The latest fortnightly Essential Research poll again comes up empty on voting intention, but it does offer the pollster’s third set of leadership ratings since the election. As with Newspoll, these record a drop in Scott Morrison’s net approval rating, owing to a three point rise in disapproval to 37%, while his approval holds steady at 48%. However, Essential parts company with Newspoll in finding Anthony Albanese up on disapproval as well, by five points to 29%, with approval down one to 38%. Morrison’s lead as preferred prime minister narrows slightly, from 44-26 to 44-28.
Further questions suggest the public leans positive on most aspects of the “influence of the United States of America” (defence, trade, cultural and business), excepting a neutral result (42% positive, 40% negative) for influence on Australian politics. The same exercise for China finds positive results for trade, neutral results for culture and business, and negative ones for defence and politics. Asked which of the two we would most benefit from strengthening ties with, 38% of respondents favoured the US and 28% China.
The small sample of respondents from New South Wales were also asked about the proposed removal of abortion from the criminal code, which was supported by an overwhelming 71% compared with 17% opposed. The poll has a sample of 1096 and was conducted online from Thursday to Sunday.
Note also the post below this one, being the latest Brexit update from Adrian Beaumont.
Says a bloke who has such economic and international authority.
‘Plenty in the ALP believe that a bearded man walked on water. Even zoomster talked in tongues once upon a time!’
False equivalence. Just for starters, it was about twenty years before I joined the ALP.
I’ve known many Green members with strongly religious, particularly Catholic, backgrounds.
The simple fact is that going to church/Sunday school/youth club/a religious school were not uncommon experiences for people growing up fifty or sixty years ago. Thus, almost any organisation you care to name will have people in it who once identified themselves with some brand of religion.
For some, of course, the identification will still hold.
It appears that there are an abnormally high number of people like this in the Liberal party atm. Even Sophie Mirabella identified herself as Christian at a candidate’s forum I once attended (she was the only candidate present who did so – the rest of us explained why we no longer were).
zoomster
Something GG wrote last night implied that those who prophesy disaster through climate change are just like other “prophets of doom”. In other words, believers in climate change are part of a cult. As a practising christian he didn’t believe the others, and most people that he knows don’t believe this one either (I hope I have paraphrased him correctly).
If people think that believing in climate change is a choice, like religion, they will be reluctant to do anything about it.
Fran Kelly and Michael Stutchbury. Definitely not one to watch.
I suppose the Green partisans will be upset that Tanya Plibersek came out in support of Gladys Berejiklian, same same and all that shit.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/labor-s-plibersek-says-it-s-absolutely-not-ok-to-ask-liberal-premier-berejiklian-on-air-if-she-d-have-an-abortion-20190824-p52kdn.html
Come on tell us why Ben Fordham should have done what it did.
Posting this in full because everyone needs to read it. We can’t make the same mistake again and follow Trump as we followed Bush.
***
Here Are Five Lies About Iran That We Need to Refute to Stop Another Illegal War
Last month, the Trump White House put out a typically Orwellian statement, chock-filled with lies, distortions, and half-truths about Iran and the 2015 nuclear deal. One line in particular stood out from the rest: “There is little doubt that even before the deal’s existence, Iran was violating its terms.”
Huh? The Iranians were violating an agreement — before it even existed?
Is it any surprise that even the foreign minister of Iran took to Twitter to join the online ridiculing of the White House?
The Trump administration’s lies on the topic of Iran are now beyond parody. There is, however, nothing funny about them. U.S. government lies can have deadly consequences: Never forget that hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women, and children, not to mention more than 4,400 U.S. military personnel, are dead today because of the sheer volume of falsehoods told by the George W. Bush administration.
So it is incumbent upon journalists to do in 2019 what we collectively did not do in 2003: Check the facts, challenge the lies, debunk the myths.
Here’s my contribution: a refutation of five of the most dishonest and inaccurate claims from the hawks — claims that brought the United States and Iran to the brink of conflict only a few weeks ago.
Lie #1: Iran Is Building a Nuclear Weapon
President Donald Trump has referred to Iran’s “quest for nuclear weapons” and claimed the Islamic Republic will soon be “on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued, “Even after the deal, Iran continued to preserve and expand its nuclear weapons program for future use.”
