Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Jussi Halla-aho announced that he will resign as chairman of the administration committee, according to Helsingin Sanomat in English. The decision comes after the Supreme Court charged Halla-aho on Friday for defaming a religion and inciting ethnic hatred.
A new chairman will be chosen by the committee on Tuesday.
Halla-aho published a statement at 1:30pm that he will bow out as chairman of the administration committee. The statement was published shortly after a commission, made up of all the parliamentary party leaders, voted unanimously that Halla-aho should step down as chairman of the administration committee.
PS parliamentary leader Pirkko Ruohonen-Lerner boycotted the meeting.
Jussi Halla-aho
Halla-aho’s problems got worse when he announced in a statement that he would not resign as chairman of the administration committee because the Supreme Court sentence was “a personal interpretation by a few people.”
Helsingin Sanomat said that some PS members see the row as a witch-hunt aimed at distracting attention from the euro crisis.
“Every time that the dissolution of the euro comes just a little bit closer, they focus on someone from the Finns Party group – often someone whose surname starts with the letter H – and try to bury the fact that the euro has not been a success story”, said the party’s deputy chairman Juho Eerola.
Eerola belongs to the same far-right Suomen Sisu anti-immigration wing of the PS as Halla-aho.
Social Democrat veteran politician Paavo Lipponen warned last year of the far-right threat in Finland and that parliament should isolate politicians like Halla-aho.
“parliament should isolate politicians like Halla-aho.”
Because the people cant just vote right, i assume. People like Paavo Lipponen belong to soviet union and the 70’s.
Enrique, you were already corrected of your mistake in previous thread and now you write that same here again. That is now intentional lie, because you have been told about your error you can’t anymore say it’s just a mistake.
Off into political oblivion! Cheerio, me old matey! 🙂 🙂
Hi guys.
Problem with Jussi Halla-aho seems to be “his one-man-island” philosophy. A Robison Crusoë in modern Finland. This “me-against-the whole world” is nearly a religious stand.
Reality of today is not a Martin Luther kind of world perspective. “Losing my Perussuomalasanity” is exactly what has happen to him when defying the Supreme Court decision.
Jussi Halla-ajo seems to aim for a “martyrdom” exit…..like Breivik!! Does religion rings a bell here?? Or………merely arrogance.
The guy is his day of reckoning, many times he maintained racial prejudices and glorify violance against minority groups in Finland. Now he wants to refuse the court decision if he could but not. it is good step forward whatever.
Ricky
One obvious point that needs correcting here is that the vote calling on the PS to remove Halal-oho was taken by the leaders of the parliamentary caucuses, and not by the Administration Committee. This explains how this development and Halal-oho’s subsequent resignation could come as sudden announcements, as the business of the Administration Committee is planned well in advance and the agenda for meetings may be viewed online.
The vote was taken by a group of senior parliamentarians who have no formal power to remove the Chairman of a parliamentary committee. There is a valuable lesson to be learned here in the importance of political confidence.
This outcome is not so much due to the Supreme Court judgement as to the way in which Halal-aho responded to that judgement. Had he acknowledged the judgement with dignity and good grace, then he might have retained just enough political confidence to survive in his position.
This, if anything, was the appropriate time for the characteristic Finnish silence that does not give tacit assent, but merely indicates that something has been understood. Narcissism and arrogant grandstanding are political hemlock in representative democracy.
Halal-oho also seems to think that he can simply give up the chair of the Administration Committee but remain on that committee as an ordinary member.
We shall see whether this is a feasible proposal. There are two other PS members on the Administration Committee, but they are also ordinary members of other parliamentary committees as well. It is not customary for the chair of a parliamentary committee to serve on any other parliamentary committee, so if Halal-oho seeks to switch places with either of the PS ordinary members on the Administration Committee, then he will also have to seek membership of the other parliamentary committee concerned in each case, or the PS will have to come up with some other solution.
In the meantime Halal-oho continues to sound off about how hard done-by he is and about how everything he says is misunderstood and everyone in the platoon is out of step except him. This will ensure that he becomes an increasingly onerous political liability to the PS.
The most shocking issue in all of this is that only a few days ago, none of the political parties was willing to actively seek Hallo’s resignation. Things only changed when he was dismissive of the Supreme court’s ruling. It is embarrassing that in Finland, a parliamentarian is tolerated for promoting hate and racism. Hallo would not have resigned had he not criticised the supreme court. I guess the supreme court is Finnish and as such, must be respected. The hate speech indictment however, was towards foreigners and as such, he can be, well, tolerated. Sad…very sad
Excellent points, Happy!
