“Millions of documents from a Chinese cybersecurity contractor and the Iranian court system revealing how both governments repress dissent abroad have been posted online over the past two weeks.”
…
“dozens of Chinese government agencies, from local police departments to the army, had hired I-Soon to gather information on opponents by hacking into social media platforms and foreign government databases.
The alleged targets included people from a range of regions suffering unrest: Hong Kongers, Tibetans, and Uyghurs. The United Nations has accused the Chinese government of subjecting Uyghurs to sterilization and forced labor in Xinjiang, where hundreds of thousands have been detained in “re-education camps,” a process the U.S. government considers genocide.
Where foreigners saw a horror show, security contractors saw a lucrative yet difficult business opportunity. “Everyone thinks of Xinjiang like a nice big cake…but we have suffered too much there,” an I-Soon employee complained in one internal email, according to The Guardian.
The Associated Press confirmed the leaks were real. Employees told the A.P. that Chinese police are investigating the identity of the leaker, and Google cybersecurity analyst John Hultquist speculated that the leak could have come from “a rival intelligence service, a dissatisfied insider, or even a rival contractor.””
…
“over 3.2 million files from the Iranian court system were posted to a searchable online database by a group known as Ali’s Justice, named for a Shiite Muslim saint. The files included secret orders and instructions on how to deal with some of Iran’s most well-known dissidents.
Iranian prosecutors had issued a secret list of Iranian athletes living abroad who should be arrested if they ever returned to Iran, according to Iran International, an opposition TV station based outside the country. Other documents included discussions on the “management” of the family of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian woman who died in police custody after being arrested for “bad hijab” in September 2022, the BBC reported.
“The [Amini] family is still on top of the matter and they have no intention of backing down,” a memo read. Iranian authorities have claimed that Amini died of a pre-existing medical condition rather than police mistreatment, and the memo predicted that it would be “very effective” if Amini’s father were to “reflect” on her illnesses in a “brief interview.””
…
“The hacked documents also show a fair amount of paranoia and internal discord within the Iranian government, with officials accusing each other of espionage and corruption, according to the BBC and IranWire, an investigative news site based outside the country.
Like the I-Soon leaker, the exact identity of Ali’s Justice is unclear. The group previously published security camera footage showing abuses inside Iranian prisoners in August 2021 and February 2022 and hacked into a TV station to broadcast anti-government messages in October 2022.”
“There’s currently a record-high share of 40-year-old Americans who’ve never been married (25 percent, as of 2021, an increase from 20 percent in 2010 and 6 percent in 1980), and according to a Pew Center study last year, only 23 percent of Americans see marriage as essential for living a fulfilling life. More than half of single Americans say they aren’t looking for a relationship or even casual dates, largely because they enjoy singlehood or have more pressing priorities. The birthrate has been steadily falling since the Great Recession, which the Brookings Institution argues stems from “shifting priorities” rather than political or economic changes. Young people are having sex later; from 1991 to 2015, a CDC survey found that the percentage of high schoolers who’d had intercourse dropped from 54 percent to 41 percent. The reasons people are having less sex, according to the viral “sex recession” Atlantic feature from 2018, range from smartphone access to surveillance culture, gamified online dating, and improved awareness of boundaries and gender politics. In other words, it’s likely a variety of cultural shifts that explain these changes rather than a single silver bullet.”
…
“the pro-marriage cohort is getting louder. They cite studies that show married people are happier and wealthier, and are more likely to raise happy children. New York Times columnist David Brooks last year advised young people to “obsess less about your career and to think a lot more about marriage.” Economist Melissa Kearney’s recent book argues that the falling marriage rate is to blame for rising inequality. In the face of greater political polarization between the sexes (young women are increasingly likely to be liberal, young men conservative), a recent Washington Post op-ed suggested that “someone will need to compromise” if they ever hope to marry. (Left unasked was why, say, a woman in a post-Roe world would ever want to date someone who did not think she deserved autonomy over her own body.) Loudest among them is University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox’s book Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, which claims that liberal thought leaders’ denial of the importance of marriage amounts to “an unusual form of hypocrisy that, however well intended, contributes to American inequality, increases misery, and borders on the immoral.””
“It was the last vote for Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., the conservative hard-liner who was all but banished from the party after he insisted that its leaders stop spreading lies about the 2020 election and accept that former President Donald Trump lost. He resigned from Congress on Friday, leaving his seat empty for now.
Buck voted “no” on the spending bill, and said he’d have voted “hell no” if possible. But despite his unassailable fiscal conservative credentials, he lost his stature on the right for insisting his party reject the stolen-election claims, reflecting a new litmus test.”