It was noted here last week that the Liberals had opened nominations in eight of the nine federal seats they hold in New South Wales, making an exception for Scott Morrison’s seat of Cook so as not to put him in an awkward spot as the party gently persuades him to bring forward his retirement. The Guardian reports that challengers to incumbents have come forward in four of these seats, three of which have been gestating since before the last election. They were largely thwarted on that occasion by the designs of one of their targets, Mitchell MP Alex Hawke, who was able to clog up the process long enough to compel the party hierarchy to resolve the matter in favour of the incumbents just weeks before the onset of the campaign.
Hawke is a close ally of Scott Morrison and a leading figure in the centre right faction, which had been left marginalised by deals between moderates and conservatives, and was weakened still further by the election defeat. Relatedly, Hawke faces a conservative-driven motion before the party’s state council to expel him over his tactics before the election. A recurring theme of the current round of challenges is that conservatives who were thwarted last time are now hopeful that Hawke and his faction will be too weak to fend them off. The aspirant in Hawke’s own seat of Mitchell in Sydney’s north-west, then and now, is Michael Abrahams, a lieutenant-colonel in the Army Reserve.
Also under pressure are two senior front-benchers, including no less a figure than the deputy party leader, Sussan Ley. Ley had variously been associated with the moderate and centre right factions, and appeared to be under pressure in her rural seat of Farrer before the last election following a conservative recruitment drive in local party branches. On that occasion her prospective challenger was Christian Ellis, a public relations specialist noted locally as a campaigner for water rights, who like Abrahams was thwarted by the national executive intervention. This time she will reportedly be opposed by Jean Haynes, a Deniliquin school teacher who appeared to have a seat in the state upper house lined up in December after the party hierarchy intervened to dump three male incumbents and replace them with women. However, a revision to the plan saw her make way for Rachel Merton, in part due to moderate objections over her role in Ellis’s challenge to Ley.
The other senior figure who faces a rival nominee is Paul Fletcher, former Communications Minister and member for the northern Sydney seat of Bradfield, where he was run uncomfortably close at the election by unheralded teal independent Nicolette Boele. However, the challenge from Paul Nettelbeck, described by The Guardian as a “communications expert who previously worked for the Menzies Research Institute”, is understood to be “primarily a defensive manoeuvre to prevent Fletcher retiring and passing his seat uncontested to a NSW moderate”. In the wake of the Aston by-election defeat in April, Niki Savva of the Age/Herald related that both Ley and Fletcher, together with Dan Tehan and Angus Taylor, had been “openly displaying their wares” in anticipation of a possible move against Peter Dutton’s leadership.
Also facing a challenge is the centre right-aligned Melissa McIntosh, whose success in increasing her margin in the difficult seat of Lindsay last year has seemingly failed to mollify local conservatives. McIntosh is again opposed by Mark Davies, Penrith councillor and husband of state Mulgoa MP Tanya Davies, who called off his challenge before the last election under the terms of a factional deal.
Other news:
• The Age/Herald has published results on the Indigenous Voice from this week’s Resolve Strategic poll, which found no leading 52-48 on a forced response question, compared with 51-49 a month ago. When an uncommitted option was included, 36% opted for yes (down six) and 42% no (up two). State breakdowns had no leading 51-49 in New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia and 58-42 in Queensland, with yes leading 52-48 in Victoria and 54-46 in Tasmania (with caution due for small samples sizes particularly in the smaller states). The poll was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1610.
• Roy Morgan conducted one of its “snap SMS” polls this week in the wake of the Victorian government’s cancellation of the Commonwealth Games, which credited the state Labor government with a 53-47 lead on two-party preferred, compared with an implausible 61.5-38.5 at the last such poll in May. The primary votes were Labor 33% (down nine), Coalition 35.5% (up seven) and Greens 12.5% (steady). Forced response questions found Daniel Andrews with 45% approval and 55% disapproval, but leading John Pesutto as preferred premier by 52.5-47.5; and a 58-42 majority in favour of cancelling the games, leaving unanswered the question of whether it was a good idea to take them on in the first place. The poll was conducted Wednesday and Thursday from a sample of 1046.
• As for the weekly federal voting intention numbers from Roy Morgan, which I don’t focus on much due to the haphazard manner in which they are published, Labor holds an unusually narrow two-party lead of 53-47, in from 54.5-45.5 last time. However, the primary votes suggest the movement is largely down to preference flows, with Labor on 35.5%, the Coalition on 35% and the Greens on 12.5%, suggesting a 54-46 lead to Labor based on previous election preferences.
