The town of Roubaix, located in northern France, has a problem. The problem is turkey bacon. Turkey bacon, it seems, is grounds for discrimination in France. The town council has filed a formal complaint against a chain of fast food restaurants known as Quick that serves only meat conforming with Islamic dietary laws at their local branch. Roubaix’s Mayor declared, “This is discrimination against non-Muslims.”

Witch hunts and Islamophobia are alive and well in the land of Pepe Le Pew. Vive la France!

As it turns out, the Roubaix Quick location is one of many branches that took pork off the menu and made all meat products halal /  kosher.  The chain made the decision to take a bacon hamburger off the menu at several of its more than 300 branches, replacing it with a halal version that comes with smoked turkey. Their target: to test the “commercial interest and technical feasibility” of introducing halal menus in France, home to the largest Muslim community in all of Europe, some five million strong.

Roubaix’s Quick branch has assured council there hasn’t been so much as a single complaint and there has even been a slight increase in business since making the changes.

Regardless, several deputies of French President Nicolas Sarkozy have condemned the decision. Vice-president of the National Front, Marine Le Pen, went so far as to warn France of “Islamisation”.

In Roubaix, Mayor Rene Vandierendonck, called for a total boycott of the Quick branch, and the town council has filed a discrimination complaint with a regional court. Wow… Who knew Turkey Bacon was so dangerous?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Vive Le France!

From David Anthony Hohol…

AP Photo

Tibet’s struggle for independence has long captured the imagination and support of the Western World. Very few people however are even aware of the Uygur people’s struggle for survival, which in many ways is far more critical. Made up of Turkic speaking, Central Asian and mostly Muslim people, the Xinjiang Uygur Auton­omous Region is their ancestral homeland. Located in Western China, the entire area lies at the one time center of the known world and is rich with the Technicolor fabric of our kaleidoscopic human history. Missionaries, monks, merchants and traders from every corner of the planet passed through with regularity. Muslim pilgrims, Buddhist holy men, Marco Polo and even Genghis Khan have cast their footprints in Xinjiang’s soil, the one time crossroads of all humanity.

Situated in an area rich with much needed natural resources, the Uygur are fast becoming outsiders to what has been the epicenter of their very cultural being for centuries. Han Chinese are slowly pouring in to take advantage of the readily available resources and at times they are doing so aggressively. Xinjiang is fast becoming China’s second Tibet in the process.

The Uygurs are witnessing the slow eradication of their culture in the name of progress. Once the vast majority, they now make up approximately half the population. Few hold good jobs as they slowly are being pushed out of the oil rich city. A recent study by the U.S. government said 800 of 840 civil service job openings were reserved for Han Chinese. Why? China’s communist government requires all government employees renounce their religion. That and they simply do not want to see their history sacrificed in the name of development.   

To make matters worse, long standing historical world heritage sites are being torn down to make space for new real estate developments. Gambling and prostitution have quickly moved in and as the pro-atheist Chinese government have even put restrictions on worship at mosques.

The culture clash has slowly begun to turn to violence. Uygyrs shopkeepers are having their businesses vandalized and some have been threatened with arson. The Uygurs are a proud people and have begun to fight back, challenging the Han and police forces in the process. More than 200 people were killed in ethic clashing and more recently, riots resulted in more than 800 deaths in some of the deadliest protests since Tienanmen Square. The military has since taken to the streets by the tens of thousands to restore order. Amnesty International and human right watch groups are disturbed by the forced assimilation of the Uygyrs by the Han Chinese. China is made of of 56 Ethic groups, with more than 90% being Han.

Tibet, Palestine, Sudan – the world is filled with stories like this and unfortunately the ending is rarely a happy one. Once again what we were, a magnanimous piece of our collective past, is about to be sacrificed upon on the altar of greed, hegemony and progress. When will we ever learn?

From David Anthony Hohol…

A Protestant Christian sect known as Mormons openly practiced polygamy throughout the 19^th century. In 1890, faced with seizures of their churches and other property under the new federal polygamist act, the Church of Latter Day Saints officially denounced polygamy. Shortly thereafter, the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Days Saints was formed by those who refused to adhere to the new policies.  Today their traditions of forced marriages and multiple wives for each man continue.

Located throughout the North Western United States, there just under 40,000 members of the FLDS, with several hundred located just over the border in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The largest FLDS community, some 10,000 strong, call Colorado State home. Shrouded in secrecy and living off the grid of mainstream society, they’ve popped on and off the radar for years. Recently, their practices have once again been brought into the light of day.

