…thanks?
Yesterday, the Yanks celebrated “Thanksgiving”. This is peculiarly American ritual; the Canadian version, coming a bit earlier, is simply another instance of the Canuks imitating the Yanks and pretending they’re original!! As to its origins, we’re told that the early settlers from England – the “Pilgrim Fathers” who landed at Plymouth Rock – shared their autumn harvest in 1621 with a tribe of native Indians in the vicinity.
Yes…as with the story of young George Washington being unable to tell a lie (“It was me that cut down the cherry tree, Dad”!!), Americans have a knack for creating self-serving myths!! If the truth be told, those Pilgrims had to’ve been helped by those Indians to cultivate the new crops of that locale, like pumpkins – and certainly about the turkeys that have now become ineluctably tied to American Thanksgiving.
Americans would’ve wolfed down some 44 million turkeys yesterday – and kept leftovers for the rest of this week!! These American turkeys, we should remember, are like our (small) sheep in size – most are over 20 lbs!! Those were very early days for British colonization in the “New World” – and it’s good to know it was the same year the Dutch launched their first settlement up the Essequibo River!! But unlike what the Dutch had done here, the Indians of America were eventually all displaced from the lands they’d lived on for thousands of years – as a reward for their hospitality!!
The notion of giving “thanks” – which would morph into “thanks-giving” – is Biblical, and emphasizes that the Pilgrims were self-righteously declaring that it was their God who’d given them the land and its bounty!! The Indians could then be thrown out at will!!
Like with the Jews in Israel, once the land is given by God – even if it’s the Israelis saying so!! – then you can even launch genocides to keep the land and its bounties!!
The other thing to note is that while Americans insist that “Thanksgiving” is a “secular holiday”, its roots are as Biblical as believing in a Virgin Birth or “Immaculate Conception”!!
With all of us Guyanese having relatives and friends living in America – especially in New York City – we’ve probably all partaken in Thanksgiving feasts when visiting.
But your Eyewitness is still taken aback by some Guyanese starting to celebrate the occasion here in our dear old Mudland. At a minimum, almost every restaurant would feature a “Thanksgiving menu”!! Your Eyewitness wants to go on record as declaring that he considers eating baked turkey only slightly less unpleasant than eating cardboard!! But he’s pretty certain that the American Culture Festival, on this Saturday at the Promenade Gardens – which promises a REAL “immersive” American experience in celebrating the best of American culture – gotta have some of that leftover turkey!!
…warning to Mad Maduro
Following hard on the heels of the passage of the bipartisan BOLIVAR Act (Banning Operations and Leases with the Illegitimate Venezuelan Authoritarian Regime) by the US House of Representatives, which awaits Senate approval, the “lame duck” Biden Administration is quacking and waddling strenuously to pre-empt Trump’s expected hard-line stance towards Mad Maduro in Venezuela. That administration has already announced officially that the self-exiled Gonzalez – a stand-in for the banned Maria Machado – was the “president-elect”, following Mad Maduro’s elections rigging – proven by his refusal to show his voting tallies!!
The administration’s just announced new sanctions that target twenty-one cronies who are propping up the illegal regime. These include FIFTEEN leaders of the Bolivarian National Guard, Bolivarian National Police, the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, Bolivarian Militia, and the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence!Whoa!! Who’s left from the regime?
The only thing left for Biden to do in order to pre-empt Trump is maybe cancel the licences they’d given to Chevron and a few European companies to work with PDVSA to lift and ship oil.
Whaks!!
…Opposition
Late on Wednesday, the Opposition grilled the Government in the National Assembly over Government’s proposed $84BILLION supplementary spending – including the $100,000 payout. This is salutary, even though the Govt got the votes to have their way!!
Voters are listening!!
