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July 15, 2025

How 1860s Mexico offered an alternative vision for a liberal international order

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Long, Professor of International Relations, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick

The Execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, June 19, 1867 Edouard ManetWikimedia Commons

In 1867, the world’s most powerful statesmen, including Austria’s Emperor Franz Josef, France’s Napoleon III and US secretary of state, William H. Seward, petitioned the Mexican government to spare the life of a condemned man.

Mexico’s ragtag army and militias had just humbled France, then Europe’s preeminent land power. The costly six-year campaign drained the French treasury and eroded Napoleon III’s domestic support. Napoleon’s ambition to transform Mexico into a client empire under a Vienna-born, Habsburg archduke, crowned Maximilian I, ended in spectacular failure.

After his defeat, Maximilian was brought before a Mexican military tribunal. European monarchs regarded the prisoner as their peer, but Mexican liberals convicted him as a piratical invader, usurper and traitor. Despite indignant appeals from European courts, President Benito Juárez refused to commute his sentence. The would-be emperor was executed by firing squad.

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The controversy went beyond one monarch’s fate. It crystallised a clash between opposed visions of global order — as Peru’s president Ramón Castilla said at the time, it was a “war of the crowns against liberty caps”.

Today, world politics are in flux. The so-called liberal international order, nominally grounded in multilateralism, open markets, human rights and the rule of law, is facing its gravest crisis since the second world war. Former advocates such as the United States now openly flout international law and undermine the very norms they once championed. China remains ambivalent, while Russia unabashedly hastens the order’s unravelling.

More broadly, the old post-second world war order appears out of step with the global south and with widespread anger over double standards exposed by the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran.
Amid today’s crises, a world order arranged for and by the great powers looks both insufficient and doomed to lack legitimacy. Reordering will require support from diverse actors, including states across the global south.

1860s: a turbulent decade

The 1860s were a turbulent, although often overlooked, moment of global reordering. Technological shifts – the telegraph, electricity, steamships and railways – appeared as disruptive then as AI does today. Combined with shifting power dynamics, these transformations accelerated imperial expansion. Yet the rules of the emerging order remained uncertain, even among the imperial powers themselves.

In Europe, networks of dynastic rule still carried weight in international politics. Under growing pressure, the ancien régime sought to reinvent and reassert itself. The old empires often justified their expansion by promising to bring order and progress to supposedly backward peoples. But that “civilising mission” clashed with a worldview emerging from Spanish America – where countries had thrown off colonial rule to establish independent republics.

As we wrote in a recent article in American Political Science Review, Spanish American diplomats articulated a republican vision of international order centred on the protection of weaker states from domination by great powers.

Fending off Europe’s empires

Divided by civil conflict, Mexico became an easy target for European empires. Mexico’s Liberal party had regained power but faced internal dissent and crippling foreign debt. Britain, France and Spain formed a coalition to invade and demand repayment. France, however, had more ambitious designs.

Exploiting the distraction of the US civil war, Napoleon III dreamed of transforming Mexico into a Latin stronghold against Yankee expansion. Best of all, Napoleon thought the scheme would turn a profit. A stable Mexican empire could repay the costs of the intervention – with interest – by increasing production from the country’s famed silver mines. Meanwhile, France would gain a receptive market for its exports and a grateful geopolitical subordinate.

Maximilian, a young Austrian prince of the house of Hapsburg, somewhat naively accepted the offer to rule a distant and unfamiliar land. He dreamed of regenerating Mexico through a liberal monarchy while reviving his family’s declining dynasty.

Led by Juárez, Mexico’s liberals fiercely resisted Maximilian’s rule. While militarily Juárez was consistently on the defensive, he remained diplomatically proactive. The Juaristas encouraged US sympathies that proved decisive after the end of the civil war. They also enjoyed solidarity – though limited material support – from other Spanish American republics. Although the monarchies of Europe all recognised Maximilian as Mexican emperor, Juárez’s defiance became a rallying point for liberals and republicans in Europe.

A monument to Juárez in central Mexico City. — Hero to the liberals: a monument to Juárez in central Mexico City.
Hajor~commonswiki, CC BY-ND

Vision of a new order

Beyond stoking sympathies, Juárez and his followers offered trenchant critiques of unequal international rules and practices cloaked in liberal guise.

First, the “republican internationalism” of Mexico’s Juaristas stood in direct opposition to European liberals’ “civilising mission”. Latin American republicans rejected the notion that progress could be imposed on their countries from abroad – though some echoed civilising rhetoric toward their own non-white populations, who like in the US were subject to campaigns of violence and dispossession that stretched from northern Mexico to the Patagonia. Many Latin American liberals likewise remained silent about empire elsewhere.

Second, the Juarista vision placed popular sovereignty, not dynastic ties, at the heart of legitimate statehood. These ideas drew on Mexico’s independence tradition and the principles enshrined in the 1857 constitution. European intervention, in this view, aimed to suppress popular rule in the Americas and extend the reaction against the failed revolutions of 1848, which had seriously threatened the old order when they raged across Europe.

Third, popular sovereign states were equal under international law, regardless of power, wealth, or internal disorder. Sovereign equality also underpinned Latin America’s strong commitment to non-intervention. Liberal writer and diplomat Francisco Zarco, a close confidante of Juárez, condemned frequent European economic justifications for intervention as the work of “smugglers and profiteers who wrap themselves in the flags of powerful nations”.

Finally, Mexican liberals called for an international system premised on republican fraternity, drawing on aspirations for cooperation that went back to liberator Simón Bolívar. The independence leader and committed republican convened a conference in 1826, hoping that a confederation of the newly independent Spanish American states would “be the shield of our new destiny”.

Similar arguments for an international order that advances non-domination still resonate in the global south today. The Mexican experience also underscores that the architects of international order have never come exclusively from the global north – and those who shape its future will not either.

Tom Long receives support from UK Arts and Humanities Research Council grant AH/V006622/1, Latin America and the peripheral origins of the 19th-century international order.

Carsten-Andreas Schulz receives support from UK Arts and Humanities Research Council grant AH/V006622/1, Latin America and the peripheral origins of the 19th-century international order.

– ref. How 1860s Mexico offered an alternative vision for a liberal international order – https://theconversation.com/how-1860s-mexico-offered-an-alternative-vision-for-a-liberal-international-order-260228

July 15, 2025

UK air quality is improving but pollution targets are still being breached – new study

Source: The Conversation – UK – By James Weber, Lecturer in Atmospheric Radiation, Composition and Climate, University of Reading

An estimated 4.2 million deaths can be attributed to poor air quality each year. Poor air quality is the largest fixable environmental public health risk in the world.

Our new study presents analysis of the UK-wide trends for three major pollutants – nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), ozone (O₃) and tiny particulate matter known as PM₂.₅ – between 2015 and 2024 to calculate how often air quality targets were breached.

Both nitrogen dioxide and PM₂.₅ showed robust decreases over the period 2015-2024, declining on average by 35% and 30% respectively. In 2015-2016, the average Defra monitoring site exceeded the nitrogen dioxide target on 136 days per year. By 2023-2024, this had dropped to 40 days per year.

For PM₂.₅, the number of days the average Defra site breached the target went from 40 to 22 days per year. While this is an improvement, the World Health Organization advises that these targets should not be breached on more than four days per year.

