A central theme of our recent book, Cooperation & Coercion, is that all governments are hamstrung when they attempt to fix problems. Policymakers suffer from the knowledge problem: they dont know enough to foresee every eventuality that will follow from what they do. Politicians see a problem, speak in sweeping statements, then declare what will happen, assuming their edicts will settle matters. But that is always just the beginning. More often than not, all manner of unintended consequences emerge, often making things worse than they were before their policies went into effect.

Consider the United States three high-profile wars against common nouns over the past half-century. Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty in the 1960s, Richard Nixon a War on Drugs in the 1970s, and George W. Bush declared a War on Terror in the early 2000s.

How are those wars working out? Because a back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates that we have spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $23 trillion in our attempt to eradicate poverty, drugs, and terror. Not only have we not won any of these wars, it is unclear that any of them can be won. These three so-called wars have managed to saddle future generations of taxpayers with unprecedented debt. And, as is the case with all coercive endeavors, policymakers ask us to imagine how bad things would have been had we not spent the trillions we did spend. And then they ask for even more money. So now we have unwinnable wars along with institutionalized boondoggles to support them.

We see the same sort of thing happening now in the face of the COVID-19 threat that has induced the largest panic attack in world history. In the name of safety, policymakers have shut down myriad productive endeavors. And there will be a raft of unintended consequences to follow. We are already seeing them manifest, and they portend potential disaster as supply chains fail.

The first cracks in US supply chains appeared in the meat industry. Smithfield Foods, reacting to a number of workers contracting the virus, shut down its Sioux Fall plant. Kenneth M. Sullivan, President and CEO, explained in a press release that, the closure of this facility, combined with a growing list of other protein plants that have shuttered across our industry, is pushing our country perilously close to the edge in terms of our meat supply. But its not just the meat plant thats implicated. Its everyone from the cattle farmer to the person who cooks dinner, and there are a number of people who have a place in that process who might first escape attention. The people who make packing materials needed to ship food, the maintenance workers who service machines up and down the supply chain, the truck drivers who move product from one place to another, the grocers who sell the product, the daycare workers who care for the grocers children so the grocers can work, and many, many more are all at risk.

This is by no means simply a Smithfield Foods problem. In full-page advertisements published in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Tyson Foods Chairman John Tyson warned, "The food supply chain is breaking." And small producers are in the same boat as the industry giants.

Millions of pounds of food are simply disappearing from the American pipeline. Chicken, hogs, and cattle are being destroyed, and farmers are dumping milk, eggs, and produce because restaurants have been forced to close. The price of oil went negative because travel restrictions have reduced the demand for oil in the US by so much that oil has gone from being a valuable commodity to a nuisance of which businesses cant rid themselves.

Predictably, politicians have jumped into the fray, with Senators Mike Lee, (R-Utah), and Amy Klobuchar, (D-Minn) leading this charge. They recently sent a letter to top members of President Donald Trumps Cabinet, including Attorney General William Barr and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, asking for a probe into the nations food problems.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, they wrote, has exposed troubling vulnerabilities in our meat supply chain that are harming both American livestock producers and consumers. We urge you to work to identify the root cause of these disruptions so we can work together to implement solutions.

Lee and Klobuchar might be the only two people in the United States who cannot identify the root cause of the vulnerabilities in the meat supply chain. Its the same root cause that has yielded every other product shortage we have experienced since the COVID-19 response began. Its the virus, Senators, coupled with political hubris. In the political classs zeal to contain the virus, any number of things found their way to the back burner, including the nations food supply. This happened because of two fundamental misunderstandings on the part of politicians: what supply chains and essential workers actually are. Policymakers who brought the force of government to bear in managing the economy have demonstrated that they dont actually understand what the economy is.

In declaring some jobs necessary and others not, in focusing on one supply chain versus another, policymakers show how little they know about the nations economy. In their view, they can simply declare things they want to happen, and then those things will happen. But that is not how economies work. An economy is the sum total of everyones activities, and when the government declares that something must happen, all kinds of other things happen too.

Consider how all the non-essential workers have been sent home for the past two months. Who gets to declare which workers are non-essential to the economy, and by what standard? Most assumed that politicians had the correct answers to these questions. But, as we are discovering, there is no such thing as non-essential workers. All workers are essential. How do we know? Because their jobs existed. Profit-driven businesses do not create non-essential jobs. Those peoples jobs were essential to their employers. Further, those peoples jobs were incredibly essential to the people themselves. They need their wages to pay the rent, buy their food, make their car payments, and for everything else that makes their lives livable.

But policymakers simply declared them non-essential, as if there would be no fallout from that decision.

In the same way that each person is supposedly connected to every other by no more than six degrees of separation, each business is connected to every other in exactly the same way. We cannot declare one business unnecessary without, by extension, declaring unnecessary every other business that relies on it, and every business that relies on those businesses. Food is necessary, and because of that delivery trucks are necessary, and because of that engine fuses and wiper blades are necessary, and because of that plastic packaging in which fuses and blades are sold is necessary, and on and on. Our economy is not a series of individual supply chains. It is a single, unified supply web. Cut the web in any place and the whole structure weakens.

And politicians have been cutting the web in myriad ways since this began. And what has happened? Food is not being delivered, and now politicians wonder why. What they really need is a mirror and an introductory economics text.

Normal people understand that there is only so much any person, or any group of people can know. But politicians rarely think of themselves as normal people do. Politicians seem to think they can solve any problem simply by declaring the solution. But solutions never play out in vacuums. Here in the real world, every action inspires multiple reactions. To think things will work any other way is just more of the same hubris that got us into the current mess.

So whats the correct answer? It is to leave people alone so that they can arrive at their own solutions. People know the relative risks and tradeoffs they face, and it should be up to them to act in their own best interests, knowing as many of the details as possible. Will this yield perfect outcomes? Probably not.

But it wouldnt yield food shortages and bankruptcies to the extent we now have them, either.

Continued here:

Meat Supply Disruptions Are the Bitter Harvest of the Non-Essential Worker Fallacy | Antony Davies, James R. Harrigan - Foundation for Economic...

COVIDS WAR ON WOMEN During this plague year, there is almost never good news, only degrees of bad news. Even so, the pandemic has been different (and worse) for girls and women.

Its true that more men are dying than women from Covid-19 around the world but thats not exactly cause for celebration.

Another ambivalent data point: More workplace risk is falling on women, who are more likely to be considered essential workers. The upside to that is still having a job, but at what price? Swedens Foreign Minister Ann Linde pointed out today in a POLITICO interview that 70 percent of those working in health care and elderly care are women.

More of the daily grind tends to fall, on average, on women: From the increased cleaning and chores that come with more time spent in the home, which falls disproportionately to so many female household members, to the extra education and childcare work created through closures of school and day care, where men have also been known, on average, to skimp.

The real-life examples are heartbreaking: Alice Jorge, a woman living with a disability in Belgium who needs support from her sister and a visiting nurse, was recently asked to choose between keeping her Covid-19 positive caregiver or going without professional care. Three women bound to suffer no matter what choices they took.

Domestic violence is up sharply: A new research report by a consortium that includes Johns Hopkins University confirms this: 31 million additional cases of gender-based violence can be expected globally if lockdowns last for an average of six months.

Travel to shelters may be restricted, and a simple phone call to a helpline can itself trigger new violence. Support services are overwhelmed with requests: from a 47 percent increase in calls to Spains national hotline to a 113 percent spike at U.N.-supported hotlines in Ukraine.

We can expect 7 million unplanned pregnancies in 144 low- and middle-income countries, thanks in part to restricted access to contraception, not to mention the 2 million female genital mutilations and countless child marriages projected to increase by the United Nations population agency. The pandemic is deepening inequality, UNFPA Executive Director Natalia Kanem said, slamming the Swiss cheese of a safety net she sees in most countries.

Kanem speaks of childbirth horror stories: pregnant women unable to access caesarian procedures (many of which are unplanned) or blood pressure medication because of redeployed health care resources, or the woman gets to the clinic (and) the midwife isnt there, because theyre also redeployed or sick. Up to two-thirds of maternal and neonatal deaths globally occur because of the absence of properly trained midwives in better times.

During World War II, women on the U.S. homefront think Rosie the Riveter entered the workforce out of a call to sacrifice for the common good. During this pandemic, women are being called back but this time to the frontlines.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Of course Matthew McConaugheys mask says just keep livin. Reach out with tips: [emailprotected] or on Twitter at @renurayasam.

A message from PhRMA:

In these unprecedented times, Americas biopharmaceutical companies are coming together to achieve one shared goal: beating COVID-19. We are working with governments and insurers to ensure that when new treatments and vaccines are approved, they will be available and affordable for patients. Explore our efforts.

THE COVID DOCTRINE For much of the nations 100 days at war with the coronavirus, Donald Trump has been a commander in chief in search of an exit strategy, Adam Cancryn writes. The president has promised the virus will simply disappear, touted unproven treatments as miracle cures and fantasized about a near future of economic resurgence and rapid return to normalcy. Yet as the White House shifts its focus away from the public health response and toward rebuilding an economy ravaged by the pandemic, there remains little clear sense even within his own administration of how close the U.S. is to victory, and what winning the war even looks like.

PINS AND NEEDLES Our executive health editor Joanne Kenen emails: Theres some good news on the vaccine front including word that the country is getting a new vaccine leader. Peter Marks has emerged as the Trump administrations unofficial vaccine czar (minus the cross and pearls) at the FDA, filling in the gap created by the abrupt ouster of Rick Bright from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. Marks will advise BARDA and other agencies on vaccine and gene therapy approval, health care reporter Sarah Owermohle reports.

News of Marks growing involvement comes amid a spate of heartening though still, we cant emphasize enough, very preliminary news about vaccine development, here and abroad. Oxford has a candidate vaccine thats safe in humans; its still testing whether it can create a strong enough immune response to combat the coronavirus. Three other companies have announced accelerations of clinical trials, though widespread availability in the best possible scenario is still months away.

Even if we get a vaccine, Joanne writes, big questions have to be answered.

Who gets it second? First responders will get it first. But how are we going to define a first responder? Anyone who works at a hospital? Only doctors and nurses? Doctors in the community? Police? Firefighters? The military?

But then who gets it second? The elderly and immune compromised because they are vulnerable? The young and healthy because they transmit it? Essential workers because theyre essential? The well-connected? And who decides?

Its possible several vaccines will come on the market at around the same time in different countries, so there could be multiple answers to this question. But this is going to be a huge bioethical knot, colliding with geopolitics. Theres no guarantee that a U.S. company will get to market first and if the World Health Organization has a role in vaccine allocation, we can anticipate some obvious conflicts.

How effective is it? If we get a good but not great vaccine like the seasonal flu shots it will still reduce transmission, but it wont wipe out the virus completely. Well still have to deal with Covid-19, though on a more manageable scale.

Who pays for it? Even if insurers, governments or, in countries other than our own, national health systems pay for immunization, the costs can be passed on indirectly through higher taxes or higher premiums.

How much does it cost? Some of the companies say they dont plan to make a profit, but vaccines are expensive. In the U.S., Trump has largely shunned national approaches, leaving states to fend for themselves as they try to acquire lab testing supplies, protective gear, ventilators and other essential pandemic-fighting goods. A similarly fragmented approach could make vaccine acquisition more expensive and complicated.

How do we make enough of it? One of BARDAs roles is to help ramp up production, and theyve started addressing this. But to make 7 billion vaccines, enough for everyone around the globe, will require commitment, creativity and cooperation that the world hasnt been very good at of late.

How fast will poor countries get access? Good question.

Will the anti-vaxxers take it? Well see. Best guess is that some will, and some wont, because not everybody who opposes vaccines does so for the same reasons or with the same intensity. Some people who dont want their child to get a measles shot may weigh the costs and the benefits differently for a coronavirus vaccine. Amid rising fears of bioterrorism after 9/11, a poll found deep but not overwhelming support for a smallpox vaccination campaign. But that was a hypothetical threat. This one is all too real.

A SMALL BREAKTHROUGH More than three decades ago, researchers made their first big breakthrough against HIV, when they showed that the drug AZT could slow the progression of the virus. Its a moment that Anthony Fauci compared to todays results about the drug remdesivir, which a clinical trial showed could help Covid patients recover more quickly.

Faucis reference to AZT was a bit like a secret code, Sarah Owermohle tells us. He was suggesting that the remdesivir results were a breakthrough, but a modest one. AZT is the shorthand for azidothymidine, a drug that won FDA approval in March 1987, when HIV patients were desperate for any treatment even one with rough side effects that was dogged by questions about whether it actually extended life. It took another decade before the development of drugs that turned HIV from a death sentence into a chronic condition.

HIV and Covid-19 are complex, but distinctly different, viruses, and drug development times are a lot faster now than they were in the 1980s and 90s. But Faucis implication was clear: Remdesivir could be a good first step in fighting Covid, but probably isnt a miracle drug.

A SICK ECONOMY The U.S. economy shrank at a 4.8 percent annual rate last quarter as the pandemic shut down much of the country. A huge percentage of the decline came from the health care industry, with a halt in elective procedures harming profits.

CLAIMS DENIED As businesses in Georgia, Texas and other states throw open their doors, many employees are scared that their employers arent taking proper health precautions. Yet if they refuse offers to return to their jobs theyll be ineligible for unemployment, reporter Megan Cassella tells us.

Trump has declared meatpacking plants essential businesses even as they spawn outbreaks across the country. Frontline health workers are having trouble getting masks, gloves, gowns and other protection equipment, so what hope do nail salons and restaurants have of getting the gear they need?

But for now, Covid fears arent a valid reason not to go back to work.

Some states are trying to take steps so that workers who feel unsafe arent forced to choose a paycheck over their health. Colorado and New York are looking at how to give workers more flexibility. In Georgia, the state labor agency is encouraging employers to negotiate back-to-work plans with employees so that if a business partially reopens, workers who feel unsafe can continue to collect unemployment. In Texas, advocates are asking the workforce commission to add voluntarily leaving work due to COVID-19 as a valid reason to claim assistance.

But other states, like South Carolina and Tennessee, are telling workers they will lose unemployment aid the same week they turn down an offer.

Even in boom times, states reject a high share of unemployment claims. Well probably learn Thursday that another 3.5 million people filed for unemployment assistance last week. Thats on top of the 26 million whove already lost their jobs in the past five weeks.

Our question for readers this week: Seeing any interesting, fun or meaningful signs related to the coronavirus? Snap a photo sometime this week and send it to Renu at [emailprotected], and well share the best ones on Friday.

GRAND OLD PACHYDERM Matt Wuerker dives into an old question on partisan symbols in the latest edition of Punchlines: Why is the elephant the symbol of the Republican Party?

MASS HYSTERIA Italian politicians clash with the Catholic clergy at their own peril, and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has risked doing just that by keeping churches closed because of coronavirus. The prime minister's decision to extend the ban on all religious ceremonies until further notice, except for funerals, has infuriated religious officials. When the lockdown started, most priests quietly accepted the need to suspend services and found alternative ways to connect with their flocks, such as holding ceremonies by video or taking confession by the roadside. But now that other places are gradually reopening, the clergy don't see why they should be last on the list.

