vanguard blog 211 items | updated May 17 2012

By Christof Putzel, "Vanguard" correspondent

Omar Hammami, the 28-year-old American from Alabama who joined an al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic militant group fighting in Somalia, has just published his 125-page memoir online, confirming that he is alive, contrary to the numerous reports that he was beheaded last month. I spent the morning with Hammami’s parents at their home in Daphne, Ala., who until our meeting were still uncertain whether or not their son was alive.

Reading from Hammami’s memoir that was posted online today, Shafik and Debra Hammami gave Current TV an exclusive interview. Hammami was the subject of Vanguard’s 2010 documentary, “American Jihadi,” which documented his journey from Alabama to the frontlines of Somalia and the reaction from his friends back home.

After viewing “American Jihadi,” Hammami made contact exclusively with Current TV three weeks ago, indicating that he was ready to tell his story.

“I just know that there are a lot of people who would like to see me dead,” Hammami told me in one of our first exchanges, “and one day the report will be a real one.”

Al Shabaab is an Islamic militant group with direct ties to al-Qaida, which until late last year controlled the Somali capital Mogadishu, and is currently losing power in the rest of Somalia and fracturing. Hammami's status in the weakened organization is unclear, but he appears to be struggling in the recent military and political setbacks Al Shabaab has suffered in its fight with U.S.-backed foreign forces and Somali’s UN-backed transitional government.

Once considered a key figure of Al Shabaab’s leadership, posting videos on YouTube of leading battles in the field and recruiting other Muslim westerners to join him in Somalia, Hammami appears to have fallen out of favor with Al Shabaab and is currently alone in hiding. In March, he posted a video in which he described his fears that Al Shabaab may plan to kill him.

Hammami has been indicted on terrorism charges and is wanted by the FBI. When I asked if he would consider surrendering to the U.S., Hammami replied, “Of course not! I didn't leave America for a thrill ride with the hopes of finding a get out of jail free card at the end of the boardwalk. This is a struggle of creed, culture, and civilization that won't end until Islam is supreme. My life is just one drop in the bucket in the endeavor of achieving that great aspiration. I wouldn’t trade the blessing of martyrdom in this cause for anything in this world or even all of it 10 times over.”

Hammami’s online memoir, written in English, details his journey from a suburban American kid raised Baptist to a Jihadist on the frontlines in Somalia, offering a rare look into one of the most notorious Islamic militant groups in the world. In his memoir, he describes his decision to leave his wife and young daughter to join forces with Al Shabaab in Somalia.

The narrative -- sometimes dramatic, sometimes riveting -- is part diary, part travel guide, part jihadi training manual, filled with school boy wonder, humor, self-doubt, bravado and at times, transfixing fear. During guerilla battles with an Ethiopian enemy, Hamamami would find himself hungry and thirsty for days and dream about ice cream cones from home and Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

“Brothers were left to fend for themselves having no maps, no money, no source of food, and no source of water,” he writes. “Some brothers were blessed with too much water, others were forced to drink urine and eat the roots of plants. Some ran into the jettisoned can food of the Ethiopians, while others were forced to eat maggots and snails.”

Hammami sought me out and found a way to contact me undetected. After a few exchanges, he asked, “Do you think I’m some wicked bloodthirsty madman? Or some naïve lost little boy?”

I’ve yet to answer. Current will update as the story continues to develop. 

Watch the full episode of "American Jihadi" and Christof's interview on "Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer" after the jump.

Download the full press release here.

The biggest challenge for many documentaries is finding the right people to film. There are a lot of variables that need to be considered: Are they charismatic, articulate, relatable and, most importantly, do their stories speak to a broader truth that the documentary intends to engage in? Settling on the wrong subjects for a documentary has ruined many a production.

For “Two Americas,” the goal in finding subjects was simple, but the challenge daunting. We needed to find two families living on different ends of our nation’s income divide. One family living the American dream, the other seeing it slip away.

