Correction:

Sandy Culkoff, Head Corporate Communications, ABC Communications, writes: Re. “Privacy Eye: only the rich and powerful to benefit?” (yesterday, item 18). Freelance journalist Luke Williams today has incorrectly accused the ABC of breaking into Lenah Game Meats to obtain footage of native possums having their throats slit and canned for meat for The 7.30 Report story that went to air in 1999.

This is untrue, the footage was provided to ABC News through a third party.

The ABC was not party to any trespass or secret filming whatsoever for the purpose of the story.

US debt:

Martin C. Jones writes: Re. “No reason or evidence will cure US of its debt fetish” (yesterday, item 3). Is Adam Creighton trolling us? After discounting the plentiful evidence from the past few years that Keynesianism (deficit financing) can, indeed, pull a country out of a soft patch into prosperity, Creighton follows the standard conservative line of rubbishing welfare programs and the “stimulus” (why this is in quotation marks I cannot fathom), and assigning the blame of increased deficits to the current Democrat administration.

Perhaps he would like a graph comparing Obama’s actions to those of Bush? I guess also mentioning that military spending is quite large and should be looked at suffices to prove his independence.

Correlation is spectacularly confused with causation as Creighton suggests that increased taxation leads to increased spending, an argument so ignorant of the way spending decisions are made in politics one hardly knows where to begin to criticise it. Perhaps here, with the American budget surplus/deficit positions since Jimmy Carter, by president.

Obama’s spiralling debt problem is again highlighted without noting that Republican (and Creighton’s) suggestions would make the situation far worse, stimulus spending (sorry, filthy, filthy money creation *spit*) now also destroys the value of the US$ — while still being ineffective at kicking the US economy along, presumably. The logical inconsistencies here are astounding, to say nothing of the gratuitous comparisons and context-free quotation.

I don’t want Crikey to stop running articles by conservative/neo-liberal/libertarian/whatever contributors, but I do want some quality control. Creighton’s article is tripe.

Brett Gaskin writes: Not sure there are many people who would disagree the US needs to reduce spending. However, Adam Creighton, in pure Republican style, claims tax increases should not even be part of the solution. Adam devotes an entire sentence to the 29% of US revenues taken up by military spending, which has almost doubled since 2001. The US spends comfortably more than China, France, Russia, UK, Italy, Germany, Japan, Italy COMBINED.

Thankfully, this sensible spending approach has ensured the US military operations are quick and successful, resulting in stated objectives and minimal civilian damage to life and property. Errr, hang on … So let’s maintain tax cuts and loopholes for the richest of the rich, but cut programs to the poorest of the poor.  It really does show what a completely insane political discourse the US is engaged in when such a proposal is seen as anything but reprehensible.

If our children acted like our politicians, we’d give them a smack and send them to their rooms.

Daniel Bond writes: I’d like to thank Adam Creighton for his educational article on the US debt problem, and especially for drawing my attention to the 1991 Republican-authored study revealing that $1 of new taxation is the root cause of 1.59 of new spending.

Here I was thinking that spending rose faster than taxes because politicians would rather go to elections promising one than the other. In that fantasy land I inhabited, a responsible government could raise money via taxes if they kept spending under control. What foolishness!

The answer, then, is clear. All the US needs to do is reduce taxes to zero. By eliminating that $2.1 trillion in revenue, they will automatically save well over $3 trillion. They’ll be back in the black in no time … what?

Norway massacre:

John Kotsopoulos writes: Re. “The Breivik manifesto and the Monckton connection” (yesterday, item 4). So according to the likes of Minchin, Breivik and his hero Monckton, environmentalism is stalking horse of communism’s grand plan to de-industrialise  the world.

This must come as more than a bit of a surprise to China, the only significant communist country in the world, which is galloping in the opposite direction and tying its economic future to the West in the process. People feeding sick minds with conspiracy theories of this type do not deserve any air time.

Call it censorship if you will, but unfettered access to the media for this type of ranting in today’s world is akin to incitement to commit a terrorist act and should be treated the same under the law.

Phillipa Smyth writes: For the past 10 years in particular, I have been angered at the media’s insistence on reporting on Muslim behaviours and beliefs whenever there is an attack in the name of “Islam” (no matter how wildly off the mark the attacker’s understanding of that religion and its teachings may be.)

In the media in the past couple of days and in Graham Readfearn’s column yesterday, we now seem to be directing a similarly broad brush at Conservatives.

