The other night somebody (not me) posted a link to my previous article to the immigrants-forum on suomi24.fi.
Yesterday morning the posting with the link was censored away.
On top of the forum page it says "Racist and inappropriate messages will be removed from the forum". Hey, it's their forum and I am not trying to question their right to remove any kind of messages they want, but was my article all that racist and inappropriate, especially considering the stuff that usually gets posted on suomi24.fi?
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Lukutaidottomia äänestäjiä?
Eduskunnassa on nyt uusi lakialoite (LA 5/2007), jossa esitetään kansalaisuuslain muuttamista siten, että kansalaisuuden saamiseen riittää yleinen kielitutkinto taitotasolla 2 (jos muut edellytykset täyttyvät, tietenkin). Nyt tarvitaan taso 3.
Aloitteen ovat allekirjoittaneet Minna Sirnö, Annika Lapintie ja Merja Kyllönen, Vasemmistoliitto.
Perusteluna tähän on se että "kansalaisuuslain kielitaitoedellytykset ovat yksinkertaisesti osoittautuneet esteeksi kansalaisuuden saannille jopa silloin, kun hakija on asunut Suomessa jo useampia vuosia". Eli siis taso 3 on liikaa vaadittu.
Voihan toki olla sitä mieltä että joko valtio ei tarvitse yhteistä kieltä/kieliä lainkaan (onhan niitä kaksi/kolme/monikielisiä valtioita, tämä muun muuassa) tai että uusien kansalaisten ei tarvitse osata niitä. Voi olla (ja minusta jopa syystäkin) sitä mieltä että niiltä ryhmiltä joille kielitaito on sekä vähemmän tärkeä että vaikeammin saavutettavissa, kuten eläkeläisiltä, sopiikin vaatia vähemmän kuin muilta. Voi vastustaa ihan yleisesti ottaen sitä että kansalaiseksi pyrkivältä vaaditaan enemmän tietoa kuin kansalaiseksi syntyneeltä, vaikka minusta se on aivan yhtä väistämätön länsimaisen elämän fakta kuin se että adoptiovanhempia seulotaan tarkemmin kuin biologisia vanhempia, johtuen siitä että länsimaissa jonkun maan kansalaisuuden saamista syntyessään ja omien lasten synnyttämistä pidetään ihmisoikeuksina kun taas adoptiolapsen tai uuden kansalaisuuden saamista pidetään etuoikeutena joka annetaan vain tarkasti seulotuille ihmisille. Voi jopa olla sitä mieltä että kaikilla ihmisillä pitäisikin olla ehdoton oikeus saada sen maan kansalaisuus, minkä he haluavat, vaikka tässä tapauksessa kyllä toivoisin että tätä hienoa uutta ihmisoikeutta ensin kokeiltaisin jossain muualla kuin Suomessa tai USA:ssa.
Tästä ei nyt kuitenkaan ole kyse, vaan siitä, että jos ollaan jo päätetty että a) maassa on kaksi kansalliskieltä ja b) kansalaisuuden hakijan kuuluisi osata jompakumpaa niistä, niin mikä on liikaa vaadittu?
Katsotaanpa mitä Opetushallitus niistä tasoista sanoo:
"3- Ymmärtää pidempää puhetta ja keskeisen ajatuksen monista televisio- ja radio-ohjelmista, jos aihepiiri on suhteellisen tuttu. Ymmärtää tavallisia tekstejä, jotka eivät vaadi aiheen tuntemusta. Normaalitempoinen puhe ja vaativammat tekstit saattavat tuottaa vaikeuksia, jos puhejakso on pitkä ja aihepiiri vieras. Selviää tavallisimmissa käytännön puhetilanteissa ja pystyy kirjoittamaan yksinkertaista, yhtenäistä tekstiä tavallisista aiheista, vaikkakin kieliopilliset ja sanastolliset puutteet toisinaan vaikeuttavat ymmärtämistä. Hallitsee hyvin jokapäiväisiin tilanteisiin liittyvän sanaston ja peruskieliopin keskeiset rakenteet.
2- Ymmärtää selkeää ja yksinkertaistettua puhetta, joka käsittelee jokapäiväisiä ja tuttuja asioita. Ymmärtää helposti lyhyitä, yksinkertaisia tekstejä ja saa selville pääasiat tuttuja aihepiirejä käsittelevistä teksteistä. Selviää rutiininomaisissa yksinkertaista tiedonvaihtoa vaativissa puhetilanteissa, vaikka ääntäminen on vielä puutteellista. Pystyy kirjoittamaan suppeita, yksinkertaisia tekstejä jokapäiväisistä asioista, mutta teksti voi olla hajanaista. Hallitsee yksinkertaisimman peruskieliopin ja keskeisen perussanaston."
Onko tämä 3-taso liikaa vaadittu ihmiseltä, jos otetaan huomioon että ennen kansalaisuuden hakemista ihmisen kuuluu asua Suomessa 6 vuotta yhtäjaksoisesti tai 8 vuotta yhteensä 15 ikävuoden täyttämisen jälkeen? (Pakolaisille ja suomalaisten puolisoille vastaavat luvut ovat 4 ja 6.) Tätä 3-tason kielitaitoa ei siis nykyään vaadita siihen että ihminen saisi tulla Suomeen, tehdä töitä, opiskella, tai saada sosiaaliturvaa Suomessa - kaikilla hakijoilla on jo kaikki nämä oikeudet. Tätä kielitaitoa vaaditaan siihen, että ihminen hyväksyttäisin Suomen kansan uudeksi jäseneksi, ja että hän pääsisi äänestämään eduskunta- ja presidenttivaaleissa. (Tässä välissä on hyvin vaikeaa pitäytyä vitseistä tyyliin "lukutaidottomat äänestäjät - Vasemmistoliiton viimeinen toivo". OK, ei vaikeaa, vaan mahdotonta. Olen pahoillani.)
Minusta se, että tämän lakialoitteen laatijoiden mukaan monet (kuinka monet?) maahanmuuttajat eivät pääse läpi 3-tason kokeesta on sinänsä huolestuttavampi uutinen kuin se, että he haluavat alentaa ne vaatimukset. Jos ihminen 6 vuoden jälkeenkään ei selviä tavallisimmissa käytännön puhetilanteissa eikä ymmärrä keskeistä ajatusta puheesta jonka aihepiiri on suhteellisen tuttu niin joko ihmistä ei todellakaan kiinnosta, tai suomen/ruotsin kielen opetus maahanmuuttajille on erittäin syvässä kriisissä, tai sekä että. Molemmat ovat aika suuri ongelma.
Aloitteen ovat allekirjoittaneet Minna Sirnö, Annika Lapintie ja Merja Kyllönen, Vasemmistoliitto.
Perusteluna tähän on se että "kansalaisuuslain kielitaitoedellytykset ovat yksinkertaisesti osoittautuneet esteeksi kansalaisuuden saannille jopa silloin, kun hakija on asunut Suomessa jo useampia vuosia". Eli siis taso 3 on liikaa vaadittu.
Voihan toki olla sitä mieltä että joko valtio ei tarvitse yhteistä kieltä/kieliä lainkaan (onhan niitä kaksi/kolme/monikielisiä valtioita, tämä muun muuassa) tai että uusien kansalaisten ei tarvitse osata niitä. Voi olla (ja minusta jopa syystäkin) sitä mieltä että niiltä ryhmiltä joille kielitaito on sekä vähemmän tärkeä että vaikeammin saavutettavissa, kuten eläkeläisiltä, sopiikin vaatia vähemmän kuin muilta. Voi vastustaa ihan yleisesti ottaen sitä että kansalaiseksi pyrkivältä vaaditaan enemmän tietoa kuin kansalaiseksi syntyneeltä, vaikka minusta se on aivan yhtä väistämätön länsimaisen elämän fakta kuin se että adoptiovanhempia seulotaan tarkemmin kuin biologisia vanhempia, johtuen siitä että länsimaissa jonkun maan kansalaisuuden saamista syntyessään ja omien lasten synnyttämistä pidetään ihmisoikeuksina kun taas adoptiolapsen tai uuden kansalaisuuden saamista pidetään etuoikeutena joka annetaan vain tarkasti seulotuille ihmisille. Voi jopa olla sitä mieltä että kaikilla ihmisillä pitäisikin olla ehdoton oikeus saada sen maan kansalaisuus, minkä he haluavat, vaikka tässä tapauksessa kyllä toivoisin että tätä hienoa uutta ihmisoikeutta ensin kokeiltaisin jossain muualla kuin Suomessa tai USA:ssa.
Tästä ei nyt kuitenkaan ole kyse, vaan siitä, että jos ollaan jo päätetty että a) maassa on kaksi kansalliskieltä ja b) kansalaisuuden hakijan kuuluisi osata jompakumpaa niistä, niin mikä on liikaa vaadittu?
Katsotaanpa mitä Opetushallitus niistä tasoista sanoo:
"3- Ymmärtää pidempää puhetta ja keskeisen ajatuksen monista televisio- ja radio-ohjelmista, jos aihepiiri on suhteellisen tuttu. Ymmärtää tavallisia tekstejä, jotka eivät vaadi aiheen tuntemusta. Normaalitempoinen puhe ja vaativammat tekstit saattavat tuottaa vaikeuksia, jos puhejakso on pitkä ja aihepiiri vieras. Selviää tavallisimmissa käytännön puhetilanteissa ja pystyy kirjoittamaan yksinkertaista, yhtenäistä tekstiä tavallisista aiheista, vaikkakin kieliopilliset ja sanastolliset puutteet toisinaan vaikeuttavat ymmärtämistä. Hallitsee hyvin jokapäiväisiin tilanteisiin liittyvän sanaston ja peruskieliopin keskeiset rakenteet.
2- Ymmärtää selkeää ja yksinkertaistettua puhetta, joka käsittelee jokapäiväisiä ja tuttuja asioita. Ymmärtää helposti lyhyitä, yksinkertaisia tekstejä ja saa selville pääasiat tuttuja aihepiirejä käsittelevistä teksteistä. Selviää rutiininomaisissa yksinkertaista tiedonvaihtoa vaativissa puhetilanteissa, vaikka ääntäminen on vielä puutteellista. Pystyy kirjoittamaan suppeita, yksinkertaisia tekstejä jokapäiväisistä asioista, mutta teksti voi olla hajanaista. Hallitsee yksinkertaisimman peruskieliopin ja keskeisen perussanaston."
Onko tämä 3-taso liikaa vaadittu ihmiseltä, jos otetaan huomioon että ennen kansalaisuuden hakemista ihmisen kuuluu asua Suomessa 6 vuotta yhtäjaksoisesti tai 8 vuotta yhteensä 15 ikävuoden täyttämisen jälkeen? (Pakolaisille ja suomalaisten puolisoille vastaavat luvut ovat 4 ja 6.) Tätä 3-tason kielitaitoa ei siis nykyään vaadita siihen että ihminen saisi tulla Suomeen, tehdä töitä, opiskella, tai saada sosiaaliturvaa Suomessa - kaikilla hakijoilla on jo kaikki nämä oikeudet. Tätä kielitaitoa vaaditaan siihen, että ihminen hyväksyttäisin Suomen kansan uudeksi jäseneksi, ja että hän pääsisi äänestämään eduskunta- ja presidenttivaaleissa. (Tässä välissä on hyvin vaikeaa pitäytyä vitseistä tyyliin "lukutaidottomat äänestäjät - Vasemmistoliiton viimeinen toivo". OK, ei vaikeaa, vaan mahdotonta. Olen pahoillani.)
