Berkeley riot shows the threat to free speech

The events on Wednesday night at the University of California-Berkeley remind me of a Christopher Hitchens’s speech:

Bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that every time you violate or propose to violate the free speech of someone else, in potencia, you’re making a rod for own back. Because the other question raised by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is simply this: who’s going to decide?

To whom do you award the right to decide which speech is harmful or who is the harmful speaker? Or determine in advance what are the harmful consequences going to be, that we know enough about in advance to prevent?

To whom would you give this job? To whom are you going to award the job of being the censor? Isn’t it a famous old story that the man who has to read all the pornography, in order to decide what’s fit to be passed and what’s fit not to be, is the man most likely to be debauched?

Did you hear any speaker, the opposition to this motion — eloquent as… one of them was — to whom you would delegate the task of deciding for you what you could read? To whom you would give the job of deciding for you, relieve you of the responsibility of hearing what you might have to hear?

Do you know anyone — hands up — do you know anyone to whom you’d give this job? Does anyone have a nominee? You mean there’s no one in Canada good enough to decide what I can read? Or hear? I had no idea. But there’s a law that says there must be such a person. Or there’s a subsection of some piddling law that says it. Well, the hell with that law then. It’s inviting you to be liars and hypocrites and to deny what you evidently know already.

About the censorious instinct we basically know all that we need to know, and we’ve known it for a long time. […] It may not be determined in advance what words are apt or inapt. No one has the knowledge that would be required to make that call.

And, more to the point, one has to suspect the motives of those who do so. In particular, the motives of those who are determined to be offended, those who will go through a treasure house of English, like Dr. Johnson’s first lexicon, in search of filthy words, to satisfy themselves and some instinct about which I dare not speculate.

The riot happened at UCB over a speech Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos intended to give. According to Yiannopoulos, the speech focused on the topic of cultural appropriation. As he noted in his video response to the riot, that hardly seems a topic worthy of burning cars, smashing windows, and assaulting people. Yet that is what occurred.

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Boko Haram kidnapped 10,000 boys and the world remained silent

It says something about a culture that prides itself on humanitarian concern that this culture could care so much about 200 kidnapped girls, but not bat an eye over 10,000 kidnapped boys.

The Wall Street Journal published an article detailing the extent of Boko Haram’s cruelty against boys. I previously wrote about how the terrorist group spent the better part of 2013 murdering hundreds of men and boys in Nigeria.These acts made some international news, but it was only when Boko Haram kidnapped 197 girls that the world took major notice of the group.

The mothers of some of the girls created the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, which went viral. First Lady Michelle Obama famously tweeted a picture of herself holding a sign with the hashtag written on it. Yet during that time Boko Haram continued to murder scores of men and boys. Shortly before and after kidnapping the girls, the group when on a killing spree, the latter of which resulted in about 400 men and boys, including infants, being slaughtered.

This received limited news coverage, yet nowhere near the amount of social media attention that the kidnapping of 200 girls received. What does our apathy buy us? What comes of this level of utter indifference to boys’ suffering? This:

Taliban exploits child rape to kill Afghan police

As terrible as this is, one must give the Taliban credit for their creativity:

The Taliban are using child sex slaves to mount crippling insider attacks on police in southern Afghanistan, exploiting the pervasive practice of “bacha bazi” — paedophilic boy play — to infiltrate security ranks, multiple officials and survivors of such assaults told AFP.

The ancient custom is prevalent across Afghanistan, but nowhere does it seem as entrenched as in the province of Uruzgan, where “bacha bereesh” — or boys without beards — widely become objects of lustful attraction for powerful police commanders.

The Taliban over nearly two years have used them to mount a wave of Trojan Horse attacks — at least six between January and April alone — that have killed hundreds of policemen, according to security and judicial officials in the province.

“The Taliban are sending boys — beautiful boys, handsome boys — to penetrate checkpoints and kill, drug and poison policemen,” said Ghulam Sakhi Rogh Lewanai, who was Uruzgan’s police chief until he was removed in a security reshuffle in April amid worsening violence.

