Guilty of Conspiring to Fuel Sales

A federal jury in Boston found the company’s top executives, including the founder, John Kapoor, guilty of conspiring to fuel sales of the drug, Subsys, by bribing doctors and misleading insurance companies.

This accusation against a Pharm company, for selling Phentasomething an opioid painkiller, a totally legal and FDA approved medicine, is something new. The company, Insys Therapeutics, agreed to pay 225 million dollars as forfeiture and other kinds of extraordinary tax. In other legal actions, TEVA agreed to pay eighty million dollars and the "toxic" Sacklers are begging for bankruptcy. The Sackler brothers are one of the most generous philanthropists, but giving out money for museums and medical schools did no good to them.

The future of pharm companies, and of large corporations in general, seems difficult. TEVA is being sued for manufacturing cheap and good medicines and for "fueling sales" in many States. That in addition to the very difficult problem of mountainous debts. Maybe the low valuation of the company is justified. I did not sell TEVA shares, it was a mistake. 

Fakenews: Was there any massacre in Tian An Men?

I remember the pictures of the Peking student demonstration carrying a giant Styrofoam statue of the Goddess of Democracy. There were few mentions of shooting students, the "massacre" meme appeared years later. Today, when the relations between China and the USA are tense, the Western press speaks non-stop of a massacre. I do not know what really happened, a Communist dictatorship is able to erase the memory of any event including famines, purges, anything. 

Baltimore Water Blackmailed

“For nearly three weeks, Baltimore has struggled with a cyber attack by digital extortionists that has frozen thousands of computers, shut down email and disrupted real estate sales, water bills, health alerts and many other services,” according to The New York Times. “[On May 7,] City workers’ screens suddenly locked, and a message in flawed English demanded about $100,000 in Bitcoin to free their files: ‘We’ve watching you for days,’ said the message, obtained by The Baltimore Sun. ‘We won’t talk more, all we know is MONEY! Hurry up!’”

“To be clear, the hostage is not a person. It’s data,” KPCW reported. “That data ranges from legislative bills to online payments for water and parking tickets.”

If what has been kidnapped and made inaccessible is data, how is that Baltimore has no backup? Apparently, the quality of municipal governance has declined in the USA. 

Your Brothers' Blood Cries Out To Me From the Earth (Kiev)

Looks like a good year

Looking back in this first half of the year 2019 I see it was good. I took a three-week vacation on City Island, Bronx, a very quiet and friendly neighborhood, with excellent air from the Atlantic Ocean. I had the best company I could ask, my little daughter and her fiance. Then my third daughter is expecting a baby girl, and I heard that the family is expanding in other continents too. The stock exchange produced several disappointments, like NVidia, TEVA, Bezeq, Tower, Mirland, and so. The losses were made up by other plays. These last weeks I was being harassed by my Clients because I was not keeping my schedules, but took courage and resigned three projects and returned the retainer. The University of Ariel has grown enormously and it is now a regular bureaucratic mass institution far different from the small, penniless, struggling, "illegal", boycotted settler initiative in "Occupied Territories" it was when I joined it. Probably this is my last semester there. 

All in all, the year started well.  

The Second Cold War

The trade war between the USA and China seems to be evolving to the formation of trade blocks, and then, Cold War blocks. China tried to prevent this development by its Belt initiative, building trade entrepots all over the world, but in the new world situation, we have to see if it can be operated.

An article referred to by Marginal Revolution blog maintains that Chairman Xi has recognized that China's aggressive and triumphalist policy was a mistake and now have to retreat in a Long March. We survived a bad Cold War already, we shall survive this too. Not me personally, but the Jewish nation. While friends of China, we are with the USA. (The ill. is from a Singapore paper, it is misleading). 

Paralysis in Israel

There is no government in Israel, and the bureaucrats are left unchained. They are the only ones that feel safe in their Olympus, they are like angry Zeus watching the human ants and feeling whom to strike down next. The bureaucrats in their airconditioned offices are privileged Whites while my Clients are mostly worthy Mizrahi people just out of the ghetto trying to realize their dream of an independent business - a pizza shop, a small worker restaurant, a small sandwich business. Tomorrow I promised to help a sandwich business in Hashmonaim Street Tel Aviv, in a dark underground cave. I hate to take money from this boy, but without the temptation of lucre, I am unable to work myself up and wear out my last grey cells to think out the solution to his problem.

To solve this problem, am meditating while drinking merlot and dancing the cumbia Alla va Maritza, yo me voy tras ella...  Colombia is the new jewel of the Caribbean, Cuba is no more.