Foreign Correspondent

[TV.Cynic]

###The Real Great Escape

Tuesday 25 April at 9.30pm

Foreign Correspondent tells the true story behind the legendary movie The Great Escape – and the overlooked role of Australians in breaking out of the “escape proof” German POW camp.

It’s one of cinema’s memorable moments: American Steve McQueen powering a motorcycle through paddocks and hurtling over fences after breaking out of a German POW camp.

Small problem…

Among the 76 Allied airmen who escaped via the ingeniously built tunnels under Stalag Luft III, there was not one American. There were, however, six Australians.

To round off Anzac Day, Foreign Correspondent reprises the true story of two of those Australians – John “Willy” Williams and Reg “Rusty” Kierath, old schoolmates who were joined again by circumstance at Stalag Luft.

Reporter Eric Campbell accompanies Willy’s niece – journalist Louise Williams – and Rusty’s nephew Peter Kierath – as they return to what’s left of Stalag Luft and meet up with the relatives of other Great Escapers.

That was definitely Mission Impossible – Peter Kierath

The planning and construction of the tunneI, the fooling of the Nazis and the climactic escape make for a rousing story of derring do. But cruelty prevailed in the end. Nearly all the prisoners were recaptured. An incensed Hitler ordered 50 of them shot, Willy and Rusty among them.

It was really quite a pivotal turning point in the war in terms of exposing the Nazis for who they really were and how absolutely amoral and brutal they were – Louise Williams

This story, first aired in 2012, is updated and introduced by Louise Williams, who has chronicled the event in her recent book “A True Story of the Great Escape”.

“The Real Great Escape” airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30 pm Tuesday April 25 (Anzac Day) and 10.30 am Thursday April 27 on ABC TV and 6.30 pm Sunday April 30 on the ABC NEWS channel. Also on iView.

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###The Last Eagle Hunters

Tuesday 2 May at 9.30pm

Foreign Correspondent takes a spectacular journey into the wilds of Mongolia in search of an ancient, imperilled tradition – the Kazakh golden eagle hunters.

A stunning collection of images and a preview link are available to media on request.

When a 13-year-old girl called Aisholpan shot to fame in the documentary The Eagle Huntress, her raw Mongolian homeland entranced audiences as well.

Its desolate, otherworldly steppes, valleys and snowy peaks provide the dramatic backdrop for Kazakh tribespeople who cling proudly to their practice of hunting with tamed golden eagles.

As correspondent Matthew Carney soon discovers, it’s a universe away from Hollywood.

In a quest to meet the surviving eagle hunters, Carney and cameraman Steve Wang take an old Russian jeep forging through mostly roadless terrain in one of the most inhospitable parts of the planet, where the mercury can plunge as low as minus 40.

Winter is the time to hunt – and the Foreign Correspondent team encounters veteran hunter Beken, his son and their golden eagles. After hours of searching, they spot a fox. Then, as the camera rolls, they unleash their powerful birds.

When I see the eagle fly, I feel free. When she catches a fox I feel great… it’s like magic! – Beken’s son Bakhbergen

The men are custodians of a thousand-year Kazakh tradition that’s threatened on several fronts – climate change, the introduction of guns for hunting and the allure of distant cities.

If my son says ‘I’m going to school far away and I’m not going to become an eagle hunter,’ I cannot tell him otherwise – Beken

Oddly enough, what might help sustain the old tradition is a breath of modern feminism. The Eagle Huntress makes some men bristle - but the exploits of its heroine Aisholpan are inspiring young girls.

Of course girls can do anything boys can do. We are resilient – Akbota, a 14-year-old who trains to be an eagle hunter

Orken, Akbota’s eagle hunter dad, is backing her all the way.

My daughter is very brave. I want to encourage girls like Akbota and Aisholpan – Orken

Older hunters worry that the practice is dying. But as Matthew Carney reports, there is a youthful optimism among the kids who are learning it.

This is a Kazakh national treasure and I want to do my part to keep it alive - Akbota

The Last Eagle Hunters – a stunning journey into north western Mongolia – airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30pm on Tuesday May 2 following and encore screening of the Logie Award-winning documentary Conviction. It’s replayed at 10.30am on Thursday May 4 on ABC and 6.30pm AEST on Sunday May 7 on ABC News 24. Also available on iview.

The Last Eagle Hunters: Foreign Correspondent

[TV.Cynic]

###Foreign Correspondent – in Australia

Tuesday 27 June at 8.30pm

For 25 years Foreign Correspondent has travelled the globe to bring Australians stories about the rest of our world.

Now it’s turning the lens outside-in.

ABC NEWS and The New York Times are collaborating on a Foreign Correspondent co-production which, in a first for the program, will be produced in Australia.

In a one-off special, The New York Times National Correspondent John Eligon, who covers issues of race, will examine the state of race relations in Australia through the fresh eyes of a young journalist from Missouri.

From Redfern to the Kimberley, from the suburbs of Brisbane to the islands of Torres Strait, Eligon explores how racism affects Indigenous people and whether it is fading or thriving. Is it a story of persistent gloom, or is there real progress to celebrate?

