9. 12.
I’d have posted something on the pitiful Nokia water disaster, but it would have quickly degenerated into a series of crappy puns. (See what I mean?)
9. 12.
Helsingin Sanomat put together a citizenship test (fi) with the questions based on real tests from other countries. I narrowly passed, but the experience mainly served to convince me that citizenship tests, at least ones that focus on trivia questions, are stupid. There’s no logic according to which one’s prospects for citizenship should depend on whether one knows the origins of the Tiernapojat play.
Obligatory handwringing over politicians’ performances can be found here. Alas, the article doesn’t name names.
8. 12.
The voting for the 2007 Sports Act of the Year ends tomorrow. Looking at the candidates (fi), I think there are three serious possibilities:
- Virpi Kuitunen’s three world championships and a third place in cross country skiing
- Tero Pitkämäki’s world championship in javelin
- Kimi Räikkönen’s world championship in Formula One
Kuitunen brought home three gold medals. Aside from winning in Osaka, Pitkämäki dominated his sport all summer long and has already been elected the European Male Athlete of the Year. Räikkönen scored the most high profile victory of the year - and it’s not even close. I’d opt for Räikkönen, if only because the last two GPs of the season were so much fun.
Someone might vote for Teemu Selänne’s Stanley Cup win, but it would be a sentimental choice. Juha Salminen’s umpteen enduro world championships is a rather impressive feat, but the sport is too small for him to win.
Now watch for Tampere United fans organize to haul their team to number one.
7. 12.
The Parliament passed a few notable bills this week. Car tax reform became a reality and a month was lobbed off civil service. Despite the latter change, conscientious objectors still object:
The League nonetheless feels that conscientious objectors are still discriminated against. They say the government has failed to show why civilian service should be any longer than conscription.
Surely the reason is obvious: the state wants to encourage men to choose conscription. Civilian service only exists because some object to conscription. Locking up the objectors would be inefficient and not very nice, so the state has them do odd jobs here and there. But the alternative doesn’t need to be particularly appealing, because if it were, that might increase the number of men who choose it. Simple as.
6. 12.
I’d like to take this moment to consider the chief downside to Finland’s independence.
I’m of course talking about the Independence Day reception at the Presidential Palace, also known as the most repetitive television program in the history of ever. For those fortunate enough to never have seen it, it consists of a few thousand handshakes followed by riveting footage of hundreds of people milling about in a few tightly packed rooms as the band plays nothing to which you should pay attention. During breaks in the music, some guests are asked pointless questions to which they give blandly patriotic answers.
You can try to adopt an ironic attitude toward the spectacle and make quips about the guests’ clothes and hair styles, but the interminable proceedings will beat even the most hardy wit into catatonic submission. Were I to draft an indictment of Finnish culture, the high ratings enjoyed by the reception year after year would be exhibit one. There’s no way you can watch the world’s stiffest conga line crawl past the presidential couple, all tight smiles and empty patter, without your soul departing your body as a protest over your failure to find less tortuous viewing, like MADE, for example.
It’s quite dull, is what I’m saying.
5. 12.
Apropos of tomorrow’s Independence Day festivities, YLE commissioned a poll in which respondents were asked to rank their rights. It’s an interesting excercise, but YLE’s coverage of its own poll is disappointingly misleading. The worst offender is this paragraph:
The survey also asked which rights people would be willing to sacrifice under exceptional conditions. Most of those asked said the right of association and a quarter put freedom of movement on their list.
The survey didn’t ask what rights respondents would be willing to sacrifice. The question (fi) concerned “being flexible” “if decision makers see it as necessary”. Second, when it comes to limiting the right of association, “most of those asked” actually amount to 36 percent of those asked.
YLE’s Olli Ainola wrote a column (fi) on the topic titled “Many Finns would accept the East German society.” He makes some good points about situations in which rights need to be weighed against each other, but the title is of course very, very hyperbolic.
Ainola writes, “After a little bit of pushing, surprisingly many Finns are prepared to accept a society in which the right of association and freedom of movement are limited, the death penalty is in use, and freedom of religion and conscience is shackled - as long as social services and privacy are guaranteed.
“What sort of a society does that bring to mind? What else than the former DDR; only Stasi is missing.”
Stasi was pretty damned central to the East German society, but we’ll forget about that for the moment. Instead, let’s try to figure out what what we can say about how many is “surprisingly many”.
Of the rights that would be limited, the freedom of religion and conscience is the most popular (fi), with 19 percent willing to accept restrictions on it under exceptional circumstances. That’s the upper limit. On the other hand, if there was no correlation between accepting limits on the four rights Ainola mentions, then the number would be approximately, oh, zero percent. So take your pick.
4. 12.
The Swedish news site The Local carries a wacky AFP article on the ol’ language question. (You can tell that the author is French by the way Arto Paasilinna is quoted in the end.) The problem with discussing the topic is that the world is neatly divided into people who don’t care and people who care a bit too much. This article tries to bring a smidgen of heat to the proceedings by only quoting the latter.
“Finland tries to teach everyone a lesson about morality but minorities in China are treated better,” blasted Juhan [sic] Janhunen, an expert on Asian languages, comparing one of the most egalitarian countries in the world to the Communist regime.
