What happened was Mr. Soini leader and presidential candidate of the ”Finns” party telling people whom he voted for.  Previously he had told the media he would only tell whom he voted for on the election day, but this was not to be true as he yesterday decided to tell everyone of whom he voted for. To tell you the truth, I was not shocked at all by the fact, that he earlierly lied about the time when he would tell his vote, as his party has been moving for such an obvious path of questionable ethics. In fact in my opinion they have betrayed their voters, but that is a matter of a nother post. I was not a bit surpriced of whom he chose to vote for in the second round after he had fallen from the contest in the first round. His party has been campaigning for the votes of the labourers by evoking the worst possible negative feelings people could have, like racism and other forms of fear. Oh, do not get me wrong, they have officially denounced racism, but when one listens to what their supporters have to say about immigrants, the racism is quite open. This is of course populism in the extreme, but it is interresting and quite revealing that the leader of this party has now declared he will vote for the conservative party “Kokoomus” candidate Mr. Niinistö. The same gentleman who has previously made some quite interresting remarcks like how the public library system should not be free of charge and how the “illegal strikes” should be punished more severely. I will not endulge here as to why I think the library system should be free, or why such punishment for strikes is ultimately wrong. If someone wants to know what I think about those, you can engage me in the comment section. Sufficient to say, that the campaign of Mr. Niinistö is largely supported by the greatest industrialists of Finland and their support groups. He was also supported in the previous parliamentary elections by the lobby group “Kehittyvien maakuntien Suomi” by some 10 000 euros, that has been on trial during the last year for corruption, though this scandal has not much diminshed the popularity of Mr. Niinistö, for some reason unknown to me. 

Why did the declaration of Mr. Soini so affect me then, if the content was much as I expected it to be? Well, I have in my previous posts commented how he seems to have hard time in keeping controll over his party representatives embarresing comments. Now, to my surprise he made one fringing common sense by himself. Usually he seems quite opportunistic and calculating about his comments, so it is hard not to believe this one was also premeditated. He said that he chose to vote for Mr. Niinistö, because he would make a better supreme commander to the Finnish armed forces. What was he referring to by this? Yes, the only contester on the second round of elections to Mr. Niinistö is Mr. Haavisto, who is one of the small minority of Finnish males who has not served in the army. I find it hard to believe that Mr. Soini actually believes that the fact that Mr. Niinistö has the rank of captain in the army reserve really makes much difference. Mr. Soini holds the rank of corporal in the same reserve, but had the audacity to puthimself up for candidacy. Surely he did not think he could have challenged a captain, with his own lowly rank, if he actually thought it was important, what is the particular military training of the candidate for the job of a president?

Most Finnish presidents have had no rank what so ever in the army. And Mr. Soini is well aware of this. He must be, if he is not totally ignorant of the office he was striving to. Is he calculating his audience has no clue of this fact? It is simply due to the fact most Finnish presidents were born before Finnish nation and the compulsory service code and because one of them is a woman, who do not have to serve in the Finnish armed forces.

Maybe we should look for the answer from what else Mr. Soini said when he defended his support to this conservative party candidate. He said that Mr. Niinistö would have better transatlantic relations. Now, we Finns do have a very strong faith in our own capabilities to protect our nation by our own army. That is why NATO membership is not popular in Finland at all. Finnish people percieve the NATO as a troublemaker, and a tool for the sole superpower the US to act without the proper support from the UN to attack sovereign nations at will. Finns generally do not want to be any part of this, as we have experience of our own, how easily stronger nations use their power against us the smaller ones by declaring we are harbouring terrorists.  The supporters of the “Finns” party come from people who are especially suspicious against the EU and the NATO, since many of them are generally suspicious of anything foreign. While Mr. Soini is supporting Mr. Niinistö he has a narrow path to thread on.

From the posters of the two leading contenders for the presidency, neither would be alligable to the high office of president. The poster of Mr. Haavisto declares that he is the negotiator for the government. Well, the clever play with words in Finnish does not translate to English, but we actually have an official negotiator for government and it is a completely different job from that of the president, so  it would seem he is applying for the wrong job. Mr. Niinistös poster declares, that a precidency is work, or something on that line. But it is written wrong in Finnish, so it really does not give a very reliable impression as to how he would handle that responsible job. 

On the second round I will give my support to Mr. Haavisto of the “Greens” party. Much more to oppose Mr. Niinistö with his market liberalistic ideals (notice the contradiction – he is the candidate of the conservative party, but supports liberalistic idealism), than to support Mr. Haavisto. Do not take me wrong. I think Mr. Haavisto would make a great president, as he is an educated man with calm attitude. Also I think he would make a great supreme commander to our armed forces, because he has wide experience from the conflict zones of this word and vision as to how crisis management works. He has worked for the UN in various areas of conflict from Afghanishtan, Iraq, Palestine, Balkans and Sudan to Liberia and researched the effect these have on the enverioment. These are the actual skills a political leader who works to guide armed forces should have, both in the case of current world situation where our military is more engaged in different UN peace keeping missions, or in a hypothetical situation where we would need to defend our national integrity.

“Hannibal ante portas!” When the Punic warlord Hannibal son of Hamilkar Barka had made his extraordinary march with elephants and all to Italy from Hispania across the Pyrenees and the Alps many miracles were witnessed in Rome and in Roman held cities of Italy. Clearly they were signs from gods for the Romans to be wary of this new adversary. Among these miracles were  such things as a child of only six months of age shrieking: “Triumph!” Other miracles mentioned were an oxen climbing to a three storey high building just to jump from the roof to the ground, and a burning ship in the sky, a lightning strike on the temple of Hope. In the city of Lavunium the holy spear had moved by itself and a raven had flown into the temple of Juno to sit down on the bed of the goddes. Near Amiternum people reported to have seen ghosts in the human shape that wore white clothes. In Picenum a hail of stones had fallen and in Caere the staffs with oracle quotations inscribed into them had shrinked. In Gaul a wolf had taken a sword straight out of a scabbard of a soldier and ran away after that. Clearly all these are portents of a disaster. Are they not? They were passed by to us by Polybius, a historian whose accounts of the second Punic war (among other events of the time)  is the major source on what happened, since he lived through it and was a close personal friend of Scipio Africanus who defeated Carthago.

