The Italian island of Sardinia presents many faces to the world, from the pretty harbours, sun-kissed beaches and fancy coastal villas of the super-rich to the famously stunning landscape of the interior, with picturesque towns and remote villages dotted among the mountains, woods and streams. Unsurprisingly, such things attract holidaymakers from all over Europe and tourism has long been one of the island's main industries. But few of those visitors will fully appreciate just how much of the island is barred to them - and indeed to locals as well. That is because about a third of Sardinia's territory is controlled by the Italian military and rented out as a testing ground for war. This restricted fiefdom includes places like Salto di Quirra - a huge weapon-proving range and rocket launching site near Perdasdefogu, one of the largest such bases in the European Union - and large sections of Sardinian coastal waters reserved for use by NATO for naval and amphibious warfare training and kept off-limits even to local fishermen. Inevitably some Sardinians baulk at the constraints all this imposes on them, but their principle concern is not about restricted movement, it is about their health. In areas near the test sites, there have been high rates of cancer, birth defects and early death. In one village, in one year, a shocking one-in-four new baby had some kind of defect. Elsewhere whole families have been hit. "My mother-in-law died of cancer. They cut my father-in-law's leg off because it was cancerous. My father died. My sister died young of lung cancer," says Sardinian citizen Guilio Angioni. Farmers and veterinarians say grazing livestock has also been affected, with numerous documented cases of animals giving birth to young with grotesquely twisted limbs. All of these instances, say concerned locals, are a toxic side effect of the thousands of high-explosive bombs, missiles, and rockets that have been tested here by European armies over the years - weapons that in some cases have contained depleted uranium, thorium and other radioactive materials, about which the authorities have been less than forthcoming. Despite the military's alleged secrecy in covering up these health problems for decades, in early 2019 formal police investigations began to shed clarity on the issue. "The causal link between the exposure to depleted uranium and diseases suffered ... has been confirmed at a judicial level. It is a milestone," says Gianpiero Scanu, leader of a two-year parliamentary inquiry. This film from Australian journalist Emma Alberici investigates the background to this disturbing story and the human cost of getting too close to the machinery of war. - - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

People & Power

Secret Sardinia | People and Power

Where are all the insects going? To anyone suffering from the over-enthusiastic attention of a cloud of mosquitoes or lamenting the effects of leaf-munching creepy crawlies in their back garden, it might seem like a ridiculous question, but it’s one that many scientists have been asking for some time now. Since the 1970s, according to one report from UK ecologists, half of all insects in Europe may have been lost as a result of intensive farming, the heavy use of pesticides and climate change. Another 2019 study, in the journal Biological Conservation, warned that at globally least 40% of the remaining 1 million known species of insect are believed to be facing extinction. If all this continues, they say, it could have devastating effects on the fragile ecosystem that sustains life on Planet Earth, because a crash of insect numbers threatens not only the birds and other animals which prey on them, but also the plants that rely on them for pollination. And that, in short, means much of the food we eat. "About 80% of crops depends on insects for pollination. 80% of the wild plant species as well”, says Professor Hans de Kroon of Radboud University in Holland. “If we are losing that, we are losing the ecological foundation of ourselves.” His own particular fears of a potential European insect apocalypse were backed up by results from a landmark study in Krefeld, Germany. Conducted over thirty years, scientists collected insects from 63 nature reserves. The results of obsessively tracking the changing numbers over time were shocking. "It was a drop of 75 per cent during a timeline of 27 years", says entomologist Martin Sorg. The impacts on agriculture could be dire, but ironically, one of the prime suspects is believed to be farm-based insecticides used the world over. "The whole system of having a way of farming which is entirely reliant on chucking on bucket loads of chemicals is not sustainable. We are going to wipe out insect life if we carry on this way", says Professor Dave Goulson of Sussex University. Reporter Eric Campbell has been finding out why scientists are so concerned – and what the solutions to the problem might be. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Insectageddon | People & Power

For well over a year, France's yellow vest activists have been making full use of their constitutionally enshrined right to protest against the economic policies of President Emmanuel Macron - most recently in support of a trade union standoff with the government over pension reform proposals. But the often uncompromising response of the authorities during some of those demonstrations - in which thousands of protesters and police officers have been injured - has raised disturbing questions about the appropriate degree of force to use in maintaining public order. Juliana Ruhfus has been to investigate claims that increasingly paramilitary-style law enforcement techniques - including the use of riot control weapons that can seriously injure those on the receiving end - are threatening to undermine France's democratic principles. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

