of Hate,” looks into whether these evangelicals may played a role in the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which would make homosexuality illegal, punishable by life in prison or death. This bill was introduced one month after the missionaries spoke in Uganda.

In the coming weeks, Vanguard will investigate the epidemic of rape on Native American reservations, the dangers of defecation and the plight of the toiletless, the black market trade in soccer players, PTSD-influenced homicides, and we’ll explore why Americans are turning to jihad.

I hope you follow along on our adventures and investigations.

I’d love to hear from you throughout the season, just send me an email at feedback@current.com, Attention: Adam.

As California marked its inaugural Harvey Milk Day, celebrating the gay rights icon, and cities across the U.S. began to commemorate Gay Pride Month, I couldn’t help but remember an interview I recently conducted in Uganda, the east African nation that is home to proposed legislation that would make being gay a crime punishable by life in prison or, in some cases, death.

“I was shocked the other day when I was watching this American movie ‘Milk,’” said Sylvia Tamale, dean of law at Makerere University in Uganda, referring to Gus Van Sant’s 2008 biopic. “I was shocked to see that the arguments put forward by the proponents of anti-homosexuality sentiments were exactly the same, almost word for word. These arguments are not new at all that Ugandans are using to justify the anti-homosexuality bill.”

I met with Tamale while filming the documentary “Missionaries of Hate” for the new season of Current TV’s Vanguard. While I was in Uganda, the campaign to push through the controversial anti-gay bill was reaching a fever pitch, with backers of the legislation drumming up support by holding mass rallies and marches condemning homosexuality.

Just as it was during the life and times of Harvey Milk, the movement against homosexuality in Uganda is being led by a group of conservative Christian evangelicals. And the arguments they’re using are an echo of Anita Bryant and the Save Our Children campaign.

"I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children,” Bryant said in 1977. “Therefore, they must recruit our children.”

More than 30 years later, our cameras were rolling as Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa brought a young woman to a press conference to testify about how she had been allegedly recruited to be a lesbian. “American money...is being used to seduce our children into homosexuality,” Ssempa said. “This bill is in response and desire to protect our children.”

The connection, while decades apart, is perhaps not so surprising if you believe those who trace the current anti-gay campaign in Uganda back to March 2009. That’s when three American evangelicals were invited to speak at a conference in the country about how Africans can protect themselves from homosexuality. Being gay in Uganda was never easy. But according to many local gay and human rights advocates, it was that conference where the depiction of homosexuality as predatory by nature gained currency in Uganda.

From there, local politicians and pastors—many with long-standing relationships with American Christian groups—took this notion and ran with it. Ssempa, as you’ll see in the documentary, went so far as showing hardcore gay porn in church in order to demonstrate the “sickness” of homosexuality.

It’s been more than three decades since Harvey Milk’s assassination, but the battle he led continues and is now open on new fronts. “I believe that the Christian fundamentalists in the US have found fertile ground in Africa to fight their battles,” Tamale told us. “Obviously they are not making a lot of the headway in the U.S., and they can very easily find allies here to fight their wars on the continent.”

Even after Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill drew the ire of international human rights organizations and governments around the world, another American evangelical, Lou Engle, traveled to Uganda to hold a rally with many of the leaders of Uganda’s anti-gay crusade.

Despite their best efforts, the anti-gay bill is still wavering in Ugandan parliament. Few now believe it will pass in its current form. But the public campaign to push it through created one of the most hostile environments for gays in the world today.

Yet even in this extremely charged climate, we managed to find gay men and women, activists and ordinary citizens who were willing to speak openly about their struggle.

“Admitting I’m gay is no longer a shame to me,” explained Long Jones, a gay man we met in Kamapala who had already been jailed, beaten and blackmailed because of his sexual orientation. “I’m not afraid because this is the opportunity that most people are getting to know that we really exist.”

Vanguard’s season premiere, “Missionaries of Hate,” will air on Current TV on May 26 at 10/9c. Watch a trailer for the episode after the jump.

This week has brought more troubling news from Africa about anti-gay efforts: A Malawi gay couple is now facing 14 years in prison for holding a symbolic wedding ceremony.

I recently returned from Uganda, where a bill was introduced that would make homosexuality a crime punishable by life in prison or, in some cases, death.

While reporting on this story, I spoke with many of the politicians and religious leaders responsible for the anti-gay campaign in the country. And most, if not all of them told me how they believed that Uganda would set an example for other nations.

“We think that God may be using this country of Uganda to provide leadership in the area of moral issues where the world needs it most,” said Ugandan Member of Parliament David Bahati, who authored the bill.

Bahati and other backers of the legislation told me how they have already received several calls from politicians all across Africa who have been inspired by Uganda’s proposed anti-gay legislation.

Homosexuality is already illegal in 38 African countries—just as it already is in Uganda—but that hasn’t stopped backers of the bill from trying to make it even more so, and the penalties even harsher.

Vanguard's "Missionaries of Hate" premieres on Current TV Wednesday, May 26 at 10/9c. Watch a trailer for the episode after the jump.