What did pubs get in the Budget 2020? – MorningAdvertiser.co.uk

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Pledges to support pubs and many other small businesses, as well as their employees, were made by Sunak in the Budget in a bid to protect the economy as the coronavirus increases its presence in the UK.

Many commentators highlighted that the Chancellors speech outlined fears the UKs economy could be hit hard by measures put in place to protect against the virus that has swept across much of the world.

Long Live The Local has welcomed the freeze in beer duty announced in the Budget, as well as the increased support in business rates relief for small pubs.

The UK pays 3.5bn in beer duty each year, which is the highest across Europe. The Chancellors decision to freeze beer duty puts pubs and brewers in a better position than the beer duty increase originally planned.

The announcement by the Chancellor clearly demonstrates that he has listened to 250,000people who signed the petition, 130,000peoplewho wrote to their MPs and 25,000 pubs who have campaigned throughout the year.

Long Live The Local programme directorDavid Cunninghamcommented: The Government has listened to the quarter of a million people that signed our petition asking for a cut to beer duty. While not a cut, replacing the planned increase with a freeze shows the Chancellor has recognised the value of local pubs and Britains brewers.

This was echoed by Candice Brown, publican of the Green Man in Eversholt, Buckinghamshire, and former Great British Bake Offwinner. She said: Pubs are the beating heart of villages like Eversholt. There are pubs like mine up and down the country that will welcome this freeze in beer duty. Its great to see the Chancellor really understands the cultural, social and economic value of pubs. He would be welcome for a pint in my pub any time.

However, it was made clear that pubs and their employees would be protected as much as possible during and after any issues caused by the outbreak through a series of measures, as reported live by The Morning Advertiser.

Firstly, Sunak outlined the imminent threat the virus poses to UK citizens and its economy, saying: We are doing everything we can to keep this country and our people healthy and financially secure.

We will get through this together. The British people may be worried but they are not daunted. We will protect our country and people, and will rise to the challenge. This virus is the key challenge facing our country but it is not our key challenge.

We have just had an election where people voted for change to our economy and this Budget delivers on that change.

He said there could be up to a fifth of the population out of work with the illness or in isolation, impacting their income and that of their employers.

As a result, Sunak abolished business rates for pubs with a rateable value under 51,000 for the financial year, as well as an additional business rates relief of 5,000.

Employers will also be able to claim a temporary coronavirus interruption loan, while businesses with fewer than 250 employees will be able to refund statutory sick pay for those off work due to coronavirus for up to 14 days.

Self-employed and gig-economy workers (zero-hours contractors) will also be given access to the relevant sickness benefits immediately, should the virus prevent them from working.

Sunak also confirmed a digital services tax will be introduced from 1 April, seeing a 2% levy on sales from certain types of digital businesses, which could raise 500m a year.

Meanwhile, plans to increase beer, wine, spirits and cider duty were also axed by the Chancellor, who hailed the pub trade as vital to the communities they serve.

Such a move inspired joy and relief from producers and the trade bodies representing them.

Wine and Spirits Trade Association (WSTA) chief executive Miles Beale said: The decision to freeze wine and spirit duty is welcome for British business, pubs and the wider hospitality trade. While he has not cut duty, it is reassuring to see that in his first Budget as Chancellor, Rishi Sunak MP, has taken steps to address the UKs excessively high duty rates.

Todays freeze is a victory for the WSTAs hard-fought campaign that called on Government to help cash-strapped consumers by keeping prices down, and to support British businesses entering a new trading landscape.

The UK Spirits Alliance (UKSA) paid a similar tribute to the Budget and a spokesperson said: Todays announcement of a freeze in spirits duty is welcome news for Britains army of distillers and the millions who enjoy our products. This is the third freeze in three years, bringing much-needed stability for our industry.

We also welcome confirmation of the Governments Queens Speech commitment to a review of alcohol duties.

A Heineken UK spokesperson said: "Licensees and drinkers up and down theUK will beraising a pint tothe Chancellor tonight for freezing beer and cider duty supporting the great British institution, the pub.

Furthermore, the newly announced increase in the business ratesdiscount for pubs from 1,000 to 5,000 will help secure a brighter future for thousands of pubs pubs that are at the heart of communities across the nation.

Nik Antona, Campaign for Real Ale chairman, said: Against the backdrop of industry fears on coronavirus, it is good to see the Government has continued to recognise the value of pubs to the economy and society by freezing beer duty in the Budget. Brewers and pubscompanies mustnow pass any savings onto consumers.

We feel the decision not to implement a preferential rate of beer duty is a missed opportunity and will use the upcoming review of alcohol duty to continue to make the case for this, as we believe this is the best way to support community pubs.

The abolition of business rates for pubs with a rateable value under 51,000, and the 5,000 discount for those with a value up to 100,000 is great news for qualifying pubs, and we are glad that the Treasury has listened to our calls for action.

The announcement of a review of the business rates system iswelcome, and this must happen as soon as possible so that we can fix the root issues with this unfair system and save our pubs from extinction.

Diageo Great Britain, Ireland & France managing directorDayalan Nayagersaid:We welcome the Chancellors duty freeze, which will provide much needed stability in these difficult times for the industry. We are delighted that he announced his intention to reform the duty system to bring fairness for gin and Scotch whisky, which should ensure that these iconic home-grown products no longer face punitive levels of tax.

Drinkers across the country will raise a toast to the Chancellor tonight. The Governments measures to help the hospitality and retail sectors will also be a welcome move for our customers, their employees and consumers in general.

British Institute of InnkeepingCOO Steven Alton commented: We are extremely pleased that in these turbulent times, the Government is taking the radical step of abolishing business rates for pubs with a rateable value of less than 51,000 for the next year.

Pubs are at the core of high streets and rural communities alike, and the challenges they currently face, are unprecedented. This relief, coupled with the sick pay support for those self-isolating during Coronavirus, is great news for those working in the front line of hospitality.

In addition, the news that business rates will be reviewed this year gives us hope that measures bringing short-term relief will be backed up by rate reforms that could bring long-term growth to our vibrant and vital sector.

Vice-president for Carlsbergs corporate affairs Bruce Ray said: Beer and pubs make a significant contribution to the UK economy and play an important role in the lives of many people who enjoy drinking beer in the many wonderful pubs and bars all across the country.

Were pleased the Chancellor has recognised the publics concern and has frozen beer tax. This is good news for breweries of all sizes, their supply chains and employees, as well as the thousands of hard-working publicans all across the UK.

Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, said: Pubgoers across the UK will be toasting the Chancellor tonight for freezing beer duty. This freeze alone will save pubgoers 80m and secure 2,000 vital jobs across the country.

Some 82% of the beer we drink here is brewed in the UK, so this is a very welcome decision that will help pubs and brewers across the UK. Cheers to the Chancellor.

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What did pubs get in the Budget 2020? - MorningAdvertiser.co.uk

How profit-gouging and government deregulation created New Zealand’s home-building catastrophe – World Socialist Web Site

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Rottenomics: The Story of New Zealands Leaky Buildings DisasterHow profit-gouging and government deregulation created New Zealands home-building catastrophe By John Braddock 12 March 2020

Rottenomics: The Story of New Zealands Leaky Buildings Disaster by Peter Dyer (Bateman Books, 2019)

New Zealands housing problems were recently described as a human rights crisis of significant proportions by Leilani Farha, a UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, following a fact-finding mission to the country.

Farha said that the social conditions she encounteredchronic homelessness, substandard accommodation, the gutting of public housing and skyrocketing rentswere violations of the right to health, security and life. The root issue, Farha declared, was the speculative housing market that had been supported by successive governments, including the current Labour-led administration.

New Zealand has some of the most expensive housing in the world relative to wages. The Real Estate Institute declared the average median house price increased by 11.8 percent in the year to January, to $615,000. Westpac bank has predicted another 10 percent increase this year. Since 2017, when Labour took office, median rents have increased by over 28 percent, from $400 a week to $515, according to TradeMe. Over 20182019, however, wages rose just 4.3 percent.

The deepening crisis is a product of fiscal regimes pursued by central banks internationally since 2008. Low interest rate policies have seen a flow of cheap cash that has financed rampant speculation in finance and property, while brutal austerity measures have hit the working class.

In New Zealand, the assault on the basic social right to safe and decent housing was prepared by three decades of pro-market deregulation, begun by the 198490 Lange-Douglas Labour government. Sweeping attacks on jobs, incomes and social services have continued under administrations of all stripes.

A 2019 book, entitled Rottenomics: The Story of New Zealands Leaky Buildings Disaster, by independent journalist Peter Dyer, provides a timely and valuable insight into one major aspect of how this assault unfolded.

Rottenomics references the term Rogernomics, which describes the pro-market liberalisation program launched by Labour Finance Minister Roger Douglas in the 1980s. The abolition of red tape, that is, the destruction of basic rules and regulation and the introduction of self-regulation, along with the privatisation of public services, rendered thousands of homes and buildings rotten and uninhabitable.

Bottom line estimates, according to Dyer, imputed from two partial government reports, indicate between 1985 and 2014, 174,000 homes were built that were doomed to rot, with a total eventual cost of $NZ47 billion. This figure excludes public buildings including schools, libraries, hospitals, etc.

Dyer characterises the leaky homes scandal as the largest man-made disaster in New Zealands history. He lays the blame firmly at the feet of both Labour and National Party-led governments that have overseen a system that continues to ensure that inadequate, unsafe homes are still being built.

The value of Dyers book lies in its thorough exposure of various factors that combined to render what was an entirely preventable disaster inevitable. The regulatory framework that had kept New Zealand buildings relatively rot and leak-free over the post-war period was systematically demolished in the deregulatory mania.

Dyer begins with a description of how Pinus radiata, also know as radiata pine and Monterey pine, a soft wood that is highly profitable because it grows quickly, replaced depleted native hardwoods in house construction. The first round of deregulation in the mid-1980s allowed for radiata pine, untreated with fungicides or insecticides, to be widely used as a building material, leading to rot and leakages.

Industry heavyweights, such as Carter Holt Harvey (CHH), lobbied intensely for the adoption of untreated timber. Treatment was regarded as an unnecessary cost. Driving CHH, Dyer notes, were new agreements which opened up free trade in goods between NZ and Australia, greatly increasing opportunities for profits. CHH soon became one of NZs largest, richest and most powerful corporations, quadrupling its assets, from $577 million in 1985 to $2.73 billion just four years later.

The key piece of legislation, the Building Act 1991, had bipartisan support after being prepared by the outgoing Labour government then brought forward by National. Building certification was thrown open to market competition and private certifiers were legally enabled to compete with local government inspectors. Business became self-regulating, while regulators were turned into freelance business operators.

It took little more than two years for reports of leaky homes to appear, as the use of untested and unaccredited products and processes became standard. According to Dyer, designers and builders took serious risks, including the widespread use of fake stucco and monolithic claddings, cheap silicon sealants and houses built without watertight eaves or flashings.

The repeal of the Building Performance Guarantee Act eliminated limited government guarantees over certain new homes. Under the Local Government Amendment Act, a swathe of public supervisory positions, such as town clerks, clerks of works and city engineers, were cut. A newly-created Building Industry Authority oversight body was given insufficient powers and inadequate funds to do its job properly.

The de-professionalising of the industry was carried through by wide-ranging assaults on the public sector, including the closure of the Ministry of Works, Ministry of Electricity and the privatisation of railways, all of which had trained specialist tradespeople and apprentices. The destruction of these century-old institutions underpinned a catastrophic, enduring loss of industrial skills.

Long-established systems of trades training were replaced with short-term, fees-charging courses at polytechnics. Unsupervised self-employed subcontractors, often the victims of mass workplace closures, flooded the labour force, all bidding for jobs on the lowest price. One architect declared: The entry cost to the industry is a hammer, a kit of power tools, a ute [flatbed vehicle] and a dog No registration scheme for builders exists all in the interests of keeping costs down and development profits up.

The 1993 Companies Act enabled property developers to evade financial liability by declaring bankruptcy in one company and then continuing business-as-usual by opening another. In one case, 19 limited companies with numbered versions of the same name, operated by the same developer, were registered with the Companies Office between 1994 and 2002.

Millions in costs had to be picked up by homeowners and local councils. A vastly inadequate Financial Assistance Package with a 10-year liability limit, instituted by a National Party government in 2011, had by 2015 assisted just 700 households with property remediation.

Dyer details the human consequences of those forced to live with mould, mildew and cold. One woman, Sarah, was sick for three years and diagnosed with aspergillosis, an infection caused by mould. Her life fell to pieces after she was forced to sell her property at a loss. Persistent illness affected Sarahs ability to work and she was made redundant. Between lost income, medical and legal expenses and inspectors fees, Sarah calculated her losses at about $NZ500,000.

The book does have significant political weaknesses, arising from the authors reformist political perspective. In particular, it fails to address the root causes of the post-1984 de-regulation program. While excoriating the policies and parties of the political establishment, Dyer attributes the destruction of the New Zealand economy to the vision of a small group of neo-liberal ideologues, centred principally in the Treasury.

Dyer implies that the solution lies in a return to better regulation and planning. He lauds the post-war tripartite arrangements in which three equal and independent partnersgovernment, industry and unions, co-operated to manage industrial relations and society as a whole. He looks back fondly on the apprenticeship training system, which was dependent on the cheap labour of indentured apprentices.

The post-war settlement based on national protectionism and social regulation was blown apart in the 1980s by vast changes to the world economy. The unprecedented development of globalisation of production rendered the social reformist measures advocated now by Dyer and others became completely unviable. There can be no return to planning and social protections under the profit system in which industries compete on a global scale, primarily by driving down costs at the expense of the health and wellbeing of ordinary people.