Finland and the UK are different, but there is no way that Allah-oho would have been tolerated in UK politics with that conviction hanging over him, and certainly not in a parliamentary post. He would have been hounded out. Sometimes the press appear like a pack of wolves in the UK, but they do keep the politicians on the straight and narrow – except when it comes to their expenses, of course. 🙂
And I have often wondered too about his academic background, as it seems so inconsistent with his extreme views. He says that he is being misunderstood. Either he is an extremely poor communicator, or he simply will not accept the fact that people are interpreting his views as ‘extreme’, in which case, his moral/political compass is way off kilter!
What about other parlamentarians who have committed crimes? Is for example causing death more tolerable or more minor offence than inciting against and ethnic group or blasphemy?
Theres a clear double standard
Jssk
Your thinking is woolly and ill-informed. How you can still show your face after revealing yourself yesterday to be completely ignorant of Finnish laws on ethnic agitation, I don’t know, and still, here you are, trying to lecture us about what it all means. The only consistent thing I can get from you is that you have a blind allegiance to Allah-oho.
It is not a double standard to call for a politician to resign in Allah-oho’s circumstances. For us here, there is a direct relevance to immigrants and the entire atmosphere within Finland, and the stand taken against this seeming tolerance of extreme intolerance.
Personally, I’m not interested in other parliamentarians who have committed crimes, though I’d be more than happy to accept that where the crimes are clearly relevant to the job they are trying to do, then it should be taken as a character test.
Likewise, I’m not totally against the idea that humans make mistakes, and that as long as people see the mistake and accept it, they can be rehabilitated and perform a positive civic duty.
The issue with Allah-oho is that he shows no remorse, and refuses to understand the nature of his crime. He is stubborn and unrepentent, and completely dismissive of the judicial system that has sanctioned him. Not much sign of rehabilitation there.
Jssk
The point is that ethnic agitation and desecration are political offences against the social order and humanity. These have special relevance to the political credibility of anyone involved in collaboration to formulate public policy. This was promptly compounded with clear indications of contempt for the law and the judiciary.
Quite simply, the convicted racist criminal Halal-hölynpöly has shown his colleagues that his impartiality cannot be trusted, and that he sets a bad example in his declared attitude towards the public policy made by Parliament and the institutions that oversee its proper implementation.
I refer you to my comment submitted a couple of days ago.
You should note that there is 2 kinds of etnic agitation “törkeä” and the “normal”. So you shouldnt compare the “normal” one with törkeä, which includes preparing for genocide and such.
The only thing that has proven to be untrustable is KKO with its double standards
He already paid 330€ of the fine. Is that being “completely dismissive”?
His salary as an MP is distrainable, so this form of civil disobedience is not an option.
So whats wrong with Halla-aho criticizing the KKO’s decision?
This is conduct unbecoming to a Member of Parliament engaged in a public fiduciary capacity. Instead of narcissistic bleating, Halal-hölynpöly has a fiduciary responsibility to set an example in showing respect for the law made by Parliament and for the institutions that implement and enforce that law.
Until he can learn that respect he is not fit for office.
Where is the double standard? What other judgement of KKO or other decision of the criminal justice system are you contrasting with this one?
We have seen some bleating on hommaforum about how it’s a double standard to fine one offence and not another, but as the other offence in question was never reported for prosecution in the first place, this simply illustrates the pig ignorance of the hommaforum contributors in question.
I discussed this in detail yesterday.
I’ve heard today a new accusation of double standards in regard to his criticism of the Supreme Court, and that the Court has been criticized by politicians before without this kind of fuss and that it should not be above criticism anyhow.
However, I think there is a difference between disagreeing with the Court on specific grounds relating to the merits of the case and disagreeing in a way that suggests their opinion is pretty worthless anyway. But how many PS supporters will be bothered to try to see the difference? They’ll still see their man as getting hard done by rather than face the truth that he’s now a convicted racist.
It’s hard to see how this was somehow a ‘political’ decision though, by the Court, given that this law he was charged under is not particularly controversial. Criticizing immigration is one thing, but attacking religion using 1500-year-old cultural artefacts and trying to smear particular nationalities as criminals clearly has little to do with immigration unless you believe that ‘nationality’ or ‘religion’ are somehow characteristics that can be used as criteria for immigration.
Jssk
Moving goal posts. Yesterday you were claiming that ethnic agitation had nothing to do with distributing racist material, and you were found to be completely wrong on that point.
