Canada Free Press
Nov 27 2010
Thankless in Obamaland
By Daniel Greenfield Saturday, November 27, 2010
This is one Thanksgiving weekend which finds Americans with little to
be thankful for. The economy is sliding badly and the dollar is
endangered, which could potentially wreck the nation’s economy long
after Obama is gone. Flying was a more unpleasant experience due to
the TSA’s aggressive insistence on harassing American fliers, rather
than Muslim terrorists. Then there’s the worldwide chaos, which now
threatens to open up a whole new war in Asia.
With a political beating in the midterm elections and a confused
administration, even liberals seem to have little to be politically
thankful for. But even mentions of Thanksgiving seem inevitably
accompanied by historical revisionism which reduces the contact
between specific groups of European settlers and certain Indian tribes
to a one-sided narrative whose goal is to delegitimize the very
existence of the United States. Everyone from PETA to indigenous
activists to Michelle Obama’s fat insanity has tried to have a go at
it.
Thanksgiving is problematic for many on the left because it provides a
positive view of American settlement and the interaction between
European settlers and Native Americans. Which is why liberals will try
to subvert the story of Thanksgiving by depicting the settlers
negatively. This is almost universally common on television nowadays.
And for those activists obsessed with what people eat, Thanksgiving
with its obligatory heavy turkey dinner, is also a major target. So we
get HRH Michelle Obama telling Americans what they can and can’t eat
for dinner. The difference is that Americans eat their own food.
Unlike Michelle and her husband who eat at taxpayer expense.
The protests over the TSA have also failed to lead to a serious
dialogue about what we should be doing to fight terrorism. Instead
junk catchphrases and people stripping to their underwear while flying
have turned media coverage of the situation into a series of running
gags. Drudge forced media coverage of the backlash, but he steered it
into freakshow areas. The media responded by running stories to pick
up some of the traffic, but the stories they ran were more about the
publicity stunts, while their above board coverage defended the Obama
Administration and the TSA. It’s a ridiculous situation when people
can Tweet that they’re going to fly in their underwear and get major
news organizations to go and film them, that does nothing to address
the problem. Instead it quickly leads to viewer fatigue and
disinterest. And that means the policies will stay in place.
Too much of the backlash has focused on what people don’t want, rather
than what they do want. That has allowed the Obama Administration to
frame it as a choice between security and privacy. When it’s actually
a choice between good security and bad security. That isn’t entirely
accidental. Too much of the coverage was led by sources who don’t
think that there even is such a thing as terrorism. Drudge and other
blogs linked to content from 9/11 Truther Alex Jones and Prison
Planet. This was Jones’ most successful effort to embed himself among
conservatives to date. For those such as Jones or Ron Paul, there is
no terrorism. The whole thing is a government conspiracy. The way they
fed the story, was the way it got told. And an opportunity to actually
reform airline security was missed.
And so what should have been an upbeat time, a harvest festival and a
reunion with friends and family, instead is tinted in haze. And that
seems par for the course under Obama.
In the UK there’s controversy over radical left faux artist Banksy’s
gallery promoting a picture of the 7/7 bombing by Mark Sinckler, a
Muslim who moved from metro vandalism to poorly done collages. All the
attention paid to this just means mission accomplished for Banksy, who
has successfully ridden and ridiculed an art world, where the only
coin that matters is notoriety, not talent.
The entire thing is hopelessly cynical. Sinckler’s Age of Shiva is a
cynical parody of British sensibilities over the 7/7 massacre.
Cynically marketed by Banksy’s Marks and Stencils gallery, which was
also set up to mock art galleries and public sensibilities, it’s the
work of emotionally dead people who believe that by mocking everything
that other people value, they remain above it. As always the joke is
on the average person, the bourgeois, the same type of person who was
riding a bus when it was blown up.
The controversy will move up Banksy and Sinckler further up the
ladder. The careers of both derive from vandalism and end there. First
vandalism of public spaces and then vandalism of public faith and
public values.
Meanwhile in Israel, Netanyahu once again finds himself in another Wye
situation, caught between signing on to what Obama wants and betraying
his country, or resisting and standing up to Obama. It’s not a
pleasant situation to be in. Last time around Netanyahu failed the
test when he gave in to Clinton. It seems as if he may be failing it
again this time. (Latma has their usual scathing take on it.)
