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US airstrike kills 30 civilians in Afghanistan

Mohammad Stanekzai
US News
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 18:32 UTC
Afghan boy airstrike
© Reuters
An Afghan boy receives treatment at a hospital after an airstrike in Helmand province, Afghanistan November 28, 2018.
At least 30 Afghan civilians were killed in U.S. air strikes in the Afghan province of Helmand, officials and residents of the area said on Wednesday, the latest casualties from a surge in air operations aimed at driving the Taliban into talks.

Afghanistan's NATO-led force said Afghan government forces and U.S. advisers came under fire from Taliban fighters in a compound in Garmsir district and called in an air strike, but the ground forces were not aware of any civilians in or near the compound.

Helmand provincial governor Mohammad Yasin Khan said troops had called in air strikes against Taliban fighters in Garmsir, causing both civilian and Taliban casualties.

A resident of the area called Mohammadullah said the clash began late on Tuesday.
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Treasure Chest

Oops! Russian state bank VTB almost loans poor African country six times its GDP by mistake


RT
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 17:53 UTC
VTB capital bank loan CAR

VTB did not say who was responsible for the mistake or how such a large figure could have been published without being spotted.
The Central African Republic (CAR) could have landed windfall on Tuesday after Russian state bank VTB reported it had almost lent the country $12 billion by mistake. The sum is over six times the country's gross domestic product.

The loan was mentioned in a quarterly VTB financial report published by the Central Bank of Russia and seen by Reuters. However, VTB insists it was a technical error and that no such loan was provided to the African country.

"VTB bank has no exposure of this size to CAR. Most likely, this is a case of a technical mistake in the system when the countries were being coded," the lender said in a statement sent to Reuters. It didn't detail who was responsible for the mistake or how such a large figure could have been published without being spotted.
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X

'Those who question are smeared and threatened' - feminist banned from Twitter for saying 'men aren't women'


RT
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 17:55 UTC
censorship
© Getty Images
A feminist - banned from Twitter for saying that "men are not women" - told RT that those who question ideologies of modern society are threatened, harassed and even fired, adding free speech and democracy may be in danger.

Meghan Murphy, editor of Canada's leading feminist news portal Feminist Current, was banned on Twitter because several of her tweets violated the platform's rules against "hateful conduct." One of the 'offending' tweets stated that "men aren't women," while the other asked: "How are transwomen not men?"

Contacted by RT, Murphy shared her reaction on the ban and tried to unravel what lies behind this online drive. She believes that society is now being forced "to adapt to a new language and a new ideology" which says that the instant a male declares that he is a woman, they must be accepted as literally female.
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Cross

Dutch church holds 800 hour non-stop service to keep political deportation from occurring

Holly Robertson
ABC News Australia
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 14:37 UTC
Protestant church in The Hague.

The Tamrazyans are now receiving sanctuary in a Protestant church in The Hague.
A Dutch church service that began a month ago has maintained a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-per-week service for over a month to protect an Armenian refugee family from being deported.

The Tamrazyans, a family of five, have lived in the Netherlands for nearly nine years, but are facing expulsion after a court rejected their appeals to stay in the country.

They are now receiving sanctuary in a Protestant church in The Hague, where under Dutch law, police are prohibited from entering places of worship during religious services, meaning the family cannot be arrested as long as the service continues.

"We do all this by continuously praying, singing, listening to sermons and worshipping," Reverend Axel Wicke, a priest at the Bethel church, tweeted.
"The Tamrazyan family is literally living in a protective house built by prayers and worship."
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Caesar

'Temples to colonial theft': Museums in the West should return stolen artifacts to where they came from

Danielle Ryan
RT
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 12:21 UTC
© Reuters / Carlos Barria
"Moai" statues, Easter Island
Is it possible to 'loan' something back to the person or place you stole it from? The British Museum in London, which houses one of the biggest permanent collections of world art and artifacts, certainly seems to think so.

Last week, responding to an emotional plea from the governor of Easter Island, the museum generously announced that it would consider "loaning" an 800-year-old statue back to the territory, which is now part of Chile.

The Hoa Hakananai'a was stolen - or "taken without permission" as The Guardian more delicately put it - in 1868 by the British HMS 'Topaze' and delivered to Queen Victoria. The museum itself uses even more sanitized language. Its online information page about the statue explains that it was "collected" during the frigate's expedition to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and was "gifted" by the Queen to the museum a year later.

"This statue would have originally stood on a specially built platform on the sacred site of Orongo," the museum explains. "It would have stood with giant stone companions, their backs to the sea, keeping watch over the island."
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Black Cat 2

Facing extradition, Julian Assange sends Embassy Cat to live with family


RT
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 15:21 UTC
Embassy cat
© Reuters / Toby Melville
Julian Assange's cat peers out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
As the threat of extradition to the US hangs over Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder has been forced to keep his beloved pet cat safe by sending it away to live in exile with Assange family members.

