tagged w/ VG-blog-AY
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Last year, the Vanguard team was shaken when two of our colleagues and friends, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were held against their will in North Korea for over four months. On May 19, their story will finally be told.
The Vanguard team has continued to chase important stories, and in the new season we'll take you across the globe, investigating issues and telling stories in ways that no one else is telling them.
We'll have exclusive sneak peeks online in the coming weeks. Then tune in to Current TV on Wednesday, May 19 for "Captive in North Korea."
Read the press release about our new season: http://current.com/s/news.htm
Watch a sneak peek in which correspondent Mariana van Zeller investigates the rising influence of American evangelical groups on anti-gay laws and attitudes in Uganda: http://current.com/1h3ig4cLast year, the Vanguard team was shaken when two of our colleagues and friends, Laura... more
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In an exclusive sneak peek from this coming season of Vanguard, correspondent Adam Yamaguchi investigates one of the world's biggest public health crises: the 2.6 billion people living without toilets. The episode premieres on Current TV on June 9.
"Vanguard," airing weekly on Wednesdays at 10/9c, is a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Kaj Larsen, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
Watch more at http://current.com/vanguard.In an exclusive sneak peek from this coming season of Vanguard, correspondent Adam... more
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I'm currently working on a story for the next season of Vanguard about toilets, or the lack thereof, in much of the world.
Our journey starts here in India, which has the largest toiletless population. We went on a river ride, which was the most disgusting smell ever. I threw up, and was sick for about 24 hours.
Vanguard is Current TV's original documentary series. Led by correspondents Mariana van Zeller, Christof Putzel, Adam Yamaguchi and Kaj Larsen, Vanguard features enterprising reports from around the globe. It airs every Wednesday at 10pm on Current TV.
You can view all Vanguard stories by visiting current.com/vanguard.I'm currently working on a story for the next season of Vanguard about toilets,... more
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Recently I returned from a nearly month-long reporting trip about shit. If you've been following the Vanguard blog, you've probably read and seen some of the shit (literally) we'd been filming. Here's another clip from that trip. It takes place in New Delhi, India along the once-mighty, holy Yamuna River, which has today become a virtual open sewer. We took a short ride on this toxic, bubbling river and stepped off onto the riverbank... Where we were surrounded by shit. Here's a little preview of the long, sometimes excruciating month I spent on the road.
Vanguard is Current TV's original documentary series. Led by correspondents Mariana van Zeller, Christof Putzel, Adam Yamaguchi and Kaj Larsen, Vanguard features enterprising reports from around the globe. It airs every Wednesday at 10pm on Current TV.
View all Vanguard stories by visiting current.com/vanguard.Recently I returned from a nearly month-long reporting trip about shit. If you've... more
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Congratulations to correspondent Mariana Van Zeller, producers Darren Foster and Cerissa Tanner, and editor Benita Sills, who have just been named winners of a Peabody Award for "The OxyContin Express."
This prestigious honor recognizes the best work in electronic media. In recognizing "notable documentaries," the Peabody board described the Vanguard piece as "a shocking documentation by Current TV of the extent of prescription-drug abuse in America."
"Every year the Peabody Board faces the daunting task of selecting examples of the most outstanding work in electronic media," said Horace Newcomb, Director of the Peabody Awards. "Our work is made more difficult because every entry is selected by a producer, a studio, a network or cable channel as their best work of the previous year. We begin at the top and have to go even higher."
We'll have more from the team in response today about the ongoing story of Oxy abuse—but right now, please join me in congratulating Mariana, Darren, Cerissa, Benita and everyone at Vanguard who worked on this important documentary.
Watch the full episode and view additional content:
Congratulations to correspondent Mariana Van Zeller, producers Darren Foster and... more
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For the first time in more than two months, this week the entire Vanguard team was in one room at the same time.
I had just gotten back from Indonesia and India (see above). Mariana had returned fewer than 24 hours before from Paris after more than six weeks abroad reporting two different stories. Christof's been in the U.S. South and then up in Canada, but returned this weekend. And Kaj had just one day between trips reporting from some of the most high-security prisons in America.
There we were, all in the same room -- and I didn't get a photo. Though a rare occurrence when we're all in production, I swear we were all there together.