The deregulation of New Zealands building industry is not unique. Dyers book does not refer to the use of aluminium composite panels (ACPs) of the type responsible for the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London, in which 72 people died. The same potentially combustible cladding is widely used in the UK, Australia and other countries.

In New Zealand, Auckland City Hospital, TVNZs headquarters, the PwC Tower and more than 5,000 city apartments were subsequently found to be clad in ACPs with flammable polyethylene cores. A Wellington City Council investigation found 103 of the capitals buildings had ACPs.

Today, the industry remains mired in crisis, and incapable of meeting the pressing need for safe, healthy affordable housing. Labour last year ditched its Kiwibuild scheme, which promised to build 100,000 affordable new homes in 10 years. Only 79 new homes had been built, most of them priced at $500,000 or morewell beyond the reach of ordinary families.

The author also recommends:

Families spokesman on New Zealand earthquake building collapse: Are there people who are above the law?[6 February 2018]

Australian inquiry into dangerous building products: An exercise in political damage control[27 July 2017]

2019 has been a year of mass social upheaval. We need you to help the WSWS and ICFI make 2020 the year of international socialist revival. We must expand our work and our influence in the international working class. If you agree, donate today. Thank you.

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How profit-gouging and government deregulation created New Zealand's home-building catastrophe - World Socialist Web Site

Experts fear an explosion of voting on amendments to the Constitution – The KXAN 36 News

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Emergency measures to combat the spread of coronavirus in Russia, including the closing of borders, mandatory quarantines for immigrants from poor countries, the transfer of students into distance learning, still in no way affected the coming vote on amendments to the Constitution. According to sources of Vedomosti close to the presidential administration, the complete abolition of voting had not yet been discussed.

This will raise doubts about the legitimacy of the adoption of the amendments. The opposition may say that the government got scared and used the situation with coronavirus to hold the amendment. In addition, the President has repeatedly stressed that it is very important that the amendment was supported by people, explained one of the interlocutors of the newspaper.

will Not be able to have and to hold e-voting across the country, because the regions lack the necessary infrastructure, but in Moscow emphasis will be placed on it. To translate the vote in the capital, a fully electronic format will not. But the Kremlin can lower the required voter turnout and of voting for the amendment: 60%. The main thing is to avoid panic, because then vote for the amendments, no one will come, said one of the sources.

Secretary of the CEC, Maya Grishina told Interfax that the Commission is studying the possibility of increasing periods of early voting, and she still has time to make a final decision on this matter.

the Decision (to be taken within the time), on the basis of the signed law, which is in the constitutional court, which says that we have three days after the decree of the President about appointment of date of elections, she specified. According to another interviewee, familiar with a situation, a decision can be made as early as next Wednesday.

According to Vedomosti, the CEC prepared a draft order.and vote provides for expression outside the polling station during the three days before election day. Yet the estimated date for the vote is April 22, but the last word for the President.

the head of the Public headquarters for the observation of elections in the capital, the chief editor of Echo of Moscow Alexei Venediktov wrote in a Telegram that he believes the right to put the question on the abolition of voting on April 22. He noted that 95% of polling stations located in schools, and schools need to send to quarantine. In Moscow, we will remind, on March 16, introduced free school attendance.

co-Chairman of the movement Golos Gregory Melkonyants believes that the expansion of the list of valid reasons for home-based voting, its extension and lack of effective monitoring can lead to the explosive growth of statistics about the number of voters at home. Therefore, the attendance will be done early and home early voting, whereas during a pandemic, it is necessary to abandon the vote and not put people at risk.

In his opinion, if the vote is not canceled, it will demonstrate the governments attitude to its citizens and could lead to lower turnout and vote against the amendments. And visiting voters at home will create additional threat of infection and spread of the virus.

the Expert of the movement Voice Basil Weissenberg pointed to a number of problems with electronic voting. The main complexity of the control of the observers, and the inability to check your voice for voters: voters cannot verify that his vote in the electronic system was considered correct. The expert also recalled that the mechanism of online voting has caused serious concerns during the elections to the Moscow city Duma. Then the result of the failure of the system of Internet voting have stopped work from-for technical problems, and then e-voting had to be suspended fromre-keying of cryptographic equipment.

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Experts fear an explosion of voting on amendments to the Constitution - The KXAN 36 News

As the global war on drugs fades away, only the drug traffickers benefit – AlterNet

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America shows signs of emerging from the century-long shadow of drug prohibition, with marijuana leading the way and a psychedelic decriminalization movement rapidly gaining steam. It also seems as if the mass incarceration fever driven by the war on drugs has finally broken, although tens if not hundreds of thousands remain behind bars on drug charges.

As Americans, we are remarkably parochial. We are, we still like to tell ourselves, the worlds only superpower, and we can go about our affairs without overly concerning ourselves about whats going on beyond our borders. But what America does, what America wants and what America demands has impacts far beyond our borders, and the American prohibitionist impulse is no different.

Thanks largely (but not entirely) to a century of American diplomatic pressure, the entire planet has been subsumed by our prohibitionist impulse. A series of United Nations conventions, the legal backbone of global drug prohibition, pushed by the U.S., have put the whole world on lockdown.

We here in the drug war homeland remain largely oblivious to the consequences of our drug policies overseas, whether its murderous drug cartels in Mexico, murderous cops in the Philippines, barbarous forced drug treatment regimes in Russia and Southeast Asia, exemplary executions in China, or corrupted cops and politicians everywhere. But now, a couple of non-American journalists working independently have produced a pair of volumes that focus on the global drug war like a U.S. Customs X-ray peering deep inside a cargo container. Taken together, the results are illuminating, and the light they shed reveals some very disturbing facts.

Dopeworldauthor Niko Vorobyov andPills, Powder, and Smokeauthor Antony Loewenstein both attempt the same feata global portrait of the war on drugsand both reach the same conclusionthat drug prohibition benefits only drug traffickers, fearmongering politicians, and state security apparatusesbut are miles apart attitudinally and literarily. This makes for two very different, but complementary, books on the same topic.

Loewenstein, an Australian who previously authoredDisaster CapitalismandProfits of Doom, isduha critic of capitalism who situates the global drug war within an American project of neo-imperial subjugation globally and control over minority populations domestically. His work is solid investigative reporting, leavened with the passion he feels for his subject.

InPills, Powder, and Smoke, he visits places that rarely make the news but are deeply and negatively impacted by the U.S.-led war on drugs, such as Honduras. Loewenstein opens that chapter with the murder of environmental activist Berta Caceres, which was not directly related to the drug war, but which illustrates the thuggish nature of the Honduran regimea regime that emerged after a 2009 coup overthrew the leftist president, a coup justified by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and which has received millions in U.S. anti-drug assistance, mainly in the form of weapons and military equipment.

Honduras doesnt produce any drugs; its only an accident of geography and the American war on drugs that we even mention the country in the context of global drug prohibition. Back in the 1980s, the administration of Bush the Elder cracked down on cocaine smuggling in the Caribbean, and as traffickers sought to evade that threat, Honduras was perfectly placed to act as a trampoline for cocaine shipments taking an alternative route through Mexico, which incidentally fueled the rise of todays deadly and uber-wealthy Mexican drug cartels.

The drug trade, combined with grinding poverty, huge income inequalities, and few opportunities, has helped turn Honduras into one of the deadliest places on earth, where the police and military kill with impunity, and so do the countrys teeming criminal gangs. Loewenstein walks those mean streetsexcept for a few neighborhoods even his local fixers deem too dangeroustalking to activists, human rights workers, the family members of victims, community members, and local journalists to paint a chilling picture. (This is why Hondurans make up a large proportion of those human caravans streaming north to the U.S. border. But unlike Venezuela, where mass flight in the face of violence and economic collapse is routinely condemned as a failure of socialism, you rarely hear any commentators calling the Honduran exodus a failure of capitalism.)

He reexamines one of the DEAs most deadly recent incidents, where four poor, innocent Hondurans were killed by Honduran troops working under DEA supervision in a raid whose parameters were covered up for years by the agency. Loewenstein engaged in extended communication with the DEA agent in charge, as well as with survivors and family members of those killed. Those people report they have never received an apology, not to mention compensation, from the Honduran militaryor from the United States.

While the Honduran military fights the drug war with U.S. dollars, Loewenstein shows it and other organs of the Honduran government are also deeply implicated in managing the drug traffic. And news headlines bring his story up to date: Just this month,U.S. prosecutors in New York accusedthe current, rightist president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernndez, of meeting with and taking a bribe from a drug trafficker. This comes after his brother, former Honduran Senator Juan Antonio Hernndez, wasconvicted of running tons of cocaineinto the United States in a trial that laid bare the bribery, corruption, and complicity of high-level Hondurans in the drug trade, including the president.

Loewenstein also takes us to Guinea-Bissau, a West African country where 70 percent of the population subsists on less than $2 a day and whose biggest export is cashews. Or at least it was cashews. Since the early years of this century, the country has emerged as a leading destination for South American cocaine, which is then re-exported to the insatiable European market.

Plagued by decades of military coups and political instability, the country has never developed, and an Atlantic shoreline suited for mass tourism now serves mainly as a convenient destination for boatloads and planeloads of cocaine. Loewenstein visits hotels whose only clients are drug traffickers and remote fishing villages where the trade is an open secret and a source of jobs. He talks with security officials who frankly admit they have almost no resources to combat the trade, and he traces the route onward to Europe, sometimes carried by Islamic militants.

He also tells the tale of one exemplary drug bust carried out by a DEA SWAT team arguably in Guinean territorial waters that snapped up the countrys former Navy minister. The DEA said he was involved in a narco-terrorist plot to handle cocaine shipments for Colombias leftist FARC guerillas, who were designated as terrorists by the administration of Bush the Junior in a politically convenient melding of the wars on drugs and terror.

It turns out, though, there were no coke loads, and there was no FARC; there was only a DEA sting operation, with the conspiracy created out of whole cloth. While the case made for some nice headlines and showed the U.S. hard at work fighting drugs, it had no demonstrable impact on the use of West Africa as a cocaine conduit, and it raised serious questions about the degree to which the U.S. can impose its drug war anywhere it chooses.

Loewenstein also writes about Australia, England, and the United States, in each case setting the historical and political context, talking to all kinds of people, and laying bare the hideous cruelties of drug policies that exert their most terrible tolls on the poor and racial minorities. But he also sees glimmers of hope in things such as the movement toward marijuana legalization here and the spread of harm reduction measures in England and Australia.

Loewenstein has made a hardheaded but openhearted contribution to our understanding of the multifaceted malevolence of the never-ending war on drugs. And I didnt even mention his chapter on the Philippines. Its in there, its as gruesome as you might expect, and its very chilling reading.

Vorobyov, on the other hand, was born in Russia and emigrated to England as a child. He reached adulthood as a recreational drug user and selleruntil he was arrested on the London Underground and got a two-year sentence for carrying enough Ecstasy to merit a charge of possession with intent to distribute. After that interval, which he says inspired him to write his book, he got his university degree and moved back to Russia, where he picked up a gig at Russia Today before turning his talents toDopeworld.

Dopeworldis not staid journalism. Instead, it is a twitchy mish-mash, jumping from topic to topic and continent to continent with the flip of a page, tracing the history of alcohol prohibition in the U.S. at one turn, chatting up Japanese drug gangsters at the next, and getting hammered by ayahuasca in yet another. Vorobyov himself describesDopeworldas true crime, gonzo, social, historical memoir meets fucked up travel book.

Indeed. He relates his college-boy drug-dealing career with considerable panache. He parties with nihilistic middle-class young people and an opium-smoking cop in Tehran, he cops $7 grams of cocaine in Colombia and tours Pablo Escobars house with the dead kingpins brother as a tour guide, he has dinner with Joaquin El Chapo Guzmans family in Mexicos Sinaloa state and pronounces them nice people (really chill), and he meets up with a vigilante killer in Manila.

Vorobyov openly says the unsayable when it comes to writing about the drug war and drug prohibition: Drugs can be fun! While Loewenstein is pretty much all about the victims, Vorobyov inhabits the global drug culture. You know:Dopeworld. Loewenstein would bemoan the utter futility of a record-breaking seizure of a 12-ton load of cocaine; Vorobyov laments, thats 12 tons of cocaine that will never be snorted.

Vorobyov is entertaining and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, and he brings a former dope dealers perspective to bear. Hes brash and breezy, but like Loewenstein, hes done his homework as well as his journalistic fieldwork, and the result is fascinating. To begin to understand what the war on drugs has done to people and countries around the planet, this pair of books makes an essential introduction. And two gripping reads.

Dopeworld: Adventures in the Global Drug Tradeby Niko Vorobyov (August 2020, St. Martins Press, hardcover, 432 pp., $29.99)

Pills, Powder, and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugsby Antony Loewenstein (November 2019, Scribe, paperback, 368 pp., $19.00)

Phillip Smith is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent ofDrug Reporter, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a drug policy journalist for the past two decades. He is the longtime author of the Drug War Chronicle, the online publication of the non-profitStopTheDrugWar.org, and has been the editor of AlterNets Drug Reporter since 2015. He was awarded the Drug Policy Alliances Edwin M. Brecher Award for Excellence in Media in 2013.

