Thursday, February 25, 2010

Olympian food: Pass the perogies, please


Ukrainian House at 3150 Ash at the Ukrainian Catholic Centre. I don’t know if it’s even orbiting at this distance but you can get there on Canada Line. Hop off at Broadway/City Hall and it’s a 10-minute walk.

At the Olympic Ukrainian House, it’s a different ball game. The food is a narrow stereotype of Ukrainian cuisine (similar to the first-Friday-of-the-month Ukrainian supper deal at the Ukrainian Holy Trinity Orthodox Church at 154 East 10th Ave.), but it’s a bargain. An overflow plate of perogies, slices of kielbasa, one cabbage roll (the weakest part of the dish) and a big whack of coleslaw costs $11.

Read complete article here.

Source: The Vancouver Sun

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Plushenko a contender for worst Olympics loser


It’s like any other village – full of honest burghers, a few catty fishwives and the odd idiot.

If anyone has earned the dunce’s cap inside Vancouver’s Olympic village, it’s Russian figure skater Evgeni Plushenko. His antics since failing to win a gold medal have launched Plushenko into the pantheon of poor Olympic sports, where he sadly has a fair bit of competition.

Plushenko’s crimes against dignity? First up, his hair. But that’s his stylist’s fault.
The Russian takes the blame for everything else. After falling to American Evan Lysacek on Friday, Plushenko wrapped himself in a blistering air of ill will.

Click here for complete story

Source: Toronto Star

Whining Russians


Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin was not to be outdone in the whining competition. He sent Plushenko a telegram — A telegram? No wonder they lost the Cold War — in which Putin, in his new, self-appointed role as Supreme Olympian, informed his soured countryman that his silver medal was “as good as gold” because Plushenko had “performed the most accomplished program on the Vancouver ice.” Russian state media joined the parade, in tones that during the Andropov period had been reserved for denunciations of the warmongering arch-fiend Ronald Reagan.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this boorish behavior — to put it gently — has a lot to do with the fact that, as a political culture, Russia has never begun to come to grips with the legacy of 74 years of Communism. Lenin’s mummy — the ghastly relic of one of the 20th century’s greatest mass murderers — remains on display for the veneration of the obtuse and the confused in Red Square. Parades celebrating the birthday of Stalin, whose homicidal record topped Lenin’s, are not uncommon. The NKVD/KGB archives, briefly opened under Boris Yeltsin, are closed to researchers. Opposition journalists are murdered with impunity, while the state dominates the mass media. History is rewritten in order to mask, even deny, the horrors of the Gulag system (which, as Anne Applebaum demonstrated in her Pulitzer Prize–winning book, was not an accidental feature of Stalinism but an essential component of Stalinist “economics”).

Click here for complete article.

Source: National Review

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Ukraine PM abandons poll challenge


A Ukrainian court has stopped considering a legal challenge to the result of February 7 presidential election after the prime minister decided to abandon her complaint.

Yulia Tymoshenko said on Saturday that she had decided to withdraw her attempt to overturn Victor Yanukovych's victory after losing confidence in the supreme administrative court.

"We do not see sense in further proceedings in the case," Tymoshenko told the court.

She later told reporters: "I faced a machine that works beyond justice."

"They want to sanctify the fraud and make it look legal."

After several hours of deliberations, Judge Olexander Nechitailo announced the court's decision to "leave the lawsuit by presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko without consideration".

Click here to read full article.

Source: Al Jazeera

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Ukrainian court suspends presidential election results

A Ukrainian court said today it had suspended the results of this month's presidential election, pending a review of an appeal filed by the declared loser.

Ukraine's administrative court said in a statement that it has suspended the Central Election Commission's ruling announcing that Viktor Yanukovych won the election held on 7 February.

The results showed Yanukovych winning by 3.5 percentage points.

The court is to rule on the appeal from Yanukovych's rival, the prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, by next Thursday, which parliament has set as inauguration day for the new president.

Tymoshenko has refused to concede and is pressing to prove her claims of election fraud in court.

Source: Gaurdian

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Ukrainians make Democracy look Bad

Poor people are capable of feats of bravery and revolution. They can storm the Bastille, overthrow the tsar or stage an Orange Revolution. But impoverished people are incapable of making sober decisions and voting responsibly in a popular election.

Click here to read full article.

Source: Moscow Times