Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Strawson, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of East London

Sunday is the first day of the working week in Israel – but the upcoming Sunday August 17 promises to be a day of strikes and demonstrations. There’s a groundswell of public opposition to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promised all-out offensive against Gaza city as well as a growing sense of desperation at the plight of the remaining hostages.

The question is how will these actions on the streets translate into a coherent political alternative to Netanyahu in Knesset elections? The next election must take place by October 2026 – but it might well happen sooner.

Netanyahu has presided over the most right-wing government in the country’s history. During his current term from October 2022, mass protests have been a feature of Israeli society. Initially they were against the government’s attack on the powers of the supreme court, which many saw as a more general attack on democracy.

Now, with the failure of the military operation in Gaza to secure the release of all the October 7 hostages, the need to secure a ceasefire or a more permanent end to the war to bring the hostages home has become the focus of public protests. August 17 is likely to involve the largest national mobilisation yet.

But despite the mass action on the streets, Israel’s opposition parties have remained divided on policy and largely united only in their dislike of Netanyahu. Only the left: the Labor Party and Meretz seem to have grasped that the time has come to offer the country a clear political alternative.

After decades of rivalry, they’ve merged into one party, the Democrats, under the leadership of charismatic former deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Yair Golan.

Yesh Atid (which translates as There is a Future) led by Yair Lapid offer a broadly centrist political platforms. Like the Democrats, Yesh Atid has been active in the campaign for securing the release of the hostages but is largely silent on any resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians.

The rest of the opposition: Benny Gantz’s Blue and White and Avigdor Leiberman’s Yisrael Beitenu are firmly on the centre-right. Gantz’s party places security as its main policy but has been open to compromise with Netanyahu on the judicial reforms. Leiberman’s party is rooted among Russian immigrants and maintains a nationalist position. Once a Netanyahu associate, he is now a major critic.

Israel’s electoral system requires parties to work together to forge coalitions. Netanyahu did so in November 2022 with the support of the most right-wing parties in the Knesset. Now the polls are predicting that it is Naftali Bennet, who served as prime minister from June 2021 to June 2022, who is shaping up as the most likely candidate to lead the opposition bloc into the next election.

Bennett led a broad coalition which briefly interrupted Netanyahu’s second period in office. Consequentially, his government was supported by Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am, or United Arab List. Abbas’s presence in the coalition underlines the significance of the role that Arab parties potentially play in Israeli politics, representing, as they do, 20% of Israel’s population in a system where lawmakers are chosen by proportional representations.

But Israel’s Arab parties, which range across different shades of Islamism, Arab nationalism and socialism, are as factionalised and divided as the Jewish parties.

What the public want

A lot will depend on how the parties handle the war and hostage questions. Opinion polls consistently show there is a large majority of Israelis (74%) in favour of ending the war in Gaza and bringing the hostages home.

A majority of people, 55%, now think that Netanyahu is handling the war badly . This level of approval, together with mass action on Israel’s streets, presents an opportunity for Israel’s opposition parties to paint themselves as a viable alternative government.

Now, nearly two years after the October 7 attack, with the unresolved hostage situation, mounting settler violence on the West Bank and Israel becoming ever more isolated internationally, this issue has become even more acute. People want the war to end.

But this doesn’t translate into support for a two-state solution, which has fallen since October 7 to a small minority of 21% of voters.

It’s not what will bring people on to the streets on August 17. During the last major period of public unrest – the pro-democracy protests of two years ago – the organisers of the marches actively discouraged comparisons between the attack on democracy in Israel and the decidedly undemocratic Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

While today there are groups such as Jewish-Arab Standing Together who make that case, especially after the course of the Gaza war, these forces are far from the mainstream of even the most activist opponents against Netanyahu’s war.

Sunday’s demonstrations will be a significant moment for Israel and a real challenge to Netanyahu’s government. It is possible that in the next few months his government will fall over the withdrawal of the ultra-orthodox parties who are angry about the goverment’s decision to revoke the exemption for ultra-orthodox Jews from the armed forces.