This article was produced byDrug Reporter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Continued here:

As the global war on drugs fades away, only the drug traffickers benefit - AlterNet

As the global war on drugs fades away, the only people who benefited were drug traffickers – Salon

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America shows signs of emerging from the century-long shadow of drug prohibition, with marijuana leading the way and a psychedelic decriminalization movement rapidly gaining steam. It also seems as if the mass incarceration fever driven by the war on drugs has finally broken, although tens if not hundreds of thousands remain behind bars on drug charges.

As Americans, we are remarkably parochial. We are, we still like to tell ourselves, "the world's only superpower," and we can go about our affairs without overly concerning ourselves about what's going on beyond our borders. But what America does, what America wants and what America demands has impacts far beyond our borders, and the American prohibitionist impulse is no different.

Thanks largely (but not entirely) to a century of American diplomatic pressure, the entire planet has been subsumed by our prohibitionist impulse. A series of United Nations conventions, the legal backbone of global drug prohibition, pushed by the U.S., have put the whole world on lockdown.

We here in the drug war homeland remain largely oblivious to the consequences of our drug policies overseas, whether it's murderous drug cartels in Mexico, murderous cops in the Philippines, barbarous forced drug treatment regimes in Russia and Southeast Asia, exemplary executions in China, or corrupted cops and politicians everywhere. But now, a couple of non-American journalists working independently have produced a pair of volumes that focus on the global drug war like a U.S. Customs X-ray peering deep inside a cargo container. Taken together, the results are illuminating, and the light they shed reveals some very disturbing facts.

"Dopeworld"author Niko Vorobyov and "Pills, Powder, and Smoke"author Antony Loewenstein both attempt the same feat a global portrait of the war on drugs and both reach the same conclusionthat drug prohibition benefits only drug traffickers, fearmongering politicians, and state security apparatusesbut are miles apart attitudinally and literarily. This makes for two very different, but complementary, books on the same topic.

Advertisement:

Loewenstein, an Australian who previously authored "Disaster CapitalismandProfits of Doom," is duh a critic of capitalism who situates the global drug war within an American project of neo-imperial subjugation globally and control over minority populations domestically. His work is solid investigative reporting, leavened with the passion he feels for his subject.

In "Pills, Powder, and Smoke," he visits places that rarely make the news but are deeply and negatively impacted by the U.S.-led war on drugs, such as Honduras. Loewenstein opens that chapter with the murder of environmental activist Berta Caceres, which was not directly related to the drug war, but which illustrates the thuggish nature of the Honduran regime a regime that emerged after a 2009 coup overthrew the leftist president, a coup justified by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and which has received millions in U.S. anti-drug assistance, mainly in the form of weapons and military equipment.

Honduras doesn't produce any drugs; it's only an accident of geography and the American war on drugs that we even mention the country in the context of global drug prohibition. Back in the 1980s, the administration of Bush the Elder cracked down on cocaine smuggling in the Caribbean, and as traffickers sought to evade that threat, Honduras was perfectly placed to act as a trampoline for cocaine shipments taking an alternative route through Mexico, which incidentally fueled the rise of today's deadly and uber-wealthy Mexican drug cartels.

The drug trade, combined with grinding poverty, huge income inequalities, and few opportunities, has helped turn Honduras into one of the deadliest places on earth, where the police and military kill with impunity, and so do the country's teeming criminal gangs. Loewenstein walks those mean streets except for a few neighborhoods even his local fixers deem too dangerous talking to activists, human rights workers, the family members of victims, community members, and local journalists to paint a chilling picture. (This is why Hondurans make up a large proportion of those human caravans streaming north to the U.S. border. But unlike Venezuela, where mass flight in the face of violence and economic collapse is routinely condemned as a failure of socialism, you rarely hear any commentators calling the Honduran exodus a failure of capitalism.)

He reexamines one of the DEA's most deadly recent incidents, where four poor, innocent Hondurans were killed by Honduran troops working under DEA supervision in a raid whose parameters were covered up for years by the agency. Loewenstein engaged in extended communication with the DEA agent in charge, as well as with survivors and family members of those killed. Those people report they have never received an apology, not to mention compensation, from the Honduran military or from the United States.

While the Honduran military fights the drug war with U.S. dollars, Loewenstein shows it and other organs of the Honduran government are also deeply implicated in managing the drug traffic. And news headlines bring his story up to date: Just this month,U.S. prosecutors in New York accusedthe current, rightist president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernndez, of meeting with and taking a bribe from a drug trafficker. This comes after his brother, former Honduran Senator Juan Antonio Hernndez, wasconvicted of running tons of cocaineinto the United States in a trial that laid bare the bribery, corruption, and complicity of high-level Hondurans in the drug trade, including the president.

Loewenstein also takes us to Guinea-Bissau, a West African country where 70 percent of the population subsists on less than $2 a day and whose biggest export is cashews. Or at least it was cashews. Since the early years of this century, the country has emerged as a leading destination for South American cocaine, which is then re-exported to the insatiable European market.

Plagued by decades of military coups and political instability, the country has never developed, and an Atlantic shoreline suited for mass tourism now serves mainly as a convenient destination for boatloads and planeloads of cocaine. Loewenstein visits hotels whose only clients are drug traffickers and remote fishing villages where the trade is an open secret and a source of jobs. He talks with security officials who frankly admit they have almost no resources to combat the trade, and he traces the route onward to Europe, sometimes carried by Islamic militants.

He also tells the tale of one exemplary drug bust carried out by a DEA SWAT team arguably in Guinean territorial waters that snapped up the country's former Navy minister. The DEA said he was involved in a "narco-terrorist" plot to handle cocaine shipments for Colombia's leftist FARC guerillas, who were designated as "terrorists" by the administration of Bush the Junior in a politically convenient melding of the wars on drugs and terror.

It turns out, though, there were no coke loads, and there was no FARC; there was only a DEA sting operation, with the conspiracy created out of whole cloth. While the case made for some nice headlines and showed the U.S. hard at work fighting drugs, it had no demonstrable impact on the use of West Africa as a cocaine conduit, and it raised serious questions about the degree to which the U.S. can impose its drug war anywhere it chooses.

Loewenstein also writes about Australia, England, and the United States, in each case setting the historical and political context, talking to all kinds of people, and laying bare the hideous cruelties of drug policies that exert their most terrible tolls on the poor and racial minorities. But he also sees glimmers of hope in things such as the movement toward marijuana legalization here and the spread of harm reduction measures in England and Australia.

Loewenstein has made a hardheaded but openhearted contribution to our understanding of the multifaceted malevolence of the never-ending war on drugs. And I didn't even mention his chapter on the Philippines. It's in there, it's as gruesome as you might expect, and it's very chilling reading.

Vorobyov, on the other hand, was born in Russia and emigrated to England as a child. He reached adulthood as a recreational drug user and seller until he was arrested on the London Underground and got a two-year sentence for carrying enough Ecstasy to merit a charge of possession with intent to distribute. After that interval, which he says inspired him to write his book, he got his university degree and moved back to Russia, where he picked up a gig at Russia Today before turning his talents to "Dopeworld."

"Dopeworld"is not staid journalism. Instead, it is a twitchy mish-mash, jumping from topic to topic and continent to continent with the flip of a page, tracing the history of alcohol prohibition in the U.S. at one turn, chatting up Japanese drug gangsters at the next, and getting hammered by ayahuasca in yet another. Vorobyov himself describesDopeworldas "true crime, gonzo, social, historical memoir meets fucked up travel book."

Indeed. He relates his college-boy drug-dealing career with considerable panache. He parties with nihilistic middle-class young people and an opium-smoking cop in Tehran, he cops $7 grams of cocaine in Colombia and tours Pablo Escobar's house with the dead kingpin's brother as a tour guide, he has dinner with Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's family in Mexico's Sinaloa state and pronounces them nice people ("really chill"), and he meets up with a vigilante killer in Manila.

Vorobyov openly says the unsayable when it comes to writing about the drug war and drug prohibition: Drugs can be fun! While Loewenstein is pretty much all about the victims, Vorobyov inhabits the global drug culture. You know: "Dopeworld." Loewenstein would bemoan the utter futility of a record-breaking seizure of a 12-ton load of cocaine; Vorobyov laments, "that's 12 tons of cocaine that will never be snorted."

Vorobyov is entertaining and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, and he brings a former dope dealer's perspective to bear. He's brash and breezy, but like Loewenstein, he's done his homework as well as his journalistic fieldwork, and the result is fascinating. To begin to understand what the war on drugs has done to people and countries around the planet, this pair of books makes an essential introduction. And two gripping reads.

"Dopeworld: Adventures in the Global Drug Trade"by Niko Vorobyov (August 2020, St. Martin's Press, hardcover, 432 pp., $29.99)

"Pills, Powder, and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs"by Antony Loewenstein (November 2019, Scribe, paperback, 368 pp., $19.00)

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As the global war on drugs fades away, the only people who benefited were drug traffickers - Salon

Were Winding Down the War on Weed But Not Fast Enough – Truthdig

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Crystal Munoz gave birth as a federal prisoner. She had just one night to hold her newborn before she was taken back to the holding facility. Crystal screamed and cried. An officer demanded she calm down. After that, she kept crying, but quietly.

In February, she was granted clemency after advocates and criminal justice reformers petitioned the White House for her early release. She was back home with her two daughters on February 21.

To see them and to be free and to be with them is the most beautiful feeling in the world, Munoz told Truthdig. Its the biggest blessing Ive been blessed with in my whole lifetime.

Munoz crime: A few years back, some friends asked her to draw a map. The friends ended up being indicted in a drug-trafficking conspiracy, mostly for marijuana. They would go on to claim that they used her map to circumvent a drug check-point. She was offered a plea deal that would have resulted in at least a 10-year-sentence. That seemed unfathomable with young kids. Crystal thought she hadnt done anything that bad and went to trial. She was found guilty and sentenced to 18 years in federal prison.

She admits that she should have faced some kind of consequences for her actions. But it never made any sense that the federal government was keeping her in prison for almost two decades, away from her daughters and husband. She notes that she had responsibilities on the outside, including raising her kids. On the inside she felt useless, unable to fulfill her duty as a parent and as a citizen. My kids are out here. There are bills to be paid, its not like I was paying my bills from prison. There has to be an alternative.

A lot of people might not realize how conspiracy charges work. Amy Povah, the founder of CAN-DO clemency, a group that advocates for non-violent drug offenders, explains. Crystal is a prime example of the conspiracy statute run amok. She drew a map to circumvent check points on the reservation, Povah told Truthdig. That is not an illegal act. But the conspiracy law can take a legal action and if the feds deem it an overt act that moves a conspiracy one step in the furtherance of a conspiracy you can be held responsible for all the illegal acts contributed to the co-conspirators many of whom you might not of even met or conspired with.

For years, Povah has worked relentlessly for Munoz release. In the past year, her campaign picked up steam. Jason Hernandez asked me which Latinas needed help and I told him Crystal had filed a petition.the Texas AM students filed a supplement, and thats the petition that got sent over to the White House, Povah explains. Alice Marie Johnson, the federal prisoner who got clemency after her case was famously taken on by reality star Kim Kardashian, also lobbied hard for Crystal. Of course Alice went hard for her cuz they were friends, Povah says.

The reality has yet to sink in for Ricky, Crystals husband. Im very happy. Im still feeling like Im in a dream. Youd think itd end more and more every day. I mean, we went to the White House, met up with Kim Kardashian really man, thats crazy. I still feel like Im in a dream.

There are few issues that confound traditional political alignments in the Trump era as much as clemency for non-violent drug offenders. Towards the end of his term, Obama granted a record number of clemency petitions to nonviolent drug criminals. Yet, the process was opaque. Prisoners who were turned down, like Munoz, had no idea why. After all, they were in prison for more or less the same drugs that the hip then-President had bragged about trying. Critics pointed out that its arbitrary and counterintuitive for clemency petitions to be reviewed in the Department of Justice, which is a building full of prosecutors.

When Trump took office, activists hoped that the presidents willingness to circumvent procedure might actually work in prisoners favor (traditionally presidents dont grant clemencies their first term). In a sense they were right: after reality star Kim Kardashian personally appealed to the president in Alice Marie Johnsons case, Johnson was home with her family within weeks. Yet the optics of the president making life-and-death decisions based on personal asks from Kardashian rattled his critics.

At its worst, the tendency manifested in liberals and mainstream media pillorying Kardashian. Trump meets Rump! the New York Post gloated. On the View, the hosts fretted that the president was once again dangerously blowing up standard procedure. Others derided Kardashian for lacking expertise. It almost seemed as if progressives were fighting the release of a black grandmother who was serving a life without parole sentence for playing a low-level role in a drug conspiracy. Shed already spent 22 years behind bars.

At the time, Johnsons counsel, Brittany Barnett, told me that Kardashians advocacy was essential to the case and deserved respect. First of all, shes at the White House advocating on behalf of Ms. Alice. You do not need to be an expert to know that Ms. Alice does not deserve to die in prison.

Thats a humanitarian issue. Shes using her platform to literally save someones life. You dont have to be an expert to know this shit is wrong.

Munoz case wasnt as high profile as Johnsons. But it nevertheless generated stories like this New York Times feature that seemed to conflate Munoz and Johnsons commutations with those of more controversial figures like Bernard B. Kerik. The 11 Criminals Granted Clemency by Trump Had One Thing in Common: Connections the headline read, suggesting there was something untoward about Munoz release.

Mark Osler, a former prosecutor who now advocates for less harsh sentencing and clemency policies, points out why connections were necessary in the first place. Its because the traditional system doesnt work.

I think the fact that they had to do a workaround of the regular process to free someone as worthy as Crystal tells us how broken the process is, Osler tells Truthdig.

