Muslim communities must face up to bad apples By Tanveer Ahmed
As a psychiatrist who visits jails, I see a lot of overlap between locals who are lured towards terror and many clients from Middle Eastern backgrounds I see in the legal system.
While the cries for calm and cohesion are laudable and the fears among the Muslim majority of being tarnished by a tiny minority appropriate, there remains a wholesale denial within sections of the Muslim community that the bad apples have any connection to the apple tree. Khaled Sharrouf was not an isolated individual, but a man with a family which was linked to a community.
There remains a marked difference in the way males are raised within some Lebanese groups which predisposes them to greater acts of anti-social behaviour. It is a fairly specific segment of the Lebanese community and a result of the migration of poorer farmers and lower-class Lebanese Muslims after the civil war in 1975. Their numbers and concentration are greatest in southwestern Sydney.
There is a rampant anti-social character to some youths from this segment which stems in part from unsuccessful child rearing. The horrific moves towards terror acts can be seen as an ideological extension of a propensity towards bad behaviour, combined with an unshakable victim mentality.
There are clear trends in the clients I see from Arab groups in jails. They come from large families. The fathers were often absent while they worked unskilled jobs trying to provide. The mothers lacked the extended family support they may have had in their ancestral lands. Parenting focused on the daughters, for in the world the mothers knew girls needed more discipline and attention for opportunity and marriage to beckon. The men were placed on a pedestal with few behavioural limits. The relatively absent fathers, who might have disciplined the sons, compounded the problems.
I see further key psychological differences among these groups, particularly the Lebanese or the children of refugees from Iraqi or Afghan backgrounds. They are likely to see anger in different ways to Westerners or migrants from more educated ethnic groups. While expressions of anger and threats are a quick way to lose face in polite Western society, it is more acceptable within Arab groups. At its worst, calm, measured responses to conflict may be seen as weak.
This is outlined by Danish psychologist Nicolai Sennell’s groundbreaking work visiting Muslim criminals in jail, where he makes reference to the Arab notion of “holy anger”, which is completely foreign to English.
Another key difference is the psychological idea of “locus of control”. This refers to whether we believe our lives are driven primarily by internal or external factors.
Western thinking teaches that we have some control of our destinies. In its most optimistic forms, it is the basis for the self-help industry. Applying these kinds of ideas to my Muslim patients, particularly first-generation or less educated migrants, is extremely difficult. There is simply no such concept in Arab cultures.
What Arab cultures have are strict external rules, traditions and laws for human behaviour. They have a God that decides their life’s course. “Inshallah” follows every statement about future plans: if God wills it to occur. They have powerful Muslim clerics who set directions for their community every Friday. These clerics dictate political views, child-rearing behaviour and whether to integrate into Western societies.
In societies shaped under Islamic influences there is little emphasis on guilt and a greater likelihood to demand that society adapt to one’s own wishes.
Muslim youths have unique difficulties in coming to terms with their identity, especially when they have conflicting value systems at home compared with school or work. This can produce greater deviance, a point better measured in Britain where South Asian youth suffer from mental illness at three times the rate of the general population.
But there are Muslim youths from many different countries living in Sydney. Other Arab Australians from Egypt, Jordan or Iran do not have the same problems. If you meet them, they will be quick to point out that their community’s migration was from a more skilled base. They had smaller families, focused on their children’s education and integrated more easily.
There is no doubt Muslim communities throughout the Western world have been under the pump since the age of terror unleashed itself this century. But for all the interfaith work, awareness building and cries for tolerance, there continues to be a significant tendency to externalise all blame.
Reproduced here under the terms if its creative commons license originally published here
Asylum-seekers: we know what we want
Find below a copy of Graham Young’s survey into the attitudes of Australians about the Asylum seeker issue It makes very interesting reading and I reproduce it here under the terms of its creative commons licence
The ALP needs to ensure that it doesn’t lose any more voters to the Greens. This is a real worry, recent by-elections notwithstanding, as according to our qualitative poll of 832 Australians, half of the 29 per cent of ALP voters who disapprove of ALP asylum-seeker policy agree with that of the Greens.
At the same time they don’t want to lose any more on the right to the Libs, and now Bob Katter.
