Russian Bronze Statue in Estonia

[Stan]

Hi Marc !
Hope your singing went well !

Hmmm. I would strongly urge the Estonian Government to request assistance from one of the cyber terrorism teams; maybe the FBI’s one, but the EU has a fairly good one to I believe. Just blocking all external server access is the equivalent of retreating back into castles - it cuts your lines of communication to the general populace.

I work with the Legal Attaché at the US Embassy quite a bit and will ring him up. Thanks, sounds like a reasonable idea. Now the hard sell…Estonia doesn’t do a lot of direct requesting. The last 4 or 5 years of FBI training here has concentrated on WMD. Anymore, it seems that our problems have to match those currently on the ‘top 10 lists’ if we want quick attention. On the other hand, civil wars usually draw attention

On the whole, I would guess that Estonia (and Latvia and Lithuania) has a rather large reserve of good will in North America and the EU. If nothing else, there are fairly sizable diasporic populations outside the country that could easily be mobilized to support the "homeland". The trick is to mobilize them in a manner that gives them both press access and political clout without having to call in major political markers.

In my ‘Europe’ post entitled “Three years on: the Baltic States and NATO” the article covered agreements between NATO and the Baltic States. Although they were celebrating the 3-year mark, we’ve seen remarkable cooperation in the form of NATO ‘Air Policing Missions’ by European countries controlling Baltic air space, cooperation with military fleets (particularly in the field of mine clearing), and international training of special operations units to fight terrorism. Still noteworthy, all three Baltic States continue to participate/support coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There are indeed large pockets of migrated Estonians in Australia, Canada and the USA. Estonians in the States were quick to support their fellow countrymen and locally posted potential US Government Officials and how to contact them. Congressman John Shimkus (R, Illinois-19) was the first to publicly speak in support of Estonia.

Estonia’s President put a good spin on this situation recently:

How to manage with this complicated past? The recipe could be simple: everyone has the right to celebrate their victories and commemorate their losses. Oswald Spengler said there is poetry to history. Currently we see how history, or rather the understanding of the past, is dividing the people living in Estonia, just like trenches and anti-tank defenses.

The Estonian nation, which lost thousands of sons and daughters in the wars and repressions of the 20th century, understands what the victory in the Great Fatherland War means to the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian people. However, if instead of commemorating the fallen on the 9th of May, people instead celebrate Estonia's occupation, and in doing so deny the suffering of the Estonian nation, then this we cannot tolerate.

He has good reasons for saying that. It appears Russia's upper house voted unanimously this past Friday to retain a Red Army banner for ceremonies like Victory parades. This is exactly what caused our problems nearly a year ago today. Wandering - aimlessly I might add – around the capital with Russian Army uniforms on while waving the ‘Hammer and Sickle’.

The bill is yet to be signed into law by Putin, who brought back the Soviet-era red star as the Russian military's emblem in 2002, soothing those nostalgic about their Communist past and alarming others fearing the return of reprisals. The parliament had earlier reinstated the Soviet anthem with new lyrics on Putin's initiative.

Regards, Stan