169 thoughts on “Monday Message Board”

  1. A Coffee Conundrum.

    I am sure our host won’t mind a post about coffee as a change of pace. To background matters first, I have had for some time symptoms which seemed to be “heart burn” or GORD. The medical diagnosis is now made (by biopsy) and it’s not GORD. It appears to be related to food and/or chemical allergies although acid reflux might play a subsidiary role. It’s no big deal and can be treated by diet modifications and a few other measures. What I am interested in are some phenomena related to my coffee consumption. I have found that consuming instant coffee has become totally off limits as it “burns” my oesophagus. Yet consumption of brewed coffee, even very strong brewed coffee, causes little or no discomfit at all.

    This leads me to think it is either a pH issue or it is related to the presence of chemical allergens in instant coffee which do not exist in any quantity in brewed coffee. The two most likely culprits re instant coffee would seem to be acrylamide (a by-product of the process of manufacturing instant coffee and also of the baking and frying of foods) and/or free-flow, anti-caking agents possibly added to instant coffee powders and granules. I’ve known for a long time (20 years or more) that I was allergic to one particular brand of cheap and nasty instant coffee. I would break out in a bad skin rash after even one cup. I have long suspected some free-flow, anti-caking chemical agent to be the culprit, though since the discovery of acrylamide in fried and baked foods and coffee, I guess that a high level of acrylamide might have been the issue. Furans might also be a problem thought I think brewed coffee has as many furans as instant. Google or Duck-Duck-Go these chemical categories if you need to.

    My first question is this. Does anyone on this blog know much about the issue of chemical by-products and additives in instant coffee? This is a different question from that about contaminants like heavy metals and pesticides. Can anyone point to any authoritative analyses? For the second related question, is brewed coffee thus healthier than instant coffee, despite the likely higher caffeine levels, but precisely because of lower acrylamide and/or other chemical levels including additives and furans?

  2. At $200 to $600 per hour, the services of a lawyer are not cheap. Legal Aid is a good idea if there is to be access to justice and legal system.

    There are times when good legal advice is essential. It seems to me that, for example, builders whose business is based on setting quotes, would be well advised to have a sound understanding of contract law.

    I am guessing that not all law graduates work as lawyers, but the price asked for their services and advice seems to me to be over the top.

  4. One solution could be the introduction of a Legalcare system, in the same vein as Medicare. However, I don’t think people would want to pay for other people’s legal costs, let alone pay for another tax.
    It could be that legal costs in general need to be reduced or that the legal system needs to be made fairer. One of the problems I have heard with facing big companies/corporations (as unlikely as one is in putting up a claim against them) is that they are able to afford the ‘best’ lawyers (well at least the most expensive ones) and can drag out court cases until the prosecutor runs out of money and therefore win by default. This could potential happen at a smaller level between renters and landowners.
    Even when divorce occurs or wills become disputed, the financial costs of getting lawyers involved can nearly outweigh what you might be entitled to. So really, it could just be that the hourly rates of hiring a lawyer and court costs might need to be reassessed (a.k.a. reduced).

  5. A problem with the current Medicare system is that it inflates doctors incomes. A legal aid system would inflate lawyers incomes. Neither need their incomes inflated.

  7. @Freelander, a good point. The other problem is the amount of frivolous lawsuits would rise, it is one of those in theory it could work

  8. Ikonoclast, sulphur dioxide is added to instant coffee which is definitely acidifying. Maltodextrin is another additive which some people have allergies to.

    I gave up coffee 20 years ago as it gave me headaches while giving up smoking. I have to say that there is something pathetic about the sight of people sucking on a take away coffee while going about their business. Having a beverage is part of taking a rest. Most of the take away coffee phenomenon is about feeding an addiction and performance enhancement. About as perfomance enhancing as rhino horn and tiger penis I reckon.

  9. @Salient Green

    Good points or perhaps I should say salient points! I’m down to one Turkish coffee a day or maybe two if I am being daring or indulgent.