This special one-hour documentary will air at 8.30pm on Tuesday June 27 on ABC & ABC iview.

The New York Times and ABC NEWS will publish digital features on the same day.

[TV.Cynic]

###The Home Show

Tuesday 9 May at the special time of 9pm on ABC & ABC iview (right after ABC’s Budget coverage)

How do we make housing more affordable? Foreign Correspondent looks at what other countries are trying – and what bright ideas we might pinch from them.

Hamish Macdonald hosts this special report, right after the Budget.

Is Australia out of ideas, or political guts, when it comes to making housing affordable? Perhaps Budget night will spring a bold and creative stroke - but to date, with prices in our big cities spiking by close to 19 per cent in a year, there’s been little to inspire.

So Foreign Correspondent’s reporters fan out abroad – to London, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Tokyo and New York - in search of some solutions.

Some ideas come out of left field, brainwaves of entrepreneurial activists whose faith in governments has long expired.

“Forget the politicians, forget them! They’re not going to help us. They can’t, OK? End of story,” declares Kim Loudrrup, a developer of cheap, sea-floating apartments in Copenhagen.

Other ideas need government. Witness Co-op City, New York’s socialistic experiment that may be the world’s biggest housing development, with 15,000 apartments catering for up to 50,000 middle and lower income workers and seniors. As Conor Duffy reports, it’s a mini-government all by itself.

The Australian Government has been scouring London for ideas. That’s where Hamish Macdonald finds Australian Alex Bell, beneficiary of a popular scheme that helps young buyers stump up a decent deposit - in the face of ever-rising prices. Now she owns her place 100 per cent. “It’s worked out very well for me,” she says.

In Barcelona, locals are furious at being priced out of the market by hordes of cashed-up foreigners renting through sites like Airbnb. Now authorities are cracking down. Eric Campbell joins the city’s chic inspectors who knock door to door, unnerving tourist tenants and busting illegal landlords who can cop fines of up to $100,000. “At least 50 per cent of the apartments are illegal now,” Campbell is told.

In Copenhagen they’ve let their imaginations loose. How about an entire village made from shipping containers? Or carbon neutral apartments where you grow your own food? Or a unique hybrid scheme where you buy equity at rock bottom price, then rent cheaply afterwards, right in the heart of the city? “It’s the best of two worlds,” says one happy owner.

Tokyo’s property bubble burst, but now it has found a blunt instrument to boost housing supply and keep prices in check. As Rachel Mealey reports, it’s all about zoning – and it might be confronting solution to many Australians.

There is no silver bullet for all our housing problems. But as Foreign Correspondent’s The Home Show demonstrates, creative approaches – even niche ideas like tiny houses, canal boats and shipping containers, combined with a dose of brave public policy – can make a real difference.

The Home Show - a Foreign Correspondent special – airs at 9pm Tuesday May 9 on ABC & ABC iview (right after the Budget coverage); at 10.30am Thursday May 11 on ABC and 6pm Sunday May 14 on the ABC NEWS channel. Also on iview.

[TV.Cynic]

###Hunting the KGB Killers

A two-part special airing Tuesday May 23 & 30 at 9.30pm

For the first time, British investigators tell the inside story of the bizarre murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko – and the Kremlin’s attempts to thwart them at every turn. In a tale that’s stranger than fiction, a teapot is the murder weapon.

Meddling in western elections, seizing territory in Ukraine, bullying critics at home and abroad – how far will Russia go to impose its will?

A clue lies in the murder of a former KGB spy-turned-whistleblower in a hotel in London’s swanky Mayfair just over a decade ago. While meeting with two Russians, Alexander ”Sasha” Litvinenko took some green tea with honey and lemon.

For some reason I didn’t like it. It’s almost cold tea. I drink maybe three or four times – statement by Alexander Litvinenko to police

It took weeks for Litvinenko to die…

He was in diabolical pain – Clive Timmons, Met Police

…and for British police investigators to establish that apart from honey and lemon, the teapot contained a million times the lethal dose of polonium-210, one of the most deadly, radioactive toxins known to science.

The investigators have maintained their silence – until now.

In this gripping documentary from Channel 4, they speak for the first time about their investigation – the initial disbelief, the race to extract Litvinenko’s story before he died, the tracking of the Russian suspects along a winding radioactive polonium trail through London, and the cat and mouse games they encountered when they came up against the might of the Kremlin.

Also speaking out are Marina and Anatoly, the wife and son Litvinenko left behind.

Once upon a time, back in Moscow, the then KGB operative Litvinenko had raised concerns about abuse of power with his boss, then KGB director Vladimir Putin. Next he went public, and got jailed for his trouble. Upon his release he fled to London, sought asylum and began helping British spy agency MI6.

Last year an official British inquiry concluded that there was a “strong probability” that the FSB (formerly the KGB) had killed Litvinenko, and that President Vladimir Putin had “probably approved” the operation.

Hunting the KGB Killers will be aired over two weeks – with part one on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30pm Tuesday May 23 and part two at 9.30pm on Tuesday May 30on ABC & ABC iview.

