In an interview to the Associated Press on board the flight back from Khanty-Mansiisk president Ilves explains why he walked out of the Fenno-Ugric Congress, and gives his thoughts on Russian developments. Nice balanced reporting from the AP, including the final quote from Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission:
“The EU is completely against all [...]
I have succumbed to temptation and written another article, this time on the arguments against compulsory military service. It is basically a condensed overview of some of the arguments against conscription, the main one being that it has a much bigger price for Estonia than proponents of it would like to show. It sparked debate, [...]
Juhan Viiding, a great Estonian, would have been 60 today. I have a lot of respect for him although I have not read a lot by him. Here is his last poem (see below for my English translation):
Kes? Johan.
Mis? Jalutas.
Millal? 1995. a jaanuaris.
Kus? Tallinna südalinnas.
Ja nägi kiviseinal valimiseelset müürilehte, millel seisis: “Eesti eestlastele!”
Johan võpatas, tardus [...]
The planned Victory Monument of the Freedom War (Vabadussõja võidusammas) is being built without regard to the principles for which Estonia stands for me. I will not honour the monument and will use any and all means reasonably possible to discredit this antithesis to freedom or the memory of the victory. I love Estonia, but I [...]
I have just arrived back from seeing the acclaimed play GEP at NO99 theatre. It was a masterpiece.
The premise is simple: Estonians as a nation are going to die out unless radical measures are undertaken. 7 Estonian men form a club called GEP with the simple intent to raise the birth rate by having as [...]
If anyone is interested, then here is the new draft on the quality reform (in Estonian). Pretty interesting.
It was announced yesterday that there are going to be changes in the accreditation of Estonian higher education institutions, mainly that institutional accreditation is going to be introduced. This means that any university which passes this will be operate with constant fear of losing some of its programmes and can focus on continuous institution-building, rather [...]
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Originally uploaded by Kari Käsper
This morning Tallinn was different: my short 7 minute walk to work was longer than expected, but it was a beautiful walk. Everything was so peaceful, so quiet and muffled. The traffic was moving slowly and graciously.
It felt like some other [...]
Recently there have been a number of petitions started in Estonia. The first one was the one to protest against the Independence/Victory monument they want to build in Tallinn. A lot of Estonian intelligentia is against the monument as its design is not so good and it does not suit the surronding area. It was [...]
from a BBC correspondent who at one time worked at Radio Free Europe with president Toomas Ilves. Read the article.
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