When people advocate limiting free speech you can be sure they think theirs is safe. Wanting to limit the speech of others is sure evidence that you believe yours is safe.
the other day I slapped a link or two on some substacks about the biolab in Reedley Ca ….. with little to no response. While comparing various articles written over about a two week period some things bothered me about the ‘response’ by the 3 letter agencies. One article stated the Feds told the local Fresno Co personnel to suppress the information….. this lab was discovered in Dec 2022 and did not hit the press for almost 6 months…. Another issue I have is initial reports stated in the same warehouse where this occurred PCR tests were being manufactured or were present where at least a dozen pathogens and live mice were present. The FDA did a recall on the ‘PCR’ tests (see attached) which advised people to return them to the same company that distributed them. As a retired cop, this makes no f@#&$ing sense. Those test should be tested for the pathogens which were present in the warehouse. https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article278262808.htmlhttps://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/medical-device-recalls/sml-distribution-llc-recalls-skippack-medical-lab-covid-19-direct-antigen-rapid-tests-are-not While we’re at it In the summer of 2018, one of China’s largest domestic vaccine makers sold at least 250,000 substandard doses of vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough. It was the latest in a slew of scandals caused by poor quality drug products made in China over the last decade. In 2008, the contamination of a raw ingredient imported from China and used to make heparin, a blood-thinning drug, was associated with at least eighty-one deaths the United States. In 2008, the contamination of a raw ingredient imported from China and used to make heparin, a blood-thinning drug, was associated with at least eighty-one deaths the United States. According to an investigative journalist, fraud and manipulation of quality data is still endemic in Chinese pharmaceutical firms.
Everstudy…thinking about you all in California now. I have a friend in Hollywood and will be praying for you and for my Hollywood friend and his family.
When God is the only one monitoring libertarian free speech and when his punishment of liars becomes immediate I will remit my objection.
Let me state again. Note those who want to limit your speech. They believe themselves to be gods, controlling the outlets.
Of course someone will cite to me the pornification of our schools as a reason for limiting free speech. Only a total ass would consider that a reason to monitor the free dissenting speech of adults. Furthermore where you find the government arbitrating the monitoring of speech that ass has also fancied itself to be god.
LifeSurge is coming to San Jose, a Christian themed get rich quick motivational seminar hosted by Cathedral of Faith. Tickets aren’t _too_ expensive, unless you upgrade. The speakers, including Tim Tebow, seem to be multi-millionaires. They don’t speak for free.
Your post caused me to check out their website. Not only Tim Tebow, but Willie Robertson and evangelist Nick Vujicic. And some guy with a TV show called The Profit. Oh, how catchy. Gag. How is the Holy Spirit not speaking to these people????
CoF is a huge seeker friendly church here. Say what one will about CC, but they at least didn’t charge for guest speakers (though I’m sure they paid for most). $37-$297 tickets for LS. :>p
You wrote: “When God is the only one monitoring libertarian free speech and when his punishment of liars becomes immediate I will remit my objection.”
I’m surprised by this response. You should know that from the moment God gave the 10 Commandments until the return of Christ, he has entrusted the administration of the 10 Commandments to his institutions of human government. I doubt you are insisting that God change his orders of creation to suit your objection, are you?
A society cannot endure in a culture where those who utter falsehoods or lies about their fellow citizens are not held to account. In my opinion, the commandment against bearing false witness is a gift given by God to protect people and society from the chaos of slander that can destroy a society. We actually saw the prelude on 1/6/2021.
I think our society needs much, much stronger slander, defamation and perjury statutes to balance the 1st Amendment. If someone wants to bear witness against their fellow man, I don’t want to hear, “it’s my opinion,” or “It’s satire”, or “it’s entertainment”, or “it’s just exageration,” or “it’s my 1st Amendment right to say it,” but what society should insist on is evidence. Because lives, and social stability, are put at risk by the things that other people say.
