Turkey - Freedom of the Press - Turkey detains journalists who allege army lorries carried weapons for ISIS

Recep Tayip Erdogan dragging Turkey into the abyss

Between one and two thousand people protested outside the Istanbul offices of opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet.

The paper has seen its Editor-in-chief and Ankara correspondent arrested and charged with espionage and treason on Thursday for daring to accuse Turkey of doing business with ISIL.

Both men say they have only done their jobs and deny their reporting is helping enemies of Turkey.

“As you know, an investigation has been launched into our reports on intelligence agency MIT trucks carrying weapons. The plaintiff is President Tayyip Erdogan himself.

We came here to defend journalism. We came here to defend people’s right to be informed, their right to learn the truth if the government is lying,” said Can Dündar, the senior of the two men.

“If the country is under a certain threat or in danger, a journalist has to report it,” said Erdem Gül.

Both men were placed in custody after their declarations. Turkey is currently rated near the bottom of global tables for press freedom and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the author of the lorry story “will pay a heavy price”.

Read more: Turkey detains journalists who allege army lorries carried weapons for ISIL | euronews, world news

EU’s Fate After Paris: A Dark Scenario - by Daniel Stelte

The EU: United we stand divided  we will fail

The terrorist attacks from Paris, inhuman and brutal, serve as an accelerant for already ongoing processes that have been weakening the European Union’s bonds.

Now they combine in a dangerous mixture and react with each other:

• The “third world war”, as labeled by the pope, with radical Islam, which is intensifying for years and in which peaceful solution seems more and more utopian.
• The wave of refugees flowing into Europe, trying to escape war, suppression and poverty.
• A depressing lack of cultural will for self-defense of the West, serving like an invitation to intolerant people to become even more intolerant.
• A European Union that shows more and more that it is not build on shared values but on the generation of economic gains and prosperity. Once Union stops being financially beneficial politicians come under pressure to explain the benefits to their national electorates.
• European governments not sticking to agreements and rules. Declaring themselves incapable of returning to the order of law.
• Governments and private sectors having lived beyond their financial means for years, unable to deal with the hefty debt load and unfunded promises for retirement and health care of an aging society.
• European leaders who have instead of addressing these issues and the ongoing Euro crisis heads on have played for time – without making use of this time.

All of this – and the list is not complete – is now mixing and reinforcing each other.

Note EU-Digest:  Only unity in purpose and joint European action can overcome the dangers that lie ahead.  If the EU breaks up the enemy, which is not only terrorism as such, but also corporate greed and manipulation, will slowly but surely pick away and destroy democracy and liberty individually in each European state without mercy. The EU is worth fighting for !

Read more: EU’s Fate After Paris: A Dark Scenario - The Globalist

The Netherlands: Winds of up to 115 kph hit the Netherlands, more tonight - DutchNews.nl

Winds gusting at up to 115 kph battered the west and north of the Netherlands on Tuesday night and the emergency services were called out to deal with numerous reports of damage. Commuters are being warned to be careful of branches on the roads on Wednesday morning.

The KNMI weather bureau withdrew its code orange storm warning around 04.00 but said more stormy weather is expected on Wednesday night. Some lanes of the A28 were closed after a tanker carrying pig fat was blown over, news agency ANP said. The fat made the road slippery and has to be cleared up before the roads can reopen. Train travel was also disrupted for a time in some places.

A tree has blocked the track between Gouda and Alpen aan den Rijn and the number of sprinter trains between Amsterdam, Schiphol airport and Utrecht has been reduced because of problems with the electricfication system.

In the Groningen town of Noordlaren, a tree crashed into a moving car but the driver was only slightly hurt, broadcaster Nos said. In Zandaam, 450 refugees had to be moved to a sports centre because the marquees they currently live in were not thought to be strong enough to resist the storm.

Read more: Winds of up to 115 kph hit the Netherlands, more tonight - DutchNews.nl

UN Human Rights Council: Giving Saudi Arabia a vital position on the UN Human Rights Council is like putting Dracula in charge of a blood bank - by Noman Ansari

During my 15 years growing up in Saudi Arabia, there was one tenet I, like most expatriates, strictly abided by. This simple unwritten rule was; minimise your interaction with locals.

