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.

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.

186 Kurdish schoolboys kidnapped and the world remains silent

I knew this would eventually happen. I knew some fundamentalist terrorist group would eventually kidnap boys. They cannot help themselves. They are compelled by their fanaticism to do stupid, horrible things. So it was only a matter of time before some well-known group went after boys. This time it was ISIS. According to the Guardian:

The kidnapping of 186 teenage boys in Syria on 30 May has gone largely unreported in the wider world, a curious omission given the outcry over the teenage girls in Nigeria. The abduction was no less sinister. The students needed to travel from the Kobani enclave on the Turkish border to Aleppo to take their exams, as required by Syria’s education system. The journey is perilous, but they reached Aleppo without incident. On the way home, however, a convoy of about 10 minibuses containing 186 boys aged 14-16 was stopped and taken to a religious school in Minbej, for training in the Qur’an and jihad. The vast majority are still there.

The omission is not curious. One hundred and eighty-six boys simply does not bring out international concern. After all, they are boys. Who, other than their parents, cares if some militant terrorist group kidnaps them?

Boko Haram kills hundred of men and boys in village raids and #theworldremainssilent

Several days ago Boko Haram attacked another village. The militant Islamist group killed hundreds. As CNN put it:

Hundreds of people were killed in raids by Boko Haram Islamic militants in northeast Nigeria’s Borno state, on the border with Cameroon, with some sources putting the death toll at 400 to 500.

On Tuesday, heavily armed men dressed as soldiers in all-terrain vehicles and on motorcycles attacked neighboring Goshe, Attagara, Agapalwa and Aganjara villages in Gwoza district, shooting residents to death and burning homes.

The attacks forced surviving villagers to flee to Cameroon and into the Mandara Mountains on the border.

“The killings are massive. Nobody can say how many people were killed, but the figure runs into some hundreds,” said Peter Biye, a lawmaker in Nigeria’s lower parliament representing the Gwoza region.

“The area is still under the control of the insurgents, and residents can’t go back to bury the dead because of the danger involved,” he said.

That is absolutely horrific. It is also misleading. Yes, people were killed and it is difficult to say how many. However, it is not difficult to say what kind of people they were. Buried in the middle of the CNN report is this information:

The attackers, who posed as soldiers, told residents they had come to protect them from Boko Haram and asked them to assemble. They singled out men and boys and opened fire on them, Biye said.

A local leader in Attagara village, who fled to nearby Madagali town in neighboring Adamawa state, said the death toll was staggering.

“The death is unimaginable. We have lost between 400 and 500 people in the attacks in which men and male children were not spared,” said the local leader, who asked not to be named for security reasons.

“The gunmen pursued on motorcycle people who fled into the bush in a bid to escape and shot them dead.

“Even nursing mothers had their male infants snatched from their backs and shot dead before their eyes,” the local leader said.

To paraphase: Boko Haram went from village to village singling out and killing men and boys, including babies.

Of course, the attacks have failed to prompt more than a casual mention in United States media. The news outlets are far too obsessed with the Bowe Bergdahl story to worry about some militant group killing Nigerians. However, to my knowledge no one in U.S. has led with the fact that Boko Haram targeted men and boys. Even CNN titled the article “Reports: Boko Haram village raids kill hundreds in Nigeria.”

Hundreds of what? People? Animals? Trees?

Certainly not men and boys. Yet that is what Boko Haram did.

When people mentioned Boko Haram’s gender-specific violence, many liberals and feminists dismissed it. They argued that the focus was on the kidnapped girls because the girls were still alive. Fair enough. Three hundred kidnapped girls may be more important than two dozen burned, shot, and slit-throated boys.

How about 400 to 500 dead men and boys? Infants boys torn from the mothers’ backs and then “shot dead before their eyes?”

Are they important enough to mention?

Imagine if the reverse happened. Imagine if Boko Haram spent several days traveling from village to village singling out women and girls and murdering them. Imagine the social media response. The news media response. In the international response.

Now go and look for that response following the recent attacks. That is not a rhetorical joke. I want you to stop reading this, open a new tab in your browser, and search and see if you can find anyone condemning the recent violence. Now check their political affiliation.

