Kanas, while you are practicing Photoshop in that manner, use the Line tool. The Brush and Eraser tools will always give you the same bad result as on the picture, unless your hands stop shaking of exitement.

Playing Estonia's political cards

In his third and final report from Estonia, the BBC News website's Patrick Jackson finds two sharply contrasting views of the Soviet statue dispute within the main party of the governing coalition.

Tallinn's violent scenes over the relocation of a Soviet war memorial last month must have come out of the blue for many in the outside world.

Surely Estonia, independent of Moscow for 16 years and a proud EU and Nato member, had become just another stable, settled, picturesque small state in northern Europe?

Depending on who you ask, the unrest was stoked either by a resurgent Moscow, seeking to reassert its influence through the large ethnic Russian minority, or by a section of Tallinn's political elite, using the Soviet legacy to win elections.

Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet points the finger very clearly at Russia.


"There are many politicians in Russia who emotionally don't accept that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and some other countries are outside Russian influence," he told the BBC News website.

While he does not blame Russia's president specifically, he recalls Vladimir Putin's statement two years ago that the collapse of the USSR was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century".

"[Mr Putin] is not in a position, at least psychologically, to say frankly that Estonia was occupied," he argues.

"Unfortunately we have seen that Russia tries to use Russians in Estonia as a propaganda tool, as a tool to make their own politics."

Estonia, he says, has always been ready to have normal relations with Russia and it is "90% up to Moscow" whether they can be achieved.

Mr Paet's political party, Reform, soared to the top of Estonian politics in the March general election, adding 10% to its share of the vote to make it the biggest group in parliament.


But for Sergei Ivanov, an ethnic Russian fellow member of the party traditionally viewed as Estonia's liberals, the election proved a personal political execution: his support collapsed to 257 votes from a one-time high of 6,000.

And it was all because his party had chosen to ignore its Russian voters and use the war memorial as a nationalist vote-winner, the former Tallinn MP told the BBC News website.

When he took his Baltic Russian party into Reform five years ago, it was on the understanding that "all liberals should work together, regardless of language, ethnicity or religion", he says.

Crucially there was also, he says, an understanding that the war monument would stay in place, having already been politically neutralised by having its Soviet-era inscription removed.

There was never any trouble at the 9 May Victory Day commemorations until 2006, he insists, when an Estonian nationalist turned up with a flag to shout slogans.

Police spirited him away from the angry crowd but the next day, Mr Ivanov recalls, the Estonian press was seething with indignation and the talk was of a Russian "fifth column" in Estonia and "true faces" being shown.

Scenting political capital, "young and very cynical" members persuaded Reform to make the memorial's relocation an election promise and "we started to be more radical than the radical nationalist party Pro Patria".

Under intense pressure from his Estonian colleagues on one side and his Russian constituents on the other, he stayed away from a parliamentary vote on relocation, to the scorn of Estonian Russians.

Leaving Estonia

Still a member of Reform - "I'm a team-player" - Mr Ivanov argues that developments in Estonia have followed a political pattern in post-Soviet Eastern Europe of being "anti-Russian in order to create consolidation".

Sergei Ivanov
Mr Ivanov has tried to create a "Russian wing" of the Reform Party

"Estonia's conflict with Russia is a political game," he says.

"We are in the EU and Nato and it is now not possible to influence Estonia by force."

He says he can understand that the focus of Estonian leaders has been on building up their newly independent state, but feels they have ignored Russian-speakers simply because they lack the skills to integrate them properly.

"Young Russians are leaving for other EU states," he says.

"There are less than a million Estonians and we need people to stay but they are leaving. To be frank, many people feel uncomfortable here and it is hurting Estonia."

'Love this country'

Estonia's foreign minister insists that the Bronze Soldier monument was a symbol of Soviet occupation and had latterly been "turned into a tool of provocations and destabilised public order".

Oil tankers on the Estonian side of the Russian border at Narva
Estonia is an important route for oil and other Russian exports

The trouble, says Mr Paet, began not in 2006 but 1947, when it was erected, because "people in the same uniform" deported or killed tens of thousands of Estonians.

But is he not concerned that the removal of a symbol so revered by Russians may exact a high political price eventually, both at home and abroad?

As regards Moscow, he says sanctions can be ruled out because they would be seen as targeting the whole of the EU.

The prospect of Russia diverting oil and other exports to bypass Estonia also fails to intimidate Mr Paet, who says Russia accounts for about 10% of Estonia's foreign trade today.

Its loss, he says, might exert some "influence temporarily but this 10% is in this sense not too big".

Estonian business, he adds, learnt from unhappy experience in the mid-1990s that it should seek more stable markets in the West.

Thousands of people from every class and age group streamed in dignified silence to the monument at its new location in Tallinn's military cemetery this 9 May to lay mounds of flowers and hold balloons with pictures of the soldier and the words "I remember and I'm proud!" So what is Mr Paet's message to Estonia's own Russians?

"Our first goal is that our society is not divided, is united, and it is not important if you are Russian or Ukrainian or Estonian," says the minister.

"The most important thing is that you are loyal to your country, you are a citizen or permanent resident, but that you love this country and would like to continue to live here."

BBC NEWS | Europe | Playing Estonia's political cards

Here is the references:

Moskou » OMON: Ordnungspolizei?

