LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (05/18/03)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

UUARC receives plea for assistance

Dear Editor:

The office of the United Ukrainian American Relief Committee (UUARC) has received a very desperate and moving plea. Its text follows.

* * *

This appeal to you is from the parents of Ihor Chovhan (born 1981), who currently survives on an artificial kidney in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk. His condition is critical and he requires an immediate kidney transplant.

We reside in the village of Ryhivka, in the Halych region of the Ivano-Frankivsk territory in western Ukraine. I, Mykhailo, the father, work as a driver on the collective farm; my wife, Kateryna, also performs various job there.

An examination at the Kyiv Institute of Surgery and Transplants of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine revealed that the mother may be a donor.

The cost of a kidney transplant is 60,200 hrv ($12,000).

At this time, our family and we are seeking sponsors to carry out the operation, since our financial situation does not permit us to pay for this operation.

Dear Benefactors! It is difficult for us to appeal for assistance, but life forces us to take this step. We are requesting that you help us in our misfortune. May God bless you.

* * *

The UUARC Executive Board is appealing to our generous community to help save the life of this young man. Please send your tax-deducible contributions to: UUARC - Ihor Chovhan Fund, 1206 Cottman Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19111

Stefan Hawrysz
Philadelphia

Another notable restaurant in Kyiv

Dear Editor:

Congratulations to Roman Woronowycz on an excellent article about the restaurants in Kyiv. I definitely agree that Kyiv has undergone a tremendous change in terms of quantity and quality of restaurants, and can now compete with other European capitals. I was surprised that when commenting about the lack of affordable restaurants, Ukrainska Kukhnia was not mentioned.

This is a cafeteria-style restaurant near Kontraktova Ploshcza in the Podil region, a few blocks from The National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy (I heard that they may be opening other branches in the city).

The restaurant has an extensive menu of Ukrainian dishes, desserts and drinks. The food is good and cheap. It is practically mobbed at lunch time, and is an excellent example of a good, affordable restaurant in Kyiv. I highly recommend it.

Oleh Wolowyna
Chapel Hill, N.C.

Famine terminology is problematic

Dear Editor:

In his March 23 column Myron Kuropas bemoans the fact that the Ukrainian Famine is largely unknown.

It wasn't that long ago that the 1932-1933 catastrophe that befell Ukraine went by Fake-Famine, False Famine, Made in Moscow Famine, Man-Made Famine, Ordered-By-Stalin-Famine, and so on.

Now we have progressed to Terror-Famine, Famine-Genocide, Famine-Holocaust, and so forth. Is it any wonder so little is known about the Famine? After 70 years we still don't know what to call it.

The word "Holocaust" is derived from ancient Greek. "Genocide" is a word invented after World War II. Both words aptly apply to the catastrophe that befell European Jews during World War II. We should not be piggybacking off the Jews: it diminishes us both.

The Ukrainian Weekly has numerous articles using the term "Great Famine." It is, in my viewpoint, an appropriate, descriptive term.

George A. Nestor
Nanty Glo, Pa.

Pyrrhic victories in Afghanistan, Iraq

Dear Editor:

Our Pyrrhic victories in Afghanistan (where no one is in control outside Kabul) and Iraq are costing the U.S. treasury $2 billion and $5 billion a week, respectively. The name of the unfolding main act in Iraq is the Sisyphean stone rolling up the mountain.

These conquests (pardon the expression) are draining the economy of the United States at an unsustainable rate of near nearly 360 billion a year. Add President George W. Bush's tax cut "for working families" - mainly with 6-figure incomes and up - and we get a federal deficit of over half a trillion dollars per year. The paucity of public awareness of this pathetic reversal and fiscal disaster of historic proportions is illustrated by a survey quoted in London's Financial Times, showing that 19 percent of Americans believe that they are in the top 1 percent income bracket.

The dollar fell 15 percent relative to the euro ("the declining power," if you can believe Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) in the last several months. Americans are enduring job layoffs and corporate pension fraud by singing "The Star Spangled Banner."

But there are hopeful signs that the GOP will find it increasingly more difficult to milk patriotism. As predicted by skeptics, no weapons of mass destruction or terrorist connections - the pretexts drummed up by President Bush as casus belli - were found, despite several fumbled attempts to designate some rusted shells as evidence of "imminent threat from Iraq to the security of our people" in the president's speech library. But there was and still is the mass detraction from neo-con propaganda mills.

Stonewalled by the U.S. media until March 16, and officially acknowledged by the Iraqi government the day before was the well-known (in Europe) allegation that the biological germ cultures that Iraq did have at one time - during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s - had been supplied to Iraq by a Virginia-based company. All along this has been just as transparent as the reason for the present American invasion, the oil grab.

Come to think of it, are we better off today than four years ago?

Boris Danik
North Caldwell, N.J.

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