A little piece of news on some “Goth and immigrant gang fight at the central railway station” that happened last Friday did not get that much attention at first. Yesterday the “City” section of the Helsingin Sanomat wrote on “Racist drunk loudmouthing aggravates the Station Square” .

Reading this got me suddenly to realise that I am a conservative old fart - I was thinking someone ought to give these kids a good old-fashioned asswhooping. But then I realized it was exactly the same in my youth. Teenagers hanging out and occasionally fighting at the central station is nothing new under the sun, or rather under the moon as its never been the safest places at nighttime.

I was slightly wondering of the original article when it came out as the “Goths” are generally not your violent kind, but the recent article explains the police and the press got the groups mixed up… they all dress in black anyways. Then I looked again at the picture… Now what do you see here:

Not your regular pissis-teen girls are they? Parents should really be proud of their teenage daughters… recycling bottles and all that. Now what does strike into *your* eye as wrong in that picture? A Finn probably doesn’t even blink at the 24-case, but look at the young ladies’ jackets. Yeah, thats not the airforce swastika and it reads “Hitler” in the nametag… While on the one hand I am proud of the emancipation and equality as in my youth only vocational school amis-guys would have been wearing something stupid like this… do the parents know what their little darlings are up to? “Yeah, mom, don’t be so calcinated, this is the new trend in Helsinki Gothic Lolita fashion, don’t you know the fashion scene?”

On the subject of youth cultures… it still revolves around the music scene. “Heavies” and “Metallists” existed in my youth, though we called them “Rockers” or “Longhairs”. “Goths” seem to have taken the niche of “Punks” to scare the bejesus out of old ladies, though you see a few old school spikes now and then. But theres the eco-anarchists and autonomes who have the anti-establishment ideology strong. “Deaners” (cf. James Dean) and “Teddys” (Elvis Clones) are also a disappeared rarity, but you see them occasionally as well as the “Shadys” (old hippies). “Fruits” are what we called “Disco-Glitter”… but the “Skins” seem to have taken the name and a few fashion items and the ideology off the one subgroup of the old school skinheads and become something I wouldn’t recognize that easily. “Hoppers” of course, or “Fubu-Gangstas” were around in the 1990’s already…

So it wasn’t any different in my youth. The Rockers beat up the Punks and vice versa… and the Skins went around sniffing glue and beating up everybody…. the police and officials say theres nothing new. The kids want to shock and offend and theres always a subgroup that wants some good old fashioned ultra-violence.

O tempora o mores.

Anytime I order from Amazon in the states, I never have to pay customs taxes, the package comes directly to my local Posti - but other packages often require me to visit Customs near the airport and pay tax (the journey to Vantaa is more annoying than the tax itself). Not sure why Amazon slips through the cracks. Books are taxed differently, maybe they think my package full of DVD’s is only books?

More Finns are eager to purchase goods online, thanks to the plummeting US dollar. According to Finnish Customs, online purchases from the United States have boomed. The most common purchases are car parts.

All packages originating from outside the EU are required to go through Customs at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. Officials say that four out of five of those packages have been ordered online.

“Consumers shop online because the dollar is so cheap. It’s less expensive to make purchases on the web than to shop in stores in Finland,” said Customs official Anja Jauhiainen.

Last year, the number of packages that had to go through customs grew by some 20 percent. In January, that number was 40 percent higher than the previous year.

Finland’s alcohol policy is one of the longest running jokes in Europe, and has continually proven to be an abysmal failure at influencing people’s behavior. Its folly revolves around one key principle: Overpricing of beer and wine, by the state monopoly, causes people to find better value in relatively price-inelastic hard liquor or spirits. To make matters worse, kids are hit especially hard by Finland’s failed policy, and for yet an additional reason: by European standards, Finland’s drinking age is set unrealistically high, at 18. It doesn’t correspond well with the widely accepted statistical fact, that Kids begin experimenting with alcohol many years prior to that age.

A third of the 15- and 16-year-olds interviewed for a poll said they had drunk spirits over the course of the previous month, the National Research Centre for Welfare and Health (Stakes) said in a report on Wednesday.

Whereas those are common ages for kids in every western country to start drinking, it’s not universal for kids start their drinking careers with hard liquor and spirits. That condition exists mainly in Finland, where children are initiated by raiding dad’s Koskenkorva or Finlandia stash. Beer is too cumbersome and conspicuous in most cases; hard liquor is more compact and available to pilfer. Not surprisingly, seeing young-teenagers (even pre-teens!) puking in public parks is a rather common occurrence in Finland. It always has been.