This is likely to make passing a budget problematic and may well trigger an elections much earlier than scheduled. Netanyahu could well face an electorate exhausted by the trauma of October 7, wars on many fronts and rising Israeli casualties in Gaza.

If the opinion polls are right, and an anti-Netanyahu bloc wins a majority, there could even be a new government in the next six months.

But to dismiss a more permanent settlement with Palestine cannot be viable in the long term. Any government committed to defending Israeli democracy will find that it is incompatible with continuing denial of Palestinian democracy. Unless there is peace with its Palestinian neighbours, Israel will not be at peace with itself.

John Strawson 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. Israel’s opposition: against Benjamin Netanyahu but not yet for peace with the Palestinians – https://theconversation.com/israels-opposition-against-benjamin-netanyahu-but-not-yet-for-peace-with-the-palestinians-262975

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sabine Hyland, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews

The people of the ancient Incan empire kept careful records of their economics, religion, demographics and history. Those records took the form of knotted cords called khipus.

Until now, researchers believed that the only people who knew how to make khipus in the Inca empire (circa 1400-1532) were very elite, high-status officials. With little direct evidence about the Inca khipu experts, researchers like myself have relied on descriptions by colonial Spanish chroniclers.

According to written sources, khipus were made exclusively by high-ranking bureaucrats who enjoyed the finest food and drink. In the Inca tradition, there was no distinction between “author” and “scribe”; both roles were combined into one.

The term used to describe an Inca khipu maker, “khipu kamayuq”, derives from the verb “kamay” which refers to creation in the sense of energising matter. Khipu experts – “kamayuq” – energised the khipus they made by imbuing the cords with their own vitality.

I head a team of researchers that has uncovered new evidence that commoners also made khipus in the Inca empire, meaning khipu literacy may have been more inclusive than previously thought. The key to this discovery is the realisation that khipu experts sometimes “signed” the khipus they made with locks of their own hair.

In Inca cosmology, human hair carried a person’s essence. A person’s hair retained his or her identity even when it was physically separated from the body. A child’s first hair-cutting, for example, was a major rite of passage. The hair removed in this ritual was given as an offering to the gods or kept in the house as a sacred object.

The Inca emperor’s hair clippings were saved during his lifetime; after death his hair was fashioned into a life-size simulacrum that was worshipped as the emperor himself.

Read more:
The Inca string code that reveals Peru’s climate history

Historically, when human hair was tied onto khipus, the hair was the “signature” of the person from whom the hair was removed. Our team observed this recently in the highland village of Jucul in Peru, where villagers possess over 90 ancestral khipus, some made centuries ago.

On the khipus of Jucul, human hair attached to the primary cord represents the people who made each section of the khipu. This accords with earlier findings that herders in highland Peru tied their own hair to khipus “like a signature”, signifying their responsibility for the information on the cords.

Personal objects tied to or otherwise incorporated into the primary cord represent the khipu creator or author. For example, on a 16th-century khipu from the Andean community of Collata, strips of a leader’s insignia scarf tied to the primary cord symbolise the man who authored the khipu, imbuing the khipu with his authority.

In contrast, when khipus contained information about multiple people, each person’s data was signified by a band of pendants of the same colour or by including hair from multiple people in the pendants.

Analysing the hair

Our team identified an Inca-era khipu, known as KH0631, with a primary cord made entirely of human hair from a single person. Until now, khipus have not been examined for the presence of human hair, so it is unknown how often they contain hair.

The human hair in KH0631’s primary cord likely represented the person who made the khipu, marking the khipu with this person’s authority and essence.

The hair in the KH0631 primary cord, 104cm long, was folded in half and twisted when the khipu was made. Assuming hair growth at 1cm per month, the hair represents over eight years of growth.

To learn about the person who made the khipu, we undertook simultaneous carbon, nitrogen and sulphur isotope measurements from a sample at the end of the cord.

The presence of the C4 isotope (instead of C3) generally indicates the consumption of maize in Andean diets; the relative levels of stable nitrogen isotopes allow us to make inferences about the proportion of meat in the diet; and the levels of stable sulphur isotopes enables us to determine the amount of marine food sources.