Jean,
I hope they don’t find out that the shooter was a card-carrying evangelical. I think free speech is important, as long as I can also clap back with my own opinions. I can also choose not to listen, “free” as it is. Shooting people, however, for expressing their opinion, is scary. It brings up images of Nazis and Kristanacht. 🙁
We live in a country where we are privileged with certain rights-speech, worship, the press, and assembly. Christians should be the most responsible in the way they exercise their rights, especially because in many parts of the world people don’t even have a right to their own opinions. i’m ot a fan of any gay causes, but I am a big proponent of being able to freely and peacefully express an opinion.
I’ve been thinking. There is a term used back in the 90’s for churches appealing to people who were “seeking” God—Seeker Friendly.
They took a lot of head from the more conservative brand of Christianity.
I consider myself a “Christian seeker”. By that I mean I am a follower of and believer in Christ but I am seeking the truth apart from what comes from the pulpit in most American churches.
So, I ask a lot of questions-here on PP and of other people
I somehow think if Jesus were to walk this earth today he wouldn’t recognize many of those who bear his named-maybe even me
Morgan Smith has been doing humanitarian work on the border for a long time…gives us something to think about here…
“Driving south from Santa Fe to Juárez or Palomas, Mexico has become like descending into a cauldron. It was 81 degrees on July 26 when we left Santa Fe, 90 when we stopped in Placitas to pick up beans and rice from the Dignity Mission but 109 at the border at Santa Teresa. We’ve made four trips in the last month and the heat has become the dominant issue. If this heat continues, I predict another migrant surge, built on heat and climate change-related crop failures and increasingly unendurable living conditions. Cities like Phoenix may have consistently hotter temperatures but we Americans have air conditioning, showers, swimming pools, shaded areas, crop insurance and all sorts of protections that simply don’t exist in the many Latin American countries from which migrants come.
Here are some examples from our recent trips that show the situation in Juárez and Palomas, Mexico.
On arriving at the barren courtyard of a mental asylum named Punto Zero on the west edge of Juárez, the first person to greet me was an older woman mental patient named Socorro. She was wearing a wool cap tied around her head and a thick fleece jacket. She stood motionless next to my car and seemed completely oblivious to the 109 degrees heat.
“She has dementia and refuses to take that cap off,” Lupe, the director said. Then Lupe tells me that their refrigeration is broken and they are waiting for a repairman. “And we’re almost out of food,” she adds. She had 38 mental patients to care for but luckily my trunk was full of the beans and rice from Dignity Mission.
Earlier when I came across the border, three women approached my car, Cecilia Vazquez, a Mixteca Indian from Oaxaca plus Graciela from Toluca, Mexico and her daughter. For years, they have been coming up from Anapra where they now live to sell trinkets at this crossing, enduring the brutal heat in summer and the bone chilling winds in winter to try to eke out a living. I always pay them for photos and give them food and clothing. They had no shade to go to and seemed dazed by the heat but selling these trinkets meant survival.
A mile later I stopped at the Pemex station to buy little bottles of yoghurt for the kids at a Tarahumara school. Another Mixteca woman carrying a baby came to the car window and sold me some key chains for a few dollars. She too seemed dazed by the heat.
“Americans head to pools, cooling centers, shelters,” USA Today says but the Recreativa Agua Park, the one public pool along the highway south of Santa Teresa was closed, the gate locked. However, the firemen in tiny Palomas, some seventy miles to the west had had a “sprinkle day” where kids could laugh, play and cool off under the water. There is no such thing in this area of Juárez; in fact, even the basic deliveries of water for cooking and household work have been delayed.
Some 600 houses in this area of Juárez are made of cinder block and were built by the non-profit, Siguiendo Los Pasos de Jesús. They have basic electricity but what about the hundreds of other houses made of patched together scraps of cardboard and plywood?
What about something as simple as shade? At Punto Zero there is a bench along the east side of a dormitory where there is shade. The patients sit there, slumped and silent but there are no trees in this area on the west end of Juárez and none in Palomas. In fact, these areas are almost totally lacking in anything green. Due to the innovative work of the non-profit Border Partners, this may change in Palomas, at least in terms of vegetables and fruit but that is a long term project.
