Without the Second Amendment protecting Americans’ right to keep and bear arms, the First Amendment is worthless. That’s not a theory. You need only look south of the border, where cartels collude with the government to prey upon disarmed citizens, to see what happens to freedom of expression when disarmed citizens are left defenseless. In Mexico, anyone who dares report on the cartels’ extra-judicial killings, torture and rape is hunted down, tortured and killed. In the following post, edited for brevity, borderlandbeat.com describes the life of the administrator of the Valor for Tamaulipas Facebook page. His story is instructive . . . [Note: some images were simply too gruesome to republish.] . . .
The administrator doesn’t want to be a hero and much less a martyr. For that, like all the other activists, he has maintained a secret identity. He only wanted to do something, to leave the side of fear and silence.
Closer to the heart is the activists that were killed in La Nena de Laredo. Maria Elizabeth Macias, a blogger of Nuevo Laredo in life, whose decapitated body appeared one morning of 2011, in the locality which she used as an online pseudonym, together with a letter that read “I am La Nena de Laredo and I am here for my reporting and yours”. (Otis: see link to article by BB reporter Ovemex about this killing).
One year later, in the same city, two activists were reported hanging from a bridge after being tortured and massacred. A letter in an envelope on one of the bodies read: “This is going to happen to everyone reporting on us on the Internet. We put this up for all to see.”
On the 1st of January 2012, a common man created the fan page “Valor por Tamaulipas.” At that moment the man became the administrator, an activist among many who denounced criminal groups such as Los Zetas and the Cartel del Golfo. On the page, the administrator then registered disappearances, situations of risk that were presented as a diary of the city, the locals that carried out business with the criminal groups.
The page belongs to a guild of tweeters such as @Agente King, @Bandolera7. amd @MrCruzStar, who had already been denouncing crime in Reynosa since 2010. It was not the first to do it, but it became the most popular site. The site took off. It had more than 200,000 followers after a year of having begun to report, writing everyday the names of those who had been “disappeared”, where the shootings were happening or which places should be avoided due to the strong influence of the criminals.
When the page started, the Cartels seemed even grateful, because they wanted someone who would inform them of the movements of their opponents, according to the administrator. He had received messages from people related to the Cartels, asking for his collaboration. He refused to help them, blocked any individual connected with drug trafficking and did not respond to any of their messages.
“And that was where the problems started”, he recalls that the first threats were soft in nature, but they escalated very rapidly. In a little while, he found accounts ghost writing that they wanted to use “his eyes on a key chain”.
In the middle of 2013 came the strongest threat ever, in the form of a flyer distributed clandestinely in Ciudad Victoria in which they offered 600,000 pesos [about $45k] to anyone who provided accurate information on the identity of the owner of Valor por Tamaulipas…. or their parents, siblings, children or wife.
“This is just free expression” said the Cartel. (Otis: see link to article on this flyer from our very own Matriach, Chivis), but in exchange for that, “money to shut the mouth of asshole pussies like these dumbasses, who believe they are heroes.” They included a telephone number and the guarantee that those who called would be anonymous, and that there was no worry that those who called would receive their money.
According to a communication that he divulged, the administrator had sent his wife and children to the United States for their security, while he continued with the denunciations.
Innocent lives were also sacrificed because of this search. In May of 2013, a partner was kidnapped, well the criminals, apparently Los Zetas – alleged that they were family members of the administrator. They weren’t, said the administrator in another communication, and it made the authorities responsible for the death by heart attack of one of the family that were kidnapped.
The same year, he received another threat:”they sent me a video of a beaten woman, and I heard a voice of a man that said that this would happen to anyone else who cooperated with me. They cut off her head in the video. Other activists like@Agente_Rey and @MrCruzStar report that they receive no more than a dozen or so denunciations by email per week, which is evidence of the popularity and influence of this site.
Of his personality, the only thing one can say is that, to his respect [the administrator] hides a certain paranoia. Carrying out work which can cause cartels to trap the activist if they make only a single mistake, it’s comprehensible.
