Politics

Across the United States, the second Monday of October is increasingly becoming known as Indigenous Peoples Day. In the push to rename Columbus Day, Christopher Columbus himself has become a metaphor for the evils of early colonial empires, and rightly so.

Diego Javier Luis
Assistant Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University October 2, 2024

The Italian explorer who set out across the Atlantic in search of Asia was a notorious advocate for enslaving the Indigenous Taínos of the Caribbean. In the words of historian Andrés Reséndez, he “intended to turn the Caribbean into another Guinea,” the region of West Africa that had become a European slave-trading hub.

By 1506, however, Columbus was dead. Most of the genocidal acts of violence that defined the colonial period were carried out by many, many others. In the long shadow of Columbus, we sometimes lose sight of the ideas, laws and ordinary people who enabled colonial violence on a large scale.

As a historian of colonial Latin America, I often begin such discussions by pointing to a peculiar document drafted several years after Columbus’ death that would have greater repercussions for Indigenous peoples than Columbus himself: the Requerimiento, or “Requirement.”

Catch-22

In 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas infamously divided much of the world beyond Europe into two halves: one for the Spanish crown, the other for the Portuguese. Spaniards lay claim to almost the entirety of the Americas, though they knew almost nothing about this vast domain or the people who lived there.

In order to inform Indigenous people that they had suddenly become vassals of Spain, King Ferdinand and his councilors instructed colonizers to read the Requerimiento aloud upon first contact with all Indigenous groups.

The document presented them with a choice that was no choice at all. They could either become Christians and submit to the authority of the Catholic Church and the king, or else:

“With the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can … we shall take you and your wives and your children and shall make slaves of them … the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault.”

It was a catch-22. According to the document, Indigenous people could either voluntarily surrender their sovereignty and become vassals or bring war upon themselves – and perhaps lose their sovereignty anyway, after much bloodshed. No matter what they chose, the Requerimiento supplied the legal pretext for forcibly incorporating sovereign Indigenous peoples into the Spanish domain.

At its core, the Requerimiento was a legal ritual, a performance of possession – and it was unique to early Spanish imperialism.

‘As absurd as it is stupid’

But for all of its seeming authority, the reading of the Requerimiento was an absurd exercise. It first occurred at what is now Santa Marta, Colombia, during the expedition led by Pedrarias Dávila in 1513. An eyewitness, the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, stated the obvious: “we have no one here who can help [the Indigenous people] understand it.”

Even with a translator, though, the document – with its lofty references to the Biblical creation of the world and papal authority – would hardly be intelligible to people unfamiliar with the Spaniards’ religion. Explaining the convoluted document would require nothing less than a long recitation of Catholic history.

Oviedo suggested that to deliver such a lecture, you’d have to first capture and cage an Indigenous person. Even then, it would be impossible to verify whether the document had been fully understood.

However, for the Requerimiento’s greatest critic, Bartolomé de las Casas, translation was merely one of many problems. A missionary from Spain, Las Casas criticized the spurious requirement itself: that a people should be expected to immediately convert to a religion they have only just learned exists, and

“swear allegiance to a king they have never heard of nor clapped eyes on, and whose subjects and ambassadors prove to be cruel, pitiless and bloodthirsty tyrants. … Such a notion is as absurd as it is stupid and should be treated with the disrespect, scorn and contempt it so amply deserves.”

Las Casas, who documented abuses against Indigenous people in multiple books and speeches, was one of the most outspoken denouncers of Spanish cruelty in the Americas. While he believed Spaniards had a right and even an obligation to convert Indigenous people to Catholicism, he did not believe that conversion should be done under the threat of violence.

Illustrations from a book written by Bartolomé de las Casas depicting Spanish torture of Indigenous peoples in the Americas.

Sound familiar? Article from last year, reposted because relevance.

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/36042267

CBP Enforces Binary Sex Codes and Enhanced US Passport Validation in APIS

Sex Field Requirements: Effective Oct. 14, 2025, CBP systems will only accept “M” (Male) or “F” (Female) in the sex field of APIS transmissions. Any other characters will result in an “X Response-Insufficient Information” error, requiring airlines to resubmit the passenger data with corrected information.

Amid the ongoing shutdown, the HHS secretary wiped out entire offices that investigate disease outbreaks, manage infectious disease responses and collect data.