Keeping Labor stuck in this quandary is good politics for Tony Abbott, and it is easy, because his policy is closest to what Australians will accept; but it is also identical to that of John Howard, and Labor just couldn’t embrace that, not just for reasons of politics but pride as well.
While no one’s policy received majority support, the opposition was closest with 45 per cent support (v 47 per cent against), while Labor’s policy attracted 19 per cent support (v 70 per cent opposition) and the Greens 18 per cent support (v 68 per cent opposition).
Importantly for the opposition in terms of Labor’s wedge, it manages to get a 42-33 per cent split in its favour among Katter voters. Disastrously for the government, Katter voters split 75-8 against its policy. At the same time, the government’s new “worst” friends on the left, the Greens, hate their policy too – 75-12 against.
But these judgments are affected by voting intentions. Polling on specific immigration policy yields more nuanced responses.
The ALP needs to ensure that it doesn’t lose any more voters to the Greens. This is a real worry, recent by-elections notwithstanding, as according to our qualitative poll of 832 Australians, half of the 29 per cent of ALP voters who disapprove of ALP asylum-seeker policy agree with that of the Greens.
At the same time they don’t want to lose any more on the right to the Libs, and now Bob Katter.
Keeping Labor stuck in this quandary is good politics for Tony Abbott, and it is easy, because his policy is closest to what Australians will accept; but it is also identical to that of John Howard, and Labor just couldn’t embrace that, not just for reasons of politics but pride as well.
While no one’s policy received majority support, the opposition was closest with 45 per cent support (v 47 per cent against), while Labor’s policy attracted 19 per cent support (v 70 per cent opposition) and the Greens 18 per cent support (v 68 per cent opposition).
Importantly for the opposition in terms of Labor’s wedge, it manages to get a 42-33 per cent split in its favour among Katter voters. Disastrously for the government, Katter voters split 75-8 against its policy. At the same time, the government’s new “worst” friends on the left, the Greens, hate their policy too – 75-12 against.
But these judgments are affected by voting intentions. Polling on specific immigration policy yields more nuanced responses.
Approval or disapproval of key elements of asylum seeker policy
Most of us (55 per cent) agree with offshore processing, while only 33 per cent disagree. Mandatory detention attracts a bare majority support of 50 per cent but with only 35 per cent opposed.
Majorities support processing on Nauru and Australian territories such as Christmas Island, and a plurality supports Manus Island. However, processing in Malaysia is disapproved of by 56 per cent, with its only support being from ALP voters.
Reintroduction of temporary protection visas was supported by 53 per cent, and while towing boats back was opposed by almost half – 49 per cent – another 42 per cent supported it.
Combing through qualitative responses, many who support easier arrangements typify their opponents as racists or xenophobes. This is undoubtedly true in some cases, but figures suggest it is not the general position as the policy most strongly supported is to increase Australia’s humanitarian intake, with 63 per cent in support to 21 per cent opposed, and net support in all major parties bar Katter’s Australian Party.
Most voters are actually sympathetic to the plight of asylum-seekers but see the issue as being one of ethical conflicts so that their plight is not the sole issue.
There is the conflict between their rights and those of refugees who can’t afford the people-smuggler tariff, meaning there is no solution that can be completely humane and just for everyone.
Another concern is territorial and cultural security, concerns that are typically conservative in the philosophical sense and that focus on our rights.
Many recognise that Australians have it pretty good, which is why refugees want to come here, but fear that too many, too quickly, would ruin what we have for everyone. There is an underlying belief that if we don’t fix the people-smuggling problem we might as well just have an open-borders policy and have the navy as a “meet-and-greet” agency to conduct people into port.
What is the point of a nation state if you can’t police your borders? And if Australian society is undermined, what does that do to our capacity to help?
In a sense there is a mismatch between the immediate and the long term that can be most easily fixed by ensuring refugees don’t come here in the first place, which means tough border regulations.
Many voters also see it as a question of competence. Labor didn’t need to fiddle with Howard’s policy, which people believe worked, but it did. They see it as a sign of dilettantism from the government, which joins all their other concerns about its competence.