[His motivation] is powered by the threats and blows he takes from others trying to discover his identity, like the phishing attempt in March, when an email ” that looked like and official Facebook notification” stole the passwords and took temporary control of another two sites, Esperanza por Tamaulipas and Valor por Huasteca. But he ensured that the attackers did not have access to his personal information or that of the people sending in denunciations.
“So the question is” the administrator asks, ” do we shut up or must we continue?”
At various time he has thought on shutting up. At the end of 2014 the administrator announced that he had ceded his page to another person. Another anonymous man, or woman, would take his place, I hope with certain connections to the Government and Sedena, the arrival of the denunciations to the authorities, maybe would obligate them to act. The followers of the page were divided about this was a good or bad thing, but its not important, the said transition never took place.
The administrator is still there, in the line of fire, despite the fact that he knows of few cases in which their actions have saved lives, despite the fact that the risk for him increases, and that he could join the list of bloggers and activists executed throughout the length and breadth of Tamaulipas for expressing themselves.
The difference between “criminals” and “government” exists only in the space between ignorance and gluttony.
Imagine, in this day and age people still believe they can remain anonymous on the interwebz.
This is why you should always maintain anonymity on the interwebz.
Indeed, but to truly do so is very difficult.
Not that while you may register with a fake name and use ‘anonymous’ as a screen name, the packets you send contain your address, and thus are linked with whatever account it is that you use to get on the internet in the first place.
That is to say you may be posting anonymous, but someone somewhere has the logs and the ability to connect the packets use to make an anonymous post, back to that account, and thus to you.
Yes, this makes identity resolution more difficult, but it can be done. The state for example can get this information with many of the tools it has (court order, warrant, etc.). And someone who is willing to bribe the right people can perhaps do the same thing.
Even posting as anonymous one should think of the internet as a public street, Don’t do anything on the internet that you wouldn’t also do out on the street, is a good rule of thumb.
And add to that this tidbit; nothing you put on the internet will ever go away. As the saying goes, getting something off of the internet is like getting pee out of the pool.
Liberals look at Mexico and see an anti-gun paradise. They see what they want the US to be. A place where the line between law and outlaw is gone. They can rule be absolute unopposed force and simply kill all that oppose them. That is their dream for the US because they know will not just submit to their rule and hand over our property and assets for them to distribute to their friends.
And anyone who thinks the cartel and the government of Mexico are not in some sort of allegiance are living a fever dream. If this happens on our soil, it would be virtually the same thing happening on a daily basis. Anyone who bad mouths our government or one of their state sponsored gangs would be hung and strung for all to see. “This is what happens when you don’t agree with us. Anybody else have anything to say?”
It’s already happening here. When news of the IRS targeting tea-party groups and activists surfaced in 2013, some reports mentioned agents regularly troll social media sites to identify activists and other critics of the most venal and vindictive administration in history.
Wait, I read Fisheeze several times, is he talking about mexican’t or the evil blue house of (D)?
Either way, yes. Perfect example of (also someone’s neighbors playing [let’s call them ‘drug’-] government) lots of f-ing up what should orherwise be a garden paradise. Throw in life lessons on FB/ internet, patting themselves on the back for bringing people together, while some of those people are going all olympic nut-dangle with strangers.
I guess if you want to report on the cartels you need to be on the deep web.
There were two times that it seemed (or I imagined) I may have met cartel people when I lived in Mexico. The less frightening of the two, was at a remote and shitty port I had based my boat out of for three years. A guy about 30 and two younger fellows walking behind him were looking over the marina. The older fellow walked up to me and started asking questions about the marina. His English was almost native, he was very polite and friendly. The questions seemed to be those of someone thinking about buying the marina. The two much younger guys appeared not to speak English. There was just something about them, the older one especially, that quickly scared me, a lot. It seemed to me that he saw me as not at all like him, like I was an animal to him even if I wasn’t prey at the moment. From that experience and others, I have ended up with no wish to return to Mexico ever.
Wouldn’t there be a way to use encryption techniques to protect those reporting and to post on the site remotely to hide the location of the administrator?