A couple of highlights from our debriefs:
I shared the story of how just moments after shooting this video from the middle of a river of shit, I completely lost it. I'd stupidly decided to make myself a protein shake that day -- and used tap water. Despite the fact that I was in India to report on the prevalence of unclean water. Still, as Kaj pointed out to our colleagues conferencing in from San Francisco, I was telling this story while eating lunch: sushi.
Mariana's trip to Africa, then Europe, then back to Africa, then back to Europe, was interrupted by not one but two epic luggage fails on the part of Lufthansa -- and one very public Twitter campaign to reuinte her with her bags (and tripod).
Kaj can't talk about his next piece other than to say that a trip to a high-security prison nearly landed him in contempt of court. And to promise he'll be using Twitter more now.
And Christof is back from a very intense round of reporting, painfully without his own camera in hand. It's a story we've been careful to not talk too much about -- unlike my relentness documenting of every pile of shit in India I filmed -- because the subjects were, even for the kind of story Vanguard so often goes after, particularly reluctant to speak with the media.
We want to tell you -- and show you -- as much as we can about the next season of Vanguard, even as we're still in the field or back here in LA piecing the shows together.
You tell me -- what do you want to know?
(Follow the full team at Twitter as we all scatter back across the globle.)
For the first time in more than two months, this week the entire Vanguard team was... more
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Today is World Water Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness around water issues – scarcity, access and quality. It’s probably the one day each year we all really stop to think about how to better manage this precious resource.
When we talk about water issues, we generally think about water scarcity. But water quality is just as, if not more important for the over 1 billion people around the world who lack adequate access to safe, clean water.
According to a report, Sick Water, released today by the UN Environment Program, over 2 billion tons of waste (human and animal) and industrial pollution are dumped into water every day. This is water that doesn’t just flow away and disappear. It’s the stuff we drink, swim, wash and eventually eat.
Yes, people are drinking and eating shit.
I was recently in India, working on an upcoming Vanguard documentary on toilets – or the lack of toilets – for 2.6 billion people around the world. Two billion, six hundred million people who are shitting out in the open, straight into rivers, or into makeshift toilets that send untreated sewage straight into waterways.
I took a short boat ride on the once-mighty but still holy Yamuna River, the vital waterway that serves New Delhi’s 12 million inhabitants. Today, people are shitting all over it. Literally. Our boat ride was absolutely wretched – easily the most awful stench I’ve experienced (and I say this after having spent three weeks filming open defecation). The river was literally bubbling with methane, the telltale sign of shit and industrial toxins. Along the river, people would shit in, then wash in this water.
Further downstream, people drink it.
As you might imagine, there are myriad public health issues this presents, and I’ll get into that in a later post.
But in the hopes that we think about water and sanitation tomorrow and the next day, Vanguard preparing a documentary about sanitation… or rather, TOILETS AND SHIT and the drive to make these “sexier” issues.
Over the next couple months, my producers and I will be updating you on our progress here on the Vanguard site. Please check in regularly for updates on this, and the other docs we’re preparing for you later this spring.
The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting has pulled together an excellent resource on water issues here.Today is World Water Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness around water issues... more
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One organization that has been working intently on the issue of clean water and access to toilets is the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
In this piece they helped fund, you can get a sense of the conditions I've been witnessing first-hand in Dehli:
World Water Day is March 22, and I'll be talking more here about some of the most disgusting--and dangerous--threats to a clean water supply.
Learn more on the Pulitzer Center's site, Downstream.
One organization that has been working intently on the issue of clean water and... more
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Today was one of the strangest shoot days I’ve had in quite some time: I toured the museum of toilets in Delhi. Yes, a place dedicated to the history and the evolution of toilets.
Here’s a small sampling of some of the more interesting models:
This is the throne-toilet. For the king who doesn’t want to leave the chamber to take a dump.
This is the travel toilet. For the outdoorsy type who wants to enjoy a nice spread on a table, or a desk to write on, but who doesn’t like to squat. This model is a multi-purpose solution for those willing to lug it around.
Have a hearty lunch, then flip open the tabletop to let it back out.
And finally, the comfort toilet. For those who like the comfort of fine leather, and the convenience of a built-in crapper.
The toilet docent added that this is favored by the "fat and lazy," who might not want to get up from the couch while watching TV or playing a game of cards.
Follow me on Twitter for more defecation.Today was one of the strangest shoot days I’ve had in quite some time: I toured... more
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It’s great to be back out on the field. My latest adventure/assignment brings me to India, where I am right now.