Interestingly, while recent political debate has centred on the risk of death to asylum-seekers from the trip, I can find little in the responses suggesting that this is a major concern of Australians.
Australia has had 26 years (some would say more than 200) of unauthorised boat arrivals, which has led to divisive debate. Now it seems we may be within reach of a set of policies that will satisfy most of us.
Floods wash away carbon tax support
In August 2009, after three years of computer modelling, a joint team of scientists from the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology announced that they had linked greenhouse gases to the drought then reigning over south-eastern Australia. They also declared that the decline in rainfall was likely to be permanent as more of those gases accumulated in the atmosphere and the world warmed.
The results of the South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative were one of many warnings issued at the time, with the drought still in full swing, that rainfall patterns had changed and that dams had been built in the wrong spots. They would never be full again.
Warnings such as this, playing on understandable fears over what had proved to be a very long, dry period, prompted the building of desalination plants in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane. More importantly, these warnings were repeated by a parade of activists and scientists (the distinction was often blurred) who found their way into the media both before and after the initiative announced its results. In early 2008, the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones, was reported as declaring that the extreme dry climate of the time was permanent. In 2007, Tim Flannery who is now the Federal Govenrment’s climate commissioner, declared that there had been a decline in the winter rainfall zone across Australia.
But in the end the warnings did little more than illustrate the problems of forecasting, any forecasting. For no sooner had the CSIRO-BoM scientists declared that the drought would continue than it started to rain and, it seems, has not stopped raining in South Eastern Australia. One result of all that rain, including two years of flooding due to back to back La Ninas, and now quite full dams, has been to wash away a great deal of public support for previous assertions about global warming.
Most of those who listened to or read the various gloomy forecasts made at the height of the drought would have little idea of any of the scientific basis for them, and would have barely heard any of the counter arguments. They have better things to do than get to the bottom of a technical issue. But they do know a lot of water when they see it, and would remember that the experts had told them their patch of Australia was drying up.
In the grand tradition of forecasters caught out by reality, the experts have broadly reinterpreted what was originally said. Media consumers are now told that the original forecasts emphasised that both droughts and flooding would increase as the world warmed (to be fair, some of the forecasts also mentioned floods).
The federal government’s Climate Commission has also issued a statement that people should look beyond the past two years of rain, floods and dams full to overflowing, and instead consider the 10 average which is still pretty dry compared to previous periods.
The trouble with these hurried reinterpretations is that those living in rural areas know perfectly well the level of the last severe flooding, perhaps back in the 1970s, as it is usually marked on a handy feature. The last set of floods came up to those marks. They and their city cousins may also have heard somewhere that rainfall is subject to cycles, and that the climate of Australia’s eastern seaboard has returned to the notably wetter conditions that prevailed from the late 1940s through to the mid-1970s. They may put those bits of information together to conclude that the experts were quite wrong in their assessments of the reasons for the drought.
Staunch defenders of global warming theory may brush aside such quibbles by pointing out that temperature and rainfall forecasts are quite separate matters, and they would be correct. It is possible to have both high temperatures and high rainfall, as anyone who visits a rain forest would know. The trouble is that scientists in 2009 were confidently linking increasing greenhouse gases to the drought, and telling everyone the dams would never be full, and promptly got more than two years of rain and full dams. It does them little good now to point to averages. In addition, the state governments built desalinisation plants with political fumbling making them difficult to switch off or dismantle in some states. They have become monuments to the folly of believing in forecasts.
This creates a problem for the Gillard government, even bigger than the self-generated political mess into which it has fallen. It is committed to the carbon tax, which will come into effect in July, but even the least media-savvy voters are becoming suspicious of the warnings about climate change that inspired the tax. Voters in marginal electorates don’t follow politics much (who can blame them), but may well have heard about the problems with the desalination plants. If the experts were so wrong about rainfall, why can’t they be wrong about temperatures and so why do we need this tax? Or so the reasoning will go.
The Climate Commissions’ assurances, plus another climate report put out by the CSIRO earlier this year, and yet another by the IPCC, reiterating warnings that greenhouse gases will lead to substantial additional warming, will do little to offset this massive increase in scepticism.
