Category Archives: Profiteering

A Huge Overnight Increase in a Drug’s Price Raises Protests – The New York Times

Worst kind of greed – bleeding sick people –

Daraprim, which is also used to treat malaria, was approved by the F.D.A. in 1953 and has long been made by GlaxoSmithKline. Glaxo sold United States marketing rights in 2010 to CorePharma. Last year, Impax Laboratories agreed to buy Core and affiliated companies for $700 million. In August, Impax sold Daraprim to Turing for $55 million, a deal announced the same day Turing said it had raised $90 million from Mr. Shkreli and other investors in its first round of financing.Daraprim cost only about $1 per tablet several years ago, but went up sharply after CorePharma acquired it. According to IMS Health, which tracks prescriptions, sales of the drug jumped to $6.3 million in 2011 from $667,000 in 2010, even as prescriptions held steady at about 12,700. In 2014, after further price increases, sales were $9.9 million, as the number of prescriptions shrank to 8,821. The figures do not include inpatient use in hospitals.Turing’s price increase could bring sales to tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year if use remains constant. Medicaid and certain hospitals will be able to get the drug inexpensively under federal rules for discounts and rebates. But private insurers, Medicare and hospitalized patients would have to pay closer to the list price.

Source: A Huge Overnight Increase in a Drug’s Price Raises Protests – The New York Times

Countries Using Child Soldiers Join UK Arms Fair

Credit: Stop the Arms FairBy a Global Information Network correspondentLONDON, Sep 15 2015 (IPS)Human rights and citizen activist groups are criticizing one of the world’s largest arms bazaars, which opened at London’s Docklands Tuesday.Participants in what is officially known as the Defense and Security International (DSEI) include 61 countries that violate human rights, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Angola and Algeria. According to the website, some 30,000 visitors are expected.More than 1,500 companies will exhibit their military wares, including the U.S. and UK giants Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and BAE Systems. Forty foreign governments will have pavilions. Sponsors and co-sponsors of the event include Turkey, South Africa, Northrup Grumman and Hewlett Packard.The four-day fair has drawn furious debate between human rights activists and those who say the arms industry provides thousands of jobs and valuable exports.Citizen activist groups using Twitter and other social media have jumped into action to condemn the fair. Traders at previous arms fairs, they note, have been able to buy and sell equipment used for torture including electric shock stun guns and batons, leg-irons, and belly-, body- and gang-chains. There has also been a range of illegal cluster-munition weaponry advertised at the fair.Nine, companies which have attended the DSEI fair between 2005 and 2013, have breached UK law, according to human rights campaigner Amnesty International.This year’s DSEI comes as the UK government ramps up its effort to sell weapons to countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, by far its most lucrative single arms market.Ryvka Barnard, senior military and security campaigner for the activist group War on Want, took issue with organizers giving Israel a national pavilion where Israeli arms companies exhibit ‘battle tested’ military technology used on Palestinians.The UK headquarters of Amnesty also spoke up: “In the past, torture equipment has been on offer right on our doorstep. Things like illegal leg irons and electric-shock batons have been shamelessly advertised and it’s blindingly obvious the law needs tightening up.“We need strengthened laws – and crucially we need proper enforcement – to stop Britain being used as a showroom for torturers to advertise their disgusting wares…” the group said.Groups organizing on Twitter against arms sales include Stop the Arms Fair!, Stop DSEI, Pax Christi and the Campaign Against Arms Trade, among others.

Source: Countries Using Child Soldiers Join UK Arms Fair

Lawmakers to Report Speaker to Ethics Council Over Trump Stunt | Jakarta Globe

Several members of Indonesia’s House of Representatives say they will report the speaker and a deputy speaker to the House’s Ethics Council over a controversial appearance the two made at a campaign event for US billionaire Donald Trump.House Speaker Setya Novanto and Fadli Zon, one of his deputies, appeared at a press conference in New York last week held by Trump, who wants to run for president of the United States.

Source: Lawmakers to Report Speaker to Ethics Council Over Trump Stunt | Jakarta Globe

Senator McCain to Photograph Seeker Holding “Protect Oak Flat” Sign: “Get Out of Here, Now!”

“I LISTENED TO THE MANY LEADERS THAT SPOKE. AFTER MR. MCCAIN SPOKE I APPROACHED HIM AND I ASKED FOR A PHOTO. THEN WHEN I SHOOK HIS HAND, I IMMEDIATELY PULLED OUT MY ‘PROTECT OAK FLAT’ CARD. WHEN HE SAW THE CARD HE SAID, ‘GET OUT OF HERE, NOW!’” TSINIGINE TOLD NATIVE NEWS ONLINE.

