Twitter Queried in the EU for Data Leak of 5.4 Million Users.

Adeola Adegunwa
December 24, 2022

More than 5.4 million Twitter users were impacted by this leak, which contained both public data scraped from the website and private phone numbers and email addresses. The information was accessed via taking advantage of an API flaw that Twitter rectified a few months back.

Following news allegations of a significant Twitter data leak last month, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has opened an investigation. It is not taking this likely with Elon Musk’s Twitter Inc.

A revelation that one or more datasets containing user personal information “had been made public on the internet” prompted Ireland’s Data Protection Commission to announce Friday that it had decided to launch an investigation.
Data of Twitter Users put up for sale since July.

Not less than 5.4 million Twitter users’ private data were offered for sale for $30,000 in July 2022 on a hacking site. Even while the majority of the information was made public, including Twitter IDs, names, login names, localities, and verified status. The hacked database also contained private data, including email addresses and phone numbers. The statement continued by stating that “one or more sections of the GDPR and/or the Act may have been, and/or are being, violated with respect to personal data of Twitter Users.”

The Data Protection Commission (DPC), which is Twitter’s primary EU watchdog, is investigating whether the social media behemoth has complied with its obligations. As a data controller regarding the processing of user data and whether any laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, have been broken.

This information was gathered in December 2021 via a Twitter API flaw that was made public through the HackerOne bug bounty program. This flaw allowed anyone to submit email addresses or phone numbers to the API and have them linked to the corresponding Twitter ID.

A Large Amount of other Users’ Data was also Stolen.

Chad Loder, a security expert, also disclosed information about a larger data dump on Twitter and Mastodon. This dump may contain millions of Twitter records with personal phone numbers that were collected using a bug in an API that had already been fixed and some publicly available data, such as verified status, account names, Twitter IDs, bios, and screen names. The same database, which contained 5,485,635 records of Twitter users, was also freely distributed on a hacking forum between September and November.

In addition to publicly scraped information like: the Twitter ID, name, screen name, verified status, location, URL, description, follower count, account creation date, friends count, favorites count, statuses count, and profile image URLs, the records also include a wealth of private user data, such as personal email addresses or phone numbers. Millions of Twitter accounts in the EU and the US were affected by a significant Twitter data breach, Loder claimed.

“I got in touch with a small number of the impacted accounts, and they confirmed that the stolen information is true. This breach did not happen before 2021.” The fact that none of the phone numbers in this leaked database were included in the original data purchased in August 2002 should be noted. This fact illustrates the extensive sharing of Twitter user information across threat actors and the depth of the data breach beyond what was previously known.

Despite the fact that this information has not been independently verified, we were also informed that the second disclosed database has more than 17 million records.

How this Probe further affects Elon Musk

Since taking over in October, Musk has issued bankruptcy warnings for Twitter and implemented a “hardcore” work atmosphere after making significant personnel reductions. A couple of months into his taking over, he has scared off advertisers, alienated some of Twitter’s most enthusiastic creators, and transformed the platform from a place for discussing news to a topic of its own.

An email requesting comment from Twitter was not immediately answered. A number of responses were “supplied,” according to the Irish regulator, who claimed to have “engaged” with it on the subject. This week, the business came to an amicable agreement with a top executive who had been barred from the company’s IT system for failing to reply within a few hours to an email from Musk asking employees if they approved of the new “Twitter 2.0.”

The former head of the department, who filed a lawsuit in Germany for unjust dismissal, said that after Musk’s restructuring, its communications department in Germany no longer existed in addition to closing its Brussels office. The Irish regulator last month fined Meta Platforms Inc. €265 million ($281 million) for failing to stop the leak of the personal information of more than half a billion users of its Facebook site, despite criticism for being slow to act.

Iranian nuclear chief: US admits Iran not seeking nukes

ByIFP Editorial Staff
December 29, 2022


The director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran has said the US’s latest national security strategy document that was published in November explicitly says Washington is confident that Tehran is not after nukes.

Mohammad Eslami added that the document however insists that Iran must not have a nuclear program.

Eslami added that the talks aimed at paving the way for the US to return to the Iran nuclear deal, JCPOA, ended five months ago and the text of an agreement was drawn up but it was Washington that went back on its word.

He also said the US claims that Iran made a new statement at the negotiating table but it was the US that made a new statement.