Your point about ‘normal’ and ‘törkeä’ makes no sense to me. Care to clarify?
Allah-oho was not protesting about the ‘double standard’, he was protesting the standard, and that should be clear even to the simplest fool. The point that he and others constantly try to ram home is that you cannot criticize immigration. In other words, you can criticize Finns, but you cannot criticize immigrants.
This is a load of horseshit for the following reasons:
1) All persons are protected by the same laws. If he saw fit, he could have made a complaint about the Finns being defamed. On the contrary, he was only interested in using this example as an excuse to peddle his bigoted crap about Islam and Somalis.
2) Does he think that the ‘standard’ should be upheld – that neither Finns nor Somalis/Muslims should be defamed in this way? Did he think that what was written about Finns was right and that he would like to write similar things about Somalis, i.e. that there should be no standard?
3) If it is the latter, then clearly it is not the ‘double standard’ that vexes him most, but ANY standard that stops him from spreading his vile opinions.
4) He went well beyond the facts of the case. Stating the facts of the case are not illegal. Some contrived attempt to apply today’s morality retrospectively into an entirely different world and circumstances almost certainly is going beyond the facts.
5) No Muslim groups among the 60 million Muslims living in Europe are advocating for child marriage.
6) Child marriage predates Islam by several thousands of years.
7) It’s almost guaranteed that each of us has at least one ancestor that procreated before today’s current age limits for consent and marriage, and so we are all by definition subject to the charge that Allah-oho created.
8. Criticising belief and religion is one thing, but making up accusations that have no foundation and using that to smear religion is something else altogether.
9) His comments relate to only a very small percentage of the Islamic world and takes no account of Islam as it is practiced in Europe.
I really do wonder how he can possibly justify himself. But then people like you come here and show that arguments really don’t matter, common sense really doesn’t matter, relevance and decency really don’t matter. As long as you can contrive some horseshit excuse, there are people out there who will support you through thick and thin in committing the most vile accusations and representations against particular immigrants. Worse, they will claim till they are blue in the face that they have the moral high ground, even while they spit out contempt for their fellow human beings.
You should read my reply.
Well, he was obviously testing for a double standard. Have you even read that scripta entry? You can ask him whether or not he thinks that killing people while drunk is a national, maybe even genetic characteric of Finns. In theory, he was right about Islam.
You are right about that todays morality doesnt apply to ancient cchild marriages.
This doesnt make it false that Muhammed was an ideal muslim. His actions were the will of god, and will of god is not to be criticized. No we are not all subjectile to that definition, unless we are all muslim.
As KKO said, those dont apparently matter when criticizing religion
Jssk
I’ve now replied. Not that it changes anything. You were clearly ill-informed.
I have read that Scripta entry and several subsequent ones defending his original arguments. I paid great attention to his arguments and I tried to be fair to him, especially on the issue of free speech, as I’m a defender of that principle. I was not one bit convinced by his arguments. It was very clear to me that he was manipulating the situation so as to justify making extreme comments. Maybe he even thought he could get away with it, or at the very least, avoid sanction by having made the accusation of ‘double standards’.
But JD already pointed out that you cannot complain about someone getting off by then committing a crime yourself. I’ve said before too that comments made by Finns about Finns, even if defamatory, are nowhere near as insidious as comments made by natives against immigrants. People seem to ignore the force of the majority and how destructive it can be.
I’d be happy for him to clarify his view of the comment on Finns. As it stands, he seems to be against the comment, but applying that standard would also mean he would have to reject his own comments about Somalis. So the most likely scenario is that he rejects all forms of ‘restriction’ on free speech. While an interesting argument in itself, it nevertheless ignores the whole notion of rights against defamation, threat and persecution. I think the laws are justified and that it’s reasonable to say that free speech comes with certain duties and responsibilities to respect the rights of others.
There is no ‘theory’ behind his analysis of Islam and the matters under discussion. I’ve already stated that the argument he used against Islam is unquestionably an argument that could be used against all of us. Not only that, but he was factually incorrect about what Islam advocates today. Thank you for acknowledging the falseness of applying modern morality to ancient times.
This is a reasonable argument to make, and I’m glad that you can make it without breaking the law. The question of just how literally one interprets the life of a prophet or a book as the Word of God is a challenge that all societies currently face. Maybe it is the key challenge of our generation. In that debate, there has been a lot of scaremongering going on. I see no problem in challenging Muslims about understanding the Quran as the literal word of God, in the same way I would see no problem in challenging Christian fundamentalists that would claim the Bible is the literal word of God.