As soon as I landed yesterday, we headed straight over to a neighborhood where people were celebrating Holi, one of the biggest holidays here in India. The celebrations consist of people dancing in the streets, throwing paint powder on one another. As soon as these guys saw us, and our cameras, we were instantly targeted.
Read more here about India's water crisis and how it impacted even this celebration, and learn more about Holi here.
Follow me for updates or keep up with everyone on the Vanguard team using our Twitter list.
It’s great to be back out on the field. My latest adventure/assignment brings... more
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Dear Vanguard Fans:
After five memorable years, we are sad to announce that Vanguard’s executive producer Laura Ling will be moving on from Current Media. In a letter addressed to the staff, Laura felt it was time to focus on starting a family and the writing of a book with her sister Lisa Ling about her captivity last summer in North Korea and the bond they shared that helped them get through it.
“Working at Current and leading the Vanguard team has been the highlight of my career.” wrote Laura Ling. “It has been challenging, but thoroughly rewarding; intense, but fun. I’m extremely proud of the Vanguard team, which is working so passionately to raise awareness about some of the most important issues affecting our world. I will continue to be a champion of their work and of Current as a whole.” Dear Vanguard Fans:
After five memorable years, we are sad to announce that... more
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This week in Copenhagen, negotiations are going on toward producing a pact to fight global warming, a pact that is supposed to be ready for world leaders to ratify at the end of the week. Whether or not the pact will be completed, or will be strong enough to accomplish what people who want to fight global warming want it to accomplish is unclear at this moment. But it does at least show that the world is trying to contradict that famous saying by someone who may or may not have been Mark Twain: “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
One of the first pieces that I ever shot for Vanguard, back in the summer of 2005, was a story set up by Adam Yamaguchi, looking at the shrinking of glaciers in Alaska.
Glacier (Video)
What we saw was pretty shocking, in terms of weather changing the landscape of Alaska, but as someone who’s been living in Southern California for many years, the idea that the weather can have a big impact on your life wasn’t actually a novel idea. I’m a native of Michigan, and, growing up, it was always my ambition, to leave and move to southern California, sunny southern California, to get away from weather. Ironically, as it turned out.
Certainly, in my adopted state, I can barbeque in my backyard on New Year’s Eve more easily than one can in Michigan—I tried it last New Year’s at my father-in-laws, when it was 10F, and it’s doable, though bracing. But, as it turns out, cold and snow aren’t necessary the kind of weather that can have a big impact on your life.
Here’s where the irony comes in: It stopped raining yesterday in Los Angeles, much to the relief of the people living in my canyon, because the rain ended before the mudslides began. There was a danger of mudslides because the side of the canyon 400 yards from my house was entirely denuded by fire this past August—one of the early fires in what turned out to be nearly a two month siege of them, including the Station Fire, the biggest fire in the recorded history of Los Angeles County. The fires came because it’s been so warm and sunny—and dry.
The fire came into my canyon as I was driving home early from work on what seemed like a pretty great day---as I was driving Laura Ling and Euna Lee were in the air, en route home to LA from North Korea in Bill Clinton’s plane. I saw a plume of smoke from the freeway, and thought to myself, “on this good day, someone else is having a bad one,” and pulled into to my canyon to hear sirens. At first I couldn’t see anything, but then a car with fire department officials pulled in front of me, and four officials got out and looked up at the hillside where there was perhaps a fifty foot wide fire. I drove on into my driveway, and said to me wife, kind of casually, ‘there’s a fire in the canyon.” We stood on our front driveway watching it, and within minutes it was half a mile wide, and very loud—it was crackling like a fireplace in a Christmas commercial. We ended up calling out kids and telling them not to come home, then evacuating our photo albums, dog, turtle, rabbit, guinea pig, my son’s guitars and my daughter’s harp. The next day, we returned—and fortunately no homes in our canyon were hurt. But ever since, the majestic pine in my neighbor’s yard looks like a potential torch of death.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that in my native Michigan, I felt annoyed and persecuted by the weather, but in my adopted southern California we are sometimes obliged to be afraid of the weather. And that seems to be what they’re debating in Copenhagen, whether or not the world as a whole, in general, should start being afraid of the weather, and, in contradiction of Mark Twain or whomever’s observation, start doing something about it.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Au revoir from the Vanguard intern - Dan Ucko
- A shout-out to Doctors Without Borders - Kaj Larsen
- Cocaine Mafia: Coke's huge market in Europe and the African supply chain that gets it there - Christof Putzel
- Lining up - Mitch Koss
- Does Sri Lanka offer lessons for Obama? - Darren Foster
- Kaj’s robot and weapon firing skills are put to the test - Lauren CerreThis week in Copenhagen, negotiations are going on toward producing a pact to fight... more
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On my long transatlantic flight this week, I managed to catch up on a movie I'd been meaning to see for some time. It usually takes flying to force me to commit to watching anything on the screen for more than 20 minutes. So between a couple short naps I finally watched Transformers 2. Though the movie was lame, I'd been reminded of how much I loved the Transformers as a kid. I grew up wanting to be an evil Decepticon who wreaked havoc on humankind. (Just seemed more fun than to be a friendly Autobot.)