Meanwhile Turkey’s Islamist thug Erdogan `the minarets are our
bayonets’ is at it again, amping up the rhetoric and threatening war.
This after the latest document releases suggest that Erdogan’s Turkey
helped Al Qaeda. This shouldn’t be too much of a shock as Erdogan’s
AKP party has Al Qaeda ties. Which shouldn’t be shocking either, as
it’s funded by Saudi money.
Erdogan’s `Support Hezbollah’ visit to Lebanon was met with Armenian
riots. In the past Erdogan had threatened to ethnically cleanse
Armenians from Turkey. (hap tip Joshua Ivens)
Erdogan is now making common cause with Islamic terrorists and he’s
sabotaging Turkey’s ties to Israel and America, in order to fulfill
his goal of integrating it with the Muslim world. In particularly
those Middle Eastern countries which have funded his takeover of the
media by his business partners and political allies. Ranting about
standing up to Israel with `Allah’s Grace’ shows how low Turkey has
fallen from a formerly secular country that understood that the
greatest threat to Turkish nationalism came from Islam.
His trip to Lebanon was full of that kind of Caliphate prep work, for example
`although we are talking different languages in this vast geography,
we should not forget that we have one history, one culture and similar
values. We have given a shape the history together. Be sure that we
will give a shape to the future altogether.
Erdogan said Turkey mutually removed visa requirements with Syria,
Lebanon, Libya and Jordan. `We have not lost anything or met any
problem. On the contrary, when we removed the visa requirements, we
clearly saw that they were meaningless. We have not removed the visa
requirements; we have removed a century old yearning among our
people.’
Whether Turks are actually yearning to import crime and unskilled
labor from the Arab world is debatable, but that doesn’t really
matter. What it means is that if Turkey joins the EU, Muslim
terrorists and criminals from across the Arab world will have no
trouble getting in.
Erdogan then proposed an Islamic EU, a Schengen, to bridge the gap to
the Caliphate.
Via Desert Conservative, an interesting piece on a forgotten massive
pre 9/11 terrorist plot in Canada.
Toronto’s terror plot of 1991 (pre September 11) has been forgotten
and become a lost memory to Canadians.
The terror plot was planned by five black Muslims who were followers
of Jamaat Al Fuqra, a Pakistani movement. They were acquitted of
planning to kill 4,500 people within two buildings in Toronto. The
attacks were to be done one after the other.
At the time of the attack, it was seen as an isolated case but now
after a series of planned attacks in Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto it
has been associated with a series of attacks by Islamist terrorists.
…
Just two years before the first World Trade Centre bombing, and a
decade before the 9/11 attacks Toronto was the potential terror plot
destination of North America where thousands of people would have died
had the terrorists not been on the radar beforehand.
The terror plot was set to blow out during the Hindu festival of
Diwali at two separate locations one after the other. The first spot
was the India Centre cinema on Gerrard Street with a 500 people
capacity (most commonly occupied by Sikhs and Hindus) and the second
spot was the Vishnu Hindu Temple, which has a capacity of 4000
(occupied by Hindus) in Richmond Hill.
What is disturbing about this is not just the scale of the planned
attacks, but a reminder that Muslim ethnic cleansing and racism is
being exported by Muslim immigrants and converts. The Muslim world has
committed genocide against non-Muslims numerous times. And it’s at it
again in Europe and in Canada.
In the roundup, Phyllis Chesler tackles the PA’s latest attempt to
Islamize the world’s holiest Jewish site
The Muslims (not the Islamists, but the Muslims) mean to take over
every Jewish site in Jewish Israel. And the United Nations means to
assist them.
Long before a sovereign Jewish state ever existed, Muslims massacred
the Jews of Hevron in 1929. Surviving Jews returned, but were then
forced to flee again during the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939. This burial
chamber of our Jewish ancestors is a cave whose purchase is carefully
and exhaustively reported in the fifth parasha (portion) of the Torah.
According to Jewish religious sources, this purchase took place in
approximately 1677 BCE.
Please remember: In 1929, when the Muslims massacred the Jews of
Hevron, there were no Jewish `settlements’ in `occupied Palestinian
land.’ There was no Muslim `Palestine’ and no sovereign Jewish state.
In 1996, under the Wye Accords, Jewish Israel surrendered most Jewish
access to this Cave to the Waqf.
Today, Jews can pray there in an outer, small chamber only under heavy
guard and only a few times a year in the main prayer chamber. Muslims
took the lion’s share of the main prayer hall because, as they claim,
Abraham is also their forefather.