Minusta se, että tämän lakialoitteen laatijoiden mukaan monet (kuinka monet?) maahanmuuttajat eivät pääse läpi 3-tason kokeesta on sinänsä huolestuttavampi uutinen kuin se, että he haluavat alentaa ne vaatimukset. Jos ihminen 6 vuoden jälkeenkään ei selviä tavallisimmissa käytännön puhetilanteissa eikä ymmärrä keskeistä ajatusta puheesta jonka aihepiiri on suhteellisen tuttu niin joko ihmistä ei todellakaan kiinnosta, tai suomen/ruotsin kielen opetus maahanmuuttajille on erittäin syvässä kriisissä, tai sekä että. Molemmat ovat aika suuri ongelma.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Sweet memories of Russian freedom of speech
When my mother was a college student (Saint-Petersburg State Polytechnical University, to be exact), they were having some kind of obligatory sermon against people who try to emigrate. The year was circa 1970, the emigration had just started, and all the colleges and workplaces worth their salt were supposed to have meetings condemning the people who were trying to leave the country and demanding that they be forced to stay.
After the official part the Komsomol leader started pointing at various students and demanding that they stand up and condemn. At some point he pointed at my mom, probably waking her up.
She did not really condemn the emigration at all, but she was not entirely suicidal, so she got up and said something along the lines of: "If you think they are totally evil, what do we need them here for? Let them go where they want and we'll be rid of them."
The Komsomol leader nearly had a heart attack, and started the proceeding to kick her out both from the Komsomol and the university. Luckily for herself she had a rather persuasive boyfriend (who later became my father), who managed to persuade the Komsomol leader not to do that (no, I don't know what kind of pressure was applied).
"Can't you get your woman to keep her mouth shut, at least in public?" - asked the Komsomol leader. "She can be very quiet if you don't ask her any questions," - my father explained. The Komsomol leader understood and never tried to wake her up at a meeting again.
By the time I was a teenager the system had mellowed out. You could still get in trouble for things just as trivial, but the extent of trouble (at least the trouble into which you got for trivial things) was quite limited. They said it was cumulative, but I did not stay there long enough to find out.
After the official part the Komsomol leader started pointing at various students and demanding that they stand up and condemn. At some point he pointed at my mom, probably waking her up.
She did not really condemn the emigration at all, but she was not entirely suicidal, so she got up and said something along the lines of: "If you think they are totally evil, what do we need them here for? Let them go where they want and we'll be rid of them."
The Komsomol leader nearly had a heart attack, and started the proceeding to kick her out both from the Komsomol and the university. Luckily for herself she had a rather persuasive boyfriend (who later became my father), who managed to persuade the Komsomol leader not to do that (no, I don't know what kind of pressure was applied).
"Can't you get your woman to keep her mouth shut, at least in public?" - asked the Komsomol leader. "She can be very quiet if you don't ask her any questions," - my father explained. The Komsomol leader understood and never tried to wake her up at a meeting again.
By the time I was a teenager the system had mellowed out. You could still get in trouble for things just as trivial, but the extent of trouble (at least the trouble into which you got for trivial things) was quite limited. They said it was cumulative, but I did not stay there long enough to find out.
Friday, May 25, 2007
On the road to Eilat, 28.04.07: desert, Dead Sea, pain in the ass and shower with Bedouins
Lyonya's car can carry 5 people easily, but we take Mira's car too. Partly for reasons of space, partly in order to be able to go to different places, partly for safety. Lyonya's car has been having problems, and part of the road to Eilat goes through West Bank, and it is a really, really bad idea to break down near some Palestinian town. (Settlers usually have a person on duty 24/7, and the people whose car breaks down on the way to or from their settlement calls that person, and several armed people immediately go to retrieve the travelers and their car. Regular Israelis who are just driving from one point in Israel to another through West Bank - I think the road that goes along the Dead Sea is the only place where this is done - have to call the Powers that Be for the rescue. Considering the amount of Powers that Be that we saw on the way, I suppose the rescue is never very far away.)
Anyway, I get in the car with Mira, she installs a flag on the roof, and we go. The flag tends to fall off occasionally.
About flags: apart from the regular Israeli flags, which are sold and waved everywhere, there is the Jerusalem flag with a yellow thingie in the middle, and some white flag with three blue guys on it, which turn out to be the current prisoners of war. At some point we also see guys selling American flags in the street, which is weird because nobody seems to be using them for anything.
Another unexpected presense of a US thing in Israel is that prices on real estate are listed in $US and not in NIS (shekel). Even more weird: the prices in the airport shop are in $US. This is really strange because NIS is a fully convertible currency and does not suffer any more inflation than $US.
Judean desert gets more deserty every kilometer. There are occasional herds of goats and sheep, and we see one camel. That is, we see one camel on its own in the desert. Every place where you can stop has one highly decorated camel and one Bedouin who charges tourists for climbing on the camel and taking a picture.
Nomadic Bedouins live in tent camps like this and are very poor both in comparison to the Jewish majority and to all other minorities. The government tries to offer them all kinds of benefits to settle down, and some do. They are Muslim Arabs, but are not considered a serious security threat like other Muslim Arabs.
We stop to take pictures at the sea level. Without a camel. The desert is almost totally deserty now, except for occasional date palm groves.
We enter the West Bank. A checkpoint with a couple of soldiers who look at us and wave us on. Every exit has its own checkpoint, and they look peaceful, somehow reminiscent of Masspike exits (which have toll booths but no soldiers). These ones, of course, have soldiers.
A stop at Qumran. I knew that it is the place where the Qumran scrolls (aka Dead Sea scrolls) were found, but I had no idea that there was something there. There are the ruins of the place where the Qumran community lived. I kind of feel sorry for the poor buggers.
We get down to the Jordan Valley. This is pretty much the lowest place on Earth, but you wouldn't know it from anything if you hadn't read about it. The valley is part of the huge rift that separates the Arabian plate from one of the African plates. Israel is on the African plate, Jordan on the Arabian. Dead Sea in the middle.
We drive out of the West Bank (the only way we know it is a little checkpoint) and stop at the beach in Ein Gedi. There are a lot of black people here, more than I'd seen anywhere else in Israel. There is some black community not far away which is famous for producing tofu and having a lot of good vegetarian restaurants, I assume they are from there. There is also a bunch of Bedouin women who get in the water fully clothed.
The Dead Sea gotta be the most overrated experience in all of Israel. The pebbles are sharp and you gotta have swimming shoes on. I would also strongly recommend covering your hair the best you can. You go into the water, it feels like any other sea water. The people tell you just to sit on water, and you can't figure out how to do it. You are trying really hard not to splash, because you don't wanna know what happens if any of that stuff gets into your eyes, or what other people will do to you if you get it into their eyes. All your scratches keep reminding you why the expression "rubbing salt into your wounds" was invented. Finally you manage to sit on water, after which you realize that a) your asshole is burning and b) you can't really turn around and get it out of the water, and so you gotta wait till the current brings you to the shore and bangs your ass on the stones.
Then you get out and run to the shower (they provide showers right on the beach, and don't even think of swimming in a place that doesn't have showers if your anus is dear to you). Your skin feels terribly oily and you suspect that you'll never get the stuff off, but after a little while it feels better, and your only concern is how to wash the harder-to-reach parts of your butt without taking the swimsuit off or looking too obscene.
Oska decided to skip the swimming.
On the way out of there I pay for a real shower, the kind where you can take your clothes off. It feels weird to be naked there, because most of the other women there are Bedouins and are at least partially dressed even in the shower. They don't react to the naked women in any way, though.
We get in the car, and continues along the Dead Sea, stopping at some resort for a coffee and then later on to take a look at Lot's wife. I wonder whether the legend really came from people looking at this more-or-less woman-shaped stone.
There is a place called 101'st Kilometer 101 km from Eilat, with a sort of poor man's zoo. There used to be more animals but some of them died in a recent fire.
An SMS. "Welcome to Jordan." Jordan is just a couple kilometers to the left.
It's getting dark as we arrive to Eilat. The place is a nice beach resort, with beaches, palms trees, restaurants, etc.
Mira and Lyonya suggest we eat sandwiches in Aroma. Oska, who is obviously not very fond of the idea, says that he would love to, but I am so obnoxiously picky that we should probably ask me. This makes me explode and say a number of things that probably shouldn't have been said, such as that my most acute requirement for the dining place is the total absence of company.
(I generally need some time for myself on my own on a regular basis. My ability to deal with people is a very easily exhaustible resource. On vacations with family and friends it can be stretched quite a bit as long as I get to run off on my own every once in a while, but for example being in close quarters with strangers 24 hours a day makes me unfriendly and mean in 48 hours, and downright hostile and violent in 72.)
I am on vacation with my family, but I haven't had time to go anywhere on my own for almost a week, and it really shows. I apologize to everyone, come to dinner with them in Aroma, and explain that I need some time off.
After that we take a walk along the waterfront. It's pretty and has a lot of little shops and juice stands. Mira and Lyonya want to know how Eilat compares to other beach resorts, and whether it makes sense for them to go to the Caribbean, for example. Our unanimous vote is "no, absolutely not", unless, of course, there is something other than beach that they want to see. Another thing, of course, is that if they want to go to the beach in the middle of winter the water temperature will be 18 in Eilat and 28 in St. Martin.
Planes fly right over us, very low.
At some point everyone goes home and I run off on my own for a while. I really need a drink and go to a bar, and they are out of most of the ingredients for all the drinks I try to order, but they go to another bar and bring them and make me a drink.
There is some highway nearby. It's huge, looks like an airport runway. In the morning it actually turns out to be an airport runway.
Eventually I go home, trying to buy a juice on the way and repeatedly failing because the salespeople are all missing in action. Finally I find a live one. Orange and kiwi juice is a good combination.
Anyway, I get in the car with Mira, she installs a flag on the roof, and we go. The flag tends to fall off occasionally.
About flags: apart from the regular Israeli flags, which are sold and waved everywhere, there is the Jerusalem flag with a yellow thingie in the middle, and some white flag with three blue guys on it, which turn out to be the current prisoners of war. At some point we also see guys selling American flags in the street, which is weird because nobody seems to be using them for anything.
Another unexpected presense of a US thing in Israel is that prices on real estate are listed in $US and not in NIS (shekel). Even more weird: the prices in the airport shop are in $US. This is really strange because NIS is a fully convertible currency and does not suffer any more inflation than $US.
Judean desert gets more deserty every kilometer. There are occasional herds of goats and sheep, and we see one camel. That is, we see one camel on its own in the desert. Every place where you can stop has one highly decorated camel and one Bedouin who charges tourists for climbing on the camel and taking a picture.
Nomadic Bedouins live in tent camps like this and are very poor both in comparison to the Jewish majority and to all other minorities. The government tries to offer them all kinds of benefits to settle down, and some do. They are Muslim Arabs, but are not considered a serious security threat like other Muslim Arabs.
We stop to take pictures at the sea level. Without a camel. The desert is almost totally deserty now, except for occasional date palm groves.
We enter the West Bank. A checkpoint with a couple of soldiers who look at us and wave us on. Every exit has its own checkpoint, and they look peaceful, somehow reminiscent of Masspike exits (which have toll booths but no soldiers). These ones, of course, have soldiers.
A stop at Qumran. I knew that it is the place where the Qumran scrolls (aka Dead Sea scrolls) were found, but I had no idea that there was something there. There are the ruins of the place where the Qumran community lived. I kind of feel sorry for the poor buggers.
We get down to the Jordan Valley. This is pretty much the lowest place on Earth, but you wouldn't know it from anything if you hadn't read about it. The valley is part of the huge rift that separates the Arabian plate from one of the African plates. Israel is on the African plate, Jordan on the Arabian. Dead Sea in the middle.
We drive out of the West Bank (the only way we know it is a little checkpoint) and stop at the beach in Ein Gedi. There are a lot of black people here, more than I'd seen anywhere else in Israel. There is some black community not far away which is famous for producing tofu and having a lot of good vegetarian restaurants, I assume they are from there. There is also a bunch of Bedouin women who get in the water fully clothed.