82,000

The number of job losses forecast in the bus industry, according to a report released last week by the American Bus Association. The industry could see losses of up to $14 billion. Many of the 3,000 private bus companies in the U.S. are small, serving a range of uses from taking kids to school, sporting events and field trips, ferrying seniors on weekend getaways and connecting small towns with major destinations. (h/t transportation reporter Tanya Snyder)

Portuguese army chief of staff Gen. Jos Nunes da Fonseca attends a briefing of school workers on disinfection procedures. | Armando Franca/AP Photo

DEEP FRIED STATE Belgium, the North Sea homeland of moules frites and mayonnaise, is the world's biggest exporter of frozen fries, but it has been hammered by the pandemics trade slowdown. The Belgian potato industry has warned that more than 750,000 tons of potatoes could be thrown away more than 40 percent of the harvest. And though Belgium's potato industry has urged patriots to take a high-calorie hit for the team by heading down to their local friteries twice a week to help reduce the spud surplus, it's increasingly clear that 11 million Belgians won't be able to handle the deep-fried mission alone. With restaurants and bars closed, and large summer events canceled, fries wont be as ubiquitous as they often are this summer. "Our entire sector is facing a big crisis. We don't just invite all Belgians to eat more fries, but the entire world," said Ward Claerbout from Agristo, a potato processing company in the west of Belgium.

Correction: Tuesdays edition of POLITICO Nightly incorrectly stated which tracks Iowa will open without spectators. The state will reopen certain race tracks without spectators but not horse and dog tracks. We regret the error.

A message from PhRMA:

In these unprecedented times, Americas biopharmaceutical companies are coming together to achieve one shared goal: beating COVID-19. The investments weve made have prepared us to act swiftly: Working with governments and insurers to ensure that when new treatments and vaccines are approved, they will be available and affordable for patients Coordinating with governments and diagnostic partners to increase COVID-19 testing capability and capacity Protecting the integrity of the pharmaceutical supply chain and keeping our plants open to maintain a steady supply of medicines for patientsExplore our efforts.

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Covid's war on women - Politico

A pregnant Native American woman incarcerated in a federal prison in Texas was diagnosed with coronavirus and died in federal custody on Tuesday, officials said.

Andrea Circle Bear, 30, had been sentenced to more than two years in prison on a drug charge this January. She delivered her baby by caesarean section while on a ventilator in a Texas hospital on 1 April, and died there on 28 April.

Circle Bears child survived, but officials declined to provide any additional information on the babys condition or where the child is now, out of respect for the family and for privacy reasons, a Bureau of Prisons spokesman said.

The 30-year-old woman had a pre-existing medical condition that made her more at risk for a severe case of coronavirus, according to federal officials, who did not specify what the condition was.

Andrea should never have been in jail in the first place. Period, the Democratic congresswoman Ayanna Pressley said on Wednesday during a discussion hosted by the Appeal, a criminal justice news site.

That she was there at all is cruel and negligent, Pressley said, calling Circle Bear one of many people trapped inside of prison systems because of systemic inequities and a failed war on drugs.

Circle Bear had admitted to selling 5.5 grams of methamphetamine to a confidential informant in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, over two different days in April 2018, according to court documents. She pleaded guilty to the charge of maintaining a drug-involved premises.

This January, Circle Bear, who was already five months pregnant, according to court documents, was sentenced to 26 months in federal prison by Judge Roberto A Lange.

Her sentencing documents note that Circle Bear had a history of substance abuse and recommended her as a candidate for a prison substance abuse treatment program. The documents also recommended that she be placed in a prison medical facility, given that she was pregnant, and due to deliver her child in early May.

The Department of Justice touted Circle Bears sentencing in a January press release. Dont let yourself or your property get mixed up in the world of illegal drugs. It ends badly, the US attorney Ron Parsons said in a statement.

Circle Bear is the 29th federal inmate to die in the Bureau of Prisons custody since late March. As of Tuesday, more than 1,700 federal inmates have tested positive for Covid-19. About 400 of those inmates have recovered.

On 20 March, Circle Bear had been transferred from a local jail in South Dakota, to FMC Carswell, a federal prison medical facility in Fort Worth, Texas, officials said.

The prison medical facility was more than 1,000 miles away from Circle Bears home of Eagle Butte, South Dakota, which is part of the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian reservation.

As a new inmate in the federal prison system, Circle Bear was quarantined as part of the Bureau of Prisons plan to slow the spread of the coronavirus, according to a press release from the bureau.

Eight days after she arrived, she was taken to a local hospital for potential concerns regarding her pregnancy, but was discharged from the hospital the same day and brought back to the prison, officials said. Three days later, prison medical staff members decided she should be brought back to the hospital after she developed a fever, dry cough and other symptoms, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

Circle Bear was put on a ventilator the same day she arrived at the hospital and her baby was born the next day, officials said. She tested positive for Covid-19 days later.

Federal and state prison records listed Circle Bears race as Native American. A spokesperson for the Cheyenne River Sioux tribal government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An attorney who represented Circle Bear also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Circle Bears pregnancy made her high risk for the virus, but she would not be considered priority for release under the Bureau of Prisons and justice department guidelines on releasing prisoners to home confinement to help stop the spread. She was already on a ventilator when an expanded home confinement memo was handed down by the justice department in early April.

William Barr, the US attorney general, ordered the increased use of home confinement and the expedited release of eligible inmates by the Bureau of Prisons, with priority for those at low- or medium-security prisons, starting with virus hotspots. Under the Bureau of Prisons guidelines, the agency is prioritizing the release of those who have served half of their sentence or inmates who have 18 months or less left and who served at least 25% of their time.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Read more:

US inmate with coronavirus dies weeks after giving birth on a ventilator - The Guardian

After weeks of downplaying the threat posed by COVID-19 as it spread across the world and into the United States, President Donald Trump was finally taking it seriously on March 18.

"I view it as, in a sense, as a wartime president," he told reporters in the White House's briefing room that day. "I mean, that's what we're fighting," he said, before invoking a now-oft-repeated metaphor about the virus as "an invisible enemy."

Framing the pandemic as a war serves mostly as a way for the presidentand the government more generallyto sweep aside skepticism and dodge difficult questions about handling the crisis. Should we think twice before imposing export restrictions that will weaken global resilience to the virus? No time, this is a war! Should the government be able to order workers to stay home, then order them back to work against their will? Generally no, but this is war! Can we protect privacy while building a massive surveillance apparatus to track the spread of the disease? That might be nice, but this is war!

Some of that might make sense during an actual waryou don't want your domestic manufacturers selling goods to your enemies, for onebut it misses the point in our current crisis. There is no us-versus-them happening here. A virus cannot be cowed. It doesn't want our land or to change our regime, and it cannot be forced to surrender by throwing bodies at it.

As Daniel Larison noted in an excellent piece for The American Conservative earlier this month, "declaring war on abstractions and inanimate objects has become a bad habit" for the American government.

Indeed, America has spent 20 years fighting an amorphous "war on terror" that's outlived all of our initial enemies, consumed trillions of taxpayer dollars, and actually created new enemies by destabilizing the Middle East and North Africa. The federal government's "wars" on poverty and drugs have been equally unsuccessful and now serve mostly as federal jobs programs for bureaucrats and cops.

Less than three months after the first American died of COVID-19, and six weeks after Trump declared himself a wartime president, the disease has now claimed more than 58,318 American livesthe number that perished in the Vietnam War. Passing that symbolic threshold provides a useful way to comprehend the severity of the disease, but it doesn't make the war analogy useful.

Writing at The Bulwark, Jonathan Last notes that both the Vietnam War and the COVID-19 pandemic were made worse by incompetent government officials who lied to the American people. That's a worthwhile observation. Both crises undermined Americans' trust in institutions and presidents, and both overlapped and amplified existing cultural faultlines.

But the metaphor's usefulness ends there. For starters, Vietnam killed mostly young Americans, while COVID-19 is mostly killing the olda distinction that might seem callous, but one that nevertheless changes how the crisis effects the national psyche. In many other senses, the war metaphor actually primes Americans to expect more bad government. Unlike an actual war, we shouldn't be calling for the government to do whatever it takes to keep us safe. Not only can it not actually do that, but its record of trying to is also rather bad.

"Comparing the pandemic to war is also somewhat demoralizing when we reflect on our government's record of waging war over the last half-century. There are scarcely any true successes in that record that we can point to that would give us confidence that the government can 'win' now," Larison writes. "Unfortunately, the only things that the government's response has in common with previous war efforts is that the U.S. was badly unprepared for what came next and the president had an unrealistic expectation of how quickly the problem would be taken care of."

See the original post here:

No, COVID-19 Isn't Like the Vietnam War. It Isn't Like Any War. - Reason

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Since we've all begun to properly settle into this lockdown thing, now is as good a time as any to binge-watch something you haven't seen before. Now TV has over 300 box sets to choose from, and with that much choice, it's always good to get some recommendations. So we've put together a list of some of our favourites so you too can join us in our unhealthy TV habits.

Is there anything more awkward on TV than Curb Your Enthusiasm? Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's semi-improvised sitcom stars David as a fictionalised version of himself and follows his life in LA, as he somehow manages to get himself into the most cringe-worthy scenarios you can imagine. The beauty of Curb is how far David succeeds in pushing the rude, obnoxious and undiplomatic qualities of his character, and how even though we're rooting for our anti-hero, he gets exactly what he deserves each episode. The addition of guest stars, often celebrities who are also playing fictionalised versions of themselves, just adds to the hilariously impending discomfort, as you watch with your hands over your eyes, waiting for David to make yet another tragic faux pas. Notable appearances over the years include Lin-Manuel Miranda, Salman Rushdie and Alanis Morissette, with the most recent series featuring Jon Hamm, Clive Owen, Mila Kunis, Sean Penn, Coldplay's Chris Martin and others. In our current state of lockdown, we can all surely relate to Larry's permanent annoyance at everyone else's behaviour. Really, we're all Larry David now. (Arusa Qureshi)

The Wire is that rare TV series that seriously challenges us to consider how we view the world. Its title refers to a wiretap surveillance undertaken by a Baltimore police unit investigating a drug dealing organisation which is operating in a run-down housing project. But, while all five seasons follow many of the same characters and the focus is always on 'the war on drugs', each season swings the spotlight onto a particular area of Baltimore society to examine how it relates to law enforcement, from the dockworkers to city hall, the education system to newspapers. The Wire's strength lies in its vast, diverse cast: mostly unknowns (including a young Idris Elba as the magnetic 'Stringer' Bell and Michael K Williams as the enigmatic Omar Little), many who had never acted before and some who had been rescued from the very lifestyles they portray here. Sympathies will ebb and flow (many of the characters who would normally be considered 'villains' evoke the most compassion) while some of the most egregious characters are lauded for their positions in respectable authority (the judiciary, law enforcement and politics). Presented in a boxy 4:3 ratio when most TV had gone widescreen, The Wire has the look of a fly-on-the-wall documentary, and its detailed depiction of how various societal factions interact with one another provoked justified comparisons to the work of Charles Dickens. Despite its weighty themes, it's often hilarious, particularly the wonderful chemistry between detectives Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West in his breakout role) and Bunk Moreland (Wendell Pierce). (Murray Robertson)

True Blood is one of those shows that started off really strong, but ended up losing its way a little by the final series. Still, with seven seasons of supernatural storylines, sexy vampires and unexpected social commentary, it's a great show to get hooked on and ultimately, binge. Based on Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels, True Blood imagines a future in which vampires and humans co-exist, thanks to the invention of a synthetic blood product called 'Tru Blood', which eliminates their need for human blood to survive. The story centres on the town of Bon Temps, Louisiana and telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), who surprise surprise, falls in love with 173-year-old vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer). But aside from the trials of Sookie and Bill and their dangerous love affair, True Blood explores some interesting and relevant issues, including equal rights and discrimination, violence against minorities and homosexuals, drug addiction, the power of the media and more. There are also some brilliant characters throughout, from shapeshifter / Sookie's boss Sam Merlotte to cook, drug dealer and medium Lafayette Reynolds. Not to mention the best character of all Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgrd), the 1000-year-old vampire and Sheriff of Area 5. (Arusa Qureshi)

This Golden Globe-nominated and Emmy-winning drama series created by David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, Mr. Mercedes) stars Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern and Zo Kravitz and tells the story of five women in Monterey, California who much to their regret, become deeply entangled in a murder investigation. Based on the Liane Moriarty novel of the same name, Big Little Lies was originally only a seven-episode miniseries, however due to its popularity it was brought back last year for a second season, with the legendary Meryl Streep joining the main cast as Kidman's mother-in-law. The supporting cast is equally stellar, featuring Alexander Skarsgrd, Adam Scott, James Tupper and Jeffrey Nordling as the women's spouses. In addition to murder, the show gracefully tackles other heavy topics including rape and abuse. Although the majority of the characters live in excessively large, lavish homes next to the ocean on the stunning California coast, it quickly becomes clear that their lives are far from perfect. With outstanding cinematography, powerful performances and a killer soundtrack, Big Little Lies is dark, thrilling and addictive, making it an ideal binge-watch while in lockdown. (Megan Forsyth)

Despite the fact that it's only been five years since the last episode of Parks and Recreation aired, the show sometimes feels like a period piece. Created out of the idealism and optimism of Obama's presidency, Parks and Rec focuses on the (mis)adventures of a group of earnest, good-hearted civil servants at a municipal Parks and Recreation department in Middle America, helmed by their deputy director, the cheerfully indefatigable Leslie Knope (played by the great Amy Poehler). Watching Parks and Rec now, through the lens of our politically fraught, Brexit-riddled and 'America First' present, its unwavering faith in progress and good governance sometimes feels impossibly far away. Yet the values at the core of Parks and Rec that service to others is the most meaningful calling, and that nothing of importance is ever achieved alone also feels more consoling than ever. It also boasted one of the strongest ensemble casts on network TV of its time, with a pre-Marvel buff Chris Pratt as the adorable, dim-witted Andy Dwyer, and Nick Offerman in his breakout role as Ron Swanson. With seven sunny seasons to hunker down into, there's genuinely no place better to ride out this pandemic than Pawnee, Indiana. (Deborah Chu)

Now TV includes numerous Comedy Central shows you wouldn't find elsewhere and Broad City is just one of them. The sitcom neatly packages the misadventures of New Yorkers Ilana Wexler and Abbi Abrams into 22-minute episodes.There is no overarching plot to Broad City; it follows the antics of two open-minded, open-hearted and somewhat lost best friends trying to make their way through life. Just as HBO's Girls put modern-young women on screen front and centre, Broad City follows suit. The show encapsulates and magnifies what it's like to be a young person living in today's world in an enjoyable, real and hilarious way. Themes of friendship, love, sexuality, gender identity, misogyny and career-pressures are tackled in an outlandish and fun manner. Writers and creators Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson are best friends in real life and therefore have amazing, vibrant and energetic chemistry on screen. This, paired with the show's farcical storylines, during which they navigate life's many shit storms, results in a charming, relatable show, that is a must-binge comedy if ever there was one. (Becki Crossley)

One of the true network TV juggernauts and the first jewel in the Shondaland crown, Grey's Anatomy has loomed over popular culture for 16 seasons and counting, with no signs of flagging. The secret sauce is surely its unabashedly soapy premise: a revolving door of implausibly hot surgeons at a Seattle hospital save lives and have sex amidst some truly ludicrous stakes. Even the most devoted fan will have lost track of the number of bomb explosions, shootings, plane crashes, natural disasters and sinkholes that this crack team of preposterously attractive medical professionals have had to weather over the years, though the real emergency on Grey's is always their deeply convoluted and incestuous personal lives. Though there've been many shake-ups to the cast over the years (often due to the aforementioned car accidents, sinking ferries, superstorms, the other bombing, etc.), Grey's alumni include the likes of Patrick Dempsey as Derek 'McDreamy' Shepherd, Katherine Heigl as the much-maligned Izzie Stevens and Sandra Oh as the brilliant and cutthroat Cristina Yang. Yet despite these truly insane shenanigans, the show's incredible staying power is testament to its ability to balance emotional histrionics with decently compelling medical detail. And since we've all got plenty of time on our hands at present, now is the perfect time to lean into the high drama that's always brewing over on Grey's. (Deborah Chu)