So I guess it was my childhood fascination with cartoon robots that fueled my interest in the idea of a robot takeover of Japan. And while that is far from being an even exaggerated reality, we're surely seeing a growing number of them pop up in Japan. For a number of reasons Japan's population is in decline: xenophobia, women are choosing to pursue careers and saying no to marriage, the Japanese aren't having sex (no explanation).
And so, robots seem to be the solution -- in a very odd Japanese way -- to the shrinking workforce that's threatening Japan's economic vitality.
Since I did my story in Japan there's been a slew of new robots, including a robot fashion model, scary horror movie child robots, jumping robots, even a sex robot (you can google that one on your own). How these robots --except perhaps the last one -- address population decline, I'm not sure. But they're fun distractions I suppose. Perhaps they're not alone, though...because now, we're starting to see robots invade other nations. This just might be the oddest one yet. Enter the shopping mall robot guide in the UAE.
Japan: Robot Nation (Video)
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- Why Should You Trust Us? - Mitch Koss
- My Second Tour of Sri Lanka - Mariana van Zeller
- Chinese Mobsters and Megacities - Joanne Shen
- The world: A dangerous place for do-gooders - Kaj Larsen
- The world: A dangerous place for reporters - Darren Foster
- Sometimes that which seemed impossible actually comes to pass - Mitch KossOn my long transatlantic flight this week, I managed to catch up on a movie I'd... more
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Adam Yamaguchi and I are making a presentation next week to a group of public information officers for large institutions on the topic of why Vanguard is great and worth co-operating with. Which, as we prepare for it, forces us to confront the question: Are we?
One of our ambitions for being in the Vanguard is to tell you about important stuff that you ideally didn’t know too much about, if at all. Think of the new episodes that we’ve put up this season, and the worlds that Mariana and Adam and Adrian have entered to show you things that you should know. We sometimes like to think of ourselves as sometimes serving as an early warning for issues that later will become prominent—hence our name. But for you to heed what we’re telling you, you have to trust that we know what we’re talking about, that we’re not exaggerating, or misunderstanding, or misrepresenting the situation at hand.
Why should you trust us?
The same question pervades what we do in producing Vanguard. A lot of what we do behind the scenes involves talking with various individuals and institutions and asking them to cooperate for free with us in putting together one of our documentaries. Imagine that you’re minding your own business and I call you up, say my name and the name of this network, name some subject or another that I’m researching, and launch into a series of questions. If I were calling on behalf of some more recognizable entity—such as MTV or the Newshour on PBS, which I have—it still requires a leap of faith for you to engage me. What if I’m lying? I could be: 1) a prankster; 2) an identity thief; 3) a salesperson; or 4) a nut. When you add to that dynamic the fact that I work for a new series, Vanguard, on a new network, Current, that average person might not yet know about, then it’s even more amazing how the vast majority of people respond cooperatively. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed by how nice people can be and feel like blurting out into the phone: “Thank you sir/madam for not hanging up on me!” But that would probably make the person on the other end of the line suddenly wonder if I was 4) a nut.