To examine the sources of pollution, we studied how pollutants were influenced by factors including time of day, day of week, wind direction and origin, location of monitoring station and even interactions between pollutant. Nitrogen dioxide concentrations are highest at monitoring sites located next to busy urban roads, lower at urban background sites (which are located at sites further from traffic such as parks) and much lower in rural sites.

Profiles over 24-hour periods show strong nitrogen dioxide peaks coinciding with the morning and evening rush hours and clear decreases at weekends. This all points to local traffic emissions being the major source. While PM₂.₅ is also higher in urban than rural locations, it exhibits more muted rush hour peaks and is more consistent between the week and weekend, suggesting traffic plays a smaller role.

We explored how wind direction and origin influenced nitrogen dioxide and PM₂.₅ by running a weather forecast model backwards for three UK locations: Reading, Sheffield and Glasgow. While nitrogen dioxide showed only a weak correlation with wind origin, PM₂.₅ was much more dependent.

For example, the probability of PM₂.₅ breaching air quality targets on a given day exceeded 15% only when the air had come from continental Europe and, for Sheffield and Glasgow, passed over much of the UK too.

NO₂ and PM₂.₅ pollution reduced over the last decade but remains too high while O₃ pollution has worsened.
James Weber, CC BY

While nitrogen dioxide and PM₂.₅ showed clear improvements, ozone exhibited a less positive picture. Ozone increased in 115 of the 121 sites considered, growing by 17% on average. A similar trend was observed across much of northern Europe. The average number of days ozone exceeded the World Health Organization target doubled from seven to 14 per year.

This may seem modest at present, but several factors are conspiring to drive ozone higher. In much of the UK, the relatively high levels of nitrogen dioxide effectively suppress ozone: as a result, ozone is higher in rural rather than urban areas and, as nitrogen dioxide decreases, ozone will increase further.

Unless, that is, we also target nitrogen dioxide’s partner in crime, volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs are critical to the production of ozone and are emitted from human sources such as traffic and industry, plus certain types of vegetation like oak trees. While emissions of nitrogen dioxide fell by 20% between 2015-2024, human-driven VOC emissions declined by only 1%.

Ozone also increases in periods of hot weather due to elevated VOC emissions from vegetation and greater mixing of air from higher up in the atmosphere into the layer closest to the surface. Incidents of hot weather are only going to become more frequent in the UK, making it even more critical to crack down on human-driven VOC emissions to limit ozone pollution.

Up in the air

In the UK, considerable efforts have been made to improve air quality. Its importance has been enshrined in law for nearly 70 years. An extensive network of air quality monitoring sites is maintained by the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) plus devolved and local authorities.

Local authorities are required to monitor air quality and develop air quality management areas in places where targets are unlikely to be met. Clean air or low emission zones have been introduced as a result.

However, air quality policy must be designed to reflect the complex nature of each pollutants’ drivers. Nitrogen dioxide is dominated by local sources, PM₂.₅ by transport from further afield and ozone by a combination of both.

big air quality measuring equipment unit , grass in background, white sky — An air quality monitoring station.
Chemival/Shutterstock

Local and national policies that cut traffic emissions by incentivising the replacement of older cars with newer, cleaner vehicles, retrofitting buses and restricting entry of the most polluting vehicles into towns and cities will probably reduce nitrogen dioxide further.

But, if nitrogen dioxide decreases are not accompanied by reductions to VOC emissions, locally and internationally, ozone will continue to rise, especially with more frequent hot weather.

By contrast, most PM₂.₅ comes from sources further afield, including industry and agriculture from other parts of the UK and beyond, so reductions hinge on stronger national and global policies that target emissions at source rather than just local efforts.

Air pollution doesn’t respect borders and while the technologies to facilitate continued improvements exist, they must be deployed in joined-up, international efforts.

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James Weber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. UK air quality is improving but pollution targets are still being breached – new study – https://theconversation.com/uk-air-quality-is-improving-but-pollution-targets-are-still-being-breached-new-study-260961

July 15, 2025

Don’t blame toxic masculinity for online misogyny – the manosphere is hurting men too

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Kate Cantrell, Senior Lecturer – Writing, Editing, and Publishing, University of Southern Queensland

“Imagine her tenderly pressing her soft lips against yours”, writes one incel on Reddit, before concluding, “you will never get to experience this because your skeleton is too small or the bones in your face are not the right shape”.

In his debut book, The Male Complaint, Simon Copland escorts his readers through the manosphere and into the minds of its inhabitants. He illustrates how boys and men who are “terrifyingly normal” become attracted to the manosphere’s grim logic – and the cognitive distortions of anti-feminist influencers like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson.

While mainstream debates often cite toxic masculinity as the cause of online misogyny, Copland, a writer and researcher at the Australian National University, shifts the blame to a deeper cultural malaise. It’s caused, he argues, by the cruel optimism of the manosphere, the multiple social and economic crises of late-stage capitalism and a collective nihilistic misery in which complaint becomes futile and destruction “the only way out”.

Review: The Male Complaint – Simon Copland (Polity)

The manosphere is a network of loosely related blogs and forums devoted to “men’s interests” – sites like The Rational Male, Game Global and the subreddits ForeverAlone, TheRedPill and MensRights. These online communities, separate in their specific beliefs, are united by their misogynistic ideas – and anti-women and anti-diversity sentiments.

They’re also united by the growing tendency of the men in these communities towards nihilistic violence: not only against others, but also against themselves.

In The Male Complaint, Copland relays his dismay at discovering “a constant stream” of suicide notes on Reddit, including a subreddit, IncelGraveyard, which catalogues close to 100 suicide notes and letters posted by self-identified incels.

Since I was a kid I was fed up with ‘Don’t worry, it will get better’, ‘You will find someone’ […] it’s not even that I want a SO (significant other) anymore. Women are awful. People are awful. I have no friends.

For Copland, the violence incels inflict on themselves is a form of passive nihilism. Incels “don’t just express disgust and despair at the world, but in themselves – their looks, body, lives, personality, intelligence, and more”.

Who’s in the manosphere?

The manosphere includes men’s rights activists, pick-up artists and “Men Going Their Own Way” (male separatists who avoid contact with women altogether). And of course, incels: men who believe they are unable to find a romantic or sexual partner due to their perceived genetic inferiority and oppression.

Incels also blame their problems on women’s alleged hypergamy: the theory women seek out partners of higher social or economic status and therefore marry “up”. Put another way, hypergamy, a concept rooted in evolutionary psychology, is the belief “women are hard-wired to be gold diggers”.

Rollo Tomassi, the so-called “godfather of the manosphere”, complains on his blog that “women love opportunistically”, while “men believe that love matters for the sake of it”.

According to Tomassi, the “cruel reality” of modern dating is that men are romantics who are “forced to be realists”, while women are realists whose use “romanticisms to effect their imperatives”. Tomassi complains:

Our girlfriends, our wives, daughters and even our mothers are all incapable of idealized love […] By order of degrees, hypergamy will define who a woman loves and who she will not, depending upon her own opportunities and capacity to attract it.

Ten years ago, these communities were largely regarded as fringe groups. Today, their ideology has infiltrated the mainstream.

On Sunday, ABC TV’s Compass reported that misogyny is on the rise in Australian classrooms, with female teachers sharing their experiences of sexual assault and harassment on school grounds – ranging from boys writing stories about gang raping their teachers to masturbating “over them” in the bathrooms. One student even pretended to stab his pregnant teacher as a “joke”.

