This is the kind of news you read in the newspapers on and off “Three football players accused of rape”. Then you read how the judge threw a book at them. But thats in America, so really…

Wait up now – actually we do have “American football” here and we do get players come in from the US and we had three football players accused of rape.

Well, this is Finland so the judges don’t throw books. As the rape wasn’t aggravated, and the men had been jailed for a significant amount of time (two months), the sentence was guilty on two counts of rape and one assisting, all three men sentenced to 1,8 months probation. Oh and yes theres damages to be paid to the women in question 4500 euros each. Somehow I find it slightly bizzarre if they’d run out of the house and pushed over someone who broke their hip, thats worth 8400 euros.

I somehow have in inkling thought if these guys had been back “at home” they might not have gotten off with 3000 euros and two months in jail.

But then again theres the Finnish guy in Brazil facing 18 years for killing his girlfriend. He should’ve come home to strangle her, might have gotten off with 3000 euros and two months in jail.

Wow, less than half of those convicted of rape ever serve jail time. Amazing…

According to a news report aired by the commercial television network Nelonen on Sunday, courts in Finland have been handing out relatively lenient sentences in cases of sexual assault – even in some which have led to physical injury.

Nelonen examined all sex crime cases handled by Finnish district courts over the past year and found out that prosecutors and courts have considered acts involving injury to the victim, or in which the woman’s home has been violently broken into, and even in which the victim has been kept a prisoner for several days, to meet the definition of “coercive sexual contact”, a category of sexual assault considered less serious than actual rape.

[...]The Nelonen report found that more than half of those convicted of actual rape have to serve real prison time. Less than one in ten of those convicted of the lesser crime have had to serve custodial sentences.

Well it looks like you can start soon forgetting to stock up for the long holidays. The government has gotten through the wrangling over shop opening hours, and the legislation seems to be ending up as follows:
- Shops can be open 12-18 Sundays except on “Holy Days” say like Pentecost.
- Shops smaller than 400 sq.m can be open 24/7 if they so wish.
- However there is also an amendment that small shops in malls may stay closed on Sundays if they so wish.

When the law gets passed and we step into the shopping era is still to be seen… baby steps, still requires a pole vault to be able to buy your Tylenol at 3am at the Siwa.

I don’t know how much the readers follow the Finnish politics and issues, but so far it seems that the old game of “broken telephone” gets even worse when it is transferred from the reality into a newspaper with a political slant, regurgitated, edited and then translated into a foreign language. One of my favorite authors, Mark Twain wrote of this in his short story “Running for Governor” already in 1870, and nothing much has changed since. So you may see headlines of “Finnish politician sued for blasphemy” but I bet the articles are more or less confusing the issues.

There is no confusion that we still retain a paragraph in the Penal Code on “blasphemy”, actually Ch.17 Par. 11: “Breach of the sanctity of religion “(563/1998). Which enables the courts to sentence people on the grounds of “ridiculing what others regard as holy”. Of course in modern times you can laugh at Jesus and God, but can you laugh at Mohammad?

Double standards if you can’t laugh at both equally – and Finland is a land of equality, isn’t it? Then again theres a few other vague subjective laws in the Penal Code that require only that you be accused of them. You don’t have to find a victim for these crimes which makes them perfect to be used in silencing people. There is a law Ch.11 Par8 – “Ethnic agitation” (578/1995) that says “A person who spreads statements or other information among the public where a certain race, a national, ethnic or religious group or a comparable group is threatened, defamed or insulted shall be sentenced for ethnic agitation to a fine or to imprisonment for at most two years.” Which of course is a noble law. Again the question is, are all races, national, ethnic or religious groups or comparable groups equal before the law? For example, can you say that Finns are prone to drunken killing sprees? So if you can say that, can you say that X are prone to robbing passersby and leeching off welfare?

The vocal (or can you say vocal of someone who writes but doesn’t speak much) anti-multiculturalism blogger and aspiring politician Jussi Halla-aho got into the eye of a shitstorm running for the Helsinki city council (he is now among other things supervising the wanking baboons and lethally biting camels in the board of the Korkeasaari Zoo) and now as a result he’s facing court of his blogpost he made in 2006 that questioned the above equality issues. It is quite important to note that the Green Women had no case and no crime to have investigated – not liking someones opinions isn’t enough grounds.