Note: Postponed from original broadcast date of 16 May

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###Man of the World: Remembering Mark Colvin

A Foreign Correspondent special airing Tuesday May 16 at 9.30pm on ABC & ABC iview

To many Australians he was the honeyed voice behind the PM microphone, the agent of reason in a fevered Twittersphere. But Mark Colvin also carved out a singular career as a foreign correspondent roaming the world’s power centres and trouble spots.

In doing so he inspired others.

Hearing Mark Colvin’s radio word pictures from the Iranian Revolution sparked a pup newspaper reporter to aspire to a foreign posting. That was Tony Jones. Colvin cajoled another young Pom to move to Australia. Britain’s loss – that was Jonathan Holmes.

Now it’s Holmes who reports on Colvin’s legacy as a foreign correspondent and, in his later years, as a virtual correspondent, harnessing Twitter as a portal to dive into big, breaking stories like the Arab Spring.

In this Foreign Correspondent tribute colleagues also tell of a little known aspect of Colvin’s career: how he channelled his own ordeal - the life-changing illness he contracted while reporting on Rwanda’s genocide - to help other reporters deal with the traumas of covering terrible events.

A Man of the World: Remembering Mark Colvin airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30pm Tuesday May 16 and 10.30am Thursday May 18 on ABC & ABC iview and 6.30pm Sunday May 21 on the ABC NEWS channel. Stream it LIVE or watch it later on iview.

A Man of the World: Remembering Mark Colvin

Please note that the previously scheduled Foreign Correspondent two-part story, Hunting the KGB Killers, will now air on May 23 & 30

[TV.Cynic]

###Hunting the KGB Killers

A two-part special airing Tuesday 23 & 30 May at 9.30pm

For the first time, British investigators tell the inside story of the bizarre murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko – and the Kremlin’s attempts to thwart them at every turn. In a tale that’s stranger than fiction, a teapot is the murder weapon.

Meddling in western elections, seizing territory in Ukraine, bullying critics at home and abroad – how far will Russia go to impose its will?

A clue lies in the murder of a former KGB spy-turned-whistleblower in a hotel in London’s swanky Mayfair just over a decade ago. While meeting with two Russians, Alexander ”Sasha” Litvinenko took some green tea with honey and lemon.

For some reason I didn’t like it. It’s almost cold tea. I drink maybe three or four times – statement by Alexander Litvinenko to police

It took weeks for Litvinenko to die…

He was in diabolical pain – Clive Timmons, Met Police

…and for British police investigators to establish that apart from honey and lemon, the teapot contained a million times the lethal dose of polonium-210, one of the most deadly, radioactive toxins known to science.

The investigators have maintained their silence – until now.

In this gripping documentary from Channel 4, they speak for the first time about their investigation – the initial disbelief, the race to extract Litvinenko’s story before he died, the tracking of the Russian suspects along a winding radioactive polonium trail through London, and the cat and mouse games they encountered when they came up against the might of the Kremlin.

Also speaking out are Marina and Anatoly, the wife and son Litvinenko left behind.

Once upon a time, back in Moscow, the then KGB operative Litvinenko had raised concerns about abuse of power with his boss, then KGB director Vladimir Putin. Next he went public, and got jailed for his trouble. Upon his release he fled to London, sought asylum and began helping British spy agency MI6.

Last year an official British inquiry concluded that there was a “strong probability” that the FSB (formerly the KGB) had killed Litvinenko, and that President Vladimir Putin had “probably approved” the operation.

Hunting the KGB Killers: Foreign Correspondent

[TV.Cynic]

###A WELSH CONVERSION

Tuesday 6 June at 9.30 pm

Labour is praying for one of history’s great comebacks in Britain’s election. But something once unthinkable may be happening in tough, working class Wales. Could the Welsh be turning Tory? Philip Williams reports

If you suggest you’re going to vote anything but Labour, they look at you like you’re threatening to trash their car – Petrina Dendy, resident of Blaengarw, a traditional Welsh Labour stronghold

Come election day next Thursday, a few cars might well be metaphorically trashed in the streets of Blaengarw.

For nearly 100 years Labour has owned Wales. The Conservatives have been the anti-Welsh, English outsiders.

But now, if some polls are right, Wales may be turning Tory blue.

As Chief Foreign Correspondent Philip Williams reports, that would spell trouble for Labour MPs like 82-year-old Paul Flynn, who has held his seat since 1987.

According to the polls, I’m finished. I’d dead. I’m toast – Paul Flynn MP

The coal mines have mostly gone, along with memories of the anti-Thatcher battles that once bonded tribal communities. But that alone doesn’t explain Labour’s leakage.

Neither does the poverty that puts Wales near the bottom of the Europe heap, nor the anti-Europeanism that saw Wales narrowly back Brexit. There’s something else…

The Labour Party has gone insane unfortunately. We’ve elected someone as leader who can never be elected as Prime Minister – Paul Flynn MP

From the obscurity of the backbench, Jeremy Corbyn was propelled to the Labour leadership by a vote of the party’s rank-and-file members. It was not an entirely popular choice.