The truth is that while it is accurate to speak of an Iranian nuclear program, which is legal under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is an utter lie to speak of an Iranian nuclear weapons program — as countless news organizations have also done.
As long ago as 2007, the U.S. intelligence community produced a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran which offered what then-President George W. Bush would later describe in his memoir as a “stunning” and “eye-popping” conclusion that “tied my hands on the military side”: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”
Nothing has changed since then. In January, then-Director of National Intelligence, Trump appointee, and former Republican congressman Dan Coats reaffirmed the consensus view of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies when he told the Senate: “We continue to assess that Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device.”
Nuclear weapons program? What nuclear weapons program?
Lie #2: Iran Violated the Nuclear Deal
The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that Iran was not sticking to the terms of the agreement — prior to the administration itself violating the agreement by unilaterally pulling out and reimposing economic sanctions on Iran.
The president claimed Iran “committed multiple violations.” Hawkish Republican Sen. Tom Cotton accused Tehran of having “repeatedly violated the terms of the deal.” So did Mark Dubowitz, head of the neoconservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, who said, “Iran is incrementally violating the deal.”
In fact, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, published more than a dozen reports confirming that Iran was fully complying with the terms of the deal. In April 2018, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis described the nuclear agreement as “pretty robust.” Even the then-head of the Israeli military, Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, said in March 2018 that the deal “with all its faults” was “working.”
Last month, Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, announced that the country’s stockpiles of enriched low-grade uranium would exceed the 300-kilogram limit laid out in the nuclear agreement — provoking a flurry of condemnations from Western governments and op-ed columnists. But let’s be clear about the order of events: The Iranian violation of one particular aspect of the deal came more than a year after the United States violated the entire deal.
Lie #3: Iran Is the Leading State Sponsor of Terror
“Iran remained the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” declared the State Department in September 2018. The Islamic Republic has been “the world’s central banker of international terrorism since 1979,” claimed national security adviser John Bolton a few weeks later. In June, Trump called Iran the “number one terrorist nation” in the world.
This makes no sense. Few would dispute the fact that Tehran has provided support, funds, and weaponry to Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which have been designated “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” by the U.S. government (though it is also worth noting that millions of Palestinians and Lebanese see them as resistance groups that are fighting against Israeli occupiers).
Yet the “war on terror” declared by Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks has been fought against Sunni jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Shabab — none of which are backed by Shia-majority Iran.
According to the Global Terrorism Index 2018, compiled by the Institute for Economics & Peace, more than half of the deaths caused by terrorists around the world in 2017 were a result of attacks by four groups: ISIS, the Taliban, the Shabab, and Boko Haram. Again, the experts agree that none of these groups are sponsored by Iran.
In fact, it is Iran’s biggest regional rival, Saudi Arabia, which has been accused of arming, funding, and providing Salafi ideological cover for many of these jihadists — including by this president.
“Who blew up the World Trade Center?” Trump asked on Fox News during the 2016 election campaign. “It wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi — take a look at Saudi Arabia, open the documents.”
If any nation deserves the dubious distinction of being “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” it is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, not the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Lie #4: Iran Working with Al Qaeda
By conjuring up a fictitious alliance between Iran and Al Qaeda, the Trump administration has found a novel way of both justifying the “number one terrorist nation” tag and providing legal cover for a future U.S. attack on Tehran.
The president has claimed that Tehran “provides assistance to Al Qaeda.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, during his tenure as CIA chief, suggested it is an “open secret” that “there have been relationships” and “there have been times the Iranians have worked alongside Al Qaeda.”
The Bush administration’s attempt to link secular Saddam Hussein with the theocratic fanatics of Al Qaeda sounded preposterous to many of us back in 2002 and 2003. It was a dumb lie. Yet the Trump administration, and its hawkish outriders at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, now want us to believe that the sectarian Sunni killers of Al Qaeda have formed an alliance with Iran, a hard-line Shia theocracy.
“I’ve never seen any evidence of active collaboration,” Jason Burke, author of “Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror,” told me in 2017. The relationship between Al Qaeda and Iran is “not one of alliance” but “highly antagonistic,” concluded a report by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point in 2012.
The Iran-Al Qaeda conspiracy theory is an especially dangerous one. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress in the wake of 9/11, allows the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.” As Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine told the New York Times in June, Trump administration officials “are looking to bootstrap an argument to allow the president to do what he likes without coming to Congress, and they feel the 2001 authorization will allow them to go to war with Iran.”
