Op-Ed

Karl Altau / JBANC Following the midterm elections and the Thanksgiving break, the United States Congress is back in action, finishing up business for the year, and this 117th Session of Congress. The new 118th Congress starts its two-year cycle on January 3. This is the third article in a...

Tere kõigile! My name is Liam Kivirist and I recently became a member of the Chicago Eesti Maja, but my grandparents (Aelita and Valdek Kivirist) were long-time members when they were living in Glenview. I grew up in an Estonian-American household and during the COVID pandemic, I took an interest...

I was in Nassau, Bahamas, in 1954 on the charter schooner "Caribee", when Queen Elizabeth, on the Royal Yacht Brittania, was visiting the British Empire, which was vast. We were told in social studies that "The sun never sets on the British Empire", as Britain had holdings in every arc...

It’s perhaps one of the questions most often posed recently. At the time of this writing, Ukrainian forces were making significant gains in the eastern Russian-occupied areas. In fact, a sense of an inevitable Ukrainian victory was palpable. Putin’s bound to retaliate. But will an end to the conflict, which...

The uncouth treatment that New York tennis fans gave Anett Kontaveit at the Arthur Ashe stadium on August 31 is not only unforgivable but nothing less than arrogant. I watched the entire match on Eurosport live and was shocked that a crowd of 30+ thousand was able to stay as...

Pastor Markus Vaga Luke 10:25-37 Sometimes it feels that whenever Jesus needs to make a point, He talks about Samaritans. A good Samaritan is someone who helps a stranger. In fact, here in New Jersey and many other states, there are laws that we call “Good Samaritan Laws” which generally...

It’s no longer news, but it still deserves attention. By mid-April, Estonia had donated proportionally more military aid to Ukraine than any other nation – including the USA and the U.K. Yet, the war is far from being wrapped up. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Estonia...

Indrek Lepson On our way to New Zealand, we stopped at Esperito Santo Island in New Hebrides to clear customs. New Hebrides at that time was under French and English jurisdiction.How that came to be, I have no idea. Both countries had consulates there, so Barbara had to go to...

Karl Altau, JBANC Vladimir Kara-Murza is not your average Russian citizen. You may have recently read that he was detained on April 11, 2022, in Moscow. Russian authorities declared him a “foreign agent” and ordered his arrest for allegedly spreading false information about the Russian military in its war against...

Sergei Metlev, Member of the Board of the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory It is becoming increasingly apparent that some Russian-speaking Estonians are offended and complaining. In general terms, it sounds like this: Ukrainian war refugees are given immediate and plentiful aid, but we who have lived here for a...