On top of this is the general angst over increases in electricity prices, which on average have risen almost 40 per cent more than inflation since the election of the Rudd government in 2007. The Rudd and Gillard governments are only partially to blame for this increase, through legislation requiring a massive increase in green electricity. Most of the increase is due to changes in networks which will not be discussed here.
As noted earlier the carbon tax has yet to start, but once it is up and running it will be a handy scape goat. Voters can relieve their feelings over the high bills they have to pay by demanding it be abolished, and abolition will at least prevent a part of future price increases. All of this means that voters already suspicious of the carbon tax will soon consider it to be in the same category as the desalination plants in each state – as an expensive white elephant that should not have to pay for.
Labor may commit political suicide for a host of reasons unconnected with the tax, but it’s certainly not going to help them at the polls.
This piece is reproduced under the terms of its Creative commons licence and the original can be found here
Don’t listen to shock jocks on carbon
I found this great piece by Bob Carter over on Online Opinion and I reproduce it here under the terms of its Creative commons licence It can be viewed at its original location via the link in the author’s name below the title.
Cheers Comrades
Don’t listen to shock jocks on carbon
by Bob Carter
“Last Monday, I received a report from the Climate Commission confirming again that climate change is real. It provided very real evidence that we need to act now. Not in a couple of generations time, or even a couple of years time, but now.” – Julia Gillard
Climate change is like motherhood: of course it’s real, and whoever would doubt it?
If, instead, the PM actually means to say “dangerous global warming caused by human-related carbon dioxide emissions is real”, then she is wrong.
That such warming is occurring is a hypothesis which can be tested against the last ten years of data, which are: carbon dioxide increase – +5%; temperature decrease – -0.05O C.
The hypothesis is invalidated by the test. There is therefore no urgency to act now – or, indeed, at all – by penal taxation against carbon dioxide such as the PM is suggesting.
What the report shows is that in the past 50 years the number of record hot days in Australia has more than doubled. Australian natural wonders such as the Great Barrier Reef are already being damaged and the risk of coastal flooding could double by the end of the century. Most significantly, the report says the greatest contributor to recent climate change is carbon pollution caused by humans.
As detailed in a scientific audit published at Quadrant Online, the facts related in this paragraph are a manifestation of natural environmental variability, and the speculation about human causation is based on discredited advice from the United Nations IPCC.
These reports are not the first of their kind. They build on past work from scientists around the world who have been tracking the effects of climate change for years.
Thousands of independent scientists have expressed different views from the extreme alarmism of the IPCC and its advisors. Most have moderate, middle ground views. They accept that natural climate change is a hazard that we should prepare for, and note that hypothetical human-caused global warming, should it ever emerge, is best dealt with in the same way. Which is by contingency preparation in advance, and adaptive response when a climate hazard, of whatever causation, is actually visited upon us.
And like ones past, these research papers have been peer reviewed by other scientists to make sure findings are accurate.
Peer review does not ensure accurate findings. It is simply an editorial device used in an (often vain) attempt at quality control.
With the science so clear we shouldn’t waste time on shock jocks or politicians who rely on false claims to run their scare campaigns. They quote one crank or another in the same way people have argued the world is flat.
“The science” doesn’t exist. As for all contentious topics, there are a very wide range of interpretations put and views held by different scientists about the causes and mechanisms of climate change. “Cranks” are not an issue given that protagonists of the highest scientific quality can be found on all sides (and there are many more than two) of the public debate about global warming.
The best way to cut carbon pollution is to make up to 1000 of our biggest polluters pay for every tonne of carbon they generate. Not households. Not small businesses. Just the top 1000 polluters.
There is no carbon pollution, as particulate matter is filtered out prior to smoke stack venting at all modern industrial plants.
If the PM means “carbon dioxide pollution”, then she is wrong again, for carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Rather, it is an environmentally beneficial trace gas that underpins plant photosynthesis, and therefore most planetary food chains.
Imposing a carbon dioxide tax on large businesses will result in any unavoidable costs of that tax being passed straight down to ordinary consumers.
We know some industries will pass some of these costs on to consumers, which is why we will give more than half of the money raised back to families.
And for how long will this largesse continue? And what about families that do not fall within the PM’s definition of being worthy to receive a refund?
