cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/collapse/p/1794000/senate-committee-features-climate-disinformation-the-atlas-network-and-dr-karl-s-clash

In Monday's hearing, the lobby group Coal Australia defended sending almost $4 million to "Australians for Prosperity" last financial year, which is a third-party group that attacked Labor, Greens and teal independent candidates during the 2025 federal election campaign.

Stuart Bocking, a former 2GB talkback radio host turned Coal Australia chief executive, denied it was a form of "astroturfing", telling senators that it was often easier to pay third-party groups to run political campaigns on one's behalf these days, because it left lobby groups to focus on other things.

"We're not engaged in astroturfing," he said.

Uh huh

The Atlas Network, first formed in 1981, partners with more than 500 free-market think tanks around the world, with 10 of them in Australia and New Zealand.

The ABC recently published a large piece which explains the history of the Atlas Network and what it is.

Dr Walker said Australians had little idea of the extent of the coordinated effort to prevent attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to renewable forms of energy.

He explained how fossil fuel companies have funded certain think tanks globally for decades to push climate denial, anti-Indigenous rights and anti-renewable messages, a technique that has helped to obscure where ideas and money are coming from.

....

And finally, science communicator Karl Kruszelnicki (Dr Karl) appeared at the Senate committee on Monday.

In an attempt to establish common factual ground with One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts, Dr Karl asked Roberts if he accepted that global temperatures were rising.

Their interaction illustrated how public discussions about the science of climate change get bogged down so easily:

Dr Karl: Do you agree that the climate records show that the last 10 years have been the hottest on record worldwide?

Senator Roberts: The last 10 years in Australia have been cooler than the 1880s and 1890s in Australia.

Dr Karl: Hang on … Worldwide. Do you agree that the last 10 years have been the hottest years on record worldwide?

Senator Roberts: No I don't

The fuck :)

Dr Karl: I feel like I'm talking to a school child who says seven times two is not 14, but instead seven times two is a bicycle divided by the square root of a banana.

Roberts: That's one way of making out that I'm a fool.

You do that all by yourself

Dr Karl: But all the scientists disagree with you. 99.999 per cent of the scientists disagree with you.

Roberts: So now you're into consensus, which is a political tool.

Dr Karl: Hang on, consensus is a political tool? … So if all the scientists agree that seven times two is 14, that's a political tool?

Roberts: That's obviously a stupid comment, in my opinion.

Research suggests more than 75,000 killed in the first 16 months of conflict, 25,000 more than announced at the time

More than 75,000 people were killed in the first 16 months of the two-year war in Gaza, at least 25,000 more than the death toll announced by local authorities at the time, according to a study published on Wednesday in the Lancet medical journal.

The research also found that reporting by the Gaza health ministry about the proportion of women, children and elderly people among those killed was accurate.

A total of 42,200 women, children and elderly people died between 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise attack into Israel that prompted a devastating Israeli offensive into Gaza, and 5 January 2025, the study found. These deaths comprised 56% of violent deaths in Gaza.

“The combined evidence suggests that, as of 5 January 2025, 3-4% of the population of the Gaza Strip had been killed violently and there have been a substantial number of non-violent deaths caused indirectly by the conflict,” the authors of the study, a team including an economist, demographer, epidemiologist and survey specialists, wrote in the Lancet Global Health.

MBFC
Archive

Paywall removed https://archive.is/b4CXk

An app to manage your Arr stack from your phone for iOS and Android.

Launch planned for last week was delayed

Portal team includes former DOGE member Coristine

Officials discussed including a VPN function

President Trump has given no indication that he has made a decision about how to proceed, as diplomatic talks continue.

The rapid buildup of U.S. forces in the Middle East has progressed to the point that President Trump has the option to take military action against Iran as soon as this weekend, administration and Pentagon officials said, leaving the White House with high-stakes choices about pursuing diplomacy or war.