Anyway, what we hope persuades the subjects who agree to help with or be in our documentaries, is the same thing that persuades you to trust our work when you watch it: As much as possible, we approach our stories without a particular angle. We’re not trying to prove a particular point, we’re trying to illuminate a situation so that you can make your own mind up about it. If, for example, Laura makes a Vanguard documentary in which there are both cops and criminals, which she has, then we like to think that she could show the result to both an audience or cops and an audience of criminals, and both groups would feel fairly represented. Ideally, if you cooperate with us when we’re shooting a story, we portray you as you are, without us filtering the information or telling the viewer how to feel about it. And similarly, if you watch one of Vanguard’s documentaries, you shouldn’t get the feeling that we’re manipulating you to react in a particular way. The human spirit rebels when it senses that it is being pressured to abandon independent judgment. Oscar Wilde put it most famously: “It would take a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.” Three quarters of a century later, Andy Warhol used a more laconic version of the same thought: “But that’s what I like about it.” We try our best to bring you compelling stories with important information. We leave it up to you how to react. And we like to think that this makes us trustworthy.
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- My Second Tour of Sri Lanka - Mariana van Zeller
- Chinese Mobsters and Megacities - Joanne Shen
- The world: A dangerous place for do-gooders - Kaj Larsen
- The world: A dangerous place for reporters - Darren Foster
- Sometimes that which seemed impossible actually comes to pass - Mitch Koss
- Doctors Wanted: no experience necessary! - Cerissa TannerAdam Yamaguchi and I are making a presentation next week to a group of public... more
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The Chinese press is having a field day with the juicy details in a case involving massive government corruption, mob-style beatings and a 46-year-old female crime-boss, reputed to have a stable of 16 lovers at her beck and call.
Ongoing trials are taking place in Chongqing, a megacity located in Sichuan, a province in western China. Xie Caiping, aka ”The Godmother”, was the ringleader in an extensive organized crime network that ran 20 illegal gambling halls, all protected by the police. (Chongqing’ deputy police chief, who happened to be Xie’s brother-in-law, reportedly bought a $4.4 million villa from bribes.) The investigation has been going on since last year and over 1,500 suspects—from gangsters to high-ranking officers—have been rounded up. This AP article notes: “Intended to display the Chinese leadership’s renewed resolve to stamp out corruption, the Chongqing campaign has instead highlighted how entrenched criminal gangs have become through China.”
Back in 2007, Adam Yamaguchi and I travelled to Chongqing and profiled people from different walks of life in this megacity on the rise. We visited a city in transition between the old and the new. The old could be very picturesque—smoky, crumbling old teahouses where old men played checkers and card games, freelance porters known as “bang bang” men stooped under the heavy load they toted on their backs, peasants eking out a meager existence on the few remaining plots of land within city limits that hadn’t yet been seized by greedy developers.
We also couldn’t help but be confronted by the new look of Chongqing—as revealed to us by young Chinese yuppies who had filled their new apartment with IKEA-esque knock offs, the real estate developer super-confident he’d be able to sell thousands of apartment units before they were even built and the homegrown auto company that aspired to be China’s answer to BMW. Even the “bang bang” man who we profiled was no longer carrying loads across his back using a traditional, old-fashioned bamboo stick. Instead he was valiantly carrying gigantic sacks, filled with Western-style garments, for a department story catering to China’s rising middle class. It was clear that the new Chongqing was quickly replacing the old Chongqing and most residents seemed, on the surface, happy about it, as long as everyone’s lives were getting better (read: richer) by the day. So what if all the construction dust and power plant pollution made the air seem as thick as pea soup?
About a week after we aired "City on Steroids", a massive earthquake struck Sichuan province. More than 87,000 people were killed including over 5,000 children when some 7,000 shoddily constructed schools collapsed. Allegations of government corruption as the cause behind the substandard buildings are still being investigated by grieving parents and media. But, over a year later, the Chinese central government in Beijing is still trying to silence all critics on this matter.
Instead, the central government periodically goes after provincial and city officials in cases like this one. It’s happened time and again in many of the megacities on China’s East Coast. Now it’s Chongqing’s turn. The scandals are covered breathlessly by the state-run media. Scapegoats are found. Colorful characters like “The Godmother” and their extravagant lifestyles are trotted out for show trials that rivet the population at large. All this, of course, deflects from examination of the deeper underlying problems in China’s hybrid, Communist-yet-Capitalist system.
In the past three decades as China’s economy has undergone its stratospheric rise, organized crime has re-emerged, like any other well-run business enterprises. And with the reform of China’s tax code in which local governments had to send their revenue to Beijing, local government officials like the ones in Sichuan, became all too susceptible to shady dealing making with organized crime groups .