As he walked away from Senator McCain (R-Arizona), Tsinigine thought about how disrespectful the senator was to him and his Apache relatives.

McCain is the U.S. senator who pushed for the land exchange of Oak Flat, a land held sacred by Apaches and other American Indians, that was tucked into last December’s $585 billion National Defense Authorization Act of 2015 that was passed by Congress.

“I respect Mr. McCain for his service in the war and the sacrifices he has made for us all, but I have no respect for him as a senator in the state of Arizona,” Tsinigine continued.

via Senator McCain to Photograph Seeker Holding “Protect Oak Flat” Sign: “Get Out of Here, Now!”.

Dubai (ROTFLOL) to build world’s largest indoor ski resort as part of Meydan City project | World news | The Guardian

Dubai to build world's largest indoor ski resort as part of Meydan City project | World news | The Guardian

(The added cost of your gasoline this summer is paying for this!) Dubai, the Gulf emirate known for extravagant projects and scorching temperatures, has announced it will build the world’s largest indoor ski resort, with a 1.2-kilometre run.

Dubai’s current indoor ski resort, opened in 2005 in the Mall of the Emirates, remains the largest in the world, according to the Guinness World Records website, boasting a 400-metre slope.

The slope runs year-round despite summer temperatures in Dubai that can top 45C (113F).

The new covered ski resort comes as part of a scheme dubbed Meydan One, also to include the world’s tallest residential tower at 711metres (2,333ft), a dancing fountain sweeping up to 420m (1,378ft), a vast shopping centre, 350-room hotel and marina, according to a government statement.

via Dubai to build world’s largest indoor ski resort as part of Meydan City project | World news | The Guardian.

British landlords ordered to evict illegal migrants under a new measure | News | DW.COM | 03.08.2015

{Election is over Bozo! Time to pay back your backbench racists?} Morgan Johansson, Sweden’s justice and immigration minister, accused Cameron and his government of “playing politics” in the wake of the Calais crisis.

People fleeing war and poverty in North Africa and the Middle East are seeking refuge in European countries, with most of the people turning up on the shores of Italy and Greece or being rescued at sea. Some 40,000 Syrian and Eritrean asylum seekers are currently camped in Italy and Greece, whereas another 20,000 are outside the EU.

via British landlords ordered to evict illegal migrants under a new measure | News | DW.COM | 03.08.2015.

The Scandal in Malaysia | DQ-en

It does not take authoritarian autocracy to run a country into the ground. Regardless of system of government, it takes only political elites out of touch with their people, a co-opted judiciary, an electoral process that even while open fails to surface progressive leadership, and a system that keeps to the law but fails to protect those speaking truth to power.

via The Scandal in Malaysia | DQ-en.

Bird Flu Cost the US $3.3 Billion and Worse Could Be Coming – Phenomena: Germination

As I reported earlier, animal-health authorities suspected—and virus analysis is now confirming—that while the flu was originally brought to the US by wild birds migrating down from Canada, most of the spread within the US was due to people and vehicles inadvertently carrying the virus from farm to farm.

via Bird Flu Cost the US $3.3 Billion and Worse Could Be Coming – Phenomena: Germination.

“Maryn is an excellent reporter and researcher. I think she will find or has already found and will report soon that if some wild birds were involved in the transmission of avian influenza, they most likely acquired it from domestic industrial flocks in China, Korea. Wherever industrial poultry is practised across the globe, this flu is developing, mutating in the industrial settings and being transmitted more by commerce, than migrating birds that come in contact with infected industrial birds.”

That China’s Stockmarket Is Not A Market Cuts Both Ways | DQ-en

This is not to say that dangers don’t lie ahead for China’s continuing economic transformation, nor that everything is currently healthy and balanced in the world’s second largest economy. China remains a developing nation faced with massive challenges. And, beyond that, China realises that all advanced economies eventually come to rely on their stockmarkets to power economic growth and that these economies learn to live with that market’s vicissitudes. As long ago as 1966 Paul Samuelson had famously quipped that Wall Street predicted 9 of the last five recessions in the US. China will have to resign itself to that kind of behaviour too, or come up with some alternative formula for finance and economic performance.

But all in all, this most recent China stockmarket experience is just a fluctuation that, both in its wider implications and in the cold light of recent historical experience, registers to be far from dramatic.

via That China’s Stockmarket Is Not A Market Cuts Both Ways | DQ-en.