At Vision in Action, the other mental asylum I’ve been helping for a dozen years, there are roughly 120 patients, most of whom spend their days in a large open patio. Several years ago, we raised the money to close off about a third of the patio and create a space with air conditioning in the summer and warmth in the winter. I thought of it as an amenity but under today’s conditions of extreme heat, it is really about survival.
On August 7, the alley behind the Sacred Heart church in El Paso was full of young Venezuelans who were sleeping on the pavement. When we drove through there to deliver clothing, it was 109 degrees.
For many years these trips to take food and supplies to a variety of Mexican humanitarian programs were monthly. Now we go at least twice a month because the need is greater. Now the dominant theme on these trips is the weather. I have the air conditioned car but what about Cecilia Vazquez trying to sell trinkets at Santa Teresa or Socorro who doesn’t know she should take off her wool cap or the hundreds of migrants in crowded shelters. We Americans can escape – we have showers, air conditioning, refrigeration, irrigation for our crops and food supply – but in the countries from which so many migrants are coming, there are none of these protections.
What will happen if these temperatures continue and if there is ongoing denial of climate change? Won’t it bring a new surge of migrants, a new reason to flee to our southern border?”
Tue 22 Aug 2023 06.55 EDTLast modified on Tue 22 Aug 2023 07.47 EDT
On a balmy day in early April, anthropologist Juan Carlos Tercero left his home in the city of Tepic, in western Mexico. Then he vanished.
In a country riddled with violence, where 25 people on average are reported missing every day, disappearances like this have become cruelly commonplace. But what makes Tercero’s disappearance particularly egregious is that he had devoted much of his life to trying to tackle this crisis.
An expert in subaquatic forensics, Tercero traveled across Mexico and throughout the region giving courses on recovering human remains and other evidence from under water. In Nayarit state, he was teaching at local colleges and helping groups searching for their loved ones. He was also about to officially join the state commission charged with locating the disappeared.
Instead, four months since he was last seen, Tercero has joined the ranks of Mexico’s more than 100,000 missing people.
“It’s not that his disappearance is more important than the others,” said Marisol Madero, a friend and fellow criminologist who has become a spokeswoman for Tercero’s family. “But if the people who are doing the searching are disappearing, imagine the fear for mothers or other groups dedicated to the search.”
In the face of government inaction, groups of women have become a driving force in the search for the disappeared in Mexico, traversing shrublands and deserts looking for some sign of their missing children, poking the dirt for the scent of rotting flesh.
But in recent years, they too have become targets of violent crime: since 2021, at least six searching mothers have been killed across the country.
“No one is safe in Mexico,” wrote journalist Javier Risco in a recent column about Tercero’s case in El País. “Neither the relatives who are looking for their disappeared, nor the public officials who are in charge” of the search.
Most frustrating for Madero has been the apparent inaction from the state prosecutor’s office, which oversees the search commission Tercero was in the process of joining. The prosecutor’s office has denied the family a copy of Tercero’s case file – a legal right for victims of crimes in Mexico – and given little indication of how the investigation is progressing.
“We would have thought that we were going to be met with support, concern, with concrete actions that would give us the certainty that they’re helping someone from their own institution,” said Madero. “Instead, we’ve found just the opposite.”
A lawyer from the Nayarit state prosecutor’s office did not respond to messages seeking comment. Emails to the prosecutor’s office went unanswered. Shortly after Tercero’s disappearance was reported, the state prosecutor, Petronilo Díaz Ponce, said that the anthropologist might have gone missing because of “personal matters”, according to local media.
The suggestion has been roundly rejected by Tercero’s family and friends: although there is no direct evidence of foul play, Tercero left behind all his equipment, his camera, his hard drives, according to Madero, suggesting that, at the very least, he intended to return home.
“He is missing because they disappeared him, not because he wanted to disappear,” Tercero’s partner, María Antonieta Castañeda, told reporters in April. “It’s pretty painful that someone who dedicated his life to the search … now we’re having to look for him ourselves.”