Residing in Ecuador's London embassy since 2012, Assange's safety became precarious last year when Ecuador elected President Lenin Moreno, a more pro-US voice than that of predecessor Rafael Correa and a man who described Assange as a "stone in our shoe."

Assange has since had his internet at Ecuador's UK embassy cut, his visitation rights severely curtailed, and Moreno's government has revoked the diplomatic credentials of London ambassador Abad Ortiz, Assange's last diplomatic contact in the UK. Add the reported existence of a sealed indictment into the mix, and things aren't looking good for the WikiLeaks boss.
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Megaphone

Twitter's trans-activist decree targets feminists

Meghan Murphy
Quillette
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 00:01 UTC
Meghan Murphy
On November 15, I woke up to find my Twitter account locked, on account of what the company described as "hateful conduct." In order to regain access, I was made to delete two tweets from October. Fair enough, you might think. Concern about the tone of discourse on social media has been widespread for years. Certainly, many have argued that Twitter officials should be doing more to discourage the vitriol and violent threats that have become commonplace on their platform.

In this case, however, the notion that my commentary could be construed as "hateful" baffled me. One tweet read, simply, "Men aren't women," and the other asked "How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?" That last question is one I've asked countless times, including in public speeches, and I have yet to get a persuasive answer. I ask these questions not to spread hate - because I do not hate trans-identified individuals - but rather to make sense of arguments made by activists within that community. Instead of answering such questions, however, these same activists insist that the act of simply asking them is evidence of hatred.

Comment: It didn't take long for the regressive left to start eating its own. Fights within the social justice movement are likely to escalate even more in the near future, as divisions continue to multiply and previously 'oppressed' individuals see themselves recast as 'oppressor'. The entire ideology is a self-consuming black hole that will eventually work itself out of existence; but unfortunately, not without a number of casualties.

See also:

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Bizarro Earth

Indonesia's new 'heresy app' draws fire for targeting of minorities


Rappler.com
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 17:44 UTC
SMART PAKEM APP
© Adek Berry/AFP
SMART PAKEM APP. An Indonesian woman shows a newly launched smartphone application called "Smart Pakem" of Jakarta's prosecutor office in Jakarta on November 27, 2018.
A new Indonesian government app that lets the public report suspected cases of religious heresy is drawing fire as rights groups warn it could aggravate persecution of minorities in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation.

Users of the app can report groups practicing unrecognized faiths or unorthodox interpretations of Indonesia's 6 officially recognised religions, including Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism.

"Smart Pakem", which was launched Sunday, November 25, and is available for free in the Google Play store, was created by the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office, which said it would help educate the public and modernize the current reporting process.

The app will also list religious edicts and blacklisted organizations and will allow users to file complaints instantaneously, instead going through the often cumbersome process of submitting a written accusation to a government office.

Comment: For more on the forces at work in Indonesia, see:

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Fire

Chinese chemical factory blast kills 22, injures 22

Wang Jianfen and Hou Liqiang
China Daily
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 18:00 UTC
China chemical plant
Twenty-two people were killed and 22 injured in a blast near a chemical plant in Zhangjiakou in Hebei province in North China on Wednesday.

At 12:41 am, an explosion and fire erupted near a chemical plant in Qiaodong district of Zhangjiakou city, Zhangjiakou Daily said via WeChat.

Police and firefighters at the scene said that the injured were rushed to hospital.
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Arrow Down

In defense of comedians: The complaint against Dani Mateo is an attempt to justify intolerance


El País
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 13:01 UTC
A society that takes its comedians to court is losing its own sense of generosity and greatness
Dan Mateo investigation hate crime Spain
© KIKE PARA EL PAÍS
Dani Mateo outside the courthouse on Monday.
On Monday, the Spanish comedian Dani Mateo appeared before a judge who is investigating whether he committed the crime of publicly offending Spanish symbols, as well as a second count of hate crimes. The investigation is based on a complaint filed by a National Police union called Alternativa Sindical de la Policía over a television sketch that was part of a comedy show on La Sexta.

Respect for the justice system's decisions means that silence must be kept over the fact that the judge accepted the complaint and summoned Mateo to a hearing. But when it comes to the complaint itself, filed by a police organization citing the defense of citizens' rights and freedoms, it is necessary to underscore that theirs is a private initiative, not an automatic application of the law. And as a private initiative, rather than protecting citizens' rights and freedoms, what it really seeks to do is to define them, and in this way to award itself the job of limiting those very same rights and freedoms.

The complaint talks about the symbols of Spain, demanding respect for them in the name of "democratic society." But it is precisely because this is a democratic society that nobody, least of all a police organization, should invoke democratic principles to report a comedian, or to demand from him a type of respect that is easily confused with an invitation to self-censorship.

Comment: See: Comedian faces hate crime charge and four years in jail for blowing his nose on the Spanish flag

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