Like him or hate him — or think he’s a despicable liar making his money spouting ridiculous conspiracy theories at the behest of major polluters — Christopher Monckton’s rhetoric did not lead Anders Breivik to kill 76 Norwegians. To draw associations between Monckton and Breivik — or between Breivik and any number of other Conservative figures, as I’ve seen in other media in the past few days — is doing the same to hysterical Conservatives as they are constantly doing to Islam. Please, let’s not stoop to that.

Brad Pace writes: Nobody is a stronger believer in the prevalence of global warming or the need for man-made carbon reduction than me. It is my job and my passion. But even I do not feel comfortable with any links to the horrible massacre in Norway and those that do not believe in climate change.

If the two sides of the climate change argument have any link or association with these events it is this — extremism and a complete disregard of conflicting thoughts is bound to lead to horrific consequences.

As a strong believer in the need for climate change action, it is up to us to convince the general public of this necessity. Let’s get better at that and leave the loonies to be seen as outcasts on both sides of the debate.

Rod Bruem writes: Crikey‘s efforts yesterday surely take the cake. On Monday you criticised some media for linking the gunman to Muslim extremists, then you follow it up yesterday by linking him to global warming sceptics such as former Senator Nick Minchin.It’s already apparent that the perpetrator is mentally deranged. That’s the bottom line.

Trying to link him to whatever religion or cause is ridiculous. At least those who got it wrong initially can claim to have written and judged in haste.

Crikey‘s loopy analysis, coming after several days of consideration, is embarrassing.

Freelancer Gabe McGrath writes: Re. “Media briefs: Sun photoshopping … Fairfax pay wars … WSJ on Murdoch …” (yesterday, item 19). In Media briefs yesterday, you wrote about the Norwegian massacre suspect having “red eyes” in one newspaper, but “normal” eyes in other publication. You wondered if the “red” eyes had been added. I’m pretty sure you’ve got it the wrong way around.

Judging by the overexposed skin, I’d say a bright flash was used. And that often leads to the common “red eye” effect. Normally, correcting “redeye” is a quick fix newspapers would do, without thinking twice.

Unless — they wanted to paint someone as “evil”. So, probably less a case of cheeky “photoshopping”, than a cheeky lack of photoshopping

Food:

Justin Templer writes: Re. “Keen: populate and perish” (yesterday, item 14). Steve Keen (a Professor at UWS) writes that the Club of Rome modelled the world as a system with five key factors — population, technology, pollution, food production and resource depletion — and that our inability to control population growth makes our efforts to control the other four factors ineffectual.

If this is correct then Thomas Malthus should have the last laugh when his prediction that “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man” comes true.  But Professor Keen has eschewed the views of the more recently famous Ester Boserup, who posits the opposite view — that population determines agricultural methods.

Boserup’s more positive view is that pressure on food resources will improve food technology through increases in workforce, agricultural methods, mechanisation and fertilisers.

And certainly this has been true in recent decades — as example, per-hectare cereal output doubled between the 1960s and the late 1990s.  Over this period, while specific regions and peoples have suffered food shortages and starvation, in general peoples on subsistence existences have had improved nutrition due to exactly the factors that Boserup suggests.

However, global warming and the potential strategic use of food complicate the picture. Global warming predictions could spell havoc for food production in specific regions while burgeoning populations (and the demand of those populations to receive subsidised staples) combined with regional hegemony is placing increasing pressure on potentially hostile demand for food resource, such as arable land.

As example, witness the recent outcry over China’s acquisition of agricultural resources across the world.

Ultimately neither the Club of Rome nor the Boserup model is correct as neither considered the strategic geopolitical role that food would play.

Climate change:

Humphrey Hollins writes from Cambodia: Cheers to Andrew Whiley (yesterday, comments) on selfish Australians with no thought for the little people in deltas affected by rising sea levels. I write this while looking over the Tonle Sap river in Phnom Penh which at this time of year reverses its direction and flows north to fill the Tonle Sap lake, the world’s biggest freshwater fishery. It is the only river in the world that changes direction and this is due to the enormous amount of water flowing down the Mekong River and filling the delta.

Unfortunately, Cambodia will, in future, get the double whammy from man’s intervention of building dams and rising sea levels from climate change. Laos is soon to build the first dam on the last wild river in the world, the Mekong. Already there are new dams on the tributaries and dozens more in the planning. I believe that less fresh water flowing down and more salt water from the ocean will inundate the land in the delta, already less than a metre above sea level in Cambodia.

Rice cultivation will suffer and the Tonle Sap fishery, already under severe pressure will collapse. Tens of millions of people will starve or be displaced in Cambodia and Vietnam. The same will happen in every delta around the Asia including in Burma, Bangladesh and India. Selfish Australians will this century see millions of boat people, not a couple of thousand.