In April of 2008, a 15 year old girl ran away from a colony in Colorado and reported her plight to the police. Their polygamy was silently accepted, but the forced marriage of a minor now on official record was not. An investigation ensued and not long afterward more than a dozen church members were indicted for having sex with a minor. Suddenly, the secluded community was on the nightly news for all to see. People watched these odd looking people protesting the arrests, their members dressed as though they were homesteaders from a hundred years past.  Their communal farming colonies cut off from the outside world were exposed for all to see; so was their habit of routinely marrying girls as young as 14 years of age. Many women in the sect have 3-5 children by the time they are 21 , as a woman’s primary role if to bear as many children as possible. It is believed this will  build up what they refer to as the celestial family that will remain with them forever.

The first defendant was convicted in November of 2009, with other trials to come in 2010.

Warren Jeffs is considered by members to be the living Prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. Calling himself a prophet and claiming to be God’s mouthpiece here on earth, Jeffs placed himself in a role of unconditional power.  Jeffs was arrested and charged with sexual misconduct with a minor as well as incest in 2006. Found guilty he was sentenced to 15 years to life in 2007.

The number of wives for those men closest to the prophet in the church’s hierarchy moves well into double digits. Church lieutenants have more than 20 wives. Jeffs was thought to have as many as 80 at the time of his arrest.

The FLDS, despite arrests and convictions of some it members, continues its long-standing tradition of polygamy to this day. Only men deemed Godly by the church hierarchy can take more than one wife. They can also have their wives and children re-assignedto other men if afterwards there are deemed unworthy. Church Elder Joe Jessup has 5 wives, 46 children and 239 great grandchildren. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Jessup declared in a recent interview.

Many young boys leave the colony, unofficially excommunicated due to the fact there are no wives for them to marry. The elder guard of the Church take most young girls for themselves and in turn, solidify their position of power over the younger men.

The latest rash of arrests built off the complaint of a 15 year old girl from a Colorado colony has once again produced convictions, but there is little to suggest the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints will ever stop such behavior. For more than a century they have defied the law and one can only assume they will continue to do so in the future.

From David Anthony Hohol…

From David Anthony Hohol…

Living in the deserts of the Middle East  has its drawbacks. Some might not consider it such, but I really do miss winter. It’s been years since I felt the patter of snowflakes against my lips,  squinted my eyes at the rush a cold wind over my face, or watched a winter’s morning sunrise dance across the snow. 

Within the realm of my rural Canadian upbringing, after hockey of course, the best part of winter was always ice-fishing. There was no greater joy shared between my grandfather and I, aside for morning chores out behind the barn, than taking the old pick-up for drive out onto the ice. He passed away seven years ago. Sometimes it feels like only yesterday the two of us fished amidst the peace of a winter’s dawn. Sometimes it seems like a thousand years have passed. Allow me to share with you the story of a typical day of grandfather and grandson out on the ice.  Perhaps that way, the memory can be taken off to far away place and live just a little bit longer.     

I jolt straight up out of a dead sleep, like a jack-in-the-box on speed, and slam my hand down on the snooze button. The small, beat-up clock radio, that’s older than I am, says 4:30 AM. My blurred eyes are almost stuck together and my bed feels like the warmest, safest place on earth. All I need is another five glorious minutes. Then, as suddenly as the alarm, I’m startled awake by my grandfather’s traditional fishing day wake up call. “Drop your cock and grab your socks! We got holes to dig!” he blurts out with a laugh.

Ice fishing with my grandfather always starts monstrously early. Looking like a zombie out of a cheap horror film, I clumsily make my way through the narrow bedroom door, and shuffle my still sleeping feet along the green shag carpet of the farmhouse living room. In the darkness, I slide my hand along the cold, oak paneling to find the light switch, and feel the black electrical tape covering a small crack in its casing, that’s been there my entire life. Once in the bathroom, I immediately turn on the water and stick my head under the tap. The icy water cascades over my face and quickly brings me back from the dead. The almost sweet water comes straight from the well, and is always cold and fresh. I then quickly hop back to my room to get dressed, because I know it won’t be long before my grandfather is outside, warming up the truck.

 Before I know it, I’m on my way out the door, armed with coffee and cigarette in hand. The cold air bites my damp skin, as I walk out into the frigid blackness of an arctic January morning in northern Alberta. My breath turns into an icy mist and rolls over my face, as I jump into my grandfather’s reliable, old pick-up. “Look at that sky… nice and clear. Those little bastards are gonna bite today,” my grandfather says with a smile, his gravelly voice always seeming to ring with truths.

We head down the lifeless void that is the highway, and the baron landscape of winter stares at us through the cracked windshield of the Chevy half ton. The only sign of life at five in the morning during the heart of a prairie winter is the wind that whistles through the truck, as we hurtle down the highway at a ferocious one hundred kilometers an hour. The cold and lonely sound of the wind outside the pick-up always makes me feel safe inside the cabin. The subtle smile upon my grandfather’s face always makes me feel warm.

