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BestOf FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC! from Finland Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: Falling within your bell curve
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
#176: May 25th 2011 at 12:36:29 PM

I can't wait till the next time I'm representing us at some event or another and True Finn supporters come and complain that we voted against the Portugal bailout.

I'm sorry to say this, and I know it sounds like a caricature except that it's true, but the only True Finns supporters that even bother to talk to people handing out Left Alliance leaflets are the ones who know absolutely nothing about politics. For example, many people didn't believe me at first when I told them that Soini was elected to the European Parliament.

"No, he has nothing to do with the EU!"

Again, not suggesting that this is the norm, but these kind of people are the ones that always come to talk to people representing other parties.

edited 21st Jan '14 6:29:32 AM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Paracletus Since: Apr, 2011
#177: May 25th 2011 at 12:57:57 PM

Well the lack of knowledge about politics is very common in this country.

JethroQWalrustitty Since: Jan, 2001
#178: May 25th 2011 at 1:05:01 PM

It is in most countries, but I honestly cried a little when I heard that majority of the people didn't know what parties were in the cabinet, before the election.

BestOf FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC! from Finland Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: Falling within your bell curve
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
#179: May 25th 2011 at 1:06:25 PM

Yeah, that was actually really depressing.

[up][up]And yeah, you're right. It's amazing that some people don't care about politics and then they can't understand why the Social Insurance Institution won't help them cover their kids' high school book costs.

edited 25th May '11 1:07:42 PM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Paracletus Since: Apr, 2011
#180: May 25th 2011 at 1:10:40 PM

I know a few people who do not care at all about politics, they are normal, smart people but they just do not find it interesting. For example my brother could care less about politics and does not vote on principle, yet he volunteered in counting the votes in this election.

AllanAssiduity Since: Dec, 1969
#181: May 25th 2011 at 2:05:54 PM

People do not typically care about politics until it intersects with their personal lives. Therefore, a government can be as corrupt and stupid as it wants, as long as it keeps the people happy.

But damn, that's a surprising level of ignorance :/

SpookyMask Since: Jan, 2011
#182: May 25th 2011 at 8:38:25 PM

Yup tongue *doesn't myself know anything about it really*

Qeise Professional Smartass from sqrt(-inf)/0 Since: Jan, 2011 Relationship Status: Waiting for you *wink*
Professional Smartass
#183: May 26th 2011 at 4:37:48 AM

I just read Best Ofs post on GLADIO. Didn't know they sunk so low during the Cold War.

Laws are made to be broken. You're next, thermodynamics.
Paracletus Since: Apr, 2011
#184: May 26th 2011 at 6:51:38 AM

Some minor news I saw today:

One of the Left Alliances government negotiators, Markus Mustajärvi from Lapland electoral district decided to withdraw from the negotiations, as he felt that the budget cuts that are going to be made will be too drastic (http://www.iltalehti.fi/uutiset/2011052613787220_uu.shtml).

The True Finns (wish they changed their english name) published a statement where they declared that the True Finns condemn racism and discrimination in all of their forms. The statement also condemned affirmative action and positive discrimination (http://www.uusisuomi.fi/kotimaa/112470-hakkaraisen-tapaus-jussi-halla-aho-astui-esiin).

The safety unit (turvallisuusyksikkö) of the parlament has recently recommended that members of the parlament should use taxis when moving from their homes to the parlament and that they should avoid moving alone in the city. This statement was issued because of death threats against the True Finns parlamentarians Teuvo Hakkarainen, Olli Immonen and Jussi Halla-aho (http://www.iltalehti.fi/uutiset/2011052613785611_uu.shtml).

BestOf FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC! from Finland Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: Falling within your bell curve
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
#185: May 26th 2011 at 10:43:41 AM

Even before the new security recommendation, Hakkarainen had already accumulated more than 30 taxi trips since he got elected, totalling almost €1000 in tax payer expenses. Most of these trips (despite rumours on the contrary) were between his new home in Helsinki and the Parliament building; the problem is that under normal circumstances, MPs are expected to travel those trips with buses or trams, not taxi.

To be fair, he did give a reason: he's lived in Helsinki for such a short time that he doesn't know how to use the buses yet.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
JethroQWalrustitty Since: Jan, 2001
#186: May 26th 2011 at 12:05:54 PM

The comparison between racism and positive discrimination is just absurd. The whole point of the statement is to just drive further the view that there is the majority and the minority and the minority has right because the majority tolerates them enough.

Also, Hakkarainen is a true bro: apologizes in public, then goes on facebook to say heäs not really sorry. Oh, and whine about how hard it is to be a heterosexual white man.

