Europe

The Chaos Computer Club (CCC), which says it is Europe's largest association of hackers, and other organizations have launched a call for a monthly Digital Independence Day, urging people to rethink their reliance on the dominant digital platforms.

cross-posted from : https://news.abolish.capital/post/16001

German journalist Anna Liedtke has accused Israeli prison authorities of raping her. Liedtke was part of the Freedom Flotilla which was intercepted and detained by Israel. Speaking publicly on the matter, the journalist said that she had been subjected to sexual violence during her prison transfer by Zionist Israeli forces.

BREAKING: Israel detains activists and confiscates aid carried on the Freedom Flotilla as legal group warns of further action

From @skwawkbox https://t.co/4yEhRcuFjG

— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) October 8, 2025

“It did not break my will”

In a video shared by Drop Site, Liedtke shared her harrowing experience inside an Israeli prison:

I was part of the Freedom Flotilla as a journalist. I was on the journalist and medical boat, the Conscience, on the way to Gaza this fall. Around 100 nautical miles away from the coast of Gaza, we were intercepted. We were put into prison for five days. And in this speech, as a woman, I want to talk about the sexual violence I experienced in prison.

I do not want to talk about it just to put the focus on myself because it is nothing personal; it is nothing individual, and it’s nothing that I should be ashamed about.

We were transferred from one prison to another and during the strip searches I was raped. I’m sharing this as again, to say it again, and not just for me and not just because I’m the only one that experienced it, because this is not true. I’m sharing it for all the women who experience sexual violence and sexual torture in the prisons; for all the women who have experienced similar horrible things in the prison, and probably are experiencing them right now as we’re speaking on this conference.

I’m speaking on behalf of those who did not survive those attacks, those who cannot speak about it because they are still in prison. And again, I am not the one that should feel ashamed.

It is the Zionist states and its prisons, its guards, who should feel ashamed. But on the other hand, there is nothing else to expect from states like those. A couple of times we heard from Palestinian prisoners, especially from female prisoners, about the situation in the Zionist prison. So what else should we expect from Zionist prisons, from the Zionist fascist states?

One thing is very important: It did not break my will.

There are so many role models, so many women comrades, so many brave women I take a lot of strength from. And looking back at history, women have always been stronger than that.

And I will end my speech with saying this. I will not stop fighting for justice and the end of violence until every woman is free and has received justice. I will not stop fighting until patriarchy does not exist.

Drop Site

The video of Liedtke can be found here. We would ordinarily include the post in the article, but for some reason we cannot embed it. We can’t confirm if the issue is due to a glitch or if Twitter/X is preventing it from being shared, but the following is a screengrab of the tweet:

Other videos of Liedtke, including this one, are still sharable:

In a shocking testimony, German journalist and activist Anna Liedtke says Israeli soldiers raped her after she was abducted from an international aid ship bound for Gaza earlier this year. pic.twitter.com/g74Tt46aYH

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) December 27, 2025

We can also share tweets which include the same video as the Drop Site post:

German journalist Anna Liedtke who was part of the Freedom Coalition Flotilla that sailed to break the blockade on Gaza was r@@ped by the IDF in Israëli detention.
She revealed this horrible detail now because she didn't want to distract the global attention from #Gaza genocide pic.twitter.com/RrMCflHiR8

— Saif Maher (@SaifMaher421388) December 25, 2025

We can additionally share other posts from Drop Site:

“There’s a killing mechanism that has been created… [by] the U.S. and Israel together. They have made conditions in Gaza so deplorable, so incompatible with human life.. These conditions are completely manufactured. And now, you don’t need a single bomb to continue killing… https://t.co/KZ3Go7erX9

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) December 28, 2025

Featured image via Drop Site

By Willem Moore

From Canary via This RSS Feed.

Ireland is looking to push for EU-level rules on social media ID verification and a ban for children during the country’s rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of 2026.

Dublin also wants new laws to clamp down on anonymous “keyboard warriors” who spread disinformation and hate online, Harris added, pointing to risks to democracy.

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.ml/post/40976380

The plane carrying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Florida for talks with U.S. President Donald Trump passed through the airspace of three countries that are parties to the International Criminal Court, despite an active ICC arrest warrant against the Israeli leader.

Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24 showed Netanyahu’s aircraft, known as “Wings of Zion,” crossed the airspace of Greece, Italy and France before reaching the Atlantic Ocean.

All three countries are signatories to the Rome Statute, which obliges member states to cooperate with ICC arrest warrants.