On the other hand, the majority in China is treated worse, so it evens out.
And as a result of budgetary cutbacks, Swedish-speaking police stations, courts and municipal offices will in the coming years be integrated into Finnish entities.“It’s scandalous! We don’t even know who was here first, the Swedes or the Finns,” thunders a judge, Charles Lindroos, whose court is due to close.
The Sami may have been there first, but it totally doesn’t count because our ancestors weren’t playing for keepsies back then.
Heikki Tala, the head of the Association for Finnish Culture and Identity, doesn’t see a problem.“Swedish speakers enjoy privileges like no other linguistic minority in the world,” he said.
“The 500,000 Finns in Sweden have no rights,” he pointed out.
That’s not strictly true. For example, while you’re allowed to enslave Sweden-dwelling Finns, you must ensure that there’s no gender discrimination among your slave force.
3. 12.
Matti Ahola, former Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defense, makes the military case (fi) for NATO membership in an interview that appeared in several Alma Media newspapers today. He doesn’t see the Finnish military lasting for long in modern warfare against a strong enemy - i.e. if Russia invades, although that’s left unsaid. “We’re talking about a durability of days, at most weeks. After that aid from foreign countries is needed. We have no system to ensure this aid.”
According to Ahola, Finland doesn’t have the goods needed to stand up to air strikes in a protracted struggle. “You can load ten to twelve missiles into a Hornet at a time. When there are 63 planes, in theory a significant part of Finland’s missiles is attached to the planes at one go. After the first full round of shots, we must quickly get more missiles from some NATO country. Others don’t have them.” Therefore, “It is one hundred percent up to NATO whether our air force’s and army’s main weapons usable in a lengthening crisis.”
Guerrilla warfare is an alternative, but it has a significant downside. “A guerrilla army’s effect starts to be felt only when the enemy has penetrated deep into the country. At that point no one is safe, least of all civilians. This sort of weapons cache romanticism is out of date.”
Ahola isn’t very pleased (fi) with President Tarja Halonen, who has made anti-membership comments in recent weeks. “She’s aware of these facts, there’s no doubt about that. Clearly she’s playing knowingly with two sets of cards.” I would consider the possibility that Halonen thinks that foreign policy benefits of non-alliance cancel out the military benefits of NATO membership.
Ahola seems to be on shakier ground when talking politics. “Before both the presidential and the parliamentary elections, certain security policy topics of which there was to be no debate were defined. We won’t be a very good example of democracy as OSCE chairs next year.” This is wrong. Nothing stops any politician from bringing up any security policy topic, but if there are no votes in talking about your pro-NATO views, why spend valuable campaign time on it?
3. 12.
In third grade, he wrote an essay titled ‘I Want To Be a President’
Posted by Ari under United States, elections, politicsNo Comments
This statement from the Hillary Clinton campaign, concerning Barack Obama’s presidential aspirations, is gotcha politics at its very funniest.
“It was clear to me from the day I met him that he was thinking about politics,” says a law school classmate.
How can any candidate recover from such a revelation?
2. 12.
Apropos of handling foreign policy, the latest number of Europa magazine (fi) carried an interview with Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva on Russia and the European Union.
The main takeaway from the article is that Kanerva supports an “active” Russia policy. Russia shouldn’t be driven out of common negotiations. EU needs Russia and Russia needs EU. This topic also prompted the best Kanerva-ism of the interview: “Driven into a corner, Russia won’t stay there, but break out like Tex Willer.”
According to Kanerva, the security guarantees mentioned in the not-a-constitution don’t remove the need for a discussion on NATO membership. “They are different types of solutions. EU’s guarantees aren’t interesting for NATO members. All options are needed.” He also called for a common EU energy policy as a way to stop Russia from applying the principles of divide and conquer.
2. 12.
Turun Sanomat published a poll (fi) that asked respondents to rate politicians’ handling of foreign policy on a scale of four to ten - Helsingin Sanomat has more numbers (fi). Speaker of the Parliament Sauli Niinistö (National Coalition Party) and President Tarja Halonen (Social Democratic Party) scored the best, 7.9 and 7.8 respectively. Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva (Coalition) at 7.5 narrowly pipped Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre Party) at 7.4 for third place.
The Speaker of course doesn’t handle foreign policy at all, so one wonders how the respondents were able to rate Niinistö’s performance. Still, he’s probably pleased; it’s the sort of question on which prospective presidential candidates should hope to do well. As for Vanhanen, in addition to losing to his Foreign Minister among all respondents, he lost to Niinistö 8.0 to 7.9 even among Centrists only. It seems that foreign policy is considered something of a weakness for him.
According to the same poll, 82 percent supported the current model in which the President together with the government is in charge of foreign policy, thus making supporters of pure parlamentarism gnash their teeth.
1. 12.
Amanda Hess from the Washington City Paper learned a lot from the Ambassador of Finland. Sample dialog:
“We do have one reality television program that I enjoy,” the man from Finland continued. “It is based on survival.”“Is it like Survivor?” I asked him.
“No,” replied the man from Finland.
