Michael D Pendleton on LinkedIn: Academic and doctor Chris van Tulleken: ‘Ultra-processed products are food… (2024)

China launches anti dumping suit in relation to a common plastic export of US, EU, Japan and Taiwan. https://lnkd.in/dHScP5MG#china #us #eu #japan #taiwan

"Karim Khan said his office had applied to the world court’s pre-trial chamber for arrest warrants for the military and political leaders on both sides for crimes committed during Hamas’s 7 October attack and the ensuing war in Gaza.He named Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas chief in the Gaza Strip, and Mohammed Deif, the commander of its military wing, considered to be the masterminds of the 7 October assault, as well as Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the group’s political bureau, who is based in Qatar, as wanted for crimes of extermination, murder, hostage-taking, rape, sexual assault and torture.Netanyahu and Gallant are accused of extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, the denial of humanitarian relief supplies and deliberately targeting civilians."https://lnkd.in/dtS6KEiV#gaza #israel #hamas #icc

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Free Assange!"Assange’s lawyers have argued he was a journalist who exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sending him to the U.S., they said, would expose him to a politically motivated prosecution and risk a “flagrant denial of justice.”The U.S. government says Assange’s actions went way beyond those of a journalist gathering information, amounting to an attempt to solicit, steal and indiscriminately publish classified government documents.In March, the two High Court judges rejected the bulk of Assange’s arguments but said he could take his case to the Court of Appeal unless the U.S. guaranteed he would not face the death penalty if extradited and would have the same free speech protections as a U.S. citizen.The court said that if Assange couldn’t rely on the First Amendment then it was arguable his extradition would be incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which also provides free speech and media protections.The U.S. provided those reassurances, but Assange’s legal team and supporters argue they are not good enough to rely on to send him to the U.S. federal court system because the First Amendment promises fall short. The U.S. said Assange could seek to rely on the amendment but it would be up to a judge to decide whether he could."https://lnkd.in/e254BrYN#freeassange #julianassange

As Leslie Y S Lee points out, fortune cookies are next, as each cookie contains a message.And the irony is there's nothing Chinese about fortune cookies, they were invented in Americahttps://lnkd.in/g-cEdgwQ

If I could change one thing in my career, I'd have done an Arts degree before my law degrees."Over the past century, what made American higher education the best in the world is not its superiority in career training, but educating students for democratic citizenship, cultivating critical thinking and contributing to the personal growth of its students through self-creation. To revive American higher education, we need to reinvigorate these roots.In Europe and many countries elsewhere, colleges and universities have undergraduates specialize from Day 1, focusing on developing area-specific skills and knowledge. College students are trained to become doctors, lawyers or experts in international relations, English literature or computer science.In the United States, European-style specialization for medical, legal, business or public policy careers is the purpose of post-collegiate professional schools. Traditionally, the American college has been about imparting a liberal arts education, emphasizing reasoning and problem solving. Those enduring skills are the critical ingredients for flourishing companies and countries.Historically, students arriving on American college campuses spent a majority of their first two years taking classes outside their projected majors. This exposed them to a common curriculum that had them engage with thoughtful writings of the past to develop the skills and capacity to form sound, independent judgments.Over the past half century, American colleges and universities have moved away from this ideal, becoming less confident in their ability to educate students for democratic citizenship. This has led to a decline in their commitment to the liberal arts, a trend underscored in the results last year of a survey of chief academic officers at American colleges and universities by Inside Higher Ed. Nearly two-thirds agreed that liberal arts education was in decline, and well over half felt that politicians, college presidents and university boards were increasingly unsympathetic to the liberal arts.Liberal arts education is not value neutral. That is why it is indispensable today. Freedom of thought, critical reasoning, empathy for others and respectful disagreement are paramount for a flourishing democratic society. Without them, we get the unreasoned condemnations so pervasive in today’s malignant public discourse. With them, we have a hope of furthering the shared governance that is vital to America’s pluralistic society."Higher Education Needs More Socrates and Plato https://lnkd.in/gVUcvpxq#liberalarts #tertiaryeducation

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The author fails to mention, in my view, the single biggest issue confronting all governments in another pandemic, namely populist distrust and civil disobedience. Even the iron control of citizens in China was starting to falter.When is the economic cost too big to counter the deaths? Hard to know till its over. But if a pandemic killed one in four, the military would be running things and they'd be shooting to enforce orders. I'm an ultra civil libertarian, but that's just a fact. "In 1918, an influenza virus jumped from birds to humans and killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people in a world with less than a quarter of today’s population. Dozens of mammals also became infected.Now we are seeing another onslaught of avian influenza. For years it has been devastating bird populations worldwide and more recently has begun infecting mammals, including cattle, a transmission never seen before. In another first, the virus almost certainly jumped recently from a cow to at least one human — fortunately, a mild case (in Texas).The second dangerous assumption is that public health measures like school and business closings and masking had little impact. That is incorrect.Australia, Germany and Switzerland are among the countries that demonstrated those interventions can succeed. Even the experience of the United States provides overwhelming, if indirect, evidence of the success of those public health measures.The evidence comes from influenza, which transmits like Covid, with nearly one-third of cases transmitted by asymptomatic people. The winter before Covid, influenza killed an estimated 25,000 here; in that first pandemic winter, influenza deaths were under 800. The public health steps taken to slow Covid contributed significantly to this decline, and those same measures no doubt affected Covid as well.So the question isn’t whether those measures work. They do. It’s whether their benefits outweigh their social and economic costs. This will be a continuing calculation."As Bird Flu Looms, the Lessons of Past Pandemics Take On New Urgency https://lnkd.in/gXhCq9wR(Subscription may be required)#pandemic #publichealth

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A fascinating read.Try it. https://lnkd.in/gWnapf3W#trump #presidentialelection #roycohn

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