“The Godmother” has been sentenced to 18 years and some of her cohorts have even gotten death sentences. But in a country as vastly populated as China, this measure is kind of like cutting one head off a hydra-headed monster. You can bet this web of businessmen, mobsters and officials isn’t unique to Chongqing. And until the central government is willing to undergo the difficult, systemic reform to get at the root causes of corruption, organized crime will keep on gathering economic and political strength.
City on Steroids (Video)
Vanguard airs a new episode tomorrow night at 10pm ET/10pm PT: "Sri Lanka: Notes from a War on Terror"
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- The world: A dangerous place for do-gooders - Kaj Larsen
- The world: A dangerous place for reporters - Darren Foster
- Sometimes that which seemed impossible actually comes to pass - Mitch Koss
- Doctors Wanted: no experience necessary! - Cerissa Tanner
- All you ever needed to know about Vanguard, and then some. - Mariana van Zeller
- Kentucky Targets “The OxyContin Express” - Mariana van ZellerThe Chinese press is having a field day with the juicy details in a case involving... more
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Happy? Or scared?
Today’s big economic news is a report showing the US Gross Domestic Product grew 3.5 percent from July through September, the first GDP growth in over a year. Wall Street was happy. Stocks on the Dow Jones average rose nearly 200 points. The Obama Administration’s $787 billion stimulus program, combining tax cuts and government spending got some of the credit. At the same time, another report this week showed that American consumer confidence is down, partly due to unemployment continuing to climb. It’s almost at 10 percent now, while wages are mostly flat and home prices remain low, 401Ks are not recovered, blah, blah, blah…
If you’ve looked at a newspaper, or TV screen, or the Internet in the past 18 months, you’ve seen all the dismal stats.
So now that the GDP is growing again, which way are things going for you? Not in the next six months, but in the next six years. What kind of economy is going to emerge from the greatest economic decline since the 1930s? That’s the big question, and it points out one of the big dilemmas of journalism. You would think that the really important stuff would be stuff that you would want to pay closest attention to but the important stuff — the average American’s position in the economy — often builds over a lot of time, sometimes over many years, in the way that you’re supposed to boil a lobster, starting with the water at room temperature, so that by the time he or she is cooked, he or she doesn’t notice (so they say). So although this present recession seemed to start abruptly, the factors behind it kind of crept up on us. And that’s what’s tough to cover, and tough to follow.
As I've said before, at Vanguard we try to look forward. In May, we did a documentary mini-series in which we tried to look at the economy that we’ve had in the US since the 1980s, against the backdrop of its collapse. Laura Ling went to Las Vegas, formerly the fastest growing place in the US, for "Lost Vegas."
Adam Yamaguchi went to China’s manufacturing center for "Outsourcing Unemployment."
And Lauren Cerre and Tracey Chang went to Argentina for "Thank You, Recession."
Basically, we were looking at what kind of economy will emerge from this present downturn. Will we manage to go back to the system we’ve had since the 1980s? There we had tremendously high levels of consumer spending on cheap stuff — cheap because we’ve outsourced many of our manufacturing jobs to places where wages are lower. And our wealth creation came from real estate, stock, and equity inflation — essentially a series of bubbles. Or we could go back to the system we had in the ‘50s through the ‘70s, where there wasn’t so much economic separation in the US — we were essentially middle class — and wage growth was the key to economic improvement.
As we travel around the world, there is also another model that we see in globalized economies: Those economic engines of the developing world, like China and India, where the “developed” portion of the economy, the economy that we see and which looks like ours, doesn’t include all the population, or even most of it. Many, or most citizens, in these countries are invisible in economic terms. In fact, when Tracey Chang interviewed the COO of Infosys, the poster child of India’s high-tech development, in Bangalore India, he pointed out to her that India’s growth was not including most people.
So where are you going to emerge? Right now there seem to be three directions.Happy? Or scared?
Today’s big economic news is a report showing the US Gross... more
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Tonight, Vanguard premieres The Forest of Ecstasy at 10pm ET/ 10pm PT on Current. Not too long before our trip, I’d bought myself a new digital SLR camera to satisfy my then-newfound passion for still photography. (Some photos below) As I go through the hundreds of photos I took during our trip, I’m reminded of all the moments and experiences my colleague Joanne and I experienced during our trip to Cambodia.
While the ecstasy trade, and its impact on Cambodia’s rainforest was one of the main focuses of our trip, this was just one of many many stories that caught our attention. In her blog entry, Joanne touches upon how the drug trade has overrun the heretofore vulnerable nation – today, mostly in the form of meth.