 The two-hour ride always goes by quickly, and we reach Floating Stone Lake in what feels like no time at all. As my grandfather and I drive out onto its surface, the truck’s knobby tires crunch and squeak over the frozen ice and snow. A glacial wasteland appears before us, with no signs of existence, except for the frozen over holes of yesterday’s hearty fisherman. Even though we’re still shrouded in darkness, the sun has just begun to cautiously peak over the horizon, and the sky is turning into a hazy gray. The moon, although slowly fading, is still silhouetted in the misty heaven of the dawn. We drive around the frozen lake for several minutes, until my grandfather decides on a spot to fish. It is his firm belief that the place one chooses to fish is the most important decision of the day. He uses the power of deductive reasoning, sixty years of fishing experience, and a lot of good old-fashioned superstition, before finally making his choice. Prior to heading out on to the motionless tundra, I pour myself a piping hot, jet-black coffee. The steam and rich smell of my mug of morning rejuvenation fill the truck’s cabin, and it’s then we venture outside.

When I first step out on to the ice, I always feel as though I’m walking on the surface of a far away planet. The massive lake seems to go on forever, and the silence that surrounds us is deafening. The quiet emptiness, however, is wonderfully beautiful. No matter what, it’s always a good morning, and the world hasn’t quite woken from its wintry slumber. The air is clean, heavy with the scent of freshly fallen snow, and tinged with the scent of the gargantuan evergreens that surround the lake. At dawn, one could almost believe this place was a certain kind of heaven, far removed from civilization and its supposed sensibilities.

As I chase the last drag of my smoke with a sip of hot coffee, my grandfather pops open the banged up tail gate of the pickup.  Shortly thereafter, out comes our trusty ice auger. It’s a steel contraption, with spiraling blades at the bottom, and a rotating handle up top. One has to drill their way through nearly four feet of ice under their own power, and my grandfather is always the first to go. After slamming the sharp end of the auger into the snow, he begins to furiously rotate the keenly-edged blades, drilling into the frozen surface below. The auger scrapes and spits, as my grandfather bores deeper and deeper into the ice, until finally, he breaks through. The icy water comes rushing up the hole, and for a moment, looks like a small geyser on the surface of the lake. “An ordinary man of my age would never use anything but a power auger, but then again, I’m no ordinary man!” he says with a satisfying laugh.

My grandfather remained a strong man late into his life. Until his body would simply no longer allow him to do so, he worked with his hands and his back. There’s nothing he enjoyed more than getting up at six in the morning to pack hay bails out to his herd, and to trudge twelve-gallon grain cans to his prize steers that went to market come spring. In many ways, he epitomized an iconic form of masculinity and I looked at him as a vision of strength throughout my entire life as a result.

After my Grandfather finishes, I grab the auger and follow suit. With our holes dug, it’s then time to grab our lines and bait. Juicy, plump maggots are always our number one preference, and my grandfather always seemed to have a strange affinity for these little creatures. After carefully puncturing a maggot onto our hooks, down the line goes, and then all we do is wait. As I look across at my grandfather, the wind begins to pick up for a moment and blows across his time beaten face. A small, yet satisfying smile falls under his thin, gray, neatly trimmed moustache. Sitting on his grain can, he reaches into his three-quarter length, green parka and pulls out one extra mild, king size cigarette. As he puts the smoke in his mouth, I notice his jagged and bent fingers. His hands are like stone figures carved with deep creases and wrinkles, a necessitating result of more than sixty years of back-breaking work. As he exhales his first drag, the smoke bellows from the side of his mouth like smoke from a chimney a on a windy day. After rolling over his dark eyes and finely carved crows feet, the smoke disappears over his head.

My grandfather always amazed me, and at times, I looked at him with awe. I often wondered what it would be like to be old, what I would be like to have all those memories and experiences, to see your children’s children grow into adults themselves, and to have lived through wars and entire eras. It was my grandfather that made me look forward to getting older; it was my grandfather that allowed me to accept my humanity. I will forever be grateful.

My dogmatic state is then suddenly broken, when my grandfather blurts out, “There we go!” and tosses aside his fishing stick to pull the fish up by the line.

Hand over hand, he pulls the line up. When the fish finally reaches the surface of the icy water, he tosses it aside, away from the jagged hole. The fat perch wriggles and gyrates on the snow like a newborn baby, its jaws gasping violently. My grandfather then steps on the tail of the great beast with his big black boot, and with stick in hand, smacks the fish over the head. It’s been put out of its misery. Upon standing up straight, he takes in a deep breath and pauses for a moment, to take in the world around him. His eyes carry with them a twinkle, and as he walks over to his grain can to once again sit down and lower his line, his youthful stride is filled with exuberance. At times, I see a young boy in my grandfather when he’s fishing. It fills me with joy and makes feel close to the man like nothing else in the world.

The ritual of fishing- it’s something, that for all its simplicity, holds resplendent moments of beauty and peace. If I ever earn the profound privilege of some day being a father, and if I’m somehow magically blessed with then seeing my children have children of their own, I would take my grandchildren out for a day on the ice. Not only to teach them the art of fishing, but to tell them stories of their great grandfather and what a great man he was. And I would tell them, even though they’ve never met him, he continues to influence their lives, each and everyday.