I compare him to your 1970s pot-smoking history teacher. There’s no substance to him – Paul Praid, taxi driver

Local MP Paul Flynn has written off the election already. He dreads the next five years: It’s going to be hell.

But never say never. Pundits suggest voters might belatedly be warming to Corbyn as the election nears. And that’s just the news Labour stalwarts like 72-year-old Marilyn Owen want to hear.

Everybody’s going to get a shock in the general election, this is my view now. If I’m wrong, God help us. That’s all I can say, God help us – Marilyn Owen

Philip Williams takes the British political temperature in A Welsh Conversion - on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30 pm Tuesday June 6 and 10.30 am Thursday June 8 on ABC TV, and 6.30 pm Sunday June 11 on News 24. Also on iView.

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###LIFE INSIDE KEROBOKAN

Tuesday 13 June at 9.30pm

A Foreign Correspondent exclusive: unprecedented access inside Bali’s notorious Kerobokan jail.

It shares a seedy infamy with its captives past and present – Bali bombers Amrozi and Samudra, and a roll call of young Aussies who traded their lives or liberty for drug deals gone bad… the likes of Chan, Sukumaran and Corby.

To many Australians, Bali’s Kerobokan jail is a place of creepy fascination, a repository of misery in an island playground.

But what’s it really like in there?

For the first time a TV crew has obtained virtually unrestricted access to all corners of Kerobokan’s men’s prison. The Foreign Correspondent team – reporter Samantha Hawley, producer Matt Davis and cameraman Phil Hemingway – spend a week roaming the jail, filming and interviewing prisoners and guards to capture life inside.

“Yeah, this is my little piece of paradise.” – Bali Nine member Matthew Norman, showing Foreign Correspondent his tiny cell.

The jail holds 1300 prisoners – four times the number it was built for - from a jumble of nationalities. Among them: Matthew Norman and fellow Bali Nine member Si Yi Chen, both lifers.

“Now no one knows me as me. I’m not Matthew Norman. I’m just Matthew Bali Nine.” – Matthew Norman

For a mere $15,000 Norman and Chen agreed to act as drug mules. They shared a cheap Bali hotel room when they were arrested 12 years ago. Now they share a cell and a fate. Both face dying in jail as old men.

“You look at the sky and you see an aeroplane and you think, one day I hope. We don’t know what tomorrow brings.” – Matthew Norman

“When you’re stressed out it feels like forever.” – Si Yi Chen

It’s not only liberty that is lost. So too is privacy and peace. In a crammed jail there is a constant jostling for space. Announcements blare incessantly from loudspeakers, testing sanity. To cope, some prisoners turn to religion, art or games. Others to crystal meth.

Yet amid all the bedlam Foreign Correspondent discovers a weirdly functioning community where prisoners and a tiny contingent of guards usually look out for each other.

“It’s like we’re parents as well as guards.” – Pak Mus, head guard

“Somehow it works. You don’t have prisoners scaling the walls, you don’t have fights daily.” – Matthew Norman

“It’s like when we were in junior high school. I feel like a virgin again!” – Yanti, women’s jail inmate

LIFE INSIDE KEROBOKAN: Foreign Correspondent

Life Inside Kerobokan – a riveting slice of life inside one our region’s notorious prisons - airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30pm Tuesday June 13 on ABC & ABC iview. It is replayed at 10.30am Thursday June 15 on ABC, and 6.30pm Sunday June 18 on the ABC NEWS channel. Also on iView.

[TV.Cynic]

###SPACE INVADERS

Tuesday 20 June at 9.30 pm

A new space race is on, as tech companies rush to launch thousands of tiny satellites that will tell us more about what’s happening on our planet than ever before. But will the information be used for good, or for harm?

Satellites were bigger than buses. Now they’re coming in shoe-box size, weighing just a few kilos and with an extremely cheap price to match.

“Nanosats” are about to revolutionise space.

We’re essentially building a time machine – Rob Simmon, data visualiser, Planet space company

Using smartphone technology, and then some, the plan is for constellations of nanosats to photograph the entire surface of the Earth, every single day. Over time they will yield a rich and growing narrative about what’s happening where, and who’s doing it.

For better or worse, it will change how people behave – Micah Walter-Range, Space Foundation

Foreign Correspondent producer Mark Corcoran drops in on the space geeks from Planet, the acknowledged leader in a pack of nanosat start-ups, to discover what the very near future in space will look like. In true tech start-up style, it took just four years for San Francisco-based Planet to go from a backyard garage obsession to launching satellites from the International Space Station. The world’s largest imagery satellite network is now run from Planet HQ – a hoodie and sneaker-populated warehouse on the grungy side of town.

Daily global imaging opens a suite of possibilities… tracking deforestation, sea trade and illegal fishing, measuring natural disasters and, for some, the most useful tool of all, spying on noxious regimes. America’s spies were so impressed, they hired Planet.