But it’s not common in Germany, where the statutory age for beer and wine is 15. The age for hard liquor is much higher. This achieves the healthy effect of channeling young people’s choices into the lower-alcohol beverage groups, rather than the high-potency ones that are so popular by default in Finland. In Germany, 3% beer-cola mixers seem to be favorites among the ’skateboarder crowd.’ They simply buy them at their local gas stations for about 1-Euro. Those sporty-looking cans have spread across most of the European continent—and without breaking parents’ budgets!

It’s obviously a good sign, because kids will continue learning to handle themselves responsibly from a young age…with the help of lower-potency fuel. I can attest to it, as my cousin and I have fond memories of being sent to the local biergarten in Munich after dinner, for tall ‘n tasty Hefeweissbier desserts. At 14-years-old, there was nothing better! It proves that some traditions should continue into eternity. Fortunately, most of Europe isn’t following Finland’s example. But how to get Finland to adopt a wiser European approach?

From HS.fi, 27.2.2008

 The article here mentions that the European Court of Justice judges are on a giraffe hunt, and that journalism was the giraffe. When you see a giraffe, you definitely recognize it, but yet it is hard to describe.

The journalist is a little confused though, I believe. He keeps talking in his article about how the European Court of Justice is going to help the Finnish government define what is journalism, or define what a giraffe is. The data protection ombudsman, Reijo Aarnio, stated that he felt Veropörssi and the SMS service were not journalism. The Finnish court and the data protection board did not agree. So now the case is in the European Court of Justice. And the question is: “is this giraffe journalism?”

What this journalist fails to realize is the real giraffe here is that residents of Finland who earn money have data personal collected from them, and then it is used for a purpose that was not its original purpose, without the right to object, and also sold for money by the government. The personal data also ends up floating around in the internet outside the EC economic area. The real giraffe here is that the data subject has no rights over his or her personal data, which goes against many principles, like Human Rights, the EU Basic Rights, the EU Personal Data directive, etc.

So I do have confidence that the court can see the real giraffe and not the fake one that is being paraded to them.

Thanks to Simoniito for the tip.

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Hat Tip to Dan “The Man” for the link!

Original article from 19, Feb.

The German government illegally bought banking personal data from Lichtenstein, in order to find Germans who were keeping their money there. They have already cracked down on some people who have been collecting interest on their money tax free there. The German government should bloody well know why people might want to hide their money away in another country in a secret account. Only around 60 or so years ago, the government was killing millions of Jews, other ethnic minorities, and political dissidents and masses of refugees were running all around Europe, trying to find somewhere safe to go. Nazis were simply taking peoples’ money and property. They were taking peoples’ gold teeth right out of their mouths.

Lichtenstein has very strict banking secrecy. It has been labeled as an uncooperative tax haven country by the OECD and there is a lot of political pressure for them to comply with banking transparency demands. So far they haven’t- Luxembourg and Switzerland have both compromised with the EC demands for imposing taxation on non-domiciled peoples’ interest on their accounts. A person who has money in Switzerland or Luxembourg nowadays must either pay tax on interest to that country or report the income in their own country.  Still both countries hold the strict banking secrecy as something very sacred. By 2011, the taxes will be so high, that it will be cheaper to report the income in most countries. But will people report it? Reporting the income exposes that the person has or has had money in one of those places, so I doubt that anyone will start reporting income, even if there is 35% tax there and 28% here, for example. It won’t repatriate money, if that’s what they are hoping for.

Luxembourg has an average income level of about twice that of Finland, and I look for that to go even higher, now that the government is making income on non-domiciled peoples’ money. Luxembourg, Switzerland and Lichtenstein are all going to become very wealthy countries. They have billions there in the banks and a large percentage of the population is employed in the banking industry.

Some libertarians have money in offshore accounts in order to avoid  government interference with their money matters. And then the Finnish government also has interesting ideas of how to use personal data that is forcefully collected for taxation,meaning you don’t have a choice whether or not to give the personal data: they sell it and publish it in the newspapers. I am still astonished to think about it. Quite the opposite “meininki” from elsewhere in the EU, especially Luxembourg.

There has been talk over in the USA of having a federal sales tax, which would put an end to a lot of the nasty capital gains and income taxes. In essence, the USA could become the world’s banking paradise if they were to enact such a thing. It would totally undermine the need to hide money in offshore accounts.

