(on daggett's behalf):

CJ Morgan,

In regard to your accusation that I have deliberately avoided your supposedly devastating rebuttal of the argument (rightly or wrongly) attributed to Gore Vidal in the article "The folly of mass migration" at http://www.opendemocracy.net/people-migrationeurope/article_1193.jsp, had it occurred to you that it is not easy for me to chase after every rabbit you set free with only 2x350 words allowed per day?

I hadn't made it a high priority to respond to that, other than in the general sense that I already had:

"On Norway and Bangladesh: why not? Perhaps Gore Vidal could have used other countries to illustrate his point, but I don't see how that would have fundamentally changed anything."

Also, since you made that post, I had made it clear that I am critical of the record of British colonialism.

Perhaps there was more of a moral case for the UK to accept immigrants from Bangladesh than for Norway, as you argue, however given that the UK is the most crowded country in Europe as a consequence of past migration from former colonies and elsewhere, a case may be made that in this regard the ordinary people of the UK, who are now suffering the consequences, may have long ago repaid that particular debt, so I don't think there is now any more a case for why Britain should accept an additional 40-50 million Bangladeshis than there is for Norway. Either way, I think Gore Vidal's argument still holds.

So, my slightly amended summary of your 'contributions' in your ten posts so far, now stands at:

1. personal attacks on your opponents as racists masquerading as environmentalists or as other fictitious OLO users, dog whistlers, 'a pack of baying hounds', etc, etc;

2. your correction of Dresdener's mistake concerning the history of Kosovo;

3. your 'rebuttal' of Gore Vidal, and

4. that one of these days you plan to enter into a 'sensible debate' about immigration not tainted by the participation of anyone you deem to be racist.

So, CJ Morgan, is there anything else I have still missed?

knofler, Yes i saw that report too,

Do you think we are on the cusp of a Zulu war?

Should we circle the wagons, conserve our water and food?

I'll keep watching CH 9 if you watch the door!

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CJ, Holy trinity, you've got a real nutter there!

So it appears, Rainier. It's interesting that 'cacofonix' doesn't appear to have any opinions of its own - but that's exactly what one would expect from a sock puppet.

James/daggett/cacofonix - yes, you did miss something else in your obsessive efforts to attack me for exposing your identitity games. I understand that you may be a little worried about being found out, but rest assured that it won't be me that alerts the moderator to your sock puppetry. If you feel that you need more posts than the rest of us in order to make yourself look really silly, I won't stand in your way.

On topic, and again way up the thread, I agreed that while Australia should probably limit its immigration on ecological grounds, 'race' should play no part in our consideration of what an appropriate level might be. You appear to disagree, but haven't actually offered any reasons beyond the egregious and dodgy Norway/Bangladesh strawman red herring.

What would you consider to be an acceptable upper limit to Australian immigration, and on what objective basis would you decide who is included?

Redneck, that the 20th century saw two world wars, the Holocaust, European and Latin American fascist states, the Gulags - all the creations of "whites" - is not to me proof that one race is more murderous, just meant as a counterexample to those who appear to believe that blacks are inherently more violent. Of course, it is entirely possible that if black races had been in similar positions of power, with access to the same resources, the 20th century would have been even more bloodthirsty - but that is sheer hypothesising.

You ask how many times does multi-culturalism have to fail. I would ask when exactly has it failed? Do you really think that Australia today is a "failure", when compared to, say, 50 years ago when our ethnicity was more homogenous? OTOH, it wouldn't be unreasonable to suppose that if Australia had not opened its borders, we would today be a small, uninteresting and largely irrelevant nation with a modest economy, at serious risk of military invasion by any one of our neighbours who couldn't resist all that empty space.

Do you think Canada is a failure? Singapore? Even the U.S., while it has no shortage of issues, would have trouble pinning any of them on a deliberate policy of open borders and multi-culturalism (indeed, you might even argue that racial tensions in the U.S. have been due in part to a lack of ready embrace of multi-culturalism). Yes, there are European nations that are beginning to wonder about the wisdom of allowing in too many arrivals with substantially different cultural values, which is understandable - but Europe is not Australia or Canada or Singapore or the U.S.

Liz, I'm trying to understand you, not speak for you.

If you had written "Japan and Norway are ethnically homogeneous and egalitarian in levels of income, but they haven't always treated the small indigenous population well", then I would accept that you were arguing reasonably. Instead, you have twice denied the existence of homogeneity and egalitarianism.

By the way, a division of Norway into indigenous Sami and non-indigenous Norwegians is questionable. Both groups have been present in the region since prehistoric times. As far as we know, both groups are indigenous.

If your personal concern is with the well-being of indigenous populations, then the Norwegians too should attract your sympathy.

On homogenous national communities:

Are people really talking about ethno nationalism?

How do you measure homogeniety accurately?

I feel what you are really alluding to is very different from an actual community because it is not (and cannot be) based on quotidian face-to-face interaction between its members.

Instead, members hold in their minds a mental image of their affinity. Is this case it an imagined white Australian affinity.

As Bennedict Anderson puts it this is largely "imagined" because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion".

Compare this 'imagining'with my own meagre knowledge of Indigenous people across the nation. On a conservative estimation I would know at least 30 people in each of 40 Indigenous communities in Queensland and they would know of me and my family. And no, the majority of them are not related to me at all.

But we would not think of ourselves as homogenous, quite the contrary actually, we favour and practice from an "ontology of diversity" being the norm.