The Iranian nuclear chief also spoke about Iran’s nuclear achievements that are conducive to other fields like medicine.

He said currently, 206 medical centers in Iran receive radiopharmaceuticals from the AEOI and 200 industries use nuclear precision tools.

He added that $1.7bn was allocated to the Bushehr nuclear power plant that replaced $7bn worth of fossil fuels.

Eslami’s comments come at a time when the JCPOA revival talks are at an impasse due to differences between Iran and the US.

Not a ‘panacea’: UK lawmakers play down hydrogen’s role in net-zero shift

KEY POINTS

Hydrogen can be produced in a number of ways, including electrolysis — where an electric current splits water molecules.

This results in “green” or “renewable” hydrogen, when the electricity used comes from a renewable source, such as wind or solar.

Most current hydrogen generation is based on fossil fuels.



Hydrogen storage tanks photographed in Spain on May 19, 2022. 

Hydrogen has a diverse range of applications and can be deployed in a wide range of industries.
Angel Garcia | Bloomberg | Getty Images

WED, DEC 21 2022
Anmar Frangoul

Hydrogen has a part to play in the U.K.’s shift to a net-zero economy but its role will likely be restricted to certain sectors, according to a report from an influential committee of U.K. lawmakers.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee concluded that although hydrogen possessed “several attractive features, most of the evidence we have received was clear that with current technologies, it does not represent a panacea.”

“As the UK looks to transition to a Net Zero economy, hydrogen will likely have specific but limited roles to play across a variety of sectors to decarbonise where other technologies — such as electrification and heat pumps — are not possible, practical, or economic,” the report, which was published Monday, said.

Described by the International Energy Agency as a “versatile energy carrier,” hydrogen has a diverse range of applications and can be deployed in a wide range of industries.

One method of producing hydrogen uses electrolysis, a process through which an electric current splits water into oxygen and hydrogen.

Some call the resulting hydrogen “green” or “renewable” if the electricity used in the electrolysis process comes from a renewable source such as wind or solar. The vast majority of hydrogen generation today is based on fossil fuels.

Monday’s report sought to temper expectations about the role hydrogen could play in slashing emissions and the transition to a net-zero economy.

“To make a large contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the UK, the production of hydrogen requires significant advances in the economic deployment of CCUS [carbon capture, utilization and storage] and/or the development of a renewable-to-hydrogen capacity,” it said.

“The timing of these is uncertain, and it would be unwise to assume that hydrogen can make a very large contribution to reducing UK greenhouse gas emissions in the short- to medium-term.”

Committee chair Greg Clark said that there were “significant infrastructure challenges associated with converting our energy networks to use hydrogen and uncertainty about when low-carbon hydrogen can be produced at scale at an economical cost.”

“But there are important applications for hydrogen in particular industries so it can be, in the words of one witness to our inquiry, ‘a big niche’,” Clark added.

In comment sent to CNBC via email, the CEO of industry group Hydrogen Europe, Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, said his organization believed hydrogen was “an essential component of the energy transition.”

“It is not a panacea, or silver bullet, but it is a missing link that will allow hard to abate sectors — eg steel, cement, maritime transport — to be part of the energy transition and help us accelerate towards net zero,” he added.

“Indeed, there are significant infrastructure challenges, but they can be overcome and indeed the strategies by which to do so have already been written,” Chatzimarkakis said. “What is needed is a joint effort from legislators and industry across Europe and the world.”
Big plans, big challenges

Over the past few years, major economies and businesses have looked to the emerging green hydrogen sector to decarbonize industries integral to modern life.

During a roundtable discussion at the COP27 climate change summit last month, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described green hydrogen as “one of the most important technologies for a climate-neutral world.”

“Green hydrogen is the key to decarbonizing our economies, especially for hard-to-electrify sectors such as steel production, the chemical industry, heavy shipping and aviation,” Scholz added, before acknowledging that a significant amount of work was needed for the sector to mature.

“Of course, green hydrogen is still an infant industry, its production is currently too cost-intensive compared to fossil fuels,” he said. “There’s also a ‘chicken and egg’ dilemma of supply and demand where market actors block each other, waiting for the other to move.”

Also appearing on the panel was Christian Bruch, CEO of Siemens Energy. “Hydrogen will be indispensable for the decarbonization of ... industry,” he said.

“The question is, for us now, how do we get there in a world which is still driven, in terms of business, by hydrocarbons,” he added. “So it requires an extra effort to make green hydrogen projects ... work.”