A 2025 report published by UN Women shows 53% of women have experienced some form of technology-facilitated, gender-based violence. The dark side of digitalisation disproportionately affects young women aged between 18 and 24, LGBTQI+ women, women who are divorced or who live in the city, and women who participate in online gaming.

‘Biologically bad’?

Copland argues that simplified critiques of toxic masculinity minimise the problem of male violence. They fail to consider the context and history of gendered behaviour, assuming toxic traits are somehow innate and unique to men, rather than the product of social expectations and relations.

This, in turn, promotes the idea that male violence derives from something “biologically bad” in the nature of masculinity itself. As Copland explains, “this is embedded in the term ‘toxic’, which makes it sound like men’s bodies have become diseased or infected”.

Blaming toxic masculinity for digital misogyny also embraces a form of smug politics in which disaffected men are dismissed as degenerates who are fundamentally different to “us” (meaning the activist left and leftist elites). They are “cellar dwellers”, “subhuman freaks”, or “virgin losers” who need to be either enlightened or locked up. “We”, on the other hand, are educated, progressive, superior.

This kind of rhetoric, as Copland explains, is unhelpful. It does not create the conditions for changing the opinions, narratives and futures of manosphere men because it does not allow people to understand their complaints and where those concerns come from – even if we do not agree with them.

Belittling attitudes and demeaning discourses alienate men who already feel socially isolated. This pushes those men further to the fringes – into the hands of “manfluencers” who claim to understand.

‘Not having love becomes everything’

The manosphere, Copland observes, is not “an aberration that is different and distinct from the rest of the world”, nor is it a community that exists solely on the “dark corners of the web”.

Rather, the manosphere, as an echo chamber, enables and encourages what Copland calls “the male complaint”: a sense of collective pain or “injury” so intrinsic to the group’s identity, it cannot be redressed.

As injured subjects who believe their problems are caused through no fault of their own, manosphere men cannot mend the “wound” they believe society has inflicted upon them. Their “marginalisation” and injured status are the lens through which they view themselves and the world.

In the Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) community, for example, some men talk about the movement as a hospital where “physicians of the male soul” use different “methods of healing” to treat the “illness of gynocentric-induced disease weighing them down”. These methods include “self-improvement” strategies that are designed to build men’s power and wealth: purchasing gym equipment, investing in the stock market, even abstaining from pornography and sex.

Others in the MGTOW community are vocally anti-victim: “You can live an extraordinary life,” one man says to another, “but you’re wasting your time on complaints and negativity”.

Even when they disagree, though, manosphere men frame women and feminism as the enemy. In this way, the machinery of the manosphere capitalises on men’s discontent, reflects that messaging back to them and displaces their anger and hurt onto an easy scapegoat.

As Copland observes, it is easier for men to blame women for their unhappiness than it is to blame the complex systems of capitalism: “if love and sex is everything, then not having love becomes everything as well”.

Blackpilled incels, lookism and anonymity

This preoccupation with intimacy is central to the incel community. It is exemplified by the various artefacts Copland embeds in his book – memes and posts from the manosphere itself.

Blackpilled incels are a subgroup of incels who believe their access to romantic and sexual relationships is doomed because of “lookism”: the belief women choose sexual partners based solely on their physical features.

Blackpilled ideology attributes romantic failure to genetically unalterable aspects of the human body, such as one’s height or skull shape. Some blackpilled incels, who call themselves wristcels, even blame their lack of sexual success on the width of their wrists.

This logic is countered by research that demonstrates men, in fact, show stronger preferences for physical attractiveness than women, with women tending to prioritise education level and earning potential.

On Reddit, incels often imagine and bitterly dismiss the potential for love and intimacy because of their looks.
Ohsineon/Pexels

The manosphere, however, amplifies this type of thinking and filters out information that challenges these ideas and opinions, increasing group polarisation. Despite its promise of solidarity, the manosphere isolates boys and men, and ultimately distances them from their wider community. This segregation results in a deep sense of alienation – these boys and men become stuck in a perpetual cycle of ideological reinforcement.

The manosphere thrives on anonymity, writes Copland, which only reinforces the idea it is not designed to foster deep relationships or connections.

No silver bullets

The sense of community the manosphere claims to offer is a sham; its alienating structures do not offer boys and men genuine belonging and connection, or real solutions to their problems.

“From one day to the next, the ability to communicate depends on the whims of hidden engineers,” writes media studies professor Mark Andrejevic of online networks more broadly. The manosphere, like other virtual constructs, is subject to manipulation by those who control the infrastructure and the rules of engagement.

More than this, the manosphere does not provide an alternative to complaint. When complaint is the only option, writes Copland, nihilism and violence are the inevitable result.

When nothing matters, there are no consequences to anything, including violence […] Manosphere men do not look to convince others, but rather seek their destruction. Destruction is the outlet they find to deal with their complaint.

That’s what makes the manosphere so dangerous.

‘Popular boys must be punished’

In 2014, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger, a British-American college student, embarked on an hours-long stabbing and shooting spree in the university town of Isla Vista, California, killing six and injuring 14. On the morning of May 23 – the “Day of Retribution” – Rodger emailed a 140-page “manifesto” to his family, friends and therapists. He also uploaded several YouTube videos in which he lamented his inability to find a girlfriend, the “hedonistic pleasures” of his peers and his painful existence of “loneliness, rejection, and unfilled desires”.

In his memoir-manifesto, Rodger – the supposed “patron saint of inceldom” – explains the motive for his violence:

I had nothing left to live for but revenge. Women must be punished for their crimes of rejecting such a magnificent gentleman as myself. All of those popular boys must be punished for enjoying heavenly lives and having sex with all the girls while I had to suffer in lonely virginity.

Four years later, in April 2018, Alek Minassian, a self-described incel, drove a rented van onto a busy sidewalk in Toronto, killing 11 (nine of them women) and injuring many more. On Facebook, Minassian explained that his actions were part of the “incel rebellion” led by the “Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger”. Later, Minassian told police, “I feel like I accomplished my mission”.

Rodger, too, ended his final YouTube video with a similar message: “If I can’t have you girls, I will destroy you”.

In his book, Copland even draws a parallel between the Westfield Bondi Junction attack and the explanation for attacker Joel Cauchi’s violence, put forward by his father just two days after the attack: “To you, he is a monster. To me, he was a very sick boy […] he wanted a girlfriend and he’s got no social skills and he was frustrated out of his brain”.

In fact, Cauchi suffered from treatment-resistant schizophrenia and had been unmedicated at the time of the attack: “after almost two decades of treatment, Cauchi had no regular psychiatrist, was not on any medications to treat his schizophrenia and had no family living nearby”. The multifaceted causes of Cauchi’s crime are more complex than misogynistic violence.

Indeed, the pieces of the manosphere puzzle, when put together, reveal a sobering image of the male complaint. However, they demonstrate misogyny is bad for everyone – not just women and girls.

As Copland concludes:

The manosphere promises men that it can make their lives better […] But it really cannot deliver. The promises it offers are not real, and in many cases make things worse […] This is how cruel optimism works, always offering, but never delivering.

‘It’s the combinations’

Recent evidence suggests there is no single route to radicalisation, and no single cause of violent extremism. Rather, complex interactions between push, pull, and personal factors are the root causes of male violence.

