This is Islam > Gazan Mom hates Hamas; Mad little Palestinian girl, still mad but under arrest

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Gaza: Woman says Hamas top dogs drive SUVs and live in luxury

while ordinary Gazans are poor

NOV 5, 2023 1:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

Most of the billions in aid money that the world’s foremost welfare state receives goes for the jihad. The rest goes to the Hamas billionaires.

This is the first indication that support for Hamas may finally be weakening in Gaza.

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Ahed Tamimi, who said jihadis would outdo Hitler, arrested

for incitement, hailed as a hero

NOV 6, 2023 8:30 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER

In this video, note how Ahed Tamimi, then a little girl, is behaving toward the soldier, who just smiles and walks away, contrary to the myth of the IDF gleefully brutalizing children who have done nothing.

Ahed Tamimi recently published this message in Hebrew and Arabic on her Instagram page: “Our message to the settlers: (We) are waiting for you in all the cities of the West Bank, from Hebron to Jenin. We will slaughter you and you will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke. We will drink your blood and eat your skull. Come on, we’re waiting for you.” See more on Ahed Tamimi here.

Despite the hair-raising bloodlust of this, she is being hailed and lionized, and of course portrayed as an innocent victim, today.

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Big Pharma - Profits Before People's Lives

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‘Obscene to put profits before saving lives’: 9 new Big Pharma billionaires emerge

amid Covid-19 vaccine rollout

20 May, 2021 08:20

©Mike Segar / Reuters / © Igor Golovniov / Keystone Press Agency

The CEOs of Moderna and BioNTech top the list of nine individuals who became billionaires on the back of the rollout of vaccines against Covid-19, a group advocating turning vaccine receipts into a global public good has said.

Much of the scientific research that went into the creation of effective vaccines against Covid-19 was paid for by taxpayer money, but the private companies that hold monopolies on the resulting intellectual property (IP) are the ones that reap the rewards. That situation is unjust and should be changed, argues the People’s Vaccine Alliance, which is calling for the lifting of IP protections for the vaccines ahead of a G20 summit.

Validating the point is the change in the net wealth of the individuals linked to the pharmaceutical business, the group said. Forbes data updated in April shows that nine Big Pharma figures have become dollar billionaires since the beginning of the pandemic, as the stocks of vaccine manufacturers soared with the news of robust profits.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel is the richest new ‘vaccine billionaire,’ followed by Ugur Sahin, his counterpart from BioNTech. Each is now worth over $4 billion. Others on the list include three Moderna investors, the chair of a firm contracted to manufacture and package Moderna’s product, and the three co-founders of the Chinese vaccine producer CanSino Biologics.

Eight others, whose wealth had already topped the billion-dollar benchmark when the pandemic hit, have seen their wealth grow significantly. They include people linked to China’s Chongqing Zhifei Biological and Sinopharm, India’s Cadila Healthcare and the Serum Institute of India, and holders of BioNTech stock.

“These billionaires are the human face of the huge profits many pharmaceutical corporations are making from the monopoly they hold on these vaccines,” said Anna Marriott, the health policy manager at charity Oxfam, a member of the Alliance. “We need to urgently end these monopolies so that we can scale up vaccine production, drive down prices, and vaccinate the world.”

Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of another Alliance member, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, said it was “obscene that profits continue to come before saving lives,” as patent holders refused to share their technology.

Vaccine manufacturers and those like Bill Gates, who support IP protections for medicines, claim factors such as the shortage of proper production capacities in the developing world and logistical bottlenecks are holding back the global vaccination effort. Lifting patent protections won’t fix that and may make the rollout slower, not faster, they warn.

Governments are split on the proposal. South Africa and India asked for a waiver under World Trade Organization (WHO) rules, but the call was backed by dozens of poorer nations that felt they were being left behind by the better-faring countries. The effectiveness of COVAX, the WHO-endorsed vaccine-sharing mechanism meant to ensure equitable access, has been underwhelming at best, suffering from underfunding and undersupply.

The US and the EU said they were ready to consider some form of patent suspension, with the likes of Russia, France, and Spain indicating they would support such a move. Germany and the UK, on the other hand, have expressed their opposition.

The statement from the People’s Vaccine Alliance comes a day ahead of a G20 Global Health Summit, which will be held in Rome on Friday and will see pressure applied to participants defending vaccine patent protections.

If taxpayers are paying for most of the research, why do we need private pharmaceutical companies at all. Why don't governments fund universities to do the research and then share the profits with them. If it is a really expensive project, countries could team up. 

