Globe Trot: Europe's battle with totalitarian ideology

DENMARK: Pegida, the European anti-Islamic group, is staying on the march despite death threats from ISIS. Organizers for a demonstration this evening in Copenhagen vow they will go through with it, while larger events in Germany were cancelled over the weekend as post-Charlie Hebdo tensions flare.

EUROPEAN UNION: With France and Belgium on high alert, and gunmen and terror planners still at large, EU ministers called today for an alliance with Muslim countries to fight the growing Islamist militant threat.

FRANCE: In a New York Times op-ed, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen called on the government to denounce as “Islamists” the perpetrators of the Paris attacks: “France, land of human rights and freedoms, was attacked on its own soil by a totalitarian ideology: Islamic fundamentalism.” While the White House prevaricates, Le Pen quoted Camus: “To misname things is to add to the world’s unhappiness.”

NIGER: Churches are burning in Niger as a backlash to “Je suis Charlie” demonstrations. This eyewitness has powerful Facebook updates of the violence.

AFGHANISTAN: A Guantanamo detainee deemed a “medium” threat, released in 2007, now leads Islamic State recruitment efforts in Afghanistan. Yes, the Islamic State is recruiting jihadists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to Gen. John Campbell, commander of the U.S. support mission in Afghanistan.

IRAQ’s overall oil output has hit a record 4 million barrels per day. Much of that has to do with Kurdish peshmerga forces moving in rapidly to control Kirkuk last summer as ISIS took control of Mosul. Kirkuk is the heart of Iraq’s oil industry, and oil from the north is exported via a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

NORTH KOREA: Famous North Korean defector Shin Dong-hyuk, the only surviving escapee to claim he was born in an infamous prison camp, has now changed important parts of his well-traveled story. Shin says he did not spend all his childhood in Camp 14, but went to a less restrictive facility with his mother and brother before being transferred back to Camp 14. The discrepancies likely will be seized on by Pyongyang authorities, who face an overdue inquiry at the International Criminal Court, fallout from cyberattacks on Sony over The Interview, and were ranked by Open Doors the most brutal regime in the world for Christians.

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