France: Police on Trial | People & Power

Filmmaker: Fanny Bouteiller Africa is rich with natural resources, yet all too often the benefits of that abundance end up with overseas consumers, foreign investors and the international markets. This is often seen as the consequence of a post-colonial globalised economy, in which the rich somehow keep getting richer and the poorest, denied the full fruits of their labours, are kept in penury. It is also a state of affairs with which many on the continent are understandably deeply unhappy. They want more than the scraps the developed world leaves on the table. In Togo, West Africa, one such struggle now comes covered in chocolate. Over 60 percent of the population of Togo lives in poverty, with its cacao growers - producers of one of the country's main cash crops - helpless in the face of prices set by international buyers. But one man is advocating a new future for his country, through indigenous chocolate production. "When we launched the plan of manufacturing chocolate, lots of people did not believe us. Most made fun of us. People said we were mad." Trained in Italy, Komi Agbokou is a chocolatier, activist and, increasingly, an anti-globalisation evangelist. He has recently returned to Togo with one mission: to incite his fellow citizens to turn their cacao into chocolate themselves rather than being forever exploited by the international market. Komi explains that current cacao prices are decided by "those who transform cocoa", forcing local farmers to sell their produce for prices over which they have no control. On a 600km (373-mile) trip from North to South Togo, Komi set out to change attitudes, teaching his countrymen to maximise their produce's worth for their own benefit. -- - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Chocolate: A Taste of Independence in Togo | People and Power

Note: This is the second of a two-part report. Watch Part 1 here: https://youtu.be/TrECb874LyY The United States seems more disunited than at any point in recent history - its politics so undermined by partisan divisions that consensus on almost anything is impossible to achieve. Toxic partisanship between Democrats and Republicans - the nation's two main parties - has soared under President Donald Trump's administration - worsening since the release of then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on his investigation of Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 elections that brought him to power. But "Trump isn't the cause of a lot of the discord that we're seeing", says Lilliana Mason, an author and professor at the University of Maryland. "He probably makes it worse. But one of the things he has done is actually to bring out into the open these divides that have been accumulating between the parties." The sorting of people into two camps has fuelled stereotyping and distrust. Too often, the allegiance to one's own side makes the prospect of compromise with opponents almost unthinkable. The US is now so polarised by the distrust that a 2018 survey recorded 70 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of Democrats as believing the opposing party posed a serious threat to the US. "Each side is so convinced that they are absolutely correct, that they are morally and truly correct, and that the other side is dangerous," Mason says. So what has weakened the bonds that once held this huge democracy together - and where could the discord lead? In the first of two in-depth reports, People & Power's Bob Abeshouse investigates why the US is a nation so ill at ease with itself. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

The Strange Death of American Civility: Part 2 | People and Power

Note: This is the first of a two-part report. The United States seems more disunited than at any point in recent history - its politics so undermined by partisan divisions that consensus on almost anything is impossible to achieve. Toxic partisanship between Democrats and Republicans - the nation's two main parties - has soared under President Donald Trump's administration - worsening since the release of then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on his investigation of Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 elections that brought him to power. But "Trump isn't the cause of a lot of the discord that we're seeing", says Lilliana Mason, an author and professor at the University of Maryland. "He probably makes it worse. But one of the things he has done is actually to bring out into the open these divides that have been accumulating between the parties." The sorting of people into two camps has fuelled stereotyping and distrust. Too often, the allegiance to one's own side makes the prospect of compromise with opponents almost unthinkable. The US is now so polarised by the distrust that a 2018 survey recorded 70 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of Democrats as believing the opposing party posed a serious threat to the US. "Each side is so convinced that they are absolutely correct, that they are morally and truly correct, and that the other side is dangerous," Mason says. So what has weakened the bonds that once held this huge democracy together - and where could the discord lead? In the first of two in-depth reports, People & Power's Bob Abeshouse investigates why the US is a nation so ill at ease with itself. -- - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

The Strange Death of American Civility: Part 1 | People and Power

At the beginning of October 2017, a referendum on Catalonian independence sparked a furious response from the Spanish state, amid accusations that the secessionist politicians and civil society activists behind the poll had committed sedition and rebellion and misused public funds. Over the past four months, those charges have been controversially tested in a trial at Spain's Supreme Court, featuring 12 leaders of the independence movement. A verdict is expected this year and if found guilty the defendants could face many years in prison. The case has raised serious questions about the independence of the Spanish judiciary, because of concerns over the state's decision to treat this deeply divisive issue as a criminal rather than political matter. We sent filmmakers Sarah Spiller and Callum Macrae to investigate. Read more: - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