When I was brought on to co-produce this episode the team had been hard at work for a few months and had already found Javier and Lucinda Loya. The Loyas were perfect. They were friendly, sincere and relatable in ways that we felt affluent people are not often represented in today’s tense economic climate. And Javier and Lucinda, both having come from very humble beginnings, would challenge myriad stereotypes about American wealth that I’m proud our show was willing to tackle.

The team had yet to find a counterpart to the Loya’s story however and I was saddled with the task of travelling to Houston, pounding the pavement and finding a family whose story would serve as counterpart to the Loyas. It was a mission I wasn’t completely sure I was up for, but I suppose I did a good job of faking that I was.

After several days hanging out at places that offer emergency assistance to families in need and chasing a variety of leads I was no closer to finding my family. Most people I met were respectfully cautious of my intentions or shut me down before I could even finish explaining our intentions. I couldn’t blame them. It’s an awkward proposition – I was basically asking these people to share their toughest, often embarrassing financial struggles with a national television audience.

So after striking out in analog, I decided to go digital. I did what everyone does these days when trying to find the perfect match. I posted an ad on Craigslist. In less than a few hours I received a response from April Starr, whom I would meet a day later. (Pictured: Producer John Henion, left, with Paul Starr).

The rest is now history but I wanted to share April’s response to my Craigslist ad. I knew as soon as I read it that her and her family were the ones I had been searching for:

Correspondent Christof Putzel Tweeted live commentary during the premiere of "The War on Weed." 

Click after the jump to read the Storify recap of his behind the scenes insights. 

Christof Putzel is a "Vanguard" correspondent.

I was doing squats in a gym with a trainer when I slipped a disc in my lower back. Within days I could hardly walk. Several doctors recommended surgery, and after some hesitation and trying homeopathic techniques without success, I opted for minimally invasive surgery to remove the offending disc at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

A month later, I was back in the field, running through woods outside Moscow to report on a guerilla training program for Neo-Nazi skinheads. My back began hurting again on the flight home, and after seeing 11 doctors, I was back in the hospital, unable to walk and with no diagnosis of what had gone wrong. The physicians pumped me full of pain meds, muscle relaxers and anti-inflammatories, but nothing helped.

In a few days, I was to be married in a long-planned wedding on the East Coast, and I had no idea how I could get there. Determined to at least make it to my bachelor party in Montreal, I checked myself out of the hospital, but walking from the taxi to my apartment, I was hit by a muscle spasm so strong and so painful that I went down and couldn’t get up. Climbing the flight of stairs, even with help, took almost an hour.

I lay in bed, almost paralyzed, but the slightest movement -- sometimes even just taking a breath -- triggered another body-twisting spasm. They seemed to be coming more often. Friends and co-workers came to visit and tried to help, but all I could think of was how I could possibly get to my wedding, now only days away. The medications numbed my mind somewhat but did nothing for the furious pain in my back or the wrenching spasms.

When a brave new co-worker stopped in, he offered me a carrot cake laced with medical marijuana. I was desperate but skeptical. He had a prescription for the stuff under California’s medical marijuana law, but I hadn’t smoked a joint since college, and my days of attending Phish concerts were long over. I had heard that medical marijuana helped people with glaucoma and reduced nausea in chemotherapy patients, but I was far from marching in a legalization parade. I cautiously ate a piece of the carrot cake and lay back, trying to relax my back enough to ward off the next awful attack. A few minutes later, I giggled, and it didn’t hurt. Within hours, I was sitting up in bed, higher than I’d ever been but also more relaxed than I’d been in two weeks.

Within 48 hours, thanks to the magic cake, a wheelchair and the patience of Jet Blue attendants, I was on my way to be married. Where I landed in Virginia, however, the marijuana that was keeping me ambulatory was illegal, and I was technically committing a misdemeanor by having it, even for my personal use.

If I’d been in New York City, I might have been one of the 600,000 people stopped and frisked every year in a relentless crackdown by the Bloomberg administration. An estimated 50,000 people are actually arrested during those stops.

The seemingly ridiculous contradictions in the way different states and the federal government treat marijuana led to "The War on Weed," my new story for "Vanguard."