In the same way, I would not seek to hold Timo Soini personally responsible, as a stated Christian, for the fact that Jesus told his disciples to respect the Mosaic Law and put to death any person (children as well, one’s presumes) who disrespects or dishonours their parent.
It is clear that the world now is facing a rise in extreme forms of Islam, while history shows us that there have been at other times extremes within all religions. Our times are unique though, in that mass media can present the actions of a few in such a way that they may appear to be a feature shared by the many. In that sense, we really must exercise some media literacy and skepticism.
There are a great many Muslims in the world who want and advocate peace, basic rights and sensible rule of law. In the secular West, religion has been a private matter, unmixed with public or political arenas, at least on the face of it. Now, we begin to understand that for Muslims, the divide is not necessarily so strict between the political and private sphere. But there are many instances too where secularism and Muslim faith are somewhat separate, i.e. Turkey and Indonesia, though more extreme elements have appeared in those countries too.
The question is really one of perspective. To present all Muslims as extremists is not merely foolishness or ignorance, it is a great disservice to over a billion human beings. And when driven forward with a remorselessness and unwillingness to appreciate the value of counter-examples, it starts to look very much like a persecution, like war-mongering, like cultural self-defence. Not only that, but when done on the back of national-socialism, it really does start to look like Nazism all over again.
Today, it has been refered to as the ‘gentle hatred’, because it has been whitewashed, sanitised and fluffed up with most delicate of PR touches so that it strikes all the right notes, pushes all the right buttons, stirs up all the relevant grievances, and touches on all the insecurities of maintaining a false identity such as ‘nationality’, or even ‘masculinity’, such is the strong connection between the two. If someone were to argue to me that nationality is not a false identity, then I would ask them, ‘why don’t the birds in Finland know they are Finnish?’
The identity we share as human beings gives us far more in common with other human beings than the differences that accumulate through having a national identity. The trajedy is that we often don’t recognise that fact.
But hatred is hatred, and it’s easy to spot because when you hate somebody, you forget they are a human being like yourself, and you present them as ‘the enemy’.
I don’t know what you are complaining about. You just made all the important criticisms that you wanted to make and you didn’t break a single law 😉
I think it’s worthwhile considering how far the counter-jihadis have been manipulated by powerful opinion formers in the West and the Middle-East. This becomes very clear in light of the Bin Laden letters, which indicate that Osama Bin Laden was keen to rebrand Al Qaeda in a way that would bring it closer to mainstream Islam, and that he was dismayed that the Obama administration had disengaged from the clash of civilisations rhetoric of its predecessor.
As always, the trick is to follow the Big Money: who stands to profit from the growth of a radical international Islamist movement and a corresponding international neofascist movement under the counter-jihadi banner? Certainly not the footsoldiers of either camp.
Further to this point, it is interesting that both the Islamist and counter-jihadi camps rely to a considerable degree on forms of language, conceptualisation and even perception that are unique to those camps. This phenomenon of opposed camps that obdurately refuse to listen to one another and insist on absolute loyalty on pain of absolute exclusion was described by George Orwell in 1984. Here, too, we had the notion of newspeak seeking to make heresy impossible to express, at least with any degree of sophistication.
Well, it may be hard for you to understand, but there is some truth in that statement. After all, it is a human feature to become aggressive when drunken. By that I mean pissed, way out of it, let’s say more drunk than one gets after a beer or two or three (depends on the person of course), let’s say after 5, 6, 7 or more beers. There is a tendancy for human beings to lose control over one’s actions and thoughts when (very) drunk. Sometimes this may lead to people who become hilariously funny, some on the other hand become very annoying, while others still become dangerous/ agressive. I think I do not have to elaborate this any further for anyone who has been drunk himself or who has been in a pub from time to time, and – I’m sorry to say so – the chance of encountering embarrassing/ tense/ dangerous situations in Finnish drinking-houses is (to say the least) somewhat higher than in other countries (and I am NOT referring to Russia, Poland, etc.). I mean by that that drinking ‘hard’ is a Finnish cultural trait, not to say that (many) Finns actually cannot handle alcohol in a sensible way. Situation is getting better, but the overall drinking culture is not like e.g. in Belgium or France (even more so) where people can go and grab a beer or two, three after work on a weekday and then dash off to the wife and kids. Not saying that there are no drinking problems in those countries, but the general drinking culture is overall more sane, less “let’s get drunk and then melancholic and then …”. With Finns it is all or nothing in that respect. And, ok, I sometimes like to do that too, but that is not my point
All this to say that hard drinking is part of a generally (accepted)Finnish attitude. In that sense, saying that Finns are genetically predisposed to commit violent crimes(kill and beat people up and so on) when drunk is in a way true. Of course this also goes for Japanese (also geneticaly predisposed to get violent when drunk), Americans, Somali people, etc. … since they are all human!