Youve got thousands and thousands of people waiting who submitted their petitions to the pardon attorney and we dont know where those stand. And theres this process driven by Fox news and people close to the president that doesnt seem capable of addressing those large numbers.

Osler, who is a contributor to The Hill, notes that solution is straightforward.

Take the pardon attorney out of the Department of Justice. Create a bipartisan clemency commission and have them make the evaluations and recommendations directly to the president.

He also cautions against scapegoating former prisoners like Munoz and Johnson just because they were freed by Trump, rather than Obama.

Despite what anyone might say or criticize, there is nothing bad about Crystal Munoz having freedom. And I think thats important to say.

As pot becomes legal around the country and wealthy people are making money in an increasingly lucrative industry, it seems intolerable that anyone should serve a day in jail for doing or selling drugs: yet there are still people serving long sentences for drugs, including marijuana, thanks to mandatory minimums and other tough-on-crime measures embraced by Republicans and Democrats in the 1980s and 1990s.

Amy Povah, who herself was caught up in a drug trafficking conspiracy, says there are plenty of more cases similar to hers.

Like Crystal I met many women who were serving the longest sentence within a drug conspiracy case even though they were the least participatory, she says. Essentially these women and some men are serving 20 to life for exercising their 6th amendment right to a trial and suffer the trial penalty phase because a judge has no discretion and must impose strict mandatory sentencing regulated by the sentencing guideline chart that was created during the zero tolerance tough on crime drug era of the late 80s.

Almost Everyone CANDO is advocating for went to trial and ended up with 15 to life as a result of exercising their constitutional rights. That is an abomination of justice!

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Were Winding Down the War on Weed But Not Fast Enough - Truthdig

TV tonight: will the robots finally take over in Westworld? – The Guardian

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Westworld9pm, Sky Atlantic

Since this dystopian series was first broadcast in 2016, theme parks havent looked quite the same. With mass uprisings from the once-abused-and-now-sentient robot avatars to contend with, how will the hosts manage their ever-worsening relationships with the guests? After season two ended on a bombshell, we open with the outside worlds very existence fundamentally threatened and the introduction of new characters played by Aaron Paul (pictured) and Vincent Cassel. Ammar Kalia

A new series of the reality show in which inept grooms (men, eh, what are they like?) are ordered to arrange every aspect of their wedding, without telling the bride. This week, laid-back Leon plans to get hitched to Kirsty on a beach in the Dorset town of Weymouth. Kirsty, however, has her heart set on a more romantic venue. Oh dear. Ali Catterall

Covering the 1970 protests at the Miss World final in London, this documentary combines archive footage with testimony from the competitors, as well as presenter Michael Aspel, to show how the demonstrations galvanised the womens liberation movement. AK

The art historian James Fox expertly analyses how visuals have changed our world, from Madonna to Dal. In this penultimate episode, he assesses how images became more seductive as the 20th century unfurled, from the freedom of Hockneys swimming pools to the aspirational pull of the Marlboro Man. Hannah J Davies

A breezy new sitcom with a serious underpinning. Kal Penn stars as Garrett Modi, a mildly disgraced ex-councilman in New York who finds himself working with a group of immigrants. They range from the unfeasibly rich to those on the minimum wage, but they are all battling with the harsh US asylum system. Phil Harrison

Channel 4s new-writers anthology kicks off its second season, showcasing diverse and up-and-coming talent in a series of 30-minute pilots. There is Yolanda Mercys BBW, a tale of plus-size life; JC Servantes mental health narrative For You; and Adulting, Chinonyerem Odimbas story of neurodiversity. AK

Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015), 9pm, Film4The gruesome opening, in which the FBI uncovers a literal house of the dead, flags up the brutal nature of Denis Villeneuves ferocious thriller about the US war on drugs. One of the FBI team, Emily Blunts tenacious Kate, is drafted into a murky covert operation in Mexico, led by the brash Josh Brolin and the haunted Benicio del Toro. Paul Howlett

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TV tonight: will the robots finally take over in Westworld? - The Guardian

Buying Weed at Bostons First Pot Shop with Shaleen Title – Boston magazine

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Massachusetts' most outspoken cannabis regulator met me at Bostons first dispensary to talk about why it doesnt matter that shes a customer, how shes taking cues from Mayor Marty Walsh, and what makes her think the future is bright.

Photo by Spencer Buell

Shaleen Title has waited a long time for this moment. Before she was appointed to Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, the 34-year-old lawyer and activist spent her professional career pushing to reform our punitive drug laws and arguing that the people who suffered the most under the War on Drugs be given a chance to make money selling weed legally. So, Titlethe most outspoken of the five CCC members, who respectively specialize in public health, public safety, regulation, business, and in Titles case social justicewas taking a victory lap on Monday, as the Pure Oasis dispensary flung open its doors in Dorchester. The new shop on Blue Hill Avenue is the first within city limits, the states first black-owned pot shop, and the first to come online through the CCCs economic empowerment program, which seeks to help communities disproportionately harmed by drug enforcement open marijuana businesses.

Opening day at the shop seemed like the ideal day to meet up. After Title, the only one of the CCC to make a point of actually shopping at pot shops,grabbed a pre-rolled Cookies N Cream joint and a T-shirt with the word Smoke across its chest from a Pure Oasis cashier, we sat down to talk about what this all means.

How does it feel to be here, at a pot shop that has just made history?

Its awesome. Its so cool to see this come to life. When I started out, people were kind of proverbially patting me on the head, like, Okay. Sure. Your equity applicants are great but Im gonna open the first store in Boston. Its satisfying to see it play out the way it has.

How many of the CCC commissioners are also customers?

I have no idea. Ive never talked to them about it. But I do know that when you see stuff on paper and in pictures its not the same as when you see it in real life.

How many of you on the CCC actually use cannabis?

Our first day we were asked about that: I, along with Commissioner Flanagan, didnt answer and the other three said that they had tried it. Its worth asking, but I also think its not that relevant. I didnt answer that question because I didnt want to be defined by itI think you can be a good regulator whether or not you use it.

Mayor Walsh warned about chaos due to traffic jams and long lines on day one, but that clearly didnt happen. Only a few dozen showed up for the initial door-opening, and there is no line right now. What did he get wrong?

I think its good to over-prepare, definitely for traffic and parking issues and crowds. After 40 stores have opened, I think we struck the right note of being over-prepared just in case and then hopefully everything goes smoothly like it did today.

Is it disappointing? They had all these rope lines set up and people arent in them.

Im never disappointed to not see chaos.

What did you think about seeing the mayor giving a press conference inside of a pot shop, after opposing legalization so vigorously just a few years ago?

You gotta stop and look big picture and celebrate those moments and see how far weve come. This is going in a direction where people who use cannabis are being treated increasingly like the normal, law-abiding people that they are.

Theres basically a consensus now. Joe Kennedy III publicly opposed legalization, but itd be a lot harder for him to run as an anti-cannabis candidate now.

Right. He just changed his mind a few months ago and came out in favor of legalization. Not only that, but very much in support of equitable legalization, which not a lot of people in Congress are leaders on. I should say, Senator Markey has been one of the few members of Congress who has totally supported equitable legalization for a long time.

Any advice for Mayor Walsh now that he has his own commission?

I mean, I would take advice from him. This is a city thats found a way to include equity applicants and create a loan fund. The state has not yet figured out how to do that. We need local officials to act like Boston and Worcester and Holyoke have and work with these applicants. Theres going to be a lot of things that need to happen for us to equitably implement this law.

Is this weeks opening giving other applicants hope?

Yes. Its so different to talk to people who are actually going through the [social equity] program versus getting filtered information [through the press]. They are overwhelmingly happy. Theyre like, This program has been a godsend. I never would have gotten this far without it. I hate criticizing media, so dont take this the wrong way, but its just different from how the narrative is playing out in the media about this program being a failure, because it doesnt match what I witness myself.

The Boston Globe has ramped up its cannabis coverage in recent years. How have they done?

In general, my experience has been positive with media. The attention that people pay to this is kind of astounding, but it just makes decisions better. Regulating this industry safely and effectively and equitably is not an easy thing. Its a challenge. So, to be able to talk about those challenges and have people really listen, I feel lucky.

What did we learn from the vape crisis and the way that the state reacted to it?

We know very little about these [vape] products. We dont know, even if someones using a regulated vape pen, what the effects will be in 30 years. So, we need to make sure that we are regulating them, monitoring them, and collecting data. I think the overall lesson that we learned is regulation works and prohibition doesnt.

Are there parallels between the vaping crisis and the reaction to the coronavirus outbreak?

It highlights something thats true for all public health crises, which is how important it is to be transparent about the data that you have so that people can empower themselves and make informed decisions.

Photo by Spencer Buell

A woman frustrated by the pace of approval for her economic empowerment application protested at your hearings. What impact did that have?

For me, it was really enlightening. It highlighted how important it is to communicate with people and that they understand where they stand. It is kind of disheartening, though, to see people think that making a public fuss is their only way to make a point. I wish that people would feel comfortable coming straight to me.

Do you find people are coming to you directly a lot?

They always have. People come to me all the time directly and I want them to.

What impact do you think the Fall River fiasco, where ex-mayor Jasiel Correia is accused of extorting cannabis companies that needed his sign-off to open in his city, had on things?

I was not surprised in the slightest, because the environment was right for that kind of corruption because nobody was enforcing the law on host community agreements. It was only a matter of time before somebody tried something like that.

How will social consumption change the way people interact with and think about cannabis?

The biggest change will be acceptance. Eventually itll be like the way you can buy a beer at a movie theater. With social consumption people can come out of the shadows: concerts, movies, art, massages, yogaall these daily parts of life where theyre currently using cannabis, but they have to hide it.

How long do you want to keep doing this? Whats next for you?

I dont know. I just focus on the next few months ahead of me. Im not necessarily the exact type of person who is normally appointed for a position like this, so the fact that [the Baker administration] gave me this opportunity is something that I will forever be grateful for. I will say as an activist, as an entrepreneur, as a lawyer, as a government regulator, Ive always had the same goal, which is fair legalization of drugs. Ill probably stay in that realm one way or another.

Who would be best for the legalization movement in the White House? Biden, Sanders, or Trump?

Man, I dont have the slightest idea. There was a time when I would have been able to give you like a very detailed and confident answer for each of those three, but the way the primaries are going, I just have no idea. I have no clue. (After this interview, Title reached out to clarify that Sanders would be best for legalization, given that he is the only one who supports legalization.)

Predictions are not pundits strong suit right now, clearly.

I dont think theyre anybodys strong suit. I do not subscribe to the idea that experts, and particularly reasonable-sounding white male experts, are the ultimate arbiters of whats going to happen and whats reasonable. Ive never subscribed to that and I still dont.

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Buying Weed at Bostons First Pot Shop with Shaleen Title - Boston magazine

Narcos Mexico Is Not the Education We Need (Review) – NACLA

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The second season of the critically acclaimed Netflix series, Narcos Mexico, recently dropped. Like previous seasons, this one charts an episode in the rise and fall of Central and South American drug trafficking dynasties, focusing on another photogenic, charismatic man at the top: Miguel ngel Flix Gallardo (played by the magnetic Diego Luna). The Padrino of the Guadalajara Cartel, Flix Gallardo united the various plazas, or the distinct zones that controlled Mexican drug production, in the 1980s.

For the ordinary U.S. viewer, Narcos Mexico is likely the only representation of Mexico they will consume all year. Even in this saturated peak TV market, Narcos Mexico catapulted to the top five streaming shows on Netflix in the United States. One week after its February 13, 2020 release, the show boasted nearly 50 million average demand expressions. The popularity of Narcos Mexico is easily explained: It is a well-crafted show with a big production budget, stellar acting, and a strong aesthetic sensibility. It also doesnt hurt that it delivers a pre-history of the inter-cartel violence that fascinates U.S. audiences. Despite its claims to accuracy, however, this season of Narcos Mexico delivers a DEA version of events, silencing the anti-left politics that undergirded the expansion of the drug trade in the 1970s and 1980s.

While it was created by three U.S. men, Narcos Mexico provides a strong sense of place thanks to the Mexican directors, writers, and actors who helped make the show, which was filmed on location. U.S. viewers, who may have little knowledge of Mexico beyond sensationalist headlines and trips to Cancn, can thus witness the distinct regional geographies of the country, from the vast Chihuahuan desert to the dense cityscapes of the Federal District and Guadalajara. If they are attentive, they may even notice the characters distinct regional Mexican accents. Perhaps for this reason, the show has also found an audience in Mexico, where on February 26 it was ranked the number two show on the platform.

But make no mistake, the shows imagined audience is decidedly gringo. The strongest evidence of the target audience is the initially-anonymous male narrator, DEA agent Walt Breslin (Scoot McNairy), whose hardboiled, Texas-tinged voiceovers take viewers on a decades-long tour of complex Mexican history and U.S. drug policy. While many characters move in and out of the story, Breslin provides a consistent point of view throughout the shows two seasons. His highly stylized expositions are also central to the shows distinct tone: neo-noir meets U.S. embassy cable.

Breslins and other protagonists dense expository narrations have led many to refer to both Narcoswhich detailed the rise and fall of Colombias Medelln and Cali cartelsand Narcos Mexico as highly informative. In a recent interview, showrunner Eric Newman even referred to the series as unspoilable because viewers could simply read the Wikipedia article. The shows visual cues also emphasize its veracity. In its arresting credit sequence, for example, photographs of real-life traffickers like Joaqun (el Chapo) Guzmn pan across a map that identifies the geographic location of each trafficking organization as well as the means by which each cartel smuggled drugs into the United States. By including images of real individuals, as opposed to the actors who play them, Narcos Mexicos creators subtly claim that they are telling a true story.