 

A Poetic Conviction? Turkish Courts Sentence Istanbul Mayor For Speech Crime – Analysis

 December 26, 2022 

By Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute

The minarets are our spears, the domes are our shields

The mosques are our barracks, the believers soldiers

Our faith has been waiting for this spiritual army

God is great, God is great – Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924), “A Soldier’s Prayer”

By James Ryan*

(FPRI) — Ottoman Turkish intellectual and ideologue Ziya Gökalp penned these lines of poetry in the course of the 1912 Balkan War fought between the Ottomans and separatists in Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia. Gökalp would later go on to become arguably the most influential intellectual of the Turkish nationalist movement, and is considered by many to have been among the foremost sociological thinkers of his time, in league with the likes of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. Though he died only a year after the republic officially came into being, Gökalp’s life and work left an indelible mark on Turkish politics and a legacy that has been utilized across the Turkish political spectrum, from nationalists, secularists, and Islamists alike. 

In 1997, Gökalp’s poem landed Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in legal trouble when he uttered those lines in a speech while he was serving as mayor of Istanbul. Citing Gökalpin the context of a rising challenge of Islamist-oriented politics in the country provided pretext for the politicized courts of the country to charge the mayor with insulting Turkey’s secular character. The ensuing legal battle would result in a 10-month jail sentence. Over the long run, the move backfired. Erdoğan’s imprisonment energized his supporters in Istanbul and beyond, made him a victim of Turkey’s illiberal legal institutions, and primed him to take center stage in the newly formed Justice and Development Party once he was released following a reduced sentence in 1999.

Two decades after Erdoğan came to power as prime minister in 2002 an ironic echo of this story has been circulating. A Turkish court recently handed down a two-and-a-half-year-long prison sentence to the current mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, a rising star within Turkey’s Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halkların Partisi, or CHP), the leading party in an opposition bloc set to challenge Erdoğan in elections this coming June. İmamoğlu was leveled with this charge for having referred to the High Elections Council (Yüksek Seçim Kurulu, or YSK) as “stupid” for having ruled that his initial victory in the 2019 Istanbul Mayoral elections was not wide enough to sustain a re-run of the elections, which İmamoğlu would ultimately win by a significantly larger margin.

The result of that election was the first indication that İmamoğlu was viewed as a threat by Erdoğan’s camp. Not merely because he defeated Erdoğan’s handpicked candidate, Binali Yıldırım, who had been serving as prime minister until that position was liquidated in the constitutional reforms that ensconced Erdoğan’s super-presidency, but because he was able to bridge a coalition between right-leaning members of the nationalist opposition Good Party (İyi Parti), left-wing members of his own party, and at the same time garner the tacit support of the Kurdish-majority People’s Democratic Party (Halk Demokrasi Parti, or HDP). Such a coalition projected out to a national scale would, presuming a free vote, be enough to overcome Erdoğan based on recent polling. Moreover, his prior appeal to HDP voters could be enough to dissuade the currently unaligned Kurdish and further left parties from running a third candidate, which would likely spell an indecisive first round of presidential elections and result in a runoff.

This current trial and sentencing are widely understood as a naked attempt to remove İmamoğlu from the ongoing contest between members of the opposition bloc who might be nominated to run against Erdoğan, and a clear signal from Erdoğan’s camp that they view İmamoğlu as a real threat. 

It remains to be seen how the legal process around this decision will play out. İmamoğlu does have an opportunity to appeal and could theoretically kick the can past the date of scheduled elections, thus remaining viable as a presidential candidate. However, the moment has been clarifying in terms of how the question of Erdoğan’s opponent will be settled. As I have written recently, Turkey’s opposition bloc faces a paradoxical challenge in that they are bound to each other by the promise to return to a parliamentary system of governance, but that promise is not at all what binds each of the parties to their voters. As such, it seemed necessary to find a candidate who was most likely to both beat Erdoğan and follow through on constitutional changes to appease the opposition coalition. 

Until recently, many suspected the leader of the CHP, Kemal Kiliçdaoğlu, would be the most likely candidate. Kiliçdaroğlu has been the architect of the unprecedented coalition of six opposition parties, and thus viewed as the one most likely to fulfill the promise of a return to parliamentary governance. İmamoğlu, on the other hand, garnered some suspicion that despite his skill and popularity, he would be less likely to follow through with his party’s promises to their partners, and his eager welcoming of comparisons to Erdoğan’s previous term as mayor may have left a bad taste in the mouths of some in his own party. In the immediate aftermath of the conviction, however,  that seems to be changing. 

