To Michael Halila, part two

Michael's answer to part 1 is here.

"First of all, I mistakenly assumed the number the Finnish immigration office gives on their page for admitted refugees is, in fact, the total number of refugees admitted to Finland. Apparently it isn't, so my bad."

Yes, they are a bit difficult to interpret. They keep separate statistics for quota refugees, asylum seekers and other immigrants. Of the asylum seekers who are allowed to stay, some get the refugee status, some "international protection", some "humanitarian reasons" and some "family". The "humanitarian reasons" are also in the regular immigrant statistics under "other reasons".

"As you can see, 2007 was a record low in applications in the 2000's, while the 4035 applications of last year are only 200 more than in 2004. Looking at the numbers, there is so far no clear rising trend. So your potential future situation is a possible future situation."

This is a good point, and 2007 indeed was a record low, but now we are over the record high. It could be just a peak year after which the applications will go down, but the Director-General of the Finnish Immigration Service thinks otherwise.

"Also, how is slightly less than 2000 refugee admissions in a year "a lot for a country like Finland"? That's, what, 0.0004 percent of our population of five million?"

0.04%.

"Each year there are some 60 000 Finnish people born; admitting 2 000 refugees in addition to them doesn't exactly unbalance our population structure dramatically."

It makes them about 3.3% of the new population growth, not counting their children who are born here. With time, it makes for a sizeable minority. Which, again, would not be a problem, except that its two biggest groups, Iraqis and Somalis, are grossy overrepresented in violent crime and unemployment statistics.

"To me it's totally monstrous to suggest that if a person makes one mistake, they're deported from Finland forever."

Depends on the size of the mistake, but how many mistakes of what size do you think would be enough?

"It's the height of naïvete to assume, like you do, that a population can be divided into criminals and non-criminals, and we should expel all the criminals. "

A population can be divided into criminals and non-criminals, that's what criminal law and courts are for, and of course the division is not perfect. And I have said twice, quite explicitly, that I don't want to expel all the criminals, or even all the foreign criminals.

"If a policy like that had a positive effect on crime rates, there would be no crime in Britain because they expelled everyone who committe a "single serious violent crime" to Australia."

I think they have stopped that a while ago. 1868, AFAIK. New generations of criminals have been born since - and imported, too.

Where do you get "there is still crime"="a particular policy has no positive effect"? There is still crime everywhere - do you think no anti-crime policy has any positive effect?

"However, I feel the constitutional issue is more important, and you're actually quoting the wrong part of the Constitution:

Perusoikeudet
6 §
Yhdenvertaisuus

Ihmiset ovat yhdenvertaisia lain edessä."

I am actually quoting from the same paragraph as you, right after what you quoted.

"And yes, it doesn't say "citizens". Human rights in general apply to humans, not just humans who are citizens of your particular polity. There are very good reasons for this."

There certainly are, but staying in a country that you are not a citizen of is not a human right as such.

"This is a disingenuous argument, for a simple reason. The juridical difference between a refugee and a foreign national is very simple. Most foreign nationals can be deported to their country of citizenship, but refugees are considered to be fleeing from persecution by that country, which is why deporting them is an entirely different matter from deporting, say, a British national."

So British nationals are less equal after all? :)

"Equality before the law doesn't mean everyone who lives in the country has to be allowed to vote or to be paid Social Security, it means they have to be treated the same before a court. "

Including a court deciding on immigration or voting or social security issues?

"And if a Finnish citizen is sentenced to four months for robbery, but a Somali refugee is sentenced to four months plus deportation to a war zone for the same robbery, then they're rather obviously not being treated equally before the law."

If you choose to define equality before the law as equality before criminal law, I find it a bit strange, but in this case we have no problem. Deportation is a proceeding defined in immigration law.

" He uses rape as his example, but the same basic logic applies to all violent crime statistics. When we adjust for overrepresentation in the age groups that commit the most crime, the per capita violent crime committed by refugees is not markedly larger than that of the general population."

Let's see. In 2007 Somalis and Iraqis, put together, constituted 0.14% of Finnish population. ((4852+3036)*100/5300484). Among the men aged 15 to 29 Somalis and Iraqis constituted 0.316%. This means that among 15-29-year-old men they were overrepresented by a factor of 2.1.

Among the suspects in cases of various forms of manslaughter, various forms of rape, aggravated battery and robbery Iraqis and Somalis were overrepresented by a factor of 14.8 and 20, respectively. The previous year they were overrepresented by a factor of 20.7 and 14.

I would count that as "markedly large".

All those numbers are available on Tilastokeskus page. Here are my calculations for crime rates, you can recheck them just to be sure.

As for the socioeconomic factors - you are right, they do affect it. What difference does it make, though? Crime is still crime, we obviously don't know how to fix the socioeconomic factors, either, and "let's import some more unemployed and unemployable young men" does not sound like a good idea.

"But despite what Halla-aho and his like are peddling, Finland is a long way from having ethnic ghettos like those of Paris."

We certainly are, and it would be nice to remain that way.

"What we need to learn from the situation in other European countries is how to stop it from happening here. In my opinion this means a stronger policy of integrating refugees and other immigrants into society, not demonizing them as criminals and trying to erect barriers of entry to stop them from coming here."

How about learning and instituting the relevant policies first, and taking more refugees later?

"In short, the reason refugees aren't finding jobs fast enough is, in my opinion, social democracy, not the refugees themselves. And as for violent crime, as I said, taking all factors into account refugees commit violent crime at approximately the same frequency as the Finnish population."

About the violent crime you are wrong. About the social security policy you are most likely right, and as soon as the social security policy changes we can try admitting more refugees than now.

I am quite a fan of the American refugee policies, too, and have written about it a few times before. They did manage to integrate their refugees, and there is no massive unemployment among the refugee population. Or, as far as I know, a massive crime rate (it is less documented than unemployment). The Office of Refugee resettlement report to the Congress is most educational (the latest one is here).

First or all, they do have a quota, which for 2006 was 70000. (The actual arrivals were 57979.) The quota is divided by regions. The largest group was from Cuba (19787). There were 10453 from Somalia.

Second, they do deport refugees or crimes, at least to the extent that this is physically possible. Even for the crimes that I would consider too minor for a deportation.

Third, their social security really doesn't last forever. Most refugees are expected to be self-supporting 4 months after arrival, and most are. If they aren't, they have some more time on state assistance, and after that they run out of money, unless they are elderly or handicapped.

I promise, as soon as Finland changes its policies in such a way that half of working-age refugees are self-supporting after 4 months of being here, I'll say "hurrah, let's get more refugees!" right here in this blog. In fact, if you can find any statistics of any refugee group doing so now, I can say "hurrah, let's get more of those!" now.

To Michael Halila

Responding here to Michael's comment to my previous post:

"We're not "admitting everyone". Finland admits less than 1,000 refugees a year, including in 2008 when the number of applications mushroomed."

In 2008 Finland has admitted 702 quota refugees, 89 asylum seekers who got a refugee status, 484 people on international protection status, 149 people for humanitarian reasons, and 38 asylum seekers on temporary residence permits, which will no doubt become continuous in 2 years. In addition to that 563 Somalis were admitted as family members. Of these at least 450 must have been family members of another refugee and therefore entitled to the same benefits. That's 1874 persons right here, and this number does not include the people with temporary residence permits and the family members of refugees other than Somalis.

It may not seem like a lot, but it's a lot for a country Finland's size. My "admitting everyone" in any case referred to a potential future situation where the number of applicants has risen sharply. Which is not all that potential anymore, now that their number has in fact risen sharply.

As for including the 2008 when the number of admissions mushroomed: we haven't seen it yet. The average time in which a normal (not Dublin, etc.) application is reviewed was 176 days in 2008 and 204 days in January 2009. The latests decision statistics are for January, and the mushrooming started in May last year. Just for comparison: in January 498 applications were filed, but only 178 decisions of any kind were made.

"And the idea of deporting everyone who is found guilty of a single crime is, to me, simply monstrous."

I did not say "for a single crime", but "for a single serious violent crime". I was not suggesting that we deport people for shoplifting, chewing khat or even having a minor fight or cheating sossu out of a bit of money. Shit happens. When shit start happening to the extent of aggravated robbery with assault and battery, it's time to shovel it out. To me it's monstrous to let them stay.

"The Finnish constitution says people (not citizens, people) are equal before the law. You want to change that to make "foreigners" less equal? I don't like the sound of that."

Let's see:

"Ketään ei saa ilman hyväksyttävää perustetta asettaa eri asemaan sukupuolen, iän, alkuperän, kielen, uskonnon, vakaumuksen, mielipiteen, terveydentilan, vammaisuuden tai muun henkilöön liittyvän syyn perusteella." (No one shall, without an acceptable reason, be treated differently from other persons on the ground of sex, age, origin, language, religion, conviction, opinion, health, disability or other reason that concerns his or her person.)

Weird, I don't see "citizenship" there. I do see "acceptable reason" instead.

Foreigners are less equal. They can't vote, and they usually need residence permits to stay in Finland. Foreigners can be deported for a single crime, and sometimes are. A person who has come here to work is denied a residence permit renewal if he or she loses the job just before the renewal and doesn't immediately find a new one. People who come here to work don't get the same social security as Finns until they get a permanent residence permit, and if their contract is short enough, they don't get any social security at all. I am not even talking about the status of students.

Refugees, on the other hand, are holy cows who are sometimes impossible to deport even after a series of convictions for aggravated assaults, batteries and robberies.

"Finland is admitting less than one thousand asylum seekers per year, and this number is not going to change dramatically despite the fearmongering going on."

Would you like to define "dramatically", and the timescale?

"But the idea that "something's gotta give" is just exaggerating the nature of the problem so much that it's hard to understand where you're coming from. I don't understand this Finnish "refugee hysteria" at all."

