As it stands now, there is only one remaining legal case against Blackwater in the United States - a lawsuit brought by Mohammed Kinani, father of the youngest victim of the Nisur Square shootings. His nine year old son, Ali was shot in the head and killed by Blackwater forces.
Ali’s father may well be the one man now standing between Blackwater and total impunity for the Nisour Square massacre.
From Aryan skinhead gatherings in the middle of the Arizona desert to the anti-immigrant militias patrolling the US-Mexican border, from the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens in Mississippi to the right wing of the "Tea Party Movement", Big Noise takes an inside look at the resurgence of white nationalism in America.
Originally aired on Al Jazeera English. Available on Dispatches Vol.6
Afghanistan's most notorious warlord is back - at the invitation of the president. Karzai hails his warlord allies as national heroes, but what does their return mean for Afghan Democracy?
It's 2009 in Baghdad, and the walls keep going up. As the American occupation enters its 7th year, Iraq remains in ruins with over 1 million dead and 4 to 6 million refugees that have not begun to return home. Baghdad, a cosmopolitan center for thousands of years, has become a city of walled ghettos. What passes for peace in Iraq today is an exhausted truce in a terrible sectarian conflict.
But how did the occupation turn into this, and what went wrong?
Originally aired on Al Jazeera English. Will be Available on Dispatches Vol.5
5 years into the war in Iraq, there is no end in sight. 200 US soldiers meet outside of Washington D.C., sharing first-hand accounts of the war on-the-ground and of growing GI resistance.
After four years of bloody insurgency in Iraq, the course of the war changed abruptly when America formed an alliance with a confederation of Sunni militias known as the Awakening movement.
But is the US just re-empowering the same tribal elite Saddam used to run the country? And will it lead to long-term stability?
Originally aired on Al Jazeera English. Available on Dispatches Vol.4
Moqtada al Sadr and his militia, the Mehdi Army, have been America's most intractable opponents in Iraq. But after recent attacks launched by the US and Iraqi military against Sadr strongholds, cease-fires were negotiated and the Mehdi Army melted away from the streets.
Has the Mehdi Army finally been defeated, and is this the end of the armed Shiite resistance to the occupation?
Originally aired on Al Jazeera English. Available on Big Noise Dispatches Vol.4
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been detained by the US, one and a half million Iraqis have had an immediate family-member detained, almost every Iraqi knows someone who has been through the US detention system.
Few American institutions affect the lives of ordinary Iraqis more directly and profoundly than the US detention system. But once Iraqis are swept up in the system, there is no clear way out.
Katrina was called the worst natural disaster in America in 100 years.
. . but the hundreds who died here were not killed by the storm - they
were left for days to drown as flood waters rose around them.
And today, the storm isn't what's keeping most of the city's former residents from returning home.
In March 2008 parliamentary elections were held in Iran. Big Noise travelled there to show a side of Iranian politics rarely seen
in the Western media. We meet everyday
people of Iran as well as the candidates running for Parliament as they
debate and discuss the relevance of these elections, their economic
conditions and the international pressures on their nation.
Elections Under Threat offers a unique glimpse into the political dynamics of the
struggles for participation and democracy in a nation facing increasing
economic and military threats from the United States.
While the economy unravels and the gap widens between rich and poor, Homeless Power looks at the rise of a new poor people's movement in America.
A homeless mother when she was in her teens, Cheri Honkala is the founder of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, an organization dedicated to empowering the poor and homeless in Philadelphia. Cheri argues that the poor are being made invisible by the urban redevelopment programs of the last 20 years. But the prosperity of shiny new urban centers is an illusion that simply forceshunger and homelessness out of site.
With the erosion of US manufacturing jobs, Americans are filing for bankruptcy in record numbers and credit card debt is soaring - leaving more workers just a paycheck away from homelessness.
"In this country there is no safety net and there is no security. You can be ok for one minute and the next day you can be living out on the street and nobody will give a damn about you," Cheri says.
Homeless Hero is the story of a true American rebel.