Do you my reader have difficulties to believe, that all these things told to Polybius really happened? It is not know why any of the people who claimed to have witnessed had to gain from telling these stories and their faith in their own stories was never tested in any way we know of. Exept, that many of these could have been witnessed by other people who would have had the opportunity to deny having been there and not having witnessed anything of the sorts. Some of these miracless are of religious type, so it is quite possible that some people had invested their faith in them. Events that happened in temples were most propably witnessed by priests of some sort, and their word was of course undisputable. Others were events that happened in public places so the amount of witnesses and possible counter claims would have been great indeed. No counter claims however appear in the text by Polybius.

Let us take them one by one. The very young child sreaming a singular word that does not refer to anything, exept if one is very keen on finding a connection to the on going attack by Hannibals forces. It took for several years before any triuphs could be arranged in Rome, for Hannibal if anyone was a victorious general. It is an extraordinary event, but not an impossible one. Wether there is any divine guidance behind such an event is a matter of opinions and taste. And of course it depends on ones own faith on Juppiter and other Roman gods, how one is inclined to interprete the event.

Now, the oxen committing suicide alledgedly happened near the cattle market so it must have had a multitude of witnesses. It is a very unlikely event. We may assume that it is possible that an oxen got scared of something and escaped to the insula only to run of from its roof, but because the event is such a strange one, a person with deep faith in the gods could easily come to the conclusion, that it was a sign of something. And as we know something very special was going on in the world at the moment.

The burning ship in the sky is my personal favourite among these. Was it a UFO? Well, the burning object was identified as a ship. This gives it a tubular form as most ships of that era were such, but wether or not it had any rigging is not mentioned by Polybius. Something wisible in the sky certainly had to be witnessed by several people, was it their common opinion that the burning object resembled a ship, we do not know.

The lightning hitting the temple of Hope is a nasty portent of course, but as we today know lightning is an athmospheric phenomenon caused by electricity and does not require any gods or spirits to make it. This is actually a major point about miracless. There are a lot of natural phenomenons that could not be explained by any other reason, than as an act of gods by the ancient people, who had no way of knowing what were these terrible powers that presented themselves in the nature. It is quite natural that they were percieved from human perspective and given reason according to humane logic. To me all gods are simply humanizations of nature. It is humane not to percieve them as random, but as meaningfull by our own standards. Such random force is much more frightening, than to think it acts on behalf of some reasonable diety, that is willing to save me from it, if I pay homage to this entity. In that sence all gods are andropomorphic.

There could be several naturalistic explanations as to how the holy spear moved by itself and why did the raven fly into the temple of Juno, but for centuries and even in our own day there are many people to whom such things bear special meaning. Typical for such interpretations of random events is, that people are often ridiculously sure of their meaning, even though it is quite hard to find the connection between the raven, the bed of Juno and Hannibal. It is also typical that when such stories first appear they soon develope forms that make the connection more obvious. As rumours do. And as rumours allways have been, people who spread them assure their audience that they heard them from a very reliable source.

The human shaped ghosts in white clothes is a typical story that seems to repeat itself throughout history and it appears in many cultures. Does this reveal that there are in fact ectoplasmic manifestations of human spirits whose host bodies have perished? No, it tells us that people get easily frieghtened of other people, if they have cultural indoctrination to believe human spirits could walk without their bodies. That is all, but of course the person who told this story and who claimed to have witnessed to have seen these “ghosts” could well believe they were indeed ghosts. It is hard to imagine that such a claim would have brought any materialistic profit to the eyewitness. If this was a case of the faith, or identity of this person, it is even possible he/she could have propably even given his/her life for the matter, given that said person was fanatical enough. It is entirely dependant on the state of mind of the crowd that first learned this story wether the eyewitness was regarded as a bit bonkers, or as someone with special relationship to the supernatural.

The hail of stones is interresting in connection to the burning ship. Could it be that there was a meteor shower, that was seen as a burning ship in the sky in one place and felt as minor meteors in a nother? Is it likelier that neither of these were seen and it was the shock and exitement of the army of Hannibal suddenly appearing in Italy that caused a social stress wich in turn gave birth to these extraordinary rumours? Or was it actually the attempt of divine forces to warn Roman people of the perils of a coming war? As allways gods have great difficulties in keeping connection to mankind. Wether it is by miracles, or by oracles, or by ancient scriptures, gods regardless, if they are the misstresses of mustard, or even the creators of entire universe, allways fail to communicate with humans so that their meaning would be clear to most people. I wonder why? One would expect that creatures with divine powers could manage a little better.

What was the srinking of the holy staffs with oracle quotations supposed to mean? What was the message? How much did they loose from their original size? Who the hell measured them, before and after? No, matter how silly that srinking might sound like, Polybius who was a man of sound reasoning took this and other portents conveyed to him at their face value. He found no reason to doubt these stories. He put his personal dignity and authority to act for these fancifull stories by telling them as true. Imagine, what would have happened, if he was later in his life ridiculed by someone claiming all those stories to be simply rumours and even by proving them to be such. Would Polybius have lost face? Would he as good Roman have done suicide as a result of losing face? Would his death have proven these stories to be true?

Then there is the wolf running of with the sword.  Once again the laws of nature have not been broken so the story is so much more plausible. The event itself is certainly extraordinary, even to the extent that though something such as described could have happened, it seem more likelier that the entire story was fabricated to explain a lost sword. However there are a lot of people in the world even today who would choose to believe in the version of ancient events that were far more fancifull than this. Why is it? Why would we find it more plausible that a man in the Roman province of Iudaea could turn water into wine or that he died and resurrected a crucifixion? Is there some significant testimony for these miraculous events that make them more believable in comparrison to say the wolf running of with a sword in Gaul?

Roman historian Tacitus mentions that “Christus” the originator of the christian cult religion was executed few decades before his time. Should we take this at the face value? He also mentions that christians were not persecuted in Rome only because emperor Nero blamed them for the burning of Rome, but because they were known to have all manner of hideous and shamefull rituals and habits. Should we take that as well on face value?

A nother historian who actually lived during the days of Jesus and in Jerusalem a jew called Josephus who was a friend of the local Roman dignitary also mentions Jesus, though much of the description of him has been argued having been added later by christian copyists. If we assume, that all Josephus tells us of Jesus is how he as a contemporary knew Jesus, we might come to the conclusion that here we have an outsider confirming the miracless alledgedly performed by Jesus and his death on the cross. (Bear in mind however, the source has been contested from as early as the 17th century.) Josephus also described how a man could survive the crucifixion. He tells of few men he recognized to have been crucified and asked for his influental Roman friend to give mercy on these men. They were taken down, but alas only one survived. We do not know how long these men had been up there, but long enough for a couple of them to die. On the cross death is actually caused by slow drowning, when one has hands in such an upright position, it may take days and days, but eventually the lungs of a crucified person fill in with fluids and cause death. Before that they are naked for all to see and soil themselves several times.  We need to remember that the whole point of crucifixion is to make the death horryfying, undignified, extremely painfull and especially to last long. 