That's simple. First of all, people have noticed that the refugees are very much overrepresented in violent crime statistics and underrepresented in the employment statistics. Second, we have the unfortunate example of other European countries in front of our eyes. And third, the number of applicants is up.

I really wouldn't worry about refugees if they found jobs fast and committed crimes with approximately the same frequency as Finns. This is, unfortunately, not the case.

Refugees: something's gotta give

I have a really strong feeling that I am just repeating what I've said before, but here goes:

The current refugee admission system in Europe is not working and cannot work much longer without a lot of trouble. The trouble has already started. Finland is behind most of the Western Europe, as far as the trouble goes, but is catching up fast.

Large-scale population movements have happened before. Some countries have managed to assimilate huge amounts of refugees and immigrants, quite often to the mutual benefit. It's just that in the early 21-century Europe that is not happening, and is not about to magically happen.

The reasons for this are many:

1. First of all, the increasing diversity. (I have written about it before, here.) All the successful refugee movements that I can think of have essentially served to decrease diversity in some way or another. I am not talking about racial or linguistic diversity, but the diversity of way of life. It is quite logical: people are persecuted for being different and move somewhere where they fit in better. Problem is, now there are a lot of people coming to Europe who don't in fact fit in better. Or if this is their "better", I shudder to think what "worse" looks like.

2. Second, the system doesn't select well enough. I am not even talking about the selection of cultures and countries - even the selection of individuals doesn't work properly.

3. Third, the current system gives very little opportunity to roll back the transaction if a wrong person is let through.

4. Fourth, eternal social security serves to attract the wrong kind of people. There are enough persecuted people in the world as it is. Obviously, the people who want to improve their standard of living by moving to a Western country and working there also want to try their luck. The social security that keeps coming forever means that everyone who moves to Europe from poor countries is garanteed a higher standard of living. And that's a hell of a lot of people.

5. Fifth, the multiculturalism, in the sense of unwillingness to admit that the refugees are coming from a worse country to a better one. Also failure to enforce the majority rules in situations where this enforcement really matters.

I really believe that admitting refugees is a good thing if the admitting country is not overstretching its resources and the people who arrive are not total schmucks. Problem is, with lavish social security for new arrivals the countries are overstretching their resources even with a small number of refugees, and schmucks are, well, disproportionally represented.

Refugee admission is a really strange game. First of all, there are refugees and potential refugees in need of resettlement. Second, there are places for them in the countries that are willing to admit them. Everyone with more than two brain cells can figure out that the former are a lot more numerous than the latter and that the whole admission thing is by its very nature a lottery and cannot be anything else.

Wouldn't the simplest thing be to admit that fact and act accordingly? Say "we can take N refugees this year" and do it, and say "sorry" to the rest of them?

This is, in fact, what is done with quota refugees. But there are also asylum seekers - the people who first come to Finland and then apply for the refugee status. Their numbers are not limited in any way, and they are given a residence permit, either as a refugee or as a person in need of protection if they are in fact deemed to be in need of protection.

This means that their number is only limited by the officials' hope that not too many will decide to come and apply. This is all very nice, but what if quite a lot of them arrive? And to all the people saying "why would anyone want to come to this cold, dark and unfriendly country?" I can only say that if only a few will come, then the quota should not be a problem, right?

I also think that Europe should rethink what are the appropriate grounds for refugee admission. Not to reduce the number of potential applicants, but because some of them mean trouble, pure and simple. Helping persecuted people is a good thing, but some people are persecuted for a very good reason. It's very nice to help somebody who is persecuted for homosexuality in Iran, for pro-democracy activism in China, for being an albino in Tansania, etc. If a person is being persecuted for Islamic extremism in Saudi Arabia, let's leave him/her right there to be persecuted.

Same with the death penalty: it's good we don't have it, but if we define it as a human right violation that makes a person condemned to it undeportable, we'll end up with a bunch of refugees who are condemned to death somewhere. And guess what: not all of them are condemned for a homosexual act or failing to praise the fearless leader loudly enough.

Now for the ones already here: is it too much to ask that they behave themselves like human beings? Considering that they are in fact human beings and most of them manage to act like that, too. For starters, how about kicking out the ones who engage in serious violent crime? After the first time, not the tenth? Even if the country of origin is not safe for the poor dear?

The whole thing is based on a lot of pretense: we pretend that we can admit everyone who needs a new home, then we pretend that the people we didn't admit didn't really need it, and then we pretend that the people whom we did admit need it so much that they cannot be sent back under any circumstances. It's time to say "we can take N refugees per year, and no criminals, please". Shouldn't be so damn hard.

Life

I have a new job now. It is kind of fun, but there is quite a lot of it. And I haven't worked in such a big office for a long time. And there are a lot of cute young guys running around. And I got a cool phone.

I also have a video cataloging project, which was done until I bought some more DVDs today, a fiction writing project that is close to being done, and an apartment cleaning project that is very, very far from being done, but has at least started.

Open your mind...

On 2.3.2009 HS has published an opinion by Jeremy Gould, an associate professor of development studies on the University of Helsinki, about how Finns have to change and open themselves to the difference.

The article is not available online, but the main points are as follows:

1. The immigration to Finland will grow in the near future, and it won't be possible to stop it. (Because of, you know, international agreements. He doesn't say which agreements. Different EU countries have very different immigration and integration policies. Now who is screaming "but with the same results" from the back row? Shame on you!)

2. Finnish people are by their nature deeply suspicious of strangers, but of course there are many different Finns and the whole idea of a monolithic Finnsh culture is an illusion.

3. It is not realistic to imagine that a) immigration would stop, b) we could send all the suspicious immigrants somewhere and c) the immigrants will magically integrate and become like Finns.

Damn, and here I thought we were doing so well with The Great Five-Year Integration Plan...

Of course, none of these statements can be really discussed, because a) total stopping of all immigration is not under discussion in anti-immigration circles, except maybe the tinfoil hat brigade, b) depends on how suspisious they are, we just sent two guys back to Somalia on a suspision that they might commit their 22d (or whatever was the count) violent crime, and c) depends on who is trying to integrate and what counts as integration.

Gould himself seems to have integrated perfectly well: he is a fine upstanding working citizen, writes good Finnish, and makes about as much sense as some Finnish social studies professors I could mention. He doesn't seem to believe that some people and groups are capable of the same, and I must say we do have quite a bit of empirical evidence that supports him.

But anyway, his conclusion: Finns must change, let go of their suspicions, open themselves to the differences and let new and pluralistics Finnishness grow and develop. Or else somebody will punch them in the nose. (OK, he puts it as "the probability of violent conflicts will grow".)

What is the man smoking? If it's not a banned substance, it damn well should be.

Now, I am not much of a strategic thinker, violent-conflict-wise. More along the lines of "hit them over the head with the backpack, kick them in the nuts and scream for the police". But what would Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz say on the subject of expecting a violent conflict and in the meanwhile letting more of the other party in? And would it even be printable?

And is the threat of violent conflict the best way of getting people to let go of their suspicions? I, for one, am generally rather suspicious of people with whom I have or expect to have a violent conflict. Most folks are, I think. Probably because those who weren't didn't live long enough to become anyone's ancestors.

And could anyone tell me what are those differences that I am supposed to open my mind to? Different skin colors? Different food? Different languages spoken in the streets? Different prayers, e.g. "O Allah, destroy the Jews..."? Different views of witchcraft, as in "witches are real and they make people's dicks disappear and let's kill them"? Honor killings? Neighborhoods that the police is afraid to visit? Burning suburbs? Bombs on the subway?

Yeah, I know, sort of concentrating on the negative by the end of the previous passage. That's because I got a feeling that when people are saying "open your mind to the differences or else" they are not meaning that I should open my mind to foreign food, foreign languages, a British coworker, an Estonian food store, a Russian book store or even an American associate professor.

The little bits are crawling ahead

This morning I realized that I need new contacts. Not because I need a new prescription or anything, but because I am on my last pair.

Logged in to the store's webpage, and realized that I have two prescriptions, and last time my vision changed, they changed only one of them and forgot the other.

(The two prescriptions are, in principle, the same prescription for two different brands of contacts. I have no idea why I need two, and who decides that I can only buy these two, and not the others. The two are of the same type, and when I come there for a new prescription, they don't test both of them.)

I needed to buy the contact fluid anyway, so I came by the store, bought it, and also told the woman there to update my other prescription. She put the new values in the computer, and told me that it will take a week to get updated.

This is so mysterious. Why does it take a week? Why, for that matter, did the address change in one frequent flyer program take 6 weeks? Are the bits crawling so slowly in their network?

And now for some more negative portrayal of Muslims in the media

The news quote of the day:
"Police say an upstate New York man concerned about the negative portrayal of Muslims in the media beheaded his wife after she filed for divorce."

Piracy, a faster choice?

I am back and still alive!

I don't generally download my music illegally from the Net. Obviously, I wouldn't admit it here if I did and somebody asked me, but since I brought it up myself, I really don't.

I almost never buy it, either. The occasional albums that my friends want me to try I usually copy from said friends, and in the rare cases when I actually know I want something, I buy it. Happens almost every year.

Last week happened to be the week. I wanted to buy an album. I found it on the Net, on the artist's own page, sold as mp3s for a very reasonable price. As payment, they accepted credit cards, through a fairly reputable Russian payment service.

I fought with the reputable Russian payment service for 10 minutes, but completely failed to get it even to display the text field where I could feed it the number of my credit card. No wonder they are not known for misusing people's credit card numbers.

Just for the hell of it, I decided to find out how easy it is to get by torrenting it from somewhere. Took less than a minute to find it, would have taken less than five minutes to torrent it. Hmmm.