I will not even go into trying to explain that the author of this maligned quote “drinking (excessively) and killing is a national, if not genetical, attribute of finns” was merely stating facts (excessive drinking and killing – a lot of murders in Suomi indeed, especially when combined with alcohol)
in the context of an article in a newspaper. Maybe it hasn’t occured to some Halla-Allo’ists in Finland but figures of speech (exaggeration, hyperbolia, irony, sarcasm, cynicism) is something used very frequently by journalists…
Now to conclude I’d like all the Halla-Aho fans around to think (hard) about this: the journalist writing about the proneness of Finns towards violence (when drunk) was a Finn himself. Then why turning on the Somali community in a response to this journalists’ writing? How grown up is that? Think about it? It just shows Halla-Aho’s bias, his real concern (not being that somebody dares write something negative about Finns, but his obsession with picking on certain population groups).
T.S.
I couldn’t have formulated this better.
Now, that is a double standard. 6 § of the constitution:
“Ihmiset ovat yhdenvertaisia lain edessä.
Ketään ei saa ilman hyväksyttävää perustetta asettaa eri asemaan sukupuolen, iän, alkuperän, kielen, uskonnon, vakaumuksen, mielipiteen, terveydentilan, vammaisuuden tai muun henkilöön liittyvän syyn perusteella.”
True, but the law on ethnic agitation is very ambiguous, and can be used as a blunt weapon. That should be fixed in my opinion.
Well, in theory its correct. In the light of nowadays morality, its not acceptable, and i dont believe that majority of muslims are OK with child marriage. Yes, i acknowledge that majority of believers dont behave 100% according to their holy texts.
If you mean “Jesus told his disciples to respect the Mosaic Law and put to death any person (children as well, one’s presumes) who disrespects or dishonours their parent.”, theoretically yes. But i doubt that would cause similiar outrage that Halla-aho caused. Partially because its not such taboo as pedophilia. The difference in literalism is that Jesus himself didnt write bible, and he used a lot of metaphors. Later some christian movements have begun to take the bible literally.
In islam’s case, Muhammed wrote Quran (allthough the book itself was compiled later from muhammads writings) and its mean to be the literal word of god, and doesnt leave much space for explanations or questioning.
Do tell me, how is nationality false? We speak the same, we have pretty much the same traditions etc. The dominant part of our ancestors travelled from south of Urals.
Present who as the enemy? For example Finnish thieves, yes. Finns as whole, no.
Jssk
Just because I see the offences as different in character does not mean that I necessarily think that they should be treated differently by the law. Clearly the law is designed to protect against racism, and that should be borne in mind.
Ambigious? Is it that hard to spot a racist comment? Are people so unsure about what racism is? Maybe they are, but if they also refuse to understand racism, can that self-imposed ignorance be a defence? Clearly not. Some people want to use criminal statistics to label certain nationalities or ethnic groups criminal. A researcher pointing out the obvious will tell you that there are several confounding variables that can also explain any statistical correlation, as well as pointing out that a lack of proper demographic weighting can also produce misleading statistics. The issue of links between genes and crime belongs in research circles, not in immigration debates. Researchers looking at identical and non-identical twin studies have found no link between genes and crime, let alone between crime, genes, race and nationality.
To date, any loose talk of genetics ‘causing crime’ is quickly followed by unethical suggestions such as eugenics, and relevant to Finland, rejection of immigratiom from certain countries. Clearly it’s a moral minefield. To add that to an already highly charged immigration debate is rather dangerous. To allow accusations with no factual basis to pass freely within the public domain is indefensible. The stimgatization created is truly horrific for those that live with it. Jssk, can you possibly imagine what it might be like to live thinking that people who identify you easily as a member of visible minority are also freely admitting on a wide scale that they would naturally suspect you to be a rapist, robber or murderer? That an individual should carry that kind of stigma in today’s world is unacceptable.