The Dead Sea gotta be the most overrated experience in all of Israel. The pebbles are sharp and you gotta have swimming shoes on. I would also strongly recommend covering your hair the best you can. You go into the water, it feels like any other sea water. The people tell you just to sit on water, and you can't figure out how to do it. You are trying really hard not to splash, because you don't wanna know what happens if any of that stuff gets into your eyes, or what other people will do to you if you get it into their eyes. All your scratches keep reminding you why the expression "rubbing salt into your wounds" was invented. Finally you manage to sit on water, after which you realize that a) your asshole is burning and b) you can't really turn around and get it out of the water, and so you gotta wait till the current brings you to the shore and bangs your ass on the stones.
Then you get out and run to the shower (they provide showers right on the beach, and don't even think of swimming in a place that doesn't have showers if your anus is dear to you). Your skin feels terribly oily and you suspect that you'll never get the stuff off, but after a little while it feels better, and your only concern is how to wash the harder-to-reach parts of your butt without taking the swimsuit off or looking too obscene.
Oska decided to skip the swimming.
On the way out of there I pay for a real shower, the kind where you can take your clothes off. It feels weird to be naked there, because most of the other women there are Bedouins and are at least partially dressed even in the shower. They don't react to the naked women in any way, though.
We get in the car, and continues along the Dead Sea, stopping at some resort for a coffee and then later on to take a look at Lot's wife. I wonder whether the legend really came from people looking at this more-or-less woman-shaped stone.
There is a place called 101'st Kilometer 101 km from Eilat, with a sort of poor man's zoo. There used to be more animals but some of them died in a recent fire.
An SMS. "Welcome to Jordan." Jordan is just a couple kilometers to the left.
It's getting dark as we arrive to Eilat. The place is a nice beach resort, with beaches, palms trees, restaurants, etc.
Mira and Lyonya suggest we eat sandwiches in Aroma. Oska, who is obviously not very fond of the idea, says that he would love to, but I am so obnoxiously picky that we should probably ask me. This makes me explode and say a number of things that probably shouldn't have been said, such as that my most acute requirement for the dining place is the total absence of company.
(I generally need some time for myself on my own on a regular basis. My ability to deal with people is a very easily exhaustible resource. On vacations with family and friends it can be stretched quite a bit as long as I get to run off on my own every once in a while, but for example being in close quarters with strangers 24 hours a day makes me unfriendly and mean in 48 hours, and downright hostile and violent in 72.)
I am on vacation with my family, but I haven't had time to go anywhere on my own for almost a week, and it really shows. I apologize to everyone, come to dinner with them in Aroma, and explain that I need some time off.
After that we take a walk along the waterfront. It's pretty and has a lot of little shops and juice stands. Mira and Lyonya want to know how Eilat compares to other beach resorts, and whether it makes sense for them to go to the Caribbean, for example. Our unanimous vote is "no, absolutely not", unless, of course, there is something other than beach that they want to see. Another thing, of course, is that if they want to go to the beach in the middle of winter the water temperature will be 18 in Eilat and 28 in St. Martin.
Planes fly right over us, very low.
At some point everyone goes home and I run off on my own for a while. I really need a drink and go to a bar, and they are out of most of the ingredients for all the drinks I try to order, but they go to another bar and bring them and make me a drink.
There is some highway nearby. It's huge, looks like an airport runway. In the morning it actually turns out to be an airport runway.
Eventually I go home, trying to buy a juice on the way and repeatedly failing because the salespeople are all missing in action. Finally I find a live one. Orange and kiwi juice is a good combination.
"Hey, you look like an Islamic terrorist!"
The unity government in Gaza has risen to the new heights of, hmm, unity: Fatah gunmen started shooting bearded men on the off chance that they are Hamas members.
Now, if they just did a summary execution of all the members of Hamas, I'd be all for it. But they are just shooting bearded guys.
Not that I am aganst profiling, mind you. But the profiling should involve checking the papers and searching the suspicious-looking person more thoroughly, not shooting them in various body parts just in case. Shooting everyone who looks like an Islamic terrorist, especially in a place where - let's face it - much everyone looks like an Islamic terrorist, is a bit unreasonable. If you are a part of a coalition government whose other part are the actual terrorists, it might also be politically unwise.
"Another Hamas official in Gaza City said that many young men had begun shaving their beards for fear of being identified as Hamas members. "We never imagined that the day would come when Muslim men would be afraid to walk in the street because they are wearing beards," he said."
Don't do that, guys! You'll need those beards after Hamas catches on to the new technique and start shooting all the beardless guys.
That's why the proper rules of war demand at least some kind of uniforms for the combatants, but of course the proper rules of war are for wankers, like the Western countries. That's probably also why all the uniforms tend to look like things that even the most fashion-impaired civilian would never put on by mistake - unlike beards, which tend to grow naturally on most men and some women.
The Muslims around the world are silent as usual. One could expect that the same people who burned embassies and occasionally each other because of some cartoons printed in Denmark would at least bother to organize a peaceful demonstration in protest of the shooting of bearded Muslim men, but I guess they only do that when some infidels forget their place.
In tomorrow news: "Raising the stakes: Hamas realizes that most Fatah supporters are Arabs, decides to kill all the Arabs in order to weed out Fatah suporters."
Now, if they just did a summary execution of all the members of Hamas, I'd be all for it. But they are just shooting bearded guys.
Not that I am aganst profiling, mind you. But the profiling should involve checking the papers and searching the suspicious-looking person more thoroughly, not shooting them in various body parts just in case. Shooting everyone who looks like an Islamic terrorist, especially in a place where - let's face it - much everyone looks like an Islamic terrorist, is a bit unreasonable. If you are a part of a coalition government whose other part are the actual terrorists, it might also be politically unwise.
"Another Hamas official in Gaza City said that many young men had begun shaving their beards for fear of being identified as Hamas members. "We never imagined that the day would come when Muslim men would be afraid to walk in the street because they are wearing beards," he said."
Don't do that, guys! You'll need those beards after Hamas catches on to the new technique and start shooting all the beardless guys.
That's why the proper rules of war demand at least some kind of uniforms for the combatants, but of course the proper rules of war are for wankers, like the Western countries. That's probably also why all the uniforms tend to look like things that even the most fashion-impaired civilian would never put on by mistake - unlike beards, which tend to grow naturally on most men and some women.
The Muslims around the world are silent as usual. One could expect that the same people who burned embassies and occasionally each other because of some cartoons printed in Denmark would at least bother to organize a peaceful demonstration in protest of the shooting of bearded Muslim men, but I guess they only do that when some infidels forget their place.
In tomorrow news: "Raising the stakes: Hamas realizes that most Fatah supporters are Arabs, decides to kill all the Arabs in order to weed out Fatah suporters."
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
GSM operators?
I want a new GSM operator (the current one is Sonera). Radiolinja (now Elisa) has been tried and found lacking in quality.
Good advice on which operators to try and especially which ones not to try is appreciated. Most of all I don't like surprises. During the Radiolinja times people used to call me from abroad and get no answer; I never got the calls; Radiolinja refused to correct or even acknowledge the problem - they said that the problem must be with the phones abroad, I doubted that so many phones in three countries on two continents suddenly failed in connection with me changing to Radiolinja. Sonera, on the other hand, produced a 131-euro surprise in the bill last fall (which is an excusable offence) and has failed to properly straighten it out so far (which isn't).
Good advice on which operators to try and especially which ones not to try is appreciated. Most of all I don't like surprises. During the Radiolinja times people used to call me from abroad and get no answer; I never got the calls; Radiolinja refused to correct or even acknowledge the problem - they said that the problem must be with the phones abroad, I doubted that so many phones in three countries on two continents suddenly failed in connection with me changing to Radiolinja. Sonera, on the other hand, produced a 131-euro surprise in the bill last fall (which is an excusable offence) and has failed to properly straighten it out so far (which isn't).
Yafo and other places, 27.04.07
We were originally supposed to go to Tel Aviv that day, but Lyonya and Mira really don't want to. They have given different reasons for their reluctance every day. (I am curious to know what their real reason was, but at this point I am not likely to believe them even if they tell me.) In any case, they are our hosts and we can't pressure them too much, and besides we have a day in Tel Aviv by ourselves in the end of the trip...
They agree to go to Yafo, though. Considering that Yafo is the same city as Tel Aviv (the official name is Tel Aviv-Yafo) we assume that we'd get to visit Tel Aviv on the same trip for a little while, but they say that it is very far away and there is nowhere to park. OK, whatever...
First they want to show us some nice places around Jerusalem. We start in the morning and go to visit the zoophiles.
The so-called zoophiles live on a green mountain and make goat cheese. I am not quite sure why Lyonya calls them zoophiles - maybe because there is nothing else to do there? In any case the zoophiles have cute goats, a cute dog, and really good cheese. We buy some and go away. I should remember to visit the zoophiles the next time I am there.
The next place is a hill with abandonned Byzantine mosaics and a humongous cactus. The hill is unimpressive and dusty and it is hot and blah.
Yafo is an very pretty ancient town. It looks somewhat deserted, though. There are restaurants in the harbor, but only one is open. We go there and get a perfectly decent fish platter.
Either the proper tourist season has not started yet, or the locals are having a major siesta, or something. It is hot.
We walk all over the almost-empty town, enjoy the views of Yafo and the sea, and Tel Aviv turns out not to be all that far away. Lyonya tells us that we can come here to Yafo again when we are in Tel Aviv, instead of spending time there, which makes me wonder again why he doesn't want us to go to Tel Aviv.
The notable local views include a tree in a hanging egg (don't ask me what that means, but looks cute) and the dumbest ice cream vendor in the world:
Me: Two small cups, one scoop of coffee ice cream each, please.
Him: Here you go. (gives me one cup)
Me: And another one like that, please.
Him: (Grabs the cup from me and tries to put another scoop in.)
Me: No, I don't want two scoops in one cup, I want two cups with one scoop each.
Him (looking astonished): Why?
Me: One for me and one for my father.
He gave me the second cup but looked like the idea of a person buying ice cream for someone who is waiting outside was completely new to him and he wasn't sure he approved of such a weird modern invention.
We get back to Jerusalem, and go to Jan's cafe. I sincerely recommend the place, and especially its list of creamy drinks. All of them.
It also has a hot cinnamonny drink called ainar. I am still planning to make some of that at home. It's sort of like glögi but way better.
We get back, and Benka decides to try to read the Koran before going to sleep. She threatens to wake up in a hijab and with a full beard. 15 seconds later horrible snoring is heard from their bedroom.
They agree to go to Yafo, though. Considering that Yafo is the same city as Tel Aviv (the official name is Tel Aviv-Yafo) we assume that we'd get to visit Tel Aviv on the same trip for a little while, but they say that it is very far away and there is nowhere to park. OK, whatever...
First they want to show us some nice places around Jerusalem. We start in the morning and go to visit the zoophiles.
The so-called zoophiles live on a green mountain and make goat cheese. I am not quite sure why Lyonya calls them zoophiles - maybe because there is nothing else to do there? In any case the zoophiles have cute goats, a cute dog, and really good cheese. We buy some and go away. I should remember to visit the zoophiles the next time I am there.
The next place is a hill with abandonned Byzantine mosaics and a humongous cactus. The hill is unimpressive and dusty and it is hot and blah.
Yafo is an very pretty ancient town. It looks somewhat deserted, though. There are restaurants in the harbor, but only one is open. We go there and get a perfectly decent fish platter.
Either the proper tourist season has not started yet, or the locals are having a major siesta, or something. It is hot.