As much as I love guns its not like the cartels couldn’t just gun you down in a drive by. Many a armed gangster and cop have been killed that way, doesn’t matter how well armed a single person is.You can’t look in every direction all day…… Just being honest gents.
True, but at least they can’t pick you up at any point in time, torture you for days, and hang your dead body off a bridge. If you’re armed they have to kill you quickly, and they might lose one or two of their guys in the process. I’d prefer the latter over the former any day.
No, it can and does happen, it’s just not as easy. How do you think Militias and Autodefensas get information out of Narcos?
I guess-very little I post on fakebook. BTW the gubmint wants to limit encryption for “safety” sake donchaknow…
What we have to remember here is something basic. A society is made up of the people in that society. That is to say (and not making a judgment call here, just pointing out a fact), Mexico is the way it is because it is made up of the people who do these things, that is to say the criminals who commit these crimes, the politicians who take the bribes, the police who (often) are incompetent and/or take the bribes, the people who allow this all to happen, etc. Again, lot of generalization in these observations, but in the end it is what it is.
The more of these people we bring into our society, the more like Mexico we are going to become. And it’s already happening to be sure.
There’s a lot to be said for the rule of law and equal protection. And we are losing it fast. Ask Hilary Clinton, she’ll tell you.
A Mexican coworker of mine wishes Mexico had the same gun laws we have in Texas as he has seen first hand extreme gang thugery, his cousins wife was sodomized on the side of the road in Matamoros after all 3 vehicles in there caravan were pulled over in daylight hours by heavily armed cartel young fn punks. There reasoning to simply interogate them incase they were rivals. This in front of his whole devout Christian family young ones and all. They did not even bother to make a police report. Wonder why.
“Without the Second Amendment protecting Americans’ right to keep and bear arms, the First Amendment is worthless. That’s not a theory.”
I am a huge believer in 2A, for different reasons. I also believe your statement is indeed a theory and a wrong one. There are plenty of countries with no RTKABA, but who still have free speech. We have the RTKABA, but show me one contemporary instance where some law-abiding US citizen successfully defended himself, with a gun, against the government, for expressing a controversial opinion. Whack-o fringe groups don’t count. You could give every Mexican a legal gun, but if they are up against heavily armed and ruthless drug cartels and a corrupt government. they still would not stand a chance.
I think the POTG diminish their effectiveness in public debate by making outlandish statements that are indefensible.
You:
“show me one contemporary instance where some law-abiding US citizen successfully defended himself, with a gun, against the government, for expressing a controversial opinion”
Note that the first amendment does not protect the freedom of speech, that is just part of it.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I should say that the Bundy Ranch standoff is the most obvious example that comes to mind.
And do remember that defending oneself with a firearm does not mean throwing lead around. Just having the firearm itself is a form of defense, and us firearm owners have an average of 8+ of them each.
Bundy Ranch is the external facing example you are looking for, but we-the-people owning 350mln legal firearms are actively defending out freedom or speech, religion etc. every day in a passive way.
Of course your preemptive dismissal of the Bundy ranch standoff as “Whack-o fringe groups” does not fly. Whacko does not appear in the constitution, and the fact that you classify them as such only buttresses the argument that they were in fact exercising a controversial opinion.
Any other questions?
+1
Outstanding! !
The fact that all you can come up with is such an obtuse example pretty much proves my point. Armed resistance at Bundy Ranch was not over 1A issues, it was over grazing rights. The 1A freedom to assemble content was handled peaceably between the protesters and the government. Add to that that Mr. Bundy was openly racist and two of his supporters committed a terrorist act in Las Vegas killing two policemen and I think you are standing on shaky ground. You might as well be defending ISIS.
You also deftly avoided my main point, which is that there are countries that have the full equivalent of 2A rights but do not have the RTKABA, so one does not necessarily ensure or prohibit the other.
BTW, “Whack-o” is not a term the framers had available to them. It’s one we’ve developed since, but it’s very useful. Thanks for illustrating that.