"The War on Weed" explores the schizophrenic marijuana laws in the United States. Under federal law, marijuana remains illegal everywhere in the U.S. However, 16 states have legalized it for medical use, choosing to ignore federal law.

In states such as California and Colorado, the legal marijuana business is booming. In the worst economy since the Great Depression, marijuana entrepreneurs are creating jobs, scientists are formulating new marijuana-derived “medicines,” developers are transforming abandoned warehouses into high-tech growing facilities, and states are collecting tens of millions of dollars in marijuana taxes. The Colorado Department of Finance employs a team of inspectors to track every ounce of marijuana from grow room to consumer, not to track down lawbreakers, but to make sure the state is getting its share of the take. Live video feeds from marijuana facilities stream into regulators’ offices. The industry is a portrait of entrepreneurs and government working hand-in-glove.

But in New York City under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a crackdown has racked up more marijuana arrests than the three previous administrations combined. Although possession in New York is a minor crime akin to jaywalking, marijuana is the city’s leading cause of arrest, and taxpayers bear about $100 million a year in costs of running the anti-grass campaign. Many residents of the city don’t even know it’s happening because the crackdown focuses on minority neighborhoods, and 90 percent of those arrested are black or Hispanic.

For a look at the country’s strange approach to dealing with an increasingly popular treatment for almost any ailment a patient can identify, watch "The War on Weed." 

Oh, and by the way, I did manage to walk down the aisle.

Watch a trailer for "The War on Weed" below, and check the schedule to catch its next airing.

"Vanguard" correspondent Adam Yamaguchi and producers Doug Busby & Doug Dearth live tweeted the premiere of "Under the Knife Abroad." 

Click through to see the Storify recap with their insights and links to watch more... 

Click through to read the Storify from Adam and Jeff.

Correspondent Christof Putzel and his producer team, the Renaud brothers, live tweeted commentary during the episode premiere. To read more about the making of this episode, click on the jump.

Christof Putzel is a "Vanguard" correspondent.

The last time I crossed the U.S.-Mexico border for a "Vanguard" story, I documented the plight of poor Mexicans who risked everything to get out of their native land and into the U.S., where the survivors try to disappear into a vast subculture of illegal aliens who work for little pay and hope for a better future. Walking with them across the desert and probing desperately for a place to cross before our water ran out, I learned what people will do when they’re desperate.

This time, I returned to Mexico for a look at another poverty-stricken subculture: young men who join the drug cartels as hit men to escape their hopeless lives and often end up gunned down in the streets in one of the most violent countries in the world. The guns? Most of them are smuggled into Mexico from the U.S., where gun laws make it easy to buy just about any weapon you can carry -- and some you can't.

My producers, Craig and Brent Renaud, and I spent several weeks in Juarez, Mexico, ground zero for the Mexican drug war. It is one thing to read the staggering statistics, but we watched them mount. Embedded with Juarez’s CSI teams, we would often film five or six murder scenes in a single day. It was the most gruesome story I’ve ever covered, worse than the Beach of Death, where I saw bodies of refugees fleeing Somalia wash up on the sands of Yemen, or a killing field in East Congo, where I found human remains after a renegade militia wiped out a village.

One reason for the awful death toll in Mexico -- more than 47,000 people killed in the last four years -- is that there are just so many deadly weapons available to those who want them for the worst reasons. The market for illegal drugs is so lucrative that the competing cartels will do anything to protect and expand their share.

The foot-soldiers for the cartels generally come from poor communities where legitimate jobs are nonexistent and gangs rule the streets. We spoke to a hit man who shrugged off having killed at least 15 people, and we interviewed young men who wanted a chance to do the same, even if they got killed trying.

The firepower for this mayhem -- assault pistols and rifles, semi-automatics of every description, even 50-caliber machine guns and light artillery -- is generally walked or driven across the U.S.-Mexico border, where all the attention is on people or drugs going north and nobody seems to care who or what goes south.