We walk all over the almost-empty town, enjoy the views of Yafo and the sea, and Tel Aviv turns out not to be all that far away. Lyonya tells us that we can come here to Yafo again when we are in Tel Aviv, instead of spending time there, which makes me wonder again why he doesn't want us to go to Tel Aviv.
The notable local views include a tree in a hanging egg (don't ask me what that means, but looks cute) and the dumbest ice cream vendor in the world:
Me: Two small cups, one scoop of coffee ice cream each, please.
Him: Here you go. (gives me one cup)
Me: And another one like that, please.
Him: (Grabs the cup from me and tries to put another scoop in.)
Me: No, I don't want two scoops in one cup, I want two cups with one scoop each.
Him (looking astonished): Why?
Me: One for me and one for my father.
He gave me the second cup but looked like the idea of a person buying ice cream for someone who is waiting outside was completely new to him and he wasn't sure he approved of such a weird modern invention.
We get back to Jerusalem, and go to Jan's cafe. I sincerely recommend the place, and especially its list of creamy drinks. All of them.
It also has a hot cinnamonny drink called ainar. I am still planning to make some of that at home. It's sort of like glögi but way better.
We get back, and Benka decides to try to read the Koran before going to sleep. She threatens to wake up in a hijab and with a full beard. 15 seconds later horrible snoring is heard from their bedroom.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Jerusalem, 26.04.07
Oska, Benka and I are all by ourselves in the old city. For a very moderate price you can walk on the city walls, and we buy the tickets and start from the Jaffa gate to the northeast.
The views are really nice. After a little while, however, Oska gets all paranoid, as he usually does if he hasn't slept well or had enough breakfast or something, and starts whining that we are entering the Muslim part of town and should leave immediately. The map in fact says that we are entering the Christian part of town, but when did facts ever stop Oska? He sees a mosque somewhere, too.
At some point he sees some construction being done on the wall and a couple of Arab workers, and says that we should go back now, because the way is closed and there are Arabs. It takes some convincing to get him to believe that there is a passage left for tourists, and that the Arabs, while somewhat suspicious in general, usually do not go to work every day with a bomb, just in case.
Finally we convince Oska to continue, and one of the Arabs, instead of turning into a fire-breathing dragon actually smiles and moves some of his construcion stuff out of our way.
We get down at the Damascus gate and on El Wad, which actually is full of Muslims, but this totally fails to impress Oska. Or the Muslims, for that matter.
The tourist guides generally say that the Muslim quarter is safe except For fridays, and we did not go there on Friday, but in general all the people (Jews, Arabs, Druze and even Hebrew-speaking Chinese) whom we met in Israel were pretty nice to tourists, much nicer than I expected. Israelis have a reputation for being somewhat rude and having bad service, but I just found them to be rather direct, more actively so than for example the Finns. You start talking to them and you really get to know what they think about everything, in more sincere detail than you have probably wanted, but I wouldn't say that they are rude about it. The service in the restaurants is much like in Finland, somewhat reserved but friendly, and they don't try to cheat you on the check.
The only places with really weird service were little Arab shops in Jerusalem's old city, and the juice stands in Eilat: the former had salesmen chasing after people and whining that they should buy something, while in the latter the vendor was usually absent as such, drinking coffee around the corner with a friend or something.
The juice stands are great, by the way. If you can find the damn guy who is supposed to sell the juice.
We (or rather I) shop a bit. Benka and I talk about how we should answer "where are you from?" with "Russia" if we want better prices, but it's really unpleasant to call oneself a Russian. I second the feeling. I buy a necklace from an Arab shop, and the guy promises me big discounts if I let him put it on my neck. He is funny, so I let him. He clearly has problems with balance though, and keeps falling on my tits. Heh.
In the Muslim quarter you are supposed to haggle, in the Jewish quarter all the prices are listed, but the end result of haggling is always pretty much the same as the listed price of similar items. There are no miracles in the world of markets.
There is a lot of school groups. Quite a few of them have an armed adult or two. I notice that the Arab school system has uniforms, while the secular Jewish doesn't. The Arab system also seems to be gender-separated. The kids from the religious Jewish system are absent altogether. Probably studying Talmud instead of going to field trips.
We visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre again, and this time Oska believes that tourists are allowed there. The church features Golgotha and Christ's tomb. There is a line to enter the tomb, and the people leaving it seem to touch some candle flame with their hands. There is no screams of "ouch", though.
The Church of the Redeemer is closed for lunch, but after it opens we climb on the tower, and the views from there are really great. The problem with all the views, however, is hamsin, a hot wind from the desert that makes everything look misty.
At some point we buy one of those elongated bagels from some Arab (not the same one who promised to love Oska in Russian the day before). The bagel is clearly an infidel bagel (tastes more like a baguette than like a proper bagel) but the green powder he gave us to put on top of it is really good. It's called zatar.
We make out way to the new city, to Ben Yehuda street. It is much like pedestrian downtown streets all over Europe, and I like it.
We try the local shawarma. It's quite good and you can have fried eggpant and french fries in it. A word of advice: they sell shawarma on a pita or on a lafa, and lafa is the way to go. It's like pita, but bigger, softer and better.
We find an ice cream place and sit there. While sitting we see a guy with a huge grenade launcher and a baby carriage.
There are a lot of armed people everywhere anyway (for some reason soldiers on leave tend to carry weapons), but that's the only time we see a grenade launcher.
One thing I am wondering about: Israel is full of heavily armed teenagers but they have somehow managed not to shoot up any schools so far.
We take a cab to Yad Vashem, which is quite far. The annoying thing about Yad Vashem is that there is a very rigid order to the exhibition, and not enough clues as to where the beginning is. Once we find the beginning, it's quite good, but I liked the Holocaust museum in DC better. Yad Vashem has two things that the museum in DC doesn't have though: the avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations, and the Hall of Names.
The views are really nice. After a little while, however, Oska gets all paranoid, as he usually does if he hasn't slept well or had enough breakfast or something, and starts whining that we are entering the Muslim part of town and should leave immediately. The map in fact says that we are entering the Christian part of town, but when did facts ever stop Oska? He sees a mosque somewhere, too.
At some point he sees some construction being done on the wall and a couple of Arab workers, and says that we should go back now, because the way is closed and there are Arabs. It takes some convincing to get him to believe that there is a passage left for tourists, and that the Arabs, while somewhat suspicious in general, usually do not go to work every day with a bomb, just in case.
Finally we convince Oska to continue, and one of the Arabs, instead of turning into a fire-breathing dragon actually smiles and moves some of his construcion stuff out of our way.
We get down at the Damascus gate and on El Wad, which actually is full of Muslims, but this totally fails to impress Oska. Or the Muslims, for that matter.
The tourist guides generally say that the Muslim quarter is safe except For fridays, and we did not go there on Friday, but in general all the people (Jews, Arabs, Druze and even Hebrew-speaking Chinese) whom we met in Israel were pretty nice to tourists, much nicer than I expected. Israelis have a reputation for being somewhat rude and having bad service, but I just found them to be rather direct, more actively so than for example the Finns. You start talking to them and you really get to know what they think about everything, in more sincere detail than you have probably wanted, but I wouldn't say that they are rude about it. The service in the restaurants is much like in Finland, somewhat reserved but friendly, and they don't try to cheat you on the check.
The only places with really weird service were little Arab shops in Jerusalem's old city, and the juice stands in Eilat: the former had salesmen chasing after people and whining that they should buy something, while in the latter the vendor was usually absent as such, drinking coffee around the corner with a friend or something.
The juice stands are great, by the way. If you can find the damn guy who is supposed to sell the juice.
We (or rather I) shop a bit. Benka and I talk about how we should answer "where are you from?" with "Russia" if we want better prices, but it's really unpleasant to call oneself a Russian. I second the feeling. I buy a necklace from an Arab shop, and the guy promises me big discounts if I let him put it on my neck. He is funny, so I let him. He clearly has problems with balance though, and keeps falling on my tits. Heh.
In the Muslim quarter you are supposed to haggle, in the Jewish quarter all the prices are listed, but the end result of haggling is always pretty much the same as the listed price of similar items. There are no miracles in the world of markets.
There is a lot of school groups. Quite a few of them have an armed adult or two. I notice that the Arab school system has uniforms, while the secular Jewish doesn't. The Arab system also seems to be gender-separated. The kids from the religious Jewish system are absent altogether. Probably studying Talmud instead of going to field trips.
We visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre again, and this time Oska believes that tourists are allowed there. The church features Golgotha and Christ's tomb. There is a line to enter the tomb, and the people leaving it seem to touch some candle flame with their hands. There is no screams of "ouch", though.
The Church of the Redeemer is closed for lunch, but after it opens we climb on the tower, and the views from there are really great. The problem with all the views, however, is hamsin, a hot wind from the desert that makes everything look misty.
At some point we buy one of those elongated bagels from some Arab (not the same one who promised to love Oska in Russian the day before). The bagel is clearly an infidel bagel (tastes more like a baguette than like a proper bagel) but the green powder he gave us to put on top of it is really good. It's called zatar.
We make out way to the new city, to Ben Yehuda street. It is much like pedestrian downtown streets all over Europe, and I like it.
We try the local shawarma. It's quite good and you can have fried eggpant and french fries in it. A word of advice: they sell shawarma on a pita or on a lafa, and lafa is the way to go. It's like pita, but bigger, softer and better.
We find an ice cream place and sit there. While sitting we see a guy with a huge grenade launcher and a baby carriage.
There are a lot of armed people everywhere anyway (for some reason soldiers on leave tend to carry weapons), but that's the only time we see a grenade launcher.
One thing I am wondering about: Israel is full of heavily armed teenagers but they have somehow managed not to shoot up any schools so far.
We take a cab to Yad Vashem, which is quite far. The annoying thing about Yad Vashem is that there is a very rigid order to the exhibition, and not enough clues as to where the beginning is. Once we find the beginning, it's quite good, but I liked the Holocaust museum in DC better. Yad Vashem has two things that the museum in DC doesn't have though: the avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations, and the Hall of Names.
Well, at least they have a lot of experience...
Belarus did not make it to the UN Human Rights Council, on account of not having any human rights.
Not that I mind - perish the thought - I think this is a good step in the right direction, but why did they elect Angola, Egypt and Qatar now? More to the point, what are such staunch human right defenders as Nigeria and Saudi Arabia doing there already? I can well imagine their campaigns for election to the Human Rights Council: "Elect Saudi Arabia! We promise to defend your freedom of religion! Besides, we have a lot of experience with beheadings!" or "Nigeria for the Human Rights Council! We know everything about getting stoned! We will also protect children's rights to get polio!".
In a sane world even an application to any human-rights related body by something Saudi Arabia would have been the laugh of all the world for a week, but part of the problem is structural. The Human Rught Council has 13 seats for Africa, 13 seats for Asia, 6 for Eastern Europe, 8 for Latin America and the Caribbean, and 7 for the "Western European and Others". Where do you get 13 even marginally civilized countries in Africa, where? And in Asia?
I think the general problem of the UN is that this is an organization that tries to maintain the fiction that Equatorial Guinea or Sudan are normal countries just like France of Germany, and somehow have a right to an opinion about things like human rights, or rather a right to have someone listen to their opinion.
(Yeah, I understand how playing a little "you are a normal country just like us and we'll try really hard not to giggle" game can be useful in some situation can be useful in some circumstances. Mostly, though, it isn't, as evidenced by the UN.)
As of the beginning of this year, for example, the UN Human Rights Council has passed 8 resolutions condemning Israel, and no resolutions condemning, say, Sudan for that little genocide of about 400 000 people. Seriously - would you expect anything else from a UN body with 13.5 Muslim countries (out of 47), quite regardless of what Israel or Sudan might or might not be doing?
Not that they forgot about Sudan completely, mind you. They have expressed deep concern. Maybe even grave concern.