On the drive back, the sun is now bright, and the sky is a clear abyss. The sun is never brighter than on a clear winter day. The magnificent rays of sunshine dance like a ballerina on the sea of white that surrounds us. The blinding sky, the howling wind outside the truck, and the side of the road that rushes by us, always puts me in a trance. The conversation between my grandfather and myself varies, but as always, includes some discussion of his beloved Toronto Maple Leafs, and what kind of team the Blue Jays were going to have come spring. Soon we will be home.

As we finally reach the one hundred yard driveway to the farmhouse, the house where both my father and grandfather were born, I’m happy. The farmyard, which was in a deep winter sleep when we left, is now wide-awake. The cats and dogs running about, the rustling of the cattle out by the barn, and as always, my grandmother in the big bay window, watching us pull up the driveway, all bring the farm back to life. As we pull into the yard, the cats and dogs surround the truck like children chasing the ice cream man, in hopes of dining on the fish to small to fry. We then unload the pick-up, and I begin to make my way to the house with the fish we have caught. “Take those to Baba and tell to make sure there’s lotsa garlic, I’ll be in after chores,” declares my grandfather.

No matter how big or small the job, my grandfather always seems to be on the go. As he walks out towards the old, worn down barn that still stands tall and strong, I once again think to myself how one very much embodies the other. They’ve both been worn down by time a little bit, but still do the job they’ve always done. They both still offer protection and warmth from the battles of life, and continue to symbolize strength, responsibility, and endurance that still lives and breathes today. As I reach the front step, I hear my Grandfather say with a chuckle, “Oh boy… if there’s no rest for the wicked, I must be the wickedest man alive,” and I smile, as I place my hand of the steel door knob.

Slowly opening the door to the farmhouse, the only door that has always been there for me to open, I feel the warmth of the kitchen upon my flushed face. At that moment, all seems right with the world and as I take off my snow-covered boots, I know deep in my heart, I’m right where I’m supposed to be.  

Recently an 80 year-0ld child molester, after having being outed by the media for his monstrous behavior, had his victim, a 12 year-old girl, returned to him.  The young girl’s father sold his daughter for approximately $20,000, thus making her the 80 year-old man’s sex slave.  All of this was entirely legal and binding according to the laws of the country. 

Saudi Arabian law calls the sale of children “marriage,” making such vile and disturbing actions fall well within the boundaries of their legal system.  There is no minimum age for such a union and time and again, children are sold off to highest bidding child molesters and rapists. 

Only a few months back, when a mother tried to annul the sale of her 8 year-old daughter to a 47 year-old man, the request was refused not once, but twice by Saudi Courts. As it turned out, the marriage contract was part of a loan repayment plan. The man agreed to deduct $8,000 from a debt the father owed him in return. Yes, you are reading this right.

On some occasions, the victims manage to run away from their molesters. The wheels of Saudi Arabian society then jump into action. The police or the victim’s parents catch the girl and return her to once again re-enter the cycle of rape and human slavery.  

I’ve often wondered if the damage and shame that Saudi Arabia brings to the international reputation of the Middle East and to Arabs everywhere is worse than any terrorist attack.  Going back over these words… I’m no longer wondering.  

From David Anthony Hohol… 

Yemen is one of the most impoverished and religiously fundamentalist places on the planet. Its own government even understands the fact that urgent political and economic reforms are needed to fight the cancer that is al-Qaeda, slowly spreading throughout the nation. They recognize the fact that continued al-Qaeda militancy risks stability and will only bring problems to an already troubled country.

Poverty is conducive to an atmosphere of radicalization and with nearly half of all Yemenis living on $2 a day, millions of people feel alienated and disenfranchised. Roughly half the population is also illiterate and the nation recently ranked 182^nd out of 191 countries in general knowledge aptitude tests. In other words, Yemen is prime territory for al-Qaeda recruitment. Hopelessness, poverty and illiteracy are all hallmarks of those most often drawn into terrorism.

Following the December 25^th attempt to blow up an American Airline with 300 people on board, under pressure from both Saudi Arabia and the Unites States, the Yemen government officially declared war on al-Qaeda. The States and Saudi also happen to be Yemen’s two biggest donors. Al Qaeda aside, Yemen is also facing a nation wide water shortage, a secessionist movement in the south, and a Shiite Muslim revolt in the north. In other words, it is a country on the verge of both chaos and collapse.  

“The challenges in Yemen are growing and, if not addressed, risk threatening the stability of the country and broader region. The government of Yemen recognizes the urgent need to address these issues which will take sustained and focused engagement,” said a government statement.  

