Sectarian violence: the threat to Australia

Sectarian-related security concerns in Australia are not entirely new, but the current issues surrounding Australians fighting in Syria and Iraq are qualitatively different, argues this paper. Abstract Neither the presence of Australian foreign fighters overseas nor sectarian-related security concerns in Australia are entirely new to this country. However, the current issues surrounding Australian jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq are qualitatively different. These foreign fighters have a simplistic worldview that divides the world into those who believe and those that don’t, and seeks the establishment of an Islamic state that is at best a chimera. They represent a security threat to Australia. The Australian Government has instituted a series of preventative programs and punitive measures to dissuade would-be fighters, but despite this their numbers have grown. Islamic community leaders have been slow to respond to the ideological threat in a timely, unequivocal and appropriate manner compared to those advocating jihad. Australia’s Muslim leaders need to understand and a cknowledge the nature of the threat, the ways in which their youth are being influenced, and to be more proactive, focused and public in their construction and dissemination of a counter-narrative

The de Broglie Wave as Evidence of a Deeper Wave Structure

It is argued that the de Broglie wave is not the wave usually supposed, but the relativistically induced modulation of an underlying carrier wave that moves with the velocity of the particle. In the rest frame of the particle this underlying structure has the form of a standing wave. De Broglie also assumed the existence of this antecedent standing wave, but it would appear that he failed to notice its survival as a carrier wave in the Lorentz transformed wave structure. Identified as a modulation, the de Broglie wave acquires a physically reasonable ontology, evidencing a more natural unity between matter and radiation than might otherwise be contemplated, and avoiding the necessity of recovering the particle velocity from a superposition of such waves. Because the Schr\"{o}dinger and other wave equations for massive particles were conceived as equations for the de Broglie wave, this interpretation of the wave is also relevant to such issues in quantum mechanics as the meaning of the wave function, the nature of wave-particle duality, and the possibility of well-defined particle trajectories.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figure

Reality and the Probability Wave

Effects associated in quantum mechanics with a divisible probability wave are explained as physically real consequences of the equal but opposite reaction of the apparatus as a particle is measured. Taking as illustration a Mach-Zehnder interferometer operating by refraction, it is shown that this reaction must comprise a fluctuation in the reradiation field of complementary effect to the changes occurring in the photon as it is projected into one or other path. The evolution of this fluctuation through the experiment will explain the alternative states of the particle discerned in self interference, while the maintenance of equilibrium in the face of such fluctuations becomes the source of the Born probabilities. In this scheme, the probability wave is a mathematical artifact, epistemic rather than ontic, and akin in this respect to the simplifying constructions of geometrical optics

Iranian foreign policy under Rouhani

In this Lowy Institute Analysis Rodger Shanahan examines changes in Iranian foreign policy under President Rouhani. He argues that while the Iranian President has changed the tone of Iranian foreign policy, changing the substance will prove much more difficult.  Key findings Rouhani is a centrist rather than a reformist and sees the economy as the key to maximising Iranian national power. The nuclear negotiations are central to ending Iran’s international isolation and reaching a modus vivendi with the United States. But a nuclear deal will not end suspicion of Iran among its neighbours in the region and may even increase it