From: fedora@fea.st
On Mon, 5 Jan 2026 10:53:13 -0800, Dude wrote:
>On 1/5/2026 6:56 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:
>> On Mon, 5 Jan 2026 13:23:37 +0000, Julian
>> wrote:
>>
>>> One of the few benefits of being an anthropologist is the uncanny
>>> exhilaration one feels watching novel current events as re-runs from
>>> previous episodes in the history of mankind.
>>
>> Watch out, a supposed anthropologist is going to say good things about
>> hilmbo.
>>
>Question:
>
>Who is this "hilbo" of which you speak?
>
>Other questions:
>
>Why don't you write in English?
>
>How many native Americans did the French Canadians kidnap?
Who cares?
>
>>> Donald Trump’s capture of Nicolas Maduro, President of Venezuela, is no
>>> exception. Kidnapping Latin American emperors is a continental
>>> tradition. It’s simply most practical method for breaking the chain of
>>> command in the region. It triggers succession chaos, enables the
>>> extraction of resources, and keeps the rest of the hierarchy more or
>>> less intact. In earlier centuries, it was Spain and Portugal. Today,
>>> it’s the United States.
>>>
>>> In the colonial era, the objective was to secure enough gold to beat
>>> European rivals. Now, with an astonishing 90 per cent of Venezuela’s oil
>>> produce heading to China, it’s about ensuring dominance over East Asia.
>>> And there has never been a better way of establishing dominance than by
>>> carrying out a good kidnapping.
>>>
>>> The first to try it in Latin America were the original Spanish
>>> conquerors led by Christopher Columbus. When he sunk his leather boots
>>> into the warm Caribbean sands in 1492, he discovered a continent of
>>> unprecedented size and a near-endless source of human slaves. But
>>> military resistance was immediate, and an Indian chieftain called
>>> Caonabó was the fiercest of all, directing surprise attacks that killed
>>> nearly all the men Columbus left on the islands when he regularly popped
>>> back to Spain. When the Admiral heard the news, he sent a terrible
>>> deputy, Alonso de Ojeda, to sort out Caonabó and eradicate any opposition.
>>>
>>> Ojeda, approaching the Indian chieftain peacefully with a mere handful
>>> of men, offered the chief some polished brass handcuffs and shackles,
>>> saying that they were ‘royal ornaments’ worn by kings in Spain that
>>> offered them divine and magical properties. Caonabó believed him. And so
>>> he let the Spaniard put them on. Then, Ojeda snapped them shut,
>>> kidnapped the chief, and galloped back to his settlement – effectively
>>> decapitating the native’s leadership. The entire culture crumbled soon
>>> after, and slaves poured into Seville. And I imagine the sketching of
>>> Caonabó’s face looked just like the pep shots of Maduro that have been
>>> circulating on social media today.
>>>
>>> A few decades later, the conquistador Hernán Cortés landed in
>>> Tenochtitlan, present-day Mexico City, and discovered yet another
>>> ancient civilization. This time, though, the sheer scale and
>>> sophistication of the Aztecs surpassed even the greatest cities back in
>>> Europe. The Emperor Moctezuma II, feeling untroubled by a couple hundred
>>> badly smelling foreigners, invited him into the city to show Cortés his
>>> personal aviary. The conquistador, following the Spanish tradition,
>>> immediately kidnapped him and put him under palace arrest.
>>>
>>> Much like Trump’s recent announcement that the US would be running
>>> Venezuela for the time being, Cortés, too, governed the Aztec empire
>>> with Moctezuma as a puppet. The successful kidnap meant gold flowed back
>>> to Spain in abundance, but the emperor himself soon died after being
>>> taken onto the palace rooftop to try and calm his subjects. One of them,
>>> unhappy with the emperor’s performance, ended the whole charade by
>>> throwing a rock at his head.
>>>
>>> Perhaps the most uncanny example happened a few years later, when
>>> another Spanish conquistador, Francisco Pizarro, landed on the shores of
>>> Peru to discover an even bigger empire: the Inca. Their emperor,
>>> Atahualpa, also looked upon these straggly foreigners with little cause
>>> for concern. A gambling man, Pizarro took the biggest risk of his life
>>> by getting his priest to read the Inca emperor the Requerimiento; a
>>> forced submission to Christianity with cultural roots in the Moorish
>>> tradition, recently expunged from Spain, of the summons to accept Islam
>>> or be attacked.
>>>
>>> Atahualpa refused, as all self-respecting Latin American emperors did in
>>> the face of foreign conquest, but misjudged the cunning of the Spanish,
>>> who promptly closed the palace gates, locked out his army, butchered his
>>> bodyguards and, as per tradition, kidnapped the emperor and held him to
>>> ransom. Like Maduro, Atahualpa was handed a set of trumped up legal
>>> charges – in this case ‘idolatry’ and adultery (the emperor enjoyed many
>>> wives). His kidnapping lasted 8 months before the Spanish strangled him
>>> with an iron collar, but not before being forcibly baptised as ‘Don
>>> Francisco’ after his conqueror and tormentor, Francisco Pizarro.
>>>
>>> It did not surprise me to see that Nicolas Maduro, too, has already
>>> ended up in today’s cultural equivalent of the ritual humiliation once
>>> offered as forced baptism. Maduro and his sovereignty were instantly
>>> mocked online, videos of American eagles eyeing up his power, were
>>> quickly reposted on Donald Trump’s Truth Social feed. Stuck in his cell
>>> in New York, awaiting trial, Maduro will take little comfort in the
>>> knowledge that he’s just the latest Latin American leader to go through
>>> this process.
>>>
>>>
>>> Max Horder
--
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<>> to <<>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian shrinks in horror and warns others away
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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