• Niki Savva’s column this week in the Age/Herald related that data collated from 2500 households during door-knocking of the Kooyong electorate by teal independent MP Monique Ryan and her supporters found 58.5% in favour of the Indigenous Voice, 45.1% strongly; 30.6% neutral or unsure; and only 11.3% opposed. Recent poll results hawked by Liberal Senator James Patterson showing no with its nose in front in Kooyong were credulously reported by Sky News.
• Simon Benson of The Australian reports JWS Research polling conducted for the Minerals Council of Australia initially found 46% in favour of the government’s “same job, same pay” industrial relations reforms, with 19% opposed — but many were said to have had misapprehensions that the reforms related to the gender pay gap. After being shown business lobby advertising attacking the reforms, the results were 26% supportive and 47% opposed. When further shown union advertising supporting the reforms, the result came out at 31% for and 34% against.
• As related in the previous post, draft new state boundaries for Western Australia proposing abolishing a Nationals-held regional seat, one of only six out of 59 not held by Labor, and the creation of a safe Labor seat in southern Perth. This has naturally infuriated the Nationals and supportive interests, coming as it does on the heels of upper house reforms that abolish a scheme that divides seats evenly between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas, despite the former accounting for three-quarters of the state’s population. In other redistribution news, I am indebted to Ben Raue at the Tally Room for paying attention to the redistribution for the Northern Territory parliament, which has been passing beneath my radar. An initial set of draft boundaries that was published in May has been scrapped altogether due to a surge of enrolment in remote communities ahead of the Indigenous Voice referendum, driven by a push in the Australian Electoral Commission’s direct enrolment campaign.
Dr John
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/inside-prince-andrews-578000amonth-life/news-story/1120b51e4e6e95897c392b4d2f57a440
Only $578,000 a month in 2022.
Stan Grant won’t return to Q+A, having quit as presenter, and will now focus on “new projects” within the ABC, while fill-in host Patricia Karvelas will continue in the role until the end of the year before a permanent replacement is appointed.
Grant, 59, a Wiradjuri man from the Griffith region in NSW and a triple Walkley Award winner, stepped away from the role in May, citing exhaustion due to a barrage of racist abuse on social media, which escalated after the ABC’s coverage of King Charles’ coronation.
“Racism is a crime. Racism is violence. And I have had enough,” Grant wrote in an ABC opinion piece explaining his departure in May.
There’s a contract. Why do you think they would be over there if there wasn’t? And while it was the right decision to abandon the games, Victoria did spend a year humming and hahing which leaves the Commonwealth Games Federation 3 years to find an alternative host, which isn’t much – Birmingham at least had 5 years notice.
Dan’s mistake wasn’t cancelling the games, it was agreeing to host the games in the first place (especially without apparently having a firm hold on costs).
In any event, the Games have probably done their dash. Very few people are going to greatly interested in events that frequently only have a handful of world-class competitors (if that), and that are logistically complex. I expect the 2026 ones to be cancelled, and possibly a 2030 Centenary ‘celebration’ before they are canned.
Simon:
I agree.
Agree with this as well. I’m honestly a little astonished that they lasted this long.
Chris Nolan in discussion with prof. Brian Cox on Oppenheimer:
https://youtu.be/AZaF_JFxBpE
How will he ever survive?
Suddenly, There is drop in polling numbers at Federal/State level for ALP across the country.
A-E
Sandakan nostaligia gets your blood flowing? Tens of thousands of women raped daily? 250,000 dead in Okinawa alone? There is some really nice nostalgia stuff to get your blood flowing there A_E: women, carrying their babies, jumping off cliffs to their deaths.
10-20,000 civilians a week, men, women and children, for eight long years? Difficult to even focus on those sorts of numbers. Nanjing was, really, from a nostalgia point of view a mere blip in that vast sea of human misery. Where to hang the nostalgia?
Have you ever read the full story of the Japanese invasion of Burma and on into India, A-E? No-one bothered much then and no-one bothers at all now. All the civilian refugee war porn nostalgia you can poke a stick at. Take two steps from the track and die in the jungle. A bit hard to whip up a bit of nostalgia on that one because it was largely undocumented. Who is counting the countless deaths in the jungle? A big loss for the nostalgia mongers.
There was a beautiful nostalgia event in Java which you would, no doubt, appreciate. Over two million starved to death while the IJA was busy stockpiling food. The irony is that only a very short time before that many of those starving were cheering the arrival of the IJA. You would appreciate the symmetry. The hundreds of thousands of slaves who died, yes, well, like all slaves difficult to give them shape to attach a bit of shape to them. After all most of them are nameless, died in nameless places. There is only so much nostalgia you can feed off nameless nobodies shitting themselves to death and dying in the shit and blood of amoebic dysentery while lying in the mud and in the rain.
Of course you could go and study WW2 off the Japanese officially sanctioned curriculum and escape all of the above totally. Simply erased from the nostalgia fields.