Since the purpose of the exercise was to transfer the money from me to the artist, I tried again. He has a link to a store selling his CDs inside the US, and I figured I'd buy one and send it to my parents as a gift. That store is not using the reputable Russian payment service, but some normal American ones. At least I assume they do. I never got to the payment service as such, because they were out of stock.

Not that this is a problem for me. I will find a way to get this content, and I will find a way to pay the guy, and I am quite determined to do both. Wouldn't it, however, be a bright idea to make buying as easy as torrenting?

This is why all the intelligent zoophiles prefer sheep:

A Russian man decided to make sweet love to a raccoon. Animal rights types usually say that poor innocent animals can't express consent or lack thereof, but this particular raccoon expressed his lack of consent quite efficiently by biting half of the man's penis off.

The raccoon choked on the penis and expired, or was killed by the man. The doctors did not manage to reattach the semidigested organ.

The Russian news sources describe the event in more detail, and feature a scan of the man's written explanation, a very amused veterinarian who was invited to the hospital to extract the penis from the raccoon, and the doctors' advice that the patient needs to have his head checked, along with whatever is left from the penis.

One detail that I really want to know: did the man try to have oral sex with the raccoon to begin with, or did the oral element happen by accident? And if he did it on purpose, did he see those teeth?

From Wikipedia: "Sexually mature raccoons often show aggressive natural behaviors such as biting during the mating season."

Life? Don't talk to me about life. And memory. And webcams.

I've been a bit tired lately, partly because my life has been very hectic, partly because I am still paying my sleep debts after a recent flu. Anyway, too tired for any hobbies except reading and occasionally seeing some friends.

Anyway, when I am somewhat stressed and tired I usually buy more memory to cheer myself up. It's cheap nowadays, too.

Problem is, I don't remember running out of memory in recent past. Looks like I don't need more than the 4G I have. Wow, I didn't think I'd live to see the day.

How is a girl supposed to cheer herself up by shopping if she doesn't need more memory and doesn't have physical space for one more hard drive in her computer? An external hard drive would be an obvious answer, but I already have two.

Which brings me to the question: can anyone recommend a webcam that works with Linux? I can find tons of them by googling, but the problem is that by the time they are mentioned on the Net in this context, they are usually out of stock in stores.

Gives a whole new dimension to table manners...

Art Price Jr. from Belleview, Ohio has been sentenced to 6 months in prison for having sex with a metal picnic table. His own table, mind you.

Part of the problem was that his home was located close to a school, which made it "disseminating harmful material to juveniles", even though it is not known if any juvenile has actually seen him in the act at any point.

The police got the tip from a person who recorded three DVDs of Price screwing the table on four separate occasions.

My first thought: damn, doesn't it hurt? He was doing it in winter, when licking a metal table outside sure would've hurt, so wouldn't sex hurt too?

My second thought: now that we know all about the villain, I wanna see the hero. Come on, man (or woman), show your face! I really wanna see what kind of person videotapes the neighbors during their tender moments with the garden furniture.

Maybe Mr. Price should move to Eastern Finland - he'd surely get in less trouble for doing it there, even with a human. On the other hand, considering how cold it gets in winter, maybe better not.

Area politics for ministers?

The National Agency for Medicines is being moved from Helsinki to Kuopio, which is a city of a bit under 100 000 people about 400 km away.

That's about 200 people who either need to leave their homes, families and friends, arrange for moving their families to Kuopio, or look for another job in Helsinki. In most Finnish families both adults work, which makes moving because of one person's work somewhat difficult.

The Minister of Social Affairs and Health Liisa Hyssälä says it's not a big deal even if all the employees in Helsinki quit. Who cares? Probably makes them all feel really valued, too.

I have a better idea: why don't we move the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health to Kuopio? Hyssälä will surely be overjoyed, at least as a Keskusta politician who supports moving big state workplaces somewhere far away, and it's not a big deal if some minister quits because of the move.

A break in blogging

Blogging will be very light for the next 2-3 weeks. The so-called Real Life is distracting me. Lots of stuff to do and very behind on my sleep.

This is kind of too bad, because there is a lot of interesting stuff to blog about right now.

Uusi Suomi and their command of English

In Uusi Suomi:

"Tanskassa 27-vuotiaan tanskalaisen uskotaan saaneen kaksi israelilaista asemiestä kimppuunsa mahdollisesti Gazan kriisin takia. Loukkaantuneen tanskalaisen vanhemmat ovat palestiinalaisia."

In the Yahoo article to which they link:

"In Denmark, a 27-year-old Dane born in Lebanon to Palestinian parents is alleged to have injured two young Israelis last week in a shooting police suspect could be linked to the Gaza crisis."

(For those who don't speak Finnish: Uusi Suomi is saying that the Israelis attacked the Lebanon-born Dane and not the other way around.)

News of the really weird

Omar Bakri Muhammed, the imam who praised 9/11 and 7/7 bombers in the UK and was subsequently encouraged to stay in Lebanon, from where he preaches through a website, has outdone himself.

He has encouraged his followers to preach Islam to aliens and spread it through the galaxy, and he said "We are obliged as Muslims to make the whole galaxy subservient to almighty Allah. Allah has created all living beings to obey him and worship him."

Oh dear... I don't know what the man is smoking, but I sure don't want any of it. On the other hand, if we could send him and his followers to the moon to preach to whatever aliens they might find out there, it might be well worth the price tag.

One could think that a guy who has an arrest warrant issued on him by Lebanese security forces would have more immediate things to worry about than conversion of aliens all over the galaxy.

A note for the really weird: if you have been persecuted for Islamic extremism in Saudi Arabia, kicked out of the UK for supporting terrorism, are being wanted by Hezbollah for terrorist activities, and you are still concerned with converting E.T. and Chewbacca to Islam, maybe you need to take a long hard look at your life, check whether the tobacco you are smoking is in fact tobacco, and schedule an appointment with your friendly local psychiatrist.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

No, no new year resolutions here.

Here we go again...

Israel has run out of patience and is striking Gaza. Not surprising really. People do get a bit miffed after about 100 mortar shells and Qassam rockets fall on their country. (No, that's not during 2007 and 2008. That's during the Christmas Eve and Christmas day.)

As always in such moments, I am wondering what a normal country would do about something like that. For example, if Qassam rockets were continuously being shot into Finland from Estonia (yeah, I know they don't really have the range), at which point Vanhanen would stop apologizing and start doing simple electoral math, for example figuring out that most voters are located on this side of the border?

The Great Infidel Holiday is upon us again

Merry Christmas!

Happy Global Orgasm Day!

Happy Global Orgasm Day!

And happy Hanukka!

The dicks and the League for Human Rights

Ihmisoikeusliitto (Finnish League for Human Rights) wants a law permitting boys' circumcision and making it available through the public health care system.

This is the League for Human Rights, not against them. Right? Let me check again. Right.

I would have thought that on the general scale of human rights the right to keep one's own body parts would rate fairly high, and the right to cut off somebody else's comparatively low, but I guess the League for Human Rights thinks otherwise. Silly me.

But first a bit about the facts:

1. The circumcision debates list all kinds of benefits and drawbacks to the procedure, but if you start to look at the studies you can see that they are all pretty inconclusive either way. The bottom line is, in the words of the American Medical Association, that "virtually all current policy statements from specialty societies and medical organizations do not recommend routine neonatal circumcision". I don't think the case should be argued on any medical merits.

2. In Finland there is no law concerning circumcision, and for a long time there was no legal precedent, either. Circumcision has been tolerated for as long as there has been a Jewish and a Muslim community, who traditionally did it among themselves without demanding anything from the public health care system, and circumcision became the subject of public discussion with the current Muslim immigration. The new immigrants understandably consider it their right to do what the established minorities have been doing for about 150 years, but often can't afford it on their own.

In 2008 the Supreme Court decided that religious circumcision is not a crime as long as it's done in a proper medical way.

But the court of course decides what the law is, not what it should be.

3. Most importantly, no country in the civilized world bans male circumcision, and our brave leaders don't want to be the first.

Back to Finnish League for Human Rights' statement.

The arguments for a law permitting and funding circumcision are ridiculous. The League for Human Rights says they don't believe that there would be any fewer circumcisions if the procedure is forbidden than there is now, and expresses concern that if circumcision is forbidden the people will turn to medically unsafe practitioners.

As a Jew, I find the implications very insulting. We are fairly law-abiding people, fairly well aware of various human rights concerns, and for the most part not very fanatically religious. Moreover, while I am most decidedly not a fan of Islam, I - unlike, apparently, the Finnish League for Human Rights - don't think that they are all criminal fanatics, either.

There is a precedent: circumcision wasn't outright forbidden in the ex-USSR, but it was made quite difficult. And guess what: most Jews there didn't do it.

For those who would circumcise their sons no matter what there are other ways to discourage dangerous methods without permitting the procedure. First of all, there is such thing as medically necessary circumcision, and I think at least some of those people will find a sympathetic doctor. Second, one way of dealing with it would be to make medically sound non-medical circumcision a fairly minor crime (battery, for example, or even minor battery) and make a medically unsound circumcision an aggravated battery, for which parents can actually go to prison.

Banning circumcision won't get rid of it completely. But if people who want to circumcise their sons will need to find a sympathetic doctor, or a sympathetic country, and possibly get a fine and/or a suspended sentence when caught, at least everyone who is in doubt or who is just doing it because it's a tradition will stop doing it. It's worth a try.

As to being the first: there used to be a time when it was legal almost everywhere to rape one's wife or to beat one's children. Finland wasn't the first country to ban those either, but doesn't it wish it were?

May he who has never done anything stupid throw the first shoe

Iraqi journalist Muntazar al-Zaidi has thrown both his shoes at George Bush, for which he was beaten up by security guards, and is facing up to seven years in jail for "offending the head of a foreign state."

Damn. Hope they don't give the same sentence for verbal offenses, or else the whole country is soon in jail.