Planet’s objective is to image the landmass of earth every day… For somebody in my profession that’s very exciting – Robert Cardillo, Director, US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

There are restrictions on how data is used. Planet can only sell to customers that are ticked by the US Government. But who might they be? For the wider industry there are big ethical issues at play. Where does privacy stop and start? And…

What if someone is using that information for criminal purposes or to harm another person? This is something that the industry is going to have to deal with at some point in the relatively near future - Micah Walter-Range, Space Foundation

And is there enough space in space? Planet says its all-seeing constellation will eventually self-destruct, but some scientists fear an influx of nanosats will just add to the mass of space junk that already threatens existing satellites and the International Space Station.

There’s no doubting that the nanosat boom has vast potential for good. But as Mark Corcoran’s story shows, technological advances like this can bowl up ethical curve balls.

Space Invaders airs on Foreign Correspondent at 9.30 pm Tuesday June 20 and 10.30 am Thursday June 22 on ABC TV, and 6.30 pm Sunday June 25 on ABC TV News. Also on iview.

[TV.Cynic]

###THROUGH AMERICAN EYES: A Foreign Correspondent Special

Tuesday June 27 at 8.3pm

For 25 years Foreign Correspondent has brought the world home to Australians. Now, in a special one-hour collaboration with The New York Times, we flip the camera to get an outsider’s take on race relations here.

Race is John Eligon’s beat. He roams America reporting for The New York Times on the tensions, eruptions and occasional triumphs in race relations.

What might he make of relations here between Indigenous Australians and the rest of the country?

ABC TV’s Foreign Correspondent and The New York Times decided to find out by sending Eligon on a journey across Australia.

As Eligon quickly learns, less than a lifetime ago indigenous Australians weren’t even counted in the Census. For many, “wages” came in rations of flour, sugar and tea. Days and destinies were subject to the whim of bureaucrats and missionaries.

So, having attained full equality under the law, having scored pivotal victories like native title rights, are Indigenous people truly in control of their lives? What more do they need to do for themselves? Is racism these days rare or routine?

John Eligon looks for some answers. In Western Australia’s Kimberley region he gets a taste of Indigenous life in a remote town.

There’s just a lotta troublemakers here… There’s a lotta racism here – Aboriginal girl, 19

There he meets teenagers determined to make something of themselves. But they must rise above frequently unstable home lives and a suicide epidemic that is robbing them of family and friends.

In the same town Eligon follows a good-hearted cop who is trying to stop kids as young as six turning to crime. An elder takes Eligon on a trip to ancestral lands – and dishes out a scorching critique on “the monster” created by wasted mining royalties.

Next stop is idyllic Torres Strait, birthplace of legal trailblazer Eddie Mabo. Indigenous people here have more power than any others thanks to Mabo and a unique fishing treaty with Papua New Guinea.

We’re gonna bloody rock your boat and we’re gonna sink your ship! – Islander fisherman recounting his ultimatum to white commercial fishermen accused of trespassing

In the Torres Strait John Eligon explores what the pay-off has been for the Islanders and how much autonomy they really have. On a white sand beach Eddie Mabo’s daughter Gail shows how her dad won his famous case – and channels what she thinks he would say about race relations were he alive today.

We have to fight harder to go upstream because the current coming the other way is trying to push us backwards – Gail Mabo

From the tropics Eligon heads to the suburbs – where most Indigenous Australians live. In Brisbane’s gritty Inala, he meets a family that appears to defy the racial stereotypes.

University lecturer Chelsea, retired cop Matt and their five kids live in a nice house with a pool. Some 15 years ago Matt made a fateful decision to join the police force. He wanted to change what he saw as its racist culture. That noble effort nearly destroyed him when he fell out with white colleagues over a controversial Aboriginal death in custody.

As Matt and Chelsea learned over time, the signposts of upward mobility can be illusory.

Class does not remedy race – Chelsea

But like many of the Indigenous people Eligon encounters on his journey, the couple is determined to bridge the racial divide. As Chelsea sees it:

I think we’re a pretty resilient mob

Through American Eyes – a one-hour Foreign Correspondent special produced by Suzanne Smith – airs at the earlier than usual time of 8.30 pm Tuesday June 27 and 10.30am Thursday June 29 on ABC TV, and 6.30 pm Sunday July 2 on ABC TV News. Also on iView.

[TV.Cynic]

###WE’RE GOING ON A BEAR HUNT

Tuesday 4 July at 9:20pm

Tiny Estonia is digging in against potential attacks from its giant neighbour Russia. And it’s employing defences far more creative than guns and boots on the ground, as Eric Campbell reports

If you don’t want a war, prepare for a war – Kirsten, Estonian army reservist

They’re fighting words from a young woman whose country would fit comfortably inside Tasmania and nearly 400 times inside the borders of Russia, its potential adversary next door.

Eight times a year Kirsten joins thousands of compatriots in war games that sharpen them for combat. Many are too young to remember a weakened Russia giving Estonia independence in 1991.

But they have seen a newly restive Russia grab Crimea and eastern Ukraine. They have clear memories of rioting by Estonia’s Russian minority, followed by paralysing cyberattacks, a decade ago. And in just a few months they will witness about 100,000 Russian troops massing just across the border to stage their own war games.