The Netflix sensation Adolescence – the harrowing story of a 13-year-old boy who is arrested and charged with murder – is powered by a single question: why did Jamie kill Katie?

In attempting to answer this question, critics and fans have offered a range of explanations: bullying, low self-esteem, emotional dysregulation, obsession with love and sex, deprivation of love and sex, the manosphere. The real answer is less obvious and infinitely more complex. It can be found in a simple line of dialogue, spoken at the end of the series by Jamie’s sister.

“It’s the combinations,” Lisa says. “Combinations are everything.”

In this moment, Lisa is justifying her outfit to her parents as they await Jamie’s trial. But subtextually, her statement doubles as the most likely explanation for his actions. And it’s the closest explanation for why some boys and men commit extreme acts of violence: the combinations.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Kate Cantrell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Don’t blame toxic masculinity for online misogyny – the manosphere is hurting men too – https://theconversation.com/dont-blame-toxic-masculinity-for-online-misogyny-the-manosphere-is-hurting-men-too-254802

July 15, 2025

UNESCO grants World Heritage status to Khmer Rouge atrocity sites – paving the way for other sites of conflict

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Rachel Hughes, Associate Professor of Geography, The University of Melbourne

A series of atrocity sites of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia have been formally entered onto the World Heritage list, as part of the 47th session of the World Heritage Committee.

This is not only important for Cambodia, but also raises important questions for atrocity sites in Australia.

Before this, the World Heritage list only recognised seven “sites of memory” associated with recent conflicts, which UNESCO defines as “events having occurred from the turn of the 20th century” under its criterion vi. These sat within a broader list of more than 950 cultural sites.

In recent years, experts have intensely debated the question of whether a site associated with recent conflict could, or should, be nominated and evaluated for World Heritage status. Some argue such listings would contradict the objectives of UNESCO and its spirit of peace, which was part of the specialised agency’s mandate after the destruction of two world wars.

Sites associated with recent conflicts can be divisive. For instance, when Japan nominated the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, both China and the United States objected and eventually disassociated from the decision. The US argued the nomination lacked “historical perspective” on the events that led to the bomb’s use. Meanwhile, China argued listing the property would not be conducive for peace as other Asian countries and peoples had suffered at the hands of the Japanese during WWII.

Heritage inscriptions risk reinforcing societal divisions if they conserve a particular memory in a one-sided way.

Nonetheless, the World Heritage Committee decided in 2023 to no longer preclude such sites for inscription. This was done partly in recognition of how these sites may “serve the peace-building mission of UNESCO”.

Shortly after, three listing were added: the ESMA Museum and Site of Memory, a former clandestine centre for detention, torture and extermination in Argentina; memorial sites of the Rwandan genocide at Nyamata, Murambi, Gisozi and Bisesero; and funerary and memory sites of the first world war in Belgium and France.

A number of legacy sites associated with Nelson Mandela’s human rights struggle in South Africa were also added last year.

Atrocities of the Khmer Rouge

The recently inscribed Cambodian Memorial Sites include prisons S-21 (now known as Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum) and M-13, as well as the execution site Choeung Ek.

These sites were nominated for their value in showing the development of extreme mass violence in relation to the security system of the Khmer Rouge in 1975–79. They also have value as places of memorialisation, peace and learning.

The Khmer Rouge developed its methods of disappearance, incarceration and torture of suspected “enemies” during the civil conflict of 1970–75. It established a system of local-level security centres in so-called “liberated” areas.

One of these centres was known as M-13, a small, well-hidden prison in the country’s rural southwest. A man named Kaing Guek Eav – also called Duch – was responsible for prisoners at M-13.

Shortly after the entire country fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975, Duch was assigned to lead the headquarters of the regime’s security system: a large detention and torture centre known as S-21.

Under his instruction, tens of thousands of people were detained in inhumane conditions, tortured and interrogated. Many detainees were later taken to the outskirts of the city to be brutally killed and buried in pits at a place called Choeung Ek.

The sites operated until early 1979, when the Khmer Rouge was forced from power.

The S-21 facility and the mass graves at Choeung Ek have long been memorialised as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre.

However, the former M-13 site shows few visual clues to its prior use, and has only recently been investigated by an international team led by Cambodian archaeologist and museum director Hang Nisay. The site is on an island in a small river that forms the boundary between the Kampong Chhnang and Kampong Speu provinces.

Further research, site protection and memorialisation activities will now be supported, with help from locals.

From repression to reflection

The Cambodian memorial sites have been recognised as holding “outstanding universal value” for the way they evidence one of the 20th century’s worst atrocities, and are now places of memory.

In its nomination dossier for these sites, Cambodia drew on findings from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal to verify and link the conflict and the sites.

In 2010, the tribunal found Duch guilty of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Duch was sentenced to 30 years in prison (which eventually turned into life imprisonment). He died in 2020.

While courts such as the International Criminal Court have previously examined the destruction of heritage as an international crime, drawing on legal findings to assert heritage status is an unusual inverse. It raises important questions about the legacies of former UN-supported tribunals and the ongoing implications of their findings.

The recent listings also raise questions for Australia, which has many sites of documented mass killing associated with colonisation and the frontier wars that lasted into the 20th century.

Might Australia nominate any of these atrocity sites in the future? And could other processes such as truth-telling, reparation and redress support (or be supported by) such nominations?

Rachel Hughes has consulted to UNESCO Cambodia.

Maria Elander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. UNESCO grants World Heritage status to Khmer Rouge atrocity sites – paving the way for other sites of conflict – https://theconversation.com/unesco-grants-world-heritage-status-to-khmer-rouge-atrocity-sites-paving-the-way-for-other-sites-of-conflict-260923

July 15, 2025

Many fish are social, but pesticides are pushing them apart

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Kyle Morrison, PhD Candidate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UNSW Sydney

Scientists have detected pesticides in rivers, lakes and oceans worldwide. So what are these pesticides doing to the fish?

Long before pesticides reach lethal doses, they can disrupt hormones, impair brain function and change fish behaviour. Many of these behaviours are essential for healthy ecosystems.

In a new study, my colleagues and I found that pesticides affect many different behaviours in fish. Overall, the chemical pesticides make fish less sociable and interactive. They spend less time gathering in groups, become less protective of their territory, and make fewer attempts to mate.

Imagine the ocean without the vibrant schools of fish we’ve come to love – only isolated swimmers drifting about. Quietly, ecosystems begin to unravel, long before mass die-offs hit the news.

A variety of fish above healthy coral reef in the Coral Triangle. — Healthy reef ecosystems feature fish swimming together and socialising.
Mike Workman, Shutterstock

Fish are living and dying in polluted water

Australia is a major producer and user of pesticides, with more than 11,000 approved chemical products routinely used in agricultural and domestic settings. Remarkably, some of these chemicals remain approved in Australia despite being banned in other regions such as the European Union due to safety concerns.

When a tractor or plane sprays pesticides onto crops, it creates a mist of chemicals in the air to kill crop pests. After heavy rain, these chemicals can flow into roadside drains, filter through soil, and slowly move into rivers, lakes and oceans.

Fish swim in this diluted chemical mixture. They can absorb pesticides through their gills or eat contaminated prey.

At high concentrations, mass fish deaths can result, such as those repeatedly observed in the Menindee Lakes. However, doses in the wild often aren’t lethal and more subtle effects can occur. Scientists call these “sub-lethal” effects.