The main source for the miracless performed by Jesus of Nasarea are the Gospels. There has been much debate as to when and by whom these were written and historians have not reached any consensus on this matter, but let us assume they were actually later written by those apostoles to whom they were attributed to. It is possible that these shepherds and fishermen learned how to write in their later days. The Gospels do not agree on everything, wich is quite strange, as they are supposed to be inspired by the creator of the universe. For example only one of them mentions that Jesus was not the only person ever to have resurrected. Matteus claims that when Jesus died on the cross, graves opened up in Jerusalem and the dead were raising. Since Josephus, our historian in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus does not mention in any of the version of his histories such an event, and since other Gospels remain omniously silent about such an event, we may assume that it was some feeble attempt by Matteus to emphasize the meaning of Jesus and had nothing to do with reality. Or could there be a nother explanation?

One thing that the Gospels do agree upon, is that Jesus was taken down during the same day as he was crucified. Also there is a note among the history by Josephus (though disputed, because his accounts have only survived through chritian copyists work), that such a man was crucified, and that his followers claimed him to have been alive only three days after the crucifixion. Now, if we assume Josephus is a valid source on this matter, we easily come to the conclusion, that Jesus did not necessarily die on the cross. The Gospels maintain that he did and that he resurrected afterwards. The Gospels are also the only source we have that claim Jesus lived after his execution, and that he was recognized by his followers, altough not without some trouble as with Thomas, who only believed it was actually Jesus after putting his finger to the wounds made by the crucifixion. It is easy to understand that the resurrection was the natural explanation to what had happened by the people of the antiquity. They had no knowledge of how much a coma patient might resemble a ”stiff”. It is just as understandable as the fact how the Romans less than hundred years before believed the lightning hitting the temple of Hope was a sign from god. However, as mentioned by Josephus a crucified person could survive, if he was taken down early enough and certainly Jesus was taken down early in comparrison to few weeks that was the standard for victims of crucifixion.  He was stabbed to the side by a spear just prior taking down and he was still bleeding, but as we know today the dead do not bleed.

So, did Jesus die on the cross and resurrect, or did he simply faint? Was it actually Jesus that appeared as him after the execution? If it was, why did one of his followers who had known him for quite a while and was supposed to know his miraculous powers, not immediately recognize him? Even if we assume all these contested sources are actual accounts written during those days by the people who had their little parts in the story, the question remains, what is the most likeliest explanation to these events? Did the wolf run of with a sword, or was the story a fabrication? It is far more likelier that a wolf might come take the sword from a scabbard to run of with it, than that a particular man was the only son of the creator of the entire universe and resurrected after being executed, yet people choose to believe the one and not the other. And they have every right to do so, as they have every right to believe in prophesies by tarot cards, or coffee stains. There are still today also people who maintain faith in thunder gods, though science has explained the natural cause and random nature of lightning. There are also very many of those who maintain faith in the originator god of the universe, just because they think that from nothing comes nothing. How a perfect entity such as the alledged creator god came to be, if the random universe could not produce itself, is a question beyond me.

I suppose it really requires faith to believe in the most fancifull stories, even when quite natural explanations are available to the miraculous events that are the base of a religion.

The creationism seems to me as an attempt to counter the results of scientific research when they contradict the holy book of one particular religion, and do not give any thought to wether their claims would make other religious and mythical stories of creation any more plausible, or not. In my opinion, the same methods could have been used to disclaim scientific research for any myth about the origins of life and the creation of the Earth. 

The actual point is that there are people who feel their faith to be threatened by what science reveals. Most people in the world do not see it that way. Most people have so little education, as to even know that science does not support any religious world views. Is this the result of most scientists to be atheists? Is this the result of atheist scientists somehow controlling the scientific field and paradigm of entire world wide science community? If either of these matters are so, then why would that be? Has scientific knowledge made scientists less prone to have religious faith? The only thing that binds scientists to eachother is their interest in knowledge. It is hardly a result of any international conspiracy of atheist scientists to take over all the fields of science and ridicule those scientists whose research would support one or another religion. How could that even be possible to achieve? I have no statistics to show you, but I would think it is most likely that even today in our world most scientists are adherents of some religion, though as with all the other people, more as a result of tradition, than personal choice or revelation. It would be inconcievable that all those people would allow themselves to be ruled over by some atheist bullies, who have counterfited all of the results of their research to diminsh the role of a creator god. Would it not? That all of the scientific knowledge we today hold would be just made up false and intended by evil scientists to lead people astray from salvation and truth. Does that sound even possible?

If any particular religion and the stories in their holy books and other traditions would be true we could expect the scientific research to support those stories over and over again. This is not the case. In fact it is the opposite. Scientific research shows over and over again that the religious stories, of the creation, and otherwise are quite obviously the results of human imagination at work. Science can not explain everything. Not at the moment at least. The unexplained matters are the loopholes and niches where gods and the spirit world takes refuge. Little by little we become more aware of the mechanics that make the universe work, and every little revelation of research results takes us further away from the suggestions made by religious leadership alledgedly inspired by gods.

Most of the fields of science have resulted in research that points out that the world is a lot older than what the genealogies of the Bible would let us believe. In fact the theories and paradigms in astronomy, geology, biology, anthorpology, sociology, psychology, archaeology and history support the idea of the universe, the Earth and life to be billions of years old. Even the major sects of the same religion, as the creationist movement recognizes, have embraced this scientific world view, though as religions they naturally have not excluded the supernatural. Neither has science. Not as such. Science does not deal in the field of supernatural, because as a concept the supernatural evades the material universe. The supernatural is a question of faith. Faith in the for-ever-improvable. You see, when lightning was first explained as a natural phenomenon, it stopped to be part of the supernatural. The supernatural is a description of things we have no natural explanation to. Religion, is an attempt to explain the unexplained, from a human perspective. In my view it is a personal matter wether you believe lightning was caused by a god, be it Yahweh or Thor, but today we do know, it does not require either andropomorphic personifications of natural powers to exist. It may happen as a result of natural weather phenomenons and it is quite random.

I have no space here to go through all the wild claims made on the creationist sites, but I will give you few examples as a taste as to how they work. First, the adaptation. The creationists claim that all the living beings were created at once, or in seven days as claimed by the Bible. That there has happened no evolution, and the alteration of species visible to us is just adaptation. That god made all the creatures to be adapted to their enviroments, but they have only altered themselves in the few thousand year span the world has existed according to their interpretation of the Bible.