Of course we’re worried about the unpredictability of Russia. We have to be prepared – Marina Keljurand, former Estonian Foreign Minister

Attacking us must be as expensive as possible, that’s the thing – Kaupo Karuse

When he’s not in camouflage manning a machine-gun in combat drills, Kaupo Karuse dons jeans and a T-shirt as a consultant at one of Estonia’s myriad digital start-ups.

And that’s where pint-sized Estonia has drawn another line of defence – cyberspace.

This once backward Soviet republic has developed one of the world’s most secure and connected digital networks.

Every Estonian has a unique digital identity. Parliament and cabinet are paperless. As the ultimate defence the government is backing up its entire data set in multiple “data embassies” abroad.

We don’t have resources, we don’t have a lot of land. We had to do something with our brain – Kaupo Karuse

Add to this the protective brawn of NATO, the 29-nation alliance that includes Estonia. But as Eric Campbell discovers, NATO is more a provocateur in the eyes of many ethnic Russians, who make up a quarter of Estonia’s population.

If we didn’t have NATO bases or military in Estonia it would be much safer to live here. They try to somehow push the Russian bear. For what? – Russian-Estonian Vladimir Cherdakov

Eric Campbell’s report “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” airs on Foreign Correspondent Tuesday July 4 at the earlier than usual time of 9.20 pm, then at 10.30 am Thursday July 6 on ABC TV and 6.30 pm Sunday July 9 on ABC TV News. Also on iView.

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###NOT EVERYBODY WANTS A GOAT

Tuesday 11 July at 9.20pm

Matt Brown reports on a radical cash experiment that challenges our deep-rooted notions of charity – and may hold the seeds of a revolution in social welfare.

Young widow Mercy lives in a mud hut so tiny that her daughters must sleep at their grandpa’s place. When it rains and her roof leaks, she shelters under a table.

Imagine then, Mercy bursting into joyful song and dance when it rains money – enough money to build a modest house with enough space for her and her girls to sleep under the one roof.

I feel like I’m sitting next to God - it’s like a dream. Now we will all eat, sleep and wake up as a family – Mercy Origa

Mercy is part of a vast experiment in rural Kenya that questions the idea that when you give a poor person cash, chances are that they will blow it on grog or smokes or something equally useless. It’s a view that underpins the way many of us give; we’d rather see our donations used to dispense rice or dig wells and not dolloped out as cold hard cash to be spent on whatever a recipient wants.

But some aid groups worry that much of the $100 billion-plus spent annually on foreign aid ends up in a sinkhole of bureaucracy or corruption, and does too little to tackle poverty. So they have begun using cash transfers.

US-based GiveDirectly is taking this to a whole new level – directly channelling cash donations to 26,000 impoverished people in Kenya via mobile phone transfers. It’s a 12-year experiment in which some will get monthly payments and others a lump sum. No middlemen involved.

Only I know what I really need and what will benefit me in the future. Not everybody wants a goat – William Owegi, who used some of a $US1000 transfer to buy musical instruments and set up a band that is now earning money at gigs.

Results are still to come, but on early evidence GiveDirectly claims recipients are spending cash wisely on life-improving goods or investments. They have more motivation to work, the group says, with less stress and domestic violence.

This is huge, this is really big and it’s very different from what you’ve known previously – Caroline Teti, Kenya representative, GiveDirectly

The experiment is even more radical than just giving cash instead of goods and services – it’s also trying out a new welfare concept that is being mostly discussed in the context of wealthy Western countries.

In some villages, everyone is getting the same amount of cash – regardless of what they already earn. It’s called Universal Basic Income, an idea that some First World reformers and Silicon Valley seers believe is key to a future where robots have supplanted workers.

For Mercy though, the future is all about having her family back together, under a roof that doesn’t leak.

Not Everybody Wants a Goat – Matt Brown’s report on how cash transfers are changing lives – airs on Foreign Correspondent Tuesday July 11 at the earlier than usual time of 9.20 pm, then at 10.30 am Thursday July 13 on ABC TV and 6.30 pm Sunday July 16 on ABC TV News. Also on iview.

[JohnsonTV]

According to The Australian, the August 2 episode will feature a story by Indonesian correspondent Adam Harvey on his close call in southern Philippines, where he was shot in the neck. He has returned to Australia for rehab.

[TV.Cynic]

###ONE LOVE

Tuesday 18 July

Jamaica’s rich music heritage got hijacked by a vicious and violent brand of homophobia. But along came a new generation of artists who, with a little help from the Internet, are wresting it back. Eric Campbell reports.

Bob Marley and his homeland Jamaica were synonymous with reggae and its message of peace, justice and equal rights.

How then, after Marley died, did Jamaica earn such a poisonous reputation that Time magazine once ran a headline, “The Most Homophobic Place on Earth?”

Boom, bye- bye, in a faggot’s head, the tough guys don’t accept fags, they have to die – lyric from dance hall artist Buju Banton

It grew from dancehall, a raw musical sub-culture that exploded onto the scene in the 1990s, exposing a deep homophobia among some of its exponents.