The text “A few baits for Mika Illman” (the state prosecutor) was in fact the *only* one the prosecutor took upon himself to draw charges upon. Can you call that a hook-line-sinker?

On the one hand I find the whole case totally preposterous, as it clearly has a political agenda. Then again “publishing the Mohammad cartoons” issue has been a watershed so the blasphemy part might prove interesting. A part of me though wants Halla-aho to be sentenced for the agitation, so I can sue the ass off anyone claiming Finland is a cold soggy dark place with drunk wifebeaters who have a difficult language.

Today a verdict came down of a heinous crime of smuggling in snuff in the Pietarsaari area. Now for the background, snuff is illegal in the EU except in Sweden. Its illegal to export from Sweden or sell outside Sweden commercially. So you can go to Sweden on a boat and bring in a roll, but thats it. However in certain regions, especially Ostrobothnia the snuff was already a part of the culture so these restrictions were seen unfair and the system continued.

For smuggling in some 500 000 cans of snuff the main culprit was sentenced to two years four months unconditional jailtime, and to pay the government 1 084514 euros of source tax along with his codefendant who got a two years probational jail sentence. Some ten gas station owners were sentenced to probational jail time and day fines for entry on smuggled items, selling substances prohibited in the law etc.

Meanwhile elsewhere a gang who raped a 15-year old girl got 2 years ten months and to pay 24 000 in damages… a drunk driver who ran over and killed a pedestrian got 2 years in jail, added with the probationary 60 days he got two days before the accident for… drunk driving…

While bringing in snuff is worth a bit over a million, burning a church when you’re 18 brings you 6,5 years in jail and 4,3 million euros in damages. If you keep your flame under the lid and molest a number of 6-12 year old children in the time frame of 10 years you get 7,5 years in jail and to pay 80 000 in damages.

Liberty and justice for all.

The Turkish Embassy in Helsinki was subjected to a molotov coctail attack on Monday night around 3am. The door of the embassy was burnt and and a staff member was hospitalized for smoke inhalation, but there wasn’t further damage reported. The police have arrested four youths suspected of the attempted arson. The Finnish security police is investigating the arson along with the Helsinki criminal police, which haven’t released further speculations of the motives.   In their brief statement the police said the youth suspected of arson are Finnish residents, but some have “Kurdish background”. The Turkish Embassy has stated they are suspecting Kurdish PKK as there was a similar incident ath the Turkish Consulate in Salzburg, Austria on Sunday night . There was a demonstration in front of the Embassy the previous day objecting the treatment of the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan currently jailed in Turkey. The Finnish minister of foreign affairs Alexander Stubb has condemned the strike and assures Finland is taking further measures to provide safety for embassies and their staff.

Martti Ahtisaari, the 10th president of Finland (1994-2000) has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts”.

Ahtisaari served for a long time in the diplomatic corps and was quite unknown as a public figure before switching to the UN and being appointed as the UN special representative in charge of UNTAG to see through the Namibian independece. As Finland was recovering from the recession he was the perfect “neutral” candidiate for presidency and steered Finland towards the EU. After his presidency Ahtisaari returned to the UN to work as a peace envoy and was involved among other missions with Aceh and Kosovo negotiations.

Of course the Russians occupying his birthtown have expressed their objections to awarding Ahtisaari the Nobel Peace Prize as they’re still cross over Kosovo. The Russian NATO envoy Dmitri Rogozin said that Ahtisaari was a puppet of the USA and got the prize as a reward for sabotaging the Kosovo accord. Yeah, maybe it should have been awarded to Putin instead.

I always *love* it when Finland gets into international news. Well, this time over the issue was boiling hot domestically and no wonder. The HS international Edition basic description of the events. Basically, a new editor-in-chief Johanna Korhonen, was hired to the Eastern Lapland regional newspaper Lapin Kansa which is published by a big Finnish publishing house Alma Media. And she was fired before she started in her job the reason being given there was a “lack of trust”   Well, the lady in question, who has been among other things the editor-in-chief of the newspaper of the Finnish Union of Journalists cried “foul” and stated in a press release she got sacked because she is living in a registered partnership with a woman.  The CEO of Alma Media Kai Telanne stated that the reason of course is not that, nothing discriminatory etcetera, but the fact that her partner is active in municipal politics while the editor should be politically nonaligned and the CEO said she had been fired for lying in her job interview, and she is just using the lesbian card.