Then again, perhaps if you are on a real nostalgia trip, A_E you could pop into Yasukuni and rub the C5431. All nicely done up in the best nostalgic fashion. This was the loco to pull the first train end to end on the Burma railroad… a body per sleeper is about the nostalgic maths of that one. Gets the old nostalgia blood flowing, that one. Lots of Japanese pollies think so because they go to worship there.
An anti-corruption investigation that examined Premier Daniel Andrews in secret, probed links between a developer and Labor ministers and has been blamed for the suicide of a former mayor will be released within days.
Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission has been given the greenlight to table the Operation Sandon report after the Victorian Court of Appeal rejected a last-ditch legal bid to block its release.
The 300-page report, expected to be released on Thursday, is the result of a five-year probe into allegedly corrupt land deals between millionaire property developer John Woodman and Casey councillors.
As revealed by The Australian in May 2022, Operation Sandon grilled Mr Andrews in private over his dealings with Mr Woodman, a big donor to the Victorian ALP and to the Liberal Party.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fnation%2Fpolitics%2Fibac-free-to-tell-of-daniel-andrews-and-developer-john-woodman%2Fnews-story%2F11c5dac280ec1abc7a7038913d337e14&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=dynamic-low-test-score&V21spcbehaviour=append
”
Ashasays:
Monday, July 24, 2023 at 6:07 pm
BW:
I would assume the main reason there’s little discussion on our internment policy is because our current policy pretty much amounts to “Fuck no.”
Same reason we don’t see a great deal of debate on bringing back the White Australia policy or restricting the voting franchise to white male property owners.
Times have changed.
”
There is saying,.
The more things change, the more they remain same.
William:
I believe that was a reference to unsubstantiated allegations made by (I think) FriendlyJordies prior to the 2022 election, which were that the present member for Sturt would sneak male prostitutes into the Parliament House prayer room so that the now-former member for Goldstein could make use of their services.
Old Spoke at 9.28 am and B.S. Fairman at 5.33 pm
Have some patience B.S.F., do some simple research and have a guess at the date. You got Aston right.
Background info is the parliamentary schedule:
https://www.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/resource/download/parliamentary-sittings-2023.pdf
It is obvious from that why 14 Oct is appealing, since it follows 4 weeks without parliament sitting.
The most likely alternatives are 4 or 25 November, which follow a break of only one week. There is little benefit for Yes from a delay of 3 weeks, but a delay of 6 weeks (25 Nov) might be significant.
Other factors include how long it is taking for the pro-Voice Liberals (outside of Tassie, where they are dominant) to become prominent, especially in NSW. They are probably chronically lame in SA.
Professor Greg Craven (one of Michael Kirby’s public speaking partners on a Bill of Rights, Craven being a negative) has taken a long while (and even a guernsey in Rowe) to come out clearly for Yes.
Craven is the sort of chronic conservative lawyer type for whom the Voice proposal was drafted, by Pearson et. al. If he has finally come out of the woodwork, then perhaps others will with more time.
As for Callinan, he is a right wing operator from wayback. He was very reluctant to recuse himself from the Kartinyeri (Hindmarsh Island) case, although he had worked for the colonists in that case. Callinan is reputed to be a novelist, however mediocre, so he is a right wing lawyer with a stretched imagination as an occupational hazard, just the sort of cover the No case wants for their pack of lies.
There is no evidence that not naming the date has hitherto concerned the electors. Probably most of them are still barely aware of the issues. E.g. until a few weeks ago the coordinator of our farmers’ market did not know there was a referendum on later this year, and he is quite politically literate; he is just too busy growing stuff and dealing with other issues to bother with the mainstream news, which in Australia is more primitive than where he is originally from (Wales).
When will the date be named? Expect this at the Garma Festival at the end of the first week of August.
What will it be? While 14 Oct is still the front runner, don’t be surprised if 25 Nov finishes strongly.
Apart from the fact that the Yes campaign could certainly use more time, especially if they have more funds for advertising than No, there is another uncertain factor. This is Senator Pat Dodson’s health. If possible, any date that would give him a chance to campaign in person would be very appealing.
As for the genuine doubts of electors, what are they? In other words, what is the direct evidence of such doubts in specific terms, apart from the polling trend in the past 2 months (since mid-May)?
Has there been any credible public poll identifying directly in a reliable way what those doubts really are, as distinct from the din of lies from Dutton et. al. ? If so, please provide a link.
If the Yes campaign is well resourced, they should have conducted several such polls privately.
Is this called …” doing a runner”….
A key witness in a parliamentary inquiry into consulting firm Synergy 360 has “severed all ties” with Australia and will not provide evidence at a hearing on Friday.