    I am still trying to perfect the method of making Turkish coffee. The first point I notice when researching on the net is the wide range of opinions and recommendations on how to do it properly. It is hard to derive the definitive method from all this “noise”. The second thing I notice is the set of definitional problems and people’s general lack of precision in describing methods. In passing, this confirms once again for me how imprecise and downright sloppy most people are when communicating something that needs objectivity and accuracy. I am sure I am guilty of this too.

    Let’s deal with the definitional problems first. So far as I can tell, the following is correct.
    Turkish style coffee is brewed in a Turkish coffee pot (britki (Greek) or cezve (Turkish). This is a smallish, waisted pot. Check the shape online. There appears to be a recommended shape, material of construction and method of use. Respectively these appear to be waisted in shape, made of copper, bronze or some other metals and heated on bottom and sides by a gas ring or a charcoal fire. Anyone have knowledgeable comments on this?

    A “cup” is a demimonde cup which is about 2 fl. oz. to 3 fl. oz (60 cc to 90 cc). Probably made of china and nearly vertically straight sided.

    A “spoon” is a teaspoon (5cc flat capacity) but the pulverized coffee used is heaped right up on the teaspoon. I have seen one YouTube video where a person of Turkish ethnicity domiciled in the US called a teaspoon a “tablespoon”. It might just have been a slip of the tongue.

    Pulverized Turkish coffee is usually medium roasted Arabica beans, ground super fine by hand. It should look like brown talcum powder. Rapid electric fine grinding is not a good idea as the frictional heat generated will further over-roast and burn the coffee.

    The methods recommended vary so much I cannot determine a definitive brewing method. For example some add the coffee to cold water and some add it to hot water. Some say to “boil” it gently. Some say to never boil it. A considerable part of the technique appears to be based on letting the brew foam without ever boiling too strongly. Sustained boiling is usually said to be a no-no.

    Some claim it foams, forming tiny bubbles if the coffee is of good quality, at approximately 70 degrees Centigrade. Why it would foam at this temperature is an interesting question since it is not the water boiling except perhaps at the metal boundary. I guess certain flavoursome or aromatic light oils react or evaporate at this temperature and get trapped in the foam? Good Turkish and Greek style coffee has foam on the surface and much of the taste and aroma is apparently trapped in that foam. Others say roasting forms trapped CO2 in the bean. If the coffee is pulverized and used fresh then this CO2 aids the foaming. I suspect hard water does not help the foam formation at all so perhaps one should use soft or distilled water?

    I need to buy a proper Turkish coffee pot obviously. The waisted shape of these pots has a purpose in the process of concentrating the foam. It is handy that one can buy, in jars or from specialist stores, the pulverized (very finely ground) coffee necessary for Turkish and Greek coffee. One can also buy a fine hand grinder which uses fine “burrs” to grind the coffee beans. Making Turkish coffee would possess, I think, an almost instant-coffee-like convenience once one masters the method. The brewing takes no longer than boiling a kettle and the attention to the process promotes anticipation of the brew. There is no need to bother with machines or filters and all that nonsense of other brew methods. Turkish coffee is simply a form of brewed coffee with the grounds are left un-drunk as sludge in the cup. It’s often taken black, sweetened to taste with a glass of water to sip between sips of coffee. It can also be poured on cream or milk for a white coffee.

    I have found what appear to me to be reasonable instructions. I will need better quality pulverized coffee Experiments with an ordinary small saucepan, electric hot plate and a cheap pulverized coffee in the jar yield drinkable coffee IMO but virtually none of the foam prized by the aficionado.. No self-respecting Turkish person would drink my brew yet.

    Does anyone have knowledgeable comments on the instructions here for example?
    http://www.turkishcoffeeworld.com/How_to_make_Turkish_Coffee_s/54.htm

    Alternatively what is THE definitive method for making Turkish coffee? I suspect there are a few methods that are “good enough” but there must be one method that in terms of precise physical-chemical processes is the absolute best in theory and in practice.

    To sum up, I look forward to answers which help me as I leave the evil world of instant coffee behind forever.

  10. somewhere in the memorybank is the info that instant coffee gets it’s nice frothiness from detergent.
    false memory?