In an emergency interventionist meeting planned for this week, the G8 nations (Canada, the United States, Japan, Italy, France, the UK, Germany and Russia) the Gulf Cooperation Council (the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman) along with Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey will meet to discuss Yemen’s fragile and potentially hazardous state. United Nations representatives and officials from both the Word Bank and the IMF will also be present at the meeting set to take place in London. Security, health, education, and economic reform are expected to take center stage.

The attempted December 25 made the international community realize that if Yemen is left on its own, al Qaeda could transform the country into something along the lines of Somalia, the tiny nation’s lawless neighbor just across the Gulf of Aden.

From David Anthony Hohol…

I never make it through a day without thoughts of my grandfather crossing my ever-racing mind, but come January the comforting spectre of his presence is stronger than at any other time of year.  The son of Ukrainian immgrant born in the farmhouse his father built with his own hands, the same house where my father was born and raised, my grandfather passed away on January 20th, 2003.   I am the son of farmer’s son or a farmer’s son, and this is not my story but the story of the North American New World. 

More than a century ago the Canadian prairies lay in waiting, with the promise of freedom and opportunity for all those willing to devote themselves to the land and to the back-breaking work necessary in order to make a better life. At the same time, the rich soil of Ukraine wallowed in poverty. The hard-working souls within the provinces of Bukovina and Galicia were dogged by hardship and worked under the unforgiving boot of oppression. The peasantry of serfdom placed many in destitute conditions and life was often barely livable. The near feudal lords of Austria, who at that time controlled Ukraine, along with significant clerical tariffs taxed away not only the farmer’s surpluses, but gouged into what was necessary to simply stay alive.

The majority of farms in Ukraine covered less than ten acres of land and a man who owned more than that was considered wealthy. Moreover, the land was often broken up into different pieces and was rarely a continuous stretch of soil. Out on the Canadian prairies, 160 acres of free land were waiting for anyone who dared to make the long and arduous journey from their homeland. The adventurous trek would take them through Europe and then across the Atlantic, only to then travel thousands of miles across rugged countryside until they finally reached the Western frontier and a brave new world. Between what seemed like a magical place and those industrious enough to make the journey, lay a gap stretching half way round the globe. Far greater than any physical divide was the unthinkable distance between being an oppressed peasant living under tyrannical rule and a new world pioneer living in freedom. There was also the powerful and intimidating barrier of language that stood like a towering wall between oppression and liberty. With that said, all that was needed to begin an influx of some 250,000 Ukrainian immigrants to this new world in waiting was knowledge of its existence.

The plight of the Ukrainian farmer began to draw attention from the intellectuals of the day and by the 1870s philanthropic organizations were established in Galicia. They strived to assist and educate the oppressed in hopes of creating hope for the future. Soon after, they began to market the idea of emigration as an option for a better life. 

Word of free lands on the prairies of a newborn nation half way round the world reached Ukraine soon after. At first it was difficult for many to believe, as it seemed to be a fantasy. For ten dollars in taxation fees the government would provide anyone who filed a claim with a 160-acre quarter section of land. Taxation in this strange new world was little in comparison, but most importantly all were equal. There would be no more lords draining life from families and the government existed to help wherever they could. It was a magical dream to the Ukrainian, a chance to belong to oneself and at last find freedom. With that said, it was not easy to leave behind all they ever were. They would have to leave their families and friends, their beloved homes where their parents and grandparents were born, their villages that had raised generations, and their cemeteries that held hundreds of years of history.  But go they did. Entire families carried all their worldly possessions on their backs and began a global trek that took them first through Germany. There they would set sail to Liverpool, before crossing the English countryside to South Hampton, where they eventually set sail for either Quebec City or Halifax.

It’s difficult to imagine the desperation and bravery that inspired so many to leave Ukraine behind and take such an incredible journey. For many, leaving the Ukraine behind was the best thing they ever did, but it was without question the most painful. Such courage and strength is hard to imagine.

The two-week journey across the Atlantic was a difficult one. Fifteen to twenty men, women and children were crammed into each hold and the conditions were unpleasant. Food was available, but sparse and hunger was a part of the steamship’s journey. Despite leaving behind their homes and the difficult conditions, spirits were high. As the ship sliced though the Atlantic, the talk was always about what lay ahead. They spoke of how in the New World they would no longer work as slaves. The land would be theirs and for their children that followed. They frankly discussed the difficulties awaiting them in their first few years, as they fully expected the work to be unrelenting. This was accepted by all because after a few years of sacrifice, the average farm would have a team of horses, a herd of cattle, pigs, chickens and forty to fifty acres of cleared and cultivated land, producing the finest of crops. More than anything, they spoke of how with hard work everyone would have freedom, allowing each and every Ukrainian who made the journey and sacrificed so much to live proudly.