Anticipating the sentence, İmamoğlu was able to stage a significant rally with thousands of supporters in his defense in the Saraçhane neighborhood of Istanbul, which is located in a district that İmamoğlu won by the slenderest of margins in 2019. At the rally, İmamoğlu was flanked by two major power players in opposition politics—the leader of the right-wing nationalist İyi Party, Meral Akşener, and Canan Kaftancıoğlu, the leader of the CHP’s Istanbul branch who is herself currently serving a four-year sentence on probation for insulting Erdoğan. Akşener was particularly impassioned in her speech to the crowd in support of İmamoğlu, invoking the poetics of the moment by saying, “this song cannot end here, it is true that song didn’t end (in the courthouse), but today, today, I promise you as Meral Akşener this song won’t end here.” This line was a clear reference to a best-selling album of spoken word poetry that Erdoğan released on the day he entered prison on March 26, 1999.

Their presence, demonstrating support from the left and right flanks of the six-party opposition bloc for the embattled mayor, was also notable for the absence of Kiliçdaroğlu, who was in Berlin completing a series of visits that included the United States and the UK to ostensibly meet with experts in technology and the economy who will advise plans to restructure Turkish industry and economy should the opposition bloc be successful. In a brief statement to the press as he was leaving his hotel in Berlin, Kiliçdaroğlu offered little more than bromides about defending justice in support of his colleague. Returning to Istanbul for a second rally on December 15th, this time alongside İmamoğlu, Kiliçdaroğlu’s verbiage was a little bit stronger but his official statement of standing in support “of the will of 16 million”—a reference to İmamoğlu’s PR campaign to represent the entirety of the population of Istanbul—rather than broader national support from all 85 million Turks again appeared muted in contrast to statements from other key figures. 

For his part, İmamoğlu has not shied away from poetic comparisons to the current president’s tenure as mayor. The position has been viewed as the best springboard for national politics in Turkey—it is the largest municipality in a country whose governing structures afford mayoralties with powers comparable to that of state governors in the United States, and İmamoğlu has been keen to use the propagandistic powers associated with the office to rebrand the city and himself with an eye towards this year’s elections since taking office in 2019. 

It remains to be seen whether the poetic irony of his conviction will turn in his favor in the contest against Erdoğan—not least because the political and structural barriers to his success are great—but in the short run it has heightened the contrasts ahead of the internal fight to name a nominee. Indeed, poets and poetry have had a long-lasting impact on partisan politics in Turkey—at different turns in the current political drama we have seen leading politicians invoke not only Gökalp, but figures like the communist poet Nazım Hikmet, the conservative Islamist Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, or the ultranationalist Nihal Atsız. If İmamoğlu manages to transcend these divides, as Gökalp’s legacy often has and indeed as Erdoğan did for a time, there will be no shortage of poetic irony to the coming contest to lead Turkey’s republican project into a second century. 

Turkey's Ekrem İmamoğlu. Photo Credit: VOA

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan organization that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on American foreign policy and national security priorities. 

*About the author: James Ryan is the Director of Research and the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI).

Source: This article was published by FPRI

Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute

Founded in 1955, FPRI (http://www.fpri.org/) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization devoted to bringing the insights of scholarship to bear on the development of policies that advance U.S. national interests and seeks to add perspective to events by fitting them into the larger historical and cultural context of international politics.

Turkey slated to deport Iranian Kurds facing execution in Iran

Artı Gerçek first reported last week on the slated deportations of the couple, Hossein Manbari and Shugar Mohammadi.

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
Published: DECEMBER 26, 2022 

The Turkish government is planning to deport two Iranian Kurds to the Islamic Republic of Iran, where they will face execution for their role in protests against the policies of the theocratic state, which swept the nation in 2017 and 2018.

The Turkish-language news organization Artı Gerçek first reported last week on the slated deportations of Hossein Manbari and Shugar Mohammadi.

“We witnessed their [the couple's] tears and their panic. They explained that they were given the death penalty and that they would lose their lives if they were sent back to Iran.”Duygu İnegöllü, lawyer for the couple

The lawyer for the couple, Duygu Inegöllü, told Artı Gerçek, “The couple arrived in Turkey three months ago. They are currently being held in the Ula removal center. The deportation decision was taken because they did not have identity cards.”