Money from the drug trade fuels a ready market in the U.S., where gun laws are kept in check by a powerful lobby, a popular culture that glorifies guns and a Supreme Court ruling that guarantees the right of Americans to own and carry deadly weapons.

It is nothing new that millions of Americans feel strongly about their 2nd Amendment right, an issue so sensitive and divisive that many politicians on the left don’t even bring up the topic of gun control during campaigns anymore. However, when a war is raging only five minutes away from the U.S. border, with literally tons of weapons imported from the U.S., can we really say it’s not our war as well?

Watch the trailer for "Arming the Mexican Cartels," our account of what happens when money, guns and desperation come together to fuel a war.

Then be sure to tune in on Monday, October 31, at 9/8c for the premiere on Current TV. 

The killing of two U.S.-born Jihadi leaders, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, in Yemen by a U.S. air strike this morning dealt a devastating blow to al-Qaida's propaganda machine and leaves Omar Hammami (pictured), a 26-year-old Al Shabaab soldier in Somalia, as one of the last American-born Qaida leaders still at large. 

I profiled Hammami, who has taken the name Abu Mansour al-Amriki, for “Vanguard” last year in a piece entitled “American Jihadi.” In February, I broke the news to his best friend, Bernie, in Hammami’s native Alabama, that Somalia's defense minister claimed he had been killed in a skirmish with interim-government troops. It was a day he and his family had feared would come, but no one was quite prepared to hear. After many tears were shed, Hammami was discovered to be alive about two weeks later and was photographed at a news conference of the Al Shabaab extremist group after the killing of Osama bin Laden by Navy Seals in Pakistan. 

Like Awlaki, Hammami has been portrayed as a leader of Qaida forces in the field and has made propaganda videos to promote a call for global Jihad. But Hammami, too, is now in retreat. Al Shabaab insurgents withdrew from the Somali capital of Mogadishu last month, and signs indicate their five-year struggle for control of the failed state is flagging. 

The Obama administration, building on a wealth of intelligence gathered in recent years and a digital treasure trove captured from bin Laden's hideout when he was killed, is closing in on the key figures in al-Qaida, and is unapologetic about crossing international borders to pursue them. 

Having followed Hammami and Al Shabaab’s movements for several years, I was beginning to think they’d always be able to elude capture or avoid getting killed. Despite numerous coordinated attacks by the U.S., Ethiopia, and the Somali interim-government, Hammami always seemed to pop up again online with another Jihadi rap song. Awlaki reportedly was being tracked for about three weeks before a drone strike took out a convoy in which he was riding with Khan and other members of his organization. With the U.S. increasing its drone strikes, it could very well be that Hammami’s days are now numbered, as well. 

Catch re-airings of "American Jihadi" on Saturday. For airtimes, click here.

Peter Waldron, the adviser to Rep. Michele Bachmann who was charged with terrorist acts in Uganda in 2006, also had a close relationship with Pastor Martin Ssempa, the preacher who has led efforts in Uganda to pass anti-gay laws.

In "Missionaries of Hate," "Vanguard" correspondent Mariana van Zeller (above left, with Ssempa) investigated the influence of American evangelical leaders on Ssempa's campaign. [Watch the full episode here.]

Andrew Rice, who worked for The New Republic in Uganda during the same time Waldron was there, wrote in Capital this week that Ssempa welcomed Waldron into his church. Waldron spoke to Ssempa's congregation about the connection between American and African evangelical Christians:

“When you were born again, you became a new person. You left your tribe,” Waldron said. Now, he said, they were all bound together by their common love of God. “I am not American. I am a Christian who comes from America. You are not Ugandan. You are a Christian who comes from Uganda.”

Rice credited that appearance with helping him connect the dots between American evangelical movement and African politics:

For many Americans of faith, Uganda, a country where homosexuality and abortion are outlawed, where politicians freely mix church and state, and where outward displays of religious devotion are the norm, represents a kind of haven. America may have a born-again president, but it is far too diverse to be, as conservatives call it, “a Christian nation.” But Uganda is on its way to becoming one.