  11. If we are not willing to get rid of fractional reserve, have a lot of interim regulations, including severe interest rate restrictions on consumer credit and real estate buying (as opposed to property development and renovation….) and if we are not ready to regulate the flow of foreign bank to domestic bank loans, through setting low maximum interest rates on the process, so as to guarantee a surplus balance of trade every year …… and if we are not ready to find all sorts of ways to bring debt levels down, so that we can move to permanent “growth-deflation” in monetary affairs without the sort of pain we had under “sado-monetarism.”……

    If we aren’t ready to do all of the above we better nationalise the banks as soon as possibile. Because without the above program the banks will continue to scuttle our future, even as their Northern Hemisphere counterparts are destroying the economies of the EU and the US right before our eyes.

  12. I’m a big anti-Keynesian but I’m both impressed and mortified that the two economists who have stood up to the international bankers in this country are both Keynesians. Professor Kean and Professor Quiggin. In my conspirational way of thinking I would estimate that Professor Quiggin probably lost his financial review gig for this apostasy.

    The Anglo/US/EU banking network has to be considered the most significant enemy of our times. They’ve got to be brought low, humiliated, expropriated down to the last ten million, and all their dirty laundry dragged out in front of the public. At the same time as getting behind more solidly the sole trader, and the small and medium-sized prosperous non-financial sector, businessman and woman.

  13. Journalism in Australia is absolutely rubbish!

    Spot the “journalist” running an ideological talking point around the idea of “deterring” refugees as opposed to engaging with her interviewee:
    …
    ALEXANDRA KIRK: Now you argue that Nauru and Malaysia are not deterrents; can nothing in your view act as a deterrent?

    MALCOLM FRASER: No it can’t because what, especially the Liberal Party have forgotten, is the circumstances from which people are fleeing. The only way you could – a democratic government such as Australia’s and even the Opposition, as Australia’s is, could not be nasty enough to match the terror, the persecution that is meted out by the Taliban or meted out by possibly both sides in Sri Lanka and a lot of other places; you can’t match that.

    And therefore nothing we can do will be a deterrent. We can’t cut off the heads of young Afghani girls and send them back to Afghanistan and say you better not come to Australia we’re as bad as the Taliban and therefore nothing we can do will be a deterrent.

    ALEXANDRA KIRK: So how will increasing the refugee intake to at least 25,000 work when the Government says on its own it is no solution?

    MALCOLM FRASER: We’ve got to forget the policy of deterrents. We’ve got to start behaving decently and humanely and we’ve got to start regarding these people as genuine refugees.

    ALEXANDRA KIRK: So how would taking at least 25,000 refugees from Indonesia deter people from getting on a boat?
    …

    (from tonight’s ‘PM’)

  15. @Megan

    It’s truly shocking that Fraser is one of only a handful of members of “the political class” now advocating the welfare of humanity.

  16. Fraser’s commitment to humane treatment of refugees goes back to 1977. I can imagine Howard grinding his then snaggled teeth in Cabinet when this decision was made.

    Of course, later on, Ratty changed his policy on snaggled teeth, submitting himself to cosmetic dentistry in expectation that alleviation of physical ugliness would disguise his moral ugliness.

    History would prove that he was partially correct.

  17. It ought to be possible for Australia to take all bona fide refugees, at current numbers, and simply reduce standard immigration intakes by the same number. Thus, the net effect on Australia’s population trend would be zero. It further ought to be possible to limit immigration such that;

    Immigration + Refugee Intake + Natural Increase – Emmigration = 0.

    (In some circumstances natural increase could be a decrease i.e. a negative number.)

    This would enable us to stabilise our population. It is necessary to stabilise our population. If you subtract arid zones and semi-arid zones from Australia’s area you are left with an area about equal to that of France but with much poorer soils and more erratic rainfall. A reasonable estimate for Australia’s sustainable population, IMO, might be in the range of 25 million to 35 million.

    The Global Footprint Network make a higher estimate than I do. Theirs is about double our current population which puts the sustainable population estimate for Australia at about 45 million in round numbers. I am not so sanguine as I have some doubts whether they have factored in future reductions of carrying capacity from global overshoot, unsustainable practices, environment degradation already in train and armed conflicts over resources.

    For example, it is clear that world fishing is in overshoot and the oceans’ fish stocks are in catastrophic decline. This is one example where, although Australia may not have overshot individually, the globe has and this affects Australia’s fishing catch going forward.