Synergy 360 has been accused of setting up a channel to secretly pay Robert in return for Robert’s help in winning government contracts, but there is no evidence that Robert has received any payment.
Will Roberts & Morrison follow suit ?
Dr John /Steve Davis
“ Dr John
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/inside-prince-andrews-578000amonth-life/news-story/1120b51e4e6e95897c392b4d2f57a440
Only $578,000 a month in 2022.”
Why not get Prince Andrew to be our next GG?
– he could use the money
– he will appreciate the free, secure accomodation of princely standard
– expectations of a scandal free GG are low now anyway
– he can cement the popularity of the monarchy in Australia
It looks like a win-win deal!
There was a time going back some 10 years when I was a landlord
I managed the properties myself (so not using a Real Estate firm)
I would issue a Tax Invoice each month, that Tax Invoice also including the date of the annual rent review (they could have been at 6 month intervals but I chose 12 months)
The Notices of Rent Increase were very specific documents when issued
They also included that there was recourse to a statutory body to complain about the rental increase, the contact details appended in case of a need to lodge a complaint
This was in Melbourne
One of my old laptops will still have the Tax Invoices and the rent increase document on it
No one ever complained about the increases which were all at the rate of inflation or just above
One of the properties was not maintained externally so I engaged a gardener to maintain the surrounds each 2 months – reimbursing by increasing the rent above the rate of inflation (but not advising the tenant noting I was acting to have them vacate – the rent increase to drive them out which worked, thankfully. The inside of the place was reasonable)
From my knowledge and unless things have changed (which I would suggest they have not because tenant protections have been enhanced over recent times) tenants have recourse
They are not simply in the hands of the landlord
In fact, in could be put that they now have more rights than landlords
Soc: “Why not get Prince Andrew to be our next GG?”
What’s his singing voice like?
For whoever is keeping a list, you can add me to the list of female posters.
It is 13:00 here, with a bit of drizzle. The herbs on my balcony are loving the long hot sunny days, interspersed with rain. Usually here in the South-west, we do not get rain in summer (when the Mediterranean climate exerts its usual influence.
But, as now there are exceptions. The jet stream had blocked the warm air around 100 km south of us, so we now have an Atlantic influence, which makes us more like La Rochelle and the northern Atlantic coast.
That being said, we have tops of 28 – 33 most days, but cool nights.
it is ferocious on in the south (here that means the Mediterranean coast east of Montpellier. Southern Italy and Greece are in a desperate state.
The take I draw from this, with full knowledge of the science, is that we really need to stop the fighting and proceed with acting as quickly as we can with action on climate change. The climate wars have prevented action on climate change, rather than waking people up to the dangers.
Extinction Rebellion UK has now decided to stop the stunts, because polling told them that they were turning people off action for climate change, rather than building support.
And, I have said this here before – should have kept my old post, because it requires a few paragraphs of explanation: Around 2/3rds of current climate change was “baked in” decades ago. There is an immediate effect that stopping all fossil fuels today would have relatively quickly, but we would still be looking at a warming climate for decades, and that needs to be planned for.
So, by all means, argue that no new gas should come on line in Australia – I am fully supportive of this – but do it in a way that does no lead to opposing three word bumper statements from the “stop burning fossil fuels today” compared to “A great new tax on everything”. Neither of these simplistic positions is helping.
And this is where we need genuine world action and cooperation between all countries. The refugee problem is at least in part caused by climate change, and this will accelerate. So, we need to be bears with big brains. We need to help the world see the positive side of helping refugees.
And by all means, argue, with facts, about when the world can feasibly get to net zero, and what Australia can do to help.
But stop with taking one tweet or one fact from an article, or an article poorly written from a science perspective, and saying: “See we need to stop burning follis fuels today.” It is adding to the problem.
Boerwar at 8.48 pm re Japanese censorship of historical crimes
Well put. This (e.g. Yasukuni) is also why the QUAD is a lot of hot air. If it cannot get the Japanese to start some truth-telling domestically, then it cannot do anything significant internationally. Given that history, lining up with an unrepentant Japan against China will not be appealing in South East Asia.
There has been one Japanese PM, Murayama Tomiichi, who lasted a bit over a year and a half in the mid-1990s, who was serious about Japanese repentance, much more than any of the 13 PMs since.
Repentance, incidentally, is the name of a remarkable Soviet film about Stalin’s crimes, made in the early 1980s by the Georgian filmmaker Tenghiz Abuladze, and shown in the USSR in 1987 as a result of Gorbachev’s glasnost policy. I saw it in Baku in March 1987. It is a long film (140 mins) but worth it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdiZCRH9Vj4 (with English subtitles)
Whether we like it or not Chinese won both men’s and Women’s 100 breast stroke finals today.