All I can say is that if you start throwing shoes at idiots you'll run out of shoes a lot faster than you'll run out of idiots.

"The evildoers shat in my pants!"

There was a joke in Russia: a general comes home from a party complaining about some lieutenant: "lieutenant X stole my slice of cake, broke my chair, took away the lady with whom I was talking..."

After the general has undressed his servant points out: "Sir, that bastard lieutenant X has also shat in your pants".

Accusing other people figuratively of shitting into one's own pants is a fairly common rhetorical device among politicians, but only Honorary Doctor of Laws (Moscow University, and many others) Robert Mugabe has managed to do it almost literally.

According to his information minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe is "genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British" and "a calculated, racist, terrorist attack on Zimbabwe".

In an unprecedented move Zimbabwean government even decided to start paying salary to doctors and nurses, even in hard currency, but they have rejected the lucrative offer of $200 and $60 a month respectively.

Life

Haven't been writing much. Had a lot of work at work lately, and a lot of social life, been to a huge student organization party, a group birthday party and an Independence day party in a row. Also have totally forgotten what sleep is, and still have a bit of a flu.

Been playing with immigration-related statistics, too, and thinking too much on the current immigration topics. Probably will write on them soon though it would be fun to write about something else for a change.

Happy Independence Day, Finland!

Good thing you got out of Russia when you did. Russia sucks.

Has anyone seen 130000 tits?

Via Megan McArdle:

More than 130,000 inflatable breasts have been lost at sea en route to Australia.

Statistics

The conversation about immigration is everywhere nowadays, and a lot of people are yelling at each other without bothering to check the facts. I decided that some kind of a page that lists statistics sources would be in order, and started one. It's in Finnish, but some of the links it lists have an English version.

If anybody wants to build a bigger and better one, or put this in some sort of wiki, feel free. If anybody wants me to add something to it, feel free to email me, but I am not promising that it will happen fast.

No, I don't wanna know what her real name is

I have just deleted a comment where an anonymous commenter is threatening to reveal an anonymous blogger's real name. Any other comments of the similar kind will naturally be deleted as soon as I see them.

The commenter's IP address was 91.152.133.200, if this is useful to anyone.

Let's not frequently and wrongly associate, comrades!

The UN General Assembly has drafted a resolution on combating defamation of religions. The draft I have linked to has been drafted by such famous human rights luminaries as Belarus, Uganda and Venezuela; I am not sure whether it's their job to write all the drafts or whether the next draft will be written by Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.

Anyway, the General Assembly "expresses deep concern in this respect that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism". They probably also wanted to express grave concern, but then thought better about it and decided not to mention the graves, just in case.

I can totally understand them. I also often express deep concern that my scale shows me the numbers that frequently and wrongly associate me with being overweight. I have a suspicion that eating less chocolate is more likely to correct the problem than a General Assembly resolution, but then I've never had a General Assembly resolution about my scale, so who knows... While they are at it, they should also express deep concern that my mirror frequently and wrongly associates me with not being 20 anymore.

But just for today I'll try to be politically correct and not wrongly associate too much.

OK, in the news:

The Religion of Peace, or maybe some different, previously unknown religion, or maybe militant atheists, has arranged a demonstration for peace in Mumbai. The demonstration seems to have suffered from a massive demo effect. So far, 125 people have found eternal peace, and 327 have been peacefully injured. The targets have been a railway station, two hotels, two hospitals, a cafe, police headquarters and the local Chabad house. Chabad houses are the houses of a large Orthodox Jewish sect, Chabad Lubavicher, and I am sure this one was taken for a peaceful dialogue between religions.

Besides Jews, the demonstrators wanted to have a peaceful dialogue with American and British citizens, preferably in places where the police cannot interrupt it. Dialogue with Indians did not interest them just as much, and they mostly just showed them the way to eternal peace.

In other news, Afghan authorities have arrested 10 Taliban (nothing to do with religion) members who are alleged to have thrown acid on 11 schoolgirls and 4 teachers a couple of weeks ago in Kandahar. Taliban denied everything and thinks that it is probably unfair to stereotype them on the basis of all the previous attacks against girls' schools. Indeed, the article says "the central Taliban organization is not the only armed group capable of such an attack in Kandahar, as other extremist militias such as Hizb-i-Islami and the Haqqani network have been blamed for actions in the province". Since we should not associate them with Islam, I think they were extremist Amish and extremist Buddhists (who are still avenging those Buddhas that Taliban destroyed.

Via Jihad Watch:

Damn, I was being sarcastic, but it sounds like this guy is seriously saying it was the Jews.

"Eek, the evil-doers are taking our voters!"

Lately I've heard several people observe, mostly with regret, that immigration critics have managed to attract the people whose opinions on immigration are not very different from many multiculturalists' opinions. That's quite true. I haven't actually made scientific polls so maybe I shouldn't make strong statements based on what I see around me, but it certainly seems like most folks, both in pro-multiculturalism and anti-multuculturalism camps, are quite OK with immigrants as long as they don't commit crimes, don't make trouble, and don't overload the welfare system unduly.

Some of them, however, consider themselves multiculturalist, and some consider themselves anti-multiculturalist. And during the last 7 years or so, I've seen lots of people, myself included, move from the multiculturalist camp to the anti-multiculturalist camp, and none move the other way. (Yeah, I am sure at least one exists somewhere, I just haven't seen him/her.) This process is happening all over the Western world, the multiculturalist politicians and worried by the rise of xenophobia, and wondering what's wrong with the people.

Just a thought: if your constituents are starting to vote for your opponents, even though their views on the actual issue haven't changed all that much, maybe it's because you and yours have failed to deliver?

We wanted the world where people of different colors, religions and cultures could come to the West more or less easily and live and work here like everyone else. I am not speaking for all the anti-multiculturalists here, but I know I did, and I've known a lot of other people who did.

What we got instead is a staggering amount of integration problems all over Europe. We've got riots in Paris suburbs, bombs in London and Madrid, Danish cartoon riots, immigrants strongly overrepresented in crime statistics in Finland and in Sweden, a murdered filmmaker and some politicians in need of bodyguards in the Netherlands, death threats towards critics of Islam and towards young women who don't want to marry men of their parents' choosing, areas abandoned by indigenous populations and chefs suing their employers for asking them to handle sausages.

Yeah, we know that the people who vote for multiculturalist politicians are pretty much like us. But "you will know them by their fruits" applies here, just like everywhere else, and the fruits are sadly obvious to quite a lot of voters.

The fact is, some immigrant groups commit more crime - especially violent crime - than others. Even in Finland the people are starting to notice it, even though the immigrant population is quite small and the groups in question are a fairly small percentage of all immigrants. Some groups are disproportionally on public assistance. Some groups are more likely to engage in terrorism than others. People are concerned about all of the above, and all they get from multiculturalist politicians is "everything is gonna be ok", "we are not gonna repeat France's (Germany's, UK's, etc.) mistakes", "we need more immigrants" and "we need to spend more money on integration" (which, when said by people professionally involved with integration, also means "we need to pay me more salary").

There is such a thing as undesirable immigrants: robbers, rapists, terrorists, young people who spend years on welfare without bothering to find a job, etc. The way I see it, there are only two ways of reducing their numbers: either reducing the admissions of the groups to which they belong, or getting rid of individuals or punishing them once they turn out to be undesirable.

I don't see the politicians doing either. You can't stop taking refugees from a particular country, because it would be discrimination. You can't limit the immigration from at-risk countries to admit only the people with higher education, because it would be depriving a needy country from its property...I mean people. You can't kick refugees off welfare after a couple of years because "it's just Not Done" and "they will become criminals anyway after that", and you can's send the criminal ones back home or back to the refugee camp because it's not safe for them, and we are deeply committed to the occupational safety of armed robbers.

There are good and bad people everywhere, of course, and even with the best policies some immigrant may turn out to be a bad person, and shit happens, but there has been just too much of the shit happening. When you have one immigrant killing his daughter for failing to marry whoever he told her to, it's just one murdering asshole who should be treated like any other murdering asshole. When we have whole communities in the UK where taxi drivers and police officers help those families catch those daughters, it's a massive failure of policy. Which, in turn, makes people think that the guilty parties, along with their counterparts in other countries, should be voted out of office.

How did most European countries come to have rules against deporting criminal refugees, even though the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees states very clearly that it is not intended to protect criminals? Whose bright idea was it to write - or sign - international treaties that prohibit returning people to a place where they can be executed, making in effect every criminal condemned or potentially condemned to death entitled to stay in, say, Norway? Whatever one's opinion on death penalty is, the refugee laws were written for the sake persecuted minorities, not for the sake of the founders of terrorist organizations. Whose fault is it that Omar Bakri Muhammed was allowed to preach terrorism in UK on taxpayers' money for 19 years? Whose idea was it to accommodate the aspects of immigrant cultures that go against our own, and who taught them to demand such accommodations?

It is a surprise that people are not very excited about humanitarian immigration when they realize that once you give a person asylum you can't kick them out even if they have been robbing people in the streets, founded terrorist organizations, or preached the destruction of the country that took them in?

Multiculturalists say "we are gonna learn from other countries' mistakes". Yes, we are, and we have, and we have started voting for the anti-multiculturalism candidates. Before the problems get out of hand, and not after.

Self-esteem and self-improvement

A recent discussion about transsexuals made me wonder about the gap between our desires and reality, and in which cases it is considered socially acceptable to correct reality, and in which cases it is considered more appropriate to correct one's desires.

I don't mean the blatantly obvious cases, such as that I would like to see one of my daycare teachers dead, but am not allowed to make that happen. I was thinking more along the lines of clear disapproval of cosmetic surgery that a lot of people express, vs. lack of same disapproval of cosmetic dentistry.