This small core of “murder music” artists thrived in a country where Christian churches and strict Rastafarians rail against gays, where murder and illiteracy rates are epic and where a so-called “Buggery Law”, providing jail terms with hard labour of up to 10 years, is still on the books.

Jamaica’s proudest brand, its music, had been tarnished.

Bit by bit though, the tide began turning. Homophobic artists were shunned by international promoters and their online sales took a hit. So they began cleaning up their acts. They had little choice.

They either have to say ‘I’m taking this hard line fundamentalist Christian position’ or they say ‘Hell no, I want to live, I want to eat, so I’m going to forget about that’ – reggae historian Dr Carolyn Cooper

Now a new generation of reggae artists is seizing the stage – and channelling Marley – with songs of tolerance.

Why can’t you accept me as I am? – lyric from Do You Still Care by Tanya Stephens.

The people who spread homophobic messages don’t represent all of Jamaica. They don’t represent half of Jamaica – Tanya Stephens

Artists like Stephens and rising star Etana are finally giving young gay people a licence to be themselves.

Anything that creates divide and separation, I’m not part of it. If you look back at Bob Marley festivals, it was everyone - black, white, gay straight – Etana

One Love, reported by Eric Campbell and filmed and produced by Matt Davis, airs on Foreign Correspondent Tuesday July 18 at 9.20 pm, then at 10.30 am Thursday July 20 on ABC TV and 6.30 pm Sunday July 23 on ABC TV News. Also on iview.

[TV.Cynic]

ESCAPE FROM MARAWI:

Tuesday 1 August at 9.20pm

Thousands of people have been caught up in a brutal new ISIS battleground on Australia’s doorstep. One of them was ABC correspondent Adam Harvey, who took a bullet to the neck. This is his story, and theirs.

Suddenly, somehow, a country loses an entire city. ISIS militants swarm through Marawi, in the Philippines island of Mindanao, all but emptying it of more than 200,000 people.

Two months later ISIS hangs on inside Marawi, fuelling its dream of a caliphate in south east Asia. A humiliated Philippines military repeatedly misses deadlines to retake the city.

You could say we were a bit surprised by the resistance we got – military spokesman

Snipers are everywhere – Filipino photojournalist

Among the many casualties in Marawi is ABC correspondent Adam Harvey

It felt like I got hit with a rock, but I guess it wasn’t a rock – Adam Harvey, seconds after being shot

For Harvey, this story is personal. There’s the hurried patch-up by brave medical staff as a gun battle rages metres away; the dash to safety; the delicate surgery to remove a deeply embedded M16 bullet; and the emotional reunion with family.

Don’t go back to Marawi – Harvey’s wife Eliza’s bedside entreaty at the Manila hospital

Harvey duly avoids Marawi – but he does return to the story. For Foreign Correspondent, he now gives the full account of his own dramatic escape alongside producer Geoff Thompson and cameraman Phil Hemingway, and of the plight of the thousands fleeing ISIS in Marawi.

He meets heroic Muslim policemen who could have run to safety but chose instead to shield Christian building workers stuck inside the city…

If we left them I knew it would be pitiful. They’d be killed – policeman

… the band of crazy-brave civilians calling themselves the “Suicide Squad”…

We risk our lives to save the lives of people still trapped inside the city. So far we’ve had calls from more than 60 people – Abdul, Suicide Squad member

…and some of the estimated 250,000 Muslim and Christian refugees who struggle to eat, with no idea when or if they can go home.

Please stop the war. A lot of people are dying, especially the little children – refugee’s plea to President Duterte

Marawi’s fall stunned Philippine authorities and neighbouring countries. So how did it happen? Harvey traces how rival groups of extremist secessionists teamed under the ISIS banner and the spell of two charismatic local brothers. Their planning and execution were meticulous.

The fear now is that Marawi may become a beacon for extremists, like Syria and Iraq, where fighters are blooded to spread terror abroad.

It’s changed the perception of the threat in Australia but more so in the immediate neighbours of Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore – terrorism expert Sidney Jones

Adam Harvey’s Escape from Marawi airs on Foreign Correspondent Tuesday August 1 at 9.20 pm, then at 10.30 am Thursday August 3 on ABC TV and 6.30 pm Sunday August 6 on ABC TV News. Also on iview.

This extended edition of Foreign Correspondent will be the last in the current season. The program will return on Mondays at 8.30 pm from November 27 until the end of January 2018.

[JohnsonTV]

Foreign Correspondent returns Monday November 20 with 3-part online special on asylum people in France available on iView and YouTube. On TV, it returns 8.30pm on November 27 with a report on climate change.

[TV.Cynic]

The new Italian job

Monday 8 January at 8.30 pm

The old is new. Ditching conventional careers, a generation of hip young Italians is rediscovering the grand tradition of “Made in Italy”. Hamish Macdonald takes an exhilarating road trip to meet them.

Not even a big recession could take the fizz out of La Dolce Vita, Italy’s beloved good life. Just the opposite, it seems.

Bleak career prospects are nudging an army of educated young Italians to go back to their roots and turn a euro out of home and hearth, food and culture.