USA yet to win a single Gold in this world Swimming championship.
Soc: “Why not get Prince Andrew to be our next GG?”
No sweat!
Also, talking about science-free zones – why has no journalist (that I can see) twigged to the fact that THERE IS NO BLOOD TEST, OR GENETIC TEST, THAT CAN DETERMINE ABORIGINALITY (in the Australian context).
The Guardian article is the one I have read today: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/24/gary-johns-faces-calls-to-resign-from-no-voice-campaign-over-offensive-comments
It correctly calls Gary Johns out as very nasty and divisive character – of the P.P. McGinness, Mark Lathan ilk. But his assertion about blood tests really does need to be debunked. Hopefully someone will write something for the conversation.
I can write for the conversation – but only in my own areas. And there is that little bit of az thing called time – despite my knowledge of physics and mathematics, I just can’t seem to expand the amount available each day. Sigh.
“And this is where we need genuine world action and cooperation between all countries. The refugee problem is at least in part caused by climate change, and this will accelerate. So, we need to be bears with big brains. We need to help the world see the positive side of helping refugees.”
We aren’t going to get that though, Europe and the United States and others (like us) have got rich plundering what is now referred to as the global south, we have done it very deliberately and very cruelly for centuries now, and we are the problem and we are the ones stopping global action, because we don’t want to pay for it.
It is why it is so enraging when absolutely idiotic and immoral human garbage carry on about China and India.
When you are finished harrumphing Boerwar, do yourself a favour and listen to Dan Carlin’s 25 hour long podcast in six parts “Supernova in the East” – a history of Japan from the Meiji Restoration to 1945. It’s a pretty comprehensive treatment; even if it is produced by a non historian, but a broadcaster who is a fan of history.
BTW Boer: did you even watch either clip I linked before you went off like a cracker at 8:48pm?
I reckon both throw some light on the vexed question of whether America should have dropped the bomb after the Trinity tests. I think Oppenheimer’s thoughtful rumination on the subject in 1965 (the second clip) to be compelling to watch. At the very least.
I’m not sure how either incited your 8.48 spray; not even with my introductory remarks.
Nor does your spray really go to the heart of the conundrum either; which really reads as a really poor “two wrongs make a right” exercise. … and I say that as one who in balance think that ‘knowing what they knew then, or believed, and making allowances for the available inferences they reached’ the Americans were within their rights to drop the bomb on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Andrew_Earlwood says:
Monday, July 24, 2023 at 9:38 pm
the Americans were within their rights to drop the bomb on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
_____
How could it not be considered a war crime or a crime against humanity?
Did someone say the QUAD. Dont make me laugh. That and AUKUS. Oh my. What is our moribund establishment doing.
Enough Already at 11.08 am
You claim: “It follows from this that we can all set aside the prospect of nuclear escalation from Moscow as a phantom with no substance, and that NATO can frame its own involvement in assisting Ukraine’s entirely justifiable resistance to Moscow’s invasion and occupation as if that particular threat does not exist on either side.”
With respect, you may have confused your desires with reality. It is much more complicated, because the prospect of nuclear escalation is inherent as a risk to be avoided by all parties in Putin’s war, apart from the different but horrifying prospect of a Russian attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.
See what Biden was advised to do by Gen Milley if Putin invaded Ukraine. This advice provides the clear framework of US policy. The quote is at pp 143-4 of Plokhy’s book, The Russo-Ukrainian War:
“No. 1: ‘Don’t have a kinetic conflict between the US military and NATO with Russia’. No. 2: ‘Contain war inside the geographical boundaries of Ukraine.’ No. 3: ‘Strengthen and maintain NATO unity.’ No. 4: ‘Empower Ukraine and give them the means to fight’.”
The advice was so important that it was “entrusted to the note cards”, presumably for Biden to read.
Note the order: giving Ukraine the weapons it needs for defence is no. 4, so if there is any uncertainty about a specific action or policy, i.e. whether giving Ukraine certain weapons would be in tension with the previous objectives, those higher objectives would take precedence.
However frustrating it has been for Ukraine, US policy has been remarkably consistent with this advice given to Biden on the eve of the war.
As for nuclear deterrence, it is a very complicated and disputed set of ideas. But the main one is simple. For nuclear deterrence to work, it must work always, every time, without fail, despite what Robert McNamara called “the fog of war”. Yet regular deterrence fails more than once. To assume that nuclear deterrence will work automatically is a fallacy.
Lawrence Freedman was a high priest of the nuclear deterrence dogma during the Cold War. He tends to minimise the risks and perhaps understate the uncertainties, but his essay on the complexities of deterrence in Putin’s war is worth reading:
https://samf.substack.com/p/salami-slicing-boiled-frogs-and-russian?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Douglas and Milko, whats this about you saying I said something about Labor supporters being fascists or what not. You got the wrong poster.