(Meanwhile, there have been refugees arriving from Sudan to Israel, with Israel desperately trying not to let them in. Are there any Israeli refugees trying to get to Sudan? Or even Palestinian refugees, for that matter?)
Not that I mind - perish the thought - I think this is a good step in the right direction, but why did they elect Angola, Egypt and Qatar now? More to the point, what are such staunch human right defenders as Nigeria and Saudi Arabia doing there already? I can well imagine their campaigns for election to the Human Rights Council: "Elect Saudi Arabia! We promise to defend your freedom of religion! Besides, we have a lot of experience with beheadings!" or "Nigeria for the Human Rights Council! We know everything about getting stoned! We will also protect children's rights to get polio!".
In a sane world even an application to any human-rights related body by something Saudi Arabia would have been the laugh of all the world for a week, but part of the problem is structural. The Human Rught Council has 13 seats for Africa, 13 seats for Asia, 6 for Eastern Europe, 8 for Latin America and the Caribbean, and 7 for the "Western European and Others". Where do you get 13 even marginally civilized countries in Africa, where? And in Asia?
I think the general problem of the UN is that this is an organization that tries to maintain the fiction that Equatorial Guinea or Sudan are normal countries just like France of Germany, and somehow have a right to an opinion about things like human rights, or rather a right to have someone listen to their opinion.
(Yeah, I understand how playing a little "you are a normal country just like us and we'll try really hard not to giggle" game can be useful in some situation can be useful in some circumstances. Mostly, though, it isn't, as evidenced by the UN.)
As of the beginning of this year, for example, the UN Human Rights Council has passed 8 resolutions condemning Israel, and no resolutions condemning, say, Sudan for that little genocide of about 400 000 people. Seriously - would you expect anything else from a UN body with 13.5 Muslim countries (out of 47), quite regardless of what Israel or Sudan might or might not be doing?
Not that they forgot about Sudan completely, mind you. They have expressed deep concern. Maybe even grave concern.
(Meanwhile, there have been refugees arriving from Sudan to Israel, with Israel desperately trying not to let them in. Are there any Israeli refugees trying to get to Sudan? Or even Palestinian refugees, for that matter?)
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
OMG! The evil French have insulted Muslims again!
This time, by electing Nicolas Sarkozy. Who, as we know, is of a partially Jewish ancestry and is therefore "thirsty for the blood of Muslim children".
What, French have voted as they saw fit, and not as would have pleased the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades? The nerve of those frog-eaters...
What, French have voted as they saw fit, and not as would have pleased the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades? The nerve of those frog-eaters...
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Welcome to the world of the total freedom of speech. Please bring your own moderator.
There is a very special place in Hell. It is reserved for journalists who talk about statistics without being familiar with the concepts of mean and median, and politicians and officials who try to make stupid rules about technical matters without any understanding of how the technology works.
The state prosecutor Mika Illman wishes to have all the Internet conversation moderated postfactum. Web forums, blogs, IRC, chats, you name it.
According to the answers he gave to Kari Haakana's questions, Illman would like to force all web forums to hire moderators.
"If I had all the cards, I would extend these laws also to individuals", he says, when asked whether these rules would also extend to private blogs. Sorry, it's kind of hard to resist making jokes about the man not playing with a full deck.
He would also like to moderate IRC chats. He realizes that it is difficult, but that does not stop him. If he knew anything about the subject, he would have also realized that this is impossible (what is said on IRC is said, and no logs are kept unless users decide to keep their own), but I guess that wouldn't have stopped him either. Taking reality into account is for peasants and programmers, not for the state prosecutor.
He says that IRC can be moderated as easily as radio or TV. Hmm, I have always imagined that radio and TV are moderated before the broadcast, not after like he has just said the Net chats should be, but if Mr. Illman has found a way to moderate broadcasts after the fact, I would gladly hear about it. Oh, dear... Imagine, every time you type a line it has to go through a moderator before it shows up on a channel... That, mind you, in a country that cannot even afford a moderator for the public statements of its chief state prosecutor to prevent him from putting his foot into his mouth too often. (If Illman has a personal moderator he sure is not getting value for his money. I have green hairy things in my fridge that can do a better job.)
That's ok, really. We have already learned that politicians are capable of legislating on technological issues without a slightest understanding of the technology in question. What bothers me more is other issues:
"The line between the permissible and the forbidden is in the same place on the Internet and outside it," - he says. Fair enough. In fact I am more concerned that the man seems to have some problem with understanding the line between the public and the private. IRC channels are usually private places, with a limited number of participants who usually know each other either on the Net or IRL, not public broadcasts. The difference between public and private is not 100% clear and might depend on the size and openness of the channel, but if the man really has a problem distinguishing between the public and the private, what else would he like to censor? Text messages, email, letters? Should every conversation of every group of friends in a bar have its own moderator? (Having its own informer has been tried in Eastern Europe during the last half of 20th century and with dismal results; having its own moderator would probably work out even worse and overstretch the country's medical resources.)
I became curious as to what is Illman's idea of the line between the permissible and the forbidden is, and look what I found: Yle's article on his dissertation:
"Demokraattisessa maassa hallitusta ja sen harjoittamaa politiikkaa tulee voida arvostella voimakkaastikin ja ulkomaalaispolitiikka on yksi sen osa. Jos siihen sisältyy samalla ulkomaalaisten arvostelu, sekin on hyväksyttävä, jos sitä ei ääneen lausuta," - says the article. ("In a democratic country one should be able to criticize the government and its policies, even strongly, and the immigration policy is part of it. If it contains criticism towards foreigners, his is acceptable, as long as it is not pronounced out loud.")
Damn. And here I thought that the freedom of speech was about the things one is in fact allowed to say out loud. If the freedom of speech includes things that are permissible as long as we don't actually say them, then the state of the freedom of speech in the world is quite perfect already. You can't even imagine the vast range of things that one could criticize in the Soviet Union as long as one did not express the criticsm in any way. Hell, I think you can even insult the prophet in Saudi Arabia as long as nobody finds out.
The age of the total freedom of speech has finally come, comrades! Hurrah!
The state prosecutor Mika Illman wishes to have all the Internet conversation moderated postfactum. Web forums, blogs, IRC, chats, you name it.
According to the answers he gave to Kari Haakana's questions, Illman would like to force all web forums to hire moderators.
"If I had all the cards, I would extend these laws also to individuals", he says, when asked whether these rules would also extend to private blogs. Sorry, it's kind of hard to resist making jokes about the man not playing with a full deck.
He would also like to moderate IRC chats. He realizes that it is difficult, but that does not stop him. If he knew anything about the subject, he would have also realized that this is impossible (what is said on IRC is said, and no logs are kept unless users decide to keep their own), but I guess that wouldn't have stopped him either. Taking reality into account is for peasants and programmers, not for the state prosecutor.
He says that IRC can be moderated as easily as radio or TV. Hmm, I have always imagined that radio and TV are moderated before the broadcast, not after like he has just said the Net chats should be, but if Mr. Illman has found a way to moderate broadcasts after the fact, I would gladly hear about it. Oh, dear... Imagine, every time you type a line it has to go through a moderator before it shows up on a channel... That, mind you, in a country that cannot even afford a moderator for the public statements of its chief state prosecutor to prevent him from putting his foot into his mouth too often. (If Illman has a personal moderator he sure is not getting value for his money. I have green hairy things in my fridge that can do a better job.)
That's ok, really. We have already learned that politicians are capable of legislating on technological issues without a slightest understanding of the technology in question. What bothers me more is other issues:
"The line between the permissible and the forbidden is in the same place on the Internet and outside it," - he says. Fair enough. In fact I am more concerned that the man seems to have some problem with understanding the line between the public and the private. IRC channels are usually private places, with a limited number of participants who usually know each other either on the Net or IRL, not public broadcasts. The difference between public and private is not 100% clear and might depend on the size and openness of the channel, but if the man really has a problem distinguishing between the public and the private, what else would he like to censor? Text messages, email, letters? Should every conversation of every group of friends in a bar have its own moderator? (Having its own informer has been tried in Eastern Europe during the last half of 20th century and with dismal results; having its own moderator would probably work out even worse and overstretch the country's medical resources.)
I became curious as to what is Illman's idea of the line between the permissible and the forbidden is, and look what I found: Yle's article on his dissertation:
"Demokraattisessa maassa hallitusta ja sen harjoittamaa politiikkaa tulee voida arvostella voimakkaastikin ja ulkomaalaispolitiikka on yksi sen osa. Jos siihen sisältyy samalla ulkomaalaisten arvostelu, sekin on hyväksyttävä, jos sitä ei ääneen lausuta," - says the article. ("In a democratic country one should be able to criticize the government and its policies, even strongly, and the immigration policy is part of it. If it contains criticism towards foreigners, his is acceptable, as long as it is not pronounced out loud.")
Damn. And here I thought that the freedom of speech was about the things one is in fact allowed to say out loud. If the freedom of speech includes things that are permissible as long as we don't actually say them, then the state of the freedom of speech in the world is quite perfect already. You can't even imagine the vast range of things that one could criticize in the Soviet Union as long as one did not express the criticsm in any way. Hell, I think you can even insult the prophet in Saudi Arabia as long as nobody finds out.
The age of the total freedom of speech has finally come, comrades! Hurrah!
Freedom of speech
"The freedom of speech is a rather relative concept," - I noted to myself about a year and a half after moving to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, while standing in my guidance counselor's office, accused of sexual harassment. Having realized that, I decided to keep it to myself for the time being.
(The sexual harassment in question involved telling a single joke with sexual content, and did not involve any physical contact. The accuser was Waldemar "Wally" Ulich, a teacher of German, who should have known better, considering that he was an expert on sexual harassment himself. He is currenty serving his 20 years' probation on 10 counts of indecent assault and battery on a child over 14.)
Seriously, though: don't take freedom of speech for granted. Not in the Land of the Free, not in Lintukoto, not anywhere.
I don't want to go into "there is no true and perfect freedom of speech anywhere, so why bother" kind of cynicism. I have had a chance to observe the differences between the civilized and the uncivilized world in this respect, and it is enormous. Freedom of speech is, however, not absolute, and its borders are usually unclear and constantly moving.
The reason for it is, well, us. The freedom of speech belongs to the category of things that are very nice to have for oneself, but when somebody else exercises it to say the things we don't like, we look for excuses to silence them. Because it's insulting. Or obscene. Or bad for the children. Or bad for the music industry. Or likely to piss Muslims off. Or creates a hostile working environment. Or is racist. Or sexist. Or sexual. Or whatever.
It's sort of like tolerance. Almost everyone claims to be tolerant, except of course of things that should never be tolerated.
Of course I try not to demand restrictions on other people's freedom of speech, and even tend to believe that I am totally for the freedom of speech, within reason of course ("fire" in a crowded theater, incitement to murder, etc., etc.), but I guess so also believe all the other people who are totally for the freedom of speech. Within reason, of course. You know, almost everyone is totally for the freedom of speech but every new restriction on it has a fair lot of people behind it.
(Note: I am talking about freedom of speech as a right to say what you want without being punished by the Powers that Be. I am not talking about being censored from HS or Suomi24 forums, or about being ridiculed in the media for what one says, or about losing one's constituency's votes after saying something unseemly. These are very different issues.)
I think people (myself probably included) need occasional reminders that the freedom of speech as such was not invented so that you could tell your neighbor "good morning, isn't the weather lovely today?", although I am quite sure that somebody somewhere got punished for that, too. The freedom of speech is there so that people whom we don't like can feel free to say things we don't like. For example that Holocaust did not happen. Or that having sex with children of any age should be legalized.
(As a carrot to my dear readers: wouldn't you like to know what your enemies are saying and who they are? That's what I usually tell myself when I feel like limiting someone's freedom of speech.)
