facility:university of oklahoma

Nation’s first opioid trial could set precedent for massive pharma payouts - POLITICO
▻https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/28/opioid-trial-pharma-payouts-1344953

https://static.politico.com/b5/2e/ce1c959743538eb72c4a15f530e6/190405-pills-ap-773.jpg

The Oklahoma trial, which will be broadcast online, is expected to last for much of the summer, putting a national spotlight on the opioid crisis, which is still killing 130 people in the United States every day. The testimony will focus on how much manufacturers of highly addictive painkillers are to blame for getting patients hooked on opioids through misleading medical claims and aggressive marketing practices.

The trial involving Johnson & Johnson will be closely watched by the hundreds of parties participating in the larger multi-district litigation overseen by U.S. District Court Judge Dan Polster, who has been pushing for a massive settlement before the first of those cases go to trial in the fall.

“It’s going to be one of the first times that there will be evidence presented in an open forum about how we got to where we are,” said Joe Rice, co-lead counsel in the federal litigation targeting drugmakers and distributors in Ohio. “That’s a big question that a lot of people in the health community want to know. … Why and how did we get here?”

On Sunday, Oklahoma also announced an $85 million settlement with Teva. That left Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals as the sole remaining defendant, barring a last-minute settlement.

Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family, settled with Oklahoma for $270 million in March, which some state lawmakers and public health experts condemned as too meager. The biggest chunk of that settlement, $200 million, will be used to establish a new addiction treatment center at the University of Oklahoma. Another $60 million will be paid to attorneys involved in the case, and just $12 million will filter down to cities and towns struggling to deal with the addiction epidemic.

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter stressed that the settlement was the best option because of the threat that Purdue would declare bankruptcy and the state might end up with nothing. But that means Oklahoma’s attorneys will have to make the potentially trickier case that other, less notorious players in the opioid pipeline created a “public nuisance” in the state by pushing misleading medical claims.

#Opioides #Oklahoma #Sackler

Syria Comment » Archives Harakat al-Hawiya al-Arabiya al-Druziya: Defending Druze Identity in Suwayda’ - Syria Comment
▻http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/harakat-al-hawiya-al-arabiya-al-druziya-defending-druze-identity-in-su

By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

Although the Druze originate from a sect within Shi’i Islam, the religious movement evolved over time such that the Druze identity is deemed separate from that of the Shi’a. The same has been true of the Alawites, though as is well known, a number of efforts have been made in the recent past to bring the Alawites into the fold of mainstream Shi’i Islam, such as Musa Sadr’s fatwa in 1974 that recognized the Alawites as Shi’a- a trend of identification strengthened by the post-1979 alliance between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Assad dynasty. More recently, extensive Iranian and pro-Iranian Shi’a militia involvement on the ground in the Syrian civil war has given rise to claims of further Shi’ification trends targeting the Alawite community in particular, such as the opening of husseiniyas (Shi’i centres) in the Damascus and Latakia areas.

Less well known is that allegations of Shi’ification efforts also exist with respect to the Druze community in Syria. It seems that primarily in response to these developments has come the emergence of the Harakat al-Hawiya al-Arabiya al-Druziya (“The Arab Druze Identity Movement”), also known as the Harakat al-Difa’ ‘an al-Hawiya al-Druziya (“The Movement to Defend Druze Identity”), which first appears to have come on the scene in late 2015 (c. October 2015). Ethnically speaking, the ‘Arab’ aspect has long been a strong component of Druze identity.

Unsurprisingly, given the context in which this movement has emerged, it is highly critical of the regime and those associated with it. However, it is also consistent in its opposition to attempts to alter Druze identity (real and perceived), and so has also drawn attention (approvingly quoting independent Druze opposition activist-in-exile Maher Sharf al-Din) to the treatment of the Druze in Jabal al-Summaq in Idlib at the hands of Jabhat al-Nusra, which has not only implemented forced conversions to Sunni Islam but has also confiscated property of those from the area who fled to/live in regime-held areas and are thought to work with the regime, while altering the demographics with an influx of Turkmen people. This contrasts with the reluctance of anti-regime Druze in Lebanon associated with Walid Jumblatt to admit these realities, playing up instead the false idea that some kind of agreement to protect the Druze was reached with Jabhat al-Nusra (a falsehood recently repeated by Fabrice Balanche).

Syria Comment
AUTHOR

Joshua Landis
Director: Center
for Middle East Studies
and Associate Professor,
University of Oklahoma
405-819-7955
Email: Landis@ou.edu Follow @joshua_landis

Co-Editor: Matthew Barber - University of Chicago
Email: SCmoderation@mail.com
Follow @Matthew__Barber

Après l’impossible « liste noire » des rebelles terroristes confiée à la Jordanie, l’impossible « liste blanche » des rebelles non-terroristes demandée à Fabius par Poutine, aujourd’hui les 70.000 « modérés » de Cameron déjà réduits à 40.000 en quelques heures :
▻http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/01/cameron-has-failed-to-justify-syria-airstrikes-mps-committee-says

Lt Gen Gordon Messenger, the deputy chief of the defence staff, told the defence select committee that national security concerns meant he could not say whether any of the 70,000 fighters were members of the Islamic Front and Ahrar ash-Sham.

