Journalist (Who Survived Previous ‘Hit’) Shot Dead In Mexico While Eating At Restaurant Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2020 – 22:25
A Mexican journalist was shot dead on Sunday in the city of Iguala in the southwestern state of Guerrero, reported Reuters.
Pablo Morrugares, the editor of PM Noticias, was at dinner Sunday evening when a gunman opened fire and killed him on the spot. He was accompanied by his bodyguard who was also shot dead.
Pablo Morrugares
Morrugares’ PM Noticias focused primarily on reporting crime in the central Guerrero state, which the US State Department has labeled the region a “Level 4: Do Not Travel.” In fact, the state is one of Mexico’s most violent cartel infested regions.
Alleged scene of Pablo Morrugares’ assassination
PM Noticias’ Facebook account published a post late Sunday that read: “We are in mourning at PM News but the page will continue with its legacy of our dear friend Pablito.”
Reuters notes Morrugares survived a 2016 assassination. The motive behind Sunday’s slaying of the reporter is unknown, but one can only suspect it’s due to the newspaper’s reporting on local crime.
The Mexican Association of Displaced and Attacked Journalists said Morrugares was recently threatened. Fellow journalists are in shock over his death.
Reporters Without Borders, an international non-profit organization that safeguards the right to freedom of information, indicate three other journalists have been killed in Mexico this year.
Reporters Without Borders released a report in 2018 that described Afghanistan, Syria, Mexico, Yemen, and India as the most dangerous areas for reporters.
Besides cartel wars and out of control murders, Mexico is recording the third-highest COVID-19 deaths in the world.
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New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday that the Black Lives Matter murals painted around the five boroughs were painted without going through the application process for public art projects.
His comments come after the city is facing scrutiny for refusing to let other groups to paint similar murals on city streets, with the groups accusing the mayor of depriving them of their First Amendment rights.
De Blasio told reporters in July that he would not allow Blue Lives Matter and other groups to paint similar messages. He justified his decision by saying that “Black Lives Matter” represents a “seismic moment” in the nation’s history and transcends the message of any one group.
Meanwhile, a conservative women’s group, Women for America First, sued De Blasio and Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg in July for allegedly blocking their request to paint a mural with the message “Engaging, Inspiring and Empowering Women to Make a Difference!”
“We’ve said, if you want to apply, you can apply, but there’s a process,” he said.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (third from left) participates in painting Black Lives Matter on Fifth Avenue in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan, N.Y., on July 9, 2020. (Mark Lennihan/AP Photo)
The mayor added that the decision to paint the Black Lives Matter murals came out of a meeting at Gracie Mansion with community leaders and activists who urged the mayor to declare the message official. He justified the decision to not follow the normal permit process, saying that that message “transcends all normal realities because we are in a moment of history where this had to be said and done.”
“That’s a decision I made,” he said.
“But the normal process continues for anyone who wants to apply.”
Trottenberg told reporters during the same press conference that anyone can apply for the public art program but added that the city has the discretion on picking those projects.
De Blasio drew an inflammatory response from President Donald Trump in June when he decided to paint “Black Lives Matter” in large yellow letters on the street outside of the Trump Tower. City officials have portrayed the location chosen as a way to rebuke the president for his response to the protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
“This is about righting a wrong and moving us all forward,” he added.
City councilors in Tulsa, Oklahoma, are also facing similar requests from groups after a Black Lives Matter mural was painted on a city street. The officials on July 29 agreed to remove a “Black Lives Matter” mural from its Greenwood District, which was painted without a permit, saying that allowing the Black Lives Matter mural to remain on the street would invite other groups to request to have their own messages painted. One of the councilors said he had already received requests from several pro-police groups about painting the words “Back the Blue” in another area in the city, in support of the Tulsa Police Department.
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Egypt To Elon Musk: No, Aliens Did Not Build The Pyramids Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2020 – 21:45
Continuing with our world’s decade long history of rewarding Elon Musk for obvious idiocy, the Tesla CEO has now been invited to visit Egypt after the “genius” Tweeted late last week that “Aliens built the pyramids”.
The Tweet alludes to a popular conspiracy theory about the origins of the pyramids, which many think was a feat unable to be carried out by humans. The topic is often discussed by pseudo-scientist writers and followers of sacred geometry in popular media, like The Joe Rogan Experience.