I did not really write this to remind people to safeguard others' freedom of speech. A lot of people write about that, with variable results, and I don't think I really have that much to add. I wrote this to tell people to watch out, and not to rely on the freedom of speech. They really are out to get you - the people who don't like what you say. The laws are unclear, the exceptions and gray areas are numerous, and it is quite easy to get in trouble. Be careful.
OTOH - people who get in trouble for what they say are constantly testing and pushing the limits of the freedom of speech and are probably the only thing that keeps the whole concept from collapsing in on itself. Keep up the good work, guys.
(Unless, of course, what you are saying is a call to Jihad, in which case do us all a favor and eat shit and die. By yourselves, mind you, and without any innocent bystanders.)
(The sexual harassment in question involved telling a single joke with sexual content, and did not involve any physical contact. The accuser was Waldemar "Wally" Ulich, a teacher of German, who should have known better, considering that he was an expert on sexual harassment himself. He is currenty serving his 20 years' probation on 10 counts of indecent assault and battery on a child over 14.)
Seriously, though: don't take freedom of speech for granted. Not in the Land of the Free, not in Lintukoto, not anywhere.
I don't want to go into "there is no true and perfect freedom of speech anywhere, so why bother" kind of cynicism. I have had a chance to observe the differences between the civilized and the uncivilized world in this respect, and it is enormous. Freedom of speech is, however, not absolute, and its borders are usually unclear and constantly moving.
The reason for it is, well, us. The freedom of speech belongs to the category of things that are very nice to have for oneself, but when somebody else exercises it to say the things we don't like, we look for excuses to silence them. Because it's insulting. Or obscene. Or bad for the children. Or bad for the music industry. Or likely to piss Muslims off. Or creates a hostile working environment. Or is racist. Or sexist. Or sexual. Or whatever.
It's sort of like tolerance. Almost everyone claims to be tolerant, except of course of things that should never be tolerated.
Of course I try not to demand restrictions on other people's freedom of speech, and even tend to believe that I am totally for the freedom of speech, within reason of course ("fire" in a crowded theater, incitement to murder, etc., etc.), but I guess so also believe all the other people who are totally for the freedom of speech. Within reason, of course. You know, almost everyone is totally for the freedom of speech but every new restriction on it has a fair lot of people behind it.
(Note: I am talking about freedom of speech as a right to say what you want without being punished by the Powers that Be. I am not talking about being censored from HS or Suomi24 forums, or about being ridiculed in the media for what one says, or about losing one's constituency's votes after saying something unseemly. These are very different issues.)
I think people (myself probably included) need occasional reminders that the freedom of speech as such was not invented so that you could tell your neighbor "good morning, isn't the weather lovely today?", although I am quite sure that somebody somewhere got punished for that, too. The freedom of speech is there so that people whom we don't like can feel free to say things we don't like. For example that Holocaust did not happen. Or that having sex with children of any age should be legalized.
(As a carrot to my dear readers: wouldn't you like to know what your enemies are saying and who they are? That's what I usually tell myself when I feel like limiting someone's freedom of speech.)
I did not really write this to remind people to safeguard others' freedom of speech. A lot of people write about that, with variable results, and I don't think I really have that much to add. I wrote this to tell people to watch out, and not to rely on the freedom of speech. They really are out to get you - the people who don't like what you say. The laws are unclear, the exceptions and gray areas are numerous, and it is quite easy to get in trouble. Be careful.
OTOH - people who get in trouble for what they say are constantly testing and pushing the limits of the freedom of speech and are probably the only thing that keeps the whole concept from collapsing in on itself. Keep up the good work, guys.
(Unless, of course, what you are saying is a call to Jihad, in which case do us all a favor and eat shit and die. By yourselves, mind you, and without any innocent bystanders.)
Monday, May 14, 2007
I want resolution!
Why do all the monitor listings tend to list them by size, and I have to click every damn monitor to find out its resolution? Can't they list the damn things by resolution too?
I've been also wondering how come so many people managed to switch from CRT to LCD already. I am only consideing switching now, and probably not gonna do it till the fall, because decent resolutions are becoming affordable only now. How could one switch from 1600x1200 to a 1280x1024?
Also: is there anything particularly good about widescreen monitors, except that they fit widescreen movies?
I've been also wondering how come so many people managed to switch from CRT to LCD already. I am only consideing switching now, and probably not gonna do it till the fall, because decent resolutions are becoming affordable only now. How could one switch from 1600x1200 to a 1280x1024?
Also: is there anything particularly good about widescreen monitors, except that they fit widescreen movies?
Eurovision
Saw the Eurovision final yesterday, under the bad influence of my friends and in the company of some of them. Much to my surprise, I really liked Ukraine, Romania and France, and Greece wasn't bad at all (and out of the ones that didn't make it to the final, Israel and Cyprus were nice). And by "really liked" I don't just mean that they were better than the others, but that I am actively interested in listening to them afterwards and trying other songs by the same artists.
Pretty much everyone I know makes fun of my music taste, which is OK, but leaves me feeling a bit lonely (as in alone in the world with my music taste, not really lonely) and wondering about it. Now I wonder: if I am so alone with my fondness for the Ukraine's song, who are those people who voted it into the second place, and how come I never meet them IRL?
While looking for other songs by the same artists today, I found Mon pere etait tellement de gauche by Fatals Picards (the French band) and really liked it.
Pretty much everyone I know makes fun of my music taste, which is OK, but leaves me feeling a bit lonely (as in alone in the world with my music taste, not really lonely) and wondering about it. Now I wonder: if I am so alone with my fondness for the Ukraine's song, who are those people who voted it into the second place, and how come I never meet them IRL?
While looking for other songs by the same artists today, I found Mon pere etait tellement de gauche by Fatals Picards (the French band) and really liked it.
25.04.07, Jerusalem
Shmuel takes us on a tour of the old city, and the old city is great.
Parts of the walls are rather new, built in Middle Ages when city walls became obsolete anyway.
Near the Jaffa gate there is a monument to a Crusader and a Muslim warrior. Shmuel disapproves.
Jerusalem has funny alien-looking fire hydrants with two eyes.
There are bits of Roman ruins, and a part of an old city wall.
At some point I see a guy who totally looks like an evil henchman from a Hollywood movie: a big rifle, a surly expression, tattoos, sunglasses, a wifebeater shirt, you name it. A bit of observation reveals that the guy is the responsible adult of some kind of a school trip. He has a group of 20 or so schoolchildren aged 9 or 10 and keeps showing them places and explaining something.
Shmuel disses the guy's gun, saying that an M1 Carbine is only good for school trips.
The Dome of Rock is beautiful from outside, but the whole Temple Mount is currently closed for tourists. Couldn't visit Al-Aqsa Mosque for the same reason.
The Valley of Jehoshaphat is the place where all the really cool religious Jews get buried, because that's where the Messiah will start raising the dead from. I am not sure I understand the point: if you are dead anyway and have been probably for hundreds of years, what's the rush, can't you wait a few more days? It's not like they are gonna run out of parking spaces and sale items in Olam Haba.
Arabs sell weird huge elongated bagels and some green powder everywhere. They are quite insistent, and have learned to advertise their bagels in Russian. One of them screams in Russian: "hot bagels! I love you in Russian!" and we wonder which one of us he loves. I vote for Oska.
Somebody should really teach these Arabs the Yiddish song "Koif meine beygele", this is very on-topic in every way.
For some reason it's still difficult to get accustommed to the opening times written in the wrong direction.
We take a look at the East Jerusalem (here be dragons) from afar, and get to listen to the horrible sounds coming from the minarets, howling almost like Serbs at Eurovision.
Then we go the Hezekiah tunnel, a 2700-year old water tunnel. The water is still there after all those years, and electricity mostly isn't, so we put our water-unfriendly valuables such as cell phones in plastic bags, put on some swimming shoes, and arms outselves with flashlights. Shmuel lets me borrow a tiny blue LED light which I hang on my shirt and which mostly just makes my breasts look blue. I take my pants off, too, and replace them with a shawl/skirt thingie which dries way faster than jeans.
The tunnel is 533 meters long. The first 50 meters are kinda fun, especially the deep bit that makes you wonder whether you can make it out with dry underwear. After that this view starts getting old (no offense, Oska) and so does hitting your head on the ceiling (the ancestors could have been more considerate towards tall people). Shmuel impresses us with "that part here is quite new, built during the times of the second Temple".
We get out into the dry-off area where 15 or so Hassidim are already trying to dry themselves off, and I promptly lose my skirt (it became have from all the water and slid down). The Hassidim decide they are dry enough, and retreat in a quick but dignified way.
After we get out of there we thank Shmuel and say goodbye to him. He was a very good guide.
No visit to the old city it complete without Ha-Kotel, the Western wall of the Temple. This is the holiest place on earth for Jews, the place of God's presense on Earth. People come to the wall and write messages to the God on little pieces of paper, like the Japanese. The wall itself is divided by sex (and men got a bigger part!), but the plaza in front of it is quite co-ed. We approach the most holy wall, touch it, and I make a very abmitious wish (somebody here is supposed to be omnipotent, no?) without a piece of paper. Benka writes God a note.
(We - or at least I - do all of the above with the same mixture of reverence and humor with which I am writing this right now.)
The plaze also contains a few yeshivas and a toilet, which is most surely the world's holiest toilet, but even the divine presense turns out to be unable to make the Most Holy Toilet flush.
We try to move from the Jewish holy places to the Christian ones, and get lost in a huge market where Arabs advertise their souvenirs to us in Russian. Their souvenirs include a t-shirt saying "Israel: Uzi does it". I consider buying it, then decide to look for the sweatshirt version, then forget about it.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Oska is uncomfortable, feeling as if we are interrupting something, although we aren't. We decide to come back tomorrow.
Parts of the walls are rather new, built in Middle Ages when city walls became obsolete anyway.
Near the Jaffa gate there is a monument to a Crusader and a Muslim warrior. Shmuel disapproves.
Jerusalem has funny alien-looking fire hydrants with two eyes.
There are bits of Roman ruins, and a part of an old city wall.
At some point I see a guy who totally looks like an evil henchman from a Hollywood movie: a big rifle, a surly expression, tattoos, sunglasses, a wifebeater shirt, you name it. A bit of observation reveals that the guy is the responsible adult of some kind of a school trip. He has a group of 20 or so schoolchildren aged 9 or 10 and keeps showing them places and explaining something.
Shmuel disses the guy's gun, saying that an M1 Carbine is only good for school trips.
The Dome of Rock is beautiful from outside, but the whole Temple Mount is currently closed for tourists. Couldn't visit Al-Aqsa Mosque for the same reason.
The Valley of Jehoshaphat is the place where all the really cool religious Jews get buried, because that's where the Messiah will start raising the dead from. I am not sure I understand the point: if you are dead anyway and have been probably for hundreds of years, what's the rush, can't you wait a few more days? It's not like they are gonna run out of parking spaces and sale items in Olam Haba.
Arabs sell weird huge elongated bagels and some green powder everywhere. They are quite insistent, and have learned to advertise their bagels in Russian. One of them screams in Russian: "hot bagels! I love you in Russian!" and we wonder which one of us he loves. I vote for Oska.
Somebody should really teach these Arabs the Yiddish song "Koif meine beygele", this is very on-topic in every way.
For some reason it's still difficult to get accustommed to the opening times written in the wrong direction.
We take a look at the East Jerusalem (here be dragons) from afar, and get to listen to the horrible sounds coming from the minarets, howling almost like Serbs at Eurovision.
Then we go the Hezekiah tunnel, a 2700-year old water tunnel. The water is still there after all those years, and electricity mostly isn't, so we put our water-unfriendly valuables such as cell phones in plastic bags, put on some swimming shoes, and arms outselves with flashlights. Shmuel lets me borrow a tiny blue LED light which I hang on my shirt and which mostly just makes my breasts look blue. I take my pants off, too, and replace them with a shawl/skirt thingie which dries way faster than jeans.