“They have figured out the biggest weakness of police forces — bacha bazi,” he told AFP.

It is a brazen yet still impressive tactic to use a culture’s pedophilia against them. It also apparently works. The authorities have no idea how to deal with this, largely because the authorities are often the ones keeping boys as sex slaves. The article mentions an instance in which a checkpoint commander’s sex slave killed seven policemen, including the rapist commander, as they slept. He then let the Taliban forces in to ensure everyone was dead.

The Taliban denies using any boys as attackers, yet the evidence clearly shows they do it. And why would they not. Consider this:

Aftermath of the Cologne New Years Eve Attacks

Sargon of Akkad uploaded a video about the Cologne New Year’s Eve attacks in Germany. On New Year’s Eve, thousands of Muslim men took to the streets and physically and sexually assaulted scores of people. This occurred in several cities, but the main focus has been Cologne due to the number of reported assaults and the following cover-up.

It is the latter that has proven most curious because not only did the authorities attempt to hide what happened, but the progressive media also attempted to mislead people about the identity of the assailants and the nature of the assaults.

The reason for the cover-up is that the majority of men who committed the violence appear to be migrants and refugees from Middle East and North African Muslim-based countries. Tthe Germany authorities do not want to admit this and decided to mask the identities of the assailants as best they could, lest anyone (i.e. the progressive left) accuse them of “racism” despite Islam not being a race.

Bulletin Board v273

Boys prove ‘resilient’ after enduring years of violence — Two small boys have shown “remarkable resilience” after enduring years of serious violence at the hands of their caregiver, a court has been told. The caregiver, 60-year-old Shahidan Nisha, appeared upset throughout her Christchurch District Court sentencing on 27 charges by Judge Alistair Garland on Friday.

Campus speaker touting men’s rights has fire alarm pulled on her –Cathy Young, a prominent writer critical of exaggerated campus rape statistics and radical feminism, elicited protests during a recent two-stop speaking tour at college campuses in Canada, which included having a fire alarm pulled during one of her speeches.

Ex-Priest Who Raped Boy Will Be Freed After Decade in Prison — A former Roman Catholic priest who raped an altar boy and spent more than a decade in prison will be freed after prosecutors withdrew a civil petition Friday to have him committed as a sexually dangerous person.

Former teacher charged with rape, pleads not guilty — Brittney Breedlove, 29, of Everton, a former teacher at Valley Springs School, was arraigned Friday on rape and sexual assault of two juvenile males, records show. The rape charge alleges Breedlove engaged in sexual intercourse with a juvenile male under the age of 14.

Bulletin Board v272

As Taliban Prisoner, Bergdahl Said To Endure ‘Horrible’ Abuse — U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl endured some of the worst abuse any U.S. prisoner of war has seen for decades while being held for five years by the Taliban in Afghanistan, a defense official has testified. Bergdahl suffered torture, abuse, and neglect, including months of beatings, said Terrence Russell, an expert with the military’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency.

Barbara Kay: Attention paid to male issues doesn’t diminish from feminism: it’s not a zero sum game — Cathy Young is a widely admired libertarian “equity feminist” American journalist, whose considerable critical skills often deployed in dismantling the “rape culture” narrative, continually ruffle ideologues’ feathers. Young was scheduled to speak at the University of Toronto tonight, Thursday, September 24th, on “The Politics of Gender and Victimhood,” an event planned by the University of Toronto Men’s Issues Awareness Society (UTMIAS) and sponsored by the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFÉ), on whose advisory board I sit.

Bluffs woman pleads not guilty to having sex with teen boy — A Council Bluffs woman has pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual abuse involving a 15-year-old boy. Jessica Pritchard, 26, was arrested on July 23 in Alliance, Nebraska, and charged with four counts of third-degree sexual abuse involving a minor and four counts of dissemination and exhibition of obscene material to a minor. If convicted of third-degree sexual abuse with a minor, a Class C felony, Pritchard could face up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.