Time and time again, people have to be told to sit down and start The Sopranos. So why haven't you started it yet? The Golden Globe and Emmy-winning show has been hailed one of the greatest dramas nay, the greatest TV shows of all time much like many others in HBO's outstanding portfolio (The Wire, Game of Thrones). The show centres around husband and father of two, Tony Soprano, played by the late great James Gandolfini, as he attempts to maintain a successful home life whilst running the New Jersey mafia. Crucial business and personal decisions bear huge weight, ultimately landing Tony in a psychiatrist's chair opposite Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco). Here, we see Tony talk through his inner conflicts and true desires, magnifying his vulnerabilities and also his somewhat charming strengths. Gandolfini leads an amazing cast, filled with characters that range from detestable to loveable, most often all rolled into one. The show's dialogue, plot lines and scenes of customary violence are said to be so true to real mafia life it was suspected that someone blabbed to the show's writers (though this has never been proven). As a unique and unapologetic examination into the psyche of a mobster, The Sopranos makes for an ultra endearing six seasons which, much like HBO's The Wire, humanises violent criminals and, as the audience begin to sympathise with and admire mafia members, a moral conundrum is turned onto the viewer. (Becki Crossley)

This feel-good favourite British comedy is centred around the lives of young couple Gavin (Mathew Horne) and Stacey (Joanna Page) and their families and friends. At the start of the series, both live at home with their parents Gavin in Essex, England with his overbearing mum Pam (Alison Steadman) and father Mick (Larry Lamb) and Stacey in Barry, Wales with her widowed mother Gwen (Melanie Walters), also often visited by Stacey's awkward Uncle Bryn (Rob Brydon). The show's standout characters are arguably the pair's best friends Smithy and Nessa, who begin an unconventional romance of their own and are played perfectly by the show's sole creators and writers James Corden and Ruth Jones. As Gavin and Stacey's relationship progresses, the two families come together for various gatherings in both Essex and Barry, and countless awkward and hilarious moments ensue. After three short series that ran from 2007 to 2010, Gavin & Stacey returned last year for a highly-anticipated Christmas Special reunion episode. The show is consistently relatable and laugh-out-loud funny, with memorable characters and catchphrases ('what's occurring?') that make quickly binge-watching the hit series far too easy. (Megan Forsyth)

This five-part masterpiece is a spellbinding depiction of the literal fallout following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. You might reasonably expect the series would begin with some explanation of how a nuclear power station works, but Chernobyl drops you right in the centre of the incident as it unfolds. Critical information is drip-fed by its many characters as they first try to make sense of the scale of what is rapidly unfolding, before heroically trying to find a solution while the ramifications of a localised disaster quickly scale up towards a global catastrophe. It's an unflinchingly difficult watch the horrors of acute radiation poisoning are depicted with ferocious candour which makes the following political cover-up all the more infuriating and particularly pertinent to the world today. A phenomenal cast (including Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgrd and Emily Watson) inject much-needed pathos into the chaos, while spectacularly authentic sets, props and costumes bring 1980s Soviet society to vivid life in all its beige glory. Chernobyl is an absolutely vital watch, not only for its contemporary political importance but because it's simply one of the finest TV series ever made. (Murray Robertson)

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The Minority Cannabis Business Association (MCBA) is a 501(c)(6) national trade association created to serve the specific needs of minority cannabis entrepreneurs, workers, and patients/consumers. The organization currently serves members from across the United States. Its 15-member board of directors is comprised of a diverse group of cannabis industry veterans and activists from across the U.S. and their to-do list features very few items that are easy to complete and scratch off the list in a short amount of time. MCBA is busy on a multitude of fronts, and their goal is to impact and influence policy to better the industry and ensure social equity.

Add to that the fact that any kind of association has scores of responsibilities beyond their organizational initiatives. That keeps MCBA and their volunteer board and membership constantly performing a juggling act largely dictated by changes in proposed legislation (sometimes aware of ahead of time in order to prepare) or things like COVID-19 (NEVER aware of ahead of time in order to prepare).

Jason Ortiz, the board president of MCBA spent time with Greenway to talk about what the organization has as its constantly evolving agenda and extensive day-to-day challenges. Ortiz, a graduate of the University of Connecticut has had an interesting career, and his choice of roles and focus were all driven by a single event.

I was arrested at 16 for a minor marijuana possession and saw the realities of the harm stemming from the war on drugs and the concept of selective enforcement in action. I was suspended from school for 45 days and thats a long time to be able to immerse yourself in learning new things. I took that time to learn all I could about activism and that made my path what it was, said Ortiz.

Ortiz went on to being working with Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) organization in college, whose work made it possible for him to GO to college.

They were working on a bill, or provision, called theHigher Education Act Aid Elimination Penalty. And that was a provision in the higher education funding bill at the time [in the 2000s] that said, if you had been convicted of a drug offense, you are not eligible for financial aid.That was making thousands if not millions of young people not able to access higher education. But in the time between I graduated high school and went to college,SSDP changed that law, and made it that you only got denied financial aid if you got caught while on financial aid. So anyone who got caught while outside of college was no longer penalized. and continued to serve in various capacities in other activism roles and organizations.

With that kind of foundation driving his career decisions, its easy to see how Ortiz fits in with the MCBA organization. They consider themselves activists, and they are giving attention and delivering progress in cannabis policy across the country. While the association itself is national, much of the work they do comes from opportunities in different states, cities, and even counties in every geography in the US as well as some global markets. Dont let the associations use of the word minority in their name restrict your thinking that their work is about race.

While they strive for ensuring that racial discrimination occurs in the industry, but minority means more than just race to the group. A minority in the associations eyes is under-served groups who arent getting an equitable opportunity to be owners or license holders in the cannabis industry. Minorities can be low-income white people, veterans who received dishonorable discharges based on cannabis infractions, victims of the war on drugs who have previous cannabis-related convictions, or people of color, be they black, brown, or beige.

An interesting reality that MCBA and Ortiz face every day is that there is often tension between activists and businesses, which he says isnt a bad thing.

The tension between the groups is both positive and negative, we all want the industry to succeed, but activists want everyone to succeed, but there are big national multi-state operators that want THEIR business to succeed.

Just as the issues are handled differently by activists and businesses depending on several factors, so are the expectations of politicians in different geographies.

Ortiz illustrates the disparities between locations by citing that Oakland has far different obstacles and victories than Connecticut or Mississippi has by having a national presence with several in the field locally, theyre able to share how other locations have addressed issues and help replicate the best practices they have seen work. The organization uses its widespread teams in locations across the country to attempt to bring together the pockets of groups that exist in local communities and bring them together to attack nationally, especially when it comes to policy change.

The group has big plans in 2020, some of which are already deeply in progress. While the focus on social equity in licensing legislation and policy is always on the forefront, Covid-19 has quickly required them to simultaneously devote significant attention and advocacy for helping with the financial repercussions of Covid on the cannabis industry. MCBA is highly engaged with political allies and their lobbying efforts are on the recently introduced bill for allotting relief funds to cannabis businesses, many of which are deemed essential in several states.

With regard to social equity work, the monster that theyre attempting to thwart is a lack of social equity for licenses, disabling the ability of under-served groups to have a fighting chance at obtaining licenses. An article from the AP cited, Some states and cities have started post-legalization initiatives to expunge criminal records and open doors in the cannabis business for people with pot convictions. California, for instance, passed a sweeping expungement law last year affecting hundreds of thousands of drug offenders.

MCBA has many allies in the fight for social equity. Imani Dawson,Executive Director of theCannabis Education Advocacy Symposium and Expo (CEASE)and National Communications Director forMinorities for Medical Marijuana (M4MM), echoed the point that bringing serious funding to equity ventures should be among lawmakers top goals. Obtaining a marijuana license is practically impossible without a million dollars [or more], which is why there are only a handful of women- and person of color- (POC) led dispensaries. We arent reflected in venture capital spaces, and its clear how much representation matters, Dawson commented in a previous interview.

Multiple activists, advocates, and social equity champions all agree on this effectively ignoring cannabis history and the needs of equity applicants definitely wont help this young industry beat the black market either.

Shanel Lindsay, owner and CEO of ARDENT and a member of the Massachusetts Cannabis Advisory Board, has been quoted saying, If regulators want this industry to succeed, they also need to make a serious effort to help secure and provide funding for people of color, women, and other minority groups who want to enter it. Those groups make up small business and medium-sized business in cannabis, and if theyre not included, well end up with Big Cannabis, and the kind of sub-quality products were seeing in Massachusetts now, Lindsay added.

Participation in collaborative opportunities with other groups and building a network of alliances in the industry has led MCBA to continue working on their State Model Build, which will be available in the fall for widespread use. The model will provide guidance and assistance in ensuring that a baseline primer for social equity considerations and recommendations are available for anyone attempting to get it right in their own local efforts. MCBA will continue to exert a strong media voice, present and participate in panels, and continue to host their own events in order to keep their momentum moving forward.

As for Ortiz himself, hes committed to continue his activism and work in the US, but as a native Puerto Rican, hes also pursuing cultivation licenses in his place of birth. Ortiz says that the road to economic recovery in his former home can be greatly accelerated by a successful and legal cannabis industry and he plans to be a part of it, possibly in 2021. His focus now is to persevere in the efforts of MCBA and his role with the National Puerto Rico Agenda to drive justice in the cannabis industry until were able to reach a place where the promises of opportunities for everyone havent quite made it YET.

Learn more about MCBA at their website.

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As business booms, MCBA's activism extends to the marginalized - Greenway

IRVINE Welsh says he is "glad he took loads of drugs" and has "absolutely no regrets" as he insists the world does not have a substance problem.

The Trainspotting author, 61, insists he does not have any regrets over his use of narcotics in the past - and says it enhanced his writing and his career.

And he says drug use is always symptomatic of other problems in society - with susbtances simply used to fill gaps in people's lives.

Welsh gave his forthright opinions writing for newly created lads' mag GHQ - which aims to provide '"edgy" content.

He said: "There's always an antecedent for for any phenomenon in our society. It's no different with drugs and all the baggage it carries.

"When asked about this issue, I'm not really sure that there is a drug problem. Drugs tend to be symptomatic of something else. Every time you have a society in transition, there is an epidemic of some kind.

"Our society is in transition now, as capitalism declines from its industrial high and we move into a world where all the technological development is counterintuitive to profits and paid work. Thus there is a tremendous gap in what people can do to progress their lives. Whenever theres a gap, drugs will always be there to fill it.

"In some respects, we ourselves actually justify the very existence of drugs, which are part and parcel of our humanity. Human life is about work and play, about celebration and festival. This, in turn, equals intoxication, which equals drugs. So drugs are ubiquitous across all types of human society, from native cultures to post capitalist ones, and lionized in all religions.

"It's impossible to conceive of what a world without drugs would even look like - music, art, religion and politics probably wouldn't exist as we know them."

He added: "All I can say is that I'm glad I took loads of drugs, and I've absolutely no regrets personally about it at all. It probably gave me an edge as a writer, helping me expand my consciousness and cultural awareness.

"I had loads of great adventures. But I sailed very close to the wind, and ultimately, I'm also very glad that I knew when to stop. It's a young person's game, and best suited to a life when you have scant concept of your mortality. They simply don't work as well after that, and it all becomes diminishing returns.

"You get very tired and sick and it starts to become hard work, just like having a job. And I already have one.

"But a lot of people don't, so drugs are their job. But you dont want to be working all the time. So like most things in life, maybe it is all about moderation."

The Edinburgh scribbler does feel, though, that the "war on drugs" is necessary and helpful.

He acknowledged anti-drug rhetoric is essential in keeping communities intact, but does have some suggestions for a better approach.

He added: "Anyone thats being honest and who has any critical faculties, will see the widespread hypocrisy with mainstream society and its view on drug use. I think the only thing we need more than drugs is a war against drugs.

"Anti-drug hysteria is one of the strongest drugs around. If you could bottle it and sell it, you probably wouldn't need anything else.

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"Without 'wars' on drugs, terror, black people, cops etc, our communities would probably disintegrate rather than slowly tear themselves apart. All that seems to hold our states, and indeed our culture, together now is a sense of some external threat."

He added: "Something that is always discussed is the gateway and easy access drugs - alcohol and prescription drugs. These aren't just gateways to other drugs, but also potentially dangerous drugs in themselves.

"Most people who f**k themselves up with drugs never get past those legal and readily available ones, because they don't really need to do so.

"Something that really needs to be looked into is a more logical approach to the 'war on drugs'. I personally believe that if the effort and money invested in a more relaxed approach to the drug issue, you could really be onto something. I think you have to take the both the state and criminals out of the drug scene and just leave people alone.

"A lot of places have tried more 'liberal' regimes; Spain, Portugal, Uruguay, some US states, have all adopted different but successful experiments in drug legalisation/ decriminalisation.

"It'll happen across the world one day, as it's completely irrational to have a prohibitionist policy on drugs."

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Irvine Welsh glad he took loads of drugs as he insists society does not have a substance problem - The Scottish Sun

Unfortunately, Mexico is a country of discrimination, even among Mexicans themselves. I was at the Congress when they were discussing the Amnesty Bill. [The Amnesty Bill, passed by the House of Deputies in December 2019, would provide an amnesty to nonviolent offenders, including woman who had abortions or the doctors who performed them, political prisoners, indigenous people who did not receive due process in their language, and in cases of minor theft without battery. Its passage is pending in the Senate.] I tried to explain that someone who has lived comfortably, who had his parents, who had money, and then one day goes out and kills someone is a different case to someone whose environment is violent, and who has to survive. You cant judge them the same.

And thats where the amnesty comes in. What are we going to leave to the younger generations? I decided to get out of the gang world because I didnt want my children to inherit my problems. We need to get rid of the stigma that a person with tattoos or a shaved head is bad, that the dark-skinned person doesnt deserve to sit next to me because Im white.

Look: there is a crisis of power. I have the power to kill someone because I want to, and I do it. There is a crisis of impunity. You see my cell phone; its worth $25,000 pesos and you decide to steal it because you know it wont cost you that much. Why?

Because even if the police catch me, they wont respect the chain of custody. Then theyll take me to the public prosecutor who wont do their job right, and then the judge will see that they didnt follow due process and let me go, even though Im guilty. But what if the police do their job, the prosecutor does theirs, the judge does theirs, and what you thought was going to be cheap winds up costing you a lot.

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The War on Drugs Victimized a Generation. Now We Have to Give Them a Future. - Jacobin magazine

When President Donald Trump declared a national emergency last month, as the coronavirus outbreak worsened, he deployed language familiar and perhaps oddly comforting to many Americans. Designating himself a wartime president, Trump likened the countrys COVID-19 response to the U.S.s mobilization during World War II. Every generation of Americans has been called to make shared sacrifices for the good of the nation, Trump insisted.

