Big-Issues.Org

When the United Nations finally acted in March 2011 to authorize a No-Fly Zone over Libya, whole populations around the world applauded or at least breathed a sign of relief. They had become engaged in the media coverage of how the dictator Gaddafi's forces were inexorably retaking towns and populations that had briefly experienced independence from his central control. The central bastion of the independence protests, the city and population of Benghazi, was at risk - and the media allowed many of its population to beseech help through TV screens to living rooms world-wide.

Why did the media filter show these pleas? They were available pictures, an apparent pre-requisite for an item to make the night time news, and they were emotionally engaging pictures, perhaps an even more insidious growing requirement for today's popular news.

Recently there has been some popular media coverage of food security (read inadequate food production) becoming a major issue and even "the greatest challenge to civilisation this century"¹. This coverage suggests that food shortages will lead to higher prices, political instability and mass migration.

How new or serious is this?

Trade in small arms seems to often be the trigger for civil conflict or at least for a dramatic escalation in the carnage that is caused by civil conflict. This applies both to guns being more readily available to individuals within stable countries and to political groups or bands within less stable countries. In both situations there is a political element and often political hypocrisy.

What is the best form of government? There is often an assumption that democracy is at the top of the list - but democracy comes in a range of forms many with glaring shortcomings. Let's see if we can at least agree on some of the attributes we would want the the best form of government to include:

In days past nationalism was the standard by which all else was judged - people who stood up against or protested the course their country was taking were portrayed as 'unpatriotic' and 'traitors to their flag'. But in this day and age where human rights are discussed far more loudly than any other kind of rights, where do human rights end and national rights supercede them?

Most criticism of free markets is based on the distortions caused when the conditions for free markets are clearly imperfect. These can typically include

• collusion between key market participants,
• incorrect or distorted information being supplied to market participants,
• misalignments between the market's effective reach and the legal jurisdiction protection that market participants assume.

In Australia the Labour government is trying to protect both its electoral support and its "balanced" position in regard to asylum seeker "boat people".  According to the media and to some recent polls it is doing it tough. Apparently Australians get very jittery when less than a couple of thousand economic refugees use flimsy boats to put themselves on our humanitarian doorstep.

Advertising is predominantly focused on selling the benefits, explicit or implicit, of the products or services of the entity paying the bill - not surprising.

The arguments of the basic free market model that is the basis of most, at least western, economies is that the various agents involved have full information on which they make their economic decisions and market choices.

Fundamentalism is generally defined in terms of its christian background, such as the Free Dictionary's