Watch a scene from "Missionaries of Hate" in which Ssempa shows graphic excerpts from gay porn as part of a press conference in support of proposed "Kill the Gays" legislation: 

"Vanguard" producer Cerissa Tanner spent most of the last year in Massachusetts shooting “Recovery High.” She also produced “Gateway to Heroin” and “The OxyContin Express.”

We typically spend three or four weeks in the field to produce an hour-long episode of “Vanguard.” “Recovery High” took 10 times that, easily making it the longest production in the history of the series. Shooting began on the first day of school in early September and concluded eight months later with graduation. During that time, our cameras were granted relatively unfettered access to the hallways of Northshore Recovery High School in Beverly, Mass.

Over the course of the school year, three students shared their sometimes harrowing stories with us. Both the highs, literal and otherwise, and the lows. Jon, Richard and Brandi – all of whom you meet in the show – are, like the other 40 or so students attending Northshore, battling addictions to drugs and alcohol.

Helping those students every step of the way is the fearless and tireless principal of Northshore Recovery High, Michelle Lipinski. Michelle, which is how the students refer to her, put a lot of trust in us when she invited our cameras into the school. As a producer I was very aware of the fact that we were working with subjects who were not only young — a situation that comes with it its own set of ethical issues and responsibilities — but also with adolescents who are more vulnerable than your typical teen.

Northshore Recovery High is a unique place. Students are drug tested at least once a week. But they are not kicked out for testing positive, something that sets the school apart from others like it (there are about 30 such schools across the country). “We come from a place where we don’t shoot our wounded,” Michelle told us. “We’re going to keep you here and we’re going try to get you better.”

And that’s what Vanguard’s cameras captured: the unrelenting and sometimes unorthodox efforts to help these kids. Some do get better. Some don’t. But, as Michelle would say of addiction itself, that’s the reality of a place like “Recovery High”: “It’s a battle… every day.”

Don't forget to use #WatchingVanguard when Tweeting about our show so we can include you in the next roundup!

While shooting "This (Illegal) American Life," "Vanguard" filmed dozens of "undocumented and unafraid" college students who traveled to the California state capitol to lobby for a local version of the Dream Act.

In this blog, "Vanguard" assistant producer Lisa Ferguson writes about hearing first-hand about the intense struggles some of these students face in accessing higher education.

In March, I joined about 90 undocumented youth as they boarded a bus and headed north. This wasn’t a trip across the U.S. border - that decision had been made for them years ago. This bus was full of students, and their journey from Los Angeles up to Sacramento was to fight for their education rights.

As a "Vanguard" assistant producer and recent college grad myself, I know money is a common subject of worry. States continue to cut funding for higher education, and with rising tuition, the average debt for an undergraduate is nearing $20,000. But as much as college students struggle to make ends meet, few face the intense challenges of those who are undocumented.

As we filmed, it became clear that money is just the first of these students’ concerns. Many come from low-income households but are ineligible to receive financial aid. They live at home to save money, and without a legal drivers license, some spend hours each day taking public transportation. When it comes time to study for finals, students stay late on campus and find somewhere nearby to sleep. When tuition bills arrive, though, many are forced to take the semester off.

Last year, it seemed like those problems might disappear. The Federal Dream Act would have legalized as many as two million undocumented youth, but it fell short – just five votes away from passing the Senate.

Now, the students have taken the issue into their own hands. Each individual we travelled with approached the microphone at the State Capitol hearing, proudly declared their illegal status, and took a stand for a California version of the Dream Act. They lobbied for two bills – AB 130 and AB 131 – that would help undocumented students qualify for financial aid. It’s only a small step toward legal citizenship, but a vital one.

"When your opportunity to access education is at stake, it is very difficult to restrain yourself," said a student named Sofia.  "The urgency we feel to fight for our rights will not go away until our dignity is recognized."

AB 130 was signed into law in late July, making undocumented students eligible for private scholarships. Access to state financial aid, though, rests on AB 131. That bill is stalled in the State Senate, and several of the students who lobbied for it have already attended their commencement ceremonies.