I looked up Bundy Ranch. Pretty much, some guy decided that the rules didn’t apply to him and he got all his feelings hurt when the federal government was having none of it after he’d illegally grazed his cattle on THEIR LAND without paying a single cent in fees. Essentially, this guy couldn’t handle that folks don’t like being stolen from. For some mind-boggling reason, a bunch of people decided that endorsing kleptomania was far more respectable than demanding fair restitution for what was essentially theft. Knowing that these same people would cry all about the horrible oppressive government if the government flexed its muscles to protect its land and its financial interests, the government backed down. That’s right, hundreds of hicks were willing to murder representatives of their sovereign elected government in the name of a thief who was only being asked to pay restitution for his crimes.
Where’d you conduct your research, Huffpo or Salon? The Bundys had enjoyed leased grazing rights to the property for generations. BLM doesn’t “own” the property, they merely manage it for “we the people.” They didn’t have a better use for the property in mind, they were apparently following an Obammunista directive to deprive private citizens of the lawful quiet enjoyment thereof. Renewing the lease would’ve avoided the whole sorry showdown.
I think a lot of the drug and corruption problems can be directly related to over population, as in too many people having too many children they cannot afford to care for all while there are not jobs or resources to support the increased masses at higher levels of income, and it gets worse exponentially. Not everybody wants to be a happy peasant forever serving the wealthy Gringos. Illegal forms of wealth have become common as they have become the easiest path to immediate wealth (not enough other incomes available to the masses). This is the result of human nature, and same thing will eventually happen here in the U.S. At some tipping point, all societies eventually reach a level at which there is not enough of (“fill in blank”) to go around. Best way to (temporarily) solve social problems in Mexico is to make drugs affordable and legal in th U.S. (demand in Mexico will disappear)
Do you really believe the drug dealer who enjoys raping, torture chopping heads off and doing it in front of children, because they get pleasure out the fear of others, will stop when it is legal to sell Marijuana in America?
I don’t believe you libertarians really understand some of the the sick pleasures of human nature.
I do support decriminalization of drugs. But if you think a mexican drug cartel is going to accept a new legitimate business rival you are either a liar or a fool.
Misunderstanding economics: check.
Twisting the libertarian argument (which says nothing about rehabilitation): check
Making a stupid emotional argument about stopping evil: check
Final lie to about supporting decriminalization even when you stated the opposite in other threads: check
You truly talk like a government employee. All lies, no substance.
Failing to make a coherent argument whatsoever, check.
Insulting and name calling check.
Making shit up out of whole cloth, check.
You sound like one of those lunatic druggie communists.
Au contraire, my argument that Chris T’s post is full of crap is quite clear. 🙂
It is amazing how far drug warriors will go to protect their stolen property.
“Au contraire, my argument that Chris T’s post is full of crap is quite clear.”
No it wasn’t. You stated a few things including “Misunderstanding economics, Twisting the libertarian argument, Making a stupid emotional argument about stopping evil” and supported none of these things with any sort of argument, logic or evidence whatsoever.
Just because you say a thing is so, does not make it so. And then going on to say your post was clear in the same way, does not make it clear.
Now I don’t know all the obvious history you and Chris T have, nor do I care.
I also haven’t any more patience to continue on with you myself.
Was that clear?
Then why are you interjecting yourself into this? But to address your points, since you lack the mental capacity to figure it out yourself:
– Economics: The creation of a black market gives wealth to cartels. Legalization will lower the price of formerly illegal items because of reduced risk and the cartels no longer have incentive to traffic the items. Duh.
– Libertarianism: Literally no libertarian has ever said the cartel members will become upstanding citizens upon decriminalization (see above economic argument for what we really think). This is a strawman argument that really needs no rebuttal, but here it is, just for you.
– Emotional argument: head-chopping, and implying all drug entrepreneurs do it. Asinine good guy/bad guy argument.
– Lying about supporting decriminalization: if you haven’t noticed, Chris is quite the drug warrior. You can find posts on his stance quite readily.
Thank you for saying some nice things. Your comments about this terrible horror story have added great value to the conversation.