Pretty much every conversation about cosmetic surgery turns to lack of self-esteem (which in our culture has pretty much turned into an insult, usually having very little to do with the actual self-esteem of the person, or lack thereof) and evil cosmetic industry preying on people who are clearly too stupid to decide for themselves. I have never heard the same feelings expressed about dental braces (I realize that a lot of people have other reasons for those than cosmetic, but a lot of them are used to make teeth look more even) or tooth whitening.

I could never quite understand why a person who wants a perfectly straight nose is suffering from a low self-esteem, has been brainwashed by society who values women only for their looks (or by society who values people only for their looks, in case of a man), needs to learn to love and and accept herself/himself as he or she is, needs to understand something about the inner beauty, etc. A person who wants perfectly straight teeth, on the other hand, is just a person who wants to straighten his or her teeth.

BTW, isn't "low self-esteem" supposed to mean "evaluating self-worth, at least on some parameters, as lower than it objectively is"? Why are people who say that they are ugly automatically accused of having low self-esteem even when they are in fact ugly? Is it because failure to deride their self-esteem means that you agree with them?

Another interesting thing about alleged self-esteem and looks is that the words "low self-esteem" are used both about the people who are striving to improve their looks (they must clearly have low self-esteem since they are unable to love and accept themselves as they are, and must spend time and money on their looks) and the people who don't care much (they must clearly have low self-esteem since they don't consider themselves worthy of new and fashionable clothes, hairstyle or makeup).

Isn't it time to admit that the words "low self-esteem", at least when not used as some strictly defined psychological term, are just a simple insult that people use on their fellow citizens whose lifestyles they disapprove of?

Hong Kong

Hong Kong was very hongkongish, as before. Skyscrapers, lights and people. It was so hot that at some point I started crying for the countless generations who lived and died there before the invention of air conditioning.

Next time I am going there, it's gonna be in winter. Not this winter, though.

Victoria Peak rules as usual. And Central. And Kowloon. And Causeway Bay. We also went to Macau, with, as usual, failed to rule.

I finally found out what a Saturday night in Mongkok looks like. It really is terrifying, even to a person used to crowds and big cities. Take New York's Times Square, double the number of people per square meter of area, and Mongkok is a much bigger area. I escaped to a book store with my tail between my legs.

In Kowloon there was a building that was still under construction but already had people living or working on the lower floors.

The biggest difference compared with Hong Kong of 3 years ago was the non-smoking everything. You can't smoke anywhere inside (in any public places I've seen, that is) and in most places outside. The few corners of the outside where one could smoke carried a sign "Smoking is not prohibited in this venue".

More about the little helicopter

I was somewhat annoyed that the people who sold me the damn thing had serious trouble believing that I was buying it for myself and not for some kid, even though I told them so.

I do realize that there are people who simply don't believe that adults can and do play. I generally dismiss them as potentially friendly aliens and leave it at that. But those salespeople were playing with helicopters themselves, and they sure didn't look like they were just doing their duty.

Whee! Little helicopter!

At 14 I was a very serious teenager, reading classics most of the time, and angsting all the rest of the time. I wonder how I would have reacted if somebody told me that at 37 I will spend a really fun evening chasing a toy helicopter around the apartment, naked, with an infrared joystick thing in one hand and a pear cognac liqueur in the other.

Immigrants and minorities can't be as successful as the normal people, by definition?

How can it be otherwise if every successful minority or immigrant group is excluded from the definition of "minority" or "immigrant"?

Four years ago I I wrote about the growing use of the word "expat" to mean an immigrant from a civilized country. I found it silly then and I find it silly now, but apparently a lot of people find it useful to have two different words for desirable immigrants (the kind that they themselves are, or would be if they went to live abroad) and undesirable immigrants (for some people pretty much everyone else, for some people the immigrants of a different skin color, for some people the immigrants who don't work, etc.)

I am surprised that the desire to have two different words is so strong. I mean, I also find myself, or for example some random German doctor, a lot more desirable than an illiterate goatherd from Kurdistan, but not to the point where I would consider it beneath me to share the word "immigrant" with him.

The social need for two separate words is obviously strong enough that HS journalists write the words "real immigrants" to mean people who are not like Elisabeth Nauclér. Their two examples of real immigrants are both Somali, so I am not sure whether you need to be black, Muslim or Somali to quality.

If we really invent two different words in Finnish and start using them in public, it will of course cause endless hours of fun defining who is an immigrant and who is an expat, based on the place of birth, citizenship, race, ethnicity and reason for being in Finland. Are people from the industrialized non-white countries expats? And from non-industrialized white countries? What about semi-industrialized? What about non-white people from white countries? People who were born in the third world but are now citizens of first-world countries? A Turkish professor, as opposed to a Turkish kebab cook?

But that's not my problem, I'll gladly leave the definitions to the people who actually want two different words. The problem is that at this point we don't have two different words, so if you reserve the word "maahanmuuttaja" (immigrant) for the more colorful folks, you don't really have any word for the other group.

The other problem is that the word "immigrant" is used in the normal way (that is, to mean all the immigrants) in the official statistics, which causes the people who use the word "immigrant" selectively to misinterpret said statistics. Usually along the lines of "oh my God, this says that there are 132 632 foreigners living in Finland, how can we support 132 632 unemployed Somalis?", when in reality only 4831 of them are Somalis of any employment status.

It is natural that in the public discourse about immigration the "unreal immigrants" are invisible. They are mostly just regular folks living regular lives, who cannot be used to demonstrate how bad the immigrants are, or how bad the Finns are towards the immigrants, or how tolerant one is, and who have little use for the whole integration system. The result of this invisibility, however, is that people are never sure what and who they are talking about when they are discussing immigration-related statistics.

So maybe there is a point in having separate words, and separate statistics? Since Helsingin Sanomat obviously thinks so, I have a modest proposal: now that HS has established that we have one unreal immigrant and no real immigrants in Eduskunta, how about publishing some separate crime statistics for the real and the unreal immigrants?

And now for the real foreigners...

I've always known that for some people a black person is always less of a real American, or a real Finn, than a white person. I'd never expected to see this attitude in such an obvious way in Helsingin Sanomat.

The title of the article is "We'll still have to wait for a Finnish Obama". It starts "In Finland members of minorities still haven't achieved top places in politics". Now that's funny. IIRC the top of Finnish politics had for a long time been in the hands of the Swedish-speaking minority. Remember that guy named Mannerheim? I think the current government has three members of the same minority in it.

I don't think we've ever had a Jew or a Muslim in the government. This is, of course, totally shocking and unfair in a country that has traditionally had a Jewish minority of about a thousand people, and, until the recent times, a Muslim minority of about the same size. The highest a Jew has ever gotten in Finnish politics is being the chairman of the group of one of the biggest parties in the parliament. I am shocked.

But sarcasm aside, the HS article is really talking about immigrants. At this point, I am getting a bit angry on behalf of Obama.

Barack Obama is not an immigrant. He is a native-born US citizen. I can see that the article switches between the terms "immigrant" and "a person of immigrant background". I am sorry if this comes as a surprise to the journalists in HS, but we are talking about the United Fucking States of America here, and there is a lot of descendants of immigrants there. Like, pretty much all the country. Obama has made history as the first black US President, but as a son of an immigrant he is nothing new: we've had Woodrow Wilson and Chester Arthur, not to mention the early presidents, who, besides having been born before the USA was established, sometimes were born to the parents who'd just arrived from Europe, sometimes spoke Dutch as their first language, and in general did god knows what.

But the truly amazing quote is here: "Elisabeth Nauclér, who represents Ahvenanmaa, is an immigrant who moved here from Sweden, but there are no "real" MPs with an immigrant background in the Parliament."

Excuse me? Did I miss us annexing Sweden overnight? Are they talking specifically about the MPs who have an immigrant background but were themselves born in Finland, and if so, why did they forget Ben Zyskowicz, who is the son of a Polish father and has been in the Parliament for 29 years? Or do they maybe think that a person representing Ahvenanmaa is not a real MP?

Or are they using the term '"real" immigrant' to mean people who are not white? If they are saying that a white Finn who has immigrated from the West is less than a real immigrant, do they even understand that this implies that they think that a non-white Finn who has immigrated from the Third World is less than a real Finn?

Seoul

The road from the airport to Seoul resembles some parts of Arizona, in a good way. There are some sculptures on the way, unlike in Arizona. One of them, of which I unfortunately did not manage to take a picture, is especially baffling: if it's a penis, why does it have only one testicle, and if it's a missile, why does it have any testicles at all?

There are no women in high-heeled boots. When there are women in boots, they are carrying a Japanese-language map of Seoul.

I've always known that I can't easily tell the Chinese, the Koreans and the Japanese from each other individually, but I can do it in a big group. This is the first time I've seen so many Koreans together, though, and as a group they look a lot more different from the Chinese and the Japanese than the Chinese and the Japanese from each other. Unfortunately, and unlike in Japan and China, there are pretty much no good-looking men in Korea. Not that they are ugly; it's just that there are no good-looking ones. When you see a good-looking man in Seoul, he is also usually carrying a Japanese-language map of the city.

Myeong-dong in general and our Ibis hotel in particular are great. Unlike in Japan, , the toilet has instructions in English. The toilet bowl in Kyoto, and IIRC in Seoul as well, started making pissing sounds as soon as you sat on it. Very encouraging.

I had a pretty nice view from the window.

In Myeong-dong there is a cafe in every building, and in every self-respecting building there are at least two. They are much in the Japanese style, except that in Seoul the situation with non-smoking areas is much better. Either the whole place is non-smoking, or the smoking area is very well-separated.

The Koreans speak somewhat better English than the Japanese, and they are not shy to use it.

The city features shopping areas, cute skyscrapers, and lots and lots of street sculptures.