At the end of the trip across the ocean the anticipation of all those on board reached a fevered pitch. When their feet first touched down upon the New World, it must have seemed no less than magical. The young city of Quebec was bustling with activity, but in the end was of little interest to the Ukrainian. It was only a pit stop between their former homes and the land that would soon be theirs. Within a few days they were once again on the move. Whether by wagon, by horse, by train or on foot, they all set off on a journey into the wilderness ranging nearly half way across the country. They wouldn’t stop until they reached the city of Winnipeg. With a population of nearly 30,000, Winnipeg was a large city for its day. It was the last outpost of significance and was the point of no return. What lay ahead was only wilderness and a few small clusters of souls across an untamed land. It was in Winnipeg where they found maps of surveyed areas and information on how to file a claim to secure a quarter section of land out west. As they looked over the maps, it was hard for them to grasp the concept that between Winnipeg and the Pacific lay hundreds of millions of acres of land. They were told they could have any 160-acre section they wanted. It all seemed too good to be true.

The Canadian Pacific Railway had been completed all the way to the Pacific in 1885, shortly after the Louis Riel Rebellion, and many Ukrainians booked passage on the CPR before they even left their homeland. They ventured towards the great West and into the last frontier of the New World.  Little pinpoints of civilization ran along the tracks that cut through a wild and rugged land from Winnipeg to what would today be Vancouver. Even if one combined the population of every single outpost along the way, at the onset of the 20^th century it created an urban population of less than ten thousand people. As they bored deeper and deeper into the heartland, they could hardly believe their eyes. The incomprehensible endlessness of the prairies before them seemed to be no less than a paradise.

Upon arriving, many were astonished at the complete lack of infrastructure. They found themselves in the midst of utter wilderness. Ukrainians didn’t realize what the conditions would be like and had no idea they would be coming to such a harsh and primitive country. Many thought they would be able to acquire land in areas that were at least somewhat developed, but there were not even road let alone villages. Only open prairies, rolling hills, winding rivers, and densely forested wonderlands lay before them. The Ukrainians were there at what was no less than the very beginning and the birth of a new nation. It must have been an amazing feeling.   

Upon arriving at the nearest immigration center, they ventured out to examine mapped and surveyed land in the area. Ukrainians always loved forested land. Back in Ukraine the Austrians or Germans had the right to claim land before the Ukrainians and the timbered sections were always taken first, which meant most Ukrainians sat upon barren open land. Now in the New World, they stood on equal ground with everyone else.  As a result, they often snapped up forested land as it was needed for both fuel and for building their homes, barns, and fences. After choosing the quarter section of land they wanted, it only needed to be made official. Returning to the immigration office with ten dollars and a township map in hand, pioneers simply said, “This is the piece I want,” and the land was theirs.

The Ukrainian settlers who arrived at the beginning of this new nation in the late 1800s and early 1900s had very limited means to establish themselves. Yes, the land was theirs but it was wild, stone infested and heavily timbered.  Yes, this was a wonderful opportunity, but it was also a self-serving move by the Canadian government. They had found a way to have this untamed land cleared and structured. After taking the first few years breaking their land and building their homes, a nation’s infrastructure came to fruition. Roads were built, communities sprouted, businesses were started, local governments were formed, and a vast and barren wilderness slowly turned into viable, prosperous, consumer based, economy building taxable cluster of citizens. Much of it was hauled in on the backs of the immigrants who gave up their home and their country to build themselves a new life and a new nation for all those who wished to stem the great divide.

With little means in the beginning, work was done most often with their hands and their backs and the entire family contributed. Cutting down trees and rounding them for building, as well as chopping up fallen timber and stacking into piles for burning were amongst the first duties. The little money some families did have was often spent on oxen or horses. These animals labored long hours, side by side with their owners, plowing through deeply set roots, pulling them through the soil, until the sod was turned over into furrows. The women and children followed behind and broke up the furrows with make shift hoes. While they weren’t toiling in the fields, their homes, corrals and animal shelters were built with wood harvested from the land. After several weeks of torturously hard labor and of ending their days sleeping in make shift shelters or under wagons while cooking over open fires, things began to look like the very beginnings of a farm. It took the average homesteaders about a month of hard labor per one acre of land cleared, so the work that lay ahead of them was still daunting. With that said, eventually a patch of cultivated land would appear as men, women and children working together scratched out a single acre of land at a time. Afterwards, they stared out over the land and saw their accomplishments slowly building with each day and pride surged through their bodies.

At last these people who truly loved the land had their hands back in the soil, but this time it was their soil, their land and what resulted was the birth of a new world. These homesteaders, who lived for generations under the suffrage of tyranny and had no experience of democratic life, had only heard of the concept of freedom. Now they were living it.

And the New World was born.

From David Anthony Hohol…

.

With the end of another decade and the storm of analysis and encapsulation that allows follows, I found it irresistible to offer up and summary of my own. But to sum up where we are now in Western Society, we first have to go back a good half century and connect the dots. Let’s start where the cracks first began to appear in the Rockwellian Life of the North American Dream.