One commonly investigated sub-lethal effect is a change in behaviour – in other words, a change in the way a fish interacts with its surrounding environment.

Our previous research has found most experiments have looked at the impacts on fish in isolation, measuring things such as how far or how fast they swim when pesticides are present.

But fish aren’t solitary — they form groups, defend territory and find mates. These behaviours keep aquatic ecosystems stable. So this time we studied how pesticides affect these crucial social behaviours.

Pesticide exposure makes fish less social

Our study extracted and analysed data from 37 experiments conducted around the world. Together, these tested the impacts of 31 different pesticides on the social behaviour of 11 different fish species.

The evidence suggests pesticides make fish less social, and this finding is consistent across species. Courtship was the most severely impacted behaviour – the process fish use to find and attract mates. This is particularly alarming because successful courtship is essential for healthy fish populations and ecosystem stability.

Next, we found pesticides such as the herbicide glyphosate, which can disrupt brain function and hormone levels had the strongest impacts on fish social behaviours. This raises important questions about how brain function and hormones drive fish social behaviour, which could be tested by scientists in the future.

For example, scientists could test how much a change in testosterone relates to a change in territory defence. Looking at these relationships between what’s going on inside the body mechanisms and outward behaviour will help us better understand the complex impacts of pesticides.

We also identified gaps in the current studies. Most existing studies focus on a limited number of easy-to-study “model species” such as zebrafish, medaka and guppies. They also often use pesticide dosages and durations that may not reflect real-world realities.

Addressing these gaps by including a range of species and environmentally relevant dosages is crucial to understanding how pesticides affect fish in the wild.

A large group of convict surgeonfish on the reef in French Polynesia — One of the experiments in our study involved convict surgeonfish, which gather in large groups or ‘shoals’.
Damsea, Shutterstock

Behaviour is a blind spot in regulation

Regulatory authorities should begin to recognise behaviour as a reliable and important indicator of pesticide safety. This can help them catch pesticide pollution early, before mass deaths occur.

Scientists play a crucial role too. By following the same methods, scientists can produce comparable results. A standardised method then provides regulators the evidence needed to confidently assess pesticide risks.

Together, regulatory authorities and scientists can find a way to use behavioural studies to help inform policy decisions. This will help to prevent mass deaths and catch pesticide impacts early on.

Leave no stone unturned in restoring our waters

Rivers, lakes, oceans and reefs are bearing the brunt of an ever-growing human footprint.

So far, much of the spotlight has focused on reducing carbon emissions and managing overfishing — and rightly so. But there’s another, quieter threat drifting beneath the surface: the chemicals we use.

Pesticides used on farms and in gardens are being detected everywhere, even iconic ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef. As we have shown, these pesticides can have disturbing effects even at low concentrations.

Now is the time to cut pesticide use and reduce runoff. Through switching to less toxic chemicals and introducing better regulations, we can reduce the damage. If we act with urgency, we can limit the impacts pesticides have on our planet.

Kyle Morrison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Many fish are social, but pesticides are pushing them apart – https://theconversation.com/many-fish-are-social-but-pesticides-are-pushing-them-apart-256230

July 14, 2025

ABC’s and CBS’s settlements with Trump are a dangerous step toward the commander in chief becoming the editor-in-chief

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Michael J. Socolow, Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of Maine

Will settlements by news companies with President Donald Trump turn journalists into puppets? MARHARYTA MARKO/iStock Getty Images Plus

It was a surrender widely foreseen. For months, rumors abounded that Paramount would eventually settle the seemingly frivolous lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump concerning editorial decisions in the production of a CBS interview with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024.

On July 2, 2025, those rumors proved true: The settlement between Paramount and Trump’s legal team resulted in CBS’s parent company agreeing to pay $16 million to the future Donald Trump Library – the $16 million included Trump’s legal fees – in exchange for ending the lawsuit. Despite the opinion of many media law scholars and practicing attorneys who considered the lawsuit meritless, Shari Redstone, the largest shareholder of Paramount, yielded to Trump.

Redstone had been trying to sell Paramount to Skydance Media since July 2024, but the transaction was delayed by issues involving government approval.

Specifically, when the Trump administration assumed power in January 2025, the new Federal Communications Commission had no legal obligation to facilitate, without scrutiny, the transfer of the CBS network’s broadcast licenses for its owned-and-operated TV stations to new ownership.

The FCC, under newly installed Republican Chairman Brendan Carr, was fully aware of the issues in the legal conflict between Trump and CBS at the time Paramount needed FCC approval for the license transfers. Without a settlement, the Paramount-Skydance deal remained in jeopardy.

Until it wasn’t.

At that point, Paramount joined Disney in implicitly apologizing for journalism produced by their TV news divisions.

Earlier in 2025, Disney had settled a different Trump lawsuit with ABC News in exchange for a $15 million donation to the future Trump Library. That lawsuit involved a dispute over the wording of the actions for which Trump was found liable in a civil lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll.

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said the CBS interview with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris was ‘fraudulent interference with an election.’

It’s not certain what the ABC and CBS settlements portend, but many are predicting they will produce a “chilling effect” within the network news divisions. Such an outcome would arise from fear of new litigation, and it would install a form of internal self-censorship that would influence network journalists when deciding whether the pursuit of investigative stories involving the Trump administration would be worth the risk.

Trump has apparently succeeded where earlier presidents failed.

Presidential pressure

From Jimmy Carter trying to get CBS anchor Walter Cronkite to stop ending his evening newscasts with the number of days American hostages were being held in Iran to Richard Nixon’s administration threatening the broadcast licenses of The Washington Post’s TV stations to weaken Watergate reporting, previous presidents sought to apply editorial pressure on broadcast journalists.

But in the cases of Carter and Nixon, it didn’t work. The broadcast networks’ focus on both Watergate and the Iran hostage crisis remained unrelenting.

Nor were Nixon and Carter the first presidents seeking to influence, and possibly control, network news.

President Lyndon Johnson, who owned local TV and radio stations in Austin, Texas, regularly complained to his old friend, CBS President Frank Stanton, about what he perceived as biased TV coverage. Johnson was so furious with the CBS and NBC reporting from Vietnam, he once argued that their newscasts seemed “controlled by the Vietcong.”

Yet none of these earlier presidents won millions from the corporations that aired ethical news reporting in the public interest.

Before Trump, these conflicts mostly occurred backstage and informally, allowing the broadcasters to sidestep the damage to their credibility should any surrender to White House administrations be made public. In a “Reporter’s Notebook” on the CBS Evening News the night of the Trump settlement, anchor John Dickerson summarized the new dilemma succinctly: “Can you hold power to account when you’ve paid it millions? Can an audience trust you when it thinks you’ve traded away that trust?”

“The audience will decide that,” Dickerson continued, concluding: “Our job is to show up to honor what we witness on behalf of the people we witness it for.”

During the Iran hostage crisis, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite ended every broadcast with the number of days the hostages had been held captive.

Holding power to account

There’s an adage in TV news: “You’re only as good as your last show.”

Soon, SkyDance Media will assume control over the Paramount properties, and the new CBS will be on the airwaves.

When the licenses for KCBS in Los Angeles, WCBS in New York and the other CBS-owned-and-operated stations are transferred, we’ll learn the long-term legacy of corporate capitulation. But for now, it remains too early to judge tomorrow’s newscasts.