45%?

Fuckin' what?

The distortion field is stronger than I thought it was.

Trump is humorless and dangerous. The “just joking” defense falls apart upon actual scrutiny of Trump’s character. He for the most part lacks a genuine sense of humor, which requires a degree of humility and capacity for self-deprecation. He’s tried to have late night hosts taken off the air for making jokes at his expense. Saturday Night Live has long been a target of his humorless rage.

Stephen Robinson
Oct 11, 2025

https://archive.md/xqXqy

This is shaping up to be even bigger than last time.

It's rare for an individual protest to suddenly cause a positive change, this is about building a movement and showing strength and supporting each other.

Visit https://www.nokings.org/ to find a location near you.

“I feel that I personally have to start thinking realistically about how to flee the country.”

Gil Duran

Portland, OR – On Saturday, September 4, 400 people rallied at Elizabeth Caruthers Park and marched to the ICE detention center in Southwest Portland.

The event was organized by Portland Contra las Deportaciones (PDXCD), Portland for Palestine (P4P), Tesla Takedown, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) to protest against the imminent deployment of National Guard troops into the streets of Portland. The troops are supposed to protect the Portland ICE facility.

The rally at Elizabeth Caruthers Park began at noon and speakers from each organization talked about the need to be out in the streets resisting ICE, as opposed to the cowardly “don’t take the bait” rhetoric peddled by city and state officials such as Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Governor Tina Kotek.

“Trump is sending in the army because he is scared, because what we are doing here is working. As oppression intensifies, so too does resistance,” said Isabella Shepard of P4P, “When ICE and Trump escalate, our numbers increase, because we understand that it is critical now more than ever that we show up for our immigrant communities, precisely because they are under attack right now.”

After the crowd had swelled in size, they began to march through the streets towards the ICE facility, chanting “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!” and “Our street, our fight!”

The crowd reached ICE around 1 p.m. and occupied the streets in front of the building. At previous protests of this magnitude, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the main force guarding the facility, has been less aggressive because protesters are able to stay safe in numbers. DHS forces occasionally storm through the front gate to clear the way for incoming and outgoing ICE and DHS vehicles, but they don't often make arrests.

October 4 marked a change in demeanor. Within 20 minutes of the crowd arriving, DHS came through the facility’s front gate and intentionally targeted and assaulted event organizers, arresting five and imprisoning them in the facility. One was a member of P4P, Lora Wilde. The other four were members of PDXCD: Holly Brown, Cass Cano, Elijah Thahir and Leticia Navarro.

After this attack, the remaining organizers announced their intent to continue occupying the streets until their comrades were released from custody. The crowd of hundreds also opted to stay. Over the course of the next eight hours, DHS directly attacked the crowd half a dozen more times and arrested at least four more people. One such attack, around 8:30 p.m., had DHS extensively use tear gas and flashbangs to push protesters several blocks away from ICE, endangering hundreds of people living in the apartments near the facility.

Three organizers and one unaffiliated protester were released from the ICE facility that day. The remaining organizers, Elijah Thahir and Leticia Navarro, were instead transferred 30 miles north to an out-of-county facility, Columbia County Jail in Saint Helens, Oregon. They were transferred around 1 a.m. on October 5, after just under 12 hours, the maximum amount of time ICE could legally detain them.

Members of PDXCD and P4P gathered at Columbia County Jail at 2 p.m. on October 5, for a press conference where they demanded the immediate release of Thahir and Navarro, as well as the dropping of all charges levied against the five organizers.

Holly Brown, one of the organizers who was detained, described the situation inside the facility, “There are harsh fluorescent lights, it's just concrete and meta.” Brown continued, “And we know that someone was detained in there for 47 days. And that is why we’re advocating for that facility to be shut down.”

Just before 7 p.m. on October 5, Leticia Navarro was released from custody. Elijah Thahir followed at 11 p.m., over 34 hours after being arrested. Thahir and Navarro have yet to be charged with any crimes, but like the other three organizers they are ready and willing to fight the charges when they do come. They have the full backing of their communities and organizations behind them.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said his security forces prevented a “false flag operation” to plant explosives at the United States Embassy in the capital Caracas in order to heighten tensions with Washington, amid a US military build-up off the coast of the Latin American country.