However, when we look at the bonestructure of a whale, there is evidence of evolution. Whales have legbones they do not use for anything. They are remains of hindlegs their ancestors had. Either that, or you can not possibly call such a creation intelligent. Why would a god create seamammals with secondary set of bones of hindlegs for nothing?

Second example are the dinosaurs and sedimentation. The creationists say that the dinosaurs were those animals that did not make it to the ark made by Noah, when the god of Jews decided to flood all the earth. We are supposed to believe, that the lower sedimentation of earth, where the dinosaur fossils are found, were formed just few thousand years ago, just prior to the great flood described in the Bible, or during it. They even give reasons as to why it is hard to find humans among the fossils from the earlier sedimentations where the various dinosaurs fossils are buried. It is reasonable enough from a surface glance, to claim that there were so few humans then that they propably would not appear in the fossilic record from that time, but what of all the other animals? Where are all the elephant remains from those sedimentations? Why are they not found in the jurassic layers and where are all the elk, and the rest of the mammals? Were mammals so rare in that world of beasts that they simply did not leave any fossils?

Why are the animals in precambrian layers completely different from the jurassic layers? And why are the fossils in the deeper layers so much more simpler than those of the later layers? The entire claim that those are just few thousand years old and that the creatures there once all existed simultaneously is proposterous.

Third example are the similarities between fossils and modern animals. The creationist would claim, that the similarities indicate that all of creation and every species existed allready in the beginning of life. Of course there are ancient fossils of similar animals, that still exist today. It is noteworthy to see what those animals are. The oldest ones in the deepest layers are the most simple forms of life. The fact that their offspring still remain unchainged, allmost unevolved, only proves that they were allready then, when the particular animals died millions of years ago and have ever since been, just perfect to their environment and had no pressure to change in order to survive. Most often the very oldest unchanged types of animals are the ones who live in the environments that have faced least change, like in the depths of the oceans. On the bottom of the seabed there is little knowledge of ice age, or volcanoes that dramatically change the athmosphere and landscape.

If the Bible is not factual about the supernatural nature of the creation, how can we assume that the stories of salvation and afterlife are true either? If the creation is just a myth, does it not indicate that the afterlife and salvation are also mere myths? What is the actual difference between the supernatural explanations of these two?

One would expect seamammals to survive a flood. Yet we have a number of whale fossils of types of animals not known to exist today. Why did they all go extinct? Why is it that the more primitive forms of whales have disappeared? On the other hand there are billions of types of animals in the world today that would have not survived  such an incident as a flood high enough to bear a ship to Mount Ararat. Not all of them could possibly fit into the ark. Did they just climb onto high mountains and survived that way? There are higher mountain ranges in the world than Ararat. If they did, why did none of the great saurian beasts climb there? Or any of the smaller sauropod lizards, for that matter? How did the saber tooth tigers all die in the flood? Their bones have been found near mountain ranges and they were quite agile beasts. Surely at least enough of the great airborne saurians could have managed to reach safety fast enough. How can it be the flood drowned all these mighty and agile animals, but the sloth survived? The sloth is an animal found only in the jungles of South America, so it could have not been aboard the Ark. It is a good climber to trees, but if the flood was high enough to bring a boat to the top of Mount Ararat, there is simply no tree tall enough for the sloth to climb into to survive. It could have decided to climb the mountains, but it really is not equipped to do so, and even, if that was the case, the Allosaurs would have surely outrunned it, possibly only stopping to eat the sloth wich are quite helpless on the ground.

Personally I doubt the ability of the sloth to come to a conclusion it needed to hit the road and ”run” for higher ground when it started to rain a lot. Logic dictates that if a flood high enough to carry a boat to Mount Ararat forced the fauna of areas too far for the animals to reach the Ark, to take refuge in the mountains, the herbivoires would have been first victims and most species of herbivores that exist today would have persihed in such confined conditions. Most insects withoug the ability to fly would have simply vanished from the world. Of course the resulting death toll would have also been terrible for the carnivores later.

How is it, that for example the Comodo dragon survived the great flood only to end up on one little island? Did the ancestors of this beast ride in the Ark or did they climb some mountain ranges? It can not swim so how did it end up on the island? There were a lot more agile predators among the saurian beasts, so how did they not survive, but this ugly mugger did? There is of course allways the possibility of a friek accident, but it is by far the only animal that we need to ask the same questions about? How did the giant tortoises of the Seychelles, Mascarenes, Galapagos and the Aldabra atoll survive the flood? It makes no sense. They certainly needed to know about the coming flood quite a lot earlier than anybody else, because with their speed to reach the tops of mountains, or the Ark takes a lot of time. In any case they are not very good climbers, so mountains do not seem like a viable option not all of these islands even have mountains, nor is it very likely they ended up in their natural habitat after taking refuge in the ark either.

If a god saw it fit to destroy the saurian beasts, why were the crocodiles saved? They are water creatures so it is natural to assume they did not even need to reach dry land to live, but why and how were all the saurian seabeasts destroyed? And why and how were the numerous types of fish and seashells we have fossils of destroyed? There are literally thousands and thousands of different species of trilobite fossils alone and they are all seabed animals. What made all of them extinct? They are to be found in the many sedimentations claimed to be the pre-flood era by the creationists, but why are the more simple forms of fish fossils in the deeper sedimentation than those of more advanced form? Did a god decide to destroy some form of barbarian imitation of life by a devil, or were these simple forms of fish only the prototypes of fish god desided to inhabit the seas with? There is nothing about this in the Bible, is there? Fish for certainty as well as the saurian seacreatures, would have survived the flood, so what destroyed all of them?

This is all just speculating from common sense. If one is not a paleontologist, one is forced to either think they have the best information about the subject, or that the Bible knows better. If one has made the leap of faith that the Bible is different from all the other holy scriptures and myths in the world, one might come to the conclusion, that the Bible has to be true in every sense. However, disbelieving what the paleontologists say about their own art is a completely new leap of faith. It contains the thought that a group of highly educated professionals are either lying, or somehow totally mistaken, and that we laymen in their field can tell better if they are right or wrong about their entire field of expertise. This is the equivalent of me telling a doctor that there is nothing wrong with my health as I do not feel bad, if the doctor has made a diagnosis that says I am terminally ill. Now, a doctor may be wrong, but are all the doctors wrong, if they come to the same conclusion? 