As a scholar of broadcast journalism and a former broadcast journalist, I recommend evaluating programs like “60 Minutes” and the “CBS Evening News” on the record they will compile over the next three years – and the record they compiled over the past 50. The same goes for “ABC World News Tonight” and other ABC News programs.

A major complicating factor for the Paramount-Skydance deal was the fact that “60 Minutes” has, over the past six months, broken major scoops embarrassing to the Trump administration, which led to additional scrutiny by its corporate ownership. Judged by its reporting in the first half of 2025, “60 Minutes” has upheld its record of critical and independent reporting in the public interest.

If audience members want to see ethical, independent and professional broadcast journalism that holds power to account, then it’s the audience’s responsibility to tune it in. The only way to learn the consequences of these settlements is by watching future programming rather than dismissing it beforehand.

The journalists working at ABC News and CBS News understand the legacy of their organizations, and they are also aware of how their owners have cast suspicion on the news divisions’ professionalism and credibility. As Dickerson asserted, they plan to “show up” regardless of the stain, and I’d bet they’re more motivated to redeem their reputations than we expect.

I don’t think reporters, editors and producers plan to let Donald Trump become their editor-in-chief over the next three years. But we’ll only know by watching.

Michael Socolow’s father, Sanford Socolow, worked for CBS News from 1956 to 1988.

– ref. ABC’s and CBS’s settlements with Trump are a dangerous step toward the commander in chief becoming the editor-in-chief – https://theconversation.com/abcs-and-cbss-settlements-with-trump-are-a-dangerous-step-toward-the-commander-in-chief-becoming-the-editor-in-chief-261006

July 14, 2025

School lunches, the French way: It’s not just about nutrition, but togetherness and ‘bon appetit’

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Rachel Engler-Stringer, Professor, Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, University of Saskatchewan

This spring, as part of a sabbatical project, I had the privilege of visiting school food programs and meeting with school food researchers in six cities in France, England and Scotland.

I got to eat school lunches, visit central kitchens in two cities where meals are prepared for thousands of children, visit school kitchens and discuss school food with the countries’ leading experts.

This visit intersects with my research with colleagues on promising food programs across Canada. This research offers insights for consideration as regions navigate the federal government’s first National School Food Program and National School Food Policy.

Government announcements about the program and policy were followed by negotiations with the provinces and territories, all of which have since signed agreements for a portion of the funding.

In most parts of Canada, officials are just beginning to plan for new approaches to school food (with a few exceptions especially in Atlantic Canada where school food programs have been transforming much more quickly).

Based on my research about international food programs, here are four key things Canadians should pay attention to:

1) In Canada we need to shift from thinking of school lunches as a safety net for kids living in poverty to thinking about them as benefiting the health and well-being of children and their families. In France, this shift in thinking is particularly clear.

School lunches in France are about teaching children about food and culture and all kids are encouraged to eat together with an adult facilitator who teaches them about the components of the meal and creates a family-meal context at each table. By contrast, if you ask many parents in Canada what school meals are for, they will tell you they are for kids living in poverty to make sure they have food to eat at school.

If Canada wants a national school food program that achieves the benefits of the best programs in the world in the areas of education, well-being and on the economy, we need to think of school meals as supporting young people to be the best students they can be.

2) One important benefit of school food programs globally is to encourage picky eaters to try new foods due to the social pressure of all kids eating the same foods together. In three cities in France I visited, and one in England, school lunches look like home-cooked meals. One main dish with meat is served (and in England, a vegetarian alternative), and kids can choose if and how much of the side vegetables and fruit to take.

In Canada, following a similar practice — one main and a vegetarian alternative when meat is served — might work well. But it’s also important that in developing a menu, the cultural diversity of Canadian school communities is reflected in the food on offer.

In the other two locations in England and Scotland, kids choose from multiple main dishes — something that adds cost to the program and does less to encourage kids to try new foods, given one choice is always something basic like a cheese sandwich.

Kids need to have some autonomy when it comes to eating, but school food programs should not be facilitating eating the same food every day. Nor should school food programs aspire to a model where broad choice is afforded from a large menu.

3) With care, planning and sufficient resources, centralized kitchens can prepare thousands of servings of a main dish daily. The French central kitchens I visited prepare 6,000 to 10,000 servings a day of high-quality food following strict food safety protocols.

I ate two simple yet delicious meals cooked in municipally owned central kitchens. In the three cities in France where I visited, they used central kitchens where main dishes were prepared and chilled to be delivered for heating at the school level. Central kitchens also delivered the salads and sides (like chopped veggies, bread, cheese and fruit) and dressings.

In the small school kitchens, the salads were dressed, and the cheese and fruit were cut for service.

The central kitchens were also used in at least one city to prepare food for daycares and for seniors who were home-bound — something to consider for Canadian cities.

Centralizing kitchens can reduce costs and provide a way for high-quality food to be produced from basic ingredients without commercial kitchens in every school capable of preparing meals for hundreds of children at a time.

4) When designed with requirements for purchasing foods from local farmers and other Canadian producers, school food programs can benefit the agricultural sector and multiply their benefits to communities beyond direct school food jobs. In France, for example, there are specific percentages to be purchased from local and sustainable sources. Percentage requirements for local and sustainable purchasing should be enacted now in Canada as its program establishes itself, perhaps beginning with 20 per cent and growing over time.

I have many more reflections from my visits, both positive and negative, but the four I have discussed are important for Canada to learn from as it begins to design the National School Food Program to meet the needs of diverse communities from coast to coast to coast.

Rachel Engler-Stringer receives funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada and received a University of Saskatchewan International Travel Award for program visits. She sits on the Steering Committee of the Coalition for Healthy School Food.

– ref. School lunches, the French way: It’s not just about nutrition, but togetherness and ‘bon appetit’ – https://theconversation.com/school-lunches-the-french-way-its-not-just-about-nutrition-but-togetherness-and-bon-appetit-259832

July 14, 2025

From raw garlic cloves to cayenne pepper: why ‘natural’ DIY skincare can leave you burnt, itchy – or worse

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adam Taylor, Professor of Anatomy, Lancaster University

Scrolling through social media, it’s hard to miss influencers raiding the pantry for “natural” beauty fixes: baking-soda scrubs, garlic spot sticks, cayenne masks that promise to tighten pores and banish dullness.

The appeal is obvious. Why pay for a dermatologist-tested cream when everyday ingredients come with antimicrobial or exfoliating properties? Yet what looks sensible in a 30-second reel can translate into painful, sometimes dangerous, DIY disasters.

Just because it’s edible doesn’t mean it’s safe to put on your skin.

Garlic, chilli, turmeric and their spice-rack neighbours may contain potent bioactive compounds, but in raw form they are unrefined, unstable and frequently far too harsh for the delicate acid mantle that shields human skin.

Professional cosmetic chemists isolate biologically active plant compounds, purify them and blend them at precisely calibrated doses suited to the skin’s natural pH. A spoonful of cayenne or a pinch of bicarbonate of soda offers none of that control. Slapping pantry powders on your face risks chemical burns, rashes or long-term damage.

Concentration is the first stumbling block. A teaspoon of baking soda, for instance, has nothing in common with a safety-tested cleanser that might contain less than 1% sodium bicarbonate balanced by humectants (moisture-attracting ingerdients) and acids.

Likewise, a swipe of raw cayenne delivers an unpredictable hit of capsaicin, the fiery molecule that dermatologists use in nerve-pain creams, but only at strictly managed strengths.