[…]

Messenger told the committee: “I can’t get into detail because of the level of classification of this briefing. What I can say is there is a spectrum of extremism.”

[…]

Later, Louise Haigh, the shadow minister for civil service reform, said the government’s national security adviser Mark Lyall Grant had told MPs at a briefing that 40,000 of the forces were radical Islamists. Haigh tweeted: “National Security Adviser confirms number of moderates on ground in Syria is 40,000 rest are much more radical Islamists.”

The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب : Take Two : How New York Times justified the placement of Alawite civilians in cages to be used as human shields
▻http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2015/11/take-two-how-new-york-times-justified.html

Take Two: How New York Times justified the placement of Alawite civilians in cages to be used as human shields
1) Typical of the New York Times: Alawite sect is always referred to as “Bashshar Al-Asad’s sect”, as if he is its prophet or as if he owns it. This is bigotry in the extreme and has provided justification and jubilation for war crimes by Syrian rebels. It would be disgusting anti-Semitism if one were to refer to Judaism as “the religion of Ariel Sharon” or to refer to Islam as “the religion of ISIS”.
2) Like the HRW statement (see below) the article immediately gives readers justification of the cage war crime: “Two days after Syrian government forces shelled a rebel-held suburb of the capital, Damascus, killing at least 40 people in a market”. That is it: the reader is immediately persuaded to sympathize with the war crimes of the rebel by telling them that the Syrian regime started this. Notice that New York Times has been doing this constantly and it is a propaganda service that the New York Times has never rendered except to Israeli occupation forces. You will look in vain to find any reference to a war crime by the regime in which a sentence is inserted to remind readers of a war crime by Syrian rebels.
3) Instead of condemning the act, the article in fact makes an effort to blatantly justifiies it and does not even refer to its practice as human shields: “apparently to shield the area from further bombardment”.
4) Wait: how were they able to capture “army officers” with their families? The officers were on the battle fields with their families? “the prisoners were captured army officers from President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect and their families.” Another desperate attempt to provide justifications.
5) Joshua Landis is wrong: it is not uncommon for Syrian rebels to impose Sunni-style veiling on Alawite women: “Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, suggested that some of the women appeared to be Sunni Muslims.”
6) The NYT even tries to present the leader of the group which committed those war crimes in a positive light: “The Army of Islam, a group with financial backing from Saudi Arabia, is led by Zahran Alloush, a Sunni commander who seemed to back away from sectarian anti-Alawite statements in an interview with an American journalist, Roy Gutman, in May.” That is all what it takes for NYT to be convinced that he is no more anti-Alawite? I am sure that Times would have been impressed with Ribbentrop statements in Nuremberg as well.
7) Obama’s administration is in contact with this war criminal: “Mr. Alloush, who said his faction had been in direct contact with Daniel Rubinstein, the Obama administration’s special envoy for Syria”.
8) Another attempt by Alewives to justify indiscriminate war crimes against all Alawites: “Alawites from the Assad family have ruled Syria for decades, even though most Syrians are Sunnis.” Imagine how the NYT would be outraged if an Arab were to insert a statement about the murder of Jews by Palestinians to the effect that: “Jews have ruled Palestine since 1948”: such a reference would be categorized as anti-Semitism in a sentence about violence.
9) Another justification in the same article for the cage war crime: “The rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta has been under intense bombardment since the insurgents managed to block the main northern entrance to Damascus”.
10) They managed to even Skyped with someone to give them another justification: ““It’s to protect the civilians,” Bilal Abu Salah, a media activist from Douma, said in a Skype interview on Sunday.” And by referring to this supporter of war crimes as “media activists” they only lend his voice credibility.
11) Then a medication justification for the cage war crime: “A paramedic from Douma who asked to be identified only by his first name, Ahmad, said the casualties of the recent strikes there “were women and kids mostly.””
12) Another justification: “said the Sunni Islamist group had copied the strategy of using “kidnapped people — including whole families — as human shields,” seen earlier in Alawite-majority towns seeking to deter shelling by insurgents.” Where did the Times correspondent see that in Alawite-majority towns? Why not name them and provide readers with pictures?

Excellente analyse de texte, en en l’occurrence un article du NYT, par Angry Arab. Pas suffisant malheureusement pour convaincre ceux qui s’obstinent encore à applaudir à la révolution syrienne.

#syrie

Joshua Landis estime que 60 à 80% des armes livrées par les États-Unis en Syrie ont terminé dans les mains d’Al Qaeda et ses affiliés.

Officials : CIA-backed Syrian rebels under Russian blitz
▻http://bigstory.ap.org/article/dfe1547ba36f4f968deee227d467dc08/officials-russian-bombs-cia-rebels-had-syrian-gains

For years, the CIA effort had foundered — so much so that over the summer, some in Congress proposed cutting its budget. Some CIA-supported rebels had been captured; others had defected to extremist groups. The secret CIA program is the only way the U.S. is taking on Assad militarily. In public, the United States has focused its efforts on fighting IS and urging Assad to leave office voluntarily.

“Probably 60 to 80 percent of the arms that America shoveled in have gone to al-Qaida and its affiliates,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.