We all feel some fear at our graduation, when we are no longer protected by classrooms, campus life, and a stable group of peers. When we leave, we face a troubled economy, but at least we have the right to pursue any job or career we choose. That’s not the case for these students, most of whom will be stuck in low wage jobs getting paid under the table.

Many of today’s undocumented youth did not make the choice to come here, but they are living the only way they know how in the only country they call home. These young men and women have survived tuition bills, sleepless study nights, and extensive commute times to earn their status as college graduates. Now, as they leave the safe haven of their universities and enter a world far less tolerant, one very important status is still missing.

For more from "This (Illegal) American Life," see our episode guide.

Lost in the often heated debate about illegal immigration in America is an appreciation of what a big decision it is for a person to move to a new country. Most Americans can trace their family histories back to a “leap” of this sort, when the lure of opportunity or security in the United States outweighed the familiarities of language, culture and community in a country of origin. To move to America – whether legally or illegally – is a monumental choice and not one that anyone makes lightly.

I know this from personal experience. Ten years ago, I was an aspiring young journalist in Lisbon, Portugal who wanted to come learn and work in the center of the media world. The decision changed the course of my life.

It’s from this starting point that I approached my latest "Vanguard" documentary, "This (Illegal) American Life." Often stories about illegal immigration in American are driven by statistics: 12 million people living here illegally, more than a million people deported since President Obama took office, hundreds of new arrivals sneaking across the border every day.

Certainly the size of these numbers are what makes this issue so contentious. But no matter what you call those millions of people living in America — undocumented, illegal, alien — know that they are also called mom and dad, brother and sister, neighbor and coworker. Every one of them has a story.

I set out to tell the story of two: an American Lit major named Ilse who is only months away from her graduation at UCLA, and a strawberry picker named Filemon who lives with 18 other people in a flophouse so that he can send what little money he makes home to his family in Mexico. I think their stories are worth hearing.

With the Presidential elections around the corner, we know illegal immigration will be a hotly debated issue. Just as it was in the election before that, and the election before that. Yet we seem to be no closer to resolving it. There’s no quick fix or painless solution. Republicans and Democrats agree that the current system is broken but that’s about all they can agree on. Inaction at the federal level has left the door open for states like Arizona and Georgia to chart their own strict and harsh anti-immigrant laws.

It’s important to remember, though, that behind every new piece of legislation that gets passed or every immigration bust seen on the local news are people like Ilse and Filemon. And how we decide to address this problem will change the course of their lives forever.

Watch the trailer for "This (Illegal) American Life," and tune in for the premiere on Monday, August 1 at 9/8c on Current TV.

Be sure to tag your tweets #WatchingVanguard so we can include in future roundups.

Follow Adam on Twitter.

As far back as I can recall, I’ve been an animal lover. I remember this old framed photo on the living room wall of my house -- it was of a tiger leaping out of the water. I’d dream of one day being able to see a real life tiger doing the same.

For many, the opportunity to see a tiger in the wild is just a dream. Few will ever have the chance, thoug they may at one point or another see one in a local zoo. For the next generation, that might be their only hope to ever see one.

In the last century, tiger populations in the wild have plummeted from well over 100,000 to a pathetic 3,000. Three thousand tigers left in the wild. In the entire world. It’s startling, and frankly, sickening.

Over the years, a number of factors have contributed to the majestic tiger's precipitous decline. As the world’s population approaches 7 billion, land has been cleared for booming cities, and the ever-encroaching human has wiped away much of the tiger’s natural habitat. Poachers, who have few other means of survival, hunt the tiger for its beautiful, coveted skins and body parts. Practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine have long extolled the health benefits of consuming tiger bones.

But that's all we're left with: 3,000. Conservationists around the world have rung the alarm bell for years, and the fears of an all-out extinction are reaching a fever pitch. Tiger poaching, and the trafficking of tiger parts, was banned over a dozen years ago. Trafficking in tiger skins and organs carries a pretty hefty penalty, but the black market is thriving.