Mr. S. T. Is not normally worth responding to. He is only insulting and adds nothing of value to the conversation about liberty. I have found some libertarians worth talking to. They add value to the conversation. Mr. S. T. does not.
I Have known many comfortable drug addicts. And I have known many comfortable enablers for drug users. Some had lots of money. Others did not.
You have avoided the issues in this terrible horror story. As I stated before libertarians don’t understand sick human nature. Thank you for confirming this. Your thrust for intoxication betrays you.
It seems many people assume American prohibition and american gangsters are the same as the mexican drug cartels. You are ignorant of history and ignorant of the cultural differences between these groups.
As in rape it is about power not sex. In the cartels it is about power not money. You are lost like most but not all libertarians. The cartels are driven by the intoxication of power. American gangsters like money and being comfortable.
Perhaps you can provide examples for innocent people who have been raped by the thousands tortured or perhaps hundreds with their heads chopped off by American gangsters. American gangsters are evil but they usually do evil to eachother. You are a blind libertarian.
I want people arrested who drive DUI. Public or private transportation. You don’t have the right to show up for work intoxicated. The shop keeper has the right to fire you. Do you disagree with all of this?
These continual stories of cartel and government terror just over the border disgust me. If you step back and look at the whole picture, it could be argued that we have deployed our soldiers to countries for humanitarian, security, and strategic reasons that were a lot less compelling than Mexico. Somalia comes to mind. It makes a lot of sense in today’s world to make sure you neighbor to the South is secure and stable. If it isn’t then the border should be secured with a wall 100 ft high and 100 ft deep.
The fact that the US hasn’t intervened militarily in Mexico make me wonder how complicit we are in the carnage. The chaos certainly keeps the immigrants flowing which serves the Democrats well. Yes, my cynicism is at an all time peak after recently doing a lot of reading about our disastrous exit from Iraq coincident with our covert expeditions into Libya, Yemen, Egypt and especially Syria over the past few years that has literally destabilized the world. The world is so much more dangerous today that it was in 2008, and as I sit here in my tinfoil hat, you just have to wonder if it isn’t by design.
All you need to know is this; border transit of either drugs or people could be stopped if they wanted it stopped.
Here look at it this way; lets say you wanted to sneak into Iran, China or SA with some drugs, do you think you would make it?
Yes.
Anyone who believes there is no drug trade in China or Iran is delusional. Moreover, advocating we revert to the brute barbarism of those states is incompatible with liberty. But hey, drug warriors are fascists at heart. That is obvious.
Don’t put words in my mouth, I didn’t say there was no drug trade in those countries, just whether or not you could sneak them in. You would have a much more difficult time doing so, which you would (China less so due to the very large border of course and you still then would need to travel to the population center anyway, where you will be caught) and if you were caught you would simply be tortured and killed. Per. I. Od.
And yet you go on, I also advocated no barbarism, just that we could control the border if it was desired, which of course, we can.
Your final two sentences are incomprehensible.
Got anything else genius?
Not only is there a drug trade in those countries, there is plenty of drug smuggling across borders. American drug interdiction at the border has been a ludicrous failure, and China and Iran don’t spend anywhere close to the same amount of resources on theirs.
That is because China and Iran’s main effort at drug deterrence is the torture and execution of drug users and entrepreneurs, something that American drug warriors enthuse over constantly, hence my line on barbarism.
Mr S.T.
I assume you support the legal drug operation the english government had in Afghanistan running opium into China. I have read the Chinese leader did not like this legal drug operation, and started an anti drug war. This was back in the 1800s.
Complicit in the carnage? We’re practically throwing weapons at one of the most repressive “democracies” in the world. When a few H&K firearms showed up there, that entire company suffered and enormous scandal for selling firearms to places where they were likely to be used in attrocities.
Welcome to the soon-to-be global future: overpopulation, climate change, famine, extreme pollution, corporate-controlled shadow governments calling the shots, all the wealth flowing upwards to the super-wealthy, and befuddled inbred masses unable to make sense of current events who eventually are herded into the gas chambers.
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