The rest will go to supporting jobs in existing industries and creating new jobs by investing in clean energy and technology.
Studies in Europe show that for every new job created in the “clean energy” industry, between two and three jobs are destroyed.
Putting a price on carbon pollution means companies will look to cut that cost to their business by decreasing their pollution, so much so that we are confident our plan will reduce Australia’s emissions by 160 million tonnes in 2020. This is equivalent to taking 50 million polluting cars off our roads in 2020.
No matter how many times the mantra is repeated, carbon dioxide emissions are not pollution, but, instead, help to green the planet.
For the first few years of the scheme the price per tonne of pollution paid by big polluters will be fixed, working effectively like a tax. After that, a cap will be put on the amount of pollution that these polluters can generate and a market will exist in which firms will buy and sell permits to emit a tonne of pollution.
In other words, as soon as possible we intend to pass control over to the same financial wizards whose trading of derivatives recently brought the world financial system to the point of collapse. What a great idea.
In this emissions trading scheme, companies that find ways to reduce their pollution will make money by selling permits to pollute and big polluters will have to spend money to buy permits. The forces of supply and demand for permits will set the price. But the golden rule will be: the less a firm pollutes, the better off it is.
In actuality, the same thing will happen to any Australian carbon dioxide trading market as has already happened to the Chicago (now closed down) and European (hopelessly corrupt) exchanges.
As the commodity – which, remember, is a piece of paper that represents a colourless, odourless, tasteless, invisible and beneficial trace gas – changes hands, every man and his dog will clamour to clip the ticket, and the market will be rife with speculation and corrupt trading.
Overwhelmingly our nation wants to act on climate change but some worry it won’t be good for us if we get out in front of the world.
What Australian citizens want the PM to act upon is to ensure reliable and cost-effective energy supplies, to stem the escalating cost of living and to indulge in good environmental stewardship. Imposition of a carbon dioxide tax will have exactly the opposite effects.
They don’t have to worry because the world is moving too.
Just this month the U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to cut his country’s emissions by half by 2027.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key is enhancing a carbon trading scheme that has been in place in New Zealand since 2008. On May 29, the U.S. state of New Jersey announced its withdrawal from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a market designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. Northeast.
Meanwhile, Russia, Japan and Canada have told the G8 nations that they will not join a second round of carbon dioxide cuts under any continuation of the Kyoto protocol, and the U.S. has reiterated it intends to remain outside the treaty. The reason is because the rest of the world, outside of Europe, has chosen not to implement penal imposts on coal-fired power stations, nor to tax carbon dioxide more generally.
Western governments are in fact moving in precisely the opposite direction to PM Gillard’s demonisation and intended taxation of an environmentally beneficial trace gas.
Half a million page views at the Sandpit
I know that statistical miles stones are really meaningless but that does not stop you feeling pretty good when you reach them. Well if you keep an eye on the hit counter at the bottom of the page some time today I expect that you will see the counter tick over t0 the magical “500,000” mark . That is pretty good for a modest blog written as a bit of fun .
Thanks very much to all of those who take the time to read what I and my friends put up here and a special thanks to all of those who take the time to comment and argue with what is on this web-page. Commentary and argument is the life blood of blogging and long may it keep pumping at the Sandpit.
Cheers Comrades
AGW proven by cooling trend???
PARIS – Global warming could take a break in the next decade thanks to a natural shift in ocean circulations, although Earth’s temperature will rise as previously expected over the longer term, according to a study published today in the British journal Nature.
Climate scientists in Germany base the prediction on what they believe is an impending change in the Gulf Stream — the conveyor belt that transports warm surface water from the tropical Atlantic to the northern Atlantic and returns cold water southwards at depth.
The Gulf Stream will temporarily weaken over the next decade, in line with what has happened regularly in the past, the researchers say.
This will lead to slightly cooler temperatures in the North Atlantic and in North America and Europe, and also help the temperatures in the tropical Pacific to remain stable, they suggest.