Pure kitchen spices also arrive with their own microorganisms: they are agricultural products processed in bulk. Once mixed with water or oil to create a mask they can become bacterial broths, inviting infection rather than a healthy glow.

Baking soda: more alkaline than your skin can handle

Baking soda illustrates how quickly a “harmless” staple can upset skin chemistry. Celebrated online for mild antibacterial and antifungal properties, sodium bicarbonate is, in fact, highly alkaline.

Normal skin sits in the acidic range of 4.5 to 5.5. Apply a thick alkaline paste and the pH shoots upward, disrupting friendly microbes and triggering irritation and breakouts.

Studies in humans show a bicarbonate paste does not relieve psoriasis itch or redness. On babies, baking-soda soaks for nappy rash have caused hypokalaemic metabolic alkalosis (low potassium levels in the blood), leading to seizures and coma.

Some influencers say that the same paste that soothes burns is safe, but it can be dangerous. There are reports of baking soda causing severe skin damage – such as deep burns and even tissue death – when it was applied to broken or injured skin.

Even more alarming are posts touting it as a DIY cancer therapy, on the theory that it “neutralises” tumour acidity. High oral doses have disrupted heart rhythm and caused death.

Garlic: ancient remedy, modern irritant

Garlic’s folklore as a “natural antibiotic” fares no better. Raw cloves are loaded with sulphur compounds that behave like caustic chemicals. Direct application has produced allergic or irritant dermatitis and even third-degree burns on lips and eyelids.

Any scars may outlast the pimple they were supposed to heal.

Research on allicin, a natural compound in garlic, shows promise as an antimicrobial and heart-protective agent – potentially helping to lower blood pressure, reduce inflammation and prevent heart disease. But that study used purified extracts in lab conditions – not a clove rubbed straight onto skin.

Chilli peppers: capsaicin isn’t a beauty hack

Chillies present an even hotter hazard. Capsaicin is licensed for nerve-pain creams yet even pharmacists warn of burning, redness and swelling. Home kitchens, obviously, lack a pharmacist.

Cooks who handle chillies daily can develop Hunan hand, an intensely painful, burning dermatitis. Despite this, some beauty hacks still recommend cayenne masks for radiance. Airborne or topical capsaicin stings the eyes, triggering involuntary spasms and long exposure can cause lasting corneal injury.

Inhaling the dust provokes coughing fits and, over time, lung inflammation. Because capsaicin penetrates the skin, repeated use can damage peripheral nerve fibres – dulling your ability to feel heat or pain – and disrupt normal blood flow, which may lead to tissue irritation, delayed healing or increased sensitivity. It can also affect blood pressure, especially in people with underlying health issues.

A notorious example underscored the danger: a woman suffered agonising vaginal burns after unknowingly using a tampon contaminated with pepper spray that had leaked in her handbag. Even mustard powder can deliver second-degree burns when misapplied.

Spice rack roulette: staining, burning, dermatitis

Spices thought to be milder are hardly innocent. Cinnamon is a trendy lip-plumper, yet dermatologists document contact dermatitis and chemical burns. Ginger “glow” masks leave many users with red, irritated skin.

Clove oil, hyped as a spot cure, has produced caustic injuries. Saffron can cause allergic rashes, while turmeric’s curcumin, celebrated online for anti-inflammatory benefits, often delivers dermatitis and bright yellow staining that lingers for days.

Dermatologists recommend patch-testing any new skincare product, even “pure” essential oils, on the inner arm for 48 hours.

Powdered spices also wander: a cinnamon scrub can fill the air with irritant dust that settles in eyes or airways, leaving you sneezing and sore instead of glowing.

Respect your barrier

Dermatologists emphasise the importance of protecting the skin barrier: gentle, pH-balanced cleansers and moisturisers help maintain the acid mantle that defends against germs. Your doctor or pharmacist can guide you toward proven plant-based ingredients like niacinamide, aloe vera, or colloidal oatmeal, all of which offer skin benefits without the sting.

Next time an influencer urges you to “ditch chemicals” or promote “clean beauty” and scoop your skincare out of a spice jar, remember, everything is a chemical. Some belong on your dinner plate – very few belong on your face.

Adam Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. From raw garlic cloves to cayenne pepper: why ‘natural’ DIY skincare can leave you burnt, itchy – or worse – https://theconversation.com/from-raw-garlic-cloves-to-cayenne-pepper-why-natural-diy-skincare-can-leave-you-burnt-itchy-or-worse-260264

July 14, 2025

We can learn a lot from Troy’s trash

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephan Blum, Research associate, Institute for Prehistory and Early History and Medieval Archaeology, University of Tübingen

Beneath the epic tales of heroes and gods, Troy’s true story is written in something far less glamorous – its rubbish.

When we think of Troy, we imagine epic battles, valiant deeds, cunning tricks and the wrath of gods. Thanks to Homer’s Iliad, the city is remembered as a stage for romance and heroism.

But long before Paris stole Helen and Achilles raged on the battlefield, the people of bronze age Troy lived ordinary lives – with extraordinary consequences. They built, cooked, stored, traded and, crucially, threw things away. And they did it right where they lived.

Today, waste is whisked away quickly – out of sight, out of mind. But in bronze age Troy (3000–1000BC), trash stayed close, often accumulating in domestic dumping grounds for generations.

Having spent more than 16 summers excavating and analysing the bronze age layers of Troy, I’ve learned to read the city’s history this waste.

Hundreds of thousands of animal bones from cattle, sheep, fish – even turtles – were found alongside vast quantities of pottery shards, ash, food scraps, and human waste. Sometimes, these layers were reused to level floors or build walls, showing how closely intertwined daily life and refuse management were.

Archaeology’s dirty secret

This wasn’t laziness or neglect, it was pure pragmatism. In a world without rubbish trucks or sanitation systems, managing refuse was neither chaotic nor careless, but a collective, spatially negotiated – and surprisingly strategic – effort.

The excavations I have worked on as part of the University of Tübingen’s Troy Project, which has been going on since 1988, have revealed just how deliberate these routines were. Where people chose to dump, or not to dump, speaks volumes about status, social roles, and community boundaries. Waste is the diary no one meant to write, yet it records the intimate rhythms of daily life with unfiltered clarity.

Far from a nuisance, Troy’s waste is an archaeologist’s treasure trove.

Over nearly 2,000 years, Troy ended up with 15 meters of built-up debris. Archaeologists can see nine major building phases in it, each made up of hundreds of thin layers, which formed as people lived their everyday lives. These layers act like snapshots, quietly recording how the city changed over time. Some capture hearth cleanings, others record the rebuilding of entire city quarters.

By analysing the layers and their ratios of bones to pottery, ash concentration, presence of storage jars, grinding stones, or production debris, specific spaces of activity become visible: kitchens, workshops, storage areas, rubbish pits. What appears chaotic turns out to be a carefully structured map of everyday routines – showing where meals were prepared, tools made, and discarded objects left behind.

A schematic cross-section through the settlement mound of Troy, revealing centuries of construction, destruction, and renewal.
University of Tübingen/Frank Schweizer, CC BY-NC-SA

The story these remains tell is one of profound transformation. Troy began as a modest agrarian settlement, shaped by the steady rhythms of farming, herding, and small-scale craft. Over time, it grew into a thriving regional centre.