The tunnel is 533 meters long. The first 50 meters are kinda fun, especially the deep bit that makes you wonder whether you can make it out with dry underwear. After that this view starts getting old (no offense, Oska) and so does hitting your head on the ceiling (the ancestors could have been more considerate towards tall people). Shmuel impresses us with "that part here is quite new, built during the times of the second Temple".
We get out into the dry-off area where 15 or so Hassidim are already trying to dry themselves off, and I promptly lose my skirt (it became have from all the water and slid down). The Hassidim decide they are dry enough, and retreat in a quick but dignified way.
After we get out of there we thank Shmuel and say goodbye to him. He was a very good guide.
No visit to the old city it complete without Ha-Kotel, the Western wall of the Temple. This is the holiest place on earth for Jews, the place of God's presense on Earth. People come to the wall and write messages to the God on little pieces of paper, like the Japanese. The wall itself is divided by sex (and men got a bigger part!), but the plaza in front of it is quite co-ed. We approach the most holy wall, touch it, and I make a very abmitious wish (somebody here is supposed to be omnipotent, no?) without a piece of paper. Benka writes God a note.
(We - or at least I - do all of the above with the same mixture of reverence and humor with which I am writing this right now.)
The plaze also contains a few yeshivas and a toilet, which is most surely the world's holiest toilet, but even the divine presense turns out to be unable to make the Most Holy Toilet flush.
We try to move from the Jewish holy places to the Christian ones, and get lost in a huge market where Arabs advertise their souvenirs to us in Russian. Their souvenirs include a t-shirt saying "Israel: Uzi does it". I consider buying it, then decide to look for the sweatshirt version, then forget about it.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Oska is uncomfortable, feeling as if we are interrupting something, although we aren't. We decide to come back tomorrow.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
24.04.07, Jerusalem
Our guide is a red-haired Zionist from Hebron named Shmuel. Today he is showing us the old parts of the new (as in, outside the old city walls) Jerusalem.
Shmuel has a pistol in his belt. When I ask my relatives about it, they shrug ("well, the guy does live in Hebron..."). The pistol does not bother me as such, but what I find disturbing is that it is in his belt in such a way that if it goes off by accident he'd shoot himself in the balls. Shmuel is nice, and I sure hope the safety is on and working well.
He shows us a million of picturesque old neighborhoods and tells something about each of them. Sometimes during the day we see a park full of people, smoke rising above it, and more people going that way with portable grills and picnic baskets. That's the traditional way to celebrate the Independece Day here.
We get a taste of the traditional celebrations at Alla's place later. They have a really nice place, and a huge balcony with a great view. They have a lot of meat and a traditional desert called "Arab thingie with cheese" (not to be confused with Arab thingie with nuts, which is rather vile).
There are lots of people speaking Hebrew, and at some point a lot of children materialize from somewhere (neighbors, I think). Luckily I find a room where Dina and her boyfriend are playing with a laptop, and they admit me into this childfree geek refuge.
At night we go out for a walk and to some cafe, and then I finally realize why locals wear so much clothes. Brr.
Shmuel has a pistol in his belt. When I ask my relatives about it, they shrug ("well, the guy does live in Hebron..."). The pistol does not bother me as such, but what I find disturbing is that it is in his belt in such a way that if it goes off by accident he'd shoot himself in the balls. Shmuel is nice, and I sure hope the safety is on and working well.
He shows us a million of picturesque old neighborhoods and tells something about each of them. Sometimes during the day we see a park full of people, smoke rising above it, and more people going that way with portable grills and picnic baskets. That's the traditional way to celebrate the Independece Day here.
We get a taste of the traditional celebrations at Alla's place later. They have a really nice place, and a huge balcony with a great view. They have a lot of meat and a traditional desert called "Arab thingie with cheese" (not to be confused with Arab thingie with nuts, which is rather vile).
There are lots of people speaking Hebrew, and at some point a lot of children materialize from somewhere (neighbors, I think). Luckily I find a room where Dina and her boyfriend are playing with a laptop, and they admit me into this childfree geek refuge.
At night we go out for a walk and to some cafe, and then I finally realize why locals wear so much clothes. Brr.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Voisiko joku jo paistaa Venäjän voissa?
Voisin lahjoittaa voitakin tähän jaloon tarkoitukseen.
Seriously, though - I am not suggesting anybody really attack Russia (such an action, even when performed by somebody capable of destroying it, would surely pollute the environment and greatly bother the neighbors) - but if the whole country just disappeared somewhere overnight, it would give me a great deal of warm fuzzy feelings.
I just tried to write a post about the Russian politics, but the only printable words it contained were "the", "to" and "off", so I didn't.
Seriously, what is it that makes Russians so incapable of realizing that the rest of Eastern Europe in general and Baltic countries in particular do not see them as liberators, and have no reason to see them as liberators?
Seriously, though - I am not suggesting anybody really attack Russia (such an action, even when performed by somebody capable of destroying it, would surely pollute the environment and greatly bother the neighbors) - but if the whole country just disappeared somewhere overnight, it would give me a great deal of warm fuzzy feelings.
I just tried to write a post about the Russian politics, but the only printable words it contained were "the", "to" and "off", so I didn't.
Seriously, what is it that makes Russians so incapable of realizing that the rest of Eastern Europe in general and Baltic countries in particular do not see them as liberators, and have no reason to see them as liberators?
23.04.07, Jerusalem
In the morning Mira drops me off in the Israel museum. There are the Qumran scrolls there, in a special little building all by themselves. It's interesting to see that the letters have not changed much since then. I have finally remembered all the Hebrew letters but of course can't read the thing anyway. There is also a lot about the life of the people in the Qumran community, which seems to be pretty miserable even by the standards of 2000 years ago.
There is also a model on Jerusalem during the Second Temple period, a lot of Jewish art, and a small but good collection of art from Asia, Africa and Latin America. There is a lot more, but I don't have time.
Mira said that there was supposed to be a siren and a minute of silence at 10 in honor of the fallen heroes (it's the Memorial Day), but it happens at 11 instead, and catches me in the most unfortunate position. Out of necessity I honor the memory of the fallen heroes while seated, consoling myself with the thought that the fallen heroes don't really care anymore.
I come outside to wait for Lyonya to pick me up, and notice that one of the numerous Israeli flags that look like Finnish is in fact Finnish and belongs to some Finnish tourist group.
We go the the airport to pick up my parents. The Tel Aviv airport, unlike all the other airports, does not permit firearms on premises and puts up signs to that effect. Benka and Oska take a very long time to come out, because they are stuck behind a long line of really weird Argentinian Hassidim.
One of the Argentinian Hassidim wanders into the women's bathroom and does not seem to notice it.
We come back to Jerusalem and have a dinner with all the relatives (Mira's mon Sara also comes), catching up on a lot of family gossip.
There is also a model on Jerusalem during the Second Temple period, a lot of Jewish art, and a small but good collection of art from Asia, Africa and Latin America. There is a lot more, but I don't have time.
Mira said that there was supposed to be a siren and a minute of silence at 10 in honor of the fallen heroes (it's the Memorial Day), but it happens at 11 instead, and catches me in the most unfortunate position. Out of necessity I honor the memory of the fallen heroes while seated, consoling myself with the thought that the fallen heroes don't really care anymore.
I come outside to wait for Lyonya to pick me up, and notice that one of the numerous Israeli flags that look like Finnish is in fact Finnish and belongs to some Finnish tourist group.
We go the the airport to pick up my parents. The Tel Aviv airport, unlike all the other airports, does not permit firearms on premises and puts up signs to that effect. Benka and Oska take a very long time to come out, because they are stuck behind a long line of really weird Argentinian Hassidim.
One of the Argentinian Hassidim wanders into the women's bathroom and does not seem to notice it.
We come back to Jerusalem and have a dinner with all the relatives (Mira's mon Sara also comes), catching up on a lot of family gossip.
22.04.07, Jerusalem
The airport is very modern and rather large. The official signs are all in three languages (Hebrew, Arabic, English) but the ads are mostly just in Hebrew. The only exception is a huge flowerbed just outside the windows that says "NOKIA: connecting people".
The passport check. "Have you ever lived in Israel? Those relatives you are visiting, how exactly are they related to you". I describe the family tree. "What's your father's name? Has he ever lived in Israel?"
Lyonya (for the Israeli passport control and other people who like exact descriptions of family relations: his wife's father's mother was a sister of my mother's mother) picks me up, which is awfully nice of him to do at 5:30 in the morning.
The hills of Judea (the region where Jerusalem is situated) are way greener than I expected. Lyonya explains that the trees were planted there, not indigenous.
Flags are everywhere, in amounts unsurpassed even in Norway. That's because the next day is the Memorial Day, and the day after that is the Independence Day, but Israelis like to wave flags in general, and the fact that the flags are the same color as in Finland makes the whole impression a bit surreal.
Jerusalem is sort of light orangey-pink. That's because the front of every building has to be made of Jerusalem stone, an orangey-pink kind of limestone. The fact that everywhere you see there are hills with Jerusalem stone buildings makes it very difficult to orient oneself in Jerusalem without a map.
Lyonya and his wife Mira (my cousin) and the rest of their family live in Gilo, the southernmost neighborhood on Jerusalem. There is a deep canyon behind the corner, and on the other side of it is Beit Jala, a suburb of Bethlehem. Some parts of the street are separated from the canyon by a bulletproof wall. Those are the places that were the targets of shootings from Beit Jala in 2000-2002.
All the houses have sun batteries and water heaters on the roof.
We drop off my bags, have some breakfast and go downtown. It's very hot already, even though weather.com has promised only 22 degrees.
We pick Mira up at her office. The inside of the building reminds me of Russia, partly by the paint on the walls but mostly by the amount of Russian spoken there.
Mira is a workplace safety official, and a very enthusiastic one at that. She can be sitting at a beach one moment and suddenly start screaming "Look, look, that guy is working up there without a safety harness! Take a picture, fast!"
I hadn't seen them in person for almost 20 years.
The three of us go to a cafe on Jaffa road, called Aroma. Aroma is a chain, and they make a really nice drink called aroma coffee, a kind of latte with a bit of whipped cream and chocolate. There is a guard at the entrance, but we sit outside.
Lots of religious people are walking in the street. Religious Jewish men in all varieties of kipas and hats, some in black Hassidic clothes, some with peyos (the sidelocks), some without. You can sort of tell their differences from their hats, clothes and peyos, but I don't manage to learn this skill.
Religious Jewish women are a lot less exotic-looking - they wear normal-looking long skirts and long-sleeved blouses, and are sometimes difficult to distinguish from similarly attired non-religious women. The married religious women cover their hair: sometimes with a hat, sometimes with a scarf tied on the back of the neck, sometimes with a snood and sometimes with a wig. In New York wigs seem to be the most popular covering, but here in Jerusalem the scarves seem to be in fashion. They are always tied in the back, possibly lest one be taken for a Muslim - Muslim women pass their scarves in front under their chins. A lot of them also wear huge shoes that probably require a tractor driver's license, but this seems to be just the local fashion.
Religious Muslim women wear scarves in such a way that neither the hair nor the neck is visible. Some of them wear jeans and perfectly normal long-sleeved blouses, some (the more religious?) wear a kind of a long coat over their other clothes, but in any case none of them look like tents, or cover their faces.
The non-religious people are fairly well-covered, too, and I wonder about the reason for that until I go out some night and realize how awfully cold it is. Jerusalem is one of those places where it can well be +30 during the day and +12 in the late evening. Tourists beware!