This rhetorical maneuver reflected the long American history of declaring war on any conceivable enemy whether physical, abstract, domestic or foreign. But as familiar and ubiquitous as war might be for many Americans, at least figuratively, that same history also shows that it is a poor framework through which to understand complex social problems such as poverty and public-health emergencies like the novel coronavirus or drug addiction.

War has been a permanent condition and the governing metaphor for American life since at least the Second World War. Instead of reining in its military and defense infrastructure at the end of the war and the beginning of what is ironically known as the postwar period the U.S. opted to go in the opposite direction, bolstering the national security state in the hopes of thwarting the perceived Soviet and Communist threat. A massive expansion of federal power, the National Security Act of 1947 formed the skeleton of our modern national defense apparatus. The Act established the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council (NSC), a cabinet-level body that would help formulate military and foreign policy on the presidents behalf.

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Drafted and circulated in 1950, the councils NSC-68 report cast the young Cold War in stark, severe terms. It declared that the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at stake and argued that Americans must be willing to give up some of the benefits which they have come to associate with their freedoms. In other words, though World War II had ended in victory, Americans would continue seeing the world through a wartime lens and indefinitely so.

In many ways, the assumptions underlying NSC-68 would guide U.S. foreign policy through the end of the Cold War and beyond. Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and thus the end of the Cold War, the U.S. [f]reed from major challengers remained committed to military action, although it often couched these interventions in terms of human rights.

It is therefore no surprise that Americans have long understood challenges far from the battlefield (such as COVID-19) through the lens of war. Beyond the actual experience of war as combat, as historian Michael Sherry has shown, the United States obsession with war has meant imagining many things in terms of it from President Lyndon B. Johnson depicting incidents of urban unrest as a war within our own boundaries to President Richard Nixon declaring a war on cancer in 1971 (as the Vietnam War raged), from LBJs War on Poverty to Pat Buchanans war for the soul of America (i.e., the culture wars) to the interlocking wars on crime and drugs. The band Wilco lamented this war fetish in their 2001 song War on War, in which frontman Jeff Tweedy sings that, in such a conflict, Youre gonna lose.

Americans know war, theologian Stanley Hauerwas notes, and when we are frightened ironically war makes us feel safe. Michael Sherry concurs building on the work of the late historian Marilyn B. Young when he calls the United States a nation deeply wedded to and defined by war, though maddeningly reluctant to admit it.

Still, real war remains distant and abstract for the overwhelming majority of Americans. As scholar Andrew Bacevich indicated in 2011, approximately half of 1 percent of our citizens bear the burden of service and sacrifice meaning 99.5% of Americans are not personally attached to the military or the national security state. The physical and emotional distance separating most Americans from the battlefield allows them to glorify war while knowing nothing of its unspeakable horrors or the sacrifice it entails.

War is destructive, violent and annihilative. But the nations commitment to war (both as reality and metaphor) has a tendency to take other policy approaches off the table. What has been called the troopification of everything generates financial and political support for any activity conducted under the umbrella of war. And so Americas over-reliance on the blunt, imprecise instrument of war hinders its ability to respond to myriad other problems, from public-health emergencies to chronic issues such as hunger. The infrastructure needed to address such concerns doesnt mesh well with war. Its use as a rhetorical and framing device within our present crisis therefore represents a dismal failure of imagination.

Most damningly, perhaps, Americas recent wars whether directed at targets physical, abstract, domestic or foreign have mostly failed. The United States excels at war, Sherry observes, though no longer at winning it. In just the past 50 years or so, the U.S. has failed to win the War in Vietnam, the war on cancer (despite many notable achievements in research and treatment), the War on Poverty (although LBJs campaign slashed poverty rates), the war on crime (which did much to terrorize and imprison poor and working-class black and brown people but little to actually curtail crime), the war on drugs (given the persistent reality of drug addiction) and the seemingly endless global war on terror.

This track record does not bode well for the nations war against COVID-19. We need an efficient, coherent public-health response coordinated by a competent federal government. What we dont need is another war.

Paul M. Renfro is an Assistant Professor of History at Florida State University and the author of Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State (Oxford University Press, 2020).

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War Has Been the Governing Metaphor for Decades of American Life. This Pandemic Exposes Its Weaknesses - TIME

Lab workers unload filled vials of remdesivir, a drug produced by Gilead Sciences Inc. that scientists from various institutions across the globe are using in test trials as they look at ways to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Photo courtesy of Gilead.

Three weeks into a virus-induced shutdown, as downtown streets remain silent and the economy finds itself teetering on the brink of a steep and sudden recession, a research boom is sweeping through local universities, hospitals and commercial labs. For scientists working nonstop behind the scenes, the race is on to defeat a deadly virus that has brought the whole world to its knees.

Their war has many fronts, but chief among them are testing and treatment, which are seeing a flurry of activity. Stanford University and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have ramped up their testing capacity and launched clinical trials at a furious pace. Since the coronavirus pandemic took off, Stanford's epidemiologists have been working with Santa Clara County health officials to model the pandemic's trajectory; its virologists have developed various ways to test for virus; and its medical researchers are now launching clinical trials for promising drugs that have proved effective for fighting Ebola, the flu and Hepatitis D.

Researchers also are collaborating with counterparts in other universities as well as public agencies and private labs to share and scale their breakthroughs.

Private companies also have stepped up, with commercial labs developing tests and distributing drugs that they believe may become critical weapons in the war against COVID-19 and with manufacturers joining the effort to create personal protective equipment, such as masks and face shields, for health care workers.

Thus far in the battle, public health strategies have led the charge, deploying the tactic of social distancing. On Tuesday, Santa Clara County residents received a glimmer of hope: Staying home to help "flatten the curve" appears to be working, even though the number of COVID-19 cases is still expected to climb between now and May 1, Dr. Sara Cody, the county's health official, told the county Board of Supervisors during her April 7 update.

Yet the hopeful news came with another message: Numerous conditions have to be met before officials can relax their social-distancing orders.

The county will need to get to a point where widespread testing for COVID-19 is available and hospitals can safely and effectively treat everyone living in the county.

"We have to at least be able to test everyone who has symptoms," Cody said. "And we also have to have enough testing capacity so that we can test where we think there is some risk of accelerated transmission or there is risk in a particular community. So we've got to have testing capacity."

Testing as defense

While Cody said she is optimistic about the latest data on COVID-19 cases, county, state and federal officials have consistently pointed to testing as a glaring weakness in the collective response to coronavirus. As of Thursday, only 13,360 people in Santa Clara County have been tested for COVID-19, county data show, with 1,442 testing positive a rate of 10.79%. It takes an average of 2.27 days to get a test result, a problem that Dr. Karen Smith of Santa Clara Public Health Department attributed Tuesday to delays at just about every step of the testing process.

Testing, she said, is limited by a shortage of swabs that are used to take samples and by the worldwide shortage of reagent, a key chemical for sample analysis.

That said, where the government has lagged, Stanford has been able to rev up its testing capacity. One of the nation's first coronavirus tests came from Benjamin Pinsky, associate professor of pathology and of infectious diseases at Stanford School of Medicine who has been developing a COVID-19 test since late January and whose team was validating and confirming results throughout February, according to Stanford.

In early March, Stanford's Clinical Virology Laboratory, of which Pinsky is medical director, was capable of conducting 1,000 daily tests, with a turnaround time for results between 36 and 48 hours, according to the university. Now, the lab can now perform 2,000 tests daily, Pinsky told this news organization in an email, and the turnaround time has been cut down to 24 hours.

Pinsky said the team has been able to optimize its workflow and boost production over the past month by validating multiple additional extraction instruments and thermal cyclers machines that amplify DNA segments using a copying process called polymerase chain reaction.

UCSF also has boosted its testing capacity by opening a new lab that can process more than 2,000 samples per day and return results in 24 hours. In early March, when UCSF began testing for COVID-19, it had a capacity to test only 60 to 100 tests daily, according to the university.

On Tuesday, UCSF Health President and CEO Mark R. Laret and UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood co-wrote in a letter that it will allow public health officials from the nine Bay Area counties, including San Mateo and Santa Clara, to submit their samples to UCSF for free analysis.

While virology labs at Stanford and UCSF are using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique to zoom in on the virus' DNA segments, a research team headed by Eran Bendavid, associate professor of medicine at Stanford, is looking at blood samples for evidence. On April 3 and 4, the team took 2,500 blood samples from volunteers at drive-thru sites in Mountain View, Los Gatos and San Jose. The team used targeted Facebook surveys in an attempt to get a population-representative sample of the county for its experiment.

The goal of the study is to examine the antibodies in the blood sample, a technique known as serology, to gauge the percentage of county residents who are or have been infected with COVID-19. A similar study was concurrently conducted in the Los Angeles area by researchers from University of Southern California.

"We need to understand how widespread the disease actually is," Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who is involved with the project, said on Saturday morning, as the second day trial was kicking off. "To do that, we need to understand how many people are infected. The current test people use to check whether they have the condition the PCR test it just checks whether you currently have the virus in you. It doesn't check whether you had it and recovered. An antibody test does both."

Stanford Health is also using blood samples to test its employees for COVID-19. On April 6, the serologic test that was developed by Stanford Medicine was launched at the university's medical facilities. While the university is currently only testing health care workers, Stanford Health spokesperson Lisa Kim said Stanford hopes to deploy these tests more broadly within the next two months.

"The test will enable us to determine which health care workers might be at low risk for working with COVID-19 patients, as well as understanding disease prevalence in our communities," Kim said.

Going on the offensive

Just as testing has accelerated, so have medical trials of potentially life-saving drugs. At an April 2 virtual town hall put on by medical leaders at Stanford, Dr. Yvonne Maldonado and Dean of Stanford Medicine Dr. Lloyd Minor, both said that the university's early development of the PCR test has increased the university's capacity to stage trials.

"Because we are one of the first to launch our own PCR test and we hope we'll have serologic testing available in the near future as well it gives us the capacity to monitor patients for not only immediate medical care but clinical trials," Maldonado said.

Two of Stanford's trials involve remdesivir, a drug produced by the Foster City-based company Gilead Sciences, Inc. Scientists from various institutions across the globe, including a team at Stanford Hospital, are examining whether remdesivir can prevent the coronavirus from replicating.

"The RNA virus gets into the cells and uses them as little hotels (to replicate)," said Kari Nadeau, co-investigator and professor of pediatric food allergy, immunology and asthma at the School of Medicine.

With the virus proliferating, some COVID-19 patients' immune systems overreact, causing severe symptoms that lead to death. Researchers hope that limiting the virus' replication will prevent the immune system from becoming overly active.

Gilead announced on April 4 that it has produced 1.5 million doses of remdesivir, enough to treat 140,000 patients. It plans to supply the drug at no charge.

Nadeau's trial began enrolling patients on March 30. Stanford is collaborating with 65 other sites worldwide; the aim is to study the drug's effects on 600 patients.

For the trial, Stanford patients will receive an intravenous dose of the medication daily for 10 days. The researchers will see how the patients do over a 15-day period. Nadeau said they expect to see a difference between the control group and those who receive the drug. They hope the drug will result in fewer people needing ventilators and fewer deaths.

Neera Ahuja, the study's principal investigator and division chief of hospital medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, said if the evidence is convincing of the drug's effectiveness, and the side effects and adverse reactions pass federal scrutiny, the FDA approval could come within a month.

"That's unheard of in the non-pandemic world," she said.

Stanford is one of many institutions now looking at remdesivir. Among the National Institutes of Health trials of the drug is one involving patients who are on ventilators; another is studying patients with moderate COVID-19 symptoms. A third will compare the results for moderately ill patients who will be given the drug and for people who only receive standard care.

The studies involve dozens of hospitals throughout California, including the VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Stanford Health Care, Kaiser Permanente and the Regional Medical Center in San Jose. Gilead also is involved in studies using remdesivir in China and France.

Stanford is also looking at other drugs, including those that have in the past proved effective in treating other infections. Maldonado said at the April 2 town hall that in addition to its work on remdesivir, Stanford is preparing to move ahead with trials for Lambda, an immunomodulator, and the viral inhibitors Camostat and favipiravir.

"They have been studied in other infections, so we think we can obtain rapid FDA INDs so that we can start doing primarily outpatient trials for these drugs," Maldonado said, referring to "investigational new drug" authorization.

"So if they work in reducing symptoms and perhaps prevent spread by reducing viral shedding from an infected person, then these could be scaled up in the not too distant future. We're hoping those will enroll (patients) pretty quickly."

Prassana Jagganathan, a Stanford infectious disease specialist who is heading the trial on Lambda, said the drug may be able to strengthen the human immune system to better fight COVID-19. Lambda, he said, appears to target cells that are located on the epithelium (outer tissue layer) of respiratory tracts, including areas such as lungs and pharynx. As such it can be particularly suitable for treating patients with COVID-19, which can trigger respiratory failure.

"It's a molecule that we think can actually stimulate and aid antiviral defenses against a multitude of different viruses," Jagganathan said.

While Lambda had not been used to treat respiratory illnesses, another interferon called Alfa had proven effective, he said. The problem with using Alfa to treat COVID-19, Jagganathan said, is that the receptors for Alfa are far more distributed throughout the human body, including in immune cells. Thus, side effects of Alfa include fever or the flu, symptoms that resemble those of COVID-19.

The primary outcome of the randomized clinical trial, which will include 120 participants, is to see how long people are shedding the virus, Jagganathan said.

"We are hypothesizing that the folks who get Lambda will have a shorter duration of virus that we can detect," Jagganathan said.

In addition to drugs, Stanford is experimenting with another promising remedy: the antibodies from patients who have already contracted and recovered from COVID-19. The new experimental therapy program, which Stanford Blood Center announced on April 7, takes blood from the recovered patients, removes the plasma containing the antibodies, and returns the remaining blood components such as red blood cells back to the donor. The antibodies are then given to critically ill COVID-19 patients through a transfusion, the center stated.

The blood center is working with Stanford Medicine in hopes that the antibodies, which are immune proteins that attack pathogens such as viruses, might help lessen the severity of the COVID-19.

Though the use of antibodies to treat COVID-19 patients is in the investigational phase, the technique, also known as passive antibody therapy, dates back as far as the 1890s. And prior outbreaks with other coronaviruses, including the one that caused SARS, showed that neutralizing antibodies were helpful in reducing the effects of the disease.

Likewise, the technique was used in the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza virus pandemic to reduce patients' respiratory viral load, inflammatory reactions and death, researchers Arturo Casadevall and Liise-anne Pirofski wrote in an article published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation on March 13. It also was used in the 2013 West African Ebola epidemic.

Stanford Blood Center will begin collecting the plasma this week and plans to increase collections in the following weeks as it identifies more donors. The donors must be fully recovered and symptom-free for at least 14 days. If they are only symptom-free for 14 to 28 days, they will be asked to retake a COVID-19 test at no cost. The repeat test must be negative to be eligible to donate.

The process takes about one to two hours using standard blood- and plasma-removal methods. The collections take place at the center's Palo Alto headquarters at 3373 Hillview Ave. in Palo Alto, where special care will be taken by a small team in a dedicated room, according to Dr. Suchi Pandey, the blood center's chief medical officer. (Interested donors can visit stanfordbloodcenter.org/covid19plasma and fill out an intake form.)

Getting enough of the antibodies to treat many patients could take time. Pandey said in an email that there's also no known way to cultivate or increase the amount of plasma in a laboratory, so blood centers and hospitals rely on donors.