    At the top of my comment I said this. “It ought to be possible for Australia to take all bona fide refugees, at current numbers”. The phrase “at current numbers” is the key. If region-wide armed conflict came to South East Asia, then there is no way Australia could take all the bona fide refugees in such a situation. Australia, whether involved in the regional confict or not, would close its borders to the best of its ability and with possible assistance from major allies with common interests. That would the real politics of that situation.

  19. I just happened to come across this article about China in The National Interest by John Quiggin. It’s from Sept 13, 2011. I think it’s very good and worth reading. I particularly like the fact the JQ points to the lack of empirical evidence (in China’s case at least) that increasing free market operations lead to increasing democratisation.

  22. “This would enable us to stabilise our population. It is necessary to stabilise our population. ”

    It certainly is. We need to make a choice between asylum seekers and the environment and I choose the latter. Europe went through well over one thousand years of crippling wars before becoming reasonably peaceful and the folk who lived there had to suck it up. There was never any suggestion that our peasant ancestors could simply mince off to some foreign land and claim asylum in a more peaceful and prosperous land. The present day asylum seekers should be told to suck it up as well. Let’s get real here, 99% of asylum seekers who can afford to pay thousands of dollars to people smugglers are on a far better wicket than a malnourished family in India or sub Saharan Africa that eeks out an existence on less than a dollar a day.

  23. @Mel

    Let me address your issues Mel, point by point.

    “We need to make a choice between asylum seekers and the environment.”

    I pointed out that we don’t need to do this in general peacetime. While conflict is scattered and far away, the number of bona fide refugees can be compensated for by reducing standard immigration numbers. In the case of widesread war in an over-populated world, we would of course have to close our borders.

    “Europe went through well over one thousand years of crippling wars before becoming reasonably peaceful and the folk who lived there had to suck it up. There was never any suggestion that our peasant ancestors could simply mince off to some foreign land and claim asylum in a more peaceful and prosperous land.”

    Many of our ancestors left Europe (English, Irish, Dutch, Spanish, Potuguese, German, Italian and Greeks to name a few) essentially as economic and religious refugees and settled (and stole or partially stole from the indigenees) the lands of Australia, Sth Africa, New Zealand, Canada, USA, Mexico and virtually all the countries of Sth America and the Carribbean. Russia and Russians also pushed east into Asia and south in the Caucasus etc. This is not say that other areas nd cultures did not push partly into Europe at one time or another; eg. the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire and the Moorish empire.

    “99% of asylum seekers who can afford to pay thousands of dollars to people smugglers are on a far better wicket than a malnourished family in India or sub Saharan Africa that eeks out an existence on less than a dollar a day”.

    Economically they may be. But when instant premature death threatens, economic advantage, which you can only enjoy if you keep living, becomes rather moot.

  24. Ikonoclast:

    “But when instant premature death threatens … ”

    I hope you don’t seriously believe that instant premature death is really the issue in most asylum seeker claims.

    ” I pointed out that we don’t need to do this in general peacetime.”

    Yes we do. In my little patch in the central goldfields region in rural Victoria, bush is being bulldozed every day to make way for new housing developments. The population of the nearest town, Castlemaine has shot up by 20% of the 5 years years I’ve lived here while house prices have gone up 30%. Why? People are escaping an increasingly overcrowded and expensive Melbourne, a city that must absorb many tens of thousands of new migrants including asylum seekers each year.

    A little further afield, in Bendigo, they are even bulldozing endangered species habitat (Eltham Copper Butterfly) to make room for Melbourne escapees.

    I’m sorry, mate, but if you are trying to deny that “rip rip wood chip” is not happening up and down the south east seaboard in order to make room for new arrivals (and resultant urban escapees) then you’re obviously less observant than Mr Magoo.

  25. Mel:

    We need to make a choice between asylum seekers and the environment and I choose the latter.

    No we don’t. Asylum seekers are human beings. Human beings demand ecosystem services wherever they are. Admittedly, if they die, they stop casting a foot print. If this is what you are rather delicately saying, I withdraw my objection, though in this case I have a different objection — why should they die and we live?