My team and I decided to set out to Asia to investigate the trade in tiger parts, to see whether there’s any hope to prevent an all-out extinction. We headed to China, which drives the demand for this illicit market. Of particular interest to the Chinese are the tiger’s bones. In traditional chinese medicine, the tiger’s bones are the most prized of all ingredients and are said to cure rheumatism, as well as increase male potency. Thus there is a lucrative trade in very expensive "tiger bone wine."

We’d been told that it would be difficult to get our hands on this wine, because it’s illegal. On day two in China, I was sitting in front of a Chinese medicine doctor and his massive jug of tiger bone wine, complete with the parts inside. That wasn’t so hard. The doctor further added that he could have a tiger killed so that I could have some fresh wine. He warned us that this was now illegal, but he’d help us get it out of the country and back home. He also gave me the choice of having wine made from the bones of a wild tiger or a farmed tiger, but said the wild ones are superior.

China believes it can save the wild tiger, not by curbing the demand for tiger parts -- which again, are illegal -- but by farming them. There are two massive tiger "conservation centers" in China, together holding upwards of 4,000 tigers. Four thousand tigers, confined in a collective space of mere hectares. These "conservation centers" are supposedly saving the tiger from extinction. Not by captive breed-and-release programs – they don’t release them, and anyway captive-release programs don't really work.

Instead China says that farms reduce the pressure on the wild tiger. Poachers won’t go after the tigers if the centers can supply the demand with a cheaper product – undercutting their costs, if you will. That's what they say. Unfortunately, the economics don’t quite address the qualitative differences between the tigers -- as believed by those who buy into this "tiger win will make me virile" bullshit.

We then headed to a town in Burma (Myanmar), which borders China and is probably the biggest illicit wildlife trade market in the world. There, tiger skins and parts were out on full display. The first store I walked into was selling a half-dozen tiger skins, aquariums full of tiger skeletons in wine, and all manner of other illegal products like leopard and ivory. And this was just one of a half-dozen stores on this one street.

I questioned the shopkeepers, who insist their tigers are wild caught and not from farms. They say the discerning customers demand their tigers come from the jungles and forests, not from cages. I pressed the shopkeeper for something fresh, and she invited me back to her kitchen.

I was shocked at what I saw: a dead tiger lying on the floor of her kitchen. The tiger had just been skinned the day before, so what lay before me was a carcass of muscle, bone, cartilage and blood and guts. She returned with a cleaver and asked if I wanted lunch. After years of boasting that I am a man who will eat anything, I had finally reached my limit, and I declined.

Back in China, we visited the two big tiger farms, which masquerade as zoos. Visitors can gawk at these magnificent creatures, learn a little about the animals. At the first, we saw few visitors. There were maybe 20 people. And as we walked from cage to cage, we didn’t see any educational signage you might see at a zoo. The only sign we saw was a one that explained the tiger’s importance in Chinese medicine. If the "zoo" attempted to veil its intentions, it did so very poorly.

Armed with hidden cameras, we asked a security guard where we could buy some tiger wine. He took us to a back office, where we suddenly saw a buzz of activity. Fancy cars pulled up. Men, flush with cash, were buying wine by the boxload. Funny that the tiger farm and the tiger wine brewery are run by the same company, right? Don’t forget though...this is all still illegal.

On the last leg of our trip, we headed to India, which may hold the key to the survival of the tiger. The country is home to the majority of the remaining tiger population. But it’s also one of the epicentres to the problems that have conspired to extinguish the tigers: overpopulation, habitat loss, and poachers driven by poverty to kill whatever will earn them some money.

We managed to get to a protected national park, one of a few dozen designated sanctuaries for the tiger. One morning, we happened upon a beautiful tiger lazing in the water, seeking refuge from the punishing 110-degree heat. As she leapt out of the water, I sat motionless, speechless. It was one of the most magical moments of my life. I was excited, then saddened.

After a first-hand look at all of the alternatives, I had finally seen the tiger in its natural habitat. My childhood dream had come true. But now I know how rare and wild a dream it really is.