I do not expect much from people. Humans have a tendency to latch onto what is trendy. If it is trendy to tweet #bringbackourgirls, people will do it. However, I do expect people to be consistent in their concern. If the kidnapping of 300 girls riled you up, how can you be silent when the same group murders 500 men and boys? How can you be silent they target babies? Where is your outrage? Where is your activism? Where is your decency?

And just to hammer the nail harder, I saw the news reports a few days ago but did not have time to read them. I spotted it again on men’s rights sites. The people who are supposed to be raving misogynists hellbent on finishing what Elliot Rodger started are the only people talking about this.

The irony writes itself.

Foolish pride

I mentioned a few days ago that A Voice for Men received death threats for wanting to hold a conference to talk about men’s issues. A few feminists have commented on the threats. My personal favorite is from popular feminist and Paul Elam hate- admirer David Futrelle.

Futrelle dislikes that Elam asked feminists to donate money to fund security for the planned conference in Detroit. As Futrelle explains:

And now it the costs of the event are going up further: according to a letter that Elam has posted to his site, the hotel that will be hosting the conference has gotten “numerous calls and threats” of a violent nature because of the conference, and is demanding that AVFM cover the costs of additional security at the event.

Let us write the above sentence correctly: According to a letter Elam posted to his site, the hotel hosting the conference received numerous calls and threats of a violent nature because of the conference, and is demanding that AVFM cover the costs of additional security at the event.

We can all due without the scare quotes. It is unlikely that the Double Tree would send a letter complaining about threats they did not receive.

In response, Elam set up a donation button for feminists only:

The death threats from feminists, in the attempt to silence these esteemed speakers, has resulted in the conference incurring tens of thousands of dollars in additional security costs.

We plan on launching a fundraiser tomorrow to address those needs, but I want to give the feminists who stand by free speech and assert decisively that these thugs do not represent what feminism is about, to have an early shot at helping us address the gender issues that impact men and boys in an open forum.

The paypal button below is offered for feminists only. It is a $25.00 one-time donation to help us with security costs that were inflicted on us by others calling themselves feminists.

You can show your support, and the true heart of the feminist community by assisting us with the security to have a safe conference with honest and open dialogue.

Bulletin Board v221

29 Boys Killed as Boko Haram Attacks Boarding School in Nigeria — Gunmen from Islamist group Boko Haram stormed a boarding school in Nigeria overnight and killed 29 pupils, police and the military said on Tuesday. Many of the victims died as the school was burned to the ground. “Some of the students’ bodies were burned to ashes,” Police Commissioner Sanusi Rufai said of the attack on the Federal Government college of Buni Yadi, a secondary school in Yobe state in the country’s northeast.

Abuse investigation: LA bishop kept altar boy list from police — When Los Angeles police were investigating allegations of child abuse by a Roman Catholic priest in 1988, they asked for a list of altar boys at the last parish where the priest worked. Archbishop Roger Mahony told a subordinate not to give the list, saying he didn’t want the boys to be scarred by the investigation and that he felt the altar boys were too old to be potential victims, according to a February 2013 deposition made public Wednesday.

The Children of Conflict — When Mohammad Qataa, a 14-year-old boy, was brutally murdered in front of his mother last year in Syria, his story went viral. Forced out of school to sell coffee on the streets of Aleppo, he refused to serve armed members of the opposition group, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), for free and jokingly insulted the Prophet Mohammad. He was subsequently tortured and shot three times in public for blasphemy.

Taliban rapes suicide bombers during training

October 14, 2013

I expected this to get more news, but it appears no one picked it up:

Taliban molestation of boys, once rarely discussed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is now becoming a more common topic of conversation.

Nematullah, a former would-be suicide bomber, told Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS) that young men, including himself, endured sexual abuse by their trainers, according to a September 23 NDS statement.

Militant leader Mullah Ahmad (aka Mullah Akhtar), who trained the young man to carry out a suicide attack on his motorcycle in Adraskan District of Herat Province in September, also sexually abused him, Nematullah said.

Police foiled Nematullah’s attempted attack and informed NDS officials about his plot and the sexual victimisation of boys by the Taliban. Mullahs Nasim and Akhtar drugged several bombers-in-training to the point where they passed out and repeatedly abused them while they were unconscious, Nematullah said.

This is yet another instance of child rape against Afghan boys that the international community has ignored. I previously wrote about the dancing boys, boys forced to dress like women and dance at parties for Afghan warlords who then rape the boys afterwards.