Interesting wikipedia article on diasporas
.
Diasporas are thus understood as transnational political entities, operating on "behalf of their entire people", and capable of acting independently from any individual state (be it their homeland or host states.)
That quote is more for the diasporas that have large numbers in a locality, such as the Irish, Scots, Greeks, Poles etc. Not the Australian diaspora which is more of a lonely entity outside of London.
John Barrdear
, a diasporan economist based in London, has started writing more regularly. Which is good as his posts are of the same high quality that the Australian economist bloggers seems to produce with unnatural ease.
While the Australia diaspora is high in per capita number the American diaspora is high in raw numbers. For the first time ever a US Presidential candidate is in the UK doing a fund raiser. Apparently there are large numbers of US diasporans working in the London finance sector and
Rudi Guliani has decided to do a fund raiser there while cloaking himself in the ghost of Ronald Reagan by meeting with Margaret Thatcher.
Money is important in US politics and apparently the Presidential candidates are consuming their hard earned fund raising dollars faster than ever. So Guliani is leaving no market untapped.
The other issue is that much of modern politics is trans-national. One of the issues for the modern nation-state is that many things are too large for it; such as Iraq, Global Warming etc. The luck of the nation-state is that much of the politics for those trans-national issues is easily phrased in co-operative national terms. So diasporans remain engage in the trans-national politics which gives an in for domestic candidates to raise money.
This is not much different from the findings in the
Lowey Institute report on the Australian Diaspora.
Interesting article in the NYT on
the Lebanese Diaspora coming home for christmas and challenging the political, military and economic paralysis of Lebanon. The article ends with:
These migrants supply Lebanon with about $1,400 per capita every year, Mr. Ghobril said -- one of the highest rates of remittances in the world. Those transfers are one of the pillars sustaining the consumer economy, he added, though they do not make up for the country's soaring public debt, the lack of long-term investment here, or the slow bleeding of the country's main natural resource - its people.
But there is another way of looking at it.
"Perhaps instead of talking about brain drain we should talk about brain globalization," Mr. Ghobril said with a mischievous grin. "The globalization of Lebanon."
Through history Diaspora's have put political and economic pressure on existing systems. Hopefully the Lebanese Diaspora, of which there is a large contingent in Australia, place similar pressure on the poor state of affairs in Lebanon.
Maybe Lebanon can return to being the Paris of the Middle East like it was prior to the civil wars of the 1980s and the consequent political, military, and violent unrest since.
The most popular locations for the Australian Diaspora are Western Europe, Britain, North America and Northern Asia.
Larger version of graph. The diaspora is largely an economic one following a mix of economic wealth and low barriers of entry to the international labor market - ie New Zealand being popular. Nationalism is a restriction on the fluidity of the diaspora and global labor market.
Most Popular on South Sea Republic
The articles that have been viewed the most:
Most Popular Restaurants in Phoenix
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Most Popular Hikes in Arizona
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Alternate Australian Constitutions
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
Archives For South Sea Republic
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
Who Is Cam Riley
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
Websites Worth Reading
Websites of friends, colleagues and of interest;