Again, it’s not that these things cannot be debated, but without an accepted theoretical basis, then there really is no justification for allowing this kind of racial or national profiling on the back of misconstrued statistics and anecdotal hearsay. You will NEVER find a Parliament in Finland foolish enough to make that kind of defamation and ethnic agitation legal, not even for the sake of ‘free speech’.
Indeed, the nature of Allah-oho’s claim was to choose society’s worst social label and attach it carelessly or maliciously to Muslims and Islam. It’s not even a problem in Europe, so why he thinks it’s relevant to the debate, I really don’t know. The issue is clear, if he’s interested and smart enough (for ‘smart’, also read ‘considerate’), there are ways for him to discuss the issues legally and without insulting Islam or Muslims.
Several debates are crossing over here. First, child marriage is discussed in the Quran only briefly, and not in relation to Mohammed’s own life. The issue then was that a girl was considered morally mature when she reached puberty and could decide for herself about her marriage. She could refuse, and some evidence suggests that Mohammed thought it was okay that a girl refuse the man who she had been married to. Marriage, as an instrument of family power in those days was the responsibility of the child’s guardian. Choice in marriage, while seen as an inailiable right nowadays, was approached very differently, both in Europe and the Middle East in times gone by.
But this discussion on marriage is a seperate discussion to the nature of holy texts as ‘the literal Word of God’. There are a great many sects of Christianity that apply any number of literal translations, choosing to adopt various parts of the New and Old Testament. Point being, the Christian world is not so different to the Muslim world. We live in an age of religious tolerance in the West, with the limits of religious freedom rubbing up against other rights and freedoms defined through secularism. However, for all that people scaremonger about political Islam, the West is still being led today by a country (USA) that cannot yet contemplate voting for an atheist president.
The rise of the religious right in America has surprised some, as has the rise of political atheism in Europe, which was believed to be quite passive about the whole notion of religion. Religion’s significance was thought to be dwindling in Europe. Not so, it would seem. Likewise, some of the behaviour of atheists mirrors the fundamentalism of the religious (including the blindness, and the blind leading the blind, i.e. Dawkins!), in much the same way that many Far Right groups (e.g. Breivik) mirror the characteristics of religious militants.
Religion faces one key problem – it’s very difficult to admit to being wrong about something. If religious authorities are wrong about one aspect of their faith or their presentation of the story of the universe, then it is like a seam unpicked, the threads start to all come apart. That is because the Churches are built not on doctrine or learning, but on ‘authority’, and that authority relies on being seen to be right, otherwise the authority evaporates, and much of the doctrine becomes subject to doubt. Some will say that is an important step in the religious life. Some will even argue that religion does not end there, but only begins, once we accept that the letter of the law is not literally the spirit of the law, to quote a smart critic of religion.
There is nothing wrong in debating these things, and really, they should be debated. However, there is one quick and sure way to turn the whole thing into a bloodbath, and that is to start insulting people on the basis of their belonging to a religious group, without even beginning to understand the individuals own beliefs, or the diversity of belief and interpration that exists within that religion, which is truly vast. In other words, it’s all too easy for people who really know very little about religion to make dubious conclusions, claim the moral high ground, and start a campaign of slash and burn- now I ask you, who are the troublemakers? This does not gloss over the fact that some religious people can have degrees of extremeness in their own ‘universal morality’. But this kind of blanket character assassination of religion is not the answer. It’s an incendiary.
Do I really have to spell this out? Nationality is an arbitrary name dreamed up by an individual – you could just as easily have been called Fonns instead of Finns (or Slörrilainen instead of Suomalainen) – coupled with an arbitrary choice of flag, an arbitrary choice of national anthem, an arbitrary choice of cultural icons, an arbitrary choice of national foods etc. The emphasis really is on the word ARBITRARY. Funny that you can easily see how religious identity has arbitrary characteristics, but you refuse to see those same arbitrary characteristics in national identities. Strange.
The first obvious point is that section 6 of the Finnish Constitution is not about equality but equity. The common confusion between these two related ideas is a legacy of the old Form of Government Act (Hallitusmuoto) and underlines the point that human rights are a relatively late arrival in the Finnish legal and administrative system.
The notion of equality is commonly understood as “treating everyone the same”. This has been marvellously satirised in a well-known cartoon. Equality typically ignores the inherent and contingent differences between individuals and applies a one-size-fits-all approach to law and public administration.
By contrast, the notion of equity recognises that individuals are different, and it allows for those differences when providing public services and enforcing public duties. This means that a range of services will be available according to the needs of various classes of individual. This approach to public administration was well-entrenched in Finland even before the Constitution was modernised. The most obvious examples are progressive taxation, the day-fine system and special social service categories (e.g. braille libraries).