But references to the series accuracy overlook the narratorsand thus, the shows particular point of view. Throughout season one, we dont know who, exactly, is relating the story of doomed DEA agent Enrique Kiki Camarena. It is only at the beginning of season two that we learn that it is Breslin, who spearheads Operation Leyenda, the agencys large-scale investigation into Camarenas murder. Far from a neutral or disinterested party, Breslin is dedicated to taking down Flix Gallardo due to his own personal losshis addict brother was the victim of drug violence years earlier. The show also suggests that Breslins narratives, though seemingly directed at the viewer, are actually intelligence briefings. One telling scene seamlessly transitions between Breslins disembodied narration and his conversation with a superior, in which he conveys the same information. This scene makes clear that Breslins narration emerges from the reports that he relays to senior DEA officials. Even if Breslins expositions implicate the U.S. government in the drug trade, and even if his actions reveal DEA disregard for Mexican lives, the show centers the U.S. DEA perspective and thus implicitly blames drug trafficking on a corrupt, violent, and ultimately unreformable Mexico.

Narcos Mexico season two opens with Flix Gallardo facing mounting financial and political pressure for his connection toif not direct participation inCamarenas 1985 torture and murder. This event was a turning point in U.S.-Mexico relations. Though the U.S. government knew about the extant relationship between Mexican government officials, intelligence organizations, and drug traffickers, Camarenas murder made them less inclined to look the other way. It also provided an opportunity to extract further economic concessions from the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which had been mired in an economic crisis since the government failed to meet its foreign debt service in August 1982. After news of Camarenas execution spread, U.S. officials and media proxies began publicly denouncing Mexican corruption, declaring that drug trafficking was a serious problem for U.S.-Mexico relations. These became points of pressure for Mexicos leaders, who sought increased economic integration with the United States and entered the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in July 1986, a precursor to North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in January 1994.

In the show, we are told that post-Camarena drug shipment seizures are way up, squeezing profits and angering the various plazas that comprise the drug federation. This increased DEA attention came at a bad time for Mexican traffickers, whose business opportunities were exploding in the wake of the closing of the so-called Caribbean corridor through which Colombian planes traditionally ferried cocaine to the United States. Once U.S. patrols effectively shut down the corridor, Colombian organizations became fully reliant upon Mexican traffickers to move drugs north. Thus is set the tension of the season, with Flix Gallardo attempting to avoid DEA prosecution while also trying to gain control of all cocaine trafficking nodesprimarily Tijuana, Jurez, and Matamorosand expanding into the retail business.

In this way, the social history that gave Narcos Mexico season 1 such rich texturewith its scenes of ordinary residents being bussed to work in the marijuana fieldsin season two gives way to a traditional business history, with its focus on charismatic, if emotionally tortured, male genius (as Flix Gallardo is so often called). Season one ended with Flix Gallardo as the unquestioned Jefe de Jefes of his federation. In season two, he continuously struggles to maintain control. He refuses to share power with the men who run his plazas, rebuffs criticism, and becomes more and more isolated personally and professionally. In a heavy-handed foreshadowing of the present violence in Mexico, Flix Gallardo laments the difficulties he has in maintaining control over unruly plaza bosses like Pablo Acosta of Jurez and the Arellano Flix brothers of Tijuana: [Its] a fucking free-for-all of independent operators who think they can go it alone.

By the season two finale, the federation has dissolved, and Mexicos trafficking routes have been divided geographically among the different organizations. In one of the shows final scenes, when Flix Gallardo and Breslin finally meet, the former predicts that, absent his leadership, Mexico will soon descend into violence. However, such claims wrongly suggest that the spectacular violence witnessed today was the result of organizational disunity rather than the governments militarized war on drug trafficking organizations. Such representations are not without political consequences.

In Mexico, the portrayal of drug trafficking organizationswhether in news or entertainmenthas become the subject of significant government scrutiny and public debate. A massive culture industry is dedicated to churning out ballads, telenovelas, and films that, some argue, glamorize the trafficking lifestyle and help audiences identify with violent criminals. Often encapsulated under the umbrella term narcocultura, this cultural output has traditionally been popular in trafficking and production centers, like Sinaloa, where drug cultivation provided an importantand often, the onlysource of income for impoverished farmers whose food production was disrupted by agrarian modernization. Popular narcocorridos and narconovelas have traditionally appealed to those who feel marginalized or neglected by government officials, and unlike mainstream media they portray high-ranking public officials as corrupt actors who are directly implicated in the drug trade. This critical lens has made narcocorridos and narconovelas targets for state censorship. In November 2016, two Mexican congressional representatives called upon federal authorities to keep narconovelas off air during primetime hours, arguing that the programs negatively influenced young people and weakened the social fabric. Similar efforts have been made to censor narcocorridos, a popular subgenre of ballads that are often commissioned by traffickers to celebrate their lives and triumphs.

Mexican President Felipe Caldern (2006-2012) saw media as key to the success of his so-called war on the cartels.In 2011, he entered an agreement with around 40 of Mexicos most prominent broadcasters and periodicals to set editorial criteria for drug-related news coverage. Media signatories agreed not to present traffickers in a sympathetic light and to avoid diffusing their messages. Calderns successor, Enrique Pea Nieto (2012-2018), passed an even stronger policy that required that media hold traffickers responsible for violence and support government actions. Such laws were clearly self-serving, as they were designed to obscure the extent to which high-ranking officials were themselves complicit in drug trafficking operations. A case in point is the recent arrest of Genaro Garca Luna, Calderns secretary of public security, who has been charged in the United States with cocaine trafficking conspiracy and making false statements.

Though they pretend otherwise, the U.S. and Mexican governments also produce narcocultura by creating spectacles around drug policing. There is perhaps no better example of drug war spectacle than the press conferences organized by the DEA or Mexican police to publicize large drug seizures. These performances follow a common script, as officers lead out arrested individuals and display seized cash, cocaine, and weapons in neat piles for photographs. Such exhibitions are intended to underscore the states victory over drug traffickers, but as Oswaldo Zavala argues, these entities have never been separate. For this reason, Caldern and his successors have relied heavily on publicity to promote the drug war. With the help of a $1.6 billion U.S. aid package, in 2007 Caldern sent the Mexican military into trafficking strongholds in pursuit of kingpins. This strategy, however, has only served to splinter organizations, aggravate inter-cartel violence, and terrorize civilians. The policing of key trafficking corridors increased competition over access to routes, and led criminal organizations to diversify their activities from drugs into human trafficking, avocado production, and natural resource extraction. The result has been a devastating spike in violence that has claimed over 200,000 lives, disappeared at least 60,000 people, and displaced tens of thousands from their homes.

In the United States, there is little public awareness of how the events portrayed in Narcos Mexico relate to Mexicos current crisis. Characterizing Narcos as a neutral conveyor of facts, as its creators and many critics do, implies that a television series can be an objective and unproblematic vehicle for educating U.S. audiences about the drug wars history. But the question, at least when considering U.S. audiences, should not be Does Narcos get the facts of the drug trafficking organizations or Mexican history correct? Instead, we should ask what story emerges from the marshalling of select details? In other words, what is Narcos Mexico teaching the millions of U.S. consumers who watch it?

Take for example, the shows treatment of the looming Iran-Contra scandal. In snippets of conversation, we learn that Flix Gallardo has already paid the CIA two million dollars, destined for the Nicaraguan Contras, in exchange for the agency helping his drug shipments get across the U.S.-Mexico border. In 1988, after the U.S. Congress learned that the CIA was sending guns and money to the Contras, Flix Gallardo sees an opportunity and cuts a deal by offering to ferry guns to Nicaragua. In exchange, the CIA silences the witness whose testimony in the Camarena murder trial was certain to send Flix Gallardo to prison. With little context for Iran-Contrathe narrator interjects with only a brief explanationviewers unfamiliar with the controversy will not grasp why the CIA wanted to send guns to Nicaragua in the first place: to unseat the leftist Sandinistas from power. Deracinated of this context, the plot point simply serves as another example of U.S.-Mexican collusion to move drugs. Yet the political and social consequencesU.S. interference in foreign politics, the resulting aggravation of violence, and the cynical sale of drugs in U.S. inner citiesremain undiscussed. Moreover, it obscures how the development of Mexicos drug trade relied on brutal anti-Left counter-insurgency both by U.S. and Mexican actors.

In media interviews, showrunner Eric Newman repeatedly returns to the central theme of the show: The drug war is the product of ill-conceived agendas and corruption on both sides of the border. No doubt. He also has frequently emphasized that there are no good guys or bad guys. But by failing to place more emphasis on the particularities of corruption, the shows critique is flattened into a moralistic condemnation of illiberal politics. But not all corruption is equal, and simply highlighting that there were bad actors on all sides fails to capture the extent to which counter-narcotics was used, as historian Alexander Avia shows, as a public mask for anti-leftist counterinsurgency. In states like Guerrero, where marijuana and poppy cultivation was a prominent source of income for small-scale farmers, Mexican officials justified the torture and enforced disappearance of suspected guerrillas as counter-narcotics initiatives. By the late 1970s, military officials facilitated the entrance of high-ranking members of the Guadalajara and Jurez cartels into these very regions. The business history presented by Narcos Mexico season two evacuates U.S. and Mexican anti-Left politics from the development of the drug trade and war.

It is very rare to have U.S. audience attention centered on Mexico. The most recent instance was the killing of a Mormon community in northern Mexico, which led President Donald Trump to threaten to send troops across the border. His reaction was not surprising but it once again highlighted the impoverished understanding regarding the underlying causes of drug-related violence south of the border. Despite its claims to the contrary, Narcos Mexico is not the education that U.S. viewers need.

Vanessa Freijeis an Assistant Professor in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Her book, Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico,is forthcoming with Duke University Press.

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Narcos Mexico Is Not the Education We Need (Review) - NACLA

Guns, drugs and cash seized in ‘war’ on County Lines – Kent Online

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By Katya Fowler

Guns, 50,000 and three kilos of heroin have been seized - as Kent Police declares "war" on County Lines drugs gangs.

KMTV reports on the raids

A total of 42 people were arrested - included suspected kingpins - after 38 properties were searched across the county as well as in London, Surrey and Sussex.

The warrants took place over two days in areas including Medway, Thanet, Folkestone, Ashford, Tonbridge and Maidstone, during a coordinated operation involving 150 officers aided by the Met and British Transport Police.

County Lines sees London gangs run Class As - usually heroin and crack cocaine - in to commuter towns to find new markets.

Yesterday 350 wraps of Class As were seized from an address in Dane Road, Margate after officers entered at 5.30am. Three people were arrested. Six people were also arrested in Trove Court, Newcastle Hill, Ramsgate where 130 wraps were recovered.

Simultaneous raids were carried out at addresses in London, also linked to the supply of drugs in Kent. These resulted in further arrests, in areas including Mitcham and Brockley.

The crackdown continued today when three kilograms of heroin worth tens of thousands of pounds were seized from a property in Goose Close, Chatham. A man was arrested.

Nearby, in Magpie Hall Road officers entered an address and found around 50,000 in cash stuffed into a rucksack, while in Solomon Road, Rainham more money and cocaine were seized. A man linked to both addresses was arrested.

In London, a handgun, live ammunition and large quantities of heroin and amphetamine were recovered from a flat in Federation Road, Abbey Wood. One man was arrested. Meanwhile, in Orpington a woman was detained after two imitation firearms were found in a car linked to an address in Lower Road.

Chief Constable Alan Pughsley said: "There are currently around 39 active county line networks in Kent which are being operated mainly from London, but by continuing to target and disrupt the gangs responsible my officers are making it much harder for them to establish a foothold.

"Those associated with gangs think nothing of the violence and misery they bring to our communities, however they should know that our knowledge and intelligence around their activities is comprehensive and growing rapidly. As these warrants show it is only a matter of time before these criminals are arrested and left facing lengthy prison sentences.

"I would like to further reassure residents that we are investing significantly in the number of police officers dedicated to tackling county lines and a coordinated approach with our partners, including other forces, is key to identifying and bringing to justice not only the street dealers, but those higher up the chain who are orchestrating the significant supplies of heroin and crack cocaine.

"Please also remember that your help remains vital. You can be our eyes and ears, so if you see anything suspicious call 101, or 999 if a crime is in progress."

"County lines criminality brings some of the most violent crime to this county. About 30% of the county lines are in London so we have to work really well with the Met police."

Kent Police have made more than 2,500 arrests since last summer, found 1,200 weapons, made around 1,000 drugs seizures, and confiscated 2.5 million in proceeds of crime.

Chf Con Pughsley added: "Our dedicated response is absolutely at this moment in time making a dent in county lines. Street intelligence tells me that local drug users are struggling to find drugs on the street in Kent. Maybe that's one of the best indicators of the impact my staff and I are having.

"At times, it must seem like a never-ending battle, but Kent Police are determined that they are going to win the war."

To get the latest updates in ongoing cases, police appeals and criminals put behind bars, click here.

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Guns, drugs and cash seized in 'war' on County Lines - Kent Online

Inside the Golden Triangle, where warlords and drug barons reign – The Age

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The traffickers silver Ford pickup is filled with 400,000 tiny Yaba or madness drug pills, the cheap mix of methamphetamine and caffeine preferred by workers from Thailand to the Philippines. Each orange pill is about the size of the head of a straw and bears a WY stamp, marking it as manufactured by the United Wa State Army, one of many militias which operate beyond the control of Myanmar's ruling junta.