There are also a lot of street vendors selling mysterious foods. The least mysterious was a potato on a stick, fashioned into one spiral potato chip.

We spent the evening with an old Russian friend who's been living there for many years. He taught us to eat Korean barbeque.

There might be some American restaurant chain that is not present in Korea, but I can't think of any.

They write without using the Chinese characters nowadays. The only places where I've seen Chinese characters are museums and palaces, and there they are in brackets as an explanation. I think that as a writing system ditching the Chinese characters is a great improvement, but for my own purposes during this trip I sorely missed them. In Japan I got accustommed to being able to read a tiny little bit, even though I don't know the language, and it didn't seem like much (just basic things like "meat", "forbidden", "chicken" or "exit"), but I sure missed it in Korea where I couldn't.

The signs on the old gates and suchlike are written from right to left. When did they switch?

The palaces are pretty colorful. I like them.

More about Japan

Kinkakuji is a very beautiful temple. It has a pond with fish, like many other temples. If you come to the pond and applaud the fish, they come to you and stick their faces out of the water.

I totally don't get the rock gardens. They are just, well, gravel and rock. If it didn't read somewhere that they are famous I would have just thought that somebody was too lazy to pulls out all the rocks. And yet people come to see the rock gardens, even though the regular non-rock gardens really rock. I guess Zen is not for me.

Talking about the gardens, Koko-en in Himeji is the mother of them all.

War crimes

A few weeks ago I was talking with some friends on IRC. We were discussing a hypothetical Russian invasion, and whether poisoned vodka would be an effective weapon against such. Being the kind of person who is interested in the legal distinctions between offering the enemy soldiers poisoned vodka and putting it somewhere where they'd steal it themselves, I raised the question of the laws of warfare, and what do the various Geneva conventions think about poisoning the enemy soldiers.

The unanimous answer was "who the fuck cares"?

I tried to mention the issue among some of my other friends, in different parts of the political spectrum. The answer - right, left and center - was "who the fuck cares". Mind you, these are all very nice people who generally condemn war crimes, or at least the war crimes committed by somebody else. It's just that the idea of the rule of law tends to pale in comparison with the idea of Russian tanks in Helsinki.

I can hardly condemn the feeling, especially since I share it. But next time somebody wonders "where do war criminals come from?" I just might try to search in a mirror.

I ain't dead...OK, not so sure about it

Got a supermegaflu. Haven't been writing or socializing much lately, because had to concentrate on breathing. Soon as I get it right, I'll try sleeping and maybe some brain activity.

Doctors are good for you, BTW. Mine has prescribed such a huge bag of drugs, it feels like it's Christmas. Or like what I think Christmas would feel if I celebrated it. Except that I have checked all the drugs and none of them have any recreational potential.

She also told me to drink fluids. I am quite sure rum toddy is a fluid.

On Japanese fashions

Japanese women love boots, and loved them also when I was there 3 years ago. Nowadays the clothes fashions have changed, though, and they wear them with tiny little shorts. The funniest I've seen was a girl with huge boots, tiny shorts, and a fur hat that belonged in a Hollywood movie about Russia in winter. It was +23 that day.

Joy and Mikko said that there is a short time in July when people don't wear boots.

But the most mysterious thing about Japanese fashion is their high heels. More than half of the women there wear high heels, and the vast majority of them have no idea how to walk on them. This is what's so mysterious: if you use high heels every day, wouldn't you eventually either learn to walk on them or give up? I've heard a few theories on the subject, but they all would apply to Russian women as well, but Russian women don't stagger on their heels in such numbers: they either learn or give up. The Japanese, amazingly, continue to stagger.

The trip impressions: Japan

Tokyo is a very pleasant city. Lively, pretty and relaxing in a way. There is not a lot of impressive views or monuments, but I've never seen any part of it that wasn't one way or another pleasant. I especially like Ueno and Shinjuku.

Kyoto, on the other hand, has a lot of lovely temples and shrines and one lively and pretty shopping, dining and nightlife area, but is otherwise astonishingly ugly. Walking outside the pretty areas was not a pleasure for the eyes. My advice for all the visitors is to get a bus pass (500 yen a day) and just ride from one pretty area to the other.

Temples are pretty, but they get monotonous fast. If you only get to see one Buddhist temple in Japan, let it be Todaiji temple in Nara. It's really The Temple.

Shinto shrines are often painted bright orange. To ward off evil spirits, one tourist guide said. This probably also explains the Helsinki subway.

Nara conveniently has most of its tourist attractions in one fairly big park. Himeji also has its attractions, the castle and the Koko-en garden, right next to each other.

Nara also has deer, which are mostly cute but can be a nuisance. One tried to eat a cop's baton, got kicked by the same baton on the butt for its effort, came to me, demanded cookies, didn't get any, bit me on the stomach and tried to pull my shirt off. It's lucky it didn't end up as deer filet.

On the way back from Nara a man started talking to us on the train. In English. He told us that he is 75 and has never been abroad, so he figured now it's time to learn English and travel by himself, not with a group like everyone else.

Address system is weird but you get used to it, good maps are available, the subways and railways have all the essential information in English. This is where their English ends, though.

In some hotels and upscale restaurants some people speak some English, but for the most part nobody does, and they are afraid to use the little English that they do speak, too. I usually avoid trying to speak local language (except some polite words) when I speak it as little as Japanese, but in Japan every word of Japanese helps. Especially number words are very useful when trying to explain how many of something you want, because in many places "three" and three fingers held up was not enough.

Finding restaurants with a non-smoking section is a big problem. However, small eateries like kaiten-sushi places are usually totally non-smoking, chain cafes (the best coffee was in Pronto, BTW) usually have smoking and non-smoking areas, and nice restaurants will seat you away from smokers at a non-crowded time.

This nonwithstanding, there are whole streets and blocks where smoking is forbidden. They are patrolled by some anti-smoking police. Once I saw a man come to a non-smoking street with a cigarette. The cop chased him with a portable ashtray, caught him and confiscated the cigarette.

Maybe a thousand pictures is worth a million words?

The shit has hit the fan

The last couple of days were full of politicians' talk about how horrible it is that Perussuomalaiset won, and whose fault that was.

This, however, is pretty unbelievable:

Tuija Brax, the Minister of Justice, says that the ministry will start teaching chairpeople of the city councils to censor anti-immigration, anti-immigrant and anti-minority speech (in the council meetings, I assume, not in the city streets).

First of all, speech inciting against racial, ethnic and religious groups is already banned by the criminal law. The law bans all public speech of the "kill the X" kind, and also of the "all Y are disgusting smelly assholes" kind. I am not sure whether or not city councils are "public" in the sense meant by the law, but what I want to know is whether Brax thinks that a) the elected city council members will say things mentioned above, or b) the elected city council members will say things like "I think we should also collect crime statistics by the country of birth of the perpetrator", and that this should be censored.

In general there has been a lot of discussion about the horrible things that Some People (tm) say about immigrants in general or some ethnic or religious groups in particular. Usually the discussion has deteriorated into claiming that these things are not true, but IMO a more relevant question to the people who think that the new anti-multiculturalist council members and their opinions are horrible would be: what kind of negative things, in your opinion, can one say about an ethnic or religious group, assuming that those things are in fact statistically true? (For the purpose of this question assume that the facts are presented in a neutral way.)

"And no nukes, while you are at it"

I came back from a trip to Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Macau last week. A more detailed report is forthcoming, but one thing I noticed is the amount of interesting warnings, bans and advice. "Please see a doctor if you are sick", "Please drink water to avoid heat", no discharging missiles in the park and a lot of other stuff, etc.

The most mysterious, however, was this, in Tapgol park in Seoul. Why two pictures of people throwing trash? What do the head and the hand mean? Do they really mean "don't set fire to the buildings" in one of these? And what the hell is the fourth one from the left in the top row (a closeup)? My first guess was "don't measure chipmunks' temperature anally", as good an advice as any, but then my friends also came up with "don't abuse chipmunks in the butt with a sparkler", "don't give chipmunks pregnancy tests", and many other creative ideas. If any of my readers know any Korean, please shed some light on this mystery.

"Eek! Eek! People elected the wrong candidates!"

The municipal election is over. Congratulations to Jussi Halla-aho, and everyone else whom I wanted to win and who won.

It is probably a law of nature that after an election the winners loudly declare that The People Have Spoken, and the losers try to come up with polite ways of saying that the people were mistaken, brainwashed or simply damn stupid. This is especially the case when the winners happen to be elitist (appeal to the people who earn more than the journalists) or populist (appeal to the people whom journalists consider lower-class but who still earn more than the journalists).

The keyword, however, is "polite". Helsingin Sanomat's reaction at first was anything but. Then somebody more sensible woke up.

I understand HS's shock when Jussi Halla-aho, who is just a guy with a blog who criticizes the current immigration policies, gets 2916 votes, and Astrid Thors, the actual immigration minister, gets 2450. This is no reason to call him an opponent of immigrants (they fixed that later), or to wring hands and wonder what went wrong and what kind of bad things happened to people that they want to vote for Halla-aho. Maybe they should rather read his writings, he's been writing for a while now about the bad things that have been happening.

On a lighter and snarkier note: in all my years in Finland there has been only one person who refused to talk to me on account of me being a foreigner, and it certainly wasn't Jussi.

I am back

Survived the vacation, looking forward to getting some sleep.

I ain't dead

I ain't dead, or even studying the current crisis, just busy. Not gonna write anything sensible for a week or two.

About the current economy crisis: wow and ouch!

Goals for tonight

Goals for tonight: wash all the underwear and not get too drunk.

I know this sounds kind of pathetic, but I am actually in a pretty good mood.

Kosher, halal, and circumcision

The Muslim immigration to Europe brought with it quite a lot of concern of locals about both Jewish and Muslim traditions that have been around here for a very long time, but are now coming to the public attention again with a new force.