It seems absurd to pay for research and then have to pay for the vaccine and the vaccine maker's profits.

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Bad Week for Billionaires as Some of World's Richest Tangle With the Law

Corruption is Everywhere

Certainly Among the World's Richest People

Jonathon Gatehouse · CBC News 

Premchai Karnasuta arrives at court to hear the verdict against him and three other suspects at Thong Pha Phum Provincial Court in Kanchanaburi province on Tuesday in a case involving poaching at a wildlife sanctuary. The case has fuelled outrage in a country fed up with impunity and corruption. (Lillian Suwanrumpha/AFP/Getty Images)

It's rarely a bad time to be a billionaire.

In 2018, the world's richest people saw their collective fortunes grow by 12 per cent, or $2.5 billion US a day.

That's part of a long-term trend that has seen the planet's über-wealthy — the top one per cent — take home the equivalent of 27 cents of every dollar of global income growth over the past four decades, while the Earth's poorest 50 per cent got a 12-cent share.

In even starker terms, in 2016 the top 61 billionaires  had as much wealth as half of the world's population, some 3.8 billion people. And as the concentration of money rose in 2017, the number fell to 43, and then last year to just the top 26.

Yet all that wealth and power doesn't necessarily put them beyond the reach of the law.

Nirav Modi, an Indian diamond merchant worth $1.8 billion US, is currently sitting in a British jail cell after his arrest yesterday on charges of bank fraud regarding a $2 billion loan with Punjab state's National Bank.

Luxury jeweler Nirav Modi, left, and actress Naomi Watts attend a dinner to celebrate the opening of the first Nirav Modi boutique in the U.S. on Sept. 8, 2015, in New York. (Diane Bondareff/Associated Press)

The 48-year-old had fled India last June as police probed allegedly fraudulent letters of guarantee, but was spotted out and about in London's toney neighbourhoods by a newspaper reporter, then turned in by a sharp-eyed bank clerk.

Authorities in India have seized a number of properties and 11 luxury vehicles belonging to Modi, including a Porsche and a Rolls Royce, and are in the process of auctioning off a collection of 173 paintings.

He had offered to post a guarantee of $880,000 Cdn pending his extradition hearing, but the British court rejected his request for bail, with the judge noting dryly that she believed he "may have the means of escape."

Just across the Channel in France, two foreign billionaires are now facing prosecution.

Suleyman Kerimov, ranked as the world's 257th richest person with a fortune of $6.4 billion, has been indicted for tax fraud over the "suspicious" purchase of five lavish villas in the south of France.

Billionaire Suleyman Kerimov, a powerful Russian oil and metals magnate, watches a soccer match at Al Nasr Stadium in Dubai on Jan. 16, 2012. (Sergei Rasulov/AFP/Getty Images)

He had previously been on trial for money laundering in connection with the purchases, but the charges were dropped last summer. (Kerimov is also among the close to two dozen oligarchs facing U.S. sanctions over Russia's presumed interference in the 2016 presidential election.)

Now he is free on a 20-million euro ($30.26 million Cdn) bail.

The reopening of his case comes just a day after French authorities disclosed that they have arrested Belhassen Trabelsi, a Tunisian billionaire who fled Canada in 2016 to escape deportation to his homeland over accusations of corruption.

Belhassen Trabelsi sits outside the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board offices in Montreal on May 7, 2013. The elusive Tunisian billionaire disappeared from Canada as he was set to be deported to his homeland in 2016, but has resurfaced and is under arrest in France. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)

The 56-year-old, who is the brother-in-law of former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, amassed a vast fortune, including hotels, banks, media companies and a major construction firm over his relative's 23 years of rule.

His wife and four children were granted asylum in Canada, and are believed to be living in Montreal.

Meanwhile, a Thai billionaire has been sentenced to 16 months in jail on poaching charges. Premchai Karnasuta, who owns one of the country's main construction firms, was arrested by rangers in a national park in February 2018, and found to be in possession of the carcasses of several protected animals including a Kalij pheasant, a barking deer and an endangered black leopard.

Thai billionaire construction tycoon Premchai Karnasuta leaves The Thong Pha Phum Provincial Court in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, on Tuesday after being sentenced to 16 months in prison for possessing the carcass of an endangered Kajij pheasant and other rare animals. (Associated Press)

His driver and his cook, who were also arrested in the jungle, received lesser sentences.

Premchai is currently free on $17,000 Cdn bail pending an appeal.