In what has been described as the worlds longest-running civil war, a bewildering array of ethnic armed organisations have been fighting the countrys military on and off for 70 years. In Myanmars north-eastern Shan State, warlords finance their armies by making narcotics in partnership with transnational organised crime syndicates. Its been much the same since the country won independence from British rule in 1948. The only thing that has changed is the product: opium fields have given way to even more lucrative ice factories.

Among the dead mans cargo in Thailand are two distinctive green packets of Guanyinwang Chinese tea. To those who know what to look for its a sign of quality. Inside each foil wrap is a kilo of high-grade crystal methamphetamine, largely made for export to more lucrative markets like Australia.

Its estimated that up to 70 per cent of the methamphetamine on Australias streets is cooked up in Myanmar. But its just part of a complex and shadowy production and distribution web. The base drugs, or precursors, largely come from China, shipped from legitimate chemical factories in hundreds of tonnes each year. The cash raised from drug sales is laundered through more than 200 casinos that have grown like a cancer through Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia over the last decade.

The narcotics are then shipped by air and sea through a sophisticated logistics network to the streets of Australia.

The Golden Triangle is the meeting point of three countries - Myanmar, Thailand and Laos - and it has long been the gateway for the regions drug trade. Its the perfect witch's brew of geography, crime and political interests that allows the drug trade to flourish. And its an industry that cannot possibly exist on this scale without the tacit or active support of some governments in the region.

A terrace farm in the largely poor Shan State in Myanmar.Credit:EPA

At a police checkpoint an hours drive north-west of Myanmars old royal capital Mandalay, trucks and cars rumbling south are cycled through a mobile X-ray machine. The unit has intercepted tonnes of narcotics and precursors since it was installed. This disruption of drug profits made it a target of militia forces in August. The strike with a rocket launcher didnt destroy the unit but, in a running battle, the retreating militia force killed more than a dozen police and soldiers.

Australian Federal Police liaison officer Jared Taggart is in his last week of a four-year posting working with Myanmar police. The AFP has a two-decade-long association with the country that began with attempts to stem the heroin trade. He admires his counterparts, saying that despite pitiful pay they are fighting on the front line in a battle that helps defend Australia. It's very highly likely that 60 to 70 per cent of the methamphetamines we see in our community have emanated from Myanmar-based production, he says.

Inside a drug lab in the jungles of Myanmar.Credit:Nine

He reels off the wins for law enforcement: In the last four years, our joint activities with Myanmar police force have resulted in the seizure of more than 22 tonnes of narcotics and 680 tonnes of precursor chemicals. That's more than $2 billion worth of drugs not making it to the shores of Australia. And that's probably more than 52 million hits of drugs that haven't made it into our community.

But with wastewater analysis showing Australians spent a staggering $8.6 billion in 2019 buying more than 11 tonnes of meth, this thin blue frontline is catching raindrops in a thunderstorm.

At a police base on the outskirts of Mandalay, Taggart leads a tour through a wired-off compound about the size of a basketball court; a quarter of its concrete floor is covered by industrial-sized drums holding 60 tonnes of chemicals used in the production of ice.

The primary ingredients in methamphetamine are ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. To make the illicit narcotic they have to be dissolved in a slush of solvents like drain cleaners, phosphorus, sulphuric and hydrochloric acid. Every kilo of meth yields five kilos of stinking toxic sludge thats flushed into the jungle. I think our community in Australia doesn't really have a strong sense of the harmful products that are going into what many may perceive to be very pure drugs, Taggart says. These are really base poisonous, harmful chemicals.

A drug lab in the Myanmar jungle.Credit:Nine

The only thing more toxic than the drug labs of Myanmar is the politics that makes it all possible. The country is awash with warring interests, which has left a large swath of Shan State under the control of dozens of ethnic armed organisations and militias.

Among the litany of peace deals and uneasy truces one was struck in the 1980s between the ruling military and the countrys most powerful ethnic armed group, the United Wa State Army, which would have a dramatic effect on the drug trade. The essence of the agreement was captured in a report by the United States Institute of Peace as the United Wa State Army pledging to not fight against government forces in exchange for the freedom to pursue whatever business activities it chose. It chose to cultivate opium.

The report noted that deal enabled the UWSA to build a drug empire that outmatched anything [Myanmar] had seen.

The United Wa State Armys most profitable drug is now meth, and the billions it makes fund an army of more than 20,000 men. It has strong links with the Chinese Communist Party and its weapons, like most of the chemicals it uses for meth production, come from China. Its arsenal includes Chinese-made surface-to-air missiles, heavy artillery and armoured fighting vehicles.

An International Crisis Group report last year noted that the drugs trade would not be possible without high-level corruption in those countries including China, Laos and Thailand - through which large consignments of drugs or their precursors are smuggled.

China has a particular responsibility to prevent precursor smuggling; it is the main source of these chemicals, but has almost never intercepted shipments crossing its border with Myanmar.

The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone is 3000 hectares of agricultural land on the Laos side of the Mekong River, leased for 50 years to the Hong Kong-based Kings Romans Group. It is one of 14 economic zones embraced by the cash-strapped Lao government and now incorporated as part of Chinas Belt and Road initiative to link Asia to Europe by land and sea. The groups chief executive, Chinese businessman Zhao Wei, won the land on a promise of jobs and prosperity.

But the US Treasury has declared Zhaos main business is running a transnational criminal syndicate. It has sanctioned Zhao and his associates for facilitating the storage and distribution of heroin, methamphetamine and other narcotics for illicit networks, including the United Wa State Army. The group is also accused of an array of horrendous illicit activities like child prostitution and sex slavery. Zhao denies the allegations.

The Kings Romans Casino in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in Laos.Credit:Nine

Cranes crowd the horizon over the zone and at its heart is the Kings Romans Casino, which lures Chinese punters from a homeland where gambling is illegal. Its gaudy crown rises on the banks of the Mekong in the shadow of a massive golden hotel thats under construction. Inside the casino is a gauche collision of faux-classical European frescoes and statues. All the tables in one wing were devoted to a popular Asian card game, Tiger-Dragon, but this day there are few players and bored croupiers are falling asleep at empty tables.

Kings Romans is also notorious for trafficking endangered animals. Laos has declared the tiger extinct in the wild but there are tigers here - hidden from view and farmed for their body parts. Some restaurants in the zone once advertised tiger and bear on the menu until bad publicity from international organisation the Environmental Investigation Agency forced that trade underground and a tiger compound next to the casino was moved.

After several attempts we find an extremely nervous taxi driver who is willing to take us to the new, larger tiger farm. Past a quarry on the edge of the zone a narrow dirt road ends at a high-walled compound that rises up the side of a hill. The guard waves me off as I approach on foot and knows enough English to confirm that he is not Lao but Burmese.

He is familiar with another English word.

Is this the tiger zoo?

Yes, he nods.

Are there many tigers in here?

Yes.

Standing on the Thai side of the Mekong, Jeremy Douglas, regional representative for the United Nations' Office on Drugs and Crime, doesnt hide his contempt for Zhao Weis handiwork as he stares at the building just a few hundred metres away. It's an abomination, frankly, he says.

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Hes tracked the dismal rise of it and the other casinos that have bloomed in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, all aiming to draw Chinese cash. This is really in essence a massive governance failure, Douglas says. What we're looking at is some parts of some countries are not under control of government, so basically it's a free space for organised crime to do their business.

"And then of course you have places, like across the river here, where you can launder the money and then you have the market on this side. So it's got all the elements that organised crime needs to really do their work.

In three days spent on the border with Thai military and narcotics police, they make it clear that they believe they are battling both government failure in Myanmar and a Laos government that is patron to a criminal enterprise.

They show photographs of Zhao Wei in the front rank of a gathering of regional drug enforcement chiefs. An honoured guest of the Lao delegation, he arrived in an armour-plated Land Rover with six bodyguards and donated money to the regional war on drugs.

Zhao Wei, head of the Kings Romans Group, at a meeting of regional law enforcement officials.Credit:Nine

Do you have any doubt that Zhao Wei is involved in the drug trade? I ask the senior Thai narcotics officer who is scrolling through the pictures of the businessman and his entourage on his phone. Yes, of course he is, he laughs.

Seedy is too bland a description of the hotel in the Myanmar border town of Tachileik where we have arranged to meet a local drug dealer. The room stinks of stale cigarettes and in an ironic touch the wall over the bed is decorated with a painting of opium poppies. This is a place that does not try to hide its associations.

The dealer wears a black-and-red mask for the camera. Hes a relatively young man in his mid-thirties but his eyes have the faraway glaze of someone whose hope is lost.

He describes a world where the people who run the drug trade are untouchable, protected by their own armies, their wealth and their government connections. He doesnt believe the trade can be stopped, saying hes never seen a single holiday in trafficking. The more they lose the more they produce, he says.

A local drug dealer in Myanmar, who says he doesnt believe the trade can be stopped.Credit:Nine

While drug pirates are being shot and small dealers arrested, no warlords and few drug lords ever face justice.

But the AFP are tracking some of the big players. In June Australian Border Force officials found 1.6 tonnes of ice hidden in stereo speakers in sea cargo that arrived in Melbourne from Bangkok. It had an estimated street value of $1 billion.

Much of the consignment was wrapped in the distinctive Guanyinwang tea packaging, marking it as made in Myanmar. The seizure was linked to a drug tsar who first appeared on police's radar in 2011, Chinese-born Canadian Tse Chi Lop. Police have dubbed his network of five triads Sam Gor, for Tses Cantonese nickname Brother Number Three.

The AFP believes Tse leads the largest crime syndicate running drugs into Australia and he is the key target of an international investigation dubbed Operation Kungur.

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If that group controls, give or take, 50 to 70 per cent of the crystal meth trade hitting the streets of Australia, then they would be making $US8 billion a year, the UNs Jeremy Douglas says. And he of course would be the biggest player in that group. So we're talking about billionaires.

Police have dubbed a group of five known associates of Tse The Billionaires' Club.

Former AFP officer Roland Singor first identified Tse and says the meth trade in South-east Asia is now so big and profitable that rival groups have joined forces. There were a lot of turf wars between them and they've now come together as a united multinational corporate entity, if you like, Singor says. They have management centres throughout South-east Asia.

Singor says the syndicates operations are structurally separated so that the compromise of one unit does not affect the others. They're very cellular, he says. They have their own project teams and they answer back to Tse Chi Lop and his core group. And he answers to a broader community of investors and business partners.

Douglas hints that some of those business partners include governments. We're seeing some countries of this region essentially ceding bits of sovereignty, whether it's the special economic zone here or the parts of Shan State, these other special economic zones and casino zones that are popping up, Douglas says. These guys are buying parts of the region.

Chris Uhlmann is political editor for Nine News.

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Inside the Golden Triangle, where warlords and drug barons reign - The Age

Book Review: Gary Englers Fake News Mysteries offer hard-boiled fiction for the Trump era – The Beacon Herald

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Gary Engler has written three novels in his series Fake News Mysteries.PNG

American Spin, War on Drugs, and Misogyny

Gary Engler | RED Publishing

The realist in murder writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities Raymond Chandler.

As the hard-boiled fiction pioneer Raymond Chandler knew well, and elaborated in the essay quoted above, murder mysteries have often had a subtext of class analysis and class war. Chandler himself set his gritty stories against a backdrop of corrupt politicians, businessmen and cops, a moral landscape of mean streets on which a flawed but moral investigator fights for whatever scraps of truth and justice can be salvaged from the civic ruins.

Gary Engler, a former news editor at The Vancouver Sun, has recently published three linked novels in a series he is calling the Fake News Mysteries, books that represent an effort to bring the Hammett/Chandler tradition up to date in the nightmarish orange glow of the Trump era, telling stories of murder and conspiracy that take into account the punishing realities of class, gender and racial oppression in our times.

Englers protagonist in all three of these promising mystery novels, Waylon Choy, is, as the series author once was, a B.C. based journalist when we first meet him in American Spin. As Choy has to explain repeatedly to the curious, he owes his surname to a Chinese ancestor who came to Canada in the 19th century and his mongrel Anglo appearance to a family history of strenuous multiculturalism that includes ancestors from European, Indigenous, Hawaiian and African backgrounds.

In that opening volume, Choy is drawn into investigating the suspicious death of a former Vancouver police chief and before all the narrative dust settles he has uncovered a right-wing conspiracy and Ponzi scheme that links neo Nazis and corrupt cops.

In the next two volumes in what promises to be an ongoing series, War on Drugs and Misogyny, Choy, now a freelance journalist, continues to tangle with violent right wing conspiracies, and encounters a rogues gallery of villains.

The action is well plotted and propulsive, and readers who love the noir elements of the hard-boiled detective genre will find much to enjoy here. The three books suffer occasionally from too much earnest exposition and could use a bit more of the snappy dialogue and sardonic humour found in Chandler and Hammett. Despite the few moments when the attempted noir effects shade toward earnest watercoloured mildness, these are exciting and thought provoking reads. Highly recommended.

Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. He welcomes feedback and story tips at tos65@telus.net

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Book Review: Gary Englers Fake News Mysteries offer hard-boiled fiction for the Trump era - The Beacon Herald

The Plot Against America Is Not About Trump, Even If Comparisons Are Inevitable – Reason

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The Plot Against America. HBO. Monday, March 16, 9 p.m.