Creationism has even some supporters with scientific degrees from universities. That does not however make their claims scientific. Science is made with many presuppositions. One of those might be, that there is in fact a supreme creator and even that the Bible is his holy connection to humanity. A scientist might even suppose that the Bible is infallible in the description of the creation of the Earth and life, but as to what conclusions he draws,  it is not science at all, if the researcher will not accept results that  might prove the presuppositions false. This goes for the theory of evolution just as well as it works for the Bible. The difference seems to be, that the scientists who presuppose the theory of evolution to be true in general terms, are aware of the paradigm of science to be the integrity to truth, while those (a very small minority indeed)  that presuppose the Bible to be true, only work to prove it so. In any kind of research, be it in the field of science, or for example criminology, the objective truth is only achieved by accepting the evidence of the research, not by presupposing, that god did it, or that the butler did it.

Mr. Gincrich said: “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire.” Yes, that it was until the early 20th century. But what is that supposed to mean? That the Palestinians are not a nation, or what? Is this representing idiotism, or pure evil intent?

 By those standards Finland is not a nation but part of Russia as we were part of Russia until the early 20th century. There is actually a host of countries that were part of some empire until the early, or even later 20th century. Does Mr. Gincrich share his views about Palestine concerning all those nations? According to the same logic the USA is not an actual nation as it was just a part of the British Empire until the late 18th century. What is Israel supposed to be by those standards? Is this guy for real???

Mr. Gincrich also said: “I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic,” Excuse me, but could someone please explain me who is the “we” this high ranking US politician is referring to? To claim that Palestinians are Arabs of course holds true. They speak Arabic. But is Mr. Gincrich here implying that all the Arab speaking people should have only one enormous state stretching from Iraq to Morocco, or what? That in fact Jordania, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, and the US ally Saudi-Arabia are in fact not separate nations? What a strange thought. If that is so, what was the point of the previous Gulf war? When Iraq invaded a nother Arab nation Kuwait, was it not just fullfilling the ideal Mr. Gincrich is here representing? So, the people of Kuwait could have gone somewhere else in the Arabia as “they had a chance to go many places”. If there is no separate Palestine nation, because they speak Arabic, howcome there is a separate nation of USA, since they speak english there?

Is Mr. Gincrich actually suggesting, that the Palestinians should have all just packed their bags and moved from their homes to leave for some other country? How many of you, my readers, would be willing to move from your homes to an unknown future in a foreign country, because some other people wanted to invade? How many of you would not fight for your right for your ancestrall land? Is Newt here showing that he has no understanding of patriotism? Very interresting trait for a president of any nation. He would propably be the first anti-patriotic president ever anywhere. These comments from someone seriously contending to such a high seat of power are just so inconcievably far out.

What actuallycaused Mr. Newt Gincrich to utter these absurd assertions? Political ambition could be one guess.  No doubt, he sought to raise political and possibly even monetary support, by giving this interview to a Jewish channel. (A Jewish channel - Now, does that not sound like an invention by Mr. Hitler?) In essence, these thoughts Newt presented are a reflection of how a large crowd of people think. That the justification of the zionist movement and the state of Israel is derived from the Palestinians actually having no particular rights as a nation, or even as indigenous people where they live. 

As if the Palestinians did not even exist. However, they do. Their ancestors lived in Palestine for hundreds of years before the invention of the zionist movement.

Beware. Regardless how Mr. Gincrich feels about the opinions he uttered in hope to gain support, there is a great number of people who agree with him. Who refuse to see the situation from a neutral perspective, though none of them has anything invested into the conflict. People who are religiously motivated to see the other side as evil. Notice that Mr. Gincrich did not even mention relgious reasons in this interview. They were implied as given.  As if logic and realities of politics supported fundamentalist christianity in that all of Palestine belongs to the Jews.

No doubt that the Israelis have right to their own state and they have a right to protect their citizens, but that gives them no right to oppress the Palestinians. Yet, they do, and such opinions as expressed by Newt here, are exactly what makes such an apartheid culture possible.

Many religions claim that morals is something given by their god in some form of holy scripture, or remembrance. Now, if people could only aply those instructions from their gods… Too easily people succumb to moralism and refuse to see the humanitarian side of things as long as there is a god to produce supreme authority behind violence. Why is it that people need to mess up the gods into their political games? As if people would not be able to come up with good enough reasons to kill each other without excuses from imaginary entities?

Newt Gincrich may make one laugh at the stupidity of the US politics, but it is not funny at all, if such a man gains power and starts to make decisions as the head of state in a country that weilds so much miltary power and allready occupies so many other countries – Arabic speaking countries among ohters. Or even if he uses such powerfull position to let out comments, that show such ignorance of history. Certainly it will prove to be a terrible cituation to the very real and not at all invented people of Palestine.

A news cast of by Fox news on the issue:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/12/10/gingrich-describes-palestinian-people-as-invented/

As it seems economical experts have made some bold guesses, that did not prove to be correct. As a result the world economy has plunged into a recession. It is typical to the guessing, that usually it is motivated not what seems to be correct, but what we would choose to be correct. People rather believe a pleasant and compelling suggestion, than the complicated truth. On the other hand fear is the key for many to believe in a particular guesses.

Fear of the outsider, or unknown is a powerfull factor in this mind game of guessing. If there is a rehabilitation center for alcoholics, or drug addicts, or a nursing home for the disabled being build in the neighbourhood, the ugly head of fearfull guessing raises its head. Suddenly there are loads of people who argue that they fear for their children and especially that their property value goes down. They are outraged, if their concerns are not tolerated. As if we were expected to tolerate the most vile intolerance of some. Having lived close by to alcoholist rehabilitation centre, insane asulym and a hospital giving treatment to drug addicts I would say, these were better built around rental housing. Just because the bad guesses those who actually own their houses may cause harm to the people who need these public services. For sure it will cause more harm to the children of these intolerant people, as they will pass on to the next generation their hate of the unknown.  People like me in rental flats could not care less if the neighbouring building is a re-hab center. Nor are their children harassed by their strange  neighbours.

What do we know? You and I know the world is round since some authority has told us so, but to verify that idea we only need to look at the horizon. It curves and the rest of the world is somewhere beyond. Hence, the information we have about this matter is rationally acceptable. We may wonder, how did our ancestors not come to think about such an obvious matter. What on earth made them think the world is flat, when it does not look it? Would we have come to question that the world is flat, if the same authority that told us it is round had told it to be flat?