But the story of Lufthansa's role in the Third Reich war machine, one that includes the large-scale use of forced labor, remains largely under the radar. In fact, Lufthansa is just one of many companies that collaborated with the Nazi regime, big-name brands and business dynasties that continue to "hide in plain sight," according to journalist David de Jong.

He is the author of the 2022 book, "Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties." It charts how, unlike the high-ranking Nazi politicians and military leaders tried at Nuremberg, the majority of business leaders who cooperated with Adolf Hitler's regime were never really held accountable.

After Germany's defeat, the focus quickly turned to the nascent Cold War, to combating communism and Soviet Russia. West Germany was seen as capitalist bulwark and German businessmen were allowed to keep their assets, whether they were legitimately theirs or whether they had been seized from Jewish businesses.

West Germany's first postwar chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, demanded an end to denazification proceedings. The country needed experienced civil servants and professionals, Adenauer argued. His government enacted amnesty laws in the early 1950s, reintegrating hundreds of thousands of former Nazis into German society, including the civil service and the judiciary.

title

Archived version

On March 16, 2022, Russia’s air force dropped two bombs on the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theatre in Mariupol, a landmark in the town’s center. According to Ukrainian official reports, at least 600 civilians were sheltering in the basement of the building at the time. Images from the air showed “ДЕТИ” (in Russian “Children”) written in huge capital letters on the square in front of the entrance to make it clear to pilots that the theater was full of children.

Two days later, Mariupol City Council reported that nearly 130 survivors had been pulled from the basement. A week on, it reported, citing eyewitnesses, that the bombs had killed about 300 people.

A subsequent independent investigation ... suggests the number of fatalities may have reached 600 ...

...

Russian forces rolled into Mariupol, a bustling Black Sea coast city, in the first months of its assault in 2022 and imposed a brutal, nearly three-month siege that resulted in thousands of deaths – 8,000 according to Human Rights Watch, and 22,000 according to the city’s exiled Ukrainian municipal council.

The city on the Sea of Azov was devastated and some 300,000 of the pre-conflict population of 540,000 fled. The UN said 90 percent of the buildings were destroyed or damaged in the siege. Russia has since sought to turn Mariupol into a new symbol of prosperity in the parts of Ukraine it controls and many East Asians from far-flung Siberia as well as Chechens and other Caucasians have flocked to the city.

...

“There were so many people in the theatre during the bombing and a lot of people were killed there,” said Ihor Kytrysh, an actor who had been performing at the Mariupol theatre since 2000, and is now living in western Ukraine.

“It’s like performing a play on the bones of the dead." ...

In an interview with the Moscow-based news site Moskovsky Komsomolet, Igor Solonin, the theatre's Russian-appointed cultural director, was asked to comment on criticism from Ukrainians on reopening the theatre. He dismissed those concerns, saying most cities across Europe have seen military action in the past. "Aren't Berlin, Paris and Warsaw built on someone else's bones?” Solonin told the publication, in an interview published Nov. 25.

...

this is the open secret in american governance. these are who now push from the top to destroy EU - we're the big threat to them.

Archived version

On March 16, 2022, Russia’s air force dropped two bombs on the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theatre in Mariupol, a landmark in the town’s center. According to Ukrainian official reports, at least 600 civilians were sheltering in the basement of the building at the time. Images from the air showed “ДЕТИ” (in Russian “Children”) written in huge capital letters on the square in front of the entrance to make it clear to pilots that the theater was full of children.

Two days later, Mariupol City Council reported that nearly 130 survivors had been pulled from the basement. A week on, it reported, citing eyewitnesses, that the bombs had killed about 300 people.

A subsequent independent investigation ... suggests the number of fatalities may have reached 600 ...

...

Russian forces rolled into Mariupol, a bustling Black Sea coast city, in the first months of its assault in 2022 and imposed a brutal, nearly three-month siege that resulted in thousands of deaths – 8,000 according to Human Rights Watch, and 22,000 according to the city’s exiled Ukrainian municipal council.

The city on the Sea of Azov was devastated and some 300,000 of the pre-conflict population of 540,000 fled. The UN said 90 percent of the buildings were destroyed or damaged in the siege. Russia has since sought to turn Mariupol into a new symbol of prosperity in the parts of Ukraine it controls and many East Asians from far-flung Siberia as well as Chechens and other Caucasians have flocked to the city.

...