Big Noise teams up with investigative journalist Greg Palast, travelling into Ecuador's Amazon rainforest to take a look at the biggest environmental case in history.
US Oil giant Chevron-Texaco versus the Cofan Indians.
The US military's progress report on Iraq is in and it's mostly bad news. But there is one unexpected success story: in the heartland of the Sunni Insurgency, a group of tribes has joined with the Americans to fight Al Qaeda. The Americans report that attacks on US forces have dropped dramatically and claim that life is beginning to return to normal.
The leader and symbol of this movement that the Americans claim is rapidly securing Anbar province is a sheik named Sattar Abu Risha.But is Abu Risha all he claims to be?
This piece originally aired on Al Jazeera English with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Big Noise teams up again with investigative journalist Greg Palast to follow up on a report they made on Vulture Funds. These vultures are speculators who buy up the debt of the poorest nations on the planet for pennies on the dollar — then use legal extortion or less-than-legal bribery to extract payments from these nations - payments equal to five, ten or twenty times what the vultures “invested.”
The initial report , that aired on BBC Newsnight and Democracy Now, created an international outcry that reached the White House and 10 Downing Street, and that threatens to close the legal loopholes that make this unscrupulous practice possible.
In July 2006, Israel attacked Lebanon in an attempt to weaken Hezballah and push it North of the Litani River, creating a buffer zone along Israel's northern border. Israeli warplanes pounded Lebanon from the air, dropping 5,000 bombs a day for 33 days. 130,000 homes were destroyed and over 1 million refugees created, but Israeli ground troops took heavy casualties and were unable to reach the Litani River.
This Big Noise video report originally aired on Al Jazeera International.
GREG PALAST: July 3rd, I was in my office in London when the phone rang. It was Mexico City. I was told, “Take a look at the Mexican papers.” The exit polls in the presidential election there showed a clear win for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left wing's candidate for president, but the official count gave the election to George Bush's ally, Felipe Calderon, of the rightwing ruling party, the PAN. Hmmm. Exit polls that don't match the official vote count. I had heard that story before. In Ohio in 2004, John Kerry led Bush in the exit polls, and in 2000, Al Gore won in the Florida exit polls. But in both cases, George Bush won in the official count.
The presidential elections are over, but the real battle over Mexico's future is being fought outside of electoral politics. Two powerful figures have launched other kinds of political campaigns here.
The multibillionaire Carlos Slim and the guerrilla leader Subcomandante Marcos are facing off in the struggle between the Mexico above and the Mexico below.
This Big Noise report originally aired on Al Jazeera International.
Vulture fund companies buy up the debt of poor countries at cheap prices, and then demand payments much higher than the original amount of the debt, often taking poor countries to court when they cannot afford to repay. Investigative journalist Greg Palast reports on one company that has won the right to collect $20 million from the government of Zambia after buying its debt for $4 million. In his recent State of the Union address, President Bush declared the United States was taking on the challenges of global hunger, poverty and disease, and urged support for debt relief, which he called the best hope for eliminating poverty. Big Noise joined Greg's team to shoot and edit this piece.
Basra is Iraq's economy – its Rumeila oil fields tap one of the largest pools of petroleum in the world, and without its revenues the central government in Baghdad would collapse. This wealth makes Basra the site of a battle for political control between the three largest Shiite parties in Iraq – al-Hakim’s SIIC, Moqtada al-Sadr’s ‘Sadrist Current’, and the Islamic Virtue Party, which controls the Basra governorate and is linked to the Oil Workers' Union. The Battle For Basra explores the power struggle underway in Basra, and what it reveals about the larger battle for control in the new, Shiite-dominated Iraq.
An investigation by Rick Rowley, Hiba Dawood and David Enders with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis reporting.This report originally aired on Al-Jazeera English.
In 2005 a food crisis hit Niger. Out of a population of 12 million, 3.6 million went hungry and 800,000 children faced starvation. But activists in Niger claim that the famine was not caused by drought. "This is a structural famine. A permanent famine,"says journalist Moussa Tchangari. "It was caused by 20 years of structural adjustment programs."
