Category Archives: usa

news, usa

Irvington students ditch communist theme [Article]

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From New York’s Lower Hudson Valley:

The class vote was part of the school’s Color Wars, to take place next month. A T-shirt was to feature a hammer and sickle on the front and “Isn’t it Time You Joined the Party” on the back.

If that phrase made you smile, it was meant to. The students were intending to be funny, even envisioning a party hat perched on the sickle.

If it didn’t, not everyone saw the humor.

…

“I just thought it was very inappropriate and offensive,” said 17-year-old Michael Schur, a senior whose relatives died in Ukraine under Stalin’s rule and whose mother complained to the principal.

Now the design has gone the way of the Soviet Union, and the juniors have substituted a video game figure, Mario, the intrepid Italian plumber outfitted in red and blue.

“We wanted to do something that was a little bit witty, smart humor,” said the class president, Isabel Garcia. “We thought we were being original.”

…

Some of Schur’s family escaped from Ukraine as Stalin forced the collectivization of farms in the 1930s, resulting in millions of deaths. The famine is known to Ukrainians as the Holodomor.

Would Jews find anything about a swastika to be funny? asked Schur’s mother, Sonya.

But communistic images — from the red star to likenesses of Che Guevara and Mao — have a history of chic, radical or otherwise. Trace it to the intelligentsia’s flirtation with communism in the early part of the last century or the counterculture revolutionaries of the 1960s.

Once Schur complained, the principal, Scott Mosenthal, told Garcia that the juniors would have to reconsider.

…

As for Schur, did he persuade his schoolmates to view the hammer and sickle differently?

“In the end I really don’t think I made my point,” he said. “I just aggravated a bunch of people.”

Read the rest of the article

We think it’s very commendable Michael, way to stick up to yourself!

holodomor, tv, usa

Holodomor to make US cable debut tomorrow

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Tomorrow at 5pmET on FOX News, Glenn Beck will air his first documentary ‘Revolutionary Holocaust, now: Live Free or Die’ on his show to ‘set out to correct progressive lies’, as announced on his national radio show:

A groundbreaking hour long special where Glenn Beck takes us back in time to examine the roots of socialism and communism and the evil that followed. We all know about the horrors of the holocaust where the pure evil Hitler inspired claimed the lives of millions of innocent people. But most do not know about the millions upon millions of lives lost in a different genocide of the Ukrainian people under the Stalin regime. This special also takes a look behind the iconic fashion symbol of Che Guevara showing that the myth doesn’t tell the story of the man who was a blood thirsty killer. We meet a family who saw first hand what a monster the man was. They know the cost of communism and you will too when you hear their story, and who can forget about Mao Zedong? A leader responsible for 70-million deaths during his reign. All communist. All killers. We will show you things you’ve never seen but need to. a

An impressive line-up of Holodomor experts:

Watch it on Canadian TV:

  • Bell ExpressVu – Ch. 507
  • Rogers Digital – Ch. 181
  • for other TV subscribers you’re on your own to find FOX news, often abbreviated ‘FOXNC’ on TV Guide listings

You might even be able to watch it online live!

tv, usa

Ukrainian food on Mad Men

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I flipped on a Mad Men marathon yesterday on TV and came across a scene that caught my attention:

I did a quick search on it and the character Paul Kinsey (played by Michael Gladis) has a love for Ukrainian food after all:

Q: What’s up with Paul and Ukrainian food?

A: I did a movie in Russia and didn’t realize how Russian I look, even more specifically, how Ukrainian I look until I was over there. Even though I’m mostly Irish, I do have some Ukrainian or Russian heritage. I don’t know if it was a reference to that. It’s also an inside joke with one of the AMC executives, Vlad Wolynetz, who’s Ukrainian. And I think it’s just a hilarious go-to pick-up line.

holodomor, news, usa

Are You Listening New York Times? Gareth Jones & The Holodomor at the United Nations

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Clipboard-1The great nephew of Gareth Jones, Nigel Linsan Colley recently discovered his great uncle’s diaries exposing the Holodomor touring Ukraine in the 30’s and delivered a speech to the United Nations in New York last week:

Last week, 180 newspapers across the world, from the Washington Post to the London Times reported the remarkable story of Gareth Jones and his graphic eyewitness accounts of his off-limits trek into Ukraine during the height of Moscow’s starvation of that country. Today, we call it the “Holodomor.” Gareth’s accounts are preserved in his journalist’s diaries which probably now represent the only surviving contemporary independent western verification of that genocide. These precious diaries are currently on display in the Wren Library at Cambridge University, where Gareth had been a student. They sit side by side with memorabilia of other illustrious alumni including Sir Isaac Newton’s personal annotated copy of ‘The Principia’, in which he proposed his fundamental mathematical Laws of Motion.

…

Thanks to the interest generated in 2003, much of the world has been made aware of the true circumstances of the Holodomor but it saddens me to report that although the world press ran the story last week, including a whole page in the London Times, conspicuous by its absence was the NYT.

All the NYT Pulitzer prize winners are being besmirched by the infamous acts of one rogue journalist. Isn’t it time Mr Sulzberger that as publisher of the NYT you should do the decent thing and return his Pulitzer? You owe it to your own paper’s reputation, and your readership, to live by your famous motto and publish ‘all the news that’s fit to print’.

Truth, an an informed public, are the linchpin of a free society

What does all this mean, today? Well, let me first take you back even further to the past. One hundred and seventy years ago, a Frenchman, Marquis de Custine published a book detailing his travels in Russia. Among the observations was this: “Russian despotism not only pays little respect to ideas and sentiments, it will also deny facts; it will struggle against evidence, and triumph in the struggle!”

Truth, and an informed public, are the linchpin of a free society. The campaign in Russia to resurrect Stalin, to whitewash his inhuman crimes, is well under way. There are disturbing signs that his rehabilitation will not only be poorly opposed but may even be facilitated by certain media around the world. Gareth Jones is a shining example of honest journalism, a benchmark to be aspired to by today’s media. It is thanks to efforts of many around us that the Holodomor is slowly, but surely, being accepted as the apogee of Stalin’s terror. I believe that Gareth was viciously murdered by the Soviet secret police. It was what the Frenchman Custine warned about, the Russian struggle against evidence. Just as decades later journalists and others who sought to uncover Moscow’s crimes before a trusting world, would also be murdered. No one is asking you to risk your lives. But do risk a little of your time and energy to uphold principle, honour and the truth. To make sure that despotism does not triumph.

Thank you very much.

[Gareth Jones Memorial]

holiday, news, usa

Happy American Thanksgiving

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A few heart warming stories from the US while they celebrate Thanksgiving:

From My Atlanta Fox:

Dr. Gary Stillwagon, an Atlanta radiation oncologist, was visiting the Ukraine doing charity work when he was invited to an engagement party by a friend. That’s where Alexander and Nelya Kyzmych told Dr. Stillwagon about their son, Michael who had been battling an aggressive form of cancer.

“It turned out he had a deadly brain cancer. He had surgery and needed radiation treatment. But they had no way to get it there, so they were stuck and they were going to let him die because they had no chance. So all of a sudden I said, what he needs is what I do!” said Dr. Stillwagon.

Immediately, Dr. Stillwagon went to work to secure the funds and visas needed to get the live-saving procedure done here in the U.S. In a record time of six weeks, the Kyzmychs received an emergency medical visa to come to Atlanta and be treated. All of the treatments performed and paid for by Radiotherapy Clinics of Georgia.

With simple radiation, not available in their country and too expensive in the U.S., Michael Kyzmych went from having no chance of surviving the cancer to being able to be in total remission.

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The charity, Struggling Kids, is an organization that exists to help destitute children and women in Ukraine who experience significant struggles, often just to survive.

Also, from the  New York Times a little Thanksgiving blessing Ukrainian style:

At my wedding nine years ago, I gave a toast, in Ukrainian, to my grandparents. Baba and Deedo were second parents to my brother and me growing up in Cleveland, and we spent many Saturdays sleeping at their house. At night, Baba would sit by me on the bed, which she had fitted with half a dozen pillows so that I’d be cushioned head-to-toe at every turn, and tell me colorful stories.

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