 Slovenia: Covid Continues To Rage, While Government Threatens Doctors – OpEd

 December 26, 2022  Eurasia Review  

By Demokracija

By Sara Kovač

While Robert Golob’s government is engaged in reorganisation, which also includes the establishment of a strategic council for nutrition under the Prime Minister, it is forgetting to take care of people’s public health. Infections with covid-19 continue to rage, and judging by government communication, it seems as if covid-19 has disappeared. But infections are increasing day by day. It is particularly worrying that we rank among the top European countries in terms of the number of infections.

It is already known from experience that covid infections spread more easily in winter, because people stay indoors due to lower temperatures. The statistics are undoubtedly not surprising, that last week we recorded 12,591 covid infections, which is 567 more cases than the week before. 19 patients lost their battle with the infection from last Monday to Sunday, which is seven deaths more than in the previous week.

The number of patients requiring hospital treatment is also increasing. Last week, an average of 90 people needed treatment for covid infection, which is seven more than the week before. There are 14 patients in the intensive care unit, which is two more patients than the week before, reports the MMC portal. On Sunday, according to the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ), the seven-day average of confirmed cases of coronavirus infection was 1,795. This is 80 more than the previous Sunday. “The number of confirmed cases in the last 14 days per 100,000 inhabitants was 1,175, which is 164 more than the previous Sunday,” they announced on Sunday, estimating that there are 24,715 active cases of infection in the country. This is 3,452 more cases than the week before.

We are at the very top

If we look at the statistics of infections by European countries in the last seven days, we can undoubtedly see that we rank among the top countries in terms of the number of infections. The most worrying situation is in France, followed by Germany, Italy, Russia, Austria, and Great Britain. The seventh place is occupied by Slovenia.

As the Christmas holidays approach, when family and close friends gather in a festive atmosphere, it would undoubtedly be appropriate to urge the public to behave protectively. Especially in contact with more vulnerable groups. So that in case of feeling unwell and having a suspicion of infection, they should get tested, and in case of illness (not only covid), also get isolated. During the winter, the Prime Minister’s “advice” that people expose themselves to the sun’s rays and sea water just does not come into play. Unless someone can reach deep into their wallet and travel somewhere warm. However, since his advice has little in common with the opinion of the profession, he could at least behave responsibly now. The same applies to the Minister of Health, Danijel Bešič Loredan, who seems to be more concerned with threats and arguments than solving real problems in healthcare, where the situation is unsustainable.

It is absolutely true that the health system has also been impoverished by covid, but the catastrophic situation is not from yesterday. Since many are in great difficulty, where to find a doctor and a prescription for medicines, the former state secretary and paediatrician Dr Tina Bregant spoke up through Facebook social network. She warned that it is only a matter of time before someone will assert the right to withdraw from compulsory insurance at the Constitutional Court. “Why? Because his rights to proper treatment are actually violated in such a system. We no longer have an accessible doctor in Slovenia. For almost 150 thousand people. This is the equivalent of a mass disaster!” she was critical. At the same time, Bregant pointed out that we pay about 13 percent of the gross salary for health care, which amounts to almost 200 euros per month even at the minimum wage. “This money is not for the doctor. This money goes through FURS (yes, yes – the government!) to ZZZS. What do they do with it there – they pay a few euros for a clinical examination! ZZZS pays less for a clinical examination with a doctor than you pay at a hairdresser or for a parking fee in front of UKC Ljubljana!”

Since the situation in health care is really at the point where we can say that we are close to a breakdown, today is undoubtedly the time when we still need operational and wise leadership of the Ministry of Health, who will know and be able to deal with all stakeholders in health care and the public appropriately communicate and conduct dialogue. A management that will also understand that the problems that have been accumulating in healthcare for many years have led to completely justified mistrust on the part of employees and, on the other hand, fear, and disappointment in patients. Given that Golob boasted of respectful communication in the first hundred days, one wonders how it is possible that he entrusted the care of such a problematic department to someone who tackled “solving problems” with threats, blackmail, and ultimatums. Since he is the Deputy Prime Minister, the whole thing is all the more worrying.

This article was originally published in Demokracija Magazine (Slovenia)

Location of Slovenia. Source: CIA World Factbook.