In the mid-late 70s, Cambodia was run by a genocidal regime, known as the Khmer Rouge. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge took over the country, and declared the beginning of Year Zero – and all cultural institutions and traditions were to be wiped. Essentially, the nation would hit the restart button, and only new revolutionary ideas would hold.
These guys were responsible for killing nearly 1/5 of the nation’s population, wiping out entire classes of intellectuals and professionals, and instituting an entirely socialized, agrarian society.
During the campaign of terror, the country was essentially hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world. This isolation would outlast the regime itself, which was driven from power in 1979. Ongoing violence and instability kept much of the rest of the world from wanting to engage, or do any business in this dangerous country.
Drugs, like many other legal products, are part of international business. Cambodia’s instability proved to be too risky for the drug traffickers, who steered clear. So even though the country sat in a region known for massive flows of drugs, Cambodia was entirely drug free.
In the years since the Khmer Rouge have lost power and melted away, Cambodia has begun to rejoin and re-engage with the world. This has meant increased trade with its neighbors. And now, the drugs are flowing in, in massive amounts.
Drug pushers are finding Cambodia to be rich, fertile ground for the proliferation and sale of drugs. Meth has proven to be particularly viral for this broken population. At the same time, those who are resource-hungry are also finding Cambodia ripe for exploitation. Like the forests full of the ecstasy precursors and the exotic animals deep inside.
Unfortunately for Cambodia, this is what democracy, the ideals of freedom, and trade have brought. Development has been extremely positive for Cambodia, and the nation is far better off than it was under the Khmer Rouge. But did liberty and freedom have to be so costly?
Recently on the Vanguard Blog:
- A Geologist’s Analysis of the War in Afghanistan - Kaj Larsen
- Everything is connected: ecstasy, rainforests, and beyond - Adam Yamaguchi
- Street Hustlers, Militants, and Vanguard’s Mission - Mitch Koss
- Cambodia’s Coming Drug Crisis - Joanne Shen
- Preparing for armageddon in the year 2012 - Adrian BaschukTonight, Vanguard premieres The Forest of Ecstasy at 10pm ET/ 10pm PT on Current. Not... more
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Over the years, I’ve worked on a number of environmental stories that have taken me from one part of the globe to another -- from Madagascar to China and all the way to Greenland.
For me, this entire journey has been a bit accidental. I’d never really considered myself to be truly “green” in any one way, but when I came to Current, I committed myself to doing stories of large global import. As I began mapping out the big stories that I felt needed to be told, many of them have happened to point back to the health of our planet.
This led me to the realization that everything is somehow tied to the environment. By simply paying attention, we can see and understand how most every action we take, nearly every product we consume, has an effect somewhere else in the world. That reaction may not be within sight – conveniently, it often isn’t – but somewhere, you can bet there’s a cost.
I began tossing around ideas about how best to illustrate that idea. Examples abound – like plastics accumulating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, electronic trash burning in an e-waste wasteland in China, or sushi’s acceptance as a global cuisine leading to an emptying of our oceans. My colleague found an unexpected, nearly grotesque example.
Ecstasy.
A few months ago, Joanne Shen and I traveled to Cambodia to see how the global demand for ecstasy was helping drive the destruction of what was amongst the most pristine, intact rainforests in Southeast Asia. It’s a great example of how the demand for various goods can, and often has, massive, reverberating effects halfway around the world. These ‘ecstasy hunters’ are burrowing deep into the forest to obtain safrole oil, the precursor to MDMA, or ecstasy. This is the crucial ingredient for the drug.
In “The Forest of Ecstasy” you’ll see me trudge through the rainforest in search of a rare tree that’s being cut down for its high quantities of the essential oil. And we came across safrole oil ‘factories’ in the middle of the forest, extracting and refining the oil before it’s sent out to become the ecstasy pill. The damage doesn’t end there. As the guys create roads into the forest, they’re paving the roads open for poachers looking for the wildlife bounty inside. It’s a chain reaction caused by club kids looking for a good time.
I’m not suggesting we stop doing all the things we do in any given day, or stop consuming the things that have become ‘necessities’ in our lives. But a greater level of awareness just might make you think a bit more about the choices you have to make.
The world is far more connected than you might imagine.