In 2004, when Philip Roth publishedThe Plot Against America, an alternative history in which Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and steers America into fascism, the chattering-class critics were all agog about thischillingallegory about the George W. Bush presidency. (Like, Bush and Lindbergh were bothpilotsand everything.) Roth rather convincingly denied that Bush was the inspiration for his novel; Bush did not propose replacing "The Star-Spangled Banner" with "Tomorrow Belongs To Me,"and the book returned to being a wintry what-if meditation on anti-Semitism.

Sixteen years later, David Simon has turned the novel into an HBO miniseries, and this time the arts intelligentsia has discovered that the real culprit is not Bush but Donald Trump. And I don't think Simon will be issuing any denials.

Consider the familiar ring of these words from a Jewish character who thinks the president is stirring up anti-Semitism: "These assholes, they've always been here. Now they have permission to crawl out from under their rocks." Or this line: "This is how it starts: everyone thinking they can work with the guy. Like Hitler: Everyone believes he doesn't mean what he says." Or the accusation that his critics are being bought off by a strong economy: "Not so long ago, you couldn't bear the man, either. But now what? Stock market is up, profits are up, business is moving.What he stands for is forgotten. What else matters to you, a businessman, if the money is right?"

It's been a while since I read the novel, and it's possible that some of this dialogue is the work of Roth and not Simon. Either way, watchingThe Plot Against Americaoften feels like being locked in a closet with a fanatical #NeverTrumper: It'll give you a headache even if you agree with him.

Simon and his writing partner Ed Burns have certainly woven political polemics into their work before, notably on the futility of the war on drugs inThe Wireand the corruption engendered by attempts to outlaw the sex trade inThe Deuce, and done so intelligently and entertainingly. But even without the Trump Temptation, the novel The Plot Against Americaposes some special challenges.

Alternative history is, by definition, ahistorical. But generally it changes one key factual point, then lets the archival billiard balls bump each other around. Roth's novel is more like a complete rewrite of the record. Lindbergh's exploits as a pioneering aviator made him wildly famous in a way that's nearly impossible to understand in today's your-15-minutes-are-up world, but he never tried to make any political hay out of it; he showed no interest in the presidency. And if he had, there's not the faintest evidence he would have been successfulRoosevelt's popularity was so immense that he was able to toss out 150 years of no-third-term tradition with scarcely a peep of protest.

So, fine, there's your one historical anomaly to start the ball rolling. But the novel continues to edit history whenever it's convenient to the plot. Lindbergh was, no doubt, anti-Semitic, but if he was a Nazi, he made Sergeant Schultzlook downright competent. In the run-up to World War II, when the United States had no intelligence service, he used ceremonial visits to Germany tospy on the Luftwaffe and was the source for practically everything the United States knew about the Nazis' powerful new air force.

If Roth overhypes his villains, he whitewashes his heroes. The Jewish characters through whose eyes the story is told regard Roosevelt as the Moses of his day, a magnificent statesman and the sword and shield of American Jews. Actually, FDR spent a good bit of his spare time plotting schemes tokeep Jews out of a postwar America. He stood by contentedly as his notoriously anti-Semitic State Department infamously turned away the German cruise ship St. Louis and its cargo of Jewish refugees in 1939, sending hundreds of them back to die at the hands of the Nazis. Likewise, Canadatreated as a cuddly asylum state for Lindbergh's Jewish victims in The Plotactually spent most of the 1930s rejecting Jewish refugees, as many as 800,000 of them.

Roth's fantasies about who was doing what to whom during the prelude to the war are mostly transferred intact to the series, undermining both its dramatic and its political credibility to the extent that it probably ought to be retitled The Way We Weren't. But if you ignore the show's macropolitical level and focus instead on its characters and their little chunk of the world, the superlative storytelling skills of Simon and Burns assert themselves.

Like the novel, their tale is told through a fictionalized version of Roth's own family. Dad Herman (Morgan Spector,Homeland) is an up-and-coming insurance salesman and the kind of guy who bellows as he listens to Walter Winchell's nightly radio newscast. Mom Elizabeth (Zoe Kaza, The Deuce) is quieter, but as a childhood refugee from Russia, has more close-up experience with anti-Semitism than her husband does. Teenage artist Sandy (newcomer Caleb Malis), is fascinated by Lindbergh's heroic dimensions, much to his father's disgust. And young Philip's (Azhy Robertson,The Americans) scant political comprehension only exacerbates his growing terror of a world seemingly spinning off its axis.

The two most engaging characters of all come from outside the nuclear family: bully-boy gangbanger Alvin (Anthony Boyle, Ordeal By Innocence), Herman's orphaned nephew, whose innate rage at the world causes him to join the Canadian army to shoot Nazis, only to discover that they shoot back, and Elizabeth's apolitical and old-maidish sister Evelyn (Winona Ryder), whose pursuit of a husband leads her into a liaison with a collaborationist Southern rabbi. Boyle and Rider's desperation at coping with a world from which they seem permanently locked out is so real it stings. More than the others, they ponder what it means to be Jewish. Is their New Jersey home really located in a Jewish neighborhood? Or is itand Alvin and some of his young friends suspecta ghetto?

And then there's Alvin's conversation with a flirty young British woman who's never met a Jew before and isn't sure what the big deal is.

"You don't seem so different," she says. "You believe in more or less the same stuff as anybody else, God and all that."

"I don't believe in God," he corrects her.

"Then why are you Jewish?" she asks in surprise.

His reply is The Plot Against America's bottom line, which despite all the show's political missteps, sounds what it must really have felt like to be Jewish in the 1940s: "I'm a Jew because I was born a Jew, and this whole fuckin' world wishes I wasn't."

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The Plot Against America Is Not About Trump, Even If Comparisons Are Inevitable - Reason

Over 2 tons of narcotics siezed in Irans Mirjaveh – Mehr News Agency – English Version

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Irans Border Guard Commander Brigadier General Ghasem Rezaie said on Sunday that following comprehensive intelligence operations, the police border guards identified a smuggling gang near the borders of the province which was planning to transfer illegal drugs to the European countries through Mirjaveh borders.

Some 2.263 tons of illicit drugs consisting of 1.881 tons of opium and 348 kilograms of hashish, 70 kilograms morphine, 309 kilograms crystal and 15 kilograms of other types drugs have been busted during the clash between the police border guards and the gang during the operation in addition to confiscation of a large number of weapons and ammunition, he added.

The smugglers fled to the highlands of the area using the darkness of the night, he said.

Based on the United Nations reports, Afghanistan ranks first as the producer of opium and heroin in the world. Iran, being Afghanistan's neighbor, has always been the main route for smuggling narcotics to the Western world.

The Islamic Republic has been actively fighting drug-trafficking over the past three decades, despite its high economic and human costs. The war on drug trade originating from Afghanistan has claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Iranian police officers over the past four decades. The country has spent more than hundreds of millions of dollars on sealing its borders and preventing the transit of narcotics destined for European, Arab and Central Asian countries.

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Over 2 tons of narcotics siezed in Irans Mirjaveh - Mehr News Agency - English Version

TV tonight: our highlights for Monday 16th March – What’s On TV

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Neighbours celebrates its 35th birthday with a run of special shows

Believe it or not Neighbours is 35 years old. Plus: big heart-in-mouth moments in Liar and intriguing documentary Miss World 1970! Heres what you shouldnt miss on TV tonight.

Our expert TV journalists have picked the best things on tv tonight

Amanda takes the lead in For You, one of a trilogy of shorts

Celebrating short films made by up and coming writers and directors, the On the Edge season returns with a trilogy of stand-alone films. Each tells a very different tale, but all three focus on young people trying to find their place in the world. It begins with BBW, a heart-warming tale of a plus-sized young black woman whos feeling the pressure to be something she isnt. For You is a touching film starring Amanda Redman, about couple Rev and Alex who are trying to negotiate her familys racism and mental health prejudice. Finally, Adulting sees a vulnerable but determined young woman taken advantage of by a group of drug dealers. Three powerful films, givingvoices to those not often heard. JL

And heres to the next 35 years!

To celebrate 35 years of the iconic Aussie soap, theres an extra special late-night edition of Neighbours on every night this week. It focuses on Ellys 35th birthday party at an abandoned island, which turns out to be the perfect place for bad-boy Finn to take his revenge. As the group relaxes on their idyllic island getaway, Finn finds an abandoned old mine, which comes in handy when you have a girlfriend you need to get rid of! With storms and venomous snakes thrown into the mix, at least three of the partygoers wont make it back to the mainland. Think late-night Hollyoaks but with added sunshine. Continues tomorrow. JL

Teamwork: Winnie and Laura

Although shifty behaviour is abundant in Liar, weve been particularly intrigued by nurse Winnie Peterson and her husband Carl. This week, we learn more about the enigmatic couple as Carl goes AWOL following the boatyard fire. As if Laura didnt have enough on her plate trying to deal with the dogged persistence of DI Renton, worried Winnie calls on her for support. But when the pair use some nifty sleuthing skills to try to locate Carl, could he help prove Lauras innocence? With several big heart-in-the-mouth scenes this episode, and some nuggets of intrigue, we cant wait for next week! CC

To coincide with the film release of Misbehaviour, a fictionalised retelling of the events surrounding the turbulent 1970 Miss World competition. Theres no sign of stars Kiera Knightley and Jessie Buckley in this documentary, of course, which looks at how the Womens Lib demonstration at the 1970s pageant at the Royal Albert Hall made headline news and marked a game-changing moment in history. With contributions from those involved, including Michael Aspel. MC

The truth and nothing but the truth: Judge Rinder

Judge Rinder returns with the daily daytime show looking at some of the UKs most high profile cases. He begins with the suspected murder of Claudia Lawrence who went missing in March 2009. A chef in York, this popular young woman suddenly vanished and despite a huge police effort, including multiple arrests, no one has been charged and her desperate family still dont know what happened. JL

Mark Addy in the episode Man of Steel

Mark Addy shows his impressive versatility as he portrays an ex-rugby pro with a secret in episode three, series 11 of Jimmy McGoverns compelling drama.

Emily Blunt as Kate Macer, a cop in way over her head

Emily Blunt delivers a brilliant performance as a doggedly upright yet all too vulnerable FBI agent whose eyes are opened to the murky realities of the war on drugs in this queasily gripping thriller. She joins a government task force led by Josh Brolins deceptively laid-back, flip-flop-wearing agent, blurring ethical lines as they criss-cross the US-Mexico border. The films pervading sense of dread and unease keeps us on edge throughout.

Dont miss Neighbours Late on TV tonight 35 years of the Australian institution has got to be worth celebrating!

Not found anything you want to watch on TV tonight? Check out our tv guide.

Happy viewing!

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TV tonight: our highlights for Monday 16th March - What's On TV

Nootropics Brain Supplements Market Size Detailed Analysis of Current Industry Figures with Forecasts Growth By 2024 – 3rd Watch News

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Global Nootropics Brain Supplements MarketThis research report provides detailed study accumulated to offer Latest insights about acute features of the Nootropics Brain Supplements Market. The report contains different market predictions related to market size, revenue, production, CAGR, Consumption, gross margin, price, and other substantial factors. While emphasizing the key driving and restraining forces for this market, the report also offers a complete study of the future trends and developments of the market. It also examines the role of the leading market players involved in the industry including their corporate overview, financial summary and SWOT analysis.It presents the 360-degree overview of the competitive landscape of the industries. Nootropics Brain Supplements Market is showing steady growthand CAGR is expected to improve during the forecast period.

Manufacturer DetailNOOESISExcelerolZhou NutritionNeurofuseLFI LabsOpti-Nutra LTD.OnnitSynergyCognetix LabsAlternaScriptNootrostaxNeurohacker CollectiveMind Lab ProCILTEPNoofluxEVO-X

Product Type SegmentationPillsLiquidCapsuleOther

Industry SegmentationStudentsAthletesOlder AdultsOthers

Global Nootropics Brain Supplements Market report provides you with detailed insights, industry knowledge, market forecasts and analytics. The report on the global Nootropics Brain Supplements industry also clarifies economic risks and environmental compliance. Global Nootropics Brain Supplements market report assists industry enthusiasts including investors and decision makers to make confident capital investments, develop strategies, optimize their business portfolio, innovate successfully and perform safely and sustainably.

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Nootropics Brain Supplements Market Size Detailed Analysis of Current Industry Figures with Forecasts Growth By 2024 - 3rd Watch News

How The Rich Are Protecting Themselves Against Coronavirus – Forbes

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AFP via Getty Images

Money cannot by immunity, but it can help stave it off. Here's how some are spending to both avoid and protect themselves against coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Lanserhof, a private medical facility at London's Arts Club, a private members club, has seen an 18% jump in the number of inquiries for its Immune Plus Support Infusion. The 300 ($387) session provides an IV infusion which contains a high dose of Vitamin C, as well as "immune-boosting amino acids and also Zinc which plays a crucial role in our immune system functioning well."

Just up the road in London's West End, Club 51, a private gym-come-health club, has issued advice to its clients about how best to protect themselves against viruses. "We produced a report for all of our clients on ten things you can do that can help protect your body against viruses in general," says Jon Denoris, Club 51's founder.

Programs like these are focused on boosting the body's immune system and are not specifically tailored against COVID-19. Club 51's programs are months-long and tailor-made to each client, combining diet, sleep, exercise with supplements like nootropics.

However, Lanserhof says a healthy immune system is the best weapon to fight off any kind of virus, "be that flu, COVID-19 or simply a cold.