The sixties were the downfall of the 20^th century’s moral foundation, a poisonous and pernicious little decade that seemingly refuses to pass on into history. For all its good intentions and accomplishments, the sixties was a decade of contempt, blind defiance, weak-mindedness, and assassins. The concepts of tradition and respect were reduced to rubble; the notion of authority was demonized, and some of our most fundamental values were no longer valued at all. All this unfolded under the guise of social action and romanticized to no end. Such attitudes created a cancer that has since rapidly spread throughout Western Society and people are losing because of it. Society, if it hasn’t already, is losing its soul.

The pretentious nature of those who stand in defense of the sixties is also something I can hardly bear. They arrogantly lay claim to the odyssey of youth and experience, and the evolution of society and self, as if it were somehow their own. According to those from the sixties, no one ever did as much to cure the world of its ills; no one cried as many tears, or shed as many skins. Many baby boomers love to claim no one before or since has ever experienced anything like those from the sixties did. So many beat their chests about how the sixties reached some great peak, and rode the crest of a huge wave that broke when the seventies hit. All I can say to this is please, once and for all, just shut-up.   

 Many have grown tired of your incessant and egocentric ramblings. So much of what you claim to be your own, belongs to everyone. What you lived through was not the sixties, but the human experience. Your pomposity amazes me at times and is best captured by the ramblings of your feeble clown prince, who claimed that even into today’s world people are still living off the so called table scraps of the sixties. [1] Well, Mr. Dylan, just because your over-rated hump of a career has been feeding off the table scraps of the sixties for years, doesn’t mean the rest of us are. Besides, according to your own confessionals, you went through that adolescent decade in an incoherent, semi-conscious, nearly comatose state of mind. Does this sound like someone we should accept as having the clear-minded vision to offer a synopsis of anything at all?

In many ways, the sixties was like the 20^th century’s very own teenager, as this child-like decade simply never wanted to listen to anyone, and thought it knew more than anybody else possibly could. It was naively defiant and unthinkingly rebelled against any and all forms of authority. It felt as though no one understood them, that no one ever experienced what they were going through, and a like a spoiled brat, complained about everything, all the while still wanting to live rent free in the basement. If an obsessive interest in one’s own level of importance that simultaneously devalues others is the definition of narcissism, then the sixties were a narcissistic decade.  A child-like attitude sits at the core of such self-important behavior, and the reality is that many of the protests and demonstrations of the 1960s were not fueled by high-minded moral principles, but by an adolescent super-ego crossing its arms in huff and saying, “You’re not the boss of me. You can’t tell me what to do.”

The seventies followed and did not dine upon the scraps of the sixties, but instead began to clean up after them. Furthermore, after all the empty noise and defiant clatter of the decade before, the seventies began the painful process of dealing with the terms the sixties so unthinkingly set. Accordingly, any attempt society made to clean house and organize the clutter left behind was met with frustration, as the rooms were changed, the furniture was moved, and nothing quite fit anymore. The blithe and pedantic way the sixties approached the idea of change left the seventies in a perpetual state of confusion. As a result, the seventies always seemed to be a little off, a bit unconventional, and slightly out of sync.

The selfless and lost attitude of the seventies gave birth to the me generation of the eighties, as society slowly grew tired of worrying about every one else’s problems. The utility of one’s own endeavors became paramount and a hedonistic approach to life began to unfold. Shortly thereafter, the guilt that often follows such an approach to existence produced a repressive veil, as the me generation of the eighties gave way to the no generation of the nineties. The nineties were once again a gilded decade of excess and an age where the real problems of the world were ignored, while dot com companies were celebrated, cell phones became fifth limbs, and Mercedes felt it entirely necessary to market a sports utility vehicle. This particular time around, however, we at least felt bad about it. Our conscience in pain from the near unconscionable and hedonistic decade before, the nineties told us what we couldn’t do or say, as the frustratingly ridiculous concept of political correctness was born. Soon, a maddeningly impossible attempt to appease every possible individual concern became commonplace. Not long after, we were told, at every turn, what we couldn’t say, what we couldn’t do, and even what we couldn’t ask. If we weren’t so busy deciding that the physically disabled should be called the physically challenged or that North American Indians should be referred to as Aboriginals, we might’ve seen it coming – but we didn’t.

The autumn of 2001 then fell upon us all and the world was changed forever. This past decade needs time to absorb into our societal bloodstream before anyone can offer a truly effective summary, but generally speaking it was a tough stretch. On a global scale the past ten years have seen division and partisanship run deep, ethnocentricity, hatred and prejudice run high, and mistrust, paranoia and fear run wide. The world is more fragmented than it has been since WWII and all of this was topped off with the worst global recession since 1929. Now, more than ever in recent memeory, it seems the world needs to start over. Perhaps thats a good thing. Perhaps.  

What will follow? No one knows, but it would be nice to break the pattern we’ve been caught in over the past 50 years or so. If we dont… who knows what the next ten years will bring.