And everybody thought in the traditional Finnish manner the issue would be brushed under the carpet.

Oops, not quite so… today had the Alma Media board of directors publishing a very curt statement of how they stand behind the CEO and do not want to discuss issues “that do not belong in the public”. Laughing my ass off as Alma Media publishes the worst scandal tabloid Iltalehti…

So what is the opinion – the current editor-in-chief of Lapin Kansa stated that an “while nobody asks what people do in their private lives as long as they keep int the closet an openly gay person would find it difficult to act as the editor-in-chief as the newspaper represents the region”.  Well, the region represented nor the newspaper doesn’t wish to be labelled as a redneck bible-belt hickdom it seems. The editors of the Lapin Kansa newspaper have demanded the CEO of Alma Media quits and is removed from the board of Lapin Kansa, The Lapland University’s women studies researchers has started rallying a boycott against Alma Media and its been said people have been canceling their subscriptions. The opinion is still out whether what Korhonen alleges is true – if it is then this is one of the most blatant discrimination cases to pop up.

Legal experts and journalists have come forth stating that personal issues should not be taken up in job interviews, and that as each person is responsible for themselves it is unfair to have some persons job depending on their spouses political activity. The government has stated that the issue should be investigated thoroughly – there was a debate but the government wanted facts as the situation is unclear. Meanwhile the biggest shareholder, a private investor stated that the “publicity is good” and that Alma Media stocks are on the rise. The Nordic newspapers also picked up on the story, especially the Danes as they have also a holding in Alma Media.

Yay! Publicity!  It seems that anything that is said or done in this case will cause another crap sandwich to appear in the lunchbox.

EDIT: 3.10 update HS International Edition of the new developments

The YLE scandal investigative journalism programme MOT broadcasted last week has caused diplomatic strain between Finland and Slovenia, both small EU countries whose populations probably never much were aware of each others existence. The MOT programme revealed the Finnish defence contractor Patria of paying bribes to gain a lucrative deal on ATV’s for the Slovenian armed forces. The police investigation on the case along with an investigation of a previous deal of howitzers to Egypt had started in May, and the CEO of Patria had stood down from his position. Patrias deals before such as that with Poland also raised some questions but no investigations were started. As the Finnish NBI investigations are noted for their rapidity, the case is expected to go to the prosecutor in October and a possible court case to take place sometime next year.

Meanwhile in Slovenia the MOT programme caused an uproar, as the programme suggests that on the receiving end of the bribes was the sitting prime minister Janez Janša, who is along with his party just preparing for a tight parliamentary election. The Slovenian government even produced two diplomatic notes over the MOT programme to the Finnish government demanding proof of the accusations. Despite both YLE and Patria are to some extent government-owned, the Finnish government said that they can not much do anything about the situation at present. Janša has denied any bribery even been suggested to him by Patria, though he said the other party in the tender process did as for meetings. Which seems very interesting indeed.

The can of hairy worms the MOT programme opened is actually an old one, but it does seem to squirm vigorously. The contract was signed in December 2006 and was the biggest arms deal in Slovenia so far and thus a huge issue in Slovenia, basically as the other rejected tender was from a Slovenian company later sold to an American conglomerate. Allegations of bribery started escalating in Slovenia, going deep into the country’s leadership, including politicians and senior civil servants so a parliamentary commission of inquiry was established in March 2007 to investigate the tender process relating to the sales contract. From what I understand the Slovenians were manufacturing the Steyr-Puch Pandur I on a licence and the competition was between the Patria AMV, Piranha and Pandur II with obvious logistical benefits. Now the Slovenian officials interviewed in the MOT programme were politicaly opposing the current government, and some had ties with the Slovenian contractor. Sour grapes maybe? Or then maybe not… in any case the election race in Slovenia got a surprisingly well-timed injection of scandal.