The Catalonia Trial: Justice or Vengeance? | People and Power

In October 2018, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), issued an alarming warning, that humanity has just twelve years to take action to avoid climate catastrophe. But is it already too late? Is our predicament now almost beyond repair? The obvious initiatives, such as energy conservation, adopting alternatives to fossil fuels and agreeing and then enforcing limits on carbon emmissions (which governments are notoriously bad at doing), may not now be enough on their own to make any appreciable difference to rising temperatures that are out of control. Some scientists and policymakers believe that more dramatic and immediate action is now necessary, that the planet itself will have to be hacked through a process known as geoengineering - deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s natural systems - in order to counteract climate change. There are many theories about how this could be done, though most as yet remain unrealised. A Swiss company Climeworks, is developing a solution that involves building giant fans that draw in air and bind carbon molecules into filters. At Harvard University, a team of scientists are hoping to mirror the cooling effects of volcano eruptions by using sulphur particles to disperse the sun's rays. Other proposals include sprinkling iron filings into the seas to encourage carbon eating plankton, or sending armadas of ships to pump sea mist into the sky... So could any of these work? Or should we instead be preparing for the now unavoidable consequences of climate change. Reporter Eric Campbell went to find out. - - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Climate Hackers | People and Power

In April 2018, protests against pension reform plans in Nicaragua quickly mushroomed into a widespread anti-government movement. The country's Sandinista regime under President Daniel Ortega cracked down hard. Over the following year, hundreds were killed, thousands more were exiled or detained and independent media voices were supressed. As negotiations to resolve the crisis finally got underway earlier this year, we sent filmmaker Rodrigo Vasquez to investigate.

Frontline Nicaragua | People and Power

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Walk in their Shoes | People and Power

His critics say he's a secretive oligarch who pulls all the strings in a country caught between Europe and Russia. His supporters say he's a just a successful businessman-turned-politician with his country's best interests at heart. But who is the man whom many know as Moldova's Puppet Master? And what lies behind murky allegations of blackmail, hitmen and a billion-dollar bank fraud? In advance of Moldova's recent general election, we sent filmmakers Glenn Ellis and Viktoryia Kolchyna to find out.

Moldova and the Puppet Master | People and Power

It may come as a surprise to those who thought the practice had long since been outlawed internationally, but although almost universally condemned as inhumane by animal rights groups and conservationists, commercial whaling still goes on - in Japan, Norway and, albeit with occasional breaks, Iceland. In the latter, where this documentary was filmed, it's only a small industry that's left defying both a global moratorium that's been in place since 1986 and the mass of public opinion around the world that has come to see killing whales as nothing short of murder. Iceland's few remaining whalers are used to the opprobrium, of course, and defend their activities by claiming that what they do is strictly monitored and controlled by the government, is only making use of sustainable resources, and that whaling is a significant part of their country's cultural heritage that needs to be preserved. That these arguments can be easily debunked by their critics (who point out, for example, that industrial whaling didn't begin until the early 20th century in Iceland, that whale meat hardly counts as a significant part of the Icelandic diet, and that whale-watching tourism contributes far more to the local economy than their slaughter), doesn't change the fact that for the moment, Iceland is still hunting whales and doesn't seem to care much about what the rest of the world thinks. At the sharp end of this battle between industry and conservationists there are currently two equally dogged opponents. On the one side are activists from an NGO known as Sea Shepherd that is determined to shame Iceland into ditching the industry and which, previously at least, hasn't been shy about taking direct action to sabotage it. On the other is the only Icelandic company that still hunts protected fin whales: Hvalur hf, led by its controversial and combative CEO, Kristjan Loftsson. Sometimes called "Iceland's most hated man", Loftsson seems unabashed by the hostility he generates and committed to carry on killing whales for as long as he's allowed. As this episode of People & Power was being made by Danish filmmakers Jakob Krogh and Soren Moon Vestergaard, the question of how long that would be was still open. Loftsson's permit to hunt fin whales was coming to an end and the Icelandic government was due to decide what was to happen next. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Killing Whales | People and Power

