This article was written shortly before Israel assassinated the Deputy Head of Hamas Political Bureau Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut on January 2. The assassination is a further illustration of the Israeli government's desire to escape the consequences of its disastrous war in Gaza, by igniting a regional conflict. 

The clashes between Hezbollah and Israel are the closest to an actual war that the Lebanon-Israel border has seen since the war of 2006, which resulted in a rushed Israeli retreat, if not outright defeat. 

 We often refer to the ongoing conflict between Lebanon and Israel as ‘controlled’ clashes, simply because both sides are keen not to instigate or engage in an all-out war. 

Obviously, Hezbollah wants to preserve Lebanese lives and civilian infrastructure, which would surely be seriously damaged, if not destroyed, should Israel decide to launch a war. 

Clintonville’s Rag-O-Rama – a hipster destination for resale clothes – shut down this past weekend, leaving employees in a lurch and another remnant of Columbus’s soulful and non-corporate past in the proverbial back-alley garbage dumpster.

The Free Press often reminisces on Columbus of the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, when it was more a hip and quirky college town than a lame playground for young professionals and their corporate overlords.

“I’ve been going there for 25 years. After Bernie’s, Surly Girl, Larry’s, Mamas, Outland, Lil Brothers, King Avenue Coffee Shop, Atlantis, Blue Danube, Tee Jayes, Short North Coffee House, and almost all the entire Short North art district, etc. with nothing ever replacing any of it, Columbus is culturally dead,” wrote Michael Moore on the Crazy Mama’s remembrance page on Facebook. For those not in know, Crazy Mama’s on South High off-campus was Columbus’s answer to the punk, new wave and garage band “underground” which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.

Sustainable ecological value monetized will have profound four-fold global benefits. Creating sustainable ecological value is the easiest path toward quickly mitigating climate change, expanding ecological global economic growth, pursuing a radical reduction in pollution depletion and ecological damage, and sharply reducing rampant global inequality. It is the basis for the pursuit of the New Wealth of Nations.

Including ecological value in global market dynamics is the missing piece needed to enable the price system and the pursuit of profit to help radically diminish the attraction of externalities by making the market send price signals realistically valuing and rewarding sustainable conduct to increase profit. Regulatory schemes and taxes on polluters have not stopped the global march toward ecological catastrophe. Monetizing ecological value is both a recognition of the inescapable importance of the global ecosphere under catastrophic assault, and a crucial improvement in the incentives of the price system embracing ecological sanity in the name of profit as well as survival and justice.