Because the hair was doubled over, the loose end included hair cut nearest the scalp and hair from the end of the tresses. This meant the sample represented two periods of the person’s life separated by eight or more years.

Isotopic analysis of carbon, nitrogen and sulphur in human hair has been used to determine the diet of ancient Andeans. The diet of high-status versus low-status groups in the Inca state differed greatly.

Elite people consumed more meat and maize-based dishes, while commoners ate more tubers, like potatoes and greens. To our surprise, isotopic analysis of the human hair in KH0631 revealed that this person had the diet of a low-status commoner, eating a plant-based diet of tubers and greens with very little meat or maize.

Sulphur isotope analysis shows little marine contribution to the diet, indicating that this person probably lived in the highlands rather than the coast. In the ancient Andes, elites feasted on meat and maize beer, while commoners dined on potatoes, legumes and pseudo-grains like quinoa. It appears that the khipu expert who made KH0631 was a commoner.

We don’t know where in the Andes KH0631 was made, so we tested the oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in the sample. Our results show that the person lived in the highlands between 2,600-2,800m above sea level in southern Peru or northern Chile (without better data on local water values, the exact location remains tentative).

This is the first time that isotopic analysis has been conducted on khipu fibres. The human hair “signature” in KH0631’s primary cord allowed us to learn more about the person who made this object.

Although other researchers have argued that only elite officials made khipus in the Inca empire, our new evidence suggests that commoners made khipus too – and that khipu literacy may have been more widespread than previously believed.

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Sabine Hyland receives funding from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the British Museum and the University of St Andrews Impact Fund.

– ref. Ancient Incans of all classes used coded strings of hair for record keeping – new research – https://theconversation.com/ancient-incans-of-all-classes-used-coded-strings-of-hair-for-record-keeping-new-research-263063

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Will de Freitas, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation

The “Paris agreement for plastic” was set to be finalised at the end of this week.

But after a week and a half of intense discussions in Geneva, Switzerland, where negotiators from 180 countries are gathered, the talks are at risk of delivering a much weakened agreement (if one can be finalised at all).

“With less than 48 hours to go”, writes one academic in Geneva, “the window for action is closing”.

What has gone wrong in Geneva? And what do experts think needs to be part of a treaty in order to make it effective?

Running into resistance

Writing at the start of this round of negotiations on August 5, social scientists Cat Acheson, Alice Street and Rob Ralston of the University of Edinburgh, highlighted various elements in the draft text which could make a real difference.

“These include cutting plastic production (Article 6), banning plastic products and chemicals that are hazardous to humans or the environment (Article 3), and a section dedicated to protecting human health (Article 19).”

But many countries are pushing back. Winnie Courtene-Jones, our expert in Geneva, is a lecturer in marine pollution at Bangor University. She says the same political disagreements that have stalled previous talks remain unresolved:

“Resistance largely comes from a bloc of countries with strong petrochemical industries and interests, unwilling to compromise or pursue ambitious measures.”

This is the “like-minded group” of countries that has frustrated attempts to include these aims since the talks began in Uruguay in November 2022. Nearly all plastic is made from fossil fuel, hence the shared position of major petrochemical producers including Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran – plus the large presence of people working for oil and gas firms and plastic manufacturers at the negotiations.

This cohort favours an agreement that seeks to manage waste, rather than cap plastic production.

“They have done so by arguing that plastics are in fact essential for protecting health, due to the role of single-use plastic in modern medicine,” Acheson and colleagues say.

From womb to grave

Petrostates citing the needs of healthcare workers in their arguments against limiting how much plastic is made worldwide are probably disingenuous. A landmark report published last week in the Lancet medical journal shows why.

“Plastics, the evidence shows, are a threat to human health – from womb to grave,” say Acheson, Street and Ralston. “They’re linked to miscarriages, birth defects, heart disease and cancer.”

The report highlights how more than 16,000 chemicals are used in plastic, many of which are not disclosed by the companies making it. Plastic chemicals are tied to health effects at all stages of human development, though foetuses, infants and young children are thought to be especially susceptible.