"The volume of plasma collected from a donor is based on specific donor parameters such as weight. Depending on the volume of plasma collected, the unit may be divided into separate plasma components, which can be used to treat up to three patients," she said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved use of the antibody treatment by hospitals, initially only for critically ill patients.

It will later be used in clinical trials on patients in different stages of the disease, according to the blood center.

Find comprehensive coverage on the Midpeninsula's response to the new coronavirus by Palo Alto Online, the Mountain View Voice and the Almanac here.

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The war on the virus: Scientists race to develop tests, drugs to stop coronavirus in its tracks - Palo Alto Online

In "How to Fix a Drug Scandal," a new four-part Netflix docuseries, documentary filmmaker Erin Lee Carr presents the stories of Massachusetts drug lab chemists Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak, and how the discovery of their respective misconduct led to the largest mass dismissal of criminal convictions in U.S. history.

Farak had been using the drugs that came through her lab in Amherst, filling out test results while high, while Dookhan had fabricated thousands of test results in her Boston lab, revealing major holes in a neglected legal system designed to streamline the "war on drugs."

Over the last decade, Carr has become something of an expert on the art of true crime. She is a master of dissecting the kinds of stories that seem made for splashy, gossipy rag, pulling at the dominant narratives which are often those easiest to tell and consume, built on familiar tropes and formulas and also, our collective hunger for them.

Carr's documentary, "Thought Crimes: The Case of The Cannibal Cop," dug into the case of Gilberto Valle, an ex-NYPD cop who was convicted of conspiracy to kidnap after his wife found that Valle had spent time detailing plans to kidnap, rape, and cannibalize several women on a number of fetish websites.

In 2017, she released "Mommy Dead and Dearest" about the death of Dee Dee Blanchard at the hands of her daughter Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and Gypsy's boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn. Her 2019 documentary "I Love You, Now Die" delved into the death of Conrad Roy, who was prompted via text by his girlfriend, Michelle Carter to kill herself.

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Carr spoke with Salon about the making of "How to Fix a Drug Scandal," how she chooses her documentary subjects, and what it looks like to film with "radical empathy" in mind.

One of the things I really appreciate about your documentaries is that you take stories that are kind of prime for sensational headlines "Thought Crimes," "Mommy Dead and Dearest," "I Love You, Now Die" and you really dig into the people and sometimes policies behind them. How do you determine if a story is one that you want to pursue for a documentary?

This is actually the number onequestion I get asked, because it's very clear in all the work that it's the same person doing it, but they involve different systemic issues. So the easiest way I can explain it is sort of the most straightforward: Is it about a woman? Is there a complicating factor? Are there layers to it which means are there other stories within it? And is it watchable and fun?

And finally, is it going to be hard to get people to watch this?

You know, Sheila Nevins, who I first started making films with, she would talk to me about how this is sort of like television; there's a commercial reality to this in that you don't want to ever make a boring cold open.

You literally have 90 seconds to draw the audience in and they are going to decide if they want to watch it enough just based on that 90 seconds. So like, do your thing.

What drew you to the stories of Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan?

You know as a sober person, and as an "out"sober person, there was something that so resonated with me about the deception of addiction. You're at work surrounded by all of these substances, and the purest substances the best of the best, you know? I don't think this is a very popular thought, but like, I would have done it. I think it's hearkening back to Adam and Eve. Like if the apple is right there and there are no cameras, you're going to take a bite of the apple.

Some people say they would never do that, that it would never cross their minds to do that, and alright, good for you. But I'm somebody that doesn't feel that way.

So I really wanted to have a series that talks about addiction, talks about temptation, talked about mental health, and continued those conversations in a way where it really looks at all aspects of it. But then you also had so many people that really set issues with the people [Farak and Dookhan's findings] convicted. Like, "They had drugs, they're guilty,"and I don't agree with that either. So it's really understanding it all from a human perspective.

And I think that definitely leads into my next question. You've talked before in interviews about how "radical empathy" is a guiding approach in your filmmaking. How did you practice that in creating "How to Fix a Drug Scandal?"

Well, I think that Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak and the prosecutors, to some extent, can all be very one-dimensional villains; and I think with Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak, specifically, I tried to see them as individuals versus villains, and really tried to stratify the line between those things.

I think it's often really about sort of caring about these people and knowing, "I am not a narrative filmmaker right now."I am making films about people's realities, what happened and it has to be thetruth, it has to be second source verified, I cannot make any of this stuff up.

So when I sit with the fact that somebody who's going to watch this and have opinions about Sonja, am I going to be able to sleep at night? Did I do the right thing? Did I three-dimensionalize her?

And I think "radical empathy"has been this phrase that I have carried around with me, but I don't give it to everybody. I did not do that with Larry Nasser, for example. I did not believe in terms of "At the Heart of Gold"that I could humanize him because that would be giving the movie over to him. So that's sort of my internal question with myself. If I have radical empathy, should that not lend itself to everybody? I think I'm sort of figuring that out as a filmmaker and as a human being as I go along.

Well, and I think that ties into how this story was structured. I thought it was interesting how, early in the first episode, we established that we were going to be recreating Sonja Farak's grand jury testimony using unsealed court transcripts. How did you come to the decision to structure the series in that way?

God, Ashlie it was rough. So you're sitting there and you have an entire binder full of grand jury transcripts. They have previously been sealed. They are literally the confession, the core part of this story.

And then you're faced up against the fact that people hate recreations and you cannot get the person who said these things to say any of these things. So my producing partner Will Cohen said, "You can do transcript-on-screen, you can do animation, you can do an actor."At one point, I really wanted Edie Falco to read it because she's out about recovery, and I was like, "That's a great idea."But then it was like, "No, that's not going to work that will be very slotted in."

So I was really having to push myself as a director and be like, "Okay, I need to make these transcripts come alive and the best way to do that is to recreate it, and if I'm going to do that, I'm going to really try to work as seamlessly as possible as getting that inside the narrative without being jarring."

And I remember I was sitting with my family and I was showing them "How to Fix a Drug Scandal,"and they were like, "Wow, it's really crazy that the woman would reenact that,"and my first thought was, "Were they too similar looking?"

But I had wanted it to be sort of seamless; and according to Twitter, according to critics, it's working. It's what you need to get through that story, and I have no apologies for it.

Right, well, and Sonja and Annie's convictions ultimately led to the largest mass dismissal of criminal convictions in U.S. history, which is absolutely staggering. What was it personally like investigating a story that impacted so many people?

It's interesting because as a filmmaker, I knew that thousands of people were impacted by it, and I thought that I would have my pick of who I could talk to; and what I recognized was the opposite. People that had prior drug convictions were incredibly distrustful of the system. Sometimes they would get on the phone, sometimes they would not, and a bunch of times we just ran into this brick wall of them saying, "I just can't do it. I don't trust that this will do anything for me."Stepping away from the filmmaker perspective, it's incredible to see what hell two chemists had wrought.

And to me, it was also really about examining post-release, like when you get out of jail what happens? When you're trying to get your convictions lifted because there's so much ripple effect. Can you apply for food stamps? Can you apply for affordable housing? Can you vote? What does your life look like then? And I think it was about showing all of these things that are sometimes really hard to get audience members to care a ton about.

But inside the show, you can really see it through Rolando Penate and Rafael Rodriguez.

"How to Fix a Drug Scandal" is now streaming on Netflix.

More:

"I would have done it": Filmmaker on indentifying with the "How to Fix a Drug Scandal" perpetrators - Salon

Don Winslow is one of America's most widely read and acclaimed crimewriters. His work has been adapted for major Hollywood movies and TV series.

In his bestselling books "The Cartel" (2015), "The Force" (2017), and "The Border" (2019), Winslow has taken the mystery, action, grittiness, moral dilemmas, and authenticity that typifies the best of crime fiction as a genre and combined it with epic storytelling and complex characters against the backdrop of America's failed war on drugs.

Winslow's new book "Broken" is a collection of six short novels focusingon the tragedies and triumphs, and day-to-day lives of people cops, bounty hunters, drug addicts, drug dealers, detectives, their loved ones, friends, and community who are criminals, those trying to stop them, and the human rubble left along America's "criminal highway."

Winslow is also a very outspoken truth-teller about the criminality, cruelty and inhumanity of Donald Trump and his regime.

In theconversation below, Winslow explains how Donald Trump embodies everything wrong with American masculinityand shares his observation thatthe coronavirus pandemic is a perfect metaphor for the pain and harm being caused to the American people and the world by Trump and his movement.

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Winslow also reflects on the obligations of the artist in a time of crisis and why he has chosen to be so vocal about Trump and his regime's many crimes against human decency and democracy.

You can also listen to my conversation with Don Winslowon my podcast "The Truth Report"or through the player embedded below.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Could you have imagined all that has happened with Donald Trump being president? If it was fiction no reasonable person wouldbelieve it.

No, you can't make this up. It's the problem with writing fiction right now. Every day you get up, and the headlines have outpaced anything you could reasonably imagine. It's discouraging. To me the coronavirus feels like the physical manifestation of some sort of metaphysical infection that we have had during the last three years at least with Donald Trump and this situation. Now Trump and all that has come from him feels almost feels like it's finally physically manifestedin the form of the virus. Now we have to see how we are all going to get through this intact.

America issick society. The sickness is so omnipresentthat too many people have become used to it as being "normal."Your description of the coronavirus as being both physical and metaphysical is such a perfect encapsulation of the Age of Trump.

I'm really beginning to come to that conclusion. It feels like in a weird way that we must get through the coronavirus in order to get past it and what it represents. It is all like the fever breaking and you go through the sweats and the shakes and the bones hurting and all that comes with getting through the illness.

And there is of course the surreal aspect of it all, with Trump's religious leaders telling people to lick the floors of churches to prove that the virus does not exist, or still telling the congregation to come to church and then they inevitably get sick from the coronavirus. Trump leads a cult. It is all a manifestation of how sick American society really is.

The first thing I do in the mornings is I usually look at five or six newspapers online. For the last few days, I almost haven't wanted to. I almost have to force myself to follow my routine. Each day's headlines are always worse than yesterday's. And then we read this ridiculous stuff about peoplelicking the floors of churches and other madness, and then one has to ask themselves, "Is this who we are as a people? As Americans? What is going on?"

In terms of a narrative and the traditional Western storytelling form, there is no climax with the Age of Trump. There is no end, just one horrible thing after another without pause. One must wonder what that lack of closure is doing to the emotional and intellectual lives of the American people.

In my trilogy about America's drug wars I intentionally abandoned the three-act structure in exchange for a five-act structure, which is the classic structure of tragedy. That is what this moment feels like to me. It is a tragedy.

A person cannot continue to support Donald Trump and still be an introspective and decent human being. To support Donald Trump is to abandon being a human being who actually thinks deeply about right and wrong. To support Donald Trump is to be a party to and support all the horrible and cruel things he does.

I don't want to just recite the whole "Greatest Generation" trope about World War II but I live in a very rural area, and it's mostly Republicans. I'm the Democrat who gets sent out to talk to my Republican neighbors when a school bond issue or some related matter comes up.

For some reason they like me. I can tell them, "Hey, we need to get these school bonds funded." They respect me, and we can work together. I have never had an issue with the 70- and 80-year-olds. They are rock-ribbed, conservative ranchers who wear cowboy hats and boots. They get it. If I go to them and I say, "Hey, we need this.I need you to vote this way because the kids need this for their educations," then they are on board. It is the 50- and 60-year-olds who are not supportive. Their response is, "Yeah, if it was good enough for me, it's good enough for them." I tell them, "That's funny because your own dad doesn't think so."

Would you even be able to properly write Donald Trump as a character in one of your books?

I don't think so. But he appears in another form in a book of mine called "The Border."But really it is impossible to write a parody of a parody. It just can't be done. Here's this guy Donald Trump in the midst of this coronavirus crisis with people dying, worried, and scared. What does Trump talk about? How it cost him billions of dollars to become president. What? Gilbert and Sullivan couldn't write lyrics for this guy. So no, I'll take a pass on it. Thank you.

We fiction writers are all struggling right now about how to write anything about and in this era. Our stories for the most part are set right now. We have to describe this moment in this era somehow. It is very difficult to do. As a writer it is easy to find yourself wandering into sarcasm, which means there will be more irony than you might otherwise want.

In America we truly are living a caricature of reality with Trump as president. What type of art do you think this moment is going to produce?

I don't think anyone's going to write anything really good about it this moment for another 10 years. We need perspective on it. I don't think that there's much in terms of novels anyway or films that are going to be done because it is so very immediate. Everything that is happening is simply too close. We also don't know the truth and all the facts about what Donald Trump has done. That reflects a broader problem with contemporary culture:with the 24/7 news cycle everything is so fast. The first story is usually wrong. To fully grapple with Donald Trump and that has happened and is happening needs time. We will also need more time before anything approaching art is made in response to Trump and this moment.

What is the obligation of the artist in a time of crisis?

I do not think that there's a responsibility to speak out. Let me just stick with my own genre. I think it's perfectly okay to write what is just a good suspense novel that entertains people and maybe to a certain extent informs the reader. That is perfectly appropriate. I kind of got into speaking about politics simply because of what I was writing about. I never intended to be a political person and I never intended to be terribly outspoken. Frankly, it goes against my personality. My inclinations tend towards being an introvert.

But in the 22 years of doing my drug trilogy, I felt that if I didn't speak out then I was almost being some type of voyeur on the genuine suffering of the people being hurt by the drug wars.

If I knew, which I do, that the war on drugs is both futile and counterproductive and wrong, then at a certain point it was incumbent on me to step outside of the novel and say it. If I knew that Trump's wall along the U.S.-Mexico border was a cruel travesty in terms of solving the heroin epidemic, the opioid crisis, then at some point I needed to step outside of saying it in a novel and say it in public. That was necessary for me to do but I don't think it is necessarily a responsibility that every artist has.

I was thinking about the border wall and how Trump and Stephen Miller and other people who share their values talk about nonwhite migrants, refugees, and immigrants. Driven by bigotry and racism, itis very easy for some people to disparage and hate people that they never met and don't know.

It frustrates me terribly when I hear people from the Northeast claim to be experts on the border, and they've maybe come down for an hour or two and gotten the standard tour. I live very close to the border. I know the people who live here. They're my friends. They're my neighbors. They went to school with my kid. We're on committees together. They're, for the most part, really fine people. It infuriates me when I hear Donald Trump call them "rapists" and "murderers" and blame them for bringing diseases into the country, including the coronavirus.

I believe that very few people, regardless of their political persuasion, could physically, in person, see somebody suffering or dying in person and not do something to help them. That's on the micro level. On the macro level though, we talk about "illegal immigrants" and "wetbacks" and use other such language and then it is very easy for people to become indifferent and cruel.

I wrote "The Border" to get beneath the headlines in these discussions about immigration. Let's live with an immigrant, albeit through fiction, for a few hundred pages. Let's not talk about the opioid crisis. Let's live with a young woman who is a heroin addict. Let's live with a cop on that beat. Let's try to see what is happening from that individual level. That makes a huge difference. To be able to do that is one of the great opportunities provided by fiction as a genre because we can create a story in our heads and hearts and then bring the reader close that world and feelings.

There are many ways to create that type of connection with the reader. The technique that I choose is to see life through the eyes of the people in my stories. And that does require a certain amount of empathy. It requires sitting down and talking to people. It really requires sitting down and listening to people which is something by the way that we as writers need to remind ourselves to do.