Such apparent incompetence or indifference when it comes to disappearances is endemic in Mexico. In a statement last year, the United Nations found that just a fraction of disappearance cases had resulted in prosecutions: only 36 convictions had been handed down at the federal level.
“The alarming trend of rising enforced disappearances was facilitated by the almost absolute impunity,” the UN said.
At the state level, where most violent crimes are investigated, ineptitude and inefficiency are particularly rampant, human rights experts say.
“Nothing about the way this case appears to be being handled, the lack of communication with the family, the lack of apparent urgency, is surprising,” said Tyler Mattiace, a Mexico expert at Human Rights Watch. State prosecutors “are often very slow and very bureaucratic and focused more on numbers and processes than on cases and the truth”.
Nayarit has a particularly dark history with its state law enforcement officials: its former attorney general, Edgar Veytia, nicknamed “the Devil”, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the United States in 2019 on drug-trafficking charges.
Meanwhile, violence in Nayarit has continued to spiral out of control. According to a 2021 government report, between 2016 and 2020, the number of disappearances in the state increased by 1,300%.
So far this year, more than 100 people have been reported missing or disappeared in the state, official figures show, including Tercero.
“The exhaustion, the emotional distress – it changes your life,” said Madero, of searching for her missing friend. “We’re in constant anguish.”
It’s all yours today…
When people advocate limiting free speech you can be sure they think theirs is safe. Wanting to limit the speech of others is sure evidence that you believe yours is safe.
Great discussion with Russell Moore.
https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/christianity-about-being-different-not-walking-with-certain-party-or-denominational-bosses-says-scholar-191103557760
The farther reaches of both sides advocate limiting free speech…and both have been moderately successful at times.
I curse both houses…
the other day I slapped a link or two on some substacks about the biolab in Reedley Ca ….. with little to no response. While comparing various articles written over about a two week period some things bothered me about the ‘response’ by the 3 letter agencies. One article stated the Feds told the local Fresno Co personnel to suppress the information….. this lab was discovered in Dec 2022 and did not hit the press for almost 6 months…. Another issue I have is initial reports stated in the same warehouse where this occurred PCR tests were being manufactured or were present where at least a dozen pathogens and live mice were present. The FDA did a recall on the ‘PCR’ tests (see attached) which advised people to return them to the same company that distributed them. As a retired cop, this makes no f@#&$ing sense. Those test should be tested for the pathogens which were present in the warehouse. https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article278262808.html https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/medical-device-recalls/sml-distribution-llc-recalls-skippack-medical-lab-covid-19-direct-antigen-rapid-tests-are-not While we’re at it In the summer of 2018, one of China’s largest domestic vaccine makers sold at least 250,000 substandard doses of vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough. It was the latest in a slew of scandals caused by poor quality drug products made in China over the last decade. In 2008, the contamination of a raw ingredient imported from China and used to make heparin, a blood-thinning drug, was associated with at least eighty-one deaths the United States. In 2008, the contamination of a raw ingredient imported from China and used to make heparin, a blood-thinning drug, was associated with at least eighty-one deaths the United States. According to an investigative journalist, fraud and manipulation of quality data is still endemic in Chinese pharmaceutical firms.
Kind of weird here in So. Cal., getting prepared for a tropical storm.
A B25 Mitchell was moved from Chino Airport to Hemet Ryan as a precaution.
Everstudy…thinking about you all in California now. I have a friend in Hollywood and will be praying for you and for my Hollywood friend and his family.
If God thought unlimited free speech was a good idea, would he have included bearing false witness in the Decalogue?
Jean
When God is the only one monitoring libertarian free speech and when his punishment of liars becomes immediate I will remit my objection.
Let me state again. Note those who want to limit your speech. They believe themselves to be gods, controlling the outlets.
Of course someone will cite to me the pornification of our schools as a reason for limiting free speech. Only a total ass would consider that a reason to monitor the free dissenting speech of adults. Furthermore where you find the government arbitrating the monitoring of speech that ass has also fancied itself to be god.
