Abdul Turay

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Black men, Estonian women: the truth By Abdul Turay Published Postimees 11 November 2009 Well that got your attention; the headline I mean. Any story on this subject, the technical term is miscegenation, is bound to get punters. The yellow media, women's magazines and reality TV shows are obsessed with the subject. Not a month goes by without some publication writing about it. Anne and Style, for example, recently ran a long feature about mixed couples. Most of these stories are muddle-headed and wrong. There's paranoia in this country that there is an army of dark-skinned men form Turkey, the tropics, some place south, who are going to make off with the nation's women. It's never going to happen. I'll explain why in a minute. Seriously, I think there are more important things to think about and worry about. I worry about feeding my family. I worry about other people being able to feed their families, so I write about politics and economics. But the p...

The second sex Published Postimees 16 January 2013 One issue scares the hell out of me. Men's rights. We are are told that we live in a male dominated society, that men have it easier than women; there are people who make a living by telling us this. In Estonia there are a dozen organisation dealing with women's rights there is even a gender studies unit (i.e. women's studies unit) at Tartu University, but there isn't yet far as I am aware, and I have checked, even one organisation dealing with men's right. It is inevitable that anybody who challenges this hegemony will come in for a barrage of criticism from an army of well-funded groups. When men's rights are discussed, it is in the context of men's health. Men are dying off. Men die younger and are more likely to commit suicide than women. Even God it seems is against men. Last week January 10 2012, for example the ministry of internal affairs published figures that show, ...

The Great Migration Published Postimees 13 Sept 2012 Recently, I asked a group of young people, if they have Facebook accounts. They looked at me like I was mad. "That's like asking us, do we have a noses?" one of them said. "Come to think of it even people who don't have noses have Facebook accounts," another said to much laughter. Last week 6 th July, Kanal 2 did a program "Minu Facebooki sõbrad". It was a light hearted look at the social network phenomenon. But the whole Facebook is king challenges some of our cherished beliefs about modern Estonia. 10 years ago when I first visited here, Estonia was more advanced than my own country the United Kingdom. It was a revelation. Estonia was my introduction to whole concept of social networking. Rate.ee was founded in May 2002, that's a year before Orkut, or MySpace, two years before Facebook. I so wasn't impressed when I first saw Facebook. "So...