During World War II, Britain mobilised a huge, now-forgotten, army of African soldiers from its colonies on the continent to fight against the Axis powers (Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan) in battlefields across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. But when peace came in 1945, the rapidly diminishing British Empire cynically betrayed these men, subjecting them to systematic discrimination and denying them the same post-war benefits as white soldiers. This truly shameful episode of colonial-era disregard reverberates to this day. Though their numbers have been whittled down by the passing years, the survivors continue to endure great poverty, hardship and alienation, in spite of having risked their lives for the Allied war effort and despite some of the best efforts of a few members of the UK military establishment who have been trying to address past wrongs. With a cast of compelling characters, including some extraordinary veterans from Kenya and Zambia, this investigation by filmmakers Jack Losh and Alessandro Pavone finally brings this dreadful injustice to light and raises disturbing questions about the UK's attitude towards its forgotten African heroes. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

The Forgotten Heroes of Empire | People & Power

In 2018 a new government came to power in Armenia, amid widespread optimism that its leader Nikol Pashinyan would end decades of corruption and economic and industrial mismanagement. But now his administration faces a major dilemma - whether to proceed with a hugely divisive, multi-billion dollar mining project at Amulsar in the mountainous south of the country. Its backers say it could bring Armenia benefits in the form of foreign investment and jobs. But ranged against it is an increasingly effective coalition of activists and protesters who warn that the project will cause enormous environmental damage and further endanger one of the world's rarest and most beautiful animal species - the Caucasian Leopard. People and Power sent filmmakers Glenn Ellis and Viktoryia Kolchyna to find out more.

Armenia: Mining Out the Leopard | People and Power

Niger has long been a key staging point for migrants and asylum seekers from sub-Saharan West Africa, but the traffic reached a peak in 2015/16 when the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimated that 330,000 people followed the desert routes north - through often inhospitable country - to reach Libya or Algeria, and then the Mediterranean coast and sea crossings to Europe. The exponential growth mostly came about because the chaotic descent of Libya into civil conflict in the years after the Arab Spring opened up new routes and border crossings and made it easier for people traffickers to operate in the security vacuum, but it also flourished because it generated significant income and employment for northern Niger and its largest city, Agadez. Much of this was from the perfectly legitimate businesses - in transport and accommodation - that sprang up to service and feed off and then further develop the migrant trade. The increased wealth was welcomed because it helped bring back a measure of stability to an area that had seen its own insurgency during the Tuareg Rebellion of 2007-2009 and which had been struggling economically in the aftermath. But even as the traffic was burgeoning, the Nigerien government was coming under pressure from the European Union, which was keen to find a response to the alarming flows of people coming across the Mediterranean. Close to its own maritime borders the EU began working with the Libyan coastguard and others to refashion methods of deterring that sea borne traffic, but it also looked for innovative ways of stemming the movement of people on land much further south. So, to the grateful relief of the EU, Niger passed new anti-smuggling laws. In early 2016, its interior minister Mohamed Bazoum ordered their implementation across the country, sending police out to arrest smugglers (most of whom, of course, had previously been operating within locals laws) and confiscating hordes of the ubiquitous pick-up trucks that drivers had become used to piling high with lucrative migrant passengers. The new laws quickly began making a big dent in the migrant flow, bringing down the number of travelers passing through Agadez from around 24,000 a month in 2016 to around 5500 a month in 2017. But there have been other consequences and many of them difficult for Niger. The economic fallout for the north of the country has been considerable - with revenues in Agadez alone being reduced by around $117 million a year, according to the IOM. Indeed the losses across the area have been so significant that the EU has had to offer $635 million to compensate those who had once made a living out of migration through a reconversion plan involving business grants and loans and other support, although so far the difficulties of qualifying for any such support seem to be keeping the take-up of these opportunities to a minimum. Moreover, where previously migrants were able to move openly, they now have to use clandestine back routes through remote desert country to avoid villages and police patrols. This is dangerous. The UN roughly estimates that for every migrant death in the Mediterranean sea, now two die in the Sahara desert. Meanwhile, community leaders fear that youth unemployment and the lack of long-term investment (notwithstanding the EU's struggling compensation scheme) to develop alternative economic models could lead to increasing criminality and insecurity. With the migrant traffic suppressed, police warn that drug trafficking is becoming an ever more attractive option and elders fear that idle young men who would once have worked in the migration trade could now easily fall prey to the competing radical attractions of Boko Haram or Daesh, which pose a growing threat across this part of West Africa. So how to best assess the EU's apparent attempt to push Europe's borders this far south? Niger is rated as one of the world's least-developed nations by the UN, but is it now paying too high a price for Europe's anti-immigration policies? We sent correspondent Juliana Ruhfus and filmmakers Marco Salustro and Victoria Baux to find out.

Niger: Europe Migration | People and Power

Al Jazeera’s weekly investigative documentary programme that looks at the use and abuse of power.

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