    If your objection is that they will cast a bigger footprint here than in Afghanistan or some other place my objection is again — in what ethical paradigm is it apt for them to demand less than we regard as consistent with human dignity? Are you demanding that we reduce our footprint to the size of theirs? Good luck with that.

    It’s possible for us to look after them better here than over there and reduce harm to the ecosystem and humans over there. I say we should.

    Europe went through well over one thousand years of crippling wars before becoming reasonably peaceful and the folk who lived there had to suck it up.

    Ah … the middle ages. How err … regressive. FTR, in those days there were no boundaries. You could just wander in if you fancied the area. Nobody had thought of visas.

    99% of asylum seekers who can afford to pay thousands of dollars to people smugglers are on a far better wicket than a malnourished family in India or sub Saharan Africa that eeks out an existence on less than a dollar a day

    Why only 99%? Why not 100%? Don’t be coy. The system doesn’t qualify people as refugees based on their inability to pay/promise ad hoc travel agents money. If only ther most wretched qualifed as refugees there would only ever be a handful of refugees — largely people who were near death and probably beyond useful assistance. There would be no need for refugee conventions. Certainly the Jews who fled Europe in 1939 aboard the St Louis were not the most wretched of the Earth. Sadly, when the St Louis was rejected many of those who went to countries occupied by the Nazis did die. That’s one of the reasons we have the Convention. It requires not that people be destitute, but that they be in serious danger from a government or its allies.

    Australia should take its fair share of refugees. Australia is responsible for $1.4trillion/$70trillion of world GDP so one could argue for 2% of the 15million or so refugees i.e about 300,000. Australia has about 0.3% of world population so if one were being stingy and ignored how wealthy we were, one might argue for 0.3% of 15 million. (about 45,000) Something in that range is an arguable figure.

    It seems reasonable that since we were/are party to trashing Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and basically sat on our hands over Sri Lanka and Burma and are in the Asia Pacific region we might focus our efforts on this region’s refugees. We could fill our quota from this region.

    I favour a policy that would speed up processing at major aggregation points and qualify refugees for supported resettlement in any suitable country willing to take them, including of course, Australia. If it turns out that some who are claimants would quailify under some other immigration program of some contracting state, then let us qualify them for these programs and move them on. If we can identify host communities in develioping countries willing to take refugees with development support from us and other contracting states who are not willing to host asylum seekers, then let us do that too. We have MDG obligations that we are not meeting too.

    In the end, it is the task of all humanity, IMO, to look after those of us who need our help. If that means we must all live a little less well personally, or even a lot less well, then I have no ethical problem with that. We cannot decline that obligation without sacrifcing our humanity. Citing the environment as a reason for pulling up the drawbridge and holding onto our ill-deserved privileges is simple dissembling.

  26. @rog

    On consecutive days this site has returned an error (petition against QLD LNP removing Climate Change from curriculum, now this) after an attempt to submit.

    Not sure why …

  27. Fran:

    “Citing the environment as a reason for pulling up the drawbridge and holding onto our ill-deserved privileges is simple dissembling.”

    I’m not dissembling as I’ve clearly and unequivocally stated my priorities. You’ve made far too many errors of fact, reasoning and logic for me to take you seriously or to address them all in a blog post, so I’ll deal with just two:

    (a)

    “Ah … the middle ages. How err … regressive. FTR, in those days there were no boundaries. You could just wander in if you fancied the area. Nobody had thought of visas.”

    You have a rather childish view of the status and rights of a peasant in the Middle Ages. It simply wasn’t possible for your average daddy and mummy peasant to pop the kids in the family sedan and toddle off to Shropshire in search of the Good Life if one had a spot of bother with one’s Master.

    (b)

    “If your objection is that they will cast a bigger footprint here than in Afghanistan or some other place my objection is again — in what ethical paradigm is it apt for them to demand less than we regard as consistent with human dignity? Are you demanding that we reduce our footprint to the size of theirs? Good luck with that.”