Last time I wrote about this, I found I had bought some noise canceling earphones for 3 times the internet price, and also found that they didn’t really work. So I set out to buy a new pair to try. I went to Amazon.com, because I have shopped there in the past. I read many reviews at Amazon and elsewhere. I found one pair of relatively cheap headphones that had gotten good reviews, the JBL Reference 510 noise cancelling headphone. OK, I went and selected it in Amazon, and then went to the checkout. It was about 35 EUR. They would not sell it to me, because I didn’t have an address in the USA. Then I tried a pair of Sony headphones - same thing. I tried 8 different brands, same thing.

That got boring, so I thought I would try to Google “mail forwarding”. The first hit I got in my S60 browser was Access USA. I found that it was 15 dollars a month to rent an address in the USA, and the postage forwarding is much cheaper than anything I have heard of. Amazon has a lot of deals where there is free shipping, so I will only need to pay for the shipping from the new address to here. So I promptly registered and got an address.

I went back the Amazon.com, bought the headphones using the new address, and now I already have them. Another workmate is going to buy himself a pair of Grado headphones to my new address. I still might just have to go ahead and pay the price for the the best brand, Bose, and a pair of in-the-ear buds for flying. Etymotic sells some really highly isolating earbuds that block out almost all noise.

Many things that Amazon.com sells, you can also find at Amazon.de or Amazon.co.uk for often a much more expensive price, much more than is accounted for in the expensive 17.5% (UK) or 16% (DE) VAT. (The EU economy is going to have its bubble burst pretty soon, i speculate. The enthusiasm of buying and selling things in and from other countries is dying down, especially since it hasn’t really been realized in Finland. for example with the exorbitant car taxes and all the protectionism and bureaucracy needed to protect the grossly bloated tax. There is no free movement of goods there. There seems to be a case going on right now where the EC is taking Finland to court over the car tax. )

I can already see the increase in my productivity. Now I just need a pair of horse blinders, to keep visual distractions from the side to a minimum. Sometimes the workplace is a bit like a circus.

Did I fall asleep and wake up in the Soviet Union..!?

Social Democratic Party MP Erkki Tuomioja has raised the idea of rationing petrol.

At a discussion forum in Vantaa for SDP members campaigning for the chairmanship, Tuomioja said that a limit could be imposed on personal gasoline consumption. According to his suggestion, everyone would be issued gasoline coupons, and those that did not use the coupons could sell them.

He said this would create environmentally-friendly petrol market.

Hat Tip to unclesam for the link!

The Danish Berlingske Tidende had a little interesting piece of news. The Danish Government has budgeted 70 million Danish Crowns to provide medical heroin to “serious addicts” along with methadone treatment.  I guess the next logical step for Finland is to start giving medical vodka to alcoholics. Awaiting the next budget round with anticipation.

I think we’re doomed with that sauna picture soon.

The Finnish government has recently gotten a nasty note from Thailand. The Thais revere their Royality quite highly, and as one of the elderly Royal Princesses died there was a webpage done to commemorate her passing… well, I can’t well link to it as it is banned by the secret DNS list made up by the Finnish police and delivered by black helicopters for the Finnish ISP’s to block child pornography sites. And the Thais are slightly… not amused.

Which thing, child pornography blocking, nothing new since the initiative 2006, has been done before by Denmark (since 2005 with 98% coverage), Norway and Sweden… not to mention a lot of other countries along with a lot of other more severe blocking as say is the case with China. So I don’t really understand what the uproar here in Finland has been about - could it be because the whole system is - maybe perhaps slightly flawed? Now if FFT gets banned thats because we linked to that Matti Nikki’s site which also got blocked, so lets get Wikipedia banned first. I mean Pakistan managed to ban YouTube from half the world so we can’t really do any worse than that. Actually they might though, as the Saudi Arabian net censorship was designed and run by a Finnish company, so I bet there is the know-how somewhere here on how to block stuff.

The Finnish Minister of Gol… erm… Communications, Suvi Linden, has gotten flak over her law proposal of the mandatory blocking. Some people actually seen a computer before, ph34rd l33t h4×0rz from the Electronic Frontier Finland ,who also commented on Matti Nikki’s site being banned, have suggested she might not be getting a hole in one with that piece of legislation necessarily.

The list delivered to the ISP’s is still a voluntary one, hence the want for the legislation. A few smaller ISP’s have said they won’t implement it and a few bigger ISP’s haven’t had the resources to implement it yet, maybe trying to avoid routing snags that will by all probability become more common before the IPV6 addresses become the standard.
At the end of the day I think none of the freedom advocates really want to be labeled as child pornography advocates. Add to the mix different jurisdictions and legislations and you definitely don’t get to figure out any easy solution that would satisfy all - be it the flower-hatted aunties or the l33t h4×0rz someone will stay unsatisfied.  On the other hand the draconian big brother of 1984 -label is a bit unfair, the police doesn’t want to be wearing the dunce cap looking silly, but what the minister forgets its her own hands on the purse strings. One big word often neglected - Resources! You need to have someone surfing the net verifying the data, and I don’t think they have enough money to even get a T1 at the NBI with the current funding policies. And prioritising doesn’t help either “Can’t come save the kitten from the tree, we’re surfing for porn…”

I doubt there will be a solution ever 100% satisfactory for everybody; but then again in a democracy they claim it is all right if it is good enough for the majority.