“I kind of like the fact that now I’m making real products. Before I was selling contracts and ideas and a lot of hot air,” says Guido Pallini, who threw in his career as a banker to return to his dad’s farm in Tuscany.

He still applies that business brain. His dad used to sell his buffaloes’ milk. Now Guido adds value by turning it into the finest cheeses - traditional mozzarella and ricotta plus a whole range of experimental types.

“Selling mozzarella, you see the smile on their faces when they bite,” he tells reporter Hamish Macdonald.

Guido wants to crack the US market – but to do so he must impress cashed-up American buyers at the world’s biggest craft cheese fair. To see how he goes, Macdonald goes along with him.

Guido is part of a movement that is seeing the number of young people working in agriculture starting to grow. About 50,000 young Italians are now running farm businesses.

…Like Nico Laguzzi, a law student who saw no future for himself and decided to join brother Filippo back on the family plot near Turin. With a team of volunteers, they’re doing all manner of things, from selling organic veggies to making craft beer from the hops they grown themselves.

“Our dream may be crazy - so a lot of people are crazy with us!” Filippo says. Profits still elude them. “But,” says Filippo, “you can make money by selling a little bit of beauty.”

That’s how Carolina Cuomo sees things too. The ex-psychologist got browned off with spasmodic work and turned to an artisanal passion – shoes. Not sensible black flatties. Ornate, exquisite, seriously expensive heels. She designs and hand-makes them from her base outside Naples.

“It’s lovely delivering them to the client. There are people who cry when they see them,” she says as she shows Macdonald her personal summer collection – all 110 pairs.

“When I touch these shoes I feel their spirit, their soul, as if they’re alive. I know everything about this shoe – how it was born, its history, as if it were a human being. And I assure you that this is a lovely person.”

Hamish Macdonald explores a hipster revolution led by young Italians who are finding beauty as they re-embrace tradition. The New Italian Job airs 8.30 pm Monday January 8 on ABC TV and ABC iview (repeated 1 pm Tuesday and 11.30 pm Wednesday on ABC TV; 8 pm Saturday and 1 am Sunday on ABC News).

[TV.Cynic]

Redneck Revolt

Monday 15 January at 8.30 pm

A year into Donald Trump’s presidency resurgent white supremacists are preaching hate. Now left- wing activists are hitting back with their own shock tactics. Stephanie March goes inside a controversial radical group.

They call themselves Redneck Revolt.

They’re a citizens’ militia that totes guns in the name of “community defence”. A right wing neo-Nazi group? Just the opposite.

I would argue we’re in a new civil war – Dwayne Dixon, Redneck Revolt

With chapters spreading across America, Redneck Revolt is a left-wing counter to white supremacists who have found voice and vigour under Donald Trump’s presidency. It’s part of a broad new movement of self-proclaimed anti-fascists and anti-racists called “Antifa”. But some Antifa tactics are too extreme even for many on their own side.

There’s a Nazi over there with a gun. I wanna make sure I’ve got a gun too – Jeff, Redneck Revolt

Correspondent Stephanie March obtains rare access to the secretive men and women of Redneck Revolt as they plot to disrupt white supremacist rallies in America’s South.

White lives matter! White lives matter! – white nationalist protesters

Among the Redneck Revolt counter-protesters is Dwayne Dixon. The softly spoken, vegan anthropology professor is as comfortable carrying an AR-15 assault rifle as he is in the classroom.

When the left uses violence, in the rare case that it happens, it’s resistance. To paraphrase poorly George Orwell, the best offence against tyranny is a rifle over the fireplace of every working man – Dwayne Dixon

To Dixon, evidence of that tyranny is seen in the growing number of hate crimes against African-Americans, Muslims and immigrants. A key player in the white nationalist movement is Matthew Heimbach, once described as the youthful, affable face of hate in America. Preying on white Americans’ fears of becoming a “hated and despised” minority, Heimbach wants a whites-only homeland within the USA.

We’re the ones that were able to settle and build our nation. We were able to come and conquer it and create this civilisation. This is ours – Heimbach, interviewed by Stephanie March

His stated ambition for a white Christian Utopia strains credulity. More believable is the immediate aim to normalise racism.

America is a house on fire… A multicultural America leads to tension – Heimbach

Antifa groups like Redneck Revolt argue that Americans are foolish to dismiss the rise of supremacist groups.

Back 10 years ago there were a handful. Today there are many more. You organise against these small groups as if they could be the starting points of future murderous movements… and you stand up to them by any means necessary – Mark Bray, left wing scholar and author

I’m not going to let people fly swastikas freely on the streets of the United States – Dwayne Dixon

On the eve of President Trump’s inauguration anniversary, Stephanie March heads to the front lines in the battle for identity in America. Redneck Revolt airs on Foreign Correspondent at 8.30 pm Monday January 15 on ABC TV (repeated 1 pm Tuesday and 11.30 pm Wednesday on ABC TV; 8 pm Saturday and 1 am Sunday on ABC News).

[TV.Cynic]

Returns Tuesday 10 July at 8pm