This time last year we were being served up the standard line on AGW , namely that the planet’s climate was on an inexorable warming trend and that if we failed to take substantial measures to combat the emissions of Co2 then we were all sure to fry. More recently we have begun to see more and more reports suggesting. that our future may be cooler rather than warmer. Like the one that I quote above. while this piece suggest that we may see a period of cooling before a return to the much mooted AGW warming trend I find it rather hard to believe that the soothsayers have any idea at all. When it is impossible to predict with any accuracy what the weather will be like tomorrow I see no reason to accept claims that cooling temperatures mean that “Global warming” is happening as claimed by the likes of Gore and Flannery et al.
Cheers Comrades
😉
Climate change violates one of Newton’s Laws
By William York – posted Monday, 31 December 2007
The claim that the science debate over climate change is settled violates the most important of Newton’s Laws. This violation is not of the famous Laws of Motion but of a little known set of derived by-laws, Newton’s Laws of Experts, a major contribution to understanding social dynamics.
Newton’s Laws of Motion may be simply stated as:
- First Law: every object persists in its state of rest or uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force;
- Second Law: the rate of change of momentum is directly proportional to the applied force; and
- Third Law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
The by-laws, Newton’s Laws of Experts, are as follows:
- First Law: every expert persists in his state of rest or opinion unless acted upon by an external grant;
- Second Law: the rate of change of opinion is directly proportional to the applied grant; and
- Third Law: for every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.The First Law of Experts is well known and can be demonstrated in countless universities, institutes and research bodies. There are two major influences. First, the need to appear relevant to the wants of society means engagement in the great issues of the day. This has been brought on by well intentioned but misguided policy that assumes innovations, financial, technical or other, spring fully developed from academic research and national needs should determine the areas of research interest.
The second and much more worrying influence comes from the coupling of politics to science. The academy has a natural bias towards the left as its business is overthrowing old ideas and generating new interpretations and understanding. If this is coupled to saving the planet and giving rise to a better world then there is a resonance between politics and academia.
At the present time there are three issues that resonate with at least parts of the academy: climate change, genetically modified organisms and nuclear power. In each case, it is arguable that the scientific understanding on the political side is selective, frequently ignorant and often presented in terms that startle the public.
As a result governments, often subject to marginal politics, have created opportunities for endless grant applications for any research perceived as relevant to these issues. As a further result, academia has responded by setting up special institutes or university departments and, with knowledge of the availability of large research grants, has applied for and received funding.
It is often the case that the envisaged research was not aimed at the target set by the government, but simply represents the dressing-up of a proposal in a way which would attract the grant.
This discussion leads to the Second Law of Experts. There is no doubt that large grants, leading to the establishment of new institutes, departments or divisions, have the effect of moving experts into positions where they will represent these new initiatives. The lifetime of these organisations is subject to the continuous feeding from grants, so there is every incentive to emphasise the importance and relevance of the research, thus providing strong and positive feedback.
The Third Law of Experts is one that is most commonly encountered in the Law. Expert witnesses are frequently called by both sides for explanations. So, rather than experts advising the bench, each side presents the most favourable explanation that helps its own case.
The present major concern of society is climate change. Why this is so is best understood in the words of H.L.Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
The effect of the political interest in climate change has been the violation of Newton’s Third Law.
Where are the experts speaking against the position that climate change is caused by human activity? They are scarcely to be seen or heard at this time. Within the academy, one expert will not willingly place himself between another expert and a grant-giving body, unless he has immunity from subsequent retribution. There are examples of those who have taken the contrary view being hounded by colleagues, being unable to secure research grants and even calls for them to be removed from their positions.
However Newton’s Laws are eternal and immutable. The violation of the Third Law will be only temporary as slowly scientific observation and understanding will get the better of the present situation.
From the above analysis, it is a firm conclusion that the climate change debate is distorted in its presentation and that its alleged scientific conclusions are unsound. Only when the Third Law is satisfied will we finally understand.
This writer would not like to estimate how long this will take. Rather he would suggest that we all heed the advice of another sage, this time from Hollywood, where Sam Goldwyn is supposed to have said that he never liked making predictions, particularly about the future.
This piece is copied from Here and as it is published under a creative commons licence it reproduction is permitted.
This piece is both witty and contains more than just a grain of truth about the funding paradigms in academia.
Something important to consider here Comrades
😉
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 