On the contrary, Cohenite. You have it back to front. The overpopulation leads to competition over resources. Religion and ethnicity make good rallying points and excuses when people are joining up sides. This is pretty clear in the case of the Rwandan genocide.

http://www.du.edu/korbel/hrhw/volumes/2002/2-1/magnarella2-1.pdf

"Hutu and Tutsi lived together relatively peacefully prior to the mid-nineteenth century, a time when their total population was comparatively low (probably less than two million, versus over seven million in 1993) and land supply for both Hutu farmers and Tutsi cattle grazers was ample. With rapid population growth in the twentieth century, the situation changed. Rwanda was faced with a critical food-people-land imbalance...

"Because of their historically different modes of ecological adaptation—Hutu horticulture and Tutsi cattle pastoralism—within the context of a society over 90 per cent agrarian, a rapidly growing rural population, no significant employment alternatives, and diminishing food production and consumption per capita, the Hutu and Tutsi became “natural competitors. Those Tutsi still engaged in cattle pastoralism wanted open ranges to graze their herds. In direct opposition, landless Hutu wanted those very lands, marginal as they may have been for agriculture, to build homesteads on and to farm.

"By flight or death of more than half of Rwanda’s Tutsi population from the early 1960s to 1973, vast tracts of land in the eastern region were freed up for Hutu settlement and cultivation. The political elites exploited these developments, which appeared to prove that Hutu farmers could have sufficient land if the Tutsi were eliminated. By the mid-1980s, population increases had again outstripped the amount of cultivable land. Farmers’ attempts to increase food production by double and triple-cropping their dwindling plots resulted in soil exhaustion. Foreign technical experts could do little to help farmers; the problem was the increasing imbalance of the land:people ratio..."

cont'd

cont'd

"There were few employment alternatives to farming. The country’s major employer was the government. In the late 1980s, the central government was employing 7,000 people and the local governments 43,000. By law, only nine per cent of these employees could be Tutsi. Eliminating the Tutsi would open up 4,500 more government jobs for Hutu. Because the country had no social security program, the thousands of unemployed young people who entered the job market each year lived on the very margins of survival. Many became easy subjects for recruitment and manipulation."

Divergence did I not mention tribalism?

Look at a population growth map of the world and where population growth is greatest; Africa and is Muslim nations and particularly in Muslim populations in Western nations.

I might add a great barrier to reduced population growth is AGW and green policies generally which prevent cheap reliable energy going to the third world and discouraging third world agriculture through biofuel production.

Hello Guy,

That's a very good article. Recently I saw some census data for Iraq. Its population has risen from about 5 million in 1950 to over 33 million in 2013. That estimate was partly based on their last census in 1997. That's a 6 fold increase and not only is it high in absolute figures but the rate of population growth is also increasing. I also tried to get census data for Burma but according to the UN the last census for that country was in 1980.

I agree with much of your article. I think most of the conflicts now are population related and perhaps Rwanda can be regarded as the start of an era where most conflict is over food and water rather than politics or religion. I recently spoke to a Bangladeshi who told me how bad things are in his country with its population somewhere around 160 million and his answer to the problem was to migrate to Australia. All this achieves is the transfer of the problem from one country to another because his thinking hasn't changed.

I have long since tuned-out of the refugee debate for the same reasons are you list in your article. It has morphed into an issue focusing on symptoms rather than causes. Allowing refugees to gradually recreate in the Australia the conditions they fled from is a more important issue than how they arrive and the low status of women is one of those conditions.

"Allowing refugees to gradually recreate in the Australia the conditions they fled from is a more important issue than how they arrive and the low status of women is one of those conditions."

Correct.

Islam regards women as portable wombs as do many of the tribalised cultures of Africa. It used to be that Catholics produced babies but now its Islam and the 'dark' continent

Since the West is grovelling towards Islam and accommodating its sharia demands the point about immigrants simply bringing their problems with them is a real issue.

Prosperity and the liberation of women are the key elements. But since the left in the West, including the feminists, are complete cowards when it comes to Islam and black culture nothing is going to change

Let's make some comparisons to figure out why some countries are poor and some are rich. Let's compare Tanks.

"Rich" Australia. 57 M1 Abrams tanks.
"Poor" The Phillipines 400 M1 Abrams tanks.
"Poor" Egypt 1000 M1 Abrams tanks
"Poor" Greece" 100 M1 Abrams tanks, 300 more on order.

Could it be said that the reason why so many countries are dirt poor is because their cultural values are no good, they won't control their population growth, they seem to despise enterprise, and they spend more on defence than we do, even though they can't afford it.

Why should Australia then be the recipient of their unwanted population growths?