Egypt seems unamused by the theories. Raina al-Mashat, Egypt’s Minister of International Co-operation, invited Musk to the country so he could see for himself, according to The Telegraph.
He said to Musk: “I follow your work with a lot of admiration. I invite you & SpaceX to explore the writings about how the pyramids were built and also to check out the tombs of the pyramid builders. Mr Musk, we are waiting for you.”
Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass called Musk’s argument a “complete hallucination”.
And given rumors of Musk’s drug use, Hawass may not be that far off…
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Auburn University is currently struggling to stick to its principles on free expression. Hopefully they will get it right in the end, but it shouldn’t be this hard.
Jesse Goldberg was hired as an adjunct to teach English classes starting this Fall at Auburn. His area of scholarly expertise, as he characterizes it, is in Black studies and critical prison studies. Unsurprisingly, he has thoughts about our current situation after the killing of George Floyd, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and high-profile incidents of violence both by and against the police. Those thoughts included a tweet saying “F*ck every single cop. Every single one,” and denouncing police as the violent agents of capital. (Alas his remarks were amplified by Donald Trump Jr. who warned that the “egg heads” are “gunning for middle America.”)
One need not agree with either the substance or the style of Goldberg’s tweet to recognize that this is a commonplace example of free expression on social media. Such speech is constitutionally protected against governmental suppression or sanction. It is also well within the bounds of what the American Association of University Professors has long characterized as “extramural speech” protected by principles of academic freedom.
I have written elsewhere that such private political speech should probably not be thought of as the kind of speech directly implicated by principles of academic freedom (which are primarily concerned with scholarly teaching and research), but it should nonetheless be protected from university sanctions as a prophylactic measure to preserve freedom of thought and discussion on college campuses.
This is a prime example of why. Goldberg’s teaching and scholarship are closely connected to the substantive content of his tweet. Hopefully he expresses himself differently in those contexts, but seeking to punish him for the ideas conveyed by his tweet would inevitably have consequences for the arguments that professors think they can safely make in the classroom or in their scholarship. Free scholarly inquiry at Auburn would be damaged if the university caved in to the American president’s son and took action against an instructor for his public political speech. It is all the more alarming that a state legislator who sits on the education committee would publicly demand that Goldberg be “fired before the sun sets today!“
Political speech in the public square is often crude, passionate, and mistaken, but life in a democracy is sometimes messy and we should strive to tolerate our fellow citizens’ coarsely expressed political opinions. Universities in particular should model such tolerance precisely because universities are important sites for public debate about matters of general concern.
College campuses would be less interesting, less useful, less democratic places if college administrators sought to punish members of the campus community for saying things in public that offend alumni, donors, and local politicians. College administrators have a duty to tell such offended members of the community, both on and off campus, that universities are places where people of many different political and social views come together to examine and debate ideas. If no one is offended by anything anyone says on a college campus, then it is probably a pretty lifeless campus.
So far the Auburn administrators are not performing their duty very well. The university should have issued a simple statement noting that no individual member of the campus community speaks for the university as a whole or as an institution, but all the members of the campus community are given the right to speak their mind about matters of public concern and using the language and rhetoric that they think are most appropriate to the task. It did not do so.
Instead, Auburn told Breitbart that this was an example of “hate speech” and released a statement:
As stated earlier this week, Mr. Goldberg’s comments on social media are inexcusable and completely antithetical to the Auburn Creed. Higher education is built upon the premise of the free expression of ideas and academic dialogue, but Auburn has not and will never support views that exclude or disrespect others, including hateful speech that degrades law enforcement professionals. Mr. Goldberg was hired on a temporary, non-tenure-track assignment.
Unfortunately, because Goldberg is off the tenure track, he is particularly vulnerable to university reprisal. Tenure and tenure-track faculty can often ride out such public controversies, but contingent faculty are all-too-often terminated, sometimes in the middle of the semester, even though their speech is equally protected by the principles to which universities have committed themselves. Fortunately, FIRE, an exemplary civil liberties organization, has reminded Auburn of the relevant principles in this case and the chilling effect that public consideration of “options” can have on the intellectual climate of a college campus.