If we had lived in them days when all people still thought the world is flat, we would propably have accepted it to be so. The reason why someone ever even claimed the world is flat, is that they did not know, what is the shape of the world, so they made up an explanation they thought sounded just right. It was a guess on the shape of the world. That they chose the world to be flat, shows how little they knew or bothered even to think about the matter, when looking at the horizon would have told them immediately, it to be a poor guess.  A number of world views were built on such guesses. This one claimed the world to be disc on the back of a giant, that one said it is a disc held up by invisible pillars. None of them represents anything than a poor guess of the matters. These wild guesses have since been shown to be totally and utterly nonsense. But instead people would have given up all the nonsense invented to explain the world beyond the horizon and all the unknown matters in it, they canonize these unplausible guesses. People like to say these mythological explanations are not simply nonsense, but defend them by claiming them to be metaphysical, or metaphors for something completely else. However, they were not metaphors to the people who invented them, nor to the countless generations who believed in them for centuries.

What if something in a religious text, that was for centuries understood as a factual truth, is proven scientifically to be false? Is it honest to claim it to be actually meant to be a metaphor? If that piece of religious fancy is actually a metaphor, how can we tell, what parts of religious texts are actually to be accepted as facts and what are mere metaphors? Some parts of religious texts abide to the scientific testing and others are possibly beyond our capablity of testing. But why should we believe anything to be absolutely true, if there is no way of proving such? All those things that science can not prove to be true or false may also be later found out to be mere metaphors for something completely else. Is for example god in the Bible just a mere metaphor, a metaphor for universal moralism, or the creative force of life energy?  Maybe it is just a metaphor for the national spirit of the twelve jewish tribes?

There may be a day, when the science can prove the existance some particular god or gods, but until that day we will have to choose whose guesses on the matter are plausible to us. If it is just the authority who claims to know that a particular god exists because it says so in the same book that claims the world is supported by the invisible pillars, or that it is a flat disc on the back of a giant tortoise, should we trust such an authority?

Science is not a religion or a philosophy. Neither is it an ideology. Therefore it itself has no bias to find previoulsy invented world views wrong. It is just a bunch of the best guesses on what can be verifiably found true by people who have researched a particular issue, with the best tools and methods available. It has no dogmas, it is under constant change and very unconservative by nature, though some scientist may hold conservative ideals and every scientist has their own particular world view with included bias.

If we are to choose either the theories science presents, or the religious ideals that contradict those theories on how the universe around actually is, honestly we can only accept the religious ideals by abandoning reason and embracing faith. Faith is not build on reason. It is built on feelings, or to say it in other words, it is based on the subconscious.

Scientific theories may be later proven to be wrong, but they are not wrong because they contradict some particular system of superstition. Science can take alteration, how about religions? Certainly most of them have been altered many times as the knowledge of the surrounding universe has increased.

To be perfectly honest, I doubt it, if there are any gods that hold any benevolent interrest towards humanity,  or that if there are gods, they are in any need for us to worship them. In fact it would be reasonable to expect them to be proud of us, if we finally claimed indepence and as adults took responsibility of our own actions. Certainly they would be appalled by us bickering about whose ancestors had the most correct guesses of gods, when they wrote theirs up. Especially so,  as those scriptures have obviously been written in the very limited knowledge of the universe of those past times.

Is the world flat? Was the earth created before the sun? Are there gods? Your guess is as good as mine, but on what do you base your opinion about it?

What I actually found interresting is the allegory the film presented to me. I doubt it was intentional and it may well be that I am the only one who saw any similarity between the two. In my view the basic story of the film could have just as well have been Taliban & Americans. Taliban taking the role of cowboys and Americans taking the role of aliens. For it was a story of rough men living in and arid land and in a violent culture, having to fight for their freedom against a technologically superior enemy whose motives are a mystery to them (at least for a while). There are plenty of other allegories along the way, but I will not reveal them here either, if you have not seen the movie. If you have, you may come to think of them by yourselves, or if not, you propably would not accept them suggested by me anyway.

I do not admire the values Taliban represent, but neither do I admire the values cowboys represented. Admit it, it would be interresting to see Harrison ford playing a Taliban leader. His role, the motives he has and the action he takes in this movie could just as well have been those of such. Cowboys (in this movie and in popular image) were machos trusting just their guns, much like the Taliban. Of course presenting a possible love interrest female character to the Taliban adventurer party would be a tricky thing to perform historically, but since they have done that so many times (and almost allways totally unrealistically) to cowboy stories, it might just work for “a Taliban story” as well. One thing is for sure, if the aliens in the movie would require a speech understandable to the human audience, they would call the cowboys with some synonym for terrorists.

See the movie, if you have not yet. Do not think of what I said while watching it. Just enjoy the very good combination of the two adventure genres joined in perfect harmony. Afterwards you may ask yourselves, if I was right about the allegory, or was it just about there actually being no more than few of stories in the world anyway. This one being a version of the heroes defending their own culture and land against a superior outside aggressor.

The term Miss Universe just got me, once again, thinking about the universe and how immense it is. The majesty is allmost impossible to concieve. We humans live on this small planet on the edge of one galaxy. We may speak of conquering the space, when we sent some of our kind to the orbit of our own planet, or when we sent probes to other parts of our solar system. In our wildest fiction we may even dream of conquering of the entire galaxy. We have no means to achieve that, but we may dream. But the entire universe is such a vast concept if we actually percieve it, it will overwhelm us. We can only dream the diversity of its structure and the secrets it holds. We may make philosophies of how it was formed and even our best guesses on the matter are just guesses. Though some guesses are better informed than others.

We humans seek security in certainties. That is why we hold faith. We like to think there is reason to everything and justice will follow each event and action. But the universe simply exists. It would be extremely naive to claim that it required all of this immense universe to produce us, the humans. Or that we are a pinnacle of nature as nature itself is the vast universe. If we are the image of a god, we are truly lacking in that respect, or the god is rather minute entity in comparrisson to the universe.

There is no certainty of anything in this universe. It is not total chaos, but we have no means to predict what truly will happen next that is relevant to the universe. We are only just learning about its basic form. It is mind thrilling to find out about the secrets of the universe. And that is what I would recommend to any person, on this small remote world of ours, to explore nature. All living and dead forms of nature. To explore different human cultures, for they are not outside nature. We humans are a part of nature like it or not. Sometimes we are harmfull to our envarioment, but even that is a part of nature and the universe. That does not, however, mean we should act thus. Nor does it give an excuse to act so. As part of the Universe and nature, we should act ethically to our own benefit and the benefit of our offspring. To benefit the future generations of humans with an ability be awed by the complexity of the universe. We do want to give them that chance, do we not?  To achieve the positive outcome we should evaluate our actions and inactions. Some acts seem insignificant and uninportant, but remember in the face of the Universe and nature we as individuals and even our planet may seem insignificant. It is us ourselves who give value to that which exists and to that which might exist, or not, some day.