    We in the West are consuming at a rate that is simply is not possible to sustain and that will eventually trash so much natural capital that the human population will collapse in ghastly circumstances. As you correctly acknowledge, there is no possibility that we’ll voluntarily make drastic cuts in consumption, hence the best we can do is cut population growth (including immigration) in order to buy some time. Your rather childish “plan” will sink the boat very quickly indeed, whereas mine will sink it more slowly or maybe not at all if extra time results in some currently unforeseeable solution.

  28. @Mel

    “We need to make a choice between asylum seekers and the environment..”

    Now that is really silly, there is no evidence to suggest that any number of asylum seekers are directly responsible to a decline in the environment.

  29. @Mel

    We in the West are consuming at a rate that is simply is not possible to sustain and that will eventually trash so much natural capital that the human population will collapse in ghastly circumstances. … Your rather childish “plan” will sink the boat very quickly indeed, whereas mine will sink it more slowly or maybe not at all if extra time results in some currently unforeseeable solution.

    The difference between your plan and mine is piffling and indeed, mine might be somewhat better. Either way, if you’re right, it scarcely matters. We might as well treat each other nicely on the way to catastrophe. At least then those clinging to life will have a model of conduct to note as they work out what to do that is better than every privileged b@stard for himself.

    For the record, there were no errors of “fact, reasoning or logic” (sic) in my post. If you can’t find any, it’s always nice to see if you can say they were there in force of course.

    As to the middle ages, there were no firm boundaries between most of the little tyrannies in place and so in theory at least you could go pretty much anywhere. Maybe you’d lack the resources to do so, but merchants for example travelled without serious restriction.

  30. “As to the middle ages, there were no firm boundaries between most of the little tyrannies in place…”

    Good one, Fran. How would you colourfully describe contemprary corporations?

  31. Fran, most peasants were bound to their masters as per my link. They couldn’t simply pop off whenever the urge grabbed them.

  34. Ah … so that’s why I was modded. The spam bucket doesn’t like t%rann%. Good to know …

  35. @Fran Barlow

    “History Learning Site” is pretty basic and obviously aimed at children.

    It probably wouldn’t form the basis of an ‘appeal to authority’ argument I would mount, but since we’re there:

    http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/peasants_revolt.htm

    On the inability of ‘peasants’ to do anything their Lords didn’t allow, I found this page interesting – especially this extract:

    “Medieval England experienced few revolts but the most serious was the Peasants’ Revolt which took place in June 1381. A violent system of punishments for offenders was usually enough to put off peasants from causing trouble.
    …
    An army of peasants from Kent and Essex marched on London. They did something no-one had done before or since – they captured the Tower of London. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the King’s Treasurer were killed. The king, Richard II, was only 14 at the time but despite his youth, he agreed to meet the peasants at a place called Mile End.
    …
    One man had emerged as the leader of the peasants – Wat Tyler from Kent. As the peasants from Kent had marched to London, they had destroyed tax records and tax registers. The buildings which housed government records were burned down. They got into the city of London because the people there had opened the gates to them.”

    Anyway, it all ended rather poorly based on lies, false undertakings and treachery by the ruling class, ho hum…!

    The point is that even according to this exemplar of historical reference, people did indeed ‘move’ about if they were desperate enough.

  36. @Megan
    A very good example of a problem with the current crop of journalist /reporters. They aren’t interested in interviewing people whose views the public is interested in hearing. Rather, they use every opportunity to spout their own ignorant views. They are at their worst when they contrive to interview each other.
    Your extract showed that the interviewer wasn’t listening to a word being said.

  37. @Ikonoclast

    Milton Friedman loved to use Hong Kong as a free market exemplar. But for the long period of British administration there was no movement toward democracy. Except, that is, at the very end where the movement toward democracy was not due to the natives but was a gift by the British (Patton) when they finally realised they would have to give HK back. More an act of trouble making than a good will gift. At the risk of Godwin, Pinochet, the Shah, Adolf, and many other bedfellows have presided over free markets with those markets not being a threat to their regimes.

  39. Selling and Tolling Existing Roads Just Stupid

    On July 17, Kelvin Thomson wrote:

    The idea of selling and tolling existing roads is one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard, and could only come from people completely out of touch with the lives of ordinary Australians and Victorians.