This is because many, though certainly not all Saudis we encountered, looked upon foreigners as if they were insolent slaves. From interactions in the neighbourhood, workplace, shops, and more, the Saudi disdain for foreigners is pretty clear.

With Saudi media towing the Kingdom line, it was only through word of mouth that we learnt of expatriate girls, women, boys, and boyish looking men escaping capture from Saudi groups. These gangs often travelled in hulking SUVs that sported tinted black windows, and would usually take their victims out into the middle of the desert to assault them sexually.

I myself evaded a child molester, when my childhood friend and I were followed by a big bellied man with a large beard who tried to bribe us with money and candy. This monster regularly prowled the neighbourhood for a few weeks.

Read more: Giving Saudi Arabia a vital position on the UN Human Rights Council is like putting Dracula in charge of a blood bank – The Express Tribune Blog

Has EU gender equality policy lost its momentum?

Yes, reckons Finnish researcher Johanna Kantola. The EU Court of Justice, meanwhile, is having a positive impact through judgements which could also have major consequences in the Nordic region, according to Kirsten Ketscher, Professor of Social Security and Welfare at the University of  Copenhagen.


Read more: Has EU gender equality policy lost its momentum? — Nordic Labour Journal

Paris attacks: Where does Isis get its money and arms from? - by Tom Brooks-Pollock

Jeremy Corbyn posed a series of rhetorical questions when asked whether bombing Isis following the Paris terror attacks would make a significant difference to the situation.

In an interview with Lorraine Kelly on ITV, the Labour leader answered "probaby not", adding: "Who is funding Isis? Who is arming Turkey? Who is providing safe havens for ISIS. You have to ask questions about the arms everyone has sold in the region."

The Paris attackers were armed with AK-47s and identical suicide vests, while police seized a rocket launcher and a huge cache of weapons in terrorists raids in Lyon following the attack. Some are said to have been trained in Syria.

So where does Isis get its money, guns and bombs, both in Europe and in the Middle East?

To a large extent Isis is now funding itself – through oil sales, kidnap ransoms, smuggling, extortion, taxes, looting, bank robberies.

When it was starting out, Isis was ‘seed funded’ by wealthy donors –individuals and charities from across the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.

At first, the governments of the Persian kingdoms openly gave money to the opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including Isis. This has since become politically and diplomatically incorrect – but large amounts of money still finds its way to Isis from wealthy individuals from the Persian gulf.

Note EU-Digest: Wouldn't it be far more effective if the West and specially the US, which probably has the worlds most sophisticated surveillance and electronic spy network, also starts gathering information on who are buying ISIS commodities and where ISIS buys their weapons?  Nothing would work faster in stopping their maniactic activities than closing their access to financial sources and putting those who buy and sell from them in jail. Then again, this information could probably open a can of worms for the West?

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Read More: Paris attacks: Where does Isis get its money and arms from? | World | News | The Independent

ISIS: Hacker Group Anonymous Announces 'Biggest Operation' Against ISIS After Paris Attacks

The Hacker group Anonymous declared "total war" on the Islamic State (ISIS) extremist group on Sunday following the wave of attacks in Paris that killed at least 129 people and left dozens more in a critical condition.

A masked, French-speaking figure with a distorted voice is shown reading a statement from the group in the two-minute-long YouTube video. Clips from the attacks in Paris are shown in the video.

"War is declared. Get prepared," the masked figure says in the video in reference to ISIS. "The French people are stronger than you and will come out of this atrocity even stronger. Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down. You should know that we will find you and we will not let you go. We will launch the biggest operation ever against you."

The escalation in Anonymous's operation against ISIS comes after at least seven suspected attackers carried out gun and bomb attacks against a number of civilian targets across the French capital, leaving 352 wounded and at least 99 in a critical condition. French police are continuing a manhunt for a man they believe took part in the attacks, identified as 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam.

Anonymous has targeted ISIS for a number of months, revealing the Twitter accounts of ISIS members and hacking a number of the group's sites. U.S. magazine Foreign Policy estimates that the group has dismantled at least 149 of the extremist group's affiliated websites, flagged approximately 101,000 Twitter accounts and nearly 6,000 propaganda videos.

Note EU-Digest: Excellent initiative. The more the better . Unity is the best defense against terrorism and fear.

Read more: Hacker Group Anonymous Announces 'Biggest Operation' Against ISIS After Paris Attacks