The good, the bad and the ugly of viking movies: The best viking movies I have ever seen were the Icelandic/Norvegian production “The White Viking” and the Polish movie “Stara Basn”. The former had a good story that related remotely to historical knowledge of how christianity was spread to Norway and Iceland. But it was ambient movie, where costumes, weapons, ships and buildings, looked very primitive in comparrison to what is known from archeology. Maybe it was a result of film budget and not a choise by the film makers. For some reason it is often the case that this subject seems to draw the makers to present a dirty and ragged, or downright primitive appearance of the people of the viking age. The Polish film, was not bad as such. It told the story of how the slavs had to fight cruel opression by the vikings. We have solid information, that this is how the Scandinavians behaved in many countries they moved to like Ireland, England, Prussia and vast forests and steppe of Russia. The fight scenes are lacking and some turns of events are a bit clumsy. However, this is the one movie that actually comes close to being a good movie about vikings. It has the best props and most plausible story. It seems odd, when you think that the Polish film makers could achieve something where the big budgets of Hollywood and Scandinavians whose ancestors the vikings actually are have almost totally failed.

 The worst viking movies have been made by big Hollywood productions. The Vikings was a major production featuring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, made in an era, when many such semi-historical movies were launched. It presented the classical barbarian image of vikings, though they had enough of presence of mind not to include the horned helmets (not that I can remember, at least). When the vikings in this movie attack England they did not only cross the sea, but also travelled through time. The English defending the large stone castle (an actual historical castle ruin far too modern for the vikings to attack) are dressed and equipped not like the Anglies and Saxons, but something like knights from the late 13th century. 

While The Vikings was at least trying to have  some resemblance to our knowledge of the vikings, later Hollywood productions have failed this completely. The 13th warrior starts out by a splendid story based on an actual historical source. Antonio Banderas plays the lead role of the actual historical figure of the arab explorer Ahmad Ibn fadlan, who actually made a trip up the river Volga and met Scandinavians there. However, the movie has so many historical errors in how these are depicted that this blog post would not stretch to unbearably long just to list them up, but a couple I simply can not get by whithout a mention are, that the makers thought that vikings had horses bigger than the arabs, plate armour and that the their ships had entire dragons sculpted to their prow. Finally the intriguing story of the actual historical character is not told at all and the action around the movie runs around an imaginary stone age people fighting a war against the vikings. It could have been a decent fantasy movie, but as such it exploits a historical source and gives totally misleading picture of an era.

One of the new Hollywood spectacle movies is the Pathfinder, where a viking raised by native americans defends them against the invading vikings. The vikings depicted in this movie are truly demonic. Propably it was the idea of the film makers to represent them in such a way that it would not leave any questions open for the audience about who are the bad guys in this movie, but also to present them from the perspective of the natives, not as men, but as demons or such. The inhuman appearance of these vikings is achieved by horned helmets, chains hanging from their black leather clothes and black furs. They look like truly tormented individuals. The whole story, even the name of the film has been taken from an older Norvegian film. There is a difference though. The original film tells the story of a saami boy leading finnish agressors who have come to kill, enslave and rob his people to a natural trap by offering himself as a guide. Is it such a difficult thing for the white american male audience to percieve themselves as native americans, that the hero could not be one of the native americans? That the hero had to be a white man and therefore one of the vikings? Or is there a nother reason the hero was not a native american?

The Valhalla Rising is one of the most boring films I have ever seen. All that happens could have been shown in so much less time. There are some beautifull landscapes, but that is about all the film has to offer. Once again the vikings are represented as dirty, ragged barbarians. Maybe the director wanted to achieve a sort of artistic impression, but while the actors propably used a lot of time to rehearse the action scenes, it seems they did none for rowing.

Why is it that when trying to entertain the audience, film makers try to affirm the classical expectations of the audience? Or are they simply trying to affirm their own preassumptions? No doubt that, when men have spent several days in an open tarred boat, they are dirty. For this I can wouch for from personal experience. On the other hand, it is a fact that historical and archeological sources tell that the vikings were in fact rather precise of their personal hygiene and many of them were quite dandy. We know that they used make up for their eyes and grew long hair and this was disapproved of by contemporaries as fashionable fancy. This would be quite astonishing to any film audience. Would it not? I suppose it does not fit in the traditional barbarian image, that vikings actually used brightly coloured wool clothes and not the dark leather and furs usually depicted in movies.

The old Norse sagas are an abundant source of exiting and inspiring stories. Why has no movie been made from those? It seems rather that all movies are made whith the same clues (or no clues at all as whith the Valhalla Rising) which are fitted into any movies wether the subject is vikings or whatever…

Armoured men-at-arms in battle

A battle that was fought between the english and frech as part of the so called 100 years war. One of the minor powers in medieval Europe was the english kingdom, but it waged war against one of the mightiest the french kingdom for some 114 years. The war was not continuous and actually some sort of peace solutions were negotiated during that time. However they never held for long. This is also one of the battles that has become iconic to the war for the english nationalist feelings.

Young and  rash king of England Henry V attacked French soil and besieged the port of Harfleur. The french were assembling a relief force. Though the siege took longer than intended, the french could not raise a big enough force to meet the english besiegers in time. When the siege was over so was the campaingn season. Henry wanted to demonstrate his power since the prolonged siege of one town had been a bit of a disappointment to him, and marched the army towards Calais the only city loyal to the english in the region. The french army shadowed his adwance, but Henry decided to give battle in a terrain of his own choise rather than to wait when will the french attack his diseased and tired army.

The french had a ratio of 3 gendarmes to one english men-at-arms. Typically to the aristocratic arrogance the french did not count the enlish archers to be much of a foe. The french main force dismounted to advance towards the english line on a muddy field which had been ploughed and softened by a rain. On that slippery slope they clambered uphill towards the english archers who poured a rain of arrows at them. By the time the french reached the english line exhausted and pushing and showing each other the enlish men at arms joined battle with them. Because the battle field was a narrow opening between forest thickets the french could not fully use their superior numbers. Those numbers turned against them as the men behind would only push the front line against the arms and weapons of the defending english. Then the french reserve that had stayed mounted charged the english picket line, but was unable to penetrate. They retreated through their own infantry and panic spread. During the moments of the panicking retreat most french who died that day were trampled to death by their own great numbers.