The "Forest of Ecstasy" airs tonight Wednesday, Oct. 28 at 10/9c on Current TV. For more information, visit Vanguard on Current.com.Over the years, I’ve worked on a number of environmental stories that have taken... more
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Last Thursday, I was going to tell you about how the neighborhood around Vanguard’s Hollywood production office is the unofficial transgender street hustler capital of Los Angeles County, but instead I wrote about the narco war in Mexico, and its possible spill over into the US—or not. But the next afternoon, just to show you that I wasn’t exaggerating about the street hustlers, I came back to the Vanguard office from an offsite meeting and my colleagues Benita Sills and Lauren Cerre informed me that, while I was away, an SUV had pulled into my parking spot so that a street hustler could perform an sexual act on a customer.
And this allows me to repeat that, in Vanguard, we like to think one part of our mission is to give you a heads up as to what might be coming in the future. We’re not fortune tellers, but if we can point to stuff that’s out there that you might otherwise not hear much about, when something does happen, it’s not such a shock because, ideally, it’s more understandable.
So instead of writing about street hustlers today, I’ll encourage you to watch a story that Adam Yamaguchi, Tracey Chang, and I shot three years ago this month in Pakistan.
We shot this story during a trip across Pakistan, in which we drove through the Khyber Pass in the militant-infested Tribal Areas along the country’s western border with Afghanistan—the place where all the fighting has been going on this past week in the Pakistani Army’s offensive against militants. Now, the instability has spread, and foreigners can’t even get up the Khyber Pass, even with a Pakistani soldier in their car, as we had.
But while we gave you a heads up on that situation, that’s not what I want to point out. While we were on our trip, a bomb went off a few hundred yards from us and killed seven people in the city of Peshawar, a few miles outside the Tribal Areas. Three years ago, such a bombing in Peshawar was rare. Now bombings have become common, not just in areas near the Tribal Areas, but across Pakistan. And that’s what I wanted to point out.
If you notice, the story I’ve put up, "Pakistani India Envy," wasn’t shot in or near the dangerous Tribal Areas, but all the way across Pakistan, in the bustling city of Lahore, in the Punjab, near Pakistan’s border with India. If you don’t watch the piece, the point is that there are militants like the ones hiding in the Tribal Areas (backed by the tribal people there), but there are also militants throughout Pakistan because the government used to back those who were deemed useful in Pakistan’s decades-long struggle against its much larger and stronger neighbor, India. But now that the militants in the Tribal Areas want to terrorize the rest of Pakistan, they’re able to turn to these other militant networks, which were only supposed to fight against India, on Indian soil.
Which means that now they’re a problem for Pakistan. It’s somewhat similar to the lesson that the US learned with its first involvement with Afghanistan, in the 1980s. At the time it gave hundreds of millions of dollars in weaponry to some members of the anti-Soviet resistance in Pakistan, which included a broad collection of groups and individuals, some of which later founded militant organizations like Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The lesson seems to be that militants pose the danger of staying militant, even when the assignment you gave them has ended. And, if that analysis proves to be correct, we told you so three years ago.Last Thursday, I was going to tell you about how the neighborhood around... more
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These days, I don’t have very much time to do much of anything but scurrying about and working. And, as much as I dislike going through airport security, or waking up at 3:30 to make early morning flights, or the poor service on most carriers, I’ve come to enjoy the calm of flying.
It’s become my rare refuge from the barrage of phone calls and emails that stop me in my tracks every few minutes. It’s become that rare window where I can catch up on my growing stack of newspapers and magazines. And best of all, it’s become my time to catch up on TV.
Apparently, I really haven’t been missing much. An endless parade of reality shows, boring docs, a taped newscast featuring annoyingly enunciating anchors turned me away.
The one bright spot might be Top Chef, which has recently become one of my new favorite shows. My version of cooking involves eating out every night, so watching the show is pushing me to want to learn how to cook. I feel like I want to be a more refined version of myself, and it’s aspirational.
But again , most of the TV lineup is mindless drivel. VH1's ‘celebreality’ was amusing for a minute, and then sunk to depressing. I tuned away, strangely feeling better about myself for not being one of the people on those shows. Maybe that’s the point.
And I think that’s why I’m so excited to be working with the Vanguard family. We happen to think there’s an audience that’s yearning for something better, something smarter. It’s my hope that upon watching a Vanguard episode, you come away entertained, fulfilled and have knowledge in context. And ultimately, more interested in learning and being an engaged member of society.These days, I don’t have very much time to do much of anything but scurrying... more
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