A good step forward today with confirmation of the resignation of Kathryn Campbell with effect from Friday. I know it probably means little to the victims for what they went through but I hope they see it as a start of the clean out of those who helped facilitate and implement it.
Andrew_Earlwood at 9.38pm
You say: “… and I say that as one who in balance think[s] that ‘knowing what they knew then, or believed, and making allowances for the available inferences they reached’ the Americans were within their rights to drop the bomb on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
Where do you get this idea of balance from? From where-ever, it seems to be from a static source.
I presume the phrase “within their rights” above does not refer to international law. There was a widely ratified treaty prohibiting poison gas in 1945. It could be argued by then to have become part of international customary law. As Wilfred Burchett documented, the radiation from the atomic bomb seemed to the survivors to be some form of poisonous gas, which in a broad sense it was. In other words, while not the form of poison gas known when that treaty was created (1925), it was an analogous substance, amidst other evils.
However, one key issue regarding the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs was the timing. There was no military urgency in that destruction from the US viewpoint. The urgency, as perceived by Truman and his advisers, was entirely different. It was diplomatic in a broad sense, in that it was influenced by US perceptions of the USSR, much more than by US perceptions of Japan.
For an interesting review of some of the arguments, see this 2013 article by Peter Kirstein:
https://www.scirp.org/pdf/AHS_2013061711293915.pdf
He points out that Truman’s main advisor was James Byrnes, his Secretary of State, who wanted “to use American atomic might to pressure the Soviet Union to embrace free elections in Poland and throughout Eastern Europe” (p 50). The gap between Byrnes’ aims and his achievements was huge.
nath @ 9:57pm
In August 1947, aside from the casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the daily deaths due to war were still running at 100K pa, even though Nazi Germany was out of the war. The human lawnmower has been running hot for nearly a decade by that stage and someone had to turn it off; even if that meant by flooding the engine.
Two wrongs never make a right, but every day 100,000 people were being killed. I’ve read a lot of post facto reasoning to the effect that Japan was on the brink of surrendering. To my mind, this could have always gone either way.
The possibility, even after the collapse of the Japanese government command structure of a clique of army captains, majors and colonels effectively persuading the Japanese population into a collective suicide pact to defend the homeland to the bitter end was a real thing.
Especially given the long tradition of such relatively junior officers holding sway over the high command and exerting real political power.
Moreover, the defence of Saipan, Okinawa and Iowa Jima provided the Americans with salutary examples of what carnage could be wrought – at terrible personal cost – against even an overwhelming amphibious force.
The training of the Japanese civilian population – in their tens of millions from 1944 onwards – to prepare to die for the emperor by literally throwing themselves onto enemy soldiers in an attempt to take at least one gaijin with them presented a real threat that when all was said and done if McArthur went ahead with operation downfall that the total casualties from that campaign would have rivalled the total sun of ww2 deaths to that date.
Someone had to turn the human lawnmower off before then. Had too. If not in August 1945, then McArthur would have been authorised to commence final preparations for the first phase of Downfall.
Nath at 9.57 pm
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was definitely a war crime. The concept of a crime against humanity was formulated during the Nuremburg trials, i.e. after the bombing. Key US military leaders knew it was a war crime. Admiral Leahy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in his memoirs that “it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that thing”. He knew what he was talking about. He knew there was no likelihood of any prosecution for that crime. Even repentance seems a way off.
Dr Doolittle, 9:58
You rely upon the pumping up of certain views, just to knock them down as a sort of straw man conspiracy theory.
I’m not saying that there were not folk in the administration who did not make decisions as to how to end the war with at least one eye on the growing power of the Soviet Union. I’d argue that they’d have been negligent not to. That however doesn’t really substitute other reasons in my opinion.
My opinion is ultimately informed by my understanding of all of the competing arguments and ‘on balance’ my conclusion was … ‘drop the bomb’.
Edited: dropping the atomic bomb on civilian populations was no more a war crime than the London Blitz – just more effective as a means of achieving mass civilian casualties. It was no more lethal than either the Dresden firestorm or of Tokyo or any of the other cities that LeMay was burning to the ground every night. Only more instantaneous. The notion that there was some magic dividing line of ‘well that was Al clearly a war crime’ is fantasy. Other than it’s awesome instantaneous power, the use of the atomic bomb accorded with the customs and norms of the entire war.
Wranslide,
Yes, I was wrong, and I apologise. It was Clem Attlee, and he gave the use as being the a context of reply to a specific poster.
Andrew_Earlwood at 10.36 pm
Have you read the main book by Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (1995)? If not, I doubt that you have understood all the competing arguments. The Kirstein article has a precis of the main arguments, but there is much more detail in the book. As with all history, the detail is crucial.