As human beings we share a common humanity. While fortunately I have not suffered in the way that the people in "The Border" or my other books have suffered because of the war on drugs, we do all have common human experiences. We've all suffered loss,we've all suffered fear, we've all felt hope, we've all felt disappointment, and I think that we can relate on those levels.

One of the throughlines in your books are questions of masculinity and violence, and the relationships that men have with one another as fathers, sons, brothers, and comrades. When I see Donald Trump, I don't see a "bad man" ora real tough guy. I see a man pretending to be tough, a wannabe mafia boss.

All the real tough guys I know are either dead or in jail. Very often these Hollywood wannabe tough guys have made a gangster movie andthey think they are the character in real life. They are not. Donald Trump wants to be a badass and clearly is not. Growing up, my intuition is that Donald Trump didn't have any friends or other people to tell him that, "Hey, you're being a jerk." It appears that Donald Trump did not have anyone to help define him as a person and help him learn boundaries and correct behavior.

Trump's wannabe tough guy swagger and machismo bullying and posturing is part of his appeal. Again, it reveals a sickness in American society. Specifically, a crisis in American masculinity.

Much of this is in fact a crisis in masculinity. Donald Trump represents most of what I don't like about men. Donald Trump represents men at our worst with all that macho posturing and other nonsense.

In the research for your books you have encountered some real bad men, legitimately tough and dangerous people. What were they like?

They are each different. They remind me of the famous Tolstoy observation that, "All happy families are the same, and all unhappy families are different."That is true of the real bad guys.

I have sat across a table from multiple murderers who can be as charming as anyone you've ever had dinner with, and yet you look in their eyes and you definitely see it. Others are just cold businesspeople. To them, violence is unfortunate but necessary. Others are very quiet. Those ones are the really serious guys. Some are sociopaths or psychopaths and others are just muted. What you typically don't see though with these types of real bad men is the macho posturing because they have no need to do it.

As the clich goes, is all writing therapeutic?

No. Not for me. That's not the deal that I have with the reader. The reader doesn't care and shouldn't care about Don Winslow's feelings. The purpose of my books is not for me to bare my soul. The purpose of my books is hopefully to tell a really good story in a good way and to maybe give people some information that they didn't have. I also hope that after finishing one of my books that the readers see the world in a different way than they had before.

How did writing become your vocation?

I've always wanted to be a writer. I felt that ways since I was a little kid. I grew up around great storytellers. My dad was a sailor and one of the great raconteurs of all time. He and his buddies had seen the world and could tell such amazing stories.

I used to sit, literally, at their feet hiding under the table. They'd pretend not to know I was there while they're drinking beer and telling great old stories. And the stories got better every year. My mom was a librarian, so I grew up around books. My dad was a tremendous reader, so I always thought thatI wanted to read and write for a living. But at some point, we often experience a crisis of confidence. I remember thinking to myself, that "No.I am not good enough to write for a living. I don't have the talent to do that." I needed to make a living, so I did that by trying to do things that were more interesting as opposed to less interesting and I was lucky enough to get some of those gigs.

I remember this vividly. I was in Africa on a safari photographic safaris to be clear sick with dysentery and a malaria relapse and thinking to myself, "You better do this thing,man.You better just stop thinking about it, stop talking about it and really do it."And I'd heard Joseph Wambaugh say that when he was a Los Angeles homicide cop which he was for many years he really wanted to be a writer. So, he decided to write 10 pages a day. I said to myself, "Well, I can't write 10 but I can do five." I did it every day for the next three years until I had my first book. All the other things I did for money were just ways of evading what I really wanted to do which is to be a professional writer.

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Author Don Winslow: Trump's administration feels like it's "manifested itself" as the coronavirus - Salon

For all those who love to paint, sketch, sculpt, or put their senses to any form of figurative canvas and create magical pieces of art, how often do you feel the need to turn to music for inspiration? Or do you prefer listening to music while doing your artsy thing? On today's Pandemic Playlist, we have chosen five songs that will inspire your creativity or just simply help you relax while you make your art.

'Thinking Of A Place' comes as one of the harder tracks on today's playlist, albeit the song is still a slow jam by nature. Like most of The War On Drugs songs, think Bob Dylan, heartland rock, blues, and synth all splashed together and you will come close to imagining what 'Thinking Of A Place' sounds like. The dreamy track will send you floating, drifting, and fading in a richly recorded slow rock number that goes down as the only song with vocals on our list. Without being too influential on your own unique artistic creation, 'Thinking Of A Place' could easily enter onto a road trip playlist, could inspire your beach vacation fantasies, or appeal as a track suitable for a long late drive through some quiet urban nightlife. But like the title, 'Thinking Of A Place' suggests whatever location you find beautiful.

The most gentle, most unfluctuating, or in a closer description, the most ambient track on our list, 'Weightless', with its fitting title, makes you feel exactly that. A wavey synth continuously contracts and dilates over a barely audible thump at a heart-beat tempo as the beat until, close to two minutes in on the 8-minute track, a sort of wind-chime tune plays on a mallet instrument. Gradual layers of instruments are woven in with changes that are so subtle, you may not even notice unless you pay attention. 'Weightless' comes as a perfect song to play in the background while you work on your art.

How can we make a playlist about relaxation and all things pleasing for your artwork inspiration without including some silky smooth jazz, right? Well, Pat Martino's 'Dreamsville' may just be the silkiest, smoothest of jazz numbers you've heard. With warm, intimate guitar rhythms that yield to no rules other than to comfort and relax you while you craft, 'Dreamsville' is full of beautiful guitar work that is an art to pull off itself. An ever-so-soft organ plays as the backup to the guitar and we understand that this minimalistic jazz piece uses few instruments as its heroes, but they do shine as heroes nonetheless. The song is sure to relax even those who don't like jazz, but lovers of the genre will probably want to snatch this up.

Listen to 'Dreamsville' here.

In case you haven't noticed, we have gone for a bit of variety on today's playlist. Alan Stivell's sprightly Celtic number 'Suite Des Montagnes' creates abstract mental imagery in its own right. For hardcore heavy metal fans, you may dip your fingers into ethnic-charged rock tunes every so often, but this track lets you enjoy a style of music that metal frequently gets inspiration from. 'Suite Des Montagnes' draws from some of the most primitive Celtic roots with a Celtic harp and low whistle as its musical weapons playing out in peppy, free-spirited melodies, and will certainly beckon the imaginations of an aspiring artist.

Listen to 'Suite Des Montagnes' here.

Another ambient tune, albeit more melodic than the previously listed Marconi Union song, 'Younger', comes as one of many truly rich and utterly beautiful Tony Anderson tracks (probably all suitable for this playlist). 'Younger' presents a bittersweet tune that tenderly slides between melancholy and hope. It may be hard to pin whether it is more one than the other of those two feelings, but that may be what Anderson had in mind when crafting this musical piece of art. The piano accentuates at just the right moments as the lead instrument with background trills and triplets while rich sweeping atmospheric instruments expand in this near-celestially-touched song. A dreamy piece of music that would be highly enjoyable to listen to while working on your art.

Pandemic Playlist is a daily list of songs that will keep you entertained instead of feeling drained while you're isolated at home. Look out for a fresh selection of great tunes from MEAWW to refresh your mood every day!

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Pandemic Playlist: From War on Drugs to Alan Stivell, the top 5 songs that will inspire creativity - MEAWW

Sonja Farak, one of the lab workers depicted in Netflix's "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." | Courtesy of Netflix

The content streaming juggernaut Netflix has once again premiered a series that may help viewers forget about the current coronavirus troubles of the world while simultaneously reminding us of the systemic problems that helped deliver us to this moment in time. The docu-series How to Fix a Drug Scandal was added to the platform this month, giving a glimpse into the ever-present problems of the so-called war on drugs through an expos of the largely ignored drug laboratory chemists who ultimately help determine the fate of those charged with narcotics possession.

Through the stories of lab chemists Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhanand the scandals their actions contributed to creatingthe program sheds a light on the inequality that characterizes the justice system when it comes to drug use and possession. It will ultimately leave viewers a bit more enlightened and perhaps a lot more frustrated by the truths the series tells.

The program was produced by Alex Gibney (The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley) and directed by Erin Lee Carr (Dirty Money). The four-part series focuses on the misconduct of lab chemists Farak and Dookhan that sets off a chain of events affecting government officials, lawyers, and thousands of inmates. The two workers become symbols of a larger systemic problem within the judicial system concerning how people are persecuted under the law regarding drug possession.

Farak was a drug lab expert in Amherst, Mass., who also happened to be a drug addict that used the substances she was supposed to test. She often conducted drug analysis while under the influence of these substances. A good chunk of the documentary takes a deeper look into her trial and the impact on those convicted of crimes based on her drug testing.

Dookhan was a chemist at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health lab who admitted to falsifying evidence affecting close to 34,000 cases. While the series takes a look at the lives of these women and what may have driven them to the actions they took, it is the response of the Attorney Generals office and government officials that gets to the real crux of the story on what happens when, instead of addressing systemic shortcomings, leadership buckles down in obstruction and cover-ups in order to fix the scandal rather than the system.

Government officials wanted to treat Farak and Dookhan as outliers who made bad decisions that were isolated instances. What the documentary unveils through interviews with lawyers and public officials, however, is that Farak and Dookhan are products of an environment that doesnt care much for its lab workers and doesnt concern itself with proper vettingbecause it cares more about conviction results than quality of work.

This is what makes up a majority of the series, as defense lawyers fight to get their clients, who are serving time based on the compromised testings of Farak and Dookhan, some sense of justice in the face of law enforcements refusal to take another look at their cases.

This is not a flashy series with the quick jump cuts and comedic irony interlaced within the story that you sometimes find when documentaries try to appeal to mainstream audiences. What you get instead is a program that relies heavily on direct-to-camera interviews, archival footage, re-created court testimonies, and the journey to some sort of semblance of justice. Its a riveting story that doesnt actually need a lot of bells and whistles, but for those wanting a more fast-paced exploration, you may find this series lacking.

The lack of tantalizing action may also relate to the fact that when people think about the war on drugs, (a drug prohibition campaign led by the United States federal government with the proclaimed aim of reducing illegal drug use and importation into the country), we often think about law enforcement, lawyers, and those persecuted. Rarely receiving any attention at all are the lab chemists who test the evidence and testify in court about their findings, something that plays a major role in convicting those being charged. It isnt a glamorous job with loads of television shows glorifying it in pop culture, but it is perhaps the most important aspect of the whole process that ultimately leads to the statistics concerning who ends up in prison thanks to this so-called war.

With that understanding, it would seem a given that lab chemists are workers who earn livable wages and that they are properly vetted and background-checked, since they have power to imprison so many. We learn in the documentary, however, that this is not the case at all.

We also learn in the documentary that, depending on your race and status, presumed innocence until proven guilty is a privilege not afforded to all.

In watching the program, viewers may become frustrated at the willful ignorance of government officials in not holding themselves accountable for the problems their negligence caused. Viewers may also become enraged at the fact that certain personalities in this tale end up with happier endings while others (read: working class people of color) have a harder time getting such second chances. It is a documentary filled with events that will have audiences discussing the intersectionality of race, class, and gender when it comes to the criminal justice system.

Drug laws and harsh sentencing has resulted in detrimental effects to communities of color. Studies have shown that people of color, particularly Black and Latino, experience more discrimination at every stage of the criminal justice system than their white counterparts, and are more likely to be stopped, arrested, convicted, sentenced, and chained with lifelong criminal records. Nearly 80% of people in federal prison and 60% of people in state prison for drug offenses are Black or Latino.

Research has also shown that prosecutors are two times as likely to pursue a mandatory minimum sentence for Black people compared to white people charged with the same offense.

This has lasting effects, as one in 13 Black people of voting age are disenfranchised by felony convictions that deny them their right to vote.

In the series, you only see a few glimpses of the nearly 50,000 people Dookhan and Farak helped to convict with their testimonies and compromised tests, but they serve as a dreadful reminder of the much bigger problem of inequality and bias in the criminal justice system.

At just close to four hours of television, the documentary only scratches the surface about the topic. How to Fix a Drug Scandal should make viewers angry about systemic injustice and government cover-ups, and hopefully that anger fuels more calls for progressive change.

Originally posted here:

Netflix's 'How to Fix a Drug Scandal' will anger you, and rightly so - People's World

An old drug is getting a lot of new attention around the world: chloroquine.

In the United States, President Donald Trump has talked about the drug's potential for treating the novel coronavirus, though there'slittle evidence. Primarily used to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, chloroquine'slink to COVID-19 has prompted a global rush on the drug and led to shortages.

But the clamor for the drug leaves leading scientists alarmed. The hopeful claims are unsubstantiated at this point, they say, even as scientists rush to set up trials to catch the research up to the hype.

Related:Trump's medical advice triggers run onmalariadrugs in Mexico

The race for chloroquine is far from new. This remedy and its natural derivative, the cinchona plant, have defined world powers and symbolized hope for cures to destructive diseases for centuries.

There are such clear parallels between what is happening now and what happened in the 17th century, said Fiammetta Rocco, author of "The Miraculous Fever-Tree," referring to a malaria pandemic that hit Italy especially hard in the 1600s.

Many thought the illness, with its spiked fevers and shaking chills, came from noxious fumes. Instead, it was the parasite-carrying mosquitoes populating Romes many marshes that spread the disease. Malaria Italian for bad air killed the Pope in 1623. The Vatican shut down, and 10 of 55 cardinals died, said Rocco, who is also a culture correspondent for The Economist.

Related:Climate change will make animal-borne diseases more challenging

Looking for a treatment for the disease, priests from the Jesuit Roman Catholic order set out on a scientific expedition and mission, traveling as far as the Andean region of South America. It was there that they found the cinchona plant.

You have to imagine ... these huge, sort of botanical creations through which very little light even passes into the ground, theyre so huge, said Rohan Deb Roy, a historian at the University of Reading in the UK and author of "Malarial Subjects."

The Jesuit missionaries and Spanish conquistadors first observed how locals used the bark of the plant or fever bark to treat malarial fevers,Deb Roy said. They then brought it back to Europe.

Whatever cured malaria should be understood not just as a medicine, but also as a military weapon, Deb Roy said.

Malaria could kill more soldiers than bullets during war, and being able to fend off the disease became key to maintaining European colonies overseas.

The cure for malaria would be then seen as a tool of empire, Deb Roy said, enabling soldiers to survive in these sort of unpredictable tropical colonial landscapes, which otherwise would be impossible for them.

That led to a race among rising industrial powers to grow their own cinchona to lessen their dependency on Spain's monopoly over the plant in the Americas. The Netherlands ultimately succeeded in the territory of Java, present-day Indonesia.

But how the bark actually worked remained a mystery until 1823, when two French researchers discovered the compound that made the bark effective against malaria: quinine.

Related:Lessons from Singapore and how it handled SARS

Quinine became the basis for many antimalarial drugs, though it took scientists another century to create a synthetic variation that would allow labs to manufacture the drug without any dependency on natural plants. Those research efforts picked up around World War I, when malaria posed a threat to all sides, including US soldiers training in the South.

We often forget now that malaria was all over the place. All up through the Mississippi Valley there was malaria, said Leo Slater, a chemist and author of "War and Disease: Biomedical Research on Malaria in the Twentieth Century."

In the early 20th century, the natural version of quinine from grinding the cinchona bark was still the essential weapon against the malaria parasite. But when Japan took control of the Dutch East Indies during World War II, that natural supply was halted.