And in the United States, Robert Kraft, the owner of the Superbowl champion New England Patriots, today rejected a plea deal that would have seen charges of receiving paid sexual acts in a Florida massage parlour dropped in exchange for a small fine and an admission of guilt.

Robert Kraft, CEO of the New England Patriots, attends the Super Bowl LIII Pregame at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Feb. 3 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

The 77-year-old Kraft is the world's 244th richest person, according to Forbes magazine, with an estimated net worth of $6.6 billion US.

It's not clear if Florida prosecutors have offered the same deal to John Childs, another Boston billionaire and major Republican donor, caught up in a related prostitution sting.

Forbes' latest billionaire ranking, released earlier this month,  lists 2,153 people with a net worth of at least $1 billion US.

Dead Billionaire Being Sued for Pharmaceutical Price-Fixing and Other Stuff

Canadian billionaire couple die in suspicious way, bodies found ‘hanging side by side next to pool'

Honey and Barry Sherman © Reuters

The owner of the Canadian pharmaceutical giant Apotex, Barry Sherman, and his wife were found dead at their home under suspicious circumstances. Reports say their bodies were “hanging side by side” next to their pool.

The bodies of Bernard Sherman, 75, also known as Barry, and his wife, Honey, 70, were found around Friday noon in their mansion in the North York district of Toronto by the police, who arrived in answer to a 911 call.

Police did not say who made the call, while the National Post reported that the bodies were initially discovered by a real estate agent, who came to the couple’s luxury mansion, which is currently up for sale.

The paper also said that the bodies were “found hanging side by side next to their indoor pool,” something that other Canadian outlets later repeated, citing police sources. Local media also said police were looking into whether it was a murder-suicide.

Meanwhile, none of these facts have been confirmed by police, who have remained tight-lipped about the case. A police detective, Brandon Price, described the deaths only as “suspicious.”

However, he also said that the police are not treating the case as homicide. The detective added that the police were still trying to “determine if there is foul play involved or not,” as reported by CBC. Later on Friday, police also issued a statement, in which it particularly pointed out that they are not looking for any suspect.

Police also said that there appeared to be no “forced entry” or any intrusion into the couple’s house. “Forensics need to be done and post-mortems on the bodies, but at this stage it appears there was no forced entry and no evidence of anybody else in the house,” a police source told the National Post.

Sherman was a successful businessman and one of the richest people in Canada. His wealth amounted to about $3 billion, according to Forbes magazine, which lists Sherman as the 12th richest Canadian businessman.

Apotex, which was founded and owned by Sherman, is one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies. It sells 260 types of generic drugs in more than 115 countries, while its medicines are used to fill over 89 million prescriptions a year in Canada alone, Forbes reports, adding that the company’s revenues account for $ 1.5 billion. It also produces non-prescription drugs, disposable plastics and fine chemicals for medical use.

Sherman had the image of someone with a happy family life. He and his wife recently welcomed a new grandchild, according to the Canadian Globe and Mail. The couple also had four children. The family was also known for its philanthropy.

The Shermans made numerous multimillion-dollar donations to hospitals, schools and charities and had buildings named in their honor. They also had close ties to the Jewish community as they donated roughly $50 million to the United Jewish Appeal - a Jewish philanthropic umbrella organization that later changed its name to the Jewish Federations of North America.

However, Sherman was also involved in several scandals. In October, his company Apotex was hit with a lawsuit filed by 45 US states and the District of Columbia. The states’ attorneys accused Apotex, along with 17 other companies and their subsidiaries, of price-fixing.

The states said the companies divided customers for their drugs among themselves, agreeing that each company would have a certain percentage of the market. The companies also agreed on price increases in advance, the states added. The price of such drugs as doxycycline hyclate skyrocketed from $20 to $1,849 in less than in a year in 2014. A total of 15 medicines were listed in the lawsuit.

For years, the family has been plagued by another scandal. In 2007, three of his cousins and the widow of the fourth filed a lawsuit against Sherman arguing that he owed them $1 billion in damages and a 20 percent stake in Apotex. Sherman acquired the company named Empire Laboratories – the predecessor of Apotex – from his uncle after the death of the latter. His uncle’s children then claimed that he should have paid them royalties over a 15-year period as well as give them a right to obtain employment through the company and a 5 percent stake in its shares.

The initial cousins’ lawsuit was dismissed by a court in 2015. It was, however, reinstated in 2016 but, in September, an Ontario court once again ruled in favor of Sherman and his cousins then appealed the decision.