Sadr City is a small neighborhood in Baghdad that holds half the city's population. It was the Northern epicenter of the two Shi'a intifadahs against Saddam's regime, and is now the stronghold of Moqtada Al Sadr's Mehdi Army. A Big Noise camera spent a summer in Sadr City and brought back these video images.
Blackwater's Youngest Victim - White Power USA - Vulture Funds Attack Liberia - East St. Louis
Return of the Warlords - Curveball - Broke Down In Motor City - The Continuing Occupation
Moqtada al Sadr and the Mehdi Army - Sunnu Re-awakening - US Detention System in Iraq - Democratic and Republican Conventions 2008 - Vote Suppression
Battle for Basra - New Orleans: Man-made Disaster -Iran:Elections Under Threat- Chevron/Texaco in Ecuador's Rainforest
Sunni Militias in Iraq - Jena, Louisiana - Homeless Power - Vulture Funds
Hugo Chavez - Subcomandante Marcos - The War in Lebanon - Fraud in the Mexican Elections - World Bank Famine in Niger - Vulture Funds - and more
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As it stands now, there is only one remaining legal case against Blackwater in the United States - a lawsuit brought by Mohammed Kinani, father of the youngest victim of the Nisur Square shootings. His nine year old son, Ali was shot in the head and killed by Blackwater forces.
From Aryan skinhead gatherings in the middle of the Arizona desert to the anti-immigrant militias patrolling the US-Mexican border, from the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens in Mississippi to the right wing of the "Tea Party Movement", Big Noise takes an inside look at the resurgence of white nationalism in America.
Afghanistan's most notorious warlord is back - at the invitation of the president. Karzai hails his warlord allies as national heroes, but what does their return mean for Afghan Democracy?
5 years into the war in Iraq, there is no end in sight. 200 US soldiers meet outside of Washington D.C., sharing first-hand accounts of the war on-the-ground and of growing GI resistance.
After four years of bloody insurgency in Iraq, the course of the war changed abruptly when America formed an alliance with a confederation of Sunni militias known as the Awakening movement.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been detained by the US, one and a half million Iraqis have had an immediate family-member detained, almost every Iraqi knows someone who has been through the US detention system. 
Katrina was called the worst natural disaster in America in 100 years.
. . but the hundreds who died here were not killed by the storm - they
were left for days to drown as flood waters rose around them.
In July 2006, Israel attacked Lebanon in an attempt to weaken Hezballah and push it North of the Litani River, creating a buffer zone along Israel's northern border. Israeli warplanes pounded Lebanon from the air, dropping 5,000 bombs a day for 33 days. 130,000 homes were destroyed and over 1 million refugees created, but Israeli ground troops took heavy casualties and were unable to reach the Litani River.
GREG PALAST: July 3rd, I was in my office in London when the phone rang. It was Mexico City. I was told, “Take a look at the Mexican papers.” The exit polls in the presidential election there showed a clear win for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left wing's candidate for president, but the official count gave the election to George Bush's ally, Felipe Calderon, of the rightwing ruling party, the PAN. Hmmm. Exit polls that don't match the official vote count. I had heard that story before. In Ohio in 2004, John Kerry led Bush in the exit polls, and in 2000, Al Gore won in the Florida exit polls. But in both cases, George Bush won in the official count.
The presidential elections are over, but the real battle over Mexico's future is being fought outside of electoral politics. Two powerful figures have launched other kinds of political campaigns here.
Vulture fund companies buy up the debt of poor countries at cheap prices, and then demand payments much higher than the original amount of the debt, often taking poor countries to court when they cannot afford to repay. Investigative journalist Greg Palast reports on one company that has won the right to collect $20 million from the government of Zambia after buying its debt for $4 million. In his recent State of the Union address, President Bush declared the United States was taking on the challenges of global hunger, poverty and disease, and urged support for debt relief, which he called the best hope for eliminating poverty. Big Noise joined Greg's team to shoot and edit this piece.