“There were so many people in the theatre during the bombing and a lot of people were killed there,” said Ihor Kytrysh, an actor who had been performing at the Mariupol theatre since 2000, and is now living in western Ukraine.

“It’s like performing a play on the bones of the dead." ...

In an interview with the Moscow-based news site Moskovsky Komsomolet, Igor Solonin, the theatre's Russian-appointed cultural director, was asked to comment on criticism from Ukrainians on reopening the theatre. He dismissed those concerns, saying most cities across Europe have seen military action in the past. "Aren't Berlin, Paris and Warsaw built on someone else's bones?” Solonin told the publication, in an interview published Nov. 25.

...

[Archived version]https://web.archive.org/web/20251229154000/https://www.kyivpost.com/post/66305)

...

The detainees include professional reporters such as Vladyslav Yesypenko, Dmytro Khyliuk, Mark Kaliush, and citizen journalists like Iryna Danylovych, Oleksiy Bessarabov, Dmytro Shtyblikov, and Seyran Saliyev. Some were captured as far back as 2016 and 2017.

...

More recent detentions include journalists and Telegram channel administrators from occupied Melitopol and Zaporizhzhia, such as Iryna Levchenko, Oleksandr Malyshev, Heorhiy Levchenko, and Yana Suvorova, who were kidnapped in 2023 while reporting under occupation.

...

120 Ukrainian journalists have died since the start of Russia’s full-scale war. Among them is Viktoriia Roshchyna, a 27-year-old investigative journalist who disappeared in August 2023 while reporting from a Russian-occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region.

In February of this year, Roshchyna’s body was returned from Russian custody showing signs of torture, including neck bruising likely from strangulation, burns possibly caused by electric shocks, and broken bones. Some of these cases, including Roshchyna’s, were highlighted in the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine documentary “Free the Voices: Stories of Ukrainian Journalists Captured by Russia,” which premiered in Kyiv in October.

...

Some journalists were freed this year. Vladyslav Yesypenko, a Radio Liberty journalist who was detained in Russian-controlled Crimea for over four years, was released in June. Dmytro Khyliuk, a UNIAN journalist, was returned to Ukraine in August after more than three years in captivity.

...

Russia holds one of the world’s largest populations of jailed journalists. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), 48 journalists were imprisoned in Russia in 2025, 26 of them Ukrainian. Many face charges such as “espionage” or “extremism,” which human rights organizations say are fabricated.

...

Originally set to kick off on December 30, 2024, the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) had already been delayed by a year. A revision approved last week now pushes it to December 2026.

The European Parliament last week voted to delay the bloc’s controversial deforestation regulation to December 2026 amid mounting pressure from some EU and non-EU countries, global business partners and industry.

...

The law cracks down on commodities linked to deforestation and forest degradation for agricultural expansion, targeting cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soya, and wood sold within the bloc. These six commodities accounted for over 50% of total deforestation between 2001-2015.

European companies ARE ready to help people and organizations with DigitalSovereignty. Here 2 great examples:

1. The French Ministry of Education provides cloud storage for 1.2 million employees using Nextcloud architecture: https://www.cio-online.com/actualites/lire-l-education-nationale-offre-le-stockage-cloud-a-ses-1-2-million-d-agents-sans-gafam-16726.html

2. Airbus is 80% certain they can find a European supplier to provide in their complex needs for a cloud: https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/19/airbus_sovereign_cloud/

If even Airbus and ministries are migrating to European solutions, then smaller businesses, non-profits, governments, people and families certainly can!

@murena@lemmy.world @murena@mastodon.social

TL;DR:

• The vast majority of cotton used by global fashion brands is sourced in East Turkistan, China's Xinjiang region, where a largely Muslim Uyghur population as the biggest minority group is subject to extreme persecution by the Chinese state, including torture, rape, forced sterilisation, and slave-like labour conditions
• Experts say the EU Forced Labour Regulation that will come into force in December 2027 is an important step, but urge for further steps, e.g., a law forcing brands to disclose their steps taken to prevent forced labour in their supply chains
• Financial issues and costs of tracking material back to their origin is no excuse, experts say

...

Most customers walking into Dublin city centre clothes shops would not dream of buying products linked to forced labour practices.

And yet many of them may be doing exactly that, without realising. That was the core claim made in a recent RTÉ Investigates documentary, which reported that supplies sold to many Irish retailers could be linked to forced labour.

Many of these firms reportedly source cotton from Xinjiang, a region in northwest China where the largely Muslim Uyghur population is the biggest minority group.