Lie #5: War on Iran Would Be Easy
This is perhaps the dumbest lie of all. Trump has threatened “the official end of Iran.” His pal in the Senate, Tom Cotton, has predicted that the United States could win a war with Tehran with just two strikes: “The first strike and the last strike.”
To call such statements absurd would be an understatement. Iran isn’t Iraq. As Col. Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell, told me on a recent episode of my podcast, Deconstructed, a conflict with the Islamic Republic “would be horrible”:
Four times almost the size of Iraq, 80 million, not 26 million people, homogeneity to the population that Iraq certainly didn’t have, 51 percent Persian. Terrain … that’s just inhospitable, almost killed Alexander the Great, for example. This would be a vicious, long-term guerrilla campaign waged by the Iranians over 10 or 15 years. And at the end of it, it would look about like Iraq did in 2011. And it would cost $2 trillion and lots of lives and more than anything else, it would require at least a half a million troops.
In other words, it would be a disaster of epic proportions. Let’s be clear: Many of the accusations leveled by Western governments and Western media organizations against Iran — it is a serial violator of human rights; it is complicit in Bashar Assad’s murderous attacks on his own people; it backs Hamas and Hezbollah, it is a promoter of anti-Semitism — are undeniably true. But the five lies that are constantly deployed by politicians and pundits to justify military action against Iran, and even regime change in Tehran, are flat-out false. And if they are not called out, we will soon find ourselves embroiled in another bloody Middle East conflict that will make the war in Iraq look like a walk in the park.
https://theintercept.com/2019/08/14/trump-iran-worst-lies/
Lizzie,
The “debate” is one where a little knowledge is used without a knowledge of what it really means.
One poster especially loves to grab hold of the worst case scenario from some modelling or report and present it as if it will be the reality, with little understanding.
The idea that not burning fossil fuels is THE solution, where it is really just a very important step towards an ultimate solution, is a common thread that seems to lead to such zealotry.
lizzie
I think there is some truth to the idea that some people substitute other beliefs (including barracking for a team, a political party or a particular issue) for religion, and then argue for them with the same one eyed dogmatic view that (some) religious people do.
For starters, I would regard – using scriptural evidence! – anyone who blindly accepts the precepts of Christianity as a poor Christian. Doubt and testing are part of the Christian experience, dating back to earliest times.
Whether it’s happy clapping, Catholicism, Amishness or whatever, simply accepting what you’re being told and regurgitating it may make you a good whatever but it doesn’t mean (necessarily) you’re a good Christian.
In the big world outside of pollbludger – and indeed, within the blessed confines of this blog – I encounter people all the time who have taken a particular stance on an issue out of blind faith, rather than as a result of real understanding.
That’s not necessarily a Bad Thing. It would appear to be a shortcut we humans take all the time when trying to make sense of a very complicated world – ‘all my friendship group thinks X is right, I trust my friends, X must be right. Oh, look! Here is an article that says X is right. More proof! Here is an article that says X is wrong. To accept it, I would have to go against my friendship group, therefore it must not only be wrong but it comes from an enemy.”
So if you try and explain to them that their viewpoint isn’t necessarily totally wrong but, perhaps, lacks nuance, or is built on a misunderstanding, or that they have to take an inconvenient truth or two into the equation, you are not seen as a reasonable person trying to help clarify an issue but as An Enemy Who Is Out To Destroy Everything They Hold Dear.
We like to believe that educated, rational people will form opinions in educated, rational ways. We dismiss those who don’t agree with us, therefore, as either uneducated or irrational. The inconvenient truth is that we are mostly trying to talk to people who have formed opinions before they’ve actually looked at the arguments, and have spent their time since finding reasons to justify their initial decision.
Firefox says:
Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 7:54 am
A simple link would suffice and at the same time protect William from any potential copyright issues.
From the SmearStralian, so take with a dose of Epsom salts…
‘The Victorian Liberal Party has polled the seat held by former state leader Matthew Guy, stoking speculation of a by-election when he quits politics.
The party polled the seat of Bulleen several weeks ago at the request of Mr Guy, who suggested other seats that will be affected by a major new road in the area also be surveyed.