It would have been a glorious victory to the english unless their baggage train had not been totally robbed by the local french knights who had not participated in the frontal assault led by the french constable and the dauphin. As a result the english army was in enemy territory without any means, food or money to pay the troops. Even the english crown was stolen. The local french led by Ysembart d’Azincourt had utilized the guerilla tactics presented by the french marshall Bertrand du Guesclin, with success.

The battle has been debated much. Mainly by the english who see it as a proud moment in their national history. The english longbow has been seen as a technical device that made the english victory possible against overwhelming odds. Will Shakespeare even wrote a play to bolster the english royal line and their “historical” victory at agincourt. Many english historians have been so nationalistic in their views, that they have gone long ways to explain this magnificent victory. By the terms of real life it is a classical example of a war fought very badly indeed. The french have been less prone to make a number of it for they won the over all war, so one battle more or less is not going to change that. For the french it was a Pyrrhic victory. One they could not afford again during the same generation. To the english it was a moral victory, but a defeat even at that. They could not possibly remain on french soil or renew their attack on the next summer. The good thing it resulted was a peace between the warring nations, though after a short grasp of strength both were at it again.

It is not the only battle that did not really end the war or lead to any decisive conclusion in the history, but there is allways some fool to praise the magnificent victory and other fools who believe there actually was one. Such wars are waged even today. The results seem to be that everybody looses. Exept maybe the weapons manufacturers…

It is remarcable that the populism of the “True Finns” party grows from fear and hatred of the immigrants. It is so easy to point the finger at some people who look like different and find the blame for the problems of our own society from those who have just arrived from outside.

This kind of political movement would not have any succes unless it had a couple of very talented politicians among them. It is typical for this demagogue type of politician to claim all politicians to be corrupt and elitist. The “True Finns” has Mr Soini, who is a sovereign ruler of his party. He may not be a racist, but his ambition is leading him to accept the support of racists. For one thing he really is a man of great ambiguity. Allready few years back his party was profiling itself by being against the EU, but when the opportinity arose he joined the European parliament. A nother clever politician who has achieved name to himself by semi-open racistic remarcks is Jussi Halla-Aho. It seems to be his doing that the quite new statement by the “True Finns” party disects itself from racism at the same time as they declare the concept of positive discrimination to be racism. A very clever political move.

Mr Halla-Aho claims, that to remove discrimination from working envarioments by giving precedence to the representative of a minority over the representative of the main population, when there are two equal applicants for the same job, is somehow wrong. My question is how can this be? There is allways some method for choosing one or the other from two equal applicants. I think mr. Halla-Aho deliberately ignores that when such a prosedure is in use for the Helsinki city workers, it does not exist in the free markets. One might think that a businesman cares not if the applicants have foreign backround, or if the are women, but as the experience from decades back and even today shows, even businesmen have predjudice. They have silly notions that a woman, or a foreigner might not do the job as well as a white finnish male. Much rarely they have notions such as, if left handers or men whith moustaches would not do their job as well as right handers, or men whith shaved faces. Mr. Halla-Aho goes to wonder why left handers, or men whith moustaches do not get the  positive discrimination benefit. I will answer here to him. It is because these groups no longer need such support. But it has been less than a 70 years when such traits might cause you not to get the job.  Jussi Halla-Aho is not totally ignorant about the obvious fact that positive discrimination becomes unnecessary, when people are no longer discriminated. He claims that the positive discrimination creates fences between races. But positive discrimination is not about ethnicity. Does it also create fences between the invalids, women and other groups that benefit from positive discrimination. It is a false dichtomy to claim, that from applicants of equal abilities it is wrong to choose one. It is also a false claim to say, that the positive discrimination act will lead to less qualified persons to have a job that “belonged” to the better qualified. The whole point is to give one more tool to choose from two equally qualified applicants the one that represents the group of people who are otherwise discriminated. Is this so complicated? How is this wrong? Is there a better way to diminish the discrimination of people by their origin or gender? What Jussi Halla-Aho is also missing is that there may be a day, when white males might need the support of the positive discrimination. Or is that what he is so affraid and therefore in opposition to immigration?

What interrests me is how will all the openly racist feel about the “True Finns” party new turn. Will they be satisfied whith the movement against the positive discrimination? Or will they be disappointed to the party leadership for condemning their racistic values? There are even parliament representatives like Mr. Hakkarainen, who are obvious racists. Will they remain a part of a party that has now condemned any kind of racism? How can those party members who actually understood they are condemning racism stand those who have racistic ideals? What about the voters who are openly racistic. When they voted for the “True Finns” party did they expect this? Do they feel betrayed, or are they so ignorant and uninformed of politics they do not see or feel it when they are being pissed into the eye? Racists often are rather uninformed or simply stoopid, so I expect no big fuss will come out of this. Most of the openly racistic people have propably missed the whole proclamation by the “True Finns” to condemn racism.

The english name of the “True Finns” is an incorrect translation, but it reveals something that is not so obvious in the finnish name. A more correct translation would be “Basic Finns”. This would be better not only in grammatical terms, but also in describing who voted for the party in the elections. People who are mostly rather uninformed about the state of the world, but are worried about the future and foremost who are disappointed in our political leadership. They are people who have suffered the fact that the conservative party has had such a great support from the masses, when in the end it makes laws only to benefit the rich man. This has been blurred by the fact that the conservative party has started to advertise itself by the ideals of a wellfare state and other socialistic achievements, and by the fact that the socialist parties have made concessions over the years to the conservatives and the market liberals to make the society run smoothily. To have money, to be distributed between the needy. Now that the socialists have been in opposition, and with the western world economy down the drain, people want to protest…

Humans are such. As long as everything is peachy, they are not interrested, why it is so. When all goes wrong, they are not interrested why it all went wrong, or how can we repaire it, but who is to blame. Reality shows and icehockey are so much more interresting to people than politics, but obviously it is not our fault our things are messed up, it must be the fault of the muslims, or the russians or, or…

It is the fault of the big parties and our scientific and political elite, that there are so many Finns who are so easily to be lead by fear and hatred a demagogue might throw at people of different perplexion or culture. But even the elite is human and capable of human errors. Our political leadership has grown to be satisfied in the consensus of all parties trying to make this a better land working together, though actual the goals have been different. This has created a political situation of allmost like one party government, whith its left and right wings, but no actual opposition. And as allways in history such situations will eventually create a radical political movement to haul the masses into opposition against all decisions that have been compromises from the beginning. Like the positive discrimination act.

However, I must confess, that I have never been as ashamed of my countrymen as I am today. To let the fear get the better of our nature, is to me betraying the principles of freedom our nation has had to fight two hard wars and the fearlesnes of the men who fought in those wars.