Byrnes was Truman’s key advisor. He saw the bomb in diplomatic terms as “the winning weapon”, which could limit Stalin’s influence in eastern Europe. He was completely wrong at his diplomacy.
Both on the Japanese side (see summary in Ward Wilson’s article last night) and for the US, timing was crucial. There was no US military urgency in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time. It would be a stretch to believe that Truman’s decision was motivated by an honourable aim, e.g. saving a great many women from the awful ravages of Japanese brutes in uniform. It had other objectives.
In any criminal trial, you would examine the timing precisely and exactly. Do the same with history.
Dr Doolittle @ #729 Monday, July 24th, 2023 – 10:27 pm
If you’re talking specifically about dropping a nuclear bomb, the point is academic. The US demonstrated that it could kill just as many (or more) Japanese civilians using conventional munitions.
Yes, it isn’t “necessary” to go nuclear. You can depopulate the same city using 1000’s of bombs instead of just one. The ethical problem is with depopulating the city though. It doesn’t actually matter* if you use many bombs to do that or just one. The end result is the same for all the civilians involved.
Unless someone has a plausible scenario where the US doesn’t drop nukes and also still wins the war without dropping any more conventional bombs too, it’s a moot point. Or at least, all you’re really debating is whether it’s worse for a lot of people to die to one big weapon than to many small ones.
*It might, in the modern context, where we understand the long-term effects of radiation and nuclear fallout, however the people calling the shots in WW2 weren’t burdened by that knowledge yet.
Harry Truman was a war criminal. He didn’t need to use the atomic bombs to induce Japan to surrender. A sticking point was the US Government’s insistence on “unconditional surrender”, a phrase that the Japanese Government interpreted as including the dissolution of the Japanese monarchy. Eventually the US Government agreed to allow the Japanese Emperor to have a ceremonial role in the post-war political structure of Japan, a concession they could have made without slaughtering 280,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Harry Truman was one of the worst US presidents. He was an ignorant rube in many ways, deeply racist, got the US trapped in the quagmire of the Korean War, misread Cold War politics completely… a disgusting little man in more ways than one.
Douglas and Milkosays:
Monday, July 24, 2023 at 10:49 pm
All good. No worries. Thanks for clarifying.
“Harry Truman was one of the worst US presidents. He was an ignorant rube in many ways, deeply racist, got the US trapped in the quagmire of the Korean War, misread Cold War politics completely… a disgusting little man in more ways than one.”
I don’t know there is a large group of very competitive terrible presidents.
*Permanent Address*
(Javed Akhtar)
Our joint family home housed 14 of us from age 5 to 95 years.
Today I watch both the houses abandoned and nature taking over the garden my mother used to tend for hours every day. The Jamun, the Drumstick a few Ashok, Neem and Peepal have survived but all beauty is both transient and fragile and the law of entropy powerful. The lovely flowers of myriad colours are all gone. I wonder what happened to the peacock family that came everyday and ate from my moms hand. The Bulbul, the sparrows, the parrots, spotted flycatchers, Cuckoos, a huge troop of monkeys that once in a month would upset the order of the place.
*Once people leave, a home becomes a house*. Initially I didn’t feel like selling and now I don’t feel like going. Time has taken away ten of its fourteen occupants.
I walk around our neighbourhood and see similar fate of so many homes once full of life now replaced or lying still.
Why do we stretch and stress to build houses? In most cases our kids won’t need it or worse fight over it.
*What is this human folly of attempting permanent ownership in a leased life with an uncertain tenure given by a landlord whose terms are non-negotiable and there is no court of appeal*
One day all we have built with love and EMIs will either be demolished, fought over, sold or lie in ruins.
Every time I fill a form that asks for ‘permanent address’ I smile at human folly.
There is a Zen story that an old monk walked into a Kings palace demanding he wanted to spend the night in this Inn and the guards told him, “What Inn, can’t you see its a palace?”. The monk said “I came here a few decades back someone was staying there, a few years later someone else took the throne from him, then someone else. Any place where the occupant keeps changing is an Inn.”
George Carlin says *“house is just a place where you keep your stuff as you go out and get more stuff”.*
As houses get bigger families get smaller. *When the house has occupants, we desire privacy and when the nest empties we crave for company.*
Birds and Animals must be laughing at us humans that give up living in order to build their dream home and in the end depart the Inn they mistook as a permanent residence.