LifeSurge is coming to San Jose, a Christian themed get rich quick motivational seminar hosted by Cathedral of Faith. Tickets aren’t _too_ expensive, unless you upgrade. The speakers, including Tim Tebow, seem to be multi-millionaires. They don’t speak for free.
The New Victor,
Your post caused me to check out their website. Not only Tim Tebow, but Willie Robertson and evangelist Nick Vujicic. And some guy with a TV show called The Profit. Oh, how catchy. Gag. How is the Holy Spirit not speaking to these people????
CoF is a huge seeker friendly church here. Say what one will about CC, but they at least didn’t charge for guest speakers (though I’m sure they paid for most). $37-$297 tickets for LS. :>p
Thank you Dan.
Alan,
You wrote: “When God is the only one monitoring libertarian free speech and when his punishment of liars becomes immediate I will remit my objection.”
I’m surprised by this response. You should know that from the moment God gave the 10 Commandments until the return of Christ, he has entrusted the administration of the 10 Commandments to his institutions of human government. I doubt you are insisting that God change his orders of creation to suit your objection, are you?
A society cannot endure in a culture where those who utter falsehoods or lies about their fellow citizens are not held to account. In my opinion, the commandment against bearing false witness is a gift given by God to protect people and society from the chaos of slander that can destroy a society. We actually saw the prelude on 1/6/2021.
I think our society needs much, much stronger slander, defamation and perjury statutes to balance the 1st Amendment. If someone wants to bear witness against their fellow man, I don’t want to hear, “it’s my opinion,” or “It’s satire”, or “it’s entertainment”, or “it’s just exageration,” or “it’s my 1st Amendment right to say it,” but what society should insist on is evidence. Because lives, and social stability, are put at risk by the things that other people say.
A mother of 9 (blended family) and wife of a man for 28 years was shot and killed for expressing her freedom of speech at her own place of business.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-store-owner-shot-dead-alleged-dispute-gay-pride-flag-police
Jean,
I hope they don’t find out that the shooter was a card-carrying evangelical. I think free speech is important, as long as I can also clap back with my own opinions. I can also choose not to listen, “free” as it is. Shooting people, however, for expressing their opinion, is scary. It brings up images of Nazis and Kristanacht. 🙁
We live in a country where we are privileged with certain rights-speech, worship, the press, and assembly. Christians should be the most responsible in the way they exercise their rights, especially because in many parts of the world people don’t even have a right to their own opinions. i’m ot a fan of any gay causes, but I am a big proponent of being able to freely and peacefully express an opinion.
I agree with you Linn.
Where the line is crossed is in cases like this, where innocent lives are upended and threatened:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-and-his-allies-double-down-on-election-lies-after-indictments-for-trying-to-undo-2020-results/ar-AA1fxD89?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=1f77c95f2f9e44c5b1433e7b613a3776&ei=7
I’ve been thinking. There is a term used back in the 90’s for churches appealing to people who were “seeking” God—Seeker Friendly.
They took a lot of head from the more conservative brand of Christianity.
I consider myself a “Christian seeker”. By that I mean I am a follower of and believer in Christ but I am seeking the truth apart from what comes from the pulpit in most American churches.
So, I ask a lot of questions-here on PP and of other people
I somehow think if Jesus were to walk this earth today he wouldn’t recognize many of those who bear his named-maybe even me
I think He’d recognize us all…I suspect He would offer correction, but He only corrects His own…
Morgan Smith has been doing humanitarian work on the border for a long time…gives us something to think about here…
“Driving south from Santa Fe to Juárez or Palomas, Mexico has become like descending into a cauldron. It was 81 degrees on July 26 when we left Santa Fe, 90 when we stopped in Placitas to pick up beans and rice from the Dignity Mission but 109 at the border at Santa Teresa. We’ve made four trips in the last month and the heat has become the dominant issue. If this heat continues, I predict another migrant surge, built on heat and climate change-related crop failures and increasingly unendurable living conditions. Cities like Phoenix may have consistently hotter temperatures but we Americans have air conditioning, showers, swimming pools, shaded areas, crop insurance and all sorts of protections that simply don’t exist in the many Latin American countries from which migrants come.