Of course if Abraham were around today, he’d be boycotted in London
and beheaded in Gaza.
The whole thing still reminds me of my old post, `Muslims announce 5
New Holy Sites’. Considering that this was written in Feb of 2007, a
day after Obama announced he was running, one section proved to be
unfortunately prescient.
The White House
Mohammed HTFBUH (High Tax Fees Be Upon Him) reportedly visited the
White House as a guest of President Millard Fillmore, slept in the
Lincoln Bedroom (which was then called, the `Give Me A Bribe and You
Can Spend the Night Bedroom) and tried to molest some of the
President’s carriage horses.
As such the highest authorities in Islam (three blind clerics who live
in Cairo and still think it’s 1922 and want an end to British colonial
rule) have announced that the White House from now is to be off-limits
to non-Muslims unless they’re there to serve incoming President,
Barack Hussein Obama.
Elder of Ziyon does some fact checking of the language being used
about the Temple Mount.
Israel Matzav asks about the Tea Party position regarding Israel.
Using a New York Times article as a starting point is always a bad
idea. Since we’re talking about a grass roots movement composed of
different organizations, there’s no official position. But
demographically most of the Tea Party people are conservative and
opposed to Muslim terrorism. Its focus is on domestic, not
international politics.
The Times uses Rand Paul as a prototype of a Tea Party candidate,
which is a terrible idea, because he doesn’t have all that much in
common on many issues with actual TP candidates. Paul, like his
father, is basically a secessionist and conspiracy theorist, who
shares the left’s view on national security issues. It’s doubtful that
he could have won under a Republican President. But under Obama,
enough people have been willing to overlook the things he’s said, like
comparing the US Army to Hitler.
Compare Paul to Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachman, Mark Rubio, etc and
you see the huge gap opening up.
The American Thinker has an interesting piece by James Lewis, who
views the entire TSA mess as part of a racist revenge fantasy by
Obama. I don’t know that I agree with him. I don’t believe that this
is a plan, but the disdain with which complaints have been met, may
be. That makes it more of a Shirley Sherrod situation, in which the
situation itself is not created out of racism, but the neglect of
those who are suffering and the favorable treatment meted out on the
basis of race is. This has been a too common pattern in government.
But it’s been practiced more commonly by white liberals, than by black
people. But Obama may arguably fall into the former category, as much
as into the latter one.
Finally on the Thanksgiving theme, the Daily Beast has some
interesting historical background for the origins of the holiday.
We can also restore the meaning of early Thanksgivings in New England
by coming at it from another angle, equally authentic. We find it in
Judaism and the Hebrew scriptures.
If you were English, and you wished to express gratitude to God, you
would turn to one majestic Biblical text before any other. It speaks
about the wilderness of the Sinai, about danger and deliverance, about
the journey of the Israelites across the Red Sea, and about the duty
to give thanks when the exodus is complete. The text is Psalm 107. In
the reign of Elizabeth I, when the realm survived a plot, a plague, or
the Spanish Armada, her subjects went to church and gave thanks to the
Almighty, using the same psalm: `We will offer unto him the sacrifice
of Thanksgiving: and tell out his works with gladness.’
So at Provincetown, when the Mayflower first dropped anchor in 1620,
the Pilgrims did likewise. For them, the psalm possessed a still
deeper resonance. Keen scholars of Hebrew, which they saw as the
original language of God, the Pilgrims knew that Psalm 107 was the
source of the Jewish thanksgiving prayer, the birkat ha-gomel. They
owned books by an English scholar, Henry Ainsworth, who used the
Jewish philosopher Maimonides to show that this was so. The birkat
ha-gomel was the prayer that every devout Jew should say, upon safe
arrival after a dangerous voyage. The Pilgrims said it too.
And so in New England the Pilgrims took a variety of sources, and over
time they blended them together to create their early Thanksgivings.
Their successors did the same. They said Thanksgiving psalms like
Jews, sometimes they fasted and sometimes they ate and drank, and like
their British cousins they puffed themselves up with national pride.
Centuries later, Americans ended up with a hybrid of Elizabethan
patriotism, Algonquian fun, and a dash of non-denominational piety. In
other words: the modern Thanksgiving. All you need add is Psalm 107,
to make the event sublime.
From: A. Papazian
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/30452