BestOf FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC! from Finland Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: Falling within your bell curve
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
#187: May 26th 2011 at 12:16:21 PM

whine about how hard it is to be a heterosexual white man

I have it so hard, man! I mean, I can walk the streets, buy groceries and even go on a date with my girlfriend - including holding hands and kissing - without anyone staring at us, looking at us strange, accusing us of sinful behaviour or laughing at us.

You know how much that hurts inside? That people give you privacy and don't single you out whenever you're being yourself in public? Turns my stomach, it does.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Paracletus Since: Apr, 2011
#188: May 27th 2011 at 2:57:25 AM

Well, white heterosexual men are at the moment the only group that can be discriminated legally. And here are some fun facts of equality that have in Finland: http://mies.asia/tilastoja.html (the link is in finnish). I understand that some of those statistics are like that because of men make a lot of bad choices in life, and they should take responsibility for their actions.

edited 27th May '11 2:57:52 AM by Paracletus

JethroQWalrustitty Since: Jan, 2001
#189: May 27th 2011 at 6:42:12 AM

white heterosexual men are at the moment the only group that can be discriminated legally.

Yeah, I'm gonna demand some citation on that.

Also, lack of legal discrimination *

doesn't mean there isn't a lot of illegal, off-the-records, institutional and personal discrimination. Fact is, as a white heterosexual male, you know you can walk the streets pretty safe from harassment. I know I can't walk hand in hand with my boyfriend in my hometown, no matter how illegal it would be to attack us.

Paracletus Since: Apr, 2011
#190: May 27th 2011 at 12:20:12 PM

How about the gender quotas that are used in municipal councils? And there are some other things in the link that I posted earlier.

Mandemo Since: Apr, 2010
#191: May 27th 2011 at 3:34:13 PM

Well, this was oen thread I wasn't expecting. Still, happy to see this.

I found it funny how True Finns (Why not Basic Finns? Would be more accurate.) are loudest to tell how things should be run but are first to refuse to take responsibelity.

However, I don't like how things are going. Right now, True Finns can cause all kind of problems, voting against issues and generally being devils avodcates in everything and clean up their hands from any mess that comes up. When(not if) something hits the fan, Soini can just do that smile of his(Sudden urge to punch something) and say "See, this wouldn't happen if we would run things".

Going back to military, I belive Finlands policy is not to keep territory, but make invasion and following occupation to cost more than attacker could hope to gain. This would involve guerilla warfare and fighting retreat.

Also know as "Hope for repeat of Winter War".

Paracletus Since: Apr, 2011
#192: May 27th 2011 at 4:36:48 PM

Well, they stood by their principles and refused to betray their voters who were and are against the bailout of Portugal (and from here you can see that only the True Finns and the Left Alliance stood by their principles: http://www.kansanmuisti.fi/opinions/portugal-vote/).

I do agree that they should change their english name, if I remember correctly, some member of their youth organisation proposed that they should be called the Finnish Peoples Party, and frankly I think that's a good title.

Kerrah Since: Jan, 2001
#193: May 28th 2011 at 3:45:29 AM

(Oh, hey, I didn't know this thread was reborn after it died at one point.)

"The Finnish People's Party" makes it sounds like it's a counter-movement to the Swedish People's Party.

Also, I'd really have liked for the True Finns to have made it into the administration. This way, they'll keep building popularity since there's no proof yet that they're as ineffective when they're in charge as everyone else.

edited 28th May '11 3:45:39 AM by Kerrah

JethroQWalrustitty Since: Jan, 2001
#194: May 30th 2011 at 1:53:55 PM

Timo Soini does make a good Troll Face.

We should get our cabinet tomorrow. I'm hoping for the speculated Rainbow model, with Conservatives, SDP, Left, Greens and some other. Of course, a cabinet that's this fractured runs the problem of working against itself against a well organized opposition c.fa the one cainet in Italy the past decade that wasn't run by don Berlusconi.

BestOf FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC! from Finland Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: Falling within your bell curve
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
#195: May 30th 2011 at 2:24:50 PM

Only slightly on-topic, but since I already talked a lot about the guy I campaigned for and other stuff like that, I don't think this will actually derail the thread:

The Left Youth is an organisation of which I am a member; it's not a member of the Left Alliance but just about 100% of the Left Youth are members or future members of the Left Alliance, so while we officially have no direct link to any political party, everyone knows we're de facto the youth wing of the Left Party. I think I mentioned our organisation in the context of my friend's campaign; he got major share of his election budget from the Left Youth.

Anyway, the Left Youth held a meeting last weekend. I can't think of a direct translation for it (Google Translate suggests "Federal Assembly", but obviously we don't have a federation or anything like that).

It's a meeting we hold every 2 years where we elect ourselves a new government and a political program and strategy that we'll be using for the next 2 years.

