The war in the former Yugoslavia produced many highly trained and experienced combatants, some of whom engaged not only in a variety of organized criminal activities such as the illicit trade of natural resources, trafficking and corruption, but also war crimes. In the post-war environment various criminal groups took advantage of post-conflict transition conditions which enabled them to be transformed into legitimate legal entities. The failure to investigate and hold to account those involved in criminal activity meant that demobilized soldiers turned to highly profitable, legally constituted private military and security companies (PMSCs). This is coupled with poorly designed security sector reforms that often fail to enhance effective and accountable security that is respectful of human rights. In recent years, similar transformations of many former combatants and criminal groups into legitimate PMSCs around the globe have raised new concerns about their growing activities across different sectors. This article uses the former Yugoslavia as an example from which to highlight some of the increasingly common problems posed by the creation of private military and security providers globally, as a result of the current uncoordinated processes to prevent armed conflicts. The article reflects on the need to avoid smart sanctions and use other foreign policy tools, while calling for an integrated approach to security sector reform and transitional justice that is necessary for sustainable peace.

Burials of eminent Quanzhen masters, particularly in the form of extravagant assembly-funerals, served as the initial step in the development of a Quanzhen-style ancestor worship. This ancestor worship functioned as the bedrock of a thriving Quanzhen lineage-building movement in thirteenth-century north China. Quanzhen Daoists attributed great significance to the physical remains of a lineage's founding master and commonly conducted multiple burials of the master. Each instance of reburial presented an opportunity for specific lineage members to assert their lineage identity, as well as ownership over the founding master's spiritual and material legacy. Lineage members commonly materialized their ancestor worship through a series of memorial objects established within a hosting monastery, including tombs, statues, portraits, memorial shrines, and commemorative steles. These lineage-building efforts strengthened dynamic networks of people, monasteries, and material culture, shaping regional interactions and transformations in north China under Mongol rule.

This article examines the idea of mind-reading technology by focusing on an interesting case of applying a large language model (LLM) to brain data. On the face of it, experimental results appear to show that it is possible to reconstruct mental contents directly from brain data by processing via a chatGPT-like LLM. However, the author argues that this apparent conclusion is not warranted. Through examining how LLMs work, it is shown that they are importantly different from natural language. The former operates on the basis of nonrational data transformations based on a large textual corpus. The latter has a rational dimension, being based on reasons. Using this as a basis, it is argued that brain data does not directly reveal mental content, but can be processed to ground predictions indirectly about mental content. The author concludes that this is impressive but different in principle from technology-mediated mind reading. The applications of LLM-based brain data processing are nevertheless promising for speech rehabilitation or novel communication methods.