World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

The alliances among the states and non-states actors in the region of the world we call the Middle East are extraordinarily complex and susceptible to minor (and sometimes major) shifts.  There is a remarkable website called “Information is Beautiful” which dedicates itself to the graphic display of information.  One of their graphics conveys the alliances in the Middle East (including major non-Middle East countries) and shows how these alliances cross all sorts of regional and ideological divides.  You can access the graphic here.

An organization called Trucost is dedicated to assessing the costs of environmental damage as part of the normal economic process.  Unfortunately, mainstream economics does not factor environmental damage into the costs of a product, instead referring to these costs as “externalities” since those costs are generally not included in the price of a product (and therefore affecting the profitability of a product).  Turcost treats environmental damage as an “unpriced natural capital costs” and categorizes them in terms of six categories:  water use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, waste, air pollution, land and water pollution, and land use.  In its most recent study Trucost estimates that the unpriced natural capital costs of some key industrial products is about US$7.3 trillion or almost 8% of the value of the total gross global product.  Needless to say, if companies were forced to include the price of environmental damage in their prices, many companies would not be profitable.  The important thing to remember, however, is that ultimately these costs have got to be paid, either in terms of tax monies used to clean up the mess or in terms of lives lost due to degradation in the ability of the planet to support life.

For a good example of how this plays out, one need only to look at the recent toxic waste spill in the Animas River in Colorado.  The US Environmental Protection Agency caused the spill because it was trying to clean up a mess made earlier by a mining company that not longer works the mine.  The mine was governed by the General Mining Law of 1872 which permits companies to avoid paying market value for the minerals they intend to mine and which does not include environmental protection as an obligation to work the mine.  Public land being used for private profit without adequate protection for the public interest is clearly a bad idea.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has appointed Danny Danon as Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations.   Danon has long opposed the two-state solution and does not support the creation of a Palestinian state.  Further, according to the New York Times, he:

“has called for Israel to annex all West Bank settlements, annul the Oslo Peace Accords and allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. He has described the Obama administration’s criticism of Israeli construction in East Jerusalem as racist and said the United States is not an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians.”

In short, Ambassador Danon rejects the US bargaining position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the official position of the UN and the European Union on the terms of an ultimate settlement to the conflict.