Here are some examples from our recent trips that show the situation in Juárez and Palomas, Mexico.
On arriving at the barren courtyard of a mental asylum named Punto Zero on the west edge of Juárez, the first person to greet me was an older woman mental patient named Socorro. She was wearing a wool cap tied around her head and a thick fleece jacket. She stood motionless next to my car and seemed completely oblivious to the 109 degrees heat.
“She has dementia and refuses to take that cap off,” Lupe, the director said. Then Lupe tells me that their refrigeration is broken and they are waiting for a repairman. “And we’re almost out of food,” she adds. She had 38 mental patients to care for but luckily my trunk was full of the beans and rice from Dignity Mission.
Earlier when I came across the border, three women approached my car, Cecilia Vazquez, a Mixteca Indian from Oaxaca plus Graciela from Toluca, Mexico and her daughter. For years, they have been coming up from Anapra where they now live to sell trinkets at this crossing, enduring the brutal heat in summer and the bone chilling winds in winter to try to eke out a living. I always pay them for photos and give them food and clothing. They had no shade to go to and seemed dazed by the heat but selling these trinkets meant survival.
A mile later I stopped at the Pemex station to buy little bottles of yoghurt for the kids at a Tarahumara school. Another Mixteca woman carrying a baby came to the car window and sold me some key chains for a few dollars. She too seemed dazed by the heat.
“Americans head to pools, cooling centers, shelters,” USA Today says but the Recreativa Agua Park, the one public pool along the highway south of Santa Teresa was closed, the gate locked. However, the firemen in tiny Palomas, some seventy miles to the west had had a “sprinkle day” where kids could laugh, play and cool off under the water. There is no such thing in this area of Juárez; in fact, even the basic deliveries of water for cooking and household work have been delayed.
Some 600 houses in this area of Juárez are made of cinder block and were built by the non-profit, Siguiendo Los Pasos de Jesús. They have basic electricity but what about the hundreds of other houses made of patched together scraps of cardboard and plywood?
What about something as simple as shade? At Punto Zero there is a bench along the east side of a dormitory where there is shade. The patients sit there, slumped and silent but there are no trees in this area on the west end of Juárez and none in Palomas. In fact, these areas are almost totally lacking in anything green. Due to the innovative work of the non-profit Border Partners, this may change in Palomas, at least in terms of vegetables and fruit but that is a long term project.
At Vision in Action, the other mental asylum I’ve been helping for a dozen years, there are roughly 120 patients, most of whom spend their days in a large open patio. Several years ago, we raised the money to close off about a third of the patio and create a space with air conditioning in the summer and warmth in the winter. I thought of it as an amenity but under today’s conditions of extreme heat, it is really about survival.
On August 7, the alley behind the Sacred Heart church in El Paso was full of young Venezuelans who were sleeping on the pavement. When we drove through there to deliver clothing, it was 109 degrees.
For many years these trips to take food and supplies to a variety of Mexican humanitarian programs were monthly. Now we go at least twice a month because the need is greater. Now the dominant theme on these trips is the weather. I have the air conditioned car but what about Cecilia Vazquez trying to sell trinkets at Santa Teresa or Socorro who doesn’t know she should take off her wool cap or the hundreds of migrants in crowded shelters. We Americans can escape – we have showers, air conditioning, refrigeration, irrigation for our crops and food supply – but in the countries from which so many migrants are coming, there are none of these protections.
What will happen if these temperatures continue and if there is ongoing denial of climate change? Won’t it bring a new surge of migrants, a new reason to flee to our southern border?”
Tue 22 Aug 2023 06.55 EDTLast modified on Tue 22 Aug 2023 07.47 EDT
On a balmy day in early April, anthropologist Juan Carlos Tercero left his home in the city of Tepic, in western Mexico. Then he vanished.
In a country riddled with violence, where 25 people on average are reported missing every day, disappearances like this have become cruelly commonplace. But what makes Tercero’s disappearance particularly egregious is that he had devoted much of his life to trying to tackle this crisis.