The specifics of Auburn’s statement are also worth noticing. It is no accident that Auburn officials were quick to denounce Goldberg’s tweet as “hate speech.” The “hate speech is not free speech” crowd should once again pay attention to how that sentiment can and will be used. If you think that only the “right people” will be sanctioned by hate speech policies, you have not been paying attention.
Auburn also adds the institutionally specific notion that Goldberg’s tweet was “antithetical to the Auburn Creed.” There is such a thing. You can read it here. It is . . . interesting. It is also in some tension with the core mission of a university to foster the fearless pursuit of the truth. There are plenty of folks who would like to see secular universities adopt creedal commitments. As Josh Blackman noted the other day in the context of Ohio State’s desire that faculty pledge themselves to “Buckeye values,” even nebulous, feel-good value statements can be converted into political litmus tests. Universities should not be in the business of requiring and enforcing such political pledges. They certainly should not be threatening to take action against instructors who say something at odds with the value statements that university administrators have endorsed.
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Authorities in Minneapolis sent out a letter to residents telling them to ‘prepare’ to be robbed and to obey criminals following a recent surge in robberies and carjackings.
“Be prepared to give up your cell phone and purse/wallet,” states the email, which also says that if a resident encounters a criminal, they should “do as they say.”
The advisory comes off the back of over two months of rioting, protests and unrest following the death of George Floyd.
Minneapolis has experienced a 46% increase in carjackings and a 36% increase in robberies compared to this same time last year, while “Police in the city’s Third Precinct alone have received more than 100 reports of robberies and 20 reports of carjackings in just the last month,” reports Alpha News.
Minneapolis’ Congressional representative Ilhan Omar has also repeatedly called for the police force to be dismantled and replaced with an army of glorified social workers.
It appears as though authorities in the city have waved a white flag to criminals who will now be emboldened to target more victims who are less likely to put up any resistance.
* * *
There is a war on free speech. Without your support, my voice will be silenced. Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.
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Soros Infuses $116K Into McCloskey Prosecutor’s PAC Days After Charges Filed Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/03/2020 – 21:05
Just eight days after St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner filed charges against a wealthy couple who defended their home against trespassing protesters, George Soros donated $116,000 to a Political Action Committee (PAC) established for the activist prosecutor, according to JustTheNews.
A Saturday filing with the Missouri Ethics Commission revealed the donation made directly from Soros to the Missouri Justice and Public Safety PAC – for which Soros is the only donor so far. The PAC has already spent at least $104,393 – including $77,804 directly on Gardner, and a payoff of accumulated debt. Of note, Gardner has a primary this Tuesday.
Soros spokesman Michael Vachon told Just The News that Soros has made no secret that he supports prosecutors like Gardner for criminal justice reform.
Gardner slapped charges on personal injury lawyers Mark McCloskey, 63, and his wife Patricia, 61, who armed themselves and stood outside their mansion as a group of roughly 100 protesters broke down a gate to march down their private road.
For defending their property, the McCloskeys were each charged with a felony count of unlawful use of a weapon. Days after the charges were filed, it emerged that Gardner’s staff ordered a crime lab to tamper with evidence, by reassembling the ‘prop’ pistol Patricia was waving in order to make it “capable of lethal use.”
This isn’t the first brush with shoddy evidence for Gardner’s office;
Gardner, a Democrat, was elected in 2016 and supported by Soros-funded PACs, which financially back several prosecutors across America on a progressive criminal justice reform platform.
She drew national attention when she filed criminal charges against then-Republican Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, forcing him to resign, only to reveal later she did not have evidence to substantiate her allegations. She is facing investigation for her conduct in the Greitens case, and her former chief investigator is awaiting trial on tampering charges. –JustTheNews
Gardner’s decision to prosecute the McCloskeys ignited a controversy over Second Amendment rights, a well as Missouri’s “Castle Doctrine” which governs use of firearms to defend one’s home. Those defending the couple include President Trump, Missouri GOP Senator Josh Hawley, Missouri AG Eric Schmitt, and Gov. Michael Parson (R) who says he’ll pardon the McCloskeys.
Their attorney, Joel Schwartz, has filed a motion to dismiss both Gardner and her office from moving forward with their prosecution – claiming a conflict of interest, as “that Gardner’s campaign has used the McCloskeys’ incident to further her own financial, personal, and professional gain because Gardner sent out campaign solicitations for her re-election mentioning the McCloskeys,” according to the report.