The party has so far surveyed only Bulleen and the poll was detected by Labor, which is fuelling speculation Mr Guy, 45, will soon quit.
He led the Liberal Party to last year’s election loss, which was exacerbated by relentless federal leadership instability under Malcolm Turnbull.
Mr Guy holds Bulleen by about 6 per cent and the poll is believed to have shown the Liberal brand holding up.
It is believed Mr Guy, who has no immediate plans of quitting, wants other seats in the area to be surveyed to enable the party to build a narrative around the impact of the North East Link, a 26km road project in northeast Melbourne with a 5km tunnel and costing an estimated $16.5 billion.
The photos will no doubt be a sight to behold.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-and-johnson-look-to-use-g-7-summit-to-fortify-their-relationship-amid-skepticism-of-both-leaders/2019/08/24/aa5d952e-c5e7-11e9-850e-c0eef81a5224_story.html
zoomster
I’m sure you are a fine teacher. 🙂
I find that I have changed my views on a number of things through reading PB and at my age I think this is a Good Thing.
Grog explores the rabbit hole.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2019/aug/25/with-trump-there-is-no-bottom-and-it-looks-like-australia-will-follow-him-all-the-way-down#comment-132315777
sprocket_
New road construction is always ‘bad’ unless the Libs thought of it first.
And the best discussion groups are those where you are not attacked simply because of what you identify yourself as. 🙂
lizzie
With you there. I usually find that the more dogmatic I am about something the more wrong I turn out to be! I thus try and stay open to the idea that I could be wrong, and try very hard to admit it when I am.
The destruction of children’s lives:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/25/australia-is-a-bigger-cage-the-ongoing-trauma-of-naurus-child-refugees
Hard to accuse Grog of holding back his opinion of conservative politics. 🙂
From the above link.
Why the Broken Hill pipeline is a disaster. Video.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1162256705935122433
Sacred trees
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/appeal-to-save-djab-wurrung-trees-due-to-overlooked-evidence-20190824-p52kcu.html
Barney:
Thanks for posting Grog’s latest.
😆
https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahryan/australia-manus-island-permanent-ban
What is Labor’s position re the proposed legislation?
Greensborough Growler @ #1288 Saturday, August 24th, 2019 – 10:52 pm
One day, you will be praying for an iceberg 🙁
lizzie @ #1303 Sunday, August 25th, 2019 – 7:27 am
If there was even a fraction as much evidence for religion as there is for climate change, we would all be in church this morning 🙁
Firefox
Thanks for the link.
I wouldn’t bother trying to defend Iran’s record as a state sponsor of terror.
Whether Iran is ‘better’ in this respect that other state sponsors of terror is another matter.
Iran may not have a ‘program’ to develop nuclear weapons but it IS building bits and pieces of related capabilities. This includes expansion of the materials and equipment base to enrich uranium.
In particular it is very active in developing the missile technology required to deliver nuclear warheads to you-kn0w-where.
And if not nuclear warheads per se, then warheads containing dirty bombs which would effectively render targetted areas uninhabitable.
Which state/s invited Mr Morrison to the G7?
Has Mr Morrison been invited to the G7 so that he can act as a sort of proxy, spoiler for Trump?
I look forward to some reflection on 30 years of a failed political experiment.
Where did the Greens go wrong on the wealth gap, the Anthropocene Extinction Event, rising CO2 emissions and so on and so forth.
Was it that the Greens failed to develop rational explanations of cause and effect?
Was it that the Greens were ineffective in targetting voters?
Was it that voters simply do not share Greens values?
Was it that the Greens formulations of problems were inaccessible to normal human beings?
Was it that the Greens only have unpalatable ‘solutions’ to sell?
Was it that the Greens combined common sense and rationality in some areas with off-the-planet shit about earthians?
Was it that the Greens are self-evidently wealthy enough to have contempt for battlers and aspirational voters?
Was it that the Greens focussed on culture war battles that are of little or no interest to 90% of Australians?
Was it that the Greens wear their intellectual and moral superiority on their sleeves?
The answers to these questions matter because the Greens are locking up the environment vote where the sun don’t shine.
Morning all. I agree with Firefox on Iran but yes, no need to paste slabs of text. If people won’t read the link they won’t read the slab.
