Luisa M

Trade Law | Investment Arbitration | Coffee | Podcasts | Politics [any/all opinions are my own]

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

Historic decision from the Swiss FT annuls award for failure to fulfil conciliation obligation. In English via https://t.co/W77Zgh1Kro

[Lee Hepner @LeeHepner]

Before there was “hipster antitrust,”there was Courtney Love in 1999.

[Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren]

How private equity gutted local malls: Joann Fabrics, Red Lobster, Claire's, and more.

[Danny Boy @Care2much18]

Blaming the air traffic controller - and somehow linking it to 'diversity' - is incomprehensible nonsense from a man devoid of empathy.

ATC audio can be listened to by anybody, including the American president who can't be bothered to do that.

I'll go through the transcript. /1

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

@DisabledDoctor This is interesting because it seems obvious—was the inverse advice from a different era? When you would have a long-standing relationship w/ one PCP/Dr (vs practices that rotate) & a bad line on a telephone means critical info could be missed (vs modern video-based telehealth)?

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

@littleann4ever I think I would have just stayed silent but held her gaze as I shook my head no 😊

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

@zorabet_ @clhubes Wait, what? Really? What is it?

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

@clhubes My bet is they were looking for a way to get to “Goldie” which seems to be a pretty popular name at the moment

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

There you go: yet another egregious example of the now all-too familiar pattern of the US preferring to sabotage international institutions rather than accept equal treatment.

This time, they've cut funding to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) - not because it failed in its mission, but because it refused to discriminate against Chinese athletes and had the audacity to expose a major US doping cover-up. Which they of course justify in their usual Orwellian doublespeak ways as 'protecting the integrity of competition' - by defunding the very organization that caught them undermining it.

For background this is a detailed description of the case involving the Chinese athletes: https://t.co/MtTNF9Ke7x

As a summary, in late 2022 and early 2023, some Chinese athletes tested positive for trace amounts of metandienone, a prohibited substance. They were immediately suspended while the Chinese branch of WADA investigated - a stark contrast to what we now know about US practices.

The investigation - which eventually concluded it was a case of meat contamination - was remarkably thorough: they tested hundreds of meat samples and found dozens positive for the substance. Supporting this conclusion were negative tests from the athletes both before and after the positive results, negative hair tests, and negative supplement tests. After a thorough review in early 2024, WADA and other anti-doping organizations accepted this explanation and did not appeal the decision to close the cases without sanctions.

It's worth noting that similar contamination cases have occurred in several countries, including the United States itself. It's also worth noting that an independent investigation (https://t.co/F9h4DqerMj) was carried out on this case and found that WADA did not mishandle the case or show bias towards the Chinese swimmers.

After some US officials decided to instrumentalize and mischaracterize this case during the Paris Olympics after Chinese swimmers did especially well, WADA officially said in a BBC article (https://t.co/yALmaWvoeS) that this was effectively baseless discrimination: "certain individuals [in the US] are attempting to score political points purely on the basis that the athletes in question are Chinese".

The US's accusations of favorable treatment for Chinese athletes are particularly ironic given that Chinese swimmers at the Paris Olympics were tested an average of 21 times each since January 2024, compared to just 6 times for US swimmers and 4 times for Australian swimmers. They had special treatment all right: it was especially harsh!

Meanwhile WADA also revealed together with Reuters a doping scandal of enormous proportions involving US athletes: https://t.co/YS6gwltN2l

It turns out that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) concocted a scheme that "allowed athletes who had doped, to compete for years, in at least one case without ever publishing or sanctioning their anti-doping rule violations, in direct contravention of the World Anti-Doping Code and USADA's own rules". So while Chinese athletes were immediately suspended upon detection of trace amounts and thoroughly investigated, USADA was knowingly allowing doped athletes to compete without any disclosure to their competitors.

This is a direct quote of the WADA statement on this: "How must other athletes feel knowing they were competing in good faith against those who were known by USADA to have cheated? It is ironic and hypocritical that USADA cries foul when it suspects other Anti-Doping Organizations are not following the rules to the letter while it did not announce doping cases for years and allowed cheats to carry on competing, on the off chance they might help them catch other possible violators. WADA wonders if the USADA Board of Directors, which governs USADA, or U.S. Congress, which funds it, knew about this non-compliant practice that not only undermined the integrity of sporting competition but also put the co-operating athletes' security at risk."

This case perfectly encapsulates a broader pattern: when faced with fair competition and transparent oversight, the US increasingly opts for obstruction and sabotage rather than improving their own performance. Whether it's sports, technology, trade, or international humanitarian law the response seems to be the same - if you can't win within the rules, try to break the system itself. We now have to face reality: the US is now the very definition of a rogue state.

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

@1960Steady @JackieFielder_ @lhfang She literally outlines what she wants to do in the quoted tweet thread. Maybe start there?

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

@tracewoodgrains I can see this working but I’d wager it heavily depends on the location of the school and the proposed mechanism by which it acts (eg: does it reduce time out of class due to illness? Does it clean pollution out of the air?)

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

@sf_mills Wait so SV is now reinventing the co-op..? 🤔

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

@oldenoughtosay Australia: 1) ground floor 2) first floor

[Elise Joshi @EliseJoshi]

Why they want to ban TikTok

[Assaf @_assaf_ps]

@Idlibie

[Karim @Idlibie]

URGENT REQUEST: I am looking for someone who speaks good Arabic and has a basic grasp of medicine to write an infographic in Arabic about refeeding syndrome.

There are tens of thousands of freed prisoners all around Syria who need to be initiated on nutrition appropriately to avoid dying of refeeding syndrome

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

@LibyaLiberty The way she clutches at his collar once they’ve stood up ����🥹

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

@emilykmay Omg! Thank you for sharing this! My similar 4 y.o would ADORE it.

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

@theliverdoc @makedelhi @Preddy85 @d_s_thakur Of course not, but companies/ their lawyers are pragmatists and that’s a huge amount of money to burn on a settlement if the science doesn’t support the plaintiff’s claims at all

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

@drseanmullen I’m just coming into this now so apologies if it has already been suggested, but I wonder if these could be incorporated into a game for VR headsets like the oculus, where prompts could be used and a “blade”/(lightsaber) visualized..?

[Luisa M @intralegemlu]

I know I don’t have many followers on here and even less who are film buffs but I got to see Bird (Andrea Arnold’s new movie) and I can’t stop thinking about it. Highly recommend.