Mira goes back to work and Lyonya and I check out Mea Shearim (he tries to convince me that people who live there do not bite at all, at least not if I put a long-sleeved cardigan on). It's quite interesting, and people really don't bite us. Then we visit Ein Kerem, a very pretty and flowery (in the literal sense) neighborhood where John the Baptist was supposedly born. While there we see some artist friend of Lyonya's. Lyonya himself paints, and paints quite well, which is something I have never known about him in the 30 or so years he's been my relative.
In the evening Mira shows me the university campus, and then we go to visit Alla, Mira's and Lyonya's older daughter. She was 9 the last time I'd seen her. Now she is all grown up and works in the police and has a husband and two children. The one-and-a-half-year-old boy, Guy, loudly demands ice cream and more ice cream, occasionally falling down into a Muslim prayer position. The older girl, Noi, looks at her brother with the most sarcatic smile I'd ever seen on a five-year-old. Heh.
In the evening I finally meet Dina, Mira's and Lyonya's younger daughter. Naturally she does not remember me - she was 3 when I's last seen her. It's very interesting to see her as an adult.
The passport check. "Have you ever lived in Israel? Those relatives you are visiting, how exactly are they related to you". I describe the family tree. "What's your father's name? Has he ever lived in Israel?"
Lyonya (for the Israeli passport control and other people who like exact descriptions of family relations: his wife's father's mother was a sister of my mother's mother) picks me up, which is awfully nice of him to do at 5:30 in the morning.
The hills of Judea (the region where Jerusalem is situated) are way greener than I expected. Lyonya explains that the trees were planted there, not indigenous.
Flags are everywhere, in amounts unsurpassed even in Norway. That's because the next day is the Memorial Day, and the day after that is the Independence Day, but Israelis like to wave flags in general, and the fact that the flags are the same color as in Finland makes the whole impression a bit surreal.
Jerusalem is sort of light orangey-pink. That's because the front of every building has to be made of Jerusalem stone, an orangey-pink kind of limestone. The fact that everywhere you see there are hills with Jerusalem stone buildings makes it very difficult to orient oneself in Jerusalem without a map.
Lyonya and his wife Mira (my cousin) and the rest of their family live in Gilo, the southernmost neighborhood on Jerusalem. There is a deep canyon behind the corner, and on the other side of it is Beit Jala, a suburb of Bethlehem. Some parts of the street are separated from the canyon by a bulletproof wall. Those are the places that were the targets of shootings from Beit Jala in 2000-2002.
All the houses have sun batteries and water heaters on the roof.
We drop off my bags, have some breakfast and go downtown. It's very hot already, even though weather.com has promised only 22 degrees.
We pick Mira up at her office. The inside of the building reminds me of Russia, partly by the paint on the walls but mostly by the amount of Russian spoken there.
Mira is a workplace safety official, and a very enthusiastic one at that. She can be sitting at a beach one moment and suddenly start screaming "Look, look, that guy is working up there without a safety harness! Take a picture, fast!"
I hadn't seen them in person for almost 20 years.
The three of us go to a cafe on Jaffa road, called Aroma. Aroma is a chain, and they make a really nice drink called aroma coffee, a kind of latte with a bit of whipped cream and chocolate. There is a guard at the entrance, but we sit outside.
Lots of religious people are walking in the street. Religious Jewish men in all varieties of kipas and hats, some in black Hassidic clothes, some with peyos (the sidelocks), some without. You can sort of tell their differences from their hats, clothes and peyos, but I don't manage to learn this skill.
Religious Jewish women are a lot less exotic-looking - they wear normal-looking long skirts and long-sleeved blouses, and are sometimes difficult to distinguish from similarly attired non-religious women. The married religious women cover their hair: sometimes with a hat, sometimes with a scarf tied on the back of the neck, sometimes with a snood and sometimes with a wig. In New York wigs seem to be the most popular covering, but here in Jerusalem the scarves seem to be in fashion. They are always tied in the back, possibly lest one be taken for a Muslim - Muslim women pass their scarves in front under their chins. A lot of them also wear huge shoes that probably require a tractor driver's license, but this seems to be just the local fashion.
Religious Muslim women wear scarves in such a way that neither the hair nor the neck is visible. Some of them wear jeans and perfectly normal long-sleeved blouses, some (the more religious?) wear a kind of a long coat over their other clothes, but in any case none of them look like tents, or cover their faces.
The non-religious people are fairly well-covered, too, and I wonder about the reason for that until I go out some night and realize how awfully cold it is. Jerusalem is one of those places where it can well be +30 during the day and +12 in the late evening. Tourists beware!
Mira goes back to work and Lyonya and I check out Mea Shearim (he tries to convince me that people who live there do not bite at all, at least not if I put a long-sleeved cardigan on). It's quite interesting, and people really don't bite us. Then we visit Ein Kerem, a very pretty and flowery (in the literal sense) neighborhood where John the Baptist was supposedly born. While there we see some artist friend of Lyonya's. Lyonya himself paints, and paints quite well, which is something I have never known about him in the 30 or so years he's been my relative.
In the evening Mira shows me the university campus, and then we go to visit Alla, Mira's and Lyonya's older daughter. She was 9 the last time I'd seen her. Now she is all grown up and works in the police and has a husband and two children. The one-and-a-half-year-old boy, Guy, loudly demands ice cream and more ice cream, occasionally falling down into a Muslim prayer position. The older girl, Noi, looks at her brother with the most sarcatic smile I'd ever seen on a five-year-old. Heh.
In the evening I finally meet Dina, Mira's and Lyonya's younger daughter. Naturally she does not remember me - she was 3 when I's last seen her. It's very interesting to see her as an adult.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
And in weirdbeard news...
Our old friend Abu Izzadeen got arrested for inciting terrorism and fundraising.
Abu Hamza had his pocket money frozen, and no, I am not kidding. Abu Hamza is serving seven years for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred, and managed to find a way to profit from property deals while behind bars in spite of having his assets frozen. This pissed the Treasury off so much that they seized his pocket money. At a very bad time too, what with Abu Izzadeen arrested and unable to raise more money for Abu Hamza.
Careful, man. You keep that up and the treasury will confiscate your hook and sell it for profit.
Abu Hamza had his pocket money frozen, and no, I am not kidding. Abu Hamza is serving seven years for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred, and managed to find a way to profit from property deals while behind bars in spite of having his assets frozen. This pissed the Treasury off so much that they seized his pocket money. At a very bad time too, what with Abu Izzadeen arrested and unable to raise more money for Abu Hamza.
Careful, man. You keep that up and the treasury will confiscate your hook and sell it for profit.
Ellilä
As some of my readers know, Mikko Ellilä is being investigated by police for allegedly inciting hatred against a population group, on request of the Ombudsman for Minorities Mikko Puumalainen.
Anything I could write right now on the subject of freedom of speech in general and this investigation in particular would be way too cynical. Better read Jussi Halla-aho, Keisarin uudet vaatteet or the man himself.
Anything I could write right now on the subject of freedom of speech in general and this investigation in particular would be way too cynical. Better read Jussi Halla-aho, Keisarin uudet vaatteet or the man himself.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Israel - general impressions
Just came back from a two-week vacation in Israel. While there I did not get involved in moving any bronze monuments around, as some of my readers have suggested, but did the normal touristy things and visited relatives and friends. The detailed report with pictures is forthcoming, but in the meanwhile:
- the whole country is really owned by cats, who keep humans as pets. Never seen that many cats anywhere.
- they have a different climate in every suburb of every city. Zionist climate control clearly works.
- we tried to avoid as many holidays as possible, and saw only 3 holidays in 2 weeks.
- most holidays seem to be celebrated by barbecuing huge amounts of meat. The people also practice it in between holidays, just in case.
- shawarma really is better than in Europe, mostly due to added eggplant and various salads.
- the people like to wave flags everywhere in the manner of Norwegians.
- the people are very direct, and will tell you everything they think about local politics in very vivid colors as soon as they meet you. The most colorful swearing is used to describe the president Moshe Katsav.
- Russian-speaking people are everywhere. Most of the younger ones speak Hebrew among themselves, so you don't realize that they also speak Russian until they suddenly address you in Russian.
- the people are very patriotic and militaristic in a way that is very similar to Finnish but a lot more intense - sort of like the Finns would be if the Winter war happened every ten years.
- hummus is everywhere. Beware.
- Roman ruins are all over the place.
- most people drive everywhere, even though public transportation exists.
- lots of beautiful flowers, except in the desert.
- before going to an Arab area, ask the locals - the difference between "that horrible place where really nasty Arabs live" and "that nice Arab village where everyone goes to lunch on Shabbat" is not obvious to the naked eye of a tourist.
- Dead Sea burns your asshole and is way overrated. Red Sea is very beautiful and nice to swim in.
- the south is deserty and looks a bit like an alien planet (at least if you are not accustommed to the desert). The north is quite green.
- all the official sings are in three languages (Hebrew, Arabic, English)
- security checks are everywhere (parkings, supermarkets, universities, malls, roads, hotels, etc.) but at least they don't make you take your belt off like in Washington, DC.
- all the supermarkets are kosher. The treif (unkosher) food is sold in small ethnic and delicatessen stores.
- almost everything is closed on Saturdays, but some stores and restaurants are open. Public transportation stops, but taxis work. Taxis are rather cheap.
- weekend is Friday+Saturday. Saturdays and other holidays start on sunset of the previous day, and end on sunset.
- the are a lot of armed people all over the place, so all places that do not want people carrying arms there have cute little "no weapons"-signs.
- there are lots and lots of lifeguards at the beaches.
- the coffee is really good, especially in the chain named Aroma.
- the whole country is really owned by cats, who keep humans as pets. Never seen that many cats anywhere.
- they have a different climate in every suburb of every city. Zionist climate control clearly works.
- we tried to avoid as many holidays as possible, and saw only 3 holidays in 2 weeks.
- most holidays seem to be celebrated by barbecuing huge amounts of meat. The people also practice it in between holidays, just in case.
- shawarma really is better than in Europe, mostly due to added eggplant and various salads.
- the people like to wave flags everywhere in the manner of Norwegians.
- the people are very direct, and will tell you everything they think about local politics in very vivid colors as soon as they meet you. The most colorful swearing is used to describe the president Moshe Katsav.
- Russian-speaking people are everywhere. Most of the younger ones speak Hebrew among themselves, so you don't realize that they also speak Russian until they suddenly address you in Russian.
- the people are very patriotic and militaristic in a way that is very similar to Finnish but a lot more intense - sort of like the Finns would be if the Winter war happened every ten years.
- hummus is everywhere. Beware.
- Roman ruins are all over the place.
- most people drive everywhere, even though public transportation exists.
- lots of beautiful flowers, except in the desert.
- before going to an Arab area, ask the locals - the difference between "that horrible place where really nasty Arabs live" and "that nice Arab village where everyone goes to lunch on Shabbat" is not obvious to the naked eye of a tourist.
- Dead Sea burns your asshole and is way overrated. Red Sea is very beautiful and nice to swim in.
- the south is deserty and looks a bit like an alien planet (at least if you are not accustommed to the desert). The north is quite green.
- all the official sings are in three languages (Hebrew, Arabic, English)
- security checks are everywhere (parkings, supermarkets, universities, malls, roads, hotels, etc.) but at least they don't make you take your belt off like in Washington, DC.
- all the supermarkets are kosher. The treif (unkosher) food is sold in small ethnic and delicatessen stores.
- almost everything is closed on Saturdays, but some stores and restaurants are open. Public transportation stops, but taxis work. Taxis are rather cheap.
- weekend is Friday+Saturday. Saturdays and other holidays start on sunset of the previous day, and end on sunset.
- the are a lot of armed people all over the place, so all places that do not want people carrying arms there have cute little "no weapons"-signs.
- there are lots and lots of lifeguards at the beaches.
- the coffee is really good, especially in the chain named Aroma.
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