*The real folly of human desire!*
UK Labour Party abandons gender self ID and will protect single sex exemptions whilst ensuring providers have clarity on how to use them. Sensible decision in my view.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/24/labour-will-lead-on-reform-of-transgender-rights-and-we-wont-take-lectures-from-the-divisive-tories
@propellor cap boy:
“ Eventually the US Government agreed to allow the Japanese Emperor to have a ceremonial role in the post-war political structure of Japan, a concession they could have made without slaughtering 280,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
__________
280,000 civilians? LeMay would have considered that a very poor weekly tally for his incendiary bombing campaign that had run nightly since January 45, and which he didn’t even stop after the A bombs were dropped. 280,000 in the span of days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki was less than HALF the total rate of war casualties at that stage of the war.
Ending the war ‘on terms’ was never as easy as you pretend it to be. Or Doolittle imagines, having swallowed a book of post facto malarkey. ‘Nothing remarkable about August 1945’ my arse: the human lawnmower was running at full power. Still! I think you are both indulging in a bit of Procrustean Logic: making your data points ‘fit’ a preconceived conclusion.
Q: UK Labour Party abandons gender self ID
No sure what this means- who else knows your gender except yourself?
“No sure what this means- who else knows your gender except yourself?”
It means they are capitulating to right wing hate but pretending they aren’t, and the writer of the article just might be transphobic.
Is this called …” doing a runner”….
A key witness in a parliamentary inquiry into consulting firm Synergy 360 has “severed all ties” with Australia and will not provide evidence at a hearing on Friday.
Synergy 360 has been accused of setting up a channel to secretly pay Robert in return for Robert’s help in winning government contracts, but there is no evidence that Robert has received any payment.
Will Roberts & Morrison follow suit ?
—–
Doubtful, but clearly a few possible ‘persons of interest’ for the NACC are looking for Mediterranean retirement houses about now. From memory, Clive Palmer’s son-in-law is sailing the med somewhere conveniently avoiding some questions over his business ventures.
Guardian is reporting an Essential with all sorts of interesting results except, you know, voting intention. But notably a sharp negative change in Albanese’s net approval:
The wide-ranging poll shows Anthony Albanese’s approval rating continues to drop – from 54% in May to 48% in July, with those who disapproved with the job he is doing as prime minister increasing from 35% to 41%.
However his approval rating remains more than 10 points ahead of Peter Dutton. The opposition leader’s rating has remained steady in the last two months (36% in May compared with 37% now). Dutton’s disapproval rating has also remained fairly steady from 45% in May to 43% now.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/25/guardian-essential-poll-support-commonwealth-games-daniel-andrews
Simon: “However his approval rating remains more than 10 points ahead of Peter Dutton.”
10 points is less than the 14 to 17 point skew in favour of incumbents typical of ‘Better PM’ and ‘Better Premier’ scores, as explained by Kevin Bonham:
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2020/04/why-better-prime-ministerpremier-scores.html
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2012/12/why-preferred-prime-ministerpremier.html
On that basis, a 10-point lead as Better PM is sub-par.
Speaking of Dr Kev:
“Monday, July 24, 2023
“Voice Referendum Polling: No Leads / Indigenous Support Levels
“TWO-ANSWER TREND ESTIMATE YES 47.8 (-2.8 in four weeks)
“Aggregated polls have Yes losing in five states and trailing the national average in three (two narrowly)”
* * *
“A Yes campaign that started deeply underwater by historic referendum standards is sinking further by the same standards with virtually every poll but many Yes supporters are still hoping that as the campaign ramps up, football final season breeds enthusiasm (I’m not really sure how that works) and greater Yes resources are deployed things will turn around. That would be a new thing in the history of referendums …”
🙁
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2023/07/voice-referendum-polling-no-leads.html
Oh, and Dr Bonham wonders if Newspoll has inadvertently switched genders …
“Last week’s Newspoll had a very odd result with women (38-49, down from 48-42) supposedly suddenly anti-Voice while men (45-47, up from 38-52) were supposedly now more sympathetic.”
“It would make more sense there if men had gone from 38-49 to 38-52 and women had gone from 48-42 to 45-47, and it’s easy to suspect that this is what occurred. Normally one would not believe anything like that from what has long been a remarkably smooth Newspoll operation, but these are not normal times in YouGov land. YouGov’s head of polling Campbell White quietly departed a few weeks ago and if ever there would be a time for a stuffup it would be now.”
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2023/07/voice-referendum-polling-no-leads.html
Also from Kevin Bonham:
“Tempers are apparently so frayed that I was blocked without warning or comment by Hunter ALP backbencher Dan Repacholi’s account on Twitter for nothing more than quote-tweeting a tweet of his that quoted some Yes propaganda on this subject and disagreeing with it. He is the first serving state, federal or territory MP … who I’m aware of blocking me in 11 years, notwithstanding the far greater grief that I have given many others.”
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2023/07/voice-referendum-polling-no-leads.html