✔︎ Finnish-Estonian novellist Sofi Oksanen wrote a scathing open letter to Melania Trump (Friday)
✔︎ Rõivas astub riigikogu aseesimehe kohalt tagasi (Thursday)
✔︎ Estonia grapples with dilemma of robot as a legal person (Wednesday)
_____________
Friday 13.
October
_____________
✔︎ Sofi Oksanen Melania Trumpile: lõpeta vaikimine, ole eeskujuks
(Postimees/elu24)
"Sa ei ole modell, moeikoon, sa ei ole iidol, sest su näoilmed räägivad vaoshoitusest, ka kurbusest. Need viitavad passiivsele ohvrile, Ida-Euroopast pärit naisele, kes ei ole julgenud veel õitsele puhkeda. USA esileedi ei saa olla liiga tagasihoidlik ja negatiivne."
✔︎ Finnish-Estonian novellist Sofi Oksanen writes a moving and candid letter to Melania Trump
(Expressen | Yle)
"Finnish author Sofi Oksanen has published a scathing open letter to US First Lady Melania Trump, urging her to speak up about the stigmatisation and sexualisation of women from the former Soviet bloc. The letter, printed in several newspapers in four languages across the Nordic countries on Thursday, calls on Trump to break her silence and help change the world."
—
—
- Eesti õhuruumis lendas USA tuumapommitaja
(Postimees)
"Pardanumbrit 86-0105 kandev pommitaja startis eile Eesti aja järgi kell 11.17 Suurbritannias asuvast Fairfordi õhujõudude baasist."
- Time for Germany to overcome Nazi past and join EU’s defense
(Politico-Europe)
"With an assertive Russia flexing its muscles to the east, Islamist terrorism bringing death to Europe’s streets, a U.S. president questioning America’s commitment to NATO, and Britain turning its back on the EU, Berlin must bite the bullet and acknowledge the need for a stronger German military. The biggest constraints in doing so are not financial or material. They’re political and psychological.”
_____________
Thursday 12.
October
_____________
✔︎ Rõivas astub riigikogu aseesimehe kohalt tagasi
(ERR | Delfi |Eesti Päevaleht)
"Küsimusele, miks on tagasiastumine vajalik, kui Rõivas süüd ei tunnista, vastas Rõivas, et poliitilist vastutust peab olema valmis võtma ka siis, kui sa tunned, et sa oled teinud midagi sellist, mis on inimeste ja minu enda eetikatundega vastuolus.
--
"Nende erinevate kahetsusväärsete sündmuste, mis seal toimusid, nii minu osalusel, kui mitte minu osalusel, nimetamine ahistamiseks on muidugi selge liialdus," rääkis Rõivas."
—
--
- Taavi Rõivase poliitiline karjäär paistab nüüd läbi olevat
- Olen naise ees vabandanud ja "arusaamatuse lahendanud”
--
--
✔︎ Estonia’s former PM Rõivas quits over sexual harassment scandal
(ERR | Politico-Europe)
"Eesti Päevaleht reported a number of incidents at an evening event in which male members of the delegation behaved inappropriately towards women, including one reported groping and an incident in which a woman was pushed into a swimming pool. Rõivas was accused of “dancing too close” to one woman present."
—
—
--
- Estonian trade delegation slammed for 'wild party' at KL bar
(The Star - Malaysia)
- Estonian trade team accused of ‘improper conduct’ in Kuala Lumpur
(FMT - Malaysia)
- The 2% Benchmark Is Blinding Us to NATO Members’ Actual Contributions
(Defence One)
"The Baltic states also make efforts that go beyond their spending … Yet NATO has no Alliance honor roll for countries whose contributions involve not just money but casualties as well.”
--
"The 2-percent focus, a former senior NATO official told me, comes from U.S. legislators. “You can spend all the time in the world telling US legislators that a country that spends one percent may spend it more wisely than one that spends two percent, but US legislators take a very simplistic view.”
- Russia’s Neighbors Respond to Putin’s ‘Hybrid War’
(Foreign Policy)
“Baltic and Nordic countries turn to education as much as military hardware to counter Moscow’s hybrid threats."
- The Finnish Model
(Foreign Affairs)
“The Finnish Defence Forces has managed a feat that other armed forces could learn from: it has made itself an attractive destination for conscripts and professional troops alike. This helps explain why the armed forces routinely have more applicants than openings for noncommissioned officer positions.”
—
"Finland has shown that the secret to making the armed forces popular is ensuring that the low-ranking soldiers and noncommissioned officers who make up most of the ranks are content. That approach is working."
- K9 Kõu kasutuselevõtt arendab Eesti kaitsevõimet hüppeliselt
(Postimees)
"Liikursuurtükkide K9 Kõu ostmine on Eesti järgmise kümne aasta suurim ja kõige olulisem relvatehing, millega paraneb oluliselt kaitseväe 1. jalaväebrigaadi mobiilsus, operatsioonisügavus ja võime vastast lahinguväljal mõjutada. Just nimelt tugev võime vastast mõjutada sai määravaks K9 Kõu kasuks otsustamisel."
- Christmas 2017 in Estonia - What to do, eat, see
(ETN)
- Eastern and Central Europe’s Strategic Provincialism
(Carnegie Europe)
"Most of the Kremlin’s target countries, the Baltic States in particular, were lucky enough to have become members of the EU and NATO since 2004."
--
"Yet the lack of international embeddedness and the partial failure of the remaining states in what has become the new Zwischeneuropa (in-between Europe)—that is, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, and (to some degree) Azerbaijan—is not only a problem for these nations themselves. It also constitutes a serious security threat, and causes political, economic, and social challenges for the new EU and NATO members."