"Weaker immune systems are more likely to develop secondary infections such as pneumonia, and thus supporting a strong and healthy immune system through good nutrition, plenty of sleep and exercise as well as IV infusions is key."

Immunity is one thing, but avoidance of the virus is better. Here, again, those with the means are taking extra precautions.

Private jet companies have reported a surge in business since the virus outbreak. Checking-in at private jet terminals and avoiding the circulated air of commercial airliners is a safer option if you really have to travel, as many business executives say they do.

All schools have temporarily closed in Madrid, Spain, to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Avoidance can also be bought for children. Tutors International, which provides elite private tuition services, says it has seen a "massive upswing in requests" since the coronavirus virus outbreak.

"We are putting extra resources into recruiting elite educators able to provide interim private tutoring," says its CEO, Adam Caller. Many of his clients are unable to return home, and others are affected by school closures and changes to examination schedules.

A Chanel mask worn during Paris Fashion Week.

While many take to panic-buying items like toilet-paper, the wealthy have shunned shopping altogether: Luxury retail is expected to take a $33 to $44 billion hit this year as the wealthy stay away from shops. (Many will outsource the buying of essentials like toilet-paper.)

This is most acute in China, which accounts for 40% of the global luxury industry, and Italy, both a manufacturer and luxury-buying tourist hot-spot. The U.K. luxury industry has also suffered for the same reasons, says Walpole, a sector body for British luxury.

Many fear contagion in the retail space. Others see little point in buying things like fashion or jewellery if there is no opportunity to show them off. "I'm just not sure when my next ball will be," says one female financier in London.

The exception to the luxury rule is, bizarrely, fashionable face-masks. The 54 ($69) Airinum Urban Air Mask 2.0 has sold out worldwide. Shoppers are now signing up to a waiting list for these multi-layer masks that claim protection against "airborne particles as small as 0.3m."

Airinum expects to be restocked in July. In the meantime that immune system needs tending to.

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How The Rich Are Protecting Themselves Against Coronavirus - Forbes

Why the New Right Loves Nootropics – The New Republic

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A class of supplements bills itself as neuroenhancers or nootropicscompounds you dont need a prescription for that promise to augment your mental functioning without side effects. A notable subset of the people interested in these brain pillsand sometimes hawking themare on the right. Its not hard to see how todays pressures might make a person want to amplify their cognitive abilities, but is there something about the idea of chemically optimizing ones mind that meshes especially well with a conservative politics? In Episode 2 of The Politics of Everything, the Australian writer Richard Cooke joins hosts Alex Pareene and Laura Marsh to talk about vitamin regulation, the history of amphetamine usage in the arts, how nootropics fit into the tradition of right-wing snake-oil peddling, and the unmistakable influence of the movie Limitless, which celebrates a mysterious substance that vastly improves its protagonists brainpowerand spurs him to commit a murder.

Later in the episode, campaign reporter Walter Shapiro calls in from South Carolina with a dispatch on the state of the primary race and his reflections on the possibility of a contested convention.

Related Reading:

Richard Cooke wrote about nootropics and the conservative commentariat for The New Republic last fall.

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Why the New Right Loves Nootropics - The New Republic

7 Top Futurists Make Some Pretty Surprising Predictions …

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From smartphone apps that can do seemingly everything to driverless cars and eerily humanlike robots, the past decade has seen dramatic advances in science and technology. What amazing advances are we likely to see in the next 10 years?

To find out, HuffPost Science reached out to seven top futurists -- and they gave us some pretty surprising predictions. Keep reading to learn more.

Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York and author of "The Future of the Mind:"

"In the next 10 years, we will see the gradual transition from an Internet to a brain-net, in which thoughts, emotions, feelings, and memories might be transmitted instantly across the planet.

Scientists can now hook the brain to a computer and begin to decode some of our memories and thoughts. This might eventually revolutionize communication and even entertainment. The movies of the future will be able to convey emotions and feelings, not just images on a silver screen. (Teenagers will go crazy on social media, sending memories and sensations from their senior prom, their first date, etc.). Historians and writers will be able to record events not just digitally, but also emotionally as well.

Perhaps even tensions between people will diminish, as people begin to feel and experience the pain of others."

Dr. Ray Kurzweil, inventor, pioneering computer scientist, and director of engineering at Google:

"By 2025, 3D printers will print clothing at very low cost. There will be many free open source designs, but people will still spend money to download clothing files from the latest hot designer just as people spend money today for eBooks, music and movies despite all of the free material available. 3D printers will print human organs using modified stem cells with the patient's own DNA providing an inexhaustible supply of organs and no rejection issues. We will be also able to repair damaged organs with reprogrammed stem cells, for example a heart damaged from a heart attack. 3D printers will print inexpensive modules to snap together a house or an office building, lego style.

We will spend considerable time in virtual and augmented realities allowing us to visit with each other even if hundreds of miles apart. We'll even be able to touch each other.

We will spend considerable time in virtual and augmented realities allowing us to visit with each other even if hundreds of miles apart. We'll even be able to touch each other. Some of the 'people' we visit with in these new realities will be avatars. They will be compelling but not quite human level by 2025 -- that will take to the 2030s. We will be able to reprogram human biology away from many diseases and aging processes, for example deactivating cancer stem cells that are the true source of cancer, or retard the progression of atherosclerosis, the cause of heart disease.

We will be able to create avatars of people who have passed away from all of the information they have left behind (their emails and other documents, images, videos, interviews with people who remember them). These will be compelling but not fully realistic, not until the mid 2030s, so some people will find this 'replicant' technology to be in the 'uncanny valley,' that is, disconcerting."

Dr. Anne Lise Kjaer, founder of London-based trend forecasting agency Kjaer Global:

"The World Health Organization predicts that chronic diseases will account for almost three-quarters of all deaths worldwide by 2020, so the evolution of M-Health (mobile diagnostics, bio-feedback and personal monitoring) is set to revolutionize treatment of conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Apps designed by medical professionals will provide efficient real-time feedback, tackle chronic conditions at a much earlier stage, and help to improve the lifestyles and life outcomes of communities in the developed and developing world.

This improvement to our physical well-being is exciting, but what excites me even more is the parallel development of apps that meet our under-served mental health needs."

Dr. James Canton, CEO of the San Francisco-based Institute for Global Futures and author of "Future Smart: Managing the Game-Changing Trends that will Transform Your World:"

"Wearable mobile devices will blanket the world. By 2025, there will be a massive Internet of everyone and everything linking every nation, community, company and person to all of the world's knowledge. This will accelerate real-time access to education, health care, jobs, entertainment and commerce...

Humans and robots merge, digitally and physically, to treat patients who may be around the world. Robo-surgeons will operate remotely on patients. RoboDocs will deliver babies and treat you over the cellphone.

Artificial intelligence becomes both as smart as and smarter than humans. AI will be embedded in autos, robots, homes and hospitals will create the AI economy. Humans and robots merge, digitally and physically, to treat patients who may be around the world. Robo-surgeons will operate remotely on patients. RoboDocs will deliver babies and treat you over the cellphone.

Predictive medicine transforms health care. Early diagnosis of disease with medical devices that sniff our breath, and free DNA sequencing that predicts our future health will be common. Personalized genetic medicine will prevent disease, saving lives and billions in lost productivity... The next generation Bitcoin will replace traditional hard money, creating a new paradigm for digital commerce and business that will create a legitimate new economy."

Jason Silva, host of National Geographic Channel's "Brain Games:"

"The on-demand revolution will become the on-demand world, where biological software upgrades, personalized medicine, artificially intelligent assistants will increasingly transform healthcare and well-being. Additionally, increased automation will continue to make our day-to-day lives infinitely richer. Self-driving cars will be ubiquitous, transportation itself will be automatic, clean, and cheap. We will move into a world in which access trumps ownership and the world is at our fingertips."

Dr. Amy Zalman, CEO & president of the World Future Society:

"Researchers now have at their disposal increasingly acute ways of looking into our brains and bodies to understand our attitudes and behavior. A few years ago, Harvard researchers showed that leaders actually have less stress, not more, than non-leaders... At Ben-Gurion University, a study of judges showed that they handed out stricter judgements before lunch -- when they were hungriest.

I find the potential application of these kinds of insights awe-inspiring. A more accurate understanding of how we humans function -- how we trust, cooperate and learn but also fight and hate -- is a tool that public policy-makers and we citizens can use to build better governance and better futures."

Mark Stevenson, author of "An Optimist's Tour of the Future:"

"The technologies arent the most important bit -- although they are super cool. Its what society does with them, and right now its institutional change thats the sticking point. What you really want to look at, in my opinion, is new ways of organizing ourselves. So, my next book covers, for instance, the renewables revolution in a small Austrian town, open source drug discovery in India, patient networks like PatientsLikeMe and schools that are throwing out the curriculum in order to get on with some actual learning."

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7 Top Futurists Make Some Pretty Surprising Predictions ...

How to Think Like a Futurist – MIT Technology Review

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Futurist and business consultant Amy Webb says that by asking the right questions, just about anyone can do what she does: separate real trends from hype and glean the paths that technologies will take. In her recently released book, The Signals Are Talking: Why Todays Fringe Is Tomorrows Mainstream, Webb shares some of her methods for analyzing the impact of innovations. She spoke to MIT Technology Reviews executive editor, Brian Bergstein, in an interview that Insider Premium subscribers can listen to here. Highlights condensed for clarity follow.

Why did you write this book? People pay you and your consulting firm for insights into the future. Arent you giving away some secrets?

My goal is to democratize the skills of a futurist, so that more and more people have the ability to see around corners. I just think its so important. Because Im concerned about the direction that were headed in.

Im not concerned in the conventional way; Im not one of those people who believes that artificially intelligent robots are going to take all our jobs and destroy humanity. The concern that I have is that technology is becoming more and more fantastical and politicized. And in the process, we fetishize the future rather than [having] the more boring conversations that are just as important.

What do you mean when you say we fetishize the future?

Ive gone back and looked at spikes in innovation. Theres a cycle that follows each one of those innovation spikes. If you track all the way back to the invention of the light bulb, you have this sudden introduction in newspapers and people get very excited. The story goes in a weird direction from there. That was the birth of modern science fiction. Theres this sudden interest in what is fantastical versus what is realistic. Weve seen that happen with the introduction of [artificial] light, with cars, with the Internet. Now as we stand on the precipice of AI, the same things happening again. I see the word futurist in many more Twitter bios than I ever have before. Were all really excited about it, but I dont see very many people working in a diligent, methodical way on thinking through the implications.

Lets talk about how you sort through the implications of technologies. In your book you say you look at trends in seemingly unrelated fields that could converge.

I was just at IBMs T.J. Watson Center, where all the research scientists are based, talking to them about artificial intelligence. They live, breathe, eat, sleep AI. One of the challenges with working in such a rarified field is that at some point, in order to do your job well, you have to block out all of the distraction and noise from other spaces. You sort of acclimate yourself to not paying attention to how the work that youre doing may impact other fields. Youre just trying to get the next part of your experiment or the next part of your research pushed forward. Therefore, you dont want to waste any time thinking about how this line of code or this outcome may impact health or geopolitics or whatever it might be.

[But] it is that kind of thinking thats so imperative because in the absence of [it], you wind up with what we saw in March when Microsoft took a research project that it had from China, which was a chatbot, introduced that same chatbot here in the United States on Twitter, and within 24 hours it went on a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic rampage. That was Tay.AI.

Its not like no one couldve seen that coming.

Yes. They shouldve seen that coming.

To find trends that might converge, you say you look for signals on the fringe, beyond the usual things that get covered in the technology press. Fair enough, but how can all of us look on the fringes?

Its not like theres a singular source where you would go to find the unusual suspects at the fringe. Instead, its a series of guiding questions. Pick a topic and then say, Okay. Who do I know of thats been working directly and indirectly in this space? Maybe try to figure out, Well, whos funding this work? Whos encouraging experimentation? I always find it fascinating to go on Iarpas website. They publicly post their RFPs. Thatll give you a window into the kinds of things that theyre thinking about. Who might be directly impacted if this technology succeeds one way or the other? Who could be incentivized to work against any change? Because they stand to gain something, they stand to lose something, who might see this technology as just the starting-off point for something else? Start asking those questions.

One of the chapters in the book goes through bio-hackers. There are these bio-hacking communities all over the place, and theyre doing all kinds of experimentation, whether thats injecting RFID tags under their skin or any other number of things. A lot of people would look at those folks and laugh at them or think theyre ridiculous, but again were looking through the lens of our own present reality without thinking about, Where are we headed?

Whats one of your favorite predictions right now?

I think some of my favorite things that are on the horizon are interesting, promising, and also scary. One of them is smart dust. Youve actually covered this in Tech Review. Smart dust are these tiny computers that are no bigger than a grain of salt or a speck of dust. Theoretically you could, in your hand at any given time, hold 5,000 sensors. Lets say that youre holding this handful of dust and you blew it into the wind. We are going to soon be in an era when its going to be really difficult to tell if you as a person have been hacked in some way, which is breathtaking and terrifying and fantastically interesting.

While reading your book, I was thinking of Future Shock by Alvin and Heidi Toffler, published in 1970. The book argued that the modern world stresses and disorients people by creating more change than we can handle in a short period of time. Is that right?

Unfortunately, I think thats still very true in the year 2016. My goal with the book and my goal in general is to break that cycle of continual surprise and shock.

If theres a way to make the future a little less exciting and a little bit more boring, thats good for everybody because that means that were not continually shocked by new ideas, that were not continually discounting people on the fringe.

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How to Think Like a Futurist - MIT Technology Review