When they do this, they cut off the rest of the world from the supply of quinine just as the war is coming, Slater said.

The US significantly ramped up its own anti-malarial efforts during the war.

They developed a large program, the largest of its kind and a model for post-war biomedicine to look for new drugs, Slater said. But the centerpiece of it was to test more than 14,000 compounds against malaria in one form or another.

In the rush to arm US soldiers with anti-malaria medication, the military narrowed in on Atabrine, a drug that was effective, but incredibly toxic, causing soldiers intense nausea.

They didnt want to take it, said Karen Masterson, a professor at Stony Brook University and author of "The Malaria Project: The US Governments Secret Mission to Find a Miracle Cure." They were so resistant to it that the chain of command demanded that their unit commander put the pill in their mouth, close their jaw, and watch their Adam's apple go up and down and swallow it.

Related:Coronavirus most challenging crisis sinceWorld War II, UN says

During the war, Germany under Adolf Hitler had also put significant efforts into malaria research, including testing drugs on people in state hospitals, prisons and concentration camps, Masterson said. (The US also used non-consenting patients as test subjects in malaria drug experiments.)

By the end of the war, the US turned to a drug more tolerable than Atabrine. It had been developed, but not pursued, by German company Bayer, which had been pivotal in modern pharmaceutical practices and malaria drug experiments. The Bayer drug had also been used in experiments by a French doctor on residents of a German-occupied compound, Masterson said.

That drug was chloroquine.

By the late 1940s and '50s, chloroquine became one of the miracle drugs, said chemist Slater.

As the world entered a new era of peace, this miracle drug was promoted by the newly formed World Health Organization to help people across the world prevent and treat malaria.

Though chloroquine rose to fame quickly, its success didnt last long, said Masterson. The so-called miracle drug was so widely promoted that malaria parasites developed a resistance, creating even more challenges in some communities where malaria was already endemic.

Its not a perfect drug, its not a magic bullet, Masterson said.

Now, more than 50 years later, chloroquine, and its close relative, hydroxychloroquine, are in the spotlight again, as the world searches for a weapon against the new coronavirus threat.

I'm not at all surprised that such a significant and major drug that is chloroquine is back in the news in the context of a global pandemic, Deb Roy said.

COVID-19: The latest from The World

Today, chloroquine still has important medical uses, but it can have serious side effects even death for some. In the fog of a fast moving pandemic, no one knows yet whether its actually useful against COVID-19.

Still, chloroquine the product of magic plants, dead popes, and desperate hopes has again come to represent a glimmer of light for some leaders today.

But Masterson cautioned that it represents something else, too.

To me its a symbol of false hope, she said.

Read more here:

The chloroquine chronicles: A history of the drug that conquered the world - PRI

How to Fix a Drug Scandal documents the riveting details about how a criminal justice travesty unfolded in Massachusetts, and how important a dogged defense attorney was in righting the wrongs that were done.

Two Massachusetts drug lab technicians Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan were caught tainting evidence inseparate drug labs in different but equally shocking ways.Farak was getting high off the confiscated drugs police sent her way before replacing the evidence with fake drugs. Meanwhile, Dookhan wasnt even testing her drugs at all; she just claimed everything sent her way tested positive so that she could apparently be thought of as a prolific worker.

The two ultimately both went to prison for their tampering.

However, as the docuseries shows, their crimes were not self-contained. The drug testing the techniciansmishandled was used to convict tens of thousands of defendants on drug charges. While state prosecutors attempted to minimize what the two drug technicians did, several lawyers put up a fight for their convicted clients.

Luke Ryan is the main lawyer featured in the docuseries.He representedRolando Penate and Rafael Rodriguez, both who were sent to prison because of drug lab certificates that Farak signed. Ryan didnt think their drug convictions were fair nor the thousands of other convictionsbased on drug certificates from the two technicians and fought against the state of Massachusetts.

I really wanted this piece to show how important attorneys are, Erin Lee Carr, the filmmaker behind the docuseries, told Oxygen.com. Lawyers are incredibly crucial in maintaining any sort of levity inside the criminal justice system.

Justice runs in Ryans blood. He grew up in Massachusetts as thegrandson of a judge and also the son of a judge.

I think the air I breathed growing up, particularly due to my father, was kind of filled with this kind of sense of certain rights and wrongs, he told Oxgyen.com, adding that his father impressed upon him that the state can yield a lot of power against an individual.

Whenever I see a complaint and it says United States or Massachusetts versus, it feels like a miscommunication, like youre no longer a part of us, he said. I feel like my job is to bring them back into the community somehow and anytime anyone is accused of a crime theres a dark cloud gathers above them and itjust is there until the case is over.

Ryan didnt start off as a lawyer. Instead, he spent much of his younger years living the same lifestyle as many of his clients.

I took very few sober breaths in college, he told Rolling Stone in 2018. My best friend killed himself when I was 16. From that point on, I didnt have a drugs-and-alcohol problem as much as a drugs-and-alcohol solution.

By age 26, he cleaned up his act and got involved with a church-ministry group that was woke to racial justice. Through the group, he realized that white privilege kept him from becoming a convict a sentiment he still feels, he toldRolling Stone,

I'd like to say there but for the grace of God, go I' but Ithink it's morethere but for the grace of privileges I received due to my race and socioeconomic status, go I, he said. I was permitted to have this kind of sowing of wild oats stage in life that so many of my clients are not given so I think, in addition to having empathy, theres a debt that I feel.

I have an opportunity to live a certain kind of life and if I dont use it to advocate on behalf of people who are doing things similar to what Idid, that would be a misuse of a life experience, he said.

He enrolled in Western New England Law at age 30, and after graduating magna cum laude began working for a small firm where he could work for the underprivileged. His work led to him being named Lawyer of the Year by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in 2017.

As the docuseries showed, Ryanwas not satisfied with the attorney general offices claimthat Farak only began using drugs six months before her 2013 arrest. He began digging around and made requests to the Massachusetts Attorney Generals office for more documents, which were initially blocked. He learned later that some in the officethought of him as a pest. When he finally got his hands on the documents, they described him as a nuisance who they should avoid giving evidence to.

Eventually, his relentless digging paid off. He discovered that Faraks drug use went as far back as 2005 and that the attorney generals office allegedly tried to bury that by withholding evidence.

He claimed that the offices former attorneys Kris Foster and Anne Kaczmarek engaged in prosecutorial misconduct and he took them to court. A Supreme Judicial Court decided in 2017 that both Foster and Kaczmarek committed "fraud upon the court, the Boston Herald reported at the time.

As a result of that finding, in 2017 more than20,000 of the convictions that were worked on by Dookhan were dismissed. In 2018, all of Fayaks cases were also dismissed including the convictions of Ryan's clients. In all, about 35,000 criminal convictions were thrown out. It became the largest dismissal in American history.

While Ryan was not the only person that helped the dismissal happen, Carr told Oxygen.com that she doesnt think it would have happened as fast as it did without his fighting.

I think it would have maybe eventually gotten there with the ACLU, she said. I just dont know if the Farak dismissals would have happened as well.

Ryan said he understands that a docuseries cannot include everything but told Oxygen.com he found it important to note that defense attorney Rebecca Jacobstein, who was included briefly in the docuseries, played a pivotal role in the dismissals.

Ryan called her an unsung hero who really framed what happened as a fraud on the court.

As the docuseries noted at its conclusion, he has filed a civil suit seeking damages for the wrongful conviction of Penate. He told Oxygen.com that while he filed the suit in 2017, it is still in the discovery phase.

Its been a slog, he said.

He said he continues to defend other clients as well.

As for the docuseries he said, I think it started a lot of important conversations about things that I care very deeply about so thats extremely gratifying and Ithink it was an extremely well made film. I hope it leads to some systemic change.

Ryan has no pending criminal cases with the attorney generals office and hasn't had to work with them since, he said.Rather than other prosecutors regarding him as a pest going forward, he said he hopes his work has served as a cautionary tale for prosecutors.

My hope is that people begin to see that there is real danger for withholding evidence, he told Oxygen.com.

Furthermore, Ryan said he hopes that the docuseries and other conversations will lead to the end of Americas war on drugs.

When we come out on the other side of this [coronavirus]pandemic, we are going to have to make some choices about how we dig ourselves out of this hole," he said. "This war on drugs is a luxury we are no longer going to be able to afford due to the incredible economic resources devoted to it and the human cost as well."

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Who Is Luke Ryan, The Persistent Defense Attorney In 'How To Fix A Drug Scandal'? - Oxygen

The Philippine governments response was remarkable when reports circulated online that the Health Department had instructed a Manila hospital to stop counting Covid-19 deaths. As quick as lightning, it immediately announced that all hospitals and health centers are mandated to report on consultations and/or admissions of all Covid-related cases. Health reports are made on national television every day and include the number of Covid patients, recoveries and deaths caused by the virus. These reports have become important to the public. Everyone has become interested in the story behind the numbers. Who died? Where did the patient contract the virus? Who recovered? With 335 deaths so far, Filipinos have treated the coronavirus as the angel or bringer of death. In one day, I heard the expression death is just around the corner more than10 times. While it is understandable to arm oneself with facts during this pandemic, one must not forget the number of deaths in President Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs. According to a Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency report, 4,948 suspected drug users and dealers died in police operations from July 1, 2016, to Sept. 30, 2018. The number does not include killings caused by unidentified gunmen. Before Covid-19 menaced the Philippines, figures were up by 10 percent in January 2020, according to the same report. Moreover, the Philippine National Police reported in 2019 that there had been 22,983 drug-related deaths since the war on drugs began. More than 90 percent of these deaths remain unresolved. There are complainants but no suspects have been arrested. The figures are jaw-dropping. Offhand, the 335 deaths caused by Covid-19 are no matchfor the drug wars casualty figures. Facts show that nature is not the primary killer of mankind. Man still poses a greater threat to his own kind than a virus. But what is interesting is that society seems to care more about Covid-19 deaths than extrajudicial killings. Is this because only the poor are being shot in cold blood while the rich are spared? Both the government and the public are now very keen on data gathering and reporting. But the same level of diligence with regard to reporting the exact number of deaths in the administrations drug war is lacking. There are certainly no televised reports and daily counting of whohas been killed in the drug war. There are also no public announcements nor a national clamor to investigate the killings. Perhaps nobody cares anymore. Or perhaps society has chosen not to care. Philippine society has become callous to reports about extrajudicial killings. The killings have become ordinary news, so ordinary newspapers do not print them on the front page anymore. What is worse is the bias the majority have developed. Many had jumped to conclude that the victims were killed because they were addicts and drug pushers. Death has become the very proof and indication of guiltin an alleged crime rather than evidence. The present pandemic brings out the best and the worst in humanity. While it may teach society to fight for survival, it can also cause societal amnesia. Yes, Philippine society is suffering from a societal amnesia the inability or intentional refusal to confront a dark past that needs resolution in the present. We, as a nation, have simply brushed the killings aside by pretending they have never existed. We have created what Philippine sociologist Randy David described as necessary fiction. David believed that it is possible for a people or individuals to remember something even if they have not experienced it. Or, alternatively, individuals can develop amnesia or experience psychological disorientation due to severe injury, David wrote in one of his columns. Has the war on drugs become a massacre too much for Philippine society to endure that it chooses to forget rather than to confront it? The coronavirus is indeed the great equalizer. But sadly, the governments war on drugs is not an equalizer at all. It chooses. It discriminates the rich from the poor. It knows borders. Thousands living below the poverty line have been killed. And the killings happen in dilapidated shanties, not in exclusive and rich villages or subdivisions. Thus, either in a pandemic like Covid-19 or in Dutertes drug war, the poor are always on the losing side. Joseph Peter Calleja is a lawyer and editor of Bayard Philippines. He is also a member of the Lay-Religious Alliance of the Assumptionists. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCANews.

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The poor always on the losing side - UCAN

MANILA, PhilippinesPhilippines President Rodrigo Duterte is bringing his uniquely brutal brand of leadership to combating the coronavirus.

On March 24, police in San Isidro forced alleged curfew violators to sit under the sun, and the local governments Facebook page posted a photo of them, saying, Everyone violating the curfew will be placed here. (Such treatment is legally classified as torture under the Anti-Torture Act of 2009.) A few days earlier, officials in Santa Cruz, Laguna province, locked five youths inside a dog cage for the same violation. Further reports emerged of police beatings and shootings around the country. Anyone out at the wrong time will be shot, you sons of bitches, said a police officer on a radio report on March 26.

And on April 1, Duterte delivered an impromptu national address with a short and clear message: My orders to the police and military if there is trouble or the situation arises where your life is on the line, shoot them dead, he announced. Understand? Dead. Ill send you to the grave. Dont test the government. In his warning, Duterte called out the human rights group Kadamay, which he accused of instigating a protest against the governments lockdown.

The speech followed weeks of criticism of the governments handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Two days later, a 63-year-old farmer was shot dead in Mindanao after reportedly refusing to wear a face mask. The police reported that the man had been drunk and attacked the health workers and the police with a scythe.

The incident was met with public outcry, with some Filipino citizens calling for Duterte to be ousted. Even his traditional base of supporters criticized the move. When you have a government that prioritizes the mobilization of military and police force to respond to a health crisis, you cant help but see the lack of sight in their priorities, said Matthew Jzac Kintanar, a student active in online protests against the Duterte government from his home in Mindanao in the southern Philippines. The government should prioritize mass testing, aggressive contact tracing, protection of front-liners, and economic support for all individuals, but instead we get threats.

Dutertes shoot-to-kill order is just one escalation in his increasing assertion of authority that is all too reminiscent of the presidents crackdown on illegal narcotics, which has seen more than 20,000 suspected drug offenders killed in three years, according to human rights organizations. The government has put the number of dead at about 6,000. The United Nations has called for an investigation into that crackdown.

Carlos Conde, a researcher at Human Rights Watch Philippines, said that beyond mistreatment at the hands of the authorities, the arrests have been counterproductive in reducing the spread of the coronavirus. The most worrisome aspect of tens of thousands of arrests is that they are thrown into crowded jails and holding areas, which completely eliminates the possibility of social distancing, he said.

What is happening in the Philippines has evoked new concerns about rising authoritarianism during the coronavirus pandemic. On April 1, in a statement, a group of 13 European Union member states said they are deeply concerned about the use of emergency measures to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, fearing that some powers could threaten democracy and fundamental rights. This came after Hungarys parliament granted Prime Minister Viktor Orban sweeping new powers, and other states are considering similar measures.

But Duterte has been particularly blunt and brutal in his response. First came the Enhanced Community Quarantine, which placed Manila and the entire island of Luzon on lockdown on March 16, suspending domestic and international travel. Businesses were shuttered, with the exception of supermarkets and pharmacies, and police, military, and local government officials enforced a strict 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew.

On March 21, the presidents office asked Congress to grant special powers to Duterte allowing him to take over privately owned utilities and businesses to address the effects of COVID-19.

After having his request refused, Duterte signed the three-month-long Bayanihan to Heal as One Act on March 25, granting him 30 powers including the ability to take over private medical facilities and public transportation, and giving him greater control of the executive branch, including government-owned and controlled corporations.

Lawyers have criticized the measure, insisting existing laws already offer the president such powers and emphasizing that it did not address the root cause of the health crisis due to Dutertes lack of a comprehensive plan against the outbreak.

