Suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us

Raoul Duke: Suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full with what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, and a voice was screaming:
Holy Jesus. What are these goddamn animals?

Lihtsalt sobiv tsitaat viimase aja kohta.
peale selle leidsin ma veel ühe normaalse artikli. Ma ei hakka tõlkima, onju, te olete vähemasti 5. klassis ikka inglist õppinud.

www.andnetwork.com wrote: TALLINN (AFP) - Shards of reinforced glass glittered like a million diamonds outside a jewelers in Parnu Street, the shopping district in central Tallinn that was badly damaged in the worst night of violence in independent Estonia.

Staring open-mouthed at a row of ransacked shops, 65-year-old Helle Tamm fought back tears.

"I've been like this all day," the jewelry shop assistant told AFP.

"I can't understand why there are so many Russian youngsters who seem to hate us Estonians. We have never started a war against any nation, in contrast to the Russians who have occupied so many of their neighbours," she said.

Hardly any buildings, either commercial or private, had been left unscarred in the central Tallinn street near where a towering Soviet war memorial had stood until Friday.

Estonian authorities moved the monument to a secret location in the early hours of Friday to prevent a repeat of the six-hour rampage and looting spree that had left a trail of destruction in Tallinn.

Police said the looting had been carried out by a small group of troublemakers, both ethnic Estonians and Russians, who had infiltrated a peaceful demonstration near the statue of the Bronze Soldier.

One young man died after being stabbed during the night of violence.

The rioters were not "united by nationality but by their desire to riot, vandalise and plunder," President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said in a televised speech Friday.

The looters smashed windows and stole everything from drugs from the chemist's shop to women's underwear, designer jeans and alcohol.
Activists of the "Young Guards of United Russia" movement rally in front of

"It is absolutely disgusting how some Russian youths behaved. This has nothing at all to do with the Soviet monument," 29-year-old Svetlana Bruskova told AFP.

"I am Russian and all my family is Russian. My husband's father was a Russian officer. I live in the centre of Tallinn and last night I was horrified by what I saw on TV," she said.

"The Estonian authorities should have taken that Soviet monument somewhere else back in 1991," said Bruskova, a life-long resident of the Estonian capital.

Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union from the close of World War II until 1991. During the occupation, tens of thousands of ethnic Estonians were deported or fled into exile. Equal numbers of Russians were shipped into the Baltic state, as part of a russification drive by Moscow.


Relations between Estonia and Russia have been tense since the Baltic state regained independence, and rows have often had an ethnic focus, with Moscow repeatedly accusing Tallinn of abusing the rights of its large ethnic Russian minority.

Larissa Antshak surveyed the disarray in the lingerie shop where she works.

"They stole the bras and underwear!" she said in disbelief.

Antshak, an ethnic Russian, was against the removal of the 2.5-metre (yard) high Bronze Soldier, which was cast in solid bronze in the late 1940s and stood as a tribute to the Red Army soldiers who chased the Nazis out of Estonia in World War II .<>

"My personal opinion is that the Soviet war monument should have stayed where it was. But I cannot condone the violence that was carried out during the night by those people," she said disdainfully.

"Look at this," she said, holding up a half-metre-long (three-foot) crowbar.


"They came specially equipped to smash windows. This one, they left in the shop."

A few metres further down Parnu Street, the rioters had torched a newspaper kiosk.

Kristiina Tomson, the 37-year-old owner of the jewelry shop where Tamm works, surveyed her small business, which had escaped the violence almost untouched.

"I didn't sleep a wink last night; I was so worried about what might happen to the shop," she told AFP.

"I think the monument should have stayed where it was because we had peace and stability then," she said.

"I am scared it has not ended yet and we are going to face more violence."

The art gallery owned by Toomas Korjus had also come through the night of violence with little to show for it.

Korjus, 48, said he had always felt a certain affection towards the Bronze Soldier.

"I liked the way it faced the church, as if it were begging forgiveness from Estonians.

"But I'm happy they've taken it away," he said.