From David Anthony Hohol…

Anyone who knows me or RELATIVITY OnLine knows full well we have done our part to criticize and confront the numerous instances of stereotypes, misinformation and propaganda  incorporated by the global powers that be in terms of the Middle East. This writer has gone to great lengths to expose Israel’s occupation of Palestine as a barely veiled attempt at ethic cleansing. We also have pointed out that groups like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are in fact fueled by unjust, manipulative and / or misguided Western actions. In short, we have championed the cause of Arabs time and again.  Now, however, I must turn my critique towards the Muslim world. It is a place not known for tolerance of criticism, but criticism is necessary if it is to purge itself of the deadly cancer known as extremism. More importantly, it is a criticism that must be heard before its too late. Life and death weigh in the balance.        

Western actions, however unfair they may appear to be, are no excuse for the extremist violence seen in Iraq, Pakistan, or Afghanistan. There is zero excuse for blowing up hotels in Jordan, buildings in the United States, embassies in Kenya, trains in the United Kingdom, Night Clubs in Indonesia, Souks in Egypt, compounds in Saudi Arabia, subways in Spain, or Markets in India.  How is killing innocent men, women and children supposed to serve as payment for unjust Western policies and ignorance? How? These so-called Muslims, these so called defenders of Islam, target innocent people to make their so-called religious attacks. They are gutless cowards in every way someone can be. They are the great shame of Islam.  

Even more vile and insane are those who cold-bloodedly kill their own, the slaughtering of fellow Muslims in the name of God.  This is what makes them true monsters – they are not invading occupiers, but neighbors to those they kill and maim. Above all else, manipulating 14-year old children into sacrificing their lives before they have even had a chance to experience it is the epitome of cowardice evil.  Thousands upon thousands of innocent people have died in the mindless violence, with few ever really knowing why.

It’s time for the Muslim world to take a long look at itself in the mirror and be brutally honest with its own reflection. Some of the worst crimes against Muslims have been committed in the name of Islam by Muslims themselves. This is the reality Muslims have to both face and confront.  

Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh in an address to nearly three million pilgrims in Mecca during last year’s Hajj raised this point at a time and place it never had been before. He harshly condemned extremist attacks in every way, calling such actions “the curse of Muslim lands.” He called extremism and suicide bombers the “most serious problem” facing the Muslim world. In other words, he looked the Muslim world in the eye and said out loud for everyone to hear that members of the Muslim Community itself are the biggest problem Islam faces today – not Israel, not the United States, but members of their own brethren.  The sad part is that few people even know the Grand Shiekh made these statements, and this includes Muslims themselves.

The very fact that a Muslim of his stature spoke such words, and at the Hajj address no less, reveals the Grand Sheikh’s acknowledgment that Muslims have to be the first to condemn extremism and to do so loudly.  Muslims the world over, be they politicians, presidents, academics, religious scholars, business leaders, or just ordinary everyday folk need to offer up a collective voice of condemnation so as to pull Islam out from under of the ugly light cast upon it by extremists. Islam needs its people to do what’s right, now more than ever before.

From David Anthony Hohol…

Reuters Photo

The Taliban’s recent assault on downtown Kabul, carried out by a timed series of explosives and suicide bombers, is yet another sign there is no use for The United States, Canada, the UK, Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Australia and more to keep their troops in the country. It doesn’t matter if they leave tomorrow or of they leave in 3 years, the end result will be the same; the Taliban will remain and then fight it out with local forces.

In the worst attacks in more than a year, the insurgents did not succeed in seizing  government buildings, but showed they can still cause death, destruction and mayhem.  More than anything, they showed absolutely no fear of or respect for the occupying forces or the Afghan army.  All this at a time when President Obama is desperately trying  to rally support for his short term, but expanded military campaign.

To make matters worse, several of the Taliban were disguised as Afghan security force members, a sure sign that even the Afghan army is working with the Taliban, for fear of what will happen once the the international coalition leaves.

“As we were conducting the ceremony of swearing in, a terrorist attack in a part of Kabul close to the presidential palace is going on. This is just one of the dangers. The danger that could harm Afghanistan is sowing national discord among Afghans,” said corrupt puppet and double agent Afghan President Karzai.

Iraq stands a better chance at stability than Afghanistan, as the Taliban are all about denial. They deny their own government, they deny their own religion, and they even deny the very lives of Afghani men, women and children. Like filthy, shit-smelling cockroaches in the sewers, they will always survive. It’s time to get out, let things happen on their own, and react accordingly. Afterwards, isolation policies like that of what are applied to North Korea and the former Iraqi regime is the only remedy.

What no one seems to understand is that although the Taliban can easily be defeated, wiping them out altogether is like trying get rid of a bad case of herpes – it just ain’t gonna happen.  The best you can hope for is to get it under control, so the occasional flare up can be properly handled.

From David Anthony Hohol…