Abdul Turay

How Estonia made Michael Jackson a megastar By Abdul Turay Years ago as an undergraduate student I had conversation with someone who was studying psychology. I didn't know anything about the subject at the time, so I asked him what he thought of Sigmund Freud. He said something so simple and so sage that I have never forgotten it. “He was a genius, but he was one genius out of many geniuses.” What he meant was that fame and genius are not the same things. Freud was one of a number of men and women doing ground breaking work in his field. Though he became more generally known by the public at large, Freud wasn't better than these other pioneers, he was simply more famous. The same principle can be applied to any field; physics, acting, invention, history and pop music. Some would have us believe that Michael Jackson was somehow superior to everybody else working in showbiz. That he was the world's greatest entertainer, a megastar in a premier l...

Paradise Lost By Abdul Turay 11 August 2009 Finally the Estonian immigration authorities have done something of which they can be proud . They are getting rid of a very nasty man. Anyone who follows current affairs in Estonia may  vaguely have heard of Craig Cobb, a bearded, 57 year old, extreme right-wing American who for the past few years has made Estonia his home. He hoped to make this country the centre for his one man campaign to promote so-called white nationalism. Tallinn is host to Cobb's Podblanc site, where mostly Russian skinhead thugs post videos of themselves committing acts of brutal violence against men, women, and even small children from ethnic minorities in Russia. Those of us who have been coming to Estonia for some years, either as visitors, investors, or as more permanent guests, have been sadden to see some of the more unsavoury characters from our part of the world show up here. Cobb is of course the worse example of this phenomenon. It...

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The hated white man By Priit Pullerits Published Postimees 13 November 2008 We Estonians have now been warned. Black British journalist, Abdul Turay, imputed in Tuesday's Postimees that we treat black people badly and threatened that if Russia attacked Narva, the USA won't undertake to do something about it, because as Turay imagined President Barack Obama's wife Michelle would then say to her husband. “Ah Estonia. Isn't that the little, small-minded, white country, to hell with them.” How come we get this angry, gleeful and belligerent tone addressed at the Estonian land and the Estonian people. It probably stems from Turay's disappointment that we don't treat him or his racial compatriots with sufficient dignity and rights. But it can't be claimed somehow that Turay's racial compatriots over in America, (where the President-elect presumably will help stop racism), have attitudes towards white people that are tolerant and friendly. Experience says the...

Freedom is the best solution By Mart Laar Published Postimees 18 July 2009 A response to the article “Laar's dilemma” This week Abdul Turay asked how to get Estonia out of the crisis, if the basis of our success is in Milton Friedman and Austrian economy school principles. There is doubt about the two ideas and the two theories are caught up in conflict. Furthermore conservative policies have been replaced by left-wing ones. Actually this has been talked about a lot. There has been a reversal of fortune. Now Friedman, the free market and low taxes get abused as people continually point to this as the reason as to why the crisis emerged. The world did the opposite in the 1930s and paid dearly for this. Now the great powers generally avoid protectionism and taxes have fallen more than they have risen. But it is government intervention in the economy that has grown, not doubt in the free market. I didn't go ahead with my economic reforms in Estonia for five years on the basis of ...

It's a Global Election By Amy Goodman First published in syndication across North America 21 July 2008 TALLINN, Estonia – When I arrived in Estonia last week – a former Soviet republic that lies just south of Finland – everyone had an opinion on Barack Obama's speech in Berlin. The headline of the British Daily Telegraph we picked up in Finland blared "New walls must not divide us," with half-page photos of the American presidential candidate silhouetted against a sea of 200,000 people. One of the first people I met in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, was Abdul Turay, the editor in chief of The Baltic Times, an English-language weekly that covers Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the three Baltic nations. Granted, he's not a typical resident for this country of largely fair-haired light-skinned people: Turay is a black Briton whose parents come from the West African nations of Liberia and Sierra Leone. And he is Muslim. While Estonia has no mosques,...

Revisiting school days By Abdul Turay First Published Jun 11, 2008 My spouse’s father is a fisherman. Since she grew up with the sea I once took her to see the first sea clocks in Greenwich. These 18th century inventions made safe sea travel possible for the first time. First I showed her the drama “Longitude,” which tells the story of how the clocks were created. Inventor John Harrison went through hell making the things. This gave the visit an extra poignancy for my partner because she knew the human story behind the clocks. This is a good recommendation for any site-seeing tour. If you read the book or see the film first, then you will enjoy the place you go to see more. Palamuse is a small town in Jogeva County. It has just 2,500 people. It is most famous as the place where Oscars Luts, a 20th century Estonian writer, went to school. Luts is often compared to Dickens, but with less blood and guts. One of his most famous works, Kevade (Spring), is about his school days...