Cliff notes: Lord of War

The Ministry of Social and Health affairs has plans on making a public registry of licenced healthcare professionals. The registry would be public, on the internet and would have such information as the person’s name, birthdate, qualification and registration number and any restrictions. This kind of information is available already by a phone call, but the ministry suggests that this way the public could easily verify the treatments they get are provided by licenced professionals. The medical staff on the other hand opposes this kind of public registry, and says people won’t choose healthcare professions as a career if there is such a registry. Mainly the nurses are worried of stalkers and such.

Travelling especially to the USA got a bit more interesting now that all new passports should be biometric. When I heard first of this biometric thing I was wondering if they had a strip of my DNA there like in every half-decent sci-fi movie or at least a retinal scan like they have in every spy movie, but the “biometric data” is as boring as a mugshot, and starting later next year fingerprints.

Or are fingerprints boring? They’ve been used for over a hundred years in forensics to identify people, as fingerprints are unique to each person. You have every other crime movie out there having someone dusting for fingerprints, even in CSI they still do it though it requires super glue and and hot air. So its definitely something even your average joe on the street recognizes whats it for.

The Aamulehti today ripped a headline over the newly appointed Police Commissioner Mikko Paatero wanting to form a fingerprint registry of Finnish citizens. Within ten years all adult Finnish citizens would be fingerprinted as fingerprinting would be a prerequisite of getting a passport (and probably ID card as well) The reason given is that with the registry it would be impossible to use forged passports and of course it would enable the police to find out their perps quite effectively. The Data Protection Ombudsman Reijo Aarnio is all against the idea of establishing a national fingerprint register.

In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people’s windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.

There is an old saying: “The manure pile won’t stink unless you go poking it.” and it seems there is nothing better to do than go poking during the summer. In the beginning of the summer there were some remarks made of doping in Finland, and as a few former skiers denied vehemently the use EPO-hormones or any knowledge of blood-doping – last week the ex-coach Kari-Pekka Kyrö came forward making a number of statements implying that the Finnish Skiing Association wasn’t as clean as they presented themselves during the 2001 Lahti Hemohes scandal. And his stories have been corroborated by others, so the story is opening up daily. As the Finnish News Agency chief editor and reporter were convicted of libel in 1999 due to claims of doping that were at the time “unfounded”, the NBI has reopened the investigation. Better late than never I guess.

Another case not as ancient re-surfacing is the infamous Sonera-book which the supreme court returned to the assizes overturning the inadmissibility of evidence. Now the public opinion on the case would be rather than trying to find the author to find “Where disappeared the money of Sonera” as the book title reads. They bought some air in Germany if I recall it correctly.

Maybe I should start a properly to go with the retro feelings and buy a Jopo.

The Helsingin Sanomat today reports of a court case where two teenage boys aged 15 and 16 were sentenced for “sexual abuse” though “performed as a young person” so they got 50 day fines each and to pay damages amounting to 1600 euros. A slap on the wrist maybe, as 50 days amounts for 300 euros, but…  The boys had enticed a girl aged 10 to strip on a webcam through the “Messenger” net.  The details shall be obscure as the case was behind closed doors and the court records sealed until 2068.  Now I just wonder where is the responsibility of the parents letting their 10-year old strip on a webcam?

Minister of the Interior Anne Holmlund has called for age limits and supervision to protect children and young people on the internet.

Addressing a seminar on the use of the internet by young users, Holmlund noted that on-line message boards are popular among the young. For that reason, she feels that they should have security personnel just like entertainment venues in the offline world do.

LOL!! There’s gazillions of forums out there, how exactly does she expect for the administrators to check people’s ages?? And how about forums outside the country?

This piece of news from the Helsingin Sanomat really rang up high on the bizarrometer.

OK, so we have teenage angst and too much tv:

Police suspect that a 16-year-old Helsinki girl paid a 19-year-old man to kill her mother.

And what was with this “handgun ownership” so rampant in Finland then?

A moment later the woman felt a strong blow to the back of her head… One of the men had shot the woman with a crossbow – the kind that is used to shoot small game, police say.

Kinda… medieval this one.

Police say that the 16-year-old daughter had promised the 19-year-old man a cash payment for the killing. The daughter did not live with the mother at the time of the attack. The man had persuaded two 20-year-old friends to join him. The crime was planned at the Espoo home of a fourth man, who now faces charges of aiding and abetting. The suspects, all native-born Finns, do not have any prior criminal records.

Kids, don’t eat that yellow snow.