Recently in Estonia Category

So this is new year? Most people are giving promises what they will do more or better or what they want to achieve during this year of 2008.

I'm not going to give any of those, but on the other side I would like to share some details why this year is important for my country.

It's time to celebrate.

On 24th of February, it will be 90 years from declaring Estonia as independent nation from foreign powers.

It all happened in short time buffer on 1918, between two occupations, but the real independence was fought out from 1918 till 1920 in  War of Independence.  You can read more on history from  Wikipedia.

Look at the special site dedicated to celebrate a year when Estonia declared itself as independent.

Check out YouTube channel EEESTI which has bunch of short video clips about everyday IT life in here.

To end with funnier tones check out explanatory video on Estonians, though it's has audio in Estonian, but still a good to watch:

Following up on a post where I talked about last dictatorship in Europe and has many concerns on Russia.

Now thanks to Jaanus, who has found this Channel 4 documentary about Russia and life there.

After watching this I see that you can only dream in Russia of having a essential democratic freedoms, like freedom of speech, on the other hand you see some head washed junior Putin supporters..

You can compare the todays Russia with 1930's Germany  where there was a high dislike for foreigners living there and how they are being treated their own people.

There were also images how a local paramilitary person has still Hitlers Mein Kampf on his bookshelf and how he shouts: "Heil Hitler!".

Now after seeing it I feel that most Russians who are being mistreated are not living abroad, like in Baltic states how Russian propaganda wants to show it happening, but they are "enjoying" their life in the mother Russia itself.

It's pretty hard to imagine after seeing this documentary how a president of the European Human Rights Commission PACE, Rene van der Linden, can state out that in Estonia Russians are being mistreated by the laws and people.

You can read a further about the Rene van der Linden statements and reply to him from Estonian MEP Marko Mihkelson's blog.

Of course there are also brighter days in daily life for Russians, but in general this documentary should give you pretty good overview of Russians everyday life, watch it here:

So today on the morning of 3rd November we have our first snowfall of this winter.



Isn't it beautiful :)