The meeting was held in Oulu, waaay North of where most of Finland's population live and only convenient for people who live pretty far in the North, but of course it's important that we hold these meetings in every corner of Finland, and this time it was Oulu's turn.

Anyway, I was there and now I kinda wish we were a political party with elections coming up: we wrote an amazing political program! If there was an English translation or I had several hours to make one, I'd post the entire program here, but for now, I'm just going to gloat on having a great program and tell you nothing about it.

For the Finns following this thread, I recommend that you read it. I'm sure it's available at the Left Youth's site (www.vasemmistonuoret.fi) and if it's not online yet, it will be soon.

I guess I need to add a disclaimer: no one agrees with 100% of what's in there. The meeting was at times very silly (we fought for at least half an hour about whether we should call ourselves a "Left-Green, feminist" organisation or an "eco-Socialist" one, and whether we should be "Socialist" or "have our roots in workers' movements, which had Socialism as their goal" and whether or not we should include the word "radical" in the description.)

The dumbest thing in the agenda is that it's now our official policy to demand the removal of the Value Addition Tax system. Yeah. As if any industrialised country could afford to not have a VAT system. As if Finland could afford the problems that arise when you remove VATs completely; the price of booze would fall, and so would that of gas, cigarettes, etc. Value Addition Taxes provide more than 40% of all of Finland's tax income. I simply don't understand how it's possible that people actually voted to keep that goal in our agenda.

But anyway, the rest of the program is almost entirely awesome, and certainly the best political platform I've ever seen.

edited 21st Jan '14 6:31:18 AM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
JethroQWalrustitty Since: Jan, 2001
#196: May 30th 2011 at 2:44:49 PM

I guess I need to add a disclaimer: no one agrees with 100% of what's in there. The meeting was at times very silly (we fought for at least half an hour about whether we should call ourselves a "Left-Green, feminist" organisation or an "eco-Socialist" one, and whether we should be "Socialist" or "have our roots in workers' movements, which had Socialism as their goal" and whether or not we should include the word "radical" in the description.)

Fuck, we're still debating that? I remember that from the national meeting I went to four years ago.

BestOf FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC! from Finland Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: Falling within your bell curve
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
#197: May 30th 2011 at 3:11:48 PM

We eventually ended up with "Red-Green, feminist youth movement that has its roots in workes' movements that had Socialism as their goal".

It was worded better in the actual political program, but it's kinda hard to translate Finnish into other languages because it's extremely expressive and there are so many ways a word can be altered to convey more meaning while still being just one word.

Example for foreigners:

"to take" = "ottaa"

"I take" = "otan"

"would I take" = "ottaisinko"

"should I take" = "ottaisinkohan"

etc.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
Paracletus Since: Apr, 2011
#198: May 30th 2011 at 3:14:12 PM

Hmm, I didn't think that the Left would be for cutting taxes, but the world seems to be full of surprises. Are you guys still for the citizen wage (kansalaispalkka, or perustulo)? I am moderately in favour of it, as I think that it would simplify the paperwork and bureaucracy greatly. Though it would be a very expensive system.

Have you considered opening an open discussion forum like Homma to challenge the True Finns over the internet? And Oulu is not that far in the north.

BestOf FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC! from Finland Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: Falling within your bell curve
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
#199: May 30th 2011 at 3:34:11 PM

The Left wants to increase the degree of progressive taxation. So we want more taxes for the wealthy and less for the poor. Whenever there's an exception or other law or regulation that is clearly designed to save the wealthy some money, we go against it, as we do when taxes that are clearly aimed more at the poor than the rich are installed.

But generally we like taxes and want there to be more of them..

As for the VAT, the party, fortunately, only wants to cut necessary stuff like food and increase it for stuff like tobacco, alcohol and luxury products. Basically, we (the party, though apparently not the Left Youth) want to make the VAT so that people don't consume too much unnecessary stuff that creates pollution for no reason.

And yes, both the Left Youth and the party support "perustulo" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee "Basic Income Guarantee" is the term used by Wikipedia, so I'm going by that.)

We have boards and forums, though I'm not sure how they work or how you get an account (or if they allow anonymous posting) 'cause I've never been to our forum or IRC or anything like that. I simply don't have the time - or rather, I spend all my free time doing other stuff or hanging out here.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
JethroQWalrustitty Since: Jan, 2001
#200: May 31st 2011 at 7:47:22 AM

Have you considered opening an open discussion forum like Homma to challenge the True Finns over the internet?

The thing is, political forums usually end up as single issue platforms, with different things on the side. These tend to gravitate towards dogmatism, where any issue remotely related to the issue will be dragged in. Seen this with Immigration and Animal Rights, if a news story is remotely related, the comments section is sure to be a flamewar.

That, and I think most of us just prefer facebook these days. I should know, I have like half the members of Left Youth as my friends on there (hi Best Of!)


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