...

Many international retailers have pledged to stop buying cotton sourced from the region. However, RTÉ revealed that suppliers to many Irish retailers still have links to these areas.

...

Rubens Carvalho, deputy director at environmental non-profit Earthsight, points out: “The average person who walks into a shop doesn’t wish to be complicit in forced labour and would probably be upset to find out they could be inadvertent accomplices.”

...

Take the example of Xinjiang. If brands have said they will not buy from the area, why does cotton linked to the region still end up in shops?

A key problem ... is the certification systems used by retailers. Most of these schemes don’t give significant detail on where cotton is actually sourced from.

For example, a type of certification system used by many retailers is called “mass balance”.

Here, the certification body inspects cotton farms to ensure they operate ethically. However, it allows for the mixing of certified and non-certified cotton. So a product can be sold with ‘60 per cent certified’ cotton. This means that while 60 per cent of the cotton is from certified farms, the source of the remaining 40 per cent is unknown.

“The problem is that once you attach a sustainability label to goods, it can provide a misleading image,” says Carvalho.

...

Take Better Cotton, which describes itself as the largest cotton sustainability programme in the world. The body is funded by retailers and brands.

It clearly states that cotton which is certified under the Better Cotton Initiative “is not traceable to its country of origin”.

“This doesn’t allow consumers of goods to have visibility over where their goods come from,” says Carvalho.

...

“For large companies, it shouldn’t be hard or expensive to do,” he says. “You could use barcodes or QR codes in cotton bales, for example.” But Dr Len Wassenaar, a leading expert in the type of testing used by cotton retailers, says this could also cause issues. “It is easy to change a label or a barcode,” he says.

“When there are pennies on the pound to be made, there will be fraud in so many areas, not just cotton. That’s why chemical tests are so compelling.”

...

Dr Wassenaar points out that the testing companies often don’t publicly share their work, meaning it can’t be verified by other scientists.

“[Chemical testing] is a powerful tool, but transparency is needed,” he says.

...

Patricia Carrier, a human rights lawyer with the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur region, says attempts to certify cotton late in the supply process create too many issues.

She says it would be better if large retailers and brands insisted on traceability from the very start of the production process.

“No certification is going to be able to guarantee a retailer that their product isn’t tainted by cotton from the region… Only a full mapping of the supply can show if a brand or retailer is linked to a region.”

...

Carrier says [costs of tracing back cotton are] no excuse. She also points out that EU legislators are pushing for this reform to happen.

Last year, the EU introduced the Forced Labour Regulation.

This bans products made with forced labour from being sold in the bloc. Regulators can force retailers which break the rules to withdraw their products from the market.

The rules will only come into force in December 2027 and Carrier says there are still question marks over how enforcement will work in practice.

...

“The EU Forced Labour Regulation is a great starting point.”

Carrier says retailers should start looking now to “shift their supply chains out of the Uyghur region”, so they’re not caught out once the new rules take effect.

...

Nessa Cosgrove, a Labour senator, says the EU’s Forced Labour Regulation ... also calls on the Irish government to “go further” and pass Labour’s Exploitation and Trafficking Bill.

This would require companies to report annually on the measures they are taking to ensure that forced labour materials aren’t in their products.

“Irish people want to know that when we shop on our own high streets, we’re not contributing to misery and exploitation elsewhere,” she says.

...

Archived link

https://archive.is/c3U7L

For example, in the production of active ingredients, Europe's market share by value has slumped. While it exceeded 80% at the end of the 1990s, it had fallen to 48% by 2014. "Today, it's closer to 30%, and it's likely to drop further," noted Vincent Touraille, president of SICOS, France's union of players in the organic chemistry and biochemistry industries. Meanwhile, China and India have soared to reach respective market shares of 35% and 20%.

A study conducted by German generic drug industry association Pro Generika found that at least three commonly used antibiotics – doxycycline, clarithromycin and cefaclor – now have only one or two manufacturers left in Europe. More broadly, 80% of the active ingredients in medicines consumed on the continent now come from India or China.

https://archive.is/xtYdt

At the center of the criticism is the planned Article 88c, which provides for special relief for data processing in the context of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The experts Peter Hense and David Wagner warn here of an "unlimited special legal zone". Since the term "AI system" is extremely broadly defined, companies could in the future declare almost any automated data processing as AI-relevant in order to evade strict data protection rules. This would replace the technology-neutral logic of the GDPR with a technology-specific privilege that primarily benefits service providers.