There are two points to make when considering defamation from the perspective of equity. The first, as Mark indicates, is that the needs of a minority should not be assumed to correspond to those of the majority. Minorities may enjoy various forms of special legal protection due to their disadvantaged position. Braille libraries are an example of this.
The second point is that intra-group interactions need not be governed in the same way as out-of-group interactions. This is really rather obvious in the case of defaming the group concerned, as intra-group defamation is self-effacing. A Martian who says “all Martians are liars” invokes the famous paradox, whereas a Terran who says this is merely being offensive. In this sense, then, intra-group defamation is fundamentally different from out-of-group defamation.
Because of the presumption against self-effacement, we allow a slightly greater margin of appreciation when evaluating cases of intra-group defamation. Ambiguously offensive expressions can be used more freely, because we generally assume that the speaker did not intend the expression in a pejorative sense. Furthermore, expressions that are historically charged by their use in an out-of-group context do not necessarily carry the same charge when used within a group.
If you think that only minorities should be protected, Nelson Mandela might want to disagree with that.
Well, its proven that immigrants are overpresented in crime statistics. Racism may also mean believing that different racial groups are characterised by some properties. Isnt this more or less true? Scandinavians differ in facial shape to east asians for example. Some african peoples have on average a larger amount of different muscle fibers compared to whites for example.
If one goes as far as discriminating due to ones race, that should be punishable of course. but some people see racism differently, and might understand even immigration criticism as racism. Thats not good.
It doesnt matter what the nationality is called. Coincidence usually plays a role how a certain group of people sharing the same charasteristics is named. Nation=/=state. For example, karelians are pretty much finns, estonians and saami are close. If you go east and take a look at the indigenous finnic peoples, they have some same cultural charasteristics. Culture is not arbitrary. it has been shaped by time and enviroment. religion may be made up. Originally a group of similiar tribes, a nation is not.
USA etc. is a different thing, the country mostly consists of fairly new immigrants (while destroying the original american peoples) of different kinds. Destroying nations by mixing them with the reason “they dont exists, so it doesnt matter” is blind stupidity.
Jssk
Well, it’s a good job I don’t think that, isn’t it. 🙂 As it is, S. Africa was an unusual case where a minority rules and subjects the majority population to abuse, although Syria and Iraq are two other examples that continue to cause significant suffering for those caught up in it.
Now there is a bold statement. Having already pointed out the arguments involved (confounders, demographic weighting), I’m very interested to see this proof of yours.
You could say that was the old-fashioned definition. Newer forms or racism and ways of identifying superiority of ‘races’ have clearly emerged, so it’s perhaps a good idea if you update yourself on that.
And how significant are these? Can these be offered as the basis for a theory that says one race is superior to another, or that one is more inclined to crime? Nope. For example, skin colour does not break down into discreet categories that you can attach clear labels. You can take the extremes, and clearly you can see the difference, but there are all shades in between. Exactly the same point can be made in regard to muscle fibres, facial shapes, HEIGHT, WEIGHT etc. Are there genetic reasons? Yes. Are these conserved within specific gene pools? Yes. Do they form distinct categories? No. End of argument.
The nettle you seem not to have grasped is that a great deal of the ‘immigration criticism’ is blatant racism, including most obviously the desire to link certain nationalities with crime, as if that has never ever happened in history before!
And yet it’s arbitrary. And people identify with the name as if it was special in itself, some kind of God given characteristic that was unique to that group.
The same characteristics, you say? And what characteristics are they, i wonder, and what is the argument that they are unique to the people, once you have accounted for the arbitrary way of referring to them? I’m curious to see examples. The only thing I can think of perhaps is technology, which may or may not be present between cultures. But as technology is a belonging, and one that is easily shared, the ‘exclusive’ nature lies merely in the ownership – not particularly convincing to me of ‘racial or national’ uniqueness.
I’m afraid you’ll find that culture is almost entirely arbitrary. That doesn’t mean it isn’t conserved (becoming heritage), but arbitrary nevertheless. Take language, that most sacred and prized feature that is imagined so often to make peoples unique. Let us take H20, for want of a better example – in one language it is dwr, in another vetta, in another agua, in another water – and yet we are all speaking of the same thing, which exists independently of the language. While there have been a great many arguments about those artifacts that are unique to a language (think along the lines of 50 words for snow), on the whole, the referents in the world are the same for all, and while the words we invent for them are different.
