Utopia, you are standing in it!

Here are the opening paragraphs of a Jan. 8th Guardian article (Angela Davis ‘stunned’ by decision to rescind civil rights award):

The veteran civil rights activist Angela Davis said she was “stunned” by the decision of Alabama’s Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to revoke an award she was set to receive.

The institute announced in October that Davis, a Birmingham native, would receive the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights award, calling her “one of the most globally recognized champions of human rights, giving voice to those who are powerless to speak”.

But last week, the organization reversed course and said she does not meet the criteria after all, in an apparent response to objections over her outspoken support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that protests against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

….

Davis, who was an active member of the Black Panther party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the…

Financial Times contextualises their Jan. 4threview of two recent books (Preventing Palestine, by Seth Anziska, and Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu, by Anshel Pfeffer) by maintaining that Netanayhu and Menachem Begin are “two rightwingers who prevented a viable Palestinian state”.

Here are relevant passages from the review:

Netanyahu’s is a political career seemingly launched with one goal: preventing a viable Palestinian state. 

Netanyahu may disagree but his most visible impact on modern Israel is that 25 years after Oslo was signed, no Palestinian state has taken form.

…

In Anziska’s deeply researched book, the idea of a negotiated path to a viable Palestinian state was first betrayed at Camp David in the late 1970s, when US president Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin, Israel’s rightwing prime minister, and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat brokered the accord that brought a lasting peace between Egypt and…

If $10 million magically appeared and you got to decide how to allocate it between several environmental goals, how would you do it? Would you spend the money preserving open space? Cleaning up a watershed? Restoring habitat? Or a mix of these and other goals?

This thought experiment encourages you to consider tradeoffs. If funds are limited—as they always are—difficult choices between competing, laudable goals are inevitable. Who makes these choices and how can, in large part, dictate outcomes, for better or worse.

For instance, scholars have long observed that federal funding for endangered species has strongly favored charismatic megafauna, like wolves, bears, and other popular species. More obscure species—especially insects—don’t win this popularity contest. The federal government’s appetite to fund recovery efforts has always been limited, so allocating too much to one species necessarily reduces funds available for another that may need it more.

Last week, biologists working with…

After President Trump reduced the size of Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument, environmentalists feared the lands would be opened up to environmentally destructive mining. However, in the first six months, only one claim had been staked, a protest claim by public lands activists.

The conflict over mining in the former lands of Bears Ears is just the latest high-profile example of a long-simmering conflict over U.S. mining regulation. It is governed by the Mining Law of 1872, which declares federal lands “free and open” to prospectors. Although environmental and federal land regulations have modified that wild-west approach over the subsequent century and a half, it remains largely possible for anyone to go out on many federal lands and stake a claim. (But actually mining and profiting from that claim is another story. . .)

Opponents of this approach have lodged protest claims in areas they wish to…