Re: BerkeleyLUG meetup this Sunday 2017-09-24 at 85c Bakery + *maybe* a special caution

[Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>]

Quoting ace36 (acohen36@gmail.com):

> Well, according to the latest news reports, something really **did**
> dramatically change from "what's already scheduled to occur." According to
> yesterday'story
> http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/09/23/berkeley-patriot-group-cancels-free-speech-week-milos-plans-unknown/,
> Cal's Free Speech Week was actually **cancelled** and Milo Yiannopoulos
> might very well have a march at Lower Sproul Plaza at 12Noon today. How
> about that!
 
Seems to have been a deliberate ploy to get UC Berkeley to spend well
over $1M on security and logistics, and notify them of cancellation only
when it was too late to avoid spending the money.  It was a setup.

It turns out that supposed key speakers preannounced by Yiannopoulos in
all the pre-event publicity had never agreed to be there, and some say
they hadn't even been invited.  Planners knew tentantively by early last
week and absolutely by last Wednesday that it wasn't going to occur, but
decided not to tell UC Berkeley until ~6am Saturday.  This is according
to an e-mail chain forwarded to San Jose Mercury News by one of the
supposed speakers, one Lucian Wintrich, a right-wing blogger.

UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof commented in a press release:  'It is
extremely unfortunate that this announcement [about the cancellation of
Free Speech Week] was made at the last minute, even as the university
was in the process of spending significant sums of money and preparing
for substantial disruption of campus life in order to provide the needed
security for these events.'

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/09/23/uc-berkeley-free-speech-week-officially-canceled/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/09/23/uc-berkeley-says-free-speech-week-is-canceled-milo-yiannopoulos-says-hes-still-coming-to-campus/

I suspect/hope Yiannopolous and this front group 'The Berkeley Patriot'
may find it difficult to get additional bookings unless they pay back
the $1M+ of expenses already incurred for their suddenly cancelled
event, or Hades suddenly goes gelid, whichever comes first.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BerkeleyLUG" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to berkeleylug+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to berkeleylug@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/berkeleylug.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.