Jo was admitted to our hospital for complex pain and complications of intestinal failure. An 18-year-old with a complex medical and psychiatric history, Jo had been frequently hospitalized for suicidal ideation, chronic pain, and complications from intestinal dysmotility. Ethics was consulted during this stay because Jo requested to stop artificial nutrition and hydration and be allowed to die with support from hospice care. Throughout this case, the care team had concerns for capacity, honoring a patient’s right to refuse medical care, caring for a patient with a history of trauma, belonging to the LGBTQ+ community, with a chronic illness. This case explores the complex course of Jo’s case and identifies ethical options that fit within the narrative of this patient’s complex story.

A framing case study examines South Africa’s allegation in early 2024 that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Then the chapter examines: (1) the history of international law, from ancient societies through the Middle Ages and the classical, positivist, and modern eras; (2) important actors in international law, including states, international organizations, peoples (groups), individuals, and non-governmental groups; and (3) the critical, contractual, and sociological perspectives on how international law can influence politics.

The framework set out in this book reconceptualises the problem of dementia care as a problem of power and social exclusion. At every stage, the goal should be to empower recipients of care to meet their own needs and participate fully in social life as equals, necessitating restrictions on the power of carers and radical changes to our cultural assumptions about and depictions of dementia. Though few would disagree that Western dementia care services are in need of reform, the book’s emphasis on social equality means that the depth and character of the proposed reforms differ significantly from many of those under public discussion. Indeed, as demonstrated in this chapter, significant changes would be needed to the way the UK treats people living with dementia under the law in order to support the reforms recommended in this book.

Animal assisted interventions offer benefits for patients, loved ones, and staff within the intensive care environment. They support humanization of a clinical space, improves interactions with familes, and enhance the patient and staff experience. The evidence base for animal assisted interventions in intensive care is an innovative area for clinical research. Specific guidance is available for the clinical application of animal assisted interventions. Therapy animals offer a useful adjunct to optimising functional activity and rehabilitation for patients in Intensive Care.

This chapter focuses on hymns designed to accompany the burial of wives and mothers, identified variously as “In funere mulierum” (“On women’s burial,” madrāshâ 32) and “In funere matrisfamilias” (“On the burial of a female householder,” madrāshâ 31). Their collection is part of the necrosima’s “family section,” a segment of the collection addressing the burial of married men, women, children, and youths. As such, they provide insight into the construction of feminine identity in Syriac Christian communities at the intersection of social strictures and biblical models. The chapter also reflects an initial foray into the question of the hymns’ function in their original setting as part of funerary processions, including their performance by women’s choirs who voiced both the part of the deceased and that of her community. In these contexts, the hymns could serve as pedagogical performances, remapping the Syrian city with an eye towards both protological and eschatological realities.

Over the course of 1975 and 1976, the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, or Church Committee" as it came to be known

The most persistent of all legends, still present in Tommaso Buscetta's confessions, is that there once existed an honourable mafia which refused on principle to involve itself in drug operations. If this version of history is clearly inaccurate, involvement in the drugs trade did lead to profound changes in the mafia. It produced enormous profits, led to the closer ties with Cosa Nostra in the USA and to the internationalisation of the mafia. Giovanni Falcone's investigations into mafia income led him to conclude that while the mafia as such had not involved itself in the drugs trade, it left individual members to pursue their own interests. Sicilians for a certain period controlled the trade internationally and the sheer volume of money compelled the mafia to move into the world of international high finance.

The final chapter considers the challenge of immigration in global context, and explores possible paths going forward. Immigration is taking place in a context of globalization and pressures for deglobalization, climate change, declining birth rates, and aging populations in many Western and non-Western countries, as well as lower trust. One group of extremists are placing intense pressures on national governments to completely close borders to immigrants, but other extremists insist that borders should be open. Authorities have to apply policies somewhere between these two extremes. As societies become increasingly diverse, authorities must also adopt policies for managing diversity. We have suggested that omniculturalism and the celebration of human commonalities, as well as increasing intergroup contact, represent promising avenues for meeting the contemporary challenge of immigration.

Despite initial hopes that advances in information technology would spread and deepen democracy around the world, new platforms for communicating have instead provided opportunities for the weakening of democracy. Social media, website hosting, messaging apps, and related technologies provide easy and cheap ways for micro-actors such as individuals and small groups (in addition to more traditional state and non-state actors) to wield soft power for antidemocratic purposes. This chapter probes how the malign version of soft power works by attracting targets through flows of information that seduce and trick audiences with mis- and disinformation as well as with divisive and hateful messaging.  Focusing on malign soft power and how it is wielded through control of information flows (content, velocity, and access) provides a framework for assessing how cyber-enabled antidemocratic efforts take form and how new actors emerge.

The Commissione parlamentare antimafia presented in 1993 a report entitled Mafia e Politica, the first time this theme had ever been examined by an official government body. The report examines the factors in the history of the post-war Italy which gave the mafia some political 'legitimacy', and identifies the successive phases of the evolution of its relationship with the Italian state. Salvatore Giuliano (1922-50) a bandit leader who started as an opponent of the mafia, but ended being manipulated by them. His men allied themselves with the separatist movement in the hope of gaining a pardon from a new government.

Chapter 2 begins with Emerson’s responses to the ineffable character of mystical experience: one of silence and listening, the other of a profusion of terms from a multitude of cultures. Writings on mystical experience by William James and Ludwig Wittgenstein are part of the discussion. This chapter considers Emerson’s skepticism about the “external world” and “other minds” and about both freedom and fate, which form a “knot of nature.” The following section concerns skepticism as an existential condition, as when Emerson writes in “Experience”: “So it is with us, now skeptical, or without unity.” The chapter concludes by considering skepticism as a positive way of life, what Emerson calls a “wise skepticism.” This form of skepticism has roots in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and, in a particularly important form for Emerson, in the Essays of Montaigne.