Nostalgy for an America that is No More

Pinkwashing Homonazism

"Cosas veredes, Sancho... " quote Don Quixote. You will see things...  never imagined things. Israel is being accused of promoting Gay Parades, etc. to pinkwash itself, to be seen as a liberal society, hospitable and friendly to everyone. To make a contrast with the surrounding Islamist societies, where women are kidnapped and sold as sex slaves and gays are thrown down from tall buildings (remember the Islamic State?).

What can we say? Nothing. We should not care about what our enemies say, they hate us and will turn everything on its head, we should keep doing what is right.

Personally I am tolerant of homosexuals, because of something that happened long time ago in Buenos Aires. A Hungarian Jewish teenager, only son of Auschwitz survivors, of my acquaintance, killed himself. For being different. Better have him dressed as a prostitute and star in a parade.   

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.