Also saying Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism (bad) does not negate the fact that the reasons claimed for any war are “Trumped up” and it is not justified. If it was only about terrorism, Donald should invade Saudi Arabia.
If Australia were truly ‘interested in de-escalating tensions in the Middle East’, as Marise Payne claims, then they would confront Trump.
It’s not going to happen and instead they will, with Trump, be working to increase tensions in the Middle East. Again.
Of all the reasons to talk about the catholic church in Australia after this week, Aunty gives us – a history of catholic missions? Why is this news now? The church PR and distraction dept goes into overdrive.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-25/australias-first-catholic-bishop-polding-legacy-reverberates/11432598
Fran Kelly conducted a good interview of Payne, IMO.
Socrates says:
Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 9:18 am
If missions are a positive legacy, then that doesn’t say much for the rest of the Church!
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/queensland-labor-declares-its-support-for-the-resources-industry-as-it-battles-to-hold-on-to-votes-in-the-regions/news-story/2db44985dc2f2536d843d6edc95ee260
Labor fiddles while the planet burns…
C@tmomma says:
Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 9:16 am
Yep, parking warships on the edge of territorial waters is a natural way of saying I don’t want a fight¿
Boerwar
An increasing number of voters have indeed reflected on the failure of successive governments of both major stripes by not giving their first preference to either party of the political duopoly.
The trend is in and will continue.
The impact of the various mission settlements in Australia is a mixed bag. That they have had disastrous consequences in some respects is unarguable.
OTOH, they were critical in many regions in providing physical protection refuges from the disease epidemics, endemic murders, rapes and massacres that marked other aspects of England’s civilizing effort in Australia.
One thing not widely reported in the Australian MSM – in fact not at all reported – is that there is now a powerful US lobby with a direct financial interest in throttling the flow of fossil fuels through the Strait of Hormuz.
As a direct result of fracking, the US is once again a net exporter of oil and gas.
C@tmomma @ #1327 Sunday, August 25th, 2019 – 9:16 am
This logic from the FM is truly mind-numbing.
Labor of course in full support of this action, btw.
‘Pegasus says:
Sunday, August 25, 2019 at 9:28 am
Boerwar
I look forward to some reflection on 30 years of a failed political experiment.
An increasing number of voters have indeed reflected on the failure of successive governments of both major stripes by not giving their first preference to either party of the political duopoly.
The trend is in and will continue.’
If appeal to ‘the trend’ is your sole effort at answering my entirely reasonable questions then I must accept that you do not seriously intend to reflect on 30 years of gross electoral failure.
BTW, your ‘trend’ has flatlined with the usual statistical noise on both sides of the flat line.
Labor of course in full support of this action, btw.
Coming down on the side of upholding Freedom of Navigation and the safe supply of oil.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-company-could-save-millions-if-interest-rates-fall-as-he-demands/2019/08/24/5e5df684-c5a9-11e9-b5e4-54aa56d5b7ce_story.html
Rex
I rarely agree entirely with one of your posts but your comment on the FM is, IMO, spot on.
There is only ONE saving grace with Australia’s deployment of troops, a ship and aircraft to the Middle East.
It has been noisily proclaimed as time limited.
Policy makers have finally come to understand that all entry strategies should automatically combine an exit strategy.
Confessions
He is, after all, the United States.
Boerwar @ #1337 Sunday, August 25th, 2019 – 9:35 am
Yes, we should celebrate the wonderful contribution the duopoly has given us with rising social inequality, climate warming and ecological extinction. Long may it continue.
The problem with the freedom of navigation and the freedom of oil exports lines are that the United States has unilaterally walked away from an Agreement that it had only a few years earlier helped broker, and then slapped sanctions on Iran that disrupt both principles totally for that country.
Queensland Labor … now, who can spot the contradiction … ?
It is worth noting that Labor refers to its hardline partisans as “true believers”. Because they certainly couldn’t call them “truth believers” 🙁
Rex
I see that you have no interest in reflecting on 30 years of Greens’ massive electoral failures.
This does not suprise!
Stuch, does arrogance when asked how to fix Australia’s arrogance in the Pacific.
What a surprise.
“True believers” – has the ring of a religious cult about it.
Player One @ #1344 Sunday, August 25th, 2019 – 9:41 am
It illustrates so clearly the destructive self-wedge Labor continues with as the vested union powers tear Labor apart.