Mr. Trump has given no indication that he has made a decision about how to proceed. But the drive to assemble a military force capable of striking Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles and accompanying launch sites has continued this week despite indirect talks between the two nations on Tuesday, with Iran seeking two weeks to come back with fleshed out proposals for a diplomatic resolution.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly demanded that Iran give up its nuclear program, including agreeing not to enrich any more uranium. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, whose country would potentially take part in an attack, has been pushing for action to weaken Iran’s ability to launch missiles at Israel.

MBFC
Archive

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51084120

Archived

Poland has banned Chinese-made cars from entering military facilities in an effort to bolster infrastructure security, according to the country’s General Staff.

The decision follows a risk analysis regarding the growing integration of digital systems in vehicles and the possibility of “uncontrolled data acquisition,” the army said in a statement published on its website on Tuesday.

NATO-member Poland has maintained trading ties with China even as Beijing sided with Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. SAIC Motor Corp.’s MG brand, Chery Automobile Co.’s models and BYD Co. led sales in Poland among Chinese auto manufacturers.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43378986

17 Feb 2026

The alarm in the Hashemite Kingdom reached a fever pitch on Sunday, following the Israeli cabinet’s approval of measures to register vast swaths of the occupied West Bank as “state land” under the Israeli Ministry of Justice. The move, described by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich as a “settlement revolution”, effectively bypasses the military administration that has governed the occupied territory since 1967, treating it instead as sovereign Israeli soil.

For Jordan, this bureaucratic annexation is the final signal that the status quo is dead. With the Israeli military’s “Iron Wall” operation crushing refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarem, Jordan’s political and military establishment is no longer asking if a forced transfer is coming, but how to stop it.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51083200

Riders embroiled in a dispute over pay and conditions with food delivery company HungryPanda in Sydney say Chinese police have summoned family members back home and even threatened to have them arrested upon return as part of a pressure campaign to stop them protesting.

The development has raised concerns about foreign interference in the protracted tussle between HungryPanda and some of its riders who say pay cuts and a lack of transparency in the app's algorithm have pushed them to the brink.

Earlier this month, multiple Sydney-based HungryPanda riders in a group chat on the Chinese social media app WeChat began discussing plans to hold a protest or refuse to work.

On Lunar New Year eve, dozens of them signed up for switching off from work during the Lunar New Year period, which often brings a surge in activity and orders on HungryPanda.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51083203

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/51083141

Archived

Italian police said Wednesday they had detected cyber-attacks against the interior ministry seeking information on dissident Chinese citizens and officers investigating Chinese groups in Italy.

“No sensitive data related to operational activities appears to have been taken,” police said in a statement, saying their findings had been passed to judicial authorities.

They did not give a timeframe but the La Repubblica daily had earlier reported that the interior ministry suffered a cyber-attack between 2024 and 2025.

...

It reported that Chinese hackers had obtained a list of some 5,000 police officers, many in sensitive roles such as counter-terrorism or tracking Chinese dissidents in Italy.

“The malicious activities were promptly detected by the Postal Police as part of routine security monitoring of the interior ministry’s IT systems,” the police statement said.

...

La Repubblica reported that the discovery of the hack damaged the growing cooperation between Italy and China on drugs, cyber-crime, human trafficking and organised crime.

This had included working together to investigate the activities of warring Chinese mafia groups in the textile hub of Prato, near Florence.

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/SkLOB

and post!

Riders embroiled in a dispute over pay and conditions with food delivery company HungryPanda in Sydney say Chinese police have summoned family members back home and even threatened to have them arrested upon return as part of a pressure campaign to stop them protesting.

The development has raised concerns about foreign interference in the protracted tussle between HungryPanda and some of its riders who say pay cuts and a lack of transparency in the app's algorithm have pushed them to the brink.

Earlier this month, multiple Sydney-based HungryPanda riders in a group chat on the Chinese social media app WeChat began discussing plans to hold a protest or refuse to work.

On Lunar New Year eve, dozens of them signed up for switching off from work during the Lunar New Year period, which often brings a surge in activity and orders on HungryPanda.

[...]

I wonder how much X has contributed to the rise of One Nation. I know relatively few people use it compared to Facebook and Instagram, but still...

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/qcBXw

Just as i thought