Author: TheConversation

While Trump complains of unfair treatment it is far better than what most other criminal defendants get

While Trump complains of unfair treatment it is far better than what most other criminal defendants get

Posted by | Aug 10, 2023

By Christopher Robertson, Professor of Law, Boston University; and Russell M. Gold, Associate Professor of Law, University of Alabama Former President Donald Trump often complains that he is being treated unfairly by the prosecutors charging him with crimes. Trump is now the subject of three federal and state criminal cases – and it is true that he is being treated unlike other criminal defendants. The prosecutors are treating Trump a lot better than the average criminal defendant. We are law scholars who have defended clients in criminal and civil cases, and we wish that our clients received the advantages...

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A Narrative of Resilience: How trauma-focused therapy is healing Ukrainian kids besieged by war

A Narrative of Resilience: How trauma-focused therapy is healing Ukrainian kids besieged by war

Posted by | Jul 22, 2023

By Zlatina Kostova, Instructor in psychiatry, clinical psychologist and director of training at Lifeline for Kids, UMass Chan Medical School Childhood trauma is a global health problem. Every year, up to one billion children worldwide experience some form of emotional, physical or sexual abuse. More than two-thirds of children report at least one traumatic event by age 16. Without early intervention, these experiences may deeply infiltrate the minds of children, who may reenact their original trauma by entering toxic relationships that repeat the dynamics of parental abuse. Or they might engage in high-risk behaviors, including unsafe sexual relationships, delinquency...

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Political Pawns: Why Russia kidnaps Ukrainian children when it is unable to care for its own

Political Pawns: Why Russia kidnaps Ukrainian children when it is unable to care for its own

Posted by | Jul 22, 2023

By Clementine Fujimura, Professor of Anthropology, Area Studies and Russian, United States Naval Academy Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian soldiers have forcibly taken an estimated 16,000 Ukrainian children to Russia. Over 300 children have since returned home, but it is not clear what happened to most of the rest. The mass abductions led prosecutors at the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants in March 2023 for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova. Moscow counters that the children it has brought to Russia – its estimates are...

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Echoes of Holodomor: Award-winning documentary “Famine” banned by Russia for depiction of cruel past

Echoes of Holodomor: Award-winning documentary “Famine” banned by Russia for depiction of cruel past

Posted by | Jul 22, 2023

By Jeremy Hicks, Professor of Russian Culture and Film, Queen Mary University of London In October last year, Russia banned a documentary depicting the famine that hit parts of the Soviet Union including Ukraine between 1921 and 1923 and revoked the film’s screening licence. The film had its UK premiere, with English subtitles, on June 22 in east London. Famine is an artistically sophisticated but in many respects unremarkable historical documentary. It does a good job of telling viewers about its subject, which is not one familiar to the Russian public, despite being one of the most traumatic events...

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Lurking fascism: How the conflation of “partisan” and “political” became a danger to liberal democracy

Lurking fascism: How the conflation of “partisan” and “political” became a danger to liberal democracy

Posted by | Jul 20, 2023

By Lawrence Torcello, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology “The personal is political!” is a well-known rallying cry, originally used by left-leaning activists, including feminists, to emphasize the role of government in personal lives and systemic oppression. It seems that now, it could be equally popular among right-wing politicians and their followers to communicate the idea that “everything is political.” Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of former President Donald Trump’s recent indictment by the Department of Justice. Trump supporters say that the decision to charge Trump was “political.” If the department hadn’t charged...

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True cost of E-commerce: Inside the black box of Amazon’s product returns

True cost of E-commerce: Inside the black box of Amazon’s product returns

Posted by | Jul 19, 2023

By Simone Peinkofer, Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management, Michigan State University E-commerce may make shopping more convenient, but it has a dark side that most consumers never see. Say you order an electric toothbrush for Father’s Day and two shirts for yourself from Amazon. You unpack your order and discover that the electric toothbrush won’t charge and only one shirt fits you. So, you decide to return the unwanted shirt and the electric toothbrush. Returns like this might seem simple, and often they are free for the consumer. But managing those returns can get costly for retailers, so...

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