Religion 7 - A Reaction To Islam

The following draft list (subject to amendment) is a stark indication of how the world is reacting against the encroachment of extreme Islam.  As is my way, I hope that there will be some discussion;  for example, are we over-reacting?

Angola;  the government does not legally recognize any Muslim organizations; as a result, mosques in the country have faced restrictions and most have been shut down by the government.

Australia;  there are a large number of militant Islamic groups in the country, and the government plans to broaden the listing criteria for terrorist organizations, and lower the threshold for arrest without warrant for terrorism offences.

Austria (edited);  The police have arrested 13 men ... targeting suspected jihad recruiters.  Reforms to Austria’s Islam law came into force in 2016.The most significant change comes in the shape of a ban on foreign funding, which is intended to prevent people from being “remote controlled” externally and to help the Austrian authorities maintain a certain amount of control. This will have a knock-on effect on the employment of Imams, 65 of which were commissioned by Turkish religious authorities and who will now be forced to return to their homelands, and even educational institutions will have to change, 150 Muslim nurseries or kindergartens in Vienna will be seriously affected.

Canada (edited);  There have been many arrests of suspect jihadists, returning from Iraq and Syria, and their passports confiscated.  Other Muslim suspects are also being arrested and held ... many are appealing deportation.  The wearing of a full-face veil (niqab or burqa) is banned in public places in the province of Quebec, and restricted throughout Canada.  Anti-Muslim sentiment is higher in Quebec than rest of Canada, a study finds.  But across the country, Canadians harbour more negative attitudes toward Muslims than other groups.  Even though Quebec politicians routinely claim otherwise, a recent study suggests Islamophobia is widespread in the province and more prevalent here than elsewhere in Canada.  Whites, Catholics, Indigenous people, racial minorities and members of the LGBT community all received higher average scores than Muslims when Canadians were asked to assign a score between zero and 100 to their feelings about these groups.  Muslims received the lowest average score, 56, in Quebec. The next lowest was 67, in the Prairies. British Columbians had the most favourable view of Muslims, with an average score of 77.

China;  has executed eight jihadists in China's campaign against separatism, and a Chinese court has sent 22 Muslim Imams to jail for 5 to 16 years, for spreading hatred.  Muslim prayers are banned in government buildings and schools in Xinjiang.

Cuba (edited);   The city of Havana is set to build Cuba’s first mosque, touted to be one of the largest in Latin America, as its Muslim population continues to grow.  Since 2015, when the government authorized that Cuba’s some 10,000 Muslims should have a place of worship, they have been congregating in a building space in downtown Havana for prayers, where copies of the Quran in both Spanish and Arabic are abundant. The new mosque is set to be built in Old Havana.

Czech Republic (edited);  Though no exact figures exist, the Muslim community in the Czech Republic is small, between 5,000 and 20,000, or less than 0.02 percent of the total population.  Attempts to open mosques have been stopped by local citizens.  Slovakia last year passed a law effectively banning Islam from gaining official status as a religion.  Currently, Islam is recognised as a religion in the Czech Republic, but its followers are restricted from several basic privileges enjoyed by other faiths, including the right to establish schools, to hold legally recognised weddings and conduct religious ceremonies in public spaces.  According to a Harvard University survey published earlier in 2017, of the hundreds of thousands of people in Europe, Czechs exhibited a higher level of implicit racial bias than in any other European country. 

France (edited);  The country has banned the full-face veils in public places with a 150-euro fine.  The government has yet to formulate an official policy towards making integration easier. It is difficult to determine in France who may be called a Muslim. Some Muslims in France describe themselves as "non-practicing". Most simply observe Ramadan and other basic rules, but are otherwise secular.

Germany (edited);  In the past year (2014), there were 81 attacks targeting mosques.  As elsewhere in Western Europe, the rapid growth of the Muslim community in Germany has led to social tensions and political controversy, partly connected to Islamic extremism, and more generally due to the perceived difficulties of multiculturalism and fears of Uberfremdung.  According to 2013 study by Social Science Research Center Berlin, two thirds of the Muslims interviewed say that religious rules are more important to them than the laws of the country in which they live, almost 60 percent of the Muslim respondents reject homosexuals as friends; 45 percent think that Jews cannot be trusted; and an equally large group believes that the West is out to destroy Islam.  The new Interior Minister, recently, caused an uproar when he declared that "Islam doesn't belong to Germany." 

Netherlands;  a Dutch MP, Machiel De Graaf, calls for the removal of all mosques in the country. "We want to clean Netherlands of Islam".  He spoke on behalf of the Party for Freedom (PVV) "All mosques in the Netherlands should be shut down.  Without Islam, the Netherlands would be a wonderful country”, he said.

Norway;  a record number of Muslims were deported last year as a way of fighting crime.

Poland;  the Polish Defense League has issued a warning to Muslims.

U.K.;  there are a large number of Muslim groups demanding that the U.K. should be solely governed by Sharia Law, forcing the Prime Minister to publically declare that the U.K. is a Christian community, and the British Home Secretary is preparing to introduce an 'anti-social behaviour order' for extremists and strip dual nationals of their citizenship.

Some Muslims in Northern Ireland have announced plans to leave the country to avoid anti-Islamic violence.  The announcement comes after an attack on a Muslim family in the city of Belfast, when crazed rioters broke into their home and assaulted them.

U.S.A.;  16 states have introduced legislation to specifically ban Sharia law.

A new controversial amendment that will ban the recognition of "foreign laws" — would include Sharia law in Alabama and North Carolina.