    Ordinary Victorians are feeling serious cost of living pressures. How does being required to pay each time we drive on roads we can presently travel on for free make us better off? It makes us worse off. Selling off existing roads to private companies and putting tolls on them will make those private companies wealthy, but it will be at the expense of ordinary motorists.

    The reason Melbourne and other capital cities have traffic congestion is because our population growth is too fast, and we should tackle that by cutting migration back to the levels we used to have in the 1980s and 1990s.

    …

  40. Presumably the inclusion of a link has kept this post in ‘moderation’, so I’ll repeat it without the link:

    @Fran Barlow

    “History Learning Site” is pretty basic and obviously aimed at children.

    It probably wouldn’t form the basis of an ‘appeal to authority’ argument I would mount, but since we’re there:

    [link was here]

    On the inability of ‘peasants’ to do anything their Lords didn’t allow, I found this page interesting – especially this extract:

    “Medieval England experienced few revolts but the most serious was the Peasants’ Revolt which took place in June 1381. A violent system of punishments for offenders was usually enough to put off peasants from causing trouble.
    …
    An army of peasants from Kent and Essex marched on London. They did something no-one had done before or since – they captured the Tower of London. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the King’s Treasurer were killed. The king, Richard II, was only 14 at the time but despite his youth, he agreed to meet the peasants at a place called Mile End.
    …
    One man had emerged as the leader of the peasants – Wat Tyler from Kent. As the peasants from Kent had marched to London, they had destroyed tax records and tax registers. The buildings which housed government records were burned down. They got into the city of London because the people there had opened the gates to them.”

    Anyway, it all ended rather poorly based on lies, false undertakings and treachery by the ruling class, ho hum…!

    The point is that even according to this exemplar of historical reference, people did indeed ‘move’ about if they were desperate enough.

  41. @rog To tweak it further, migrants (new and established multi generational) are OK but asylum seekers are bad for the environment?

  42. Bill McKibbin tells us what we need to know in the latest Rolling Stone:
    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719

    When the Pacific Island states and Bangladesh go under I would not be surprised, nor would I blame them, if the erstwhile inhabitants of those places decide that a rather large country to the south of PNG which has contributed disproportionately to their predicament ought to make some room for them by way of restitution.

  43. The whole “imminent global catastrophe” conundrum we face raises uncomfortable questions about the conditionality of our morality and ethics.

    Those among us who have humane values, from genuine compassion and/or moral vanity, will soon find that application of our moral values has instinctual, emotional, self-interested and practical conditional limits. By the way, I accuse myself of being perhaps more motivated by moral vanity than compassion though some compassion does exist in me too. Being partially motivated by moral vanity is not a bad thing if one is aware of it. If moral vanity motivates some moral behaviour that is better IMO than being totally immoral or amoral. That is provided that self-assessment prevents the moral vanity from being selective, partial and hypocritical in nature.

    It is relatively easy (requiring no real self-sacrifice) to take a stance that current levels of refugee applications should be met by Australia with concomittant reductions in voluntary immigration whilst also working towards a steady state population for Australia. The moral equation becomes more difficult if the trickle of refugees (14,000 p.a. is a trickle) becomes a flood. Go up by one factor of 10 to 140,000 p.a. and we could probably cope for some time (a decade or two) by adjusting other factors including other aspects of immigration.

    Going up by another factor of 10 (1,400,000) would see us facing serious problems. Various practicalities and direct self-survival pressure would suggest we would have to close our borders as best we could. A climate emergency, of the kind that is clearly and obviously coming, could easily push people from Asia, S.E. Asia and the islands of Oceania into the Australian continent at the rate of 1.4 million per annum. Another factor of 10 (14 million per annum) as displaced persons in Asia due to severe climate change is easily possible. Whether 14 million could both transit to staging points like Indonesia and then get over the marine barrier, functioning as a bottle neck, to get to Australia is another question.

    In summary, yes it relatively easy to be morally and humanely correct when the pressure is within bounds that we can handle. And I support letting refugess in at that rate. However, when climate change precipitates the catastrophic global emergency that is coming then individual and national survival pressures will trump all other concerns. A pure survival struggle renders virtually all moral nicities inoperative.