Meanwhile, the law punishes those violating restrictions with up to two months imprisonment or fines up to 1 million Philippine pesos, about $20,000. These punishments extend to individuals or groups found to be creating or spreading false information regarding the coronavirus crisis. The National Union of Journalists, a local press group, said that the provision makes the government the arbiter of what is true or false and will end up criminalizing free speech.

Politicians in the Philippines are equally defiant. Filipino Sen. Leila de Lima, who has been in prison since 2017 for allegedly violating the drug trafficking law, is no stranger to arbitrary authoritarianism.

I personally experienced being the victim of the weaponization of the law to silence democratic dissent, a useful tool in the Tyrants Toolbox, she said in a prison interview with Foreign Policy. De Lima said that there have been more arrests of curfew and quarantine violators (at least 17,000) than mass testings (3,000). People are dying because governments are more concerned about retaining control and power, rather than protecting and serving and we are now one hungry mob away from a dictatorship, she said.

Nor does Dutertes approach appear to be working well.The Department of Health has recorded 5,660 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the Philippines as of April 16, a leap from just three reported cases on March 2. The Philippines has the highest number of cumulative coronavirus cases in Southeast Asia as of April 15, according to the World Health Organization, followed by Indonesia and Malaysia. In the region, the Philippines has the second-highest number of deaths, 362, and the second-lowest recovery rate, just 435.The Philippines also has among the highest percentage of total COVID-19 fatalities among health care professionals in the world. The country has conducted the fewer tests than most other nations, 38,103 for a population of 109 million, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University,

Other types of punishments are also highly demeaning. On April 5, three members of the LGBTQI+ community in Pandacaqui, Pampanga, were ordered to kiss each other and do a sexy dance in front of a minor,Rappler reported, as punishment for violating the curfew, and the incident was streamed live on Facebook by the barangay captain, the highest elected official in the village. An anti-discrimination bill that would have penalized this type of behavior has languished in Congress for nearly four years.

Another Facebook live post shows detainees in Pandacaqui forced to sign bail papers with sweat, while being threatened with paddling.

Perhaps the most notorious incident to date concerns a protest by residents in Sitio San Roque, Quezon City, who were asking for food aid on April 1. Twenty-one people were arrested with bail set at 15,000 pesos (almost $300) each. With 80 percent of San Roque earning minimum wage around 500 pesos a day and most residents unable to work during the lockdown, such a fee is impossible for many.

Human rights organizations and labor groups have expressed outrage and indignation at the violent arrests. The Asia Pacific Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines called for the release of the 21 protesters, who, as of April 6 were still in police custody. The Philippine authorities should urgently investigate reports of barangay (village) officials committing abuses, said Amnesty International Philippines on April 8. And the labor group Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino said, to arrest hungry and desperate people is a new low for this administration.

As a result of such brutality, the tide of public sentiment is beginning to turn. Over the past two weeks, the hashtags #StopTheAttacks, #BasicSocialServicesforthePoor and #MassTestingNowPH circulated on social media. A growing sentiment among the Philippine public is that the more the Duterte administration focuses on heavy-handed, militaristic responses, the less attention is directed toward health solutions. People are waiting for the government to deliver on its promises of assistance for health workers and emergency cash aid for 18 million low-income families of which more than 1.5 million have lost all sources of income.

The International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines said the crisis will increasingly take a heavy toll on the poor. We support the efforts of empowered peoples movement in the Philippines to make the Duterte government accountable for: every poor persons life lost due to denial of health care services and protection from Covid-19; every front-liners who died and are at risk due to the massive shortage of adequate facilities and equipment, the coalition wrote in a statement.

Eliza Romero is the coordinator at the Malaya Movement, a U.S.-based alliance to advance democracy and human rights in the Philippines. She said that her organization supports the increasing protests demanding the release of the San Roque residents and condemning the governments response to the coronavirus.

The shoot-to-kill order will just encourage more extrajudicial killings and vigilantism, Romero said. It will give private citizens and barangay captains impunity to commit more human rights violations with the protection of the law while normalizing carnage.

The forum Kalusugan, Hindi Diktadura! (Health, Not Dictatorship!) organized an online rally with speakers from advocacy organizations on April 1. They pushed a social media rally spreading the hashtags #DUTERTERESIGN and #OUSTDUTERTENOW, and the message Solusyong medical, hindi militar (Medical solutions, not military), which began trending on Twitter.

Amid the governments militarist approach, Filipinos have taken the situation into their own hands; citizen-led relief operations, information campaigns, and donation drives are providing hundreds of community-driven solutions to a faltering government response. They call it the Citizens Urgent Response to End Covid-19 (CURE COVID), an initiative made up of various organizations and sectors such as the National Union of Students of the Philippines that were active in calling for the release of the 21 San Roque residents.

Dutertes order is made more dangerous by the culture of impunity created by his administration. State forces will not hesitate to pull the trigger because they know that they have the support of the president, said Jandeil Roperos, the deputy secretary-general of the student group.

Filipinos are wary of dictator-like actions, which hark back to the notorious Marcos years before the 1986 People Power Revolution. The fact that the Philippines was already under a state of de facto martial law long before the enhanced community quarantine is testament to Dutertes Marcosian tactics, Roperos said. His war on drugs, the extrajudicial killings, the political persecutions, and red-tagging of activists and critics are a few examples of these tactics and proof that democracy is endangered. The whole country held its breath when he asked for more powers precisely because of him being hell-bent on recreating Marcoss dictatorship.

Filipinos have been pushing back against the system that oppresses them for a long time. The recent dissent against Dutertes incompetence has contributed to the growing social unrest. Dutertes fall from power, if he fails to change trajectories, is inevitable.

This pandemic gives him more leeway to abuse rights and endanger democracy, Conde, the Human Rights Watch researcher, added. The martial-law like atmosphere, the clampdown on criticism, coupled with past actions against the media and critics, all make a democratic slide possible.

More than three decades ago, it was the much-acclaimed People Power that ultimately toppled the Marcos dictatorship in February 1986 as hundreds of thousands of Filipinos rose up to challenge the president.

And if Duterte is not careful, history may repeat itself, said the student protester Kintanar: This pandemic has brought out the absolute worst of this government. People are tired, angry, and fed up at how we are being treated. Filipinos have shown the world peoples power. We have ousted two presidents before. Im sure that if the need arises, we will not hesitate to do it again.

The rest is here:

Duterte Issues 'Shoot Them Dead' Order for Violators of the Coronavirus Restrictions - Foreign Policy

This article is inThe Spectators May 2020 US edition.Subscribe here to get yours.

We are told that were in this together by people who can afford to wait out the epidemic in the way the aristocrats of old retreated to their estates when the plague arrived in the city. It is more accurate to say that we are, as this editions cover puts it, together, alone. The coronavirus has revealed that people today can live in connected solitude, as Sam Leith describes. It has never been easier to retreat from society if you have the money. But it has never been more vital to sustain real-world connections. We may feel atomized but the truth is we can no more insulate ourselves entirely from other people than we can from the economic effects of an unprecedented shutdown.

It is customary for politicians to declare war on poverty, on drugs, on terrorism but for once, this talk has been justified. The military responded with its customary professionalism and diligence. Almost overnight, the US Navys hospital ship Comfort appeared in New York Harbor and the US Army Corps of Engineers turned the Javits Center into a 3,000-bed field hospital. The federal system, however, has adapted less quickly and ably. Political grandstanding and bickering between governors have hampered a coordinated response and heightened public alarm.

Business has responded with an efficiency that would be more heartening were the boom in home delivery not accompanied by price hikes and the exploitation of those doing the delivering. The COVID-19 epidemic has exposed the ugly underbelly of globalization, as Christopher Caldwell describes. The creation of jobs at a time when unemployment has reached Depression levels almost overnight is imperative. But it will not excuse the existence of a permanent gig economy underclass.

The food supply chain has not broken, but the lines at food banks are growing. After the mass hoarding of toilet paper, our common symbol of the paper-thin layer between civilization and barbarism, the shelves are stocked. But more and more Americans are struggling to afford the basics. Even before COVID-19, nearly half of Americans held no savings at all. The Trump administrations $1,200 subvention to citizens is a drop in the swelling ocean of debt. Total lockdown is a luxury that we can no longer afford.

Some businesses have been sharp to adapt: Titos Vodka, for instance, is now producing hand sanitizer. But General Motors had to be shamed by the Defense Production Act before it would switch to producing ventilators. The president claimed that GM, a company bailed out by the Obama administration, had been stalling over cost. If so, GM was hardly alone. Only when the hospitals in New York City were at risk of overflowing did health insurers waive out-of-pocket costs for all COVID-19 treatment. Harvard University, insulated by its endowment, did not guarantee the wages of its sub-contracted cleaning, security and catering workers until pressured to do so. United Airlines waited for the stimulus bill to pass (with $50 billion for airlines) before telling workers to expect job cuts. Car manufacturers, health insurers, airlines and the Ivy League are habitual beneficiaries of direct and indirect government support. Their contempt for the common taxpayer has never been clearer.

No failure of commission was more shameful than that of the state and local administrators who failed to stock up on masks, gowns, gloves and other personal protective equipment (PPE). This, like the outsourcing of medical supply chains, reflects a disorder of domestic priorities. So does the failure of the Obama and Trump administrations to restock federal stores of masks after the H1N1 (swine flu) epidemic of 2009, and the Trump administrations disbanding of the NSCs global health unit.

Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 against globalization and its discontents: outsourcing, strategic dependency on China, the political classs abandonment of American workers and American security. Like George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Trump finds his presidency redefined by unforeseen disaster. COVID-19 is a reckoning for the United States, and for the Trump presidency in particular.

COVID-19 is a vindication of those who, like Trump, advocate for strong borders and economic independence. Perhaps less comfortably for the president and his supporters, the response to COVID-19 is also a repudiation of those who have demonized Hispanic immigrants as criminals and cultural fifth columnists. The public servants who have sustained hospitals and civic order, and the workers who have delivered luxuries to our doorsteps, are disproportionately migrants.

Trump was also elected to break up the cozy corporatism of Washington DC and private capital. The present danger has, however, forced the president to become the inadvertent sponsor of forces he once opposed and technologies he once distrusted. The Congressional stimulus was rushed through quickly and is in significant part an Obama-style bailout. The administration has turned to Google as a public information channel. The militarization of civilian life, a malign side effect of the war on terror, is being furthered by necessity, and so is the digital snooping and surveillance that accompanies it.

As Paul Wood says, the crisis will not be the last challenge of its kind. Though the symptoms of COVID-19 are beginning to lift, the body politic still requires urgent treatment. The lockdown must be lifted as far as possible, and the lessons learned as quickly as possible. It is imperative that Americans be allowed to work. But restoring the fabric of society also means restoring trust between institutions and the people they are supposed to serve.

This article is inThe Spectators May 2020 US edition.Subscribe here to get yours.

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EDITORIAL: After the lockdown, the breakdown - The Spectator USA

We all have that one show we become evangelists for.

That show is must see TV for you, but youre incredulous that it somehow winds up in the Ill get to it when I get to it wing of so many other peoples queues.

Right now, that show for me is Black Monday.

When the show premiered last year on Showtime, critics were a bit torn. Season one currently has a 56% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with reviews basically calling it unfocused and not the cathartic takedown of Wall Street that they may have been expecting.

But thats exactly why I loved it.

With the very real stock market crash of 1987 (aka Black Monday) as its backdrop, the show paints a fictional story of the people and motives who caused it, namely Mo Monroe (Don Cheadle) and his trading firm the Jammer Group. What starts as a get-rich-quick scheme devolves into a shell game of figuring out whos screwing over whom.

Although the web of secret motives (and secret lives) can make season one seem a bit formless, half the fun of the show is watching how all the loose threads are eventually woven togetherand they do, indeed, come together. And no, this isnt a takedown of the people in power playing fast and loose with innocent lives, because these arent your typical people in power on Wall Street. The Jammer Group is run by Mo, a black man; Dawn (Regina Hall), a black woman; and Blair and Keith (Andrew Rannells and Paul Scheer), both closeted gay men.

To be sure, they all make terrible and morally bankrupt decisions. However, there are deeper motives to their actions that are intrinsically linked to their marginalization. Its not right, but its far more emotionally compelling than just greed is good.

Season one ended on a bit of a cliffhanger with Mo going on the run, and questions abound as to how the Jammer Group would benefit from the crash they purposefully caused that wouldve made me tune in regardless. However, now that were halfway through season two, I can confidently say this is my favorite show on television right now.

Heres why I think it should become yours, too.

Whether a pure artistic decision or a budgetary one, bottle episodes make great televisionif done correctly. With the action focused on a limited set of characters in a confined setting, the normal arc of the series has time to stretch, and what writers choose to fill that extra time can yield impactful results.

Case in point, season twos third episode: Idiot Inside.

The majority of the episode takes place in a bank where Mo and Keith are looking to make a deal with the top drug cartel in Miami. As the tension elevates in the back room where negotiations are taking place, theres also an increasing sense of dread in the lobby out front. Were introduced to several nonregular characters who, as the episode progresses, arent who or what they seem, in both good and terrible ways. The episode ends with a crucial turning point in Mo and Keiths relationshipnot to mention an epic shootout. Idiot Inside makes perfect use of the isolated setting to advance the principal story while simultaneously taking a break from it too. The whole episode was like a mashup of Black Monday, Scarface, and Dog Day Afternoon in the best possible way.

The best way to describe Black Monday is a dark farce. No matter how outlandish the scenario or dialogue might be, theres always moments of grounded clarity that balance out the overall tone of the show: the flashbacks to Mos days as a Black Panther (and the betrayal that set him on the path we see him on now), Mo and Dawns tumultuous relationship rooted in her being undervalued as a woman, Keith coming to terms with his sexuality, and so forth. Having laid that solid groundwork with its characters, season two earned the right to dial up the farce just a bit without going completely off the rails, as in that musical number in episode five, Violent Crooks and Cooks of Books.

After the bank deal goes south, Keith is hauled off to prison. The show couldve played it straight, a few fish-out-of-water jokes here, maybe a dropped-the-bar-of-soap joke there. But the writers took the opportunity to make a statement on white-collar crimes and the racial disparity in punishment with a barbershop-quartet-style number welcoming Keith to the white (collar) side of prison.

To me, this is camp and farce done right: It fits within the heightened world the show created for itself while drilling issues such as Ronald Reagans war on drugs and all the racial biases associated with it.

In season one, Black Monday solidly revolves around Mo. A compelling character, to be sure. But once he flees at the end of the finale, season two picks up with a renewed focus on Dawn, who is truly the heart (and brains) of the show. Her storyline best exemplifies what I mentioned earlier: Atypical power players playing the same crooked game as everyone else.

But unlike Mo and Blair, who basically turn into two more boys in the boys club, Dawn, for better or worse, was never blindsided by the excesses that access can bring. That gender and racial inequality is what keeps her grounded and focused enough to become the true architect of the plan that caused Black Monday in season one (even through Blair gets credit for it). In season two, we get a closer look at how that lack of valuation motivates her furthereven to the point of an ethical crisis within her own community.

Much like how The Leftovers became less about Kevin (Justin Theroux) and more about Nora (Carrie Coon)yet another show I have evangelized and will always evangelizeBlack Monday season two gives the much-deserved spotlight to the shows most empathic character as she claws and manipulates her way past the boys to get whats hers.

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Why 'Black Monday' is the show you need to be bingeing right now - Fast Company