Many Muslims and Jews say that at least some of the people who raise these issues just don't like Muslims, Jews or both. This is undoubtedly so, but it doesn't mean that these are not real issues. It's just that the debate on them sounds rather strange nowadays.

First of all, I find it really strange that people on all sides of the debate often claim that ritual slaughter is barbaric. Or that it is humane. Ritual slaughter, just like regular slaughter, can be as barbaric or as humane as you make it.

At best, the ritual slaughter is cutting the animal's throat very fast with a sharp knife, with the result that the animal loses consciousness immediately. At worst, the animal does not lose consciousness immediately and is hoisted up by its hind legs to bleed out while conscious.

In spite of the popular misconceptions to the contrary kosher and halal slaughter are permitted in Finland, as long as it's done in a proper slaughterhouse and the animal is stunned right after the cut. There is nothing particularly barbaric about this method, unless you disapprove of eating meat in general.

There are some disagreements among both Jews and Muslims as to whether it's kosher/halal to stun the animal after the cut. And yes, some think that it's not, Jews more often than Muslims. Do we have to cater to them? The demand for any kind of kosher meat is so low in Finland that it is AFAIK not slaughtered in Finland anyway, and as for halal - well, stunning is permitted in Saudi Arabia, so wouldn't that be kosher (sorry) enough for the vast majority of Muslims? And IME Jews and Muslims are people like everyone else, in that in the absence of superkosher and superhalal they make do with what they have.

Has anyone besides Abdullah Tammi ever demanded unstunned kosher or halal meat in Finland? (That's not a rhetorical question.)

One point that is rarely raised: people who wish to follow very strict kosher and halal guidelines and don't believe in stunning don't need to become vegetarians or compromise their beliefs, of they are not so inclined. Fish does not require ritual slaughter in Judaism or Islam, and stunning birds after cutting their necks is not required by law in Finland.

In short, I think that Finland already has the right laws, as in Eläinsuojeluasetus 7.6.1996/396.

As to circumcision, the situation is complicated. There is no proper law, and treating it as battery is difficult since authorities have in effect permitted it ever since Jews and Muslims lived here, which is a fairly long time. It has become an issue only after the Muslim immigration of the 90s, which made it more common, raised demand for having it taxpayer-funded, and brought the issue of the female circumcision. A few thoughts on banning circumcision:

1. The people who discuss circumcision as is it were a medieval custom long forgotten in Europe and only brought here by recent Muslim immigration are of course very wrong. Circumcision has been around and permitted for a long, long time. I think that a child's right to bodily integrity is more important than freedom of religion, and that banning non-medical circumcision would be a great step forward, but that's exactly what it would be: a huge step forward. It should be treated as such. As in "we realize that is has been permitted pretty much all over the Western world all the time, but times change and we think it's time to ban it, and this is why...".

2. The people who think that it should be funded by taxpayers are making a step backward. It used to be funded by NHS in UK; when it stopped being so, the rates fell dramatically.

3. The problem of people not obeying the law and doing it anyway is real, and something needs to be done about it. OTOH, if it were illegal it would be a lot less common. My rather obvious suggestion would be to make it mildly punishable if done illegally but in proper medical conditions, and make the punishment a lot more severe for people who do it in a way that endangers the child's health. OTOH, the punishments for grievous bodily harm are ridiculously small in Finland in any case.

Anyway: I see how it is a matter of principle for many people, but IMO even laws that would make at least some people give up on this custom would be good.

The less-radical younger generation

This seems almost too funny to be true. Remember Omar Bakri, the man that the newspapers usually politely call "firebrand cleric" because a newspaper can get in trouble for using a more descriptive term, for example "delusional Islamist sociopath"?

His daughter Yasmin turned out to be a pole dancer. Which, of course, totally doesn't have anything to do with the way they took her out of school at 16 for an arranged marriage.

One of Bakri's comments: "Islam has prevailed and you are defeated. The lowest people on earth are non-Muslims and that is why we have to put up with these fabrications and lies."

There is still some sense in the world...

...even in West Virginia.

The anti-farting charges were dropped.

The land of the free and the home of the buttplug

Finland is only trying to figure out how to prevent horrible violence, but the USA is already ahead of everyone.

In West Virginia, a man has been charged with battery on a police officer. For farting.

'"The gas was very odorous and created contact of an insulting or provoking nature with Patrolman Parsons," the complaint alleged.'

The man was also accused of passing gas loudly, lifting his leg while doing so, moving his chair towards the officer before farting, and fanning the gas towards the officer. The evildoer admits to farting, but not the moving and the fanning, and is claiming an upset stomach.

OK, maybe all the jokes about West Virginians are true, in that many of them are children of cousins, siblings, sheep or parents who happen to be all of the above. And OK, I've been to some restaurants (none of them in West Virginia) after which the customers' farts can and rightfully should be banned by chemical weapon limitation treaties. But one thing I would like to know: are they gonna ban beans for being a sort of anti-police ammo?

Why is hating everyone OK?

I am sure I've written about it before, but why, again, is hating all people much more acceptable, both legally and socially, than hating some group?

I think a direct incitement to kill people is illegal in any case, but anything short of it is not. If you write something along the lines of "I hate all Asians, they are like a cancer spreading on our beautiful planet", or even "Asians totally suck and are worthless and smell bad" the police will be at your door pretty soon. Ditto for blacks, whites, or any race or ethnic group you can think of. But you can write such things about all those groups put together, and not only not get arrested, but not even necessarily considered a psychotic creep.

Isn't it time to rethink this, especially considering that - thank God for small favors - I don't remember anyone ever committing a murder of a group of Asians, whites, blacks or anyone else for racial or ethnic reasons in Finland, but we just had a second spree killing for misanthropic reasons within one year?

Let's ban, ban, ban something!

According to Tilastokeskus, 23 people died in 2006 from being shot during a manslaughter or by accident: 17 were victims of crimes, 4 were victims of accidents, and they are not sure about the remaining two.

During the same time, 41 people died in motorcycle accidents and 73 in boating accidents. There are 1620000 legal firearms in Finland, 737000 boats and 188 144 motorcycles plus 188 388 mopeds.

That's about 70435 legal firearms per one person killed by firearms, and since 57% of the firearms used in crimes are illegal firearms, 121713 legal firearms per one person killed by them. That's also 10096 boats per person killed by boating, and 9183 motorcycles and mopeds per person killed while riding one.

So, why do so many people demand a total ban on guns every time several people get killed, but I've never heard anyone seriously demand a ban on all, or even just recreational, boating and motorcycling?

Refugees and diversity

A number of blogs have been talking about immigration and refugees lately, especially on Uusi Suomi's list of election blogs.

In such discussions feelings run high, both sides sometimes use the kind of arguments that makes one feel ashamed for them, and most people seem to be a bit unclear on the concept of refugee.

Yesterday, however, I ran into one that made me inhale my tea. I don't remember which one of those conversation threads it was, but it went along the line of "how does taking refugees help the countries that they are coming from?"

I did a double-take. Say what? Why on Earth would you want to help them? Unless, of course, you are either the kind of person who defines "help" as "carpet bombing", or the kind of person who thinks that all the violent criminals just need help.

The current concept of refugee was created by 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and defines a refugee as a person who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country". Why a country generating such people should get any help, as opposed to a very hard kick in the nuts, is beyond my understanding.

I know that every time Holocaust or Nazis are mentioned in any political discourse, God (or is it Godwin) kills a kitten somewhere. Considering the date of the convention, however, a prototypical refugee they were thinking of was most probably a Jew trying to escape from Nazi Germany. Can you really imagine Americans, Russians, Swiss, Swedes, or any kind of furry little creatures from Alpha Centauri say "how does helping Jewish refugees help Germany?" No? Didn't think so.

Anyway, the whole idea was to take some minority groups or persons from where they are being persecuted by the majority or the powers that be, and move them to the places where they would fit in better.

Tens of millions of refugees were successfully resettled during the last century. Usually the successful resettlement involved people moving from a place where people were less like themselves to a place where people were more like themselves, either in ethnicity, religion, way of life or political opinions, or at least to a place where the locals were more accustomed to people like themselves. Jews and political dissidents from German-occupied Europe fled to pretty much anywhere that would take them, Germans who disagreed with Communism fled from East Germany to West Germany, Poles fled from the Ukraine to Poland, Finns fled from the Carelian Isthmus to the rest of Finland, Hindus and Sikhs fled from Pakistan to India and Muslims fled from India to Pakistan, Hindus fled from Bangladesh to India, Jews fled from Muslim and Communist countries to Israel and the US, people who disagreed with Communists fled from Communist counties to the West, people who disagreed with radical Shia Islam fled from Iran to the West, and pretty much everyone who could fled from the Khmer Rouge Cambodia to anywhere.

The whole idea of refugee resettlement is to reduce diversity in the world. If it's increasing the diversity, you are doing something wrong. And when I say "diversity", I don't mean the skin color, but the way of life.

This is not to say that countries should never take refugees that are different from the locals - the Bahai, for example, don't have a Bahai country to go to, and have successfully integrated, well, everywhere where they are not considered to be Islamic apostates.

In 1967 people fleeing wars were added to the definition of a refugee. This did have a point: after all bombs don't care whether you are a member of a majority or a minority and whether you have a good government or a bad one. But it also did create quite a lot of refugees, and, more problematically, quite a lot of refugees who are not looking forward to settling down in a country that's more appropriate for them, but want to stay somewhere until the war ends, without any wish to properly integrate in the new country. Some of the countries who accept them also sort of expect them to go home after the war, and support them for years without making any integration demands on them. Of course many of those wars turn out to be forever, and people who have lived for years on welfare usually have no intention to go back or to find a job. To complicate matters further, sometimes those wars really do end fast and the war refugees really do go home.