  44. Good stuff, Ikonoclast. There is a world of difference between conspicuous keyboard ethics (as demonstrated Fran Barlow) and real world survival ethics. On top of that I admit selfishness is part of the equation. Currently I can look out my window and see wallabies, echnidas and superb fairy wrens and hundreds of trees that I’ve planted on my acreage. Nothing will convince me that I have a moral obligation to give this up and instead look out my window and see Mahmood and his 40 dutiful burqa clad wives.

    I’m a green green not a watermelon green.

  45. if the people detained from the boats go to Nauru how much does the corporation that has replaced the public service get paid?
    if the people go to Malaysia does that corporation get paid?
    if they go through immigration checks in Australia how much does the corporation get paid?
    if the process is put back to public governance how much would it cost in all three cases?
    is the Australian government ability to handle this not up to scratch,given that Australias’publicservices’record for settling and checking refugees and immigrants has been going on on a largish scale since the end of the second world war?

    or is the whole coalition position about making sure the corporate body that has the contract receives the income implicit in that contract?

    hehhe.
    also chuckled on burgerman with no news experience going to the fin board when respected lady elder recently cried that government interference in no-news broadcasters is ridiculous because impartial oversight had no news experience.

    a partiality gap ?

  46. It is quite true that the Refugee Conventions were not written with a systemic ecological collapse in mind. However, it is probable that the consequences such collapses will be mediated through the political systems of affected nations. To state this case in concrete terms, when nations flood or run out of the capacity to feed their populations, religious, ethnic, racial and caste out-groups will be persecuted and will seek salvation elsewhere.

    Unstated in the Conventions as they were written after WWII is the expectation that crises will be temporary in nature and that refugee populations will be small minorities, perhaps returning to their ancestral fatherland, as many displaced Germans did at the end of WWII.

    These days, even the most restrictive application of the Conventions tests the tolerance of a large section of the population of nations signatory to the Conventions.

    I wonder if, upon becoming PM, Abbott will have the bottle to denounce formally the Conventions.

  47. @Mel

    I didn’t intend in any way to single out Fran Barlow for criticism. I suspect she is far more humane and compassionate than I am and possibly more ethical too. I was just saying we all have to be aware that various pressures, if they get strong enough, will challenge and eventually overwhelm all our humane and compassionate capabilities no matter where we sit on the scale.

    But it’s funny how our fears tend to be projections of the bad things we are doing to other people. Australia is not in any imminent danger of being swamped by Moslems, yet several Moslem countries have been swamped by Western airforces and ground armies. We are in fact dropping bombs and missiles on their wedding gatherings (monogamous or polygamous), sending ground armies through their city blocks and trashing their countryside.

  48. Abandonment of border control would be disastrous for the US, most of all for the poor, and would do nothing to the hundreds of millions of others in the Third World who could never hope to immigrate to the US.

    A very simple solution would be to process all applications for asylum in the country from which the would-be immigrant wished to migrate. In place of detention centers within the US, accommodation for intending immigrants could be set up outside the US embassy or outside some other office administered by the embassy.

    With the agreement of the host country, protection could be provided by the US embassy staff to any intending asylum seeker until such time as either he/she is found to have grounds to fear for his/her safety in that country and is granted asylum or is found not to have grounds for fear and refused asylum.

    Refugee rights advocates could ensure that every intending asylum seeker is given a fair hearing.

    (It is instructive that César Chávez (1927 – 1993), the renowned Mexican American trade-union organiser, opposed open borders, because he knew that uncontrolled immigration would be used by the corporate elite to undermine his efforts to organise rural farm workers.)

  50. @Ikonoclast

    I think the situation in Muslim countries is much more complicated than that. I doubt western forces have been responsible for more than 2% of civilian conflict related deaths in the Greater ME (Sudan thru Pakistan) since 2000. Even in Iraq, the near genocidal violence between the various sects has accounted for vastly greater civilian deaths than allied actions. However, if my assumption on this is wrong I’d be happy to be corrected.

    Having said all that I would like allied forces to leave the Greater ME immediately and completely. These folk can then decide for themselves if they want to pursue peace or continue the slaughter. It ain’t my problem.

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