The archaeological record, rich in refuse, traces this long arc of change. Exotic imports fashioned from stones such as carnelian and lapis lazuli begin to appear, revealing distant trade connections. Specialised metalworking tools emerge alongside monumental architecture. some buildings stretched nearly 30 metres, signalling growing ambitions and expanding capabilities.

This rise unfolded gradually, reflected not just in grander buildings, but in shifting tools, trade, and how people dealt with what they left behind. Waste management became more organised, with designated areas for different types of waste. This reflects broader shifts in how the community structured space and managed its economy.

Yet this ascent was interrupted. By the mid-third millennium BC, signs that things were becoming smaller appear. Architecture simplifies, household inventories shrink, production debris declines suggesting economic slowdown or political instability.

Still, Troy endured. By the mid-second millennium BC, the city revived. Refined ceramics, luxury imports and evidence of social complexity marked a new chapter of recovery and reinvention. This splendid settlement later became the stage for Homer’s Trojan War where Greek warriors faced the daunting task of climbing towering mounds of debris built up over centuries just to reach the palaces.

A heap worth climbing

These insights allow us to see Troy not just as a city of walls and towers, but as a living organism shaped by daily routines, unspoken norms and social negotiation. The waste left behind is a remarkably honest archive of bronze age society – beneath myths, stones, and poetry.

Troy’s trash heaps are the bronze age’s search history. To know what mattered 4,500 years ago, don’t ask poets – ask the garbage. From broken tools to shared meals, from imported luxuries to scraps, this waste reveals the pulse of everyday life and society’s evolving structure.

Ironically, these mundane refuse layers preserved the bronze age world for us. Without them, we’d know far less about early Troy’s people. Their depth and composition trace changes in economy, technology, and social structure. From scraps to towers of pottery shards, waste archaeology is key to understanding early urban complexity.

So next time you picture Achilles storming Troy’s gates, remember: the heroes might have been divine, but their city smelled very human.

Stephan Blum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. We can learn a lot from Troy’s trash – https://theconversation.com/we-can-learn-a-lot-from-troys-trash-260613

July 14, 2025

How does the PKK’s disarmament affect Turkey, Syria and Iraq?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Pinar Dinc, Associate Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science and Researcher, Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University

The historic disarmament ceremony on July 11 where members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) laid down their arms marked a pivotal moment in a decades-long conflict in Turkey. The ceremony was described by many who attended as a profoundly symbolic and emotional day that may signal the beginning of a new era.

During the disarmament ceremony in Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, 26 PKK guerrillas alongside four senior commanders and leaders of the movement, symbolically laid aid down their arms and burned them. The audience included officials from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), plus politicians, journalists and international observers.

For more than four decades the PKK has been embroiled in an armed conflict with Turkey that has claimed more than 40,000 lives and shaped Kurdish identity and politics across the region.

The PKK disarmament ceremony also could mark a new era for the Kurds, one of the largest stateless groups in the world with over 30 million people living across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. The PKK has said it will now shift from armed resistance to political dialogue and regional cooperation.

Strikingly, the day after the ceremony, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan acknowledged the state’s historical failures in addressing the Kurdish issue. He listed past abuses of Kurds – state-sponsored abductions and extrajudicial violence, the burning of villages and the forced displacement of families – as examples of policies that had fuelled, rather than quelled, the conflict.

“We all paid the price for these mistakes” he said. He later added: “As of yesterday, Turkey began to close a long, painful and tear-filled chapter.” Erdoğan also announced the formation of a parliamentary commission to oversee the legal steps of the peace process, suggesting a much-needed institutionalised and transparent approach than in previous attempts.

This hints that the road ahead might include a period of transitional justice. This could compose of different tools used by societies to address past violence and human rights abuses during a shift from conflict to peace and democracy. These may include legal actions such as trials, as well as other efforts to heal and rebuild trust in society.

Erdoğan also underlined the regional dimension of the agreement: “The issue is not only that of our Kurdish citizens, but also of our Kurdish brothers and sisters in Iraq and Syria. We are discussing this process with them, and they are very pleased as well.”

PKK fighters take part in a symbolic peace ceremony.

International dimensions

While the PKK may be laying down arms, the Kurdish political movement should not be expected to disappear. On the contrary, it is likely to become more active in the democratic sphere — both in Turkey and in other parts of the Middle East where Kurdish people live. It is no secret that the current peace process is the result of shifting geopolitical realities.

Growing tensions between the US and Iran, Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, the ousting of the Assad regime in Syria, and shifting power dynamics across the region have all contributed to a geopolitical landscape in which prolonged armed conflict has become increasingly unsustainable — for both Turkey and the PKK. In this context, the current peace process is not merely a domestic initiative.

It represents a strategic recalibration in a rapidly changing Middle East. For Turkey, stabilising its southeastern border and reducing internal security pressures is essential amid regional volatility.

Map of Turkey and neighbouring countries — Shutterstock

Turkey has long maintained strong ties with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) (the official ruling body of the Kurdistan region) in Iraq. However, the situation for Kurds in Syria remains more complex, as Turkey continues to view the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (a region that has in effect been self governing since 2012 and where many Kurds live) as a security threat along its border.

Meanwhile, negotiations continue between the new Syrian government under current president, Ahmed Hussein al-Shara, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led coalition in Syria, which has been historically backed by the US. The SDF seeks to maintain its military autonomy and have its own independent political system — both of which are opposed by Damascus.

Western nations, particularly the US, remain influential in these talks. The US ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria, Thomas Barrack, is reportedly uneasy with the lack of progress in the talks between al-Shara, and the SDF. He said: “The SDF, who has been a valued partner for America in the fight against ISIS, well-respected, bright, articulate, has to come to the conclusion that there’s one country, there’s one nation, there’s one people, and there’s one army.”

Another factor here is that a strong Arab-Turkish-Kurdish alliance is unlikely to align with Israeli strategic interests, which may favour a more fragmented Kurdish presence in the region.

For now, Turkey faces the complex task of overseeing a comprehensive disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration process. This requires not only the decommissioning of weapons and the disbanding of armed units, but also the social and political reintegration of former combatants. The success of this will depend on legal reforms, institutional trust and a genuine commitment to democratic inclusion.

Erdoğan has been critised for his government’s ongoing non-democratic practices such the appointment of state trustees who replace elected officials and the imprisonment of elected officials.

And, despite the symbolic disarmament, the Turkish government persists in using the words “struggle against terrorism” — an approach that risks undermining the peace process by criminalising political dialogue and delegitimising Kurdish demands.

Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan reiterated that the PKK’s broader network, including the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), a group representing Kurds across Iraq, Syria and Turkey, must cease to pose a threat. “We will remain vigilant until every component of the KCK is no longer a danger to our nation and region,” he stated.

For the PKK, the changing alliances and uncertainties in Syria and Iraq may have made armed struggle a less viable path forward. Yet the sustainability of peace will depend on more than disarmament. It will require ending the criminalisation of Kurds in political institutions and within civil society.

What comes next will determine whether this moment becomes a historic turning point or another missed opportunity.

Pinar Dinc is the principal investigator of the ECO-Syria project, which receives funding from the Strategic Research Area: The Middle East in the Contemporary World (MECW) at the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden.

– ref. How does the PKK’s disarmament affect Turkey, Syria and Iraq? – https://theconversation.com/how-does-the-pkks-disarmament-affect-turkey-syria-and-iraq-261113