Less than 10% of plastic is recycled, the Lancet states. Much of it leaks out at various stages between use and disposal and breaks down into tinier and tinier fragments. Plants and worms in the soil and plankton in water ingest or absorb these microplastics, and are in turn eaten by larger organisms. This is how plastic travels through food webs – and eventually reaches us.

“It is now clear that the world cannot recycle its way out of the plastic pollution crisis,” according to the Lancet report.

Plastic-eating microbes

There are some promising developments.

Just a few days ago, Julianne Megaw, a lecturer in microbiology at Queen’s University Belfast, reported the findings of her latest research on microbial degradation, which she says involves “harnessing the natural abilities of certain bacteria and fungi to break down plastics in ways that current technologies cannot”.

Such microbes are often found in polluted sites, but Megaw’s research shows they’re also found in more pristine environments. Some were able to degrade plastics by around 20% in a month without any pretreatment.

These results are “among the highest biodegradation rates ever recorded for these plastics,” writes Megaw. “This suggests that we don’t have to stick to polluted sites. It’s possible that we could find microbes with excellent plastic-degrading potential anywhere.”

This is great news of course. Maybe one day billions of friendly microbes will be set loose to clear up a century or two of plastic pollution. But even in the most optimistic scenario, we’re still some way off being able to use microorganisms at scale.

Reaching the limit?

And so that leaves the idea of placing limits on total plastic production. Research by Costas Velis, a lecturer in resource efficiency at the University of Leeds, indicates why an effective treaty will need to include some kind of global cap:

“All efforts to scientifically model the extent of plastic pollution in the future assume that restricting how much plastic the world makes each year will be necessary (among other measures) to curb its harmful presence in the environment.”

But even if countries can phase down plastic manufacturing, Velis cautions that we would have much further to go to solve the problem.

“Cutting production almost in half and using all other strategies, such as ramping up recycling and disposing of plastic waste in landfills or via incineration plants, would still leave residual pollution in 2040,” he says.

Waste management reforms, changes to the design of remaining plastic products and mandates for retailers will also be necessary.

“It could be possible to massively simplify the types of polymers used in packaging so that just a few are in circulation. This would make recycling more effective, as one of the present complications is the huge variation in materials that leads to cross-contamination. Likewise, countries could massively expand systems for reusing and refilling containers in shops,” he says.

You and I will have to get used to living with much less plastic as well – a marked shift in our lives for which there is little precedent, Velis says. A result in Geneva that reins in the expanding plastic industry could at least kickstart that process.

“Every year without production caps makes the necessary cut to plastic production in future steeper – and our need to use other measures to address the problem greater,” he says.

Whatever happens in the next few days, be sure to check out the latest coverage here on The Conversation. We have plastics experts lined up to assess the final treaty – or explain why talks ultimately did collapse.

Post-carbon

Last week, we asked you if growing awareness of microplastic contamination had affected your behaviour.

Stefan Frischauf said that plastic bags are a nightmare and, as an architect, “rebuilding and reuse of materials should be regulated in much more severe ways”.

Babette Schouws says: “I have stopped buying clothes made of polyester or other plastic materials … I always check the tag before I try something on.”

And Tina Grayson set up “a small business selling our solid shampoo and conditioner bars”. Each bar, she says, saves about three plastic bottles. “This is our contribution to the ever worrying increase of plastics and microplastics in our world – as well as doing other things in our house such as ordering milk from the milk man in glass bottles rather than buying plastic ones from the supermarket, using chewable toothpaste, using toothbrushes without plastic handles, buying our loo paper from Bamboo which is wrapped in paper etc.”

Next week, we’d like to know if severe heatwaves in the UK, southern Europe or beyond have affected your holiday plans. Will you try and avoid 40°C temperatures or head for a dip in the sea to cool off?

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

– ref. How a global plastic treaty could cut down pollution – if the world can agree one – https://theconversation.com/how-a-global-plastic-treaty-could-cut-down-pollution-if-the-world-can-agree-one-262816