The world is a strange place. Billions upon billions of trees, all absolutely unique and no two alike, and yet totally un-unique in being trees. In other words, uniqueness and non-uniqueness both co-exist at the same time. The same is true of human culture, in my view.
But just because it’s arbitrary does not mean it isn’t unique, but we would be fools to think that that uniqueness is something that naturally excludes others who have a different language or heritage.
Haha-Aho didn’t criticise the decision by the KKO. He was completely dismissive of it. There is a big difference. When the president of the United States (as Obama did on an issue) disagreed with a US supreme court’s ruling, he began by stating that “I respect the supreme court and its ruling, however, I disagree with it”. It sets a terrible precedence when one arm of government disrespects or disregards another arm in a democracy. I would expect that reaction from some elected official in Russia or Cameroon where the rule of law is not respected.
A second implication of his nonsense attitude is that, well, he did nothing wrong, as such, those who engage in hate speech can continue doing so. Why? Well because those who criticise them, such as judges, other politicians, and individuals in civil society are simply misinterpreting or misrepresenting their positions. Haha-Aho is basically stating that there is nothing wrong in making racist or hateful comments.
His reaction would be interpreted by some as meaning hate speech is OKAY. Why don’t you get it, Jssk???
Uh, Halla-aho paid most of the fine, and i dont believe he isnt going to pay the rest. I dont think you know what “completely dismissive” means. He showed healthy criticism.
Tarja Halonen criticised a decision in the “grandmother case” couple years back. It didnt cause an outrage. Johannes Koskinen had criticised dozens of decisions and caused compensation liability for the state because of actions infringing human rights. He didnt have to resign.
Halla-ahos conviction showed that you can get fined very easily for writing irrelevant stuff, if it hits an important person in the achilles heel.
Ethnic minorities are equally capable of insulting, inciting hatred and practising violence. In colonial africa, was the white power acceptable to keep white colonialist safe?
So a finn can incite against finns as much as he likes? wheres the limit then? can he call for a finnish genocide even?
I dont think that “disadvantaged position” is an acceptable explanation of putting other group of people in different position.
Your first response simply fails to connect with the point that I explained.
Your second point merely asks how broad the margin of appreciation should be when defamation is self-effacing. That’s an interesting question. We may well ask whether the Finnish government itself was within this margin when arguing that there was a public health justification for the State monopolies on alcohol sales and gaming specifically in Finland. This argument boils down to the assertion that Finnish people are uniquely, or at least especially susceptible to addictive-compulsive behaviour.
Well, then you take issue with a very important and very well-established principle of law in general, which is to protect the weaker party in asymmetric transactions. Most of Finnish labour law, for example, is designed to protect the employee, who is understood as the weaker party in an employment relationship. There are special legal provisions that protect the interests of minors in relations with adults specifically because minors are understood to be the weaker party in those relationships. There is an entire raft of legislation that protects consumers in relation to manufacturers, retailers and sellers in general, and another major area that protects individuals in their relations with public authorities.
Jssk
Respectfully, that is a crock of shit as an explanation, and you know it. Halal-hölynpöly does not have a credible choice over whether or not to pay the fine.
As I pointed out above, Halal-hölynpöly’s salary as an MP is distrainable. There is simply no practical way that he can “refuse to pay”. If he doesn’t pay, then he will notice at some point that an even larger sum has been docked from his salary or from his bank account by the distraint authority.
The only way that Halal-hölynpöly can refuse to pay this fine is by resigning from all employment (i.e. standing down from Parliament), emptying his bank account and hiding all other distrainable assets. As protests go, that would be quite impressive.
Indeed Halal-hölynpöly cannot possibly be ignorant of this, as he signed a private member’s bill submitted this year by fellow peruSSuomalaiset member Tom Packalén seeking to reintroduce imprisonment for people who fail to pay fines and have no distrainable assets.
You understood this point when it was made to you above, and you responded to it with another question. Readers may draw their own conclusions.
So what are you complaining then about? Because he dared to criticise the decision?
Jssk
IIRC the most out-of-line criticism of the Supreme Administrative Court judgement came from Pekka Hallberg, the President of the Supreme Administrative Court itself, when he submitted an informal request to the police to delay enforcement of the judgement. That certainly did cause significant consternation, and Hallberg was subsequently censured by the Parliamentary Ombudsman for conduct unbecoming. However, the character of that criticism was significantly different, as it was directed