This photo author is Oleg Kabatov ( Как � был человеком ). He proves that it is not a fake by publishing in the internet this picture RAW file
( iFolder.ru Áåñïëàòíûé õîñòèíã ôàéëîâ - õðàíåíèå ôàéëîâ, îáìåí ôàéëàìè ÷åðåç èíòåðíåò (ôàéëîîáìåííèê). )

Nice to learn it's not you, who makes these childish laughable "evidences" against brutal barbarical Russia. The RAW files format is being opened and edited in any version of Photoshop, but ok, I admit you didn't know it. If you want to slander Russia in the best way and outline it's negative and threatening image you should write USSR or STALIN or RUSSIA JUDENFREI, not SS - whether with tooth paste on the helmet or in Photoshop.
You are not little boy and must understand that "SS" on the policeman helmet is the same as hakenkreuz symbol on the T-short of Sid Vicious. You could have written DARTH VADER, BORN TO KILL or METALLICA with the same hope for effect.
If you want to going in for the cyber-war against Russia and get Europe scared, hey, you must at least be in the trend. In a word, before writing anything you have to read anything and not forget to swith your head on.

The SS letters do look fake... but who knows.

If someone would want to slander "brutal barbarical" Russia, someone might
mention the "Nasi" movement and the Putin-youth. lol.

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I duck, therefore i cover.

[OFFTOPIC]
can anyone make a thread starter on the eurovision songfestival? About how the ossies all voted for eachother and only a few of the others got through?
[/OFFTOPIC]

[OFFTOPIC]
You could start it. I thought I was going to see Eurovision, but I guess it was Intervision.

cont. there already is a thread about eurovision.. started by Malvolio
[/OFFTOPIC]

Recently Russian politicians and media give a lot of time on the radio and TV, using a lot of printing paint for attacking Estonians, despite the fact that Russia is the largest country in the world by the area with 150 million inhabitants. Estonia, on the contrary, is among the smallest states in Europe with 1,5 million inhabitants.

Why is the elephant so much worried about the mouse, and why are comments of the Russian side so emotional? The questions become particularly relevant after the replacement of the old soviet monument from the centre of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

Partly, the response lies in the fact that the monument symbolises different values and meanings for different people: for Estonians - it is the reminder of the soviet occupation; for Russians – the award for the role of the Red Army in the victory against the Nazi Germany.

Anyway, there is something more vital and fundamental: we have to deal here with a huge country, which is not capable of facing the reduction of its mighty and power.

But why Putin’s Russia is so hostile to the democratic Estonia? And eventually the Bronze Soldier is related to the former Soviet Union, and not to the Russian Federation. The answer is rather simple: the Russian regime of today considers itself the successor of the Soviet Union.
The Kremlin attempts to save last moral justifications for the existence of the Soviet Union – that its courageous people played the decisive role in the victory against the Nazi Germany. Without this justification the entire soviet era becomes an experiment of regret, an absurd period in the history.

Geopolitika - The Russian elephant and the Estonian mouse

Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia sent this letter to EU countries few days ago to make the EU to put pressure on Estonia in the Statue row.

The letter was published in the Estonian newspaper "Eesti paevaleht".

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I duck, therefore i cover.

Eventually the Bronze Soldier is related to the living descendants of those twelve soldiers who were buried beneath and to the long condoned by the EU the deliberate discriminative policy of persistent humiliation that current regime led against Russian-speaking minority inside of Estonia last 15 years.
Eventually that Russian boy in the night of protests was stabbed by Estonians. Eventually two German tourists in the night of protests were detained by the police, huddled and beaten in the hangars together with other detainees only cause they didn't speak Estonian language whereat police determined them as being non-Estonians.
15 years the mice were biting the ill elephant who slept. There is no difference which mouse caused the awakening.

Thats Kremlin propoganda. Kremlin media russians present as innocent young boys. Besides, he was 20 years old.
Kremlin sent its neonazis organization as Putin youth organization "Nashi" to do the mess in Talinn and to organise riots, snatches and stealings in Talinn.

Here we can see that "innocent" russian boys and girls:





Untitled Document

There was 15 years to build the tolerant normal European state in Estonia where all etnic minorities live in peace and equality. You've chosen the way of discrimination and ethnical selectionism unseen in the worst times of totalitarism, because in USSR despite it's political system all citizens had equal civil rights. You offered to the minorities eat your insults or leave their homeland. All that time you were throwing the matches in to the powder chamber. Now the blood of Russian is spelt. Game over.

Everything would be allright with russian etnic minorities and their integration if Kremlin not use russian etnic minorities for its imperialistic goals.
Now Kremlin finance russian - fascist organizations in Estonia and instigate riots . For Kremlin that is good, because Putin want to show the world
purportedly estonians discriminate russians minority. The same in Lithuania and Latvia. The fact is, that Putin regime use russian minorities for Russia imperialistic goals

There is no chance to kindle the clashes wave of that dimension and the spontaneous fierce brutality of the police from the ground zero in calm water, by the strengh of Putin agents or bunch of those funny puppies "Nashi". Whatever quantity of extremists would be exported in to the Switzerland, Belgium and other normal multi-ethnical European country from "evil outside enemy" - this could not cause any turmoil in all ethnical and language groups of those countries. To the contrary, this would only consolidate the society against the danger to common wealth and stability.
The critical mass of insults and humiliation collected all those years - the Baltic state TV channels and media, every election compaign and rhetoric of the state leaders cultivated the ground for the growing tensions.

The statue is related with those Soviet soldiers but in one way; Soviet origin.
Statue was a monument of victory, and painful reminder of Soviet occupation. Remains of the Soviet soldiers buried there have been buried in a military cemetary, where their remains belong.
Estonians were much more humane than Soviets in this matter.

Here news said he was stabbed by other Russians..

Permanent residents of Estonia, not tourists. While beating them was very wrong and should be looked into, be mindful why there was the riot in the first place.

Do you mean that Russians feel the need to wage wars again?
If so, do sign upp, we'll meet in battle.

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En uneksi. I do not dream.