An expert in subaquatic forensics, Tercero traveled across Mexico and throughout the region giving courses on recovering human remains and other evidence from under water. In Nayarit state, he was teaching at local colleges and helping groups searching for their loved ones. He was also about to officially join the state commission charged with locating the disappeared.
Instead, four months since he was last seen, Tercero has joined the ranks of Mexico’s more than 100,000 missing people.
“It’s not that his disappearance is more important than the others,” said Marisol Madero, a friend and fellow criminologist who has become a spokeswoman for Tercero’s family. “But if the people who are doing the searching are disappearing, imagine the fear for mothers or other groups dedicated to the search.”
In the face of government inaction, groups of women have become a driving force in the search for the disappeared in Mexico, traversing shrublands and deserts looking for some sign of their missing children, poking the dirt for the scent of rotting flesh.
But in recent years, they too have become targets of violent crime: since 2021, at least six searching mothers have been killed across the country.
“No one is safe in Mexico,” wrote journalist Javier Risco in a recent column about Tercero’s case in El País. “Neither the relatives who are looking for their disappeared, nor the public officials who are in charge” of the search.
Most frustrating for Madero has been the apparent inaction from the state prosecutor’s office, which oversees the search commission Tercero was in the process of joining. The prosecutor’s office has denied the family a copy of Tercero’s case file – a legal right for victims of crimes in Mexico – and given little indication of how the investigation is progressing.
“We would have thought that we were going to be met with support, concern, with concrete actions that would give us the certainty that they’re helping someone from their own institution,” said Madero. “Instead, we’ve found just the opposite.”
A lawyer from the Nayarit state prosecutor’s office did not respond to messages seeking comment. Emails to the prosecutor’s office went unanswered. Shortly after Tercero’s disappearance was reported, the state prosecutor, Petronilo Díaz Ponce, said that the anthropologist might have gone missing because of “personal matters”, according to local media.
The suggestion has been roundly rejected by Tercero’s family and friends: although there is no direct evidence of foul play, Tercero left behind all his equipment, his camera, his hard drives, according to Madero, suggesting that, at the very least, he intended to return home.
“He is missing because they disappeared him, not because he wanted to disappear,” Tercero’s partner, María Antonieta Castañeda, told reporters in April. “It’s pretty painful that someone who dedicated his life to the search … now we’re having to look for him ourselves.”
Such apparent incompetence or indifference when it comes to disappearances is endemic in Mexico. In a statement last year, the United Nations found that just a fraction of disappearance cases had resulted in prosecutions: only 36 convictions had been handed down at the federal level.
“The alarming trend of rising enforced disappearances was facilitated by the almost absolute impunity,” the UN said.
At the state level, where most violent crimes are investigated, ineptitude and inefficiency are particularly rampant, human rights experts say.
“Nothing about the way this case appears to be being handled, the lack of communication with the family, the lack of apparent urgency, is surprising,” said Tyler Mattiace, a Mexico expert at Human Rights Watch. State prosecutors “are often very slow and very bureaucratic and focused more on numbers and processes than on cases and the truth”.
Nayarit has a particularly dark history with its state law enforcement officials: its former attorney general, Edgar Veytia, nicknamed “the Devil”, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the United States in 2019 on drug-trafficking charges.
Meanwhile, violence in Nayarit has continued to spiral out of control. According to a 2021 government report, between 2016 and 2020, the number of disappearances in the state increased by 1,300%.
So far this year, more than 100 people have been reported missing or disappeared in the state, official figures show, including Tercero.
“The exhaustion, the emotional distress – it changes your life,” said Madero, of searching for her missing friend. “We’re in constant anguish.”
Lord, have mercy. Please.
So what do you think Christianity will look like in 20 years?
Culture has really changed. Where Christianity was effective and fit in culture 30 to 50 years ago, it seems to be counter cultural now.
When I was young, we thought in terms of community. “Majority rule” was the thought of the day. Now, we rend to think in terms of individual rights.
I really wonder if the church will survive
Curious ya’lls thoughts