The problem, of course, is that while with the persecuted minorities you usually do know that they need a permanent new home, the war might last 2 months or 20 years. I don't think there is an easy solution to that.

I do however think that refugees should only be taken to places where they will more or less fit in. By that I mean people who prefer to live under the Western system to the West, people who prefer living under Sharia to the countries that have Sharia, people who prefer to live under Communism to Cuba and North Korea, etc.

Unfortunately there are always more refugees than resettlement places for them, and somebody always has to be left behind. For example, the people who would like to live under Sharia and simultaneously receive European-style social benefits can stay where they are and wait for such a country to appear. With Britain permitting Sharia courts nowadays they might even have a chance.

Global attitudes report

Many news sources have quoted the Pew Research Center's global attitudes report yesterday. I am all for news sources reading long papers, picking out some interesting tidbits and digesting it for us, but why is it so rare for them to show some kind of link to the original source? Anyway, the full report is here.

The biggest news: negative attitudes towards Jews and Muslims on the increase almost everywhere.

My first thought, especially upon noticing that for example in Spain the dislike of Jews, Muslims and Christians is fairly high: what do they mean by the questions, and what do the respondents mean by the answers? More specifically, do they mean Christians as the people who truly believe in Jesus as the savior, the holy trinity, etc., or do they mean all the folks originally from a Christian family, most of whom express they Christianity only by celebrating Christmas? If somebody asked me how I feel about the religious group X, I would tend to assume the latter, but I am not sure they meant it, and even if they did, I am not sure it was understood that way.

In short: how large a percentage of the perceived anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian attitudes in each country are just an expression of a general distaste for religion? And how much of the distaste is based on the perception that all/most members of the group are religious?

This reminds me: in Finland I've run several times into people who sort of assume that all the Jews are very religious and actually believe in something, and were a bit disapponted by me. As an ex-boyfriend of mine explained to one of them: "You know how you don't go to church on Sunday? Well, Jews are the people who don't go to a synagogue on Saturday instead."

Another interesting finding is that Muslims are becoming less and less fond of suicide bombings, with Lebanese people's support for suicide bombings falling from 74% in 2002 to 32% now, Pakistanis' from 33% to 5%, and Turks' from 13% to 3%.

Osama is also becoming less and less popular, from 20% to 2% in Lebanon. from 56% to 19% in Jordan. (The biggest decline in Jordan, from about 63% to about 23%, happened between 2005 and 2006. November 9, 2005, by a strange coincidence, happened to be the date of suicide bombings that killed 60 people and 3 suicide bombers in Amman.)

The only country where support for Bin Laden went up, from 44% to 58%, is Nigeria.

On antisemitism: in Western Europe the people under 50 disliked Jews less than the people over 50, in Poland and Russia the other way around.

In Spain, dislike for all three religions is very much up since 2005. Wonder why.

Banks paging Robin Hood

HS says that banks want to have a right to raise a mortgage's interest unilaterally. Not all the time, of course, but only when the bank is totally fucked.

Now that's an interesting idea. Do we, the customers, also get to reduce the interest when we don't have money? Or raise the interest on our bank accounts? "Hi, it's Vera, I am a bit broke, could you pay me a 50% interest on my account instead of whatever it is now?" Cool.

I ain't dead

Just have a very tiring flu. Some evil is living in my throat and keeping me awake at night. Tea and alcohol are exorcising it, but too slowly.

Separate but equal

Helsinki has its own segregated swimming now, for Muslim women only. It's in Jakomäki swimming pool, swimming lessons for Muslim girls only Saturday 9-10:45, free swimming for Muslim women 11-14:30. Infidels need not apply.

Sometime last fall they had swimming hours for immigrant women. Now city of Helsinki Sports Department has it listed as Muslim-women hours.

Different Muslim cultures has different interpretation of Islamic modesty rules, but I'd appreciate pointers at what particular interpretation says that Muslim men can swim with infidels of both sexes, whereas Muslim women can swim in the company of each other, but not in the company of infidel women.

This, however, is not the point. There might be Muslim women who truly and deeply feel that they need their separate swimming time. Damn, I used to like having separate swimming time for myself and my fellow computer science students. We rented the pool for a evening from the student union now and then. The city sports facilities are also available for rent by private groups. This, however, is not Muslim Women's Swimming Club ry renting the place and inviting their members, or some Aisha and Fatima renting it and inviting their friends. This is the city of Helsinki practicing discrimination on the basis of religion.

The issue of sex-separated swimming facilities is pretty similar in my opinion, but for all it's worth, Yrjönkatu pool has separate hours for both men and women, and Muslim women can use it just like anyone else. The fact that some of them seem to resent sharing the pool with infidel women makes one wonder whether the issue is really Islam as such (I've been to a shower with a bunch of religious-looking Bedouin women in Negev, they didn't run away or go blind), or possibly the fact the the parents of some particular African cultures don't want to have to explain to their daughters why everybody else's pussy is different from their own. After all, if vulva and clitoris are unclean, no wonder they don't want to swim in a pool full of them.

A few people in the HS forum defended the policy on the basis of "it isn't hurting anyone" (except for everyone else who might like to use the place on Saturday?) and that it would be wrong to begrudge the Muslim women their separate swimming time, and what's the big deal as long as everyone gets to swim at some point.

Now where have I heard that before? Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), a US Supreme Court decision upholding the doctrine of "separate but equal". I suppose a lot of people would say that a decision the US Supreme Court has made in 1896 should not be relevant in Finland in 2008. I agree. It hasn't even been relevant in the US since 1954.

Muslims have lived in Finland for more than a 100 years now, and somehow managed to survive without their own pool hours until now. A lot of them managed to swim with the opposite sex, or at least with the infidels of the same sex. The native-born Finnish Muslims seem to have no trouble whatsoever. The immigrants, or the native-born Finns who convert into the more restrictive forms of Islam, should understand that this society is not designed for them, and it's up to them to adapt to it.

Yes, having to always reserve the pool privately is quite inconvenient for the kind of Muslims who can't swim in the same pool with infidels. Right. It's supposed to be inconvenient for them. In case somebody did not get the memo, this society has not been designed for the convenience of the fundamentalist Muslims, but of mostly-secular mostly-Lutherans. Live with it.

And no, I don't even think that accommodating requests of immigrant groups is always a bad thing. I just don't think that "we don't want our women to swim with unclean infidels" is a request worthy of being accommodated.

"We can't expect them to learn Finnish, now can we?"

The minister of Labor and the fearless leader of the Greens, Tarja Cronberg, took part in a press conference on security policy in Helsinki on Tuesday.

Quite predictably she thinks that the war in Georgia has no bearing on Finland's security situation, there are no reasons to join NATO or to raise defense spending, etc.

She also demanded that the status on the Russian minority should be secured in the Baltic countries and in Finland, and suggested that Yle should have more Russian-language programming for this purpose.

"Regardless of what happens in Russia and what Russia does, Finland should take care of its growing Russian minority," she said.

However, she said, securing the status of the Russian-speaking minority is not about the security policy. She just happened to mention it during the press conference on security policy for no reason at all.

Why, I am touched. Cronberg wishes to take care of my poor little Russian-speaking self. Medvedev and Putin also just want to protect and take care of my poor little Russian-speaking self, in their own way.

When I was very young and roamed the street of St. Petersburg with less regard for personal safety than is strictly advisable, I found one and only one 100% indicator of an impending rape attempt: if a strange man suddenly volunteered to protect me from bad guys, it always meant that he was about to attack me physically, and the unsolicited words "I'll walk you home, there are a lot of hooligans around, it's not safe on your own" coming from a strange man always made me look for whatever could be used as a weapon.

By a strange coincidence, I feel the same way about politicians.

Seriously, though: what does Cronberg think to achieve by increasing the amount of Russian programming on Yle? Apart from licking Putin's ass, that is.

Russian-speaking people in Finland either speak Finnish, in which case they can watch and listen to the Finnish programming, or should be learning Finnish, in which case they'd do better to learn Finnish than to listen to the Russian programming. Does anyone, even the fearless leader of the Greens, really think that integration of the new immigrants is helped by providing them with entertainment in their native language as opposed to, say, providing them with more Finnish-language classes?

In the time since my arrival to the US we went from one Russian-language newspaper to five TV channels. From all I've seen it really did not improve integration, although at least part of the cause-and-effect went the other way (the less-integrable people came later and created demand for the Russian channels).

Russian-speaking people in Finland already have Russian bookstores, lots of Russian books in the public libraries, and three Russian-language channels that can be ordered on cable TV. What many of them don't have is a good working knowledge of Finnish. A new Russian channel would hardly serve that purpose.

Movies and seats

Been to the movies yesterday. Kung Fu Panda, which was OK, and the new Indiana Jones, which I liked better.

Made me wonder about a few things, not related to these particular two movies:

1. Why do most people seem to dislike the front rows regardless of their actual location, the size of the screen, the angle, the height, etc.?

2. Am I the only person who orders the tickets "one ticket to the movie X, row Y please"? How come they never seem to hear or acknowledge my location request? The conversation usually continues: "is row Z OK"? "No, I would like row Y, please." Row Y invariably has more free space than row Z.

3. What the hell is wrong with the people who want to get up and watch the end credits? I can understand people wanting to get out as soon as the end credits start, although I disapprove of it because they get in the way of those of us watching the credits, but why the hell some of the people who want to watch the credits themselves seem to have a problem with the idea that somebody behind them might want to watch them too, and that they are not quite transparent?

4. What's the point of having places for senior citizens on public transport? If there are no senior citizens around, they don't need them, and if they are around, isn't it nice to offer them a seat even if it isn't a designated senior citizen seat? Are the designated seats just so that everyone knows who should be the first to give up their seats to the elderly?