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The economic pain that we are witnessing right now is far greater than anything that we witnessed during the last recession. U.S. GDP declined by 32.9 percent on an annualized basis last quarter, more than 100,000 businesses have permanently shut down since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit the United States, and more than 54 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits over the last 19 weeks. Up until just recently, a $600 weekly unemployment “supplement” and a federal moratorium that prevented many evictions had helped to ease the suffering for millions of American families, but both of those measures have now expired.
As a result, a tremendous amount of economic pain which had previously been deferred will now come rushing back with a vengeance. Millions of American families are no longer going to be able to pay their bills, and experts are warning that we could soon see an “eviction crisis” that is absolutely unprecedented in American history.
48-year-old Thomas Darnell of West Point, Mississippi never thought that he would be in this position. He had been a factory worker for over 20 years until he lost his job in May, and since then he hasn’t been able to find another. And then on top of everything else, everyone in his house caught COVID-19…
First, he was furloughed for three weeks in April and then laid off in May. Then things got worse: His entire household of seven, including himself, his wife, three kids and daughter-in-law, along with his baby grandson, contracted coronavirus after they saw their immediate family over the Independence Day weekend.
“I’m tired and shaky. Even after a few weeks, I’m still trying to recover,” Darnell says, who has since been cleared of the virus but still has lingering symptoms.
He is concerned that employers will be scared away by his recent illness, and he is becoming desperate because he is running out of money.
With no health insurance and no paychecks coming in, Darnell and his wife have gotten to the point where they have to make a choice between buying insulin or buying groceries…
He can’t afford health insurance, which has added to his anxiety because he and his wife are both diabetic, he says. Like Bolei, Darnell and his wife have been forced to make a grueling decision between either paying for their medications or keeping food on the table.
“Do we buy insulin or groceries? It’s a hard juggle,” Darnell says. “I’m willing to make less money and start working again to get health insurance, but no one is hiring.”
The weekly $600 unemployment supplements from the federal government had helped to keep them going for a while, but now those payments have ended, and the immediate future is looking quite bleak.
In Richmond, Virginia, a mother of eight named Shamika Rollins wasn’t sure how she was going to make it when her hours as a home health aid were reduced. Unpaid bills started piling up, and then she got an eviction notice a few weeks ago. The following comes from CBS News…
Shamika Rollins’ eight children share two bedrooms in Richmond, Virginia. But she’s worried about losing their home after she says she received an eviction notice in June.
“First thing, I panic, and then next thing, I look, and I’m like, I got my kids. And it’s like, okay, now you gotta figure this out,” she told CBS News correspondent Adriana Diaz.
If a miracle does not happen, Rollins and her eight children will soon be out in the street, and this is causing her to have “a lot of sleepless nights”…
“I have a lot of sleepless nights,” Rollins said. “My mind is constantly racing, you know, what’s your next move?”
Sadly, there are millions of other Americans in the exact same position.
In fact, experts are projecting that up to 40 million Americans could be evicted from their homes during this pandemic.
Many small business owners are also facing heartbreaking choices during this downturn. A restaurant owner in Delaware named Alex Heidenberger “hasn’t paid the mortgage on his home the past four months” as he desperately tries to keep his once profitable restaurants alive…
Heidenberger, who typically draws about $20,000 a month in profit from the restaurant, now receives nothing. He says he hasn’t paid the mortgage on his home the past four months. He served lifeguard duty for a couple of weeks, mostly to help a beach crew depleted by COVID-19 quarantines but also to make some cash.
“I’m working harder than I have ever worked in my life,” he says, adding that he puts in about 80 hours a week at the two restaurants. Yet, “I have no money… This is all I think about. I don’t sleep.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the restaurant industry particularly hard. Americans are not eating out as regularly as they once did because of the virus, and it is probably going to remain that way for the foreseeable future.
In Massachusetts, a restaurant owner named John Pepper once had eight thriving locations, but at this point only two of them remain open…
John Pepper used a PPP loan to pay employees and reopen four of his eight Boloco restaurants when Massachusetts lifted its shutdown order in early May. But with the money spent and business at the restaurants down as much as 70%, Pepper had to again close two locations. The staff of 125 he had before the virus outbreak is down to 50.