Politics 14 - A 'Nightmare' Nuclear Deal

The recent nuclear framework agreement between powerful world leaders and Iran, regarding the lifting of sanctions, has the U.S. Senate stating that they will do everything that they can think of to change it, and Israel’s Netanyahu clearly displays his thoughts with the one-word, “nightmare”.

It seems that no one understands why Iran needs enrichment facilities when less expensive reactor fuel is available on the international market.  Therefore, it is said that there can be only one reason ... to produce enough enrichment for a bomb.

Therefore, it is really necessary to pause and study Iran’s history.

Chris Lawrence, a nuclear scientist at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation says, “This detached calculus is made possible only by a radical ahistoricism that seems to pervade nearly all discussion of the Iranian nuclear program.”

He continues, “Nuclear power reactors represent towering investments. Most are designed to last 40 years, and their lives are often extended to 50 or 60. Meanwhile, the price of fuel makes up less than 30 percent of their operating cost”.

Starting with the revolution in 1979, when construction on the Bushehr reactor had reached 80%, the German construction company was encouraged to back out, and U.S. pressure in the 80’s caused France, China, and Argentina to back out of being suppliers of nuclear fuel.

Therefore, this history shows that Iran cannot rely on the international availability of fuel, fifty years from now ... certainly not from Russia, and is a good reason to be self reliant. 

It should not be surprising, considering years of sanctions, that they continued with a secret procurement process, it being their only option.

“As fellow nonproliferation analyst Ivanka Barzashka and others have pointed out, the existence of the Fordow plant [Constructed beneath a mountain. Ed.] removes this option since it would be invulnerable to an airstrike. In fact, if Iran can simply continue enriching at Fordow, then destroying Natanz [Iran’s largest enrichment plant. Ed.] is even worse than pointless, since it would likely change Iran's calculus in favor of weaponization.” Lawrence continued.

It may seem strange that Iran would agree to reduce its’ enrichment process and, it is suspected, this will enable them to maintain their centrifuge capability, should there be a failure of future agreements and, thus, avoid shutting down their reactors as they did in the 80’s.

We must not be too pleased with ourselves that severe sanctions have caused this latest agreement, because as Lawrence also says, “Iran came to the table in 2003, before sanctions were escalated, with a better deal than we could possibly imagine today. We eloquently responded, "You're evil, go away." Since then, they have done the rational thing and become excellent enrichers of uranium so they will never again be without fuel for their reactors”.

I hope that a final agreement is reached in June, and that the U.S. Senate keeps its’ pointed nose out of harms way ... the less that I say about Netanyahu the better.

Aerospace 11 - Pilots In The Wrong Occupation

Recently, I read a very important and topical article in Aviation Week magazine that, I believe, should be diligently read, and I have copied some extracts here.

Unless you've spent your entire life shielded from all realities, you've probably heard of an aircraft pilot who shouldn't pilot;  a person who, despite having accumulated a wealth of flight hours, would be better suited to a different occupation.

Yet while most of us are determined by nature, as a group we tend to hide when it comes to exposing bad habits.  We do nothing, remain quiet, and hope that perhaps the system will sort out a truly bad pilot, or someone else will sound the alarm.

And even if you do turn somebody in for inability or negligence, such failings are hard to define and even more difficult to prove.  After all, to become a licensed pilot, one needs to have obtained a certain amount of practical flying experience and demonstrate both the knowledge and skill described by the government.  But as has been documented in many fatal accidents, faults in personality and attitude rather than a lack of technical expertise are sometimes key to a flight's failure.

"Personality needs to be considered on a level of importance right along with piloting skills.  A safe pilot needs to be able to comfortably multi-task, keep an open mind, assimilate quickly and see the big picture.  When you have a pilot with an angry, ticked-off personality, his world shrinks, and his viewpoint is narrowed before he even gets in the cockpit.  That in itself is a weakness, and for the captain -- who is the purveyor of safety -- his persona becomes a liability."says Gregory Feith, an ATP and former senior accident investigator with the NTSB.

While pilots are typically enthusiastic about flying, there are exceptions.  In some Asian countries candidates are selected to become pilots based upon their academic performance, rather than any interest or aptitude on their part to pilot airplanes.  And there are youngsters in the United States who feel compelled to become pilots because it's a family tradition.

Pilot training and testing has never been about grading performance ... it's always been a pass or fail with nothing in between.  Judging a pilot who failed a check as weak is as useless as judging a pilot with a perfect record as good. There is no objective measure of a good pilot in the system.

"Make no mistake," says Feith, "there are people sitting in cockpits today because their peer group or their personal history put them there.  They are convinced that they need to be there, rather than should be there, and there are few ways to determine until after the fact -- even on personality tests -- how these pilots are going to perform under pressure."

We must be wary of pilots who repeatedly blame others -- be they crewmembers, air traffic controllers or the weather briefer -- for what is essentially their own screw-up.  It seems that, if it's never their fault, then it's never -- in their minds -- their responsibility.  If that's the case, then maybe they're really not vested in what's happening.

In addition to being cheap to hire, a great thing about low experience pilots is they haven't been flying long enough to have made many mistakes. They look great on paper and the vetting process is easy.  And they remain in the cockpit despite, or some might argue, because of, the system.  Feith says unions can protect flawed pilots, and training companies exist to improve, not eject, pilots of all skill levels.  "They also don't relish being the bearers of bad news as to the quality of the pilots you've hired,'' Feith observes, ``and corporate flight department managers may never know if a candidate passed extraordinarily -- or barely marginally -- because it's a hard thing to objectify.''

"We are each personally accountable for enhancing safety as a whole," says Feith.  "But it's not the collective that enhances safety, it's the individuals within the collective who do so."

Thanks to Business and Commercial Aviation