For Afghan women, world is uniting again—this time to leave them to their fate

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan banned women from universities—the latest in a series of measures which mark the descent of an iron veil over Afghanistan.

PRAVEEN SWAMI
25 December, 2022 

Representational image. | Afghan Refugee Women Association members hold placards during a protest at Jantar Mantar, in New Delhi on 16 August 2021. | Photo: ANI

From the high walls of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the portraits of the country’s kings looked down on the journalists who trooped into Kabul after 9/11, in the weeks after the fall of the Taliban. There was just one painting—taken from a photograph of king Amanullah Khan—which included the queen consort. The artist, anthropologist Julie Billaud observed, had chosen to paint a traditional wedding veil over queen Soraya Tarzi’s face, flowing down to the floor.

Late in August 1928, Tarzi had torn off her veil at a Loya Jirga, or grand assembly of tribal elders, after a speech where the king had declared “Islam did not require women to cover their bodies or wear any special kind of covering.” Tarzi set up the country’s first schools and hospitals for women. The portrait represented the erasure of Tarzi’s dramatic rebellion against tradition—a radicalism too deep even for the new republic.

Earlier this week, the reborn Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan banned women from universities—the latest in a series of measures which mark the descent of an iron veil over Afghanistan. Girls have been banned from high schools, the United Nations says, and gender-segregation rules are denying women access to work and even healthcare. Forced marriages—often to ageing Taliban commanders—have become common.

The Taliban had promised, before taking power, to allow the education of women to continue, and vowed to “guarantee the legal and human rights of every child, woman and man.” Their failure to keep their promises has led to loud condemnation in world capitals—but the international community is offering Afghanistan’s women little more than pieties. Even scholarships for women have been restricted in India, and many other countries.

“Women are half of society and they’re disregarded,” one woman told the researchers Roxanna Shapour and Rama Mirzada. “How can a bird fly on only one wing?”

The politics of gender apartheid

Ever since the cleric Nida Muhammad Nadim took charge as the Islamic Emirate’s higher education minister in October, he began working to dismantle the last traces of Tarzi’s legacy. Last month, the minister assailed Amanullah for “bringing debauchery and obscenity from foreign lands.” Educating women, he argued, “clashed with Islam and Afghan values.” Following the decision to close college gates to women, Nadim complained that students “wore dresses like they are going to a wedding ceremony.”

The higher education minister also argued against examination tests for Taliban candidates who were seeking jobs. A Taliban’s true qualification, he insisted, was the “number of bombs” he had detonated.

Like many of the most powerful figures in the Islamic Emirate, Nadim is a member of a small circle of clerics from the southern Kandahar region grouped around its emir, Hibatullah Akhundzada. The key figures in the group include Mohammad Khalid Haqqani, the head of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice—responsible for enforcing theocratic norms—as well as chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani and minister of religious affairs Nur Muhammad Saqeb.

Few details have emerged on Nadim’s background, but the 1977-born cleric is thought to have run a seminary in Kandahar, before joining the Taliban insurgency after 9/11. Earlier, he served as regional governor for Nangarhar and Kabul.

The hard line on educating women, some argue, is enmeshed with a power-struggle within the Taliban, with rival factions using religion as an instrument to assert their legitimacy. Earlier this year, Akhundzada ordered judges to rigorously enforce shari’a-law punishments, including flogging and amputations—restituting the savagely-coercive legal system used to subjugate women before 9/11.

Even earlier, though, the Islamic Emirate had taken an ambiguous posture on educating girls—notably, by resiling on a promise to reopen high schools after a meeting of top leaders failed to reach a consensus. The previous minister for higher education, Abdul Baqi Haqqani—linked to the eastern Afghan networks of Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani—had said women could continue to study at university, but in gender-segregated classrooms. Abdul Baqi, however, insisted formal education was “less valuable” than clerical instruction.

Top Taliban leaders—among them health minister Qalandar Ebad, deputy foreign minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, and spokesperson Suhail Shaheen—sent their own daughters for higher education, casting it as an Islamic duty.

Facing resentment against Taliban commanders enriched by power in Kabul—in an increasingly poor country—the southern Afghan clerics responded by pushing the anti-modern values of their peasant constituencies.

Even after a democratic government was instituted following 9/11, resistance against education for girls remained widespread in swathes of rural Afghanistan. The United Nations noted last year that the number of girls in higher education increased from only 5,000 in 2001 to just around 90,000 in 2018. Teachers and students remained concentrated in urban areas.