…why can’t I see this page?

Have you ever bought a bottle of bottled water? If you did you pay attention to where it was from? How much did you pay for it? Welcome to one of the biggest and most dishonest scams on the earth today.

Now that airlines have made it against the rules to take more the 100 ml (?) of liquids onto an airplane, that the only water you can find in the airports is bottled water. Last time I was passing through Heathrow, they were selling mostly only Évian water, imported from France, for over one quid a bottle. Some people are making good money selling something that is basically free.

In the USA, you can buy a whole 10 or 20 pack of bottled water for a dollar or two, which you may think is a good deal, but what about all the plastic garbage that you and other people are filling up the landfills with? What about all the trucks that are transporting those crates of bottled water around for you to buy, crowding the highways and using fuel ?

Some celebs pay a premium price for Voss bottled water, imported all the way from Norway. My wife heard that Madonna takes baths in Voss water. Some others will drink water imported all the way from Fiji. Think of all the energy used to transport the water, something that most people have good access to.  It is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard of, shipping water from one place to another place that already has clean water.

In Finland, in the land that probably has the most readily available drinkable water in Europe or perhaps even in the world, the locally bottled water probably costs the most in the world. A bottle of no-name locally bottled water here costs over one Euro.

Is the bottled water any better than municipal water? Sometimes the delivered bottled water can have many times the amount of bacteria in it than the municipal water, especially the clean municipal water in Finland, which is often spring water. (with the temporary exception of Nokia) Some Finnish lakes are so clean, you could drink straight from them. Most lakes that have a municipal beach also have postings of the bacteria ppm content. There you can see first hand how clean it is. On the other hand, the water from the ground can indeed be polluted or have dangerous microbes in it, which does justify buying bottled water or purifying it yourself. I have been to places where the municipal water is not drinkable, or even always available, like Nairobi, Kenya for example, especially during the dry season. There it has to be filtered through ceramic filters before being drunk.

Maybe you should think twice next time before succumbing to the great scam. Just take one of your deposit bottles, fill it up with your municipal water, cork it, and take it with you next time you think you will need water to drink while on the move. Save energy and save your money for something more interesting.

I think I’d like a second opinion…

The Finnish Competition Authority has launched an investigation over the Finnish supermarket chains. At present, 85% of the market is divided between three big chains, the S-group, the K-group and Tradeka. The investigation will look for price fixing and illegal cartels, especially deals made between manufacturers and the chains. The phenomenon of centralized markets isn’t anything peculiar to Finland as such; in the UK 75% of the market is in the hands of 4 big operators.Meanwhile in the EU, some 439 Europarliamentarians have demanded the EU-Commission to investigate the big pan-European supermarket chains, such as Tesco and Carrefour for similar allegations of price-fixing and leaning on the manufacturers. Finland is expecting more foreign competition as Tradeka, with a 12% slice of the cake is owned by Swedish capital investors who are bound to sell at some time, and the big operators in Finland, S-Group and K with some 40% and 35% of the market share respectively cannot buy Tradeka straight off due to competition legislation. Wonder what the new year brings.

A 50 year old man on sickness pension was found dead in his apartment in Helsinki. He had been dead there for 3 years. Apparently, what triggered someone noticing his being gone was that his automatic account transfers for paying the apartment maintenance fee weren’t going through, because his account had gone empty. The neighbours had apparently not noticed any smell. He was found on the 18th of January, but this was in the news today. Iltalehti was the first to tell about this incident.

It makes one wonder what kind of lonely life a person like this must have lived in order to lay dead for 3 years in a high rise apartment building in Helsinki and not be noticed. Where are his siblings, children, or parents? It also makes one wonder about the social welfare state.

See also: http://www.ess.fi/?article=184829

Sooooooo sorry I’ve been away, this new job of mine is killing me, it’s nothing but work and sleep. Super dooper big thanks (again and again) to Hank, Kristian, and Sirkuspelle for continuing to pump out great articles! Until I return back to normal, here’s an awesome new track and music video from Finnish electropop band, Retropop…