“A lot of this is out of our hands at this point,” Pepper says. “At this moment, I don’t see getting my full payroll back.”
Overall, we are facing a “restaurant apocalypse” in the U.S. that is unprecedented in size and scope.
As many as 231,000 of the nation’s roughly 660,000 eateries will likely shut down this year, according to an estimate from restaurant consultancy Aaron Allen & Associates provided to Bloomberg News. This will bring the industry’s steady growth to a halt and mark the first time in two decades that U.S. restaurant counts don’t climb. Restaurants have already shed millions of jobs this year, economic data show.
What we are watching is truly horrifying. So many hopes and dreams went into each one of those restaurants that are shutting down, and countless restaurant owners are going to be completely financially ruined by all of this.
For other Americans, this economic downturn has put their very lives at risk. In Colorado, 70-year-old Catherine Azar was already dealing with heart problems and diabetes, and now she is in danger of being thrown out into the street…
“It’s hard for me to conceive of someone being willing to put another person out in the street in the middle of a deadly pandemic, and I’m high risk. I’m 70. I have heart issues and I’m diabetic,” Azar said.
Rollins and Azar are just two of the 43 million Americans at risk of eviction in the coming months. For context, about 1 million Americans were evicted in 2010, the year after the Great Recession.
How long do you think that a 70-year-old woman with heart problems and diabetes would last on the street or in a shelter?
And as millions upon millions of Americans get evicted during the months ahead, the shelters are all going to fill up really fast.
So the Fourth Circuit held today in Maryland Shall Issue v. Hogan, in an opinion written by Judge Steven Agee and joined by Judges Barbara Keenan and Julius Richardson. The court cited Supreme Court cases that allowed alcohol stores to assert their prospective customers’ Equal Protection Clause rights in challenging sex-discriminatory drinking ages, and contraceptive sellers to assert their prospective customers’ substantive due process rights. The district court will now need to consider whether the Maryland law is consistent with the Second Amendment.
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So the Fourth Circuit held today in Maryland Shall Issue v. Hogan, in an opinion written by Judge Steven Agee and joined by Judges Barbara Keenan and Julius Richardson. The court cited Supreme Court cases that allowed alcohol stores to assert their prospective customers’ Equal Protection Clause rights in challenging sex-discriminatory drinking ages, and contraceptive sellers to assert their prospective customers’ substantive due process rights. The district court will now need to consider whether the Maryland law is consistent with the Second Amendment.
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The world’s largest broker of fine and decorative art, jewelry, and collectibles, Sotheby’s, announced Monday that total sales for the first seven months of the year were $2.5 billion, down 25% from the same period a year earlier when it sold $3.3 billion, reported artnet news.
Sotheby’s said $1.9 billion came from auction and online sales (down 30.4%). Private sales totaled $575 million (down 1.5%).
The auction house said declining sales might have been worse if it wasn’t for its online segment.
“The art and luxury markets have proven to be incredibly resilient, and demand for quality across categories is unabated,” said Charles Stewart, Sotheby’s CEO, in a statement.
Stewart said, “although driven by necessity, it’s clear that our clients’ interest and confidence in technology have fundamentally changed.”
Sotheby’s said bidders are getting younger, a trend where millennials are starting to become more dominant in online auctions. About a third of bidders over the period were under 40 years old.
Ahead of lockdowns, Sotheby’s was already building the infrastructure for virtual-only auctions. By the time lockdowns began, online sales had surged to $285 million, more than tripling its online total for all of 2019.
The virus pandemic’s silver lining is that it helped supercharge global online art sales that were declining ahead of 2020.
With overall waning sales, Sotheby’s furloughed 12% of its staff in April. Employees in the US and UK were not furloughed but took a 20% pay reduction through summer.
“Like many businesses, Sotheby’s is adjusting to the challenging circumstances resulting from COVID-19 and taking the necessary steps to protect our employees and the future of the company,” the auction house said in April.
As for rival Christies, well, it sold $1.4 billion worth of art for the first seven months, down 50% over the same period in 2019.
Overall, auction houses are seeing slowing sales in a virus-induced recession, as millennial bidders now drive online sales.
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