frank et al, your all a little behind the times. Christianity is being assaulted on all sides in India. Especially from the ranks of Islam and Hindi. It is now a criminal offence to become Christian. And many Christians are being singled out for retribution in the name of community cohesiveness. It depends if the community is predominately Hindu or Islamic. Of course the Hindu and Muslim are having a go at it between themselves too.

Hatred, it's alive and flourishing here on the pages of OLO as it is any where else in the world. Who said love comes easy?

Thank you CJ Morgan. You're right to correct my serious typo. I meant to say: less than 20% of Muslims are Arabs, not the other way round. My apologies. I wanted to point out that the fixation of the so-called 'clash of civilizations' on the Middle East was misleading. And my case remains.

aqvarivs says: 'It is now a criminal offence to become Christian [in India].' This is a gross exaggeration. The BBC reports that a small number of states governed by the Hindu nationalist party have introduced laws to make conversions to Christianity more difficult. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6050408.stm)

Hindu-Christian volence comes from extremist groups - on both sides. In general, Christians and Hindus in India have many centuries of peaceful coexistence.

My point remains: in India, Christianity is under much greater threat from the numerically dominant Hindus than from Muslims. Yet that is hardly front page news in Australia. As with Indonesia's Christians, the number of Christians in India outnumbers the total Australian population. Christianity in India is vigorous and in no danger of disappearing soon (see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07722a.htm or http://www.missionstudies.org/conference/1papers/fp/Roger_Hedlund_Full_Paper.pdf

Horus, It's well-known that those who throw personal abuse do so because they feel threatened by the target's ideas. Why did my ideas upset you? Can you offer better ideas, or is hysterical abuse the best you can do? Are you a Christian? Or just rabid anti-Muslim?

I agree with aqvarivs: Hatred, is alive and flourishing here on the pages of OLO. Thankfully, it's expressed only through words.

Frank... I'll seek to address your first paragrph as it contains most of the issues.

Grazing Ground.. Actually I don't see the Middle East coming into it.

The major point I was making, is that Islam as an ideology does actually contain the equivalent to the Marxist idea of "dictatorship of the proletariat by violent overthrow of the Bourgoise". In its call for the triumph of the Calipha (Dar Ul Islam) over Dar Ul Haab (lands of Infidels)

Christianity_Hinduism_Buddhism_Zoroastrianism_Sikhism etc have no such concept.

Islam and Marxism share the goal of ultimate earthly and political victory.
The original Islamic state was established by violence the the ruthless and genocidal supression of enemies, -in contrast, Christianity was established by this.

Acts 8:1-4 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=51&chapter=8&version=31

[Persecution, believers scattered.

3But Saul began to destroy the church.

4Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.]

COMMENT: If we compared this moment to an equivalent one in the growth of Islam, this would coincide with the flight of Mohammed and his 70 companions from persecution in Mecca to safety Medina. Those 70 pledged to defend him with their lives. From this point on, it was continual war with the Jews and Arabs.

Contrast this with the 300 yrs.. let me repeat that THREE HUNDRED YEARS of the growth of the Church by... "those who preached the Word"

It was during the Medinan period where a lot of the doctrines of war were firmed up in Islam and they carry on till this day.

On Indonesia.. we have the Ansuz Alliance. Just like Mohammed had the treaty of Hudrabiya and many others. Protection. Without them, the threat would be much bigger.

While I'm harsh on the immigration matter, I also believe in vigorous proclamation of the Gospel of Christ in Australia as the ultimate solution to the issue but not 'because' of that issue, no, but in Johns words

["That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life"] (1John_1:1)

It's not immigration that's causing the degradations in the environment that everyone seems so worried out. Assuming the document Divergence refers to is 'Australia's Environment- Issues and Trends 2006' (http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/7d12b0f6763c78caca257061001cc588/22df603ea8680b40ca256a8a00836f8a!OpenDocument). my reading suggests that it's the 'seachange' crowd- primary retirees moving to the coast- and rural-urban migration that's putting the burdens on our environment. Also, the increasing prevalence of 1-2 person households (primary aged persons) which reduces the average occupancy in urban dwellings.

Neither of these issues seems to be created/exasperated by immigrants. Instead, these are issues caused by lack of development/opportunities in rural areas and the increasing age of our population. The 'evil' developers loathed by so many on this thread aren't providing housing for immigrants. They're providing for Australians giving up the ratrace for the tranquility of gated communities with security guards and a golf course.

Also: doubling our population in 50 years at present rates? The ABS doesn't think so- according to their worst case scenario, we won't double our numbers until somewhere near 2100 (http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/3222.02004%20to%202101?OpenDocument). Their most likely case says we'll reach 28M by 2050 and only 30M by 2100. Hell, their best case provides for a peak of 25M in 2050 and a return to 22M by 2100- and that's with a annual NET immigration level of 80,000!

Immigration isn't the problem. How we deal with land use is! Too many decades of thinking we can live how we want and where we want without paying the piper is what has brought us to these straights. For a country of smart people who know of "droughts and flooding rains" and surrounded by water; to have water problems says every about complacency. Stop looking for someone else to pin our problems on and look them square in the eye. Farm crops suited to our water profile. Establish systems that're able to store 'flooding rains' for the 'droughts'. Promote development in rural areas that encourage people to move back out of the cities. Run sedans and not 4x4s in the city. Take responsibility for our impact to the environment and stop relying on the providence of nature.

Frank,
Don’t read my words as having a malicious tone

Rather read then as expressing incredulity (with a little p/fun for spice).

Incredulity that you should be unaware of the ongoing persecution of Christians & other non-Muslims in Indonesia etc. As a general observation it could be said that there are few places where Islam is dominant where the non-Muslim minority is not given a rough deal ( & an officially sanctioned rough deal at that).

It is not a sign of “tolerance” or good upbringing to ignore such facts ( as some would have us believe) it is rather more akin to appeasement & cowardice.

Mylakhrion,

I got the 53 years by a simple exponential growth calculation, assuming that the present growth rate is going to continue. Obviously future growth rates depend on government decisions and individual decisions about childbearing. However, there are some very powerful people who want massive population growth, so the growth rate can easily be increased simply by taking in more migrants. They are already supplying half our population growth.

Migrants use cars, housing, sewers, water, etc. just like everyone else. It is a bit rich to blame all environmental problems exclusively on native born Australians. The problems are with bad management (you are correct there) and total numbers. As just one example, Australian household energy consumption increased by 50% between 1975 and 1995. 24% of the increase was due to increased consumption and 76% due to population growth. The same thing is still going on. Prof. Ian Lowe, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, was interviewed on Radio National about the last State of the Environment report. He said that a graph in the report showed increased per capita electricity consumption, but that there wasn't a graph showing the truth that population was increasing even more sharply. Not only more per capita, but a lot more caputs. There is no point in cutting individual consumption in half and then doubling the population. As the T-shirt slogan says, "Save water, the developers need it".

The government statistics on immigration numbers vastly understate the intake. Refugees don't count, even those we invite. New Zealanders don't count, nor do the people who take out New Zealand citizenship to get to Australia. Students who get a degree here in a number of fields can get a permanent resident visa without ever being counted in the immigration numbers. There are large numbers of supposedly temporary visas that are routinely renewed.