In short:

Australia will send a military aircraft and 85 ADF personnel to the United Arab Emirates to assist in the defence of Gulf nations that have been attacked by Iran.

They will be operational by the end of the week for an initial four-week period for the "collective self-defence of Gulf nations".

What's next?

Foreign Minister Penny Wong says Iran's attacks on neighbouring countries escalated overnight.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Monday declared his support for his Lebanese counterpart Joseph Aoun in the latter’s effort to disarm Hezbollah.

The Middle East war expanded to Lebanon on March 2, after Tehran-backed Hezbollah fired rockets toward Israel in response to the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei on the first day of US-Israeli attacks on Iran

Since March 2, Israel has been conducting large-scale air raids on Lebanon and incursions with ground troops, killing at least 486 people according to the Lebanese health ministry.

The article in full: https://bret.dk/every-single-board-computer-i-tested-in-2025/

Part of a larger $550 billion investment framework.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43965516

It is worth noting that both the hardware and software of Fairphone is heavily dependent on a Chinese company T2Mobile.

For those looking to avoid both US and Chinese companies, then the Jolla phone is the way to go.

Hacker News.

Israeli settlers and soldiers killed three Palestinians in their village near Ramallah on Saturday night, the third deadly attack in a week of surging Israeli violence across the occupied West Bank.

Israeli settlers have shot dead five civilians during invasions of Palestinian olive groves, villages and grazing land, in the brief period since Israel and the US launched a new war on Iran at the end of February. A sixth person died on Saturday after inhaling military-grade tear gasused by the Israeli army.

The escalating regional conflict diverted diplomatic, media and political attention away from occupied Palestine, even as Israeli authorities imposed a new blockade on Gaza and brought in sweeping movement restrictions across the occupied West Bank, and settlers intensified Israeli attacks on Palestinian land, crops, livestock and homes.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/7675978

Mark Carney’s Canberra address and the Geelong Treaty reveal the architecture of a powerful middle-power bloc ready to be assembled.

Archived link

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Aukus delivers hard power: nuclear-powered submarines, quantum technologies, AI-enabled defence systems, hypersonic weapons, and directed-energy capabilities. But hard power without economic depth is brittle. Canzuk supplies the missing dimension – trade diversification, skilled labour mobility, critical minerals coordination, and a diplomatic network that spans every major ocean and time zone. Together they form something greater than the sum of their parts: a full-spectrum alliance that can deter adversaries, withstand economic coercion, and provide mutual resilience when the global order fractures.

...

Australia and Canada together possess the largest mineral reserves held by democratic nations. In an era of accelerating decoupling from Chinese supply chains, this is an asset of extraordinary and growing strategic value.

The polling data confirms the political feasibility. A February 2026 survey by Canzuk International found 68 per cent support in Australia, 72 per cent in Canada, 75 per cent in New Zealand, and 70 per cent in the United Kingdom for a multilateral free trade and mobility agreement. These are not marginal numbers. They represent a democratic mandate waiting to be exercised.

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The institutional scaffolding is more advanced than most commentators acknowledge. The four Canzuk nations share King Charles III as head of state, Westminster parliamentary systems, common law traditions, and deeply interoperable intelligence services through Five Eyes. The ABCANZ Armies program – encompassing all four Canzuk nations plus the United States – already facilitates military interoperability across the Anglosphere. Workforce mobility initiatives are being pursued to facilitate movement of skilled defence personnel between Australia and the United Kingdom, including reciprocal recognition of security clearances. Add Canada and New Zealand to this framework and you have a defence-industrial ecosystem that spans the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean – with Arctic reach thrown in for good measure.

New Zealand, often treated as the quiet partner, brings its own distinctive value. Its Pillar II potential under Aukus – advanced cyber capabilities, undersea sensing, and Antarctic logistics – complements the submarine focus of Pillar I. And its extraordinary 75 per cent public support for Canzuk suggests a population ready for deeper integration than its cautious political class has yet been willing to deliver.

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Just wanted to update everyone of the good news!!

Residents report terror of smoke-filled city, from potentially toxic rain, air and water to food scarcity and difficulty of escape

Thick black smoke was still rising in the sky, soot covered the streets and cars, balconies filled with black gunk, and the toxic air had filled the lungs as Tehran woke up after a night of airstrikes on the city’s oil depots on Sunday.

In messages and voice notes sent to the Guardian, people described the situation in their homes and on the streets, some calling it “apocalyptic”. With the sun blotted out, disoriented people in Iran’s capital had to turn on their lights to see through the gloom.

Four oil depots and a petroleum logistics site in and around Tehran were hit. Local authorities said six people were killed and 20 wounded at one of the sites.

Videos shared by citizen journalists showed massive flames over the Tehran sky overnight and smoke still billowing over the oil storage facilities. As rain poured down on the city of 10 million people on Sunday morning, authorities warned of toxic acid rain and many residents woke up with pain in their throat and eyes burning.

MBFC
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Implementation of the White House’s return-to-office directive will be aided by the tech firm Palantir. It remains unclear why a spy-tech company should be tasked with things like “employee seat assignments.”

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/60387297

Proton Mail provided Swiss authorities with payment data for defendtheatlantaforest@protonmail.com — the account linked to Stop Cop City protests in Atlanta. The FBI obtained this information through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request on January 25, 2024, identifying the activist behind the anonymous account through their credit card identifier.

The United States and Israel are both revelling in inflicting the maximum possible death and suffering on Iran. After the genocide in Gaza, on a far larger field in Iran, those in power in Israel and the USA have a lust to kill and they revel in impunity.

The Epstein files reveal the same dynamic. We live in a society where those who obtain power wish to exercise it in the cruellest possible ways against the most defenceless. It appears to be a feature of late Western capitalist society, where sociopathic tendencies are essential to obtaining power, in a society which rejects altruism and cooperation as concepts and promotes competition, self-love and ruthlessness.

Iran is showing commendable fighting spirit, but as my last article stated, American military power should not be underestimated. They have the ability to destroy Iran from the air, to obliterate the institutions of the state and all of the key civilian infrastructure. Electricity, water, healthcare, education, administration, policing all can be knocked out just as they were systematically in Gaza and – on a scale insufficiently recalled – in Iraq.

Trump is already asking Congress for $50 billion to fund the operation and replenish stocks. The scale of destruction Netanyahu envisages will cost at least half a trillion dollars from the US Treasury. But there is nothing that can stop them.

I witnessed close up over five months the 80 to 100,000 homes destroyed in Lebanon by Israel in the last three years. We have all seen what they did to Gaza. The notion they cannot do this to Iran is simply wrong. It requires a colossal effort of will, a mania for killing, a vast amount of money and the depletion of the US arsenal. But they can do it.

Only political action by the peoples of the West against their leaders can stop it.

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Human Rights Watch research has found that key aspects of the current German social security system are already failing to ensure the rights to social security and to an adequate standard of living, in particular for single parents, most of whom are women raising young children. The proposed changes to the social security system are likely to exacerbate these problems.

First reported here 5 days ago, it has now been confirmed by official sources. https://lemmy.ca/post/61271111

Nearly 40 employees of OpenAI and Google filed an amicus brief in support of Anthropic’s Monday lawsuit.

Archived version: https://archive.is/20260309204814/https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/891514/anthropic-pentagon-lawsuit-amicus-brief-openai-google