_____________
Wednesday 11.
October
_____________
- Estonia grapples with dilemma of robot as a legal person
By Ott Ummelas
(Bloomberg)
"The Economy Ministry is working on legislation that would address the status of artificial intelligence in legal disputes, said Siim Sikkut, the official in charge of the government’s IT strategy."
- I, Estonian Robot
(Transitions)
- Estonia works toward giving AI legal status
(The Daily Mail | Financial Review | others)
--
--
—
- Do We Need Asimov's Laws?
(MIT Technology Review - May 2014)
“In 1942, the science fiction author Isaac Asimov published a short story called Runaround in which he introduced three laws that governed the behaviour of robots. … Asimov’s laws of robotics have become a key part of a science fiction culture that has gradually become mainstream."
- Why Asimov Put the Three Laws of Robotics in the Order He Did
- EU 2016 Study: "European Civil Law Rules in Robotics"
(European Parliament)
"Abstract - The European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee commissioned this study to evaluate and analyse, from a legal and ethical perspective, a number of future European civil law rules in robotics."
_____________
Tuesday 10.
October
_____________
- Turning Passports Into Weapons
by Brian Whitmore
(RFERL)
"Under proposed legislation, millions of Ukrainian, Belarusian, Georgian, Moldovan, and Kazakh citizens would suddenly become eligible for Russian passports."
--
"So would many EU citizens, as the bill would also cover Russian speakers in the Baltic states, Finland, and Poland -- all of which, of course, were once part of the Russian Empire."
- Если на русских за рубежом вымещают свой страх — мы обязаны их принять
(Novaya Gazeta)
- Estonia ‘first country in world able to function without physical land’
(Euronews)
"The technology-savvy nation will create ‘digital embassies’ around the world with a back-up of all its critical data."
- Ukrainlased palusid Eestilt abi pronkssõduri küsimuses
(Eesti Ekspress)
- Ukrainians ask about Estonia's experiences with Bronze Soldier
(ERR)
_____________
Monday 9.
October
_____________
- US to support establishing radar positioning on Estonia's eastern border
(ERR | Jane’s 360)
"In addition to Estonia, building the eastern border is important for the EU and NATO as well, which is why it must be done thoroughly and so that it will last for multiple generations."
—
"US to allocate US $5 million."
- Baltics battle Russia in online disinformation war
(Deutsche Welle)
“… Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have been amassing experience from decades-long disinformation, fake-news and hacking attacks."
_____________
- Book Review -
_____________
- "The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia”
(Washington Post)
"She has already written several chronicles of Putin and his era, including a best-selling biography, “The Man Without a Face.” … But this is by far Gessen’s best book, a sweeping intellectual history of Russia over the past four decades, told through a Tolstoyan gallery of characters. It makes a convincing if depressing case that Homo Sovieticus, that unique species created a century ago with the Bolshevik Revolution, did not die out along with the Soviet Union.”
—
"Whatever you call Putin’s Russia, you don’t need to agree with Gessen’s inflammatory label to find her book a sad, compelling indictment of the country where she was born, a country so traumatized by its monstrous past that it seems intent on repeating it."
—
_____________
- Russia -
_____________
- Looking Beyond 2018: Putin and the Technocrats
(Carnegie Moscow Center)
"The 2018 election will legitimize Putin in a new way. He will become a historical figure rather than a popular leader. It will also test new concepts of technocratic models of government. The regime will attempt to make government autonomous of Putin’s day-to-day participation. The institutional transformation of the regime ushered in by the campaign will continue long after the election is over.”
- Putin will Restore Iron Curtain after Elections
(Window on Eurasia)
"Pavel Chikov, head of the Kazan-based Agora Human Rights Organization, says that after Vladimir Putin is re-elected, the Kremlin leader will neutralize the political and regional elites, pull out of the Council of Europe, restore the death penalty, and impose tight restrictions on anyone seeking to go abroad and the confiscation of their property.”
- Russia’s House of Shadows
House on the Embankment | Дом на набережной
(The New Yorker)
"It is hard to imagine now, with a children’s playground in one of its courtyards and a pan-Asian noodle bar on the ground floor, but throughout 1937 and 1938 the House of Government was a vortex of disappearances, arrests, and deaths. Arrest lists were prepared by the N.K.V.D., the Soviet secret police, which later became the K.G.B., and were approved by Stalin and his close associates."
"In total … eight hundred residents of the House of Government were arrested or evicted during the purges, thirty per cent of the building’s population. Three hundred and forty-four were shot."
(The Atlantic)
"Neither the Ukrainian famine nor the broader Soviet famine were ever officially recognized by the USSR. Inside the country the famine was never mentioned. All discussion was actively repressed; statistics were altered to hide it. The terror was so overwhelming that the silence was complete. Outside the country, however, the cover-up required different, subtler tactics. …"
by Edward Lucas
(CEPA)
"Ten years ago, the idea that Russia had the will or ability to interfere in other countries’ affairs was widely dismissed as paranoid scaremongering. Not any more."
(The Moscow Times)
- Russia unveils new Crimea-themed bank note
(Deutsche Welle | Moscow Times)
“… showing the Crimean naval city of Sevastopol and the Greek and Roman ruins at Chersonesus. Images of the annexed peninsula were chosen by the public in an online poll. … The new note will be worth 200 rubles (around $3.50, €2.90)."
—
- Russian TV’s view on Catalonia referendum: Europe falling apart and Spain compared to Ukraine
(EU vs Disinfo)
- Russia’s economy would be growing a lot faster today if it hadn’t spent so much money on rearming
(BNE)
_______
____
_