Also read: Pakistan can’t fight its real enemy Taliban so it’s turning to politically useful enemy India

With the Taliban's latest move, the highest level of education an Afghan girl can get is 6th grade

December 25, 2022

NPR

Heard on All Things Considered

7-Minute Listen

NPR's Andrew Limbong speaks with Pashtana Durrani, executive director of LEARN — a nonprofit that helps Afghan girls access education.

Statue Of Meat-Packing Magnate Beheaded In Sacramento

Investigators found the severed head of the Charles Swanston statue a few feet away, but have no motive.

The historic statue of Charles Swanston, its head recently decapitated, stands in William Land Park on Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2022, in Sacramento, Calif. The statute of a 19th-century Northern California meat-packing magnate was beheaded earlier this week.

 (Photo: Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee via AP)

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS |
PUBLISHED: December 29, 2022

SACRAMENTO — The statue of a 19th-century Northern California rancher and meat-packing magnate was decapitated earlier this week, leaving investigators in the state’s capital city scratching their heads to find a motive behind the vandalism.

Tipsters could receive a $1,000 reward for information about what befell the nearly century-old granite statue of Charles Swanston in Sacramento’s William Land Park on Monday. The severed head was found on the ground nearby.

Swanston traveled west from Ohio as part of the California Gold Rush and quickly realized he’d make more money as a butcher, according to Sacramento City Historian Marcia Eymann.

Police are investigating whether the vandal — or vandals — had a beef with the Swanstons or if it was a random act

.

The head of the Charles Swanston statue rests on the ground near a bush in William Land Park on Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2022, in Sacramento, Calif., the day after it was believed to have been vandalized. The statute of a 19th-century Northern California meat-packing magnate was beheaded earlier this week. (Photo: Hector Amezcua/The Sacramento Bee via AP)

“I have no idea why anyone, unless they’re vegetarians and didn’t like meat-packers” would do this to the statue, Eymann said Wednesday. “I find this very bizarre.”

The statue is the work of the late sculptor Ralph Stackpole, a famous San Francisco artist during the Great Depression era.

An early Sacramento pioneer and settler, Swanston then became a rancher and started a meat-packing business that made him rich. His son in the 1920s commissioned the statue, which is part of a fountain, and donated it to the city after Swanston’s death in 1911 at 101 years old, The Sacramento Bee reported.

The family’s ranch was located on what’s now William Land Park. Eymann said if not for his son’s donation, the city would likely have never put up a piece for Swanston.

“Not that anybody knows who he is, but that’s something very special that Sacramento had and now it’s destroyed,” she said.

https://www.valcomnews.com/charles-swanston-memorial-fountain-pays-tribute-to-early-area-resident

Charles Swanston Memorial Fountain pays tribute to early area ... 

Sep 10, 2014 ... The Charles Swanston statue is among the various memorials at William Land Park. At the west end of William Land Park and bordering the ...

http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~npmelton/genealogy/sacswans.htm

CHARLES SWANSTON - Rootsweb 

Charles Swanston, who closed his eyes to earthly scenes many years ago, ... founder of the well known meat packing firm of Swanston & Son, of Sacramento.

I DUNNO WHO WOULD WANT TO DECAPITATE IT

THE JUNGLE - cloudfront.net

https://d1lexza0zk46za.cloudfront.net › documents

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THE JUNGLE. By Upton Sinclair. (1906). Chapter 1. It was four o'clock when the ceremony was over and the carriages began to arrive. There.

207 pages

Beasts of burden - Antagonism and Practical History | libcom.org

https://libcom.org › article › beasts-burden-antagonism-...

Mar 26, 2017 — An attempt to rethink the separation between animal liberationist and communist politics. This is a text which, we hope, faces in two ...

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  Beasts of Burden - Review - Libcom.org

  https://libcom.org › beasts-of-burden-undercurrent-8

  
  

  Jul 24, 2005 — Its overall argument is that animal and human exploitation are intrinsically related, and that the fight for communism is inseparable to the ...
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  Reply to 'Letter on animal liberation' - Antagonism and ...

  https://libcom.org › library › reply-letter-animal-liberati...

  
  

  Jul 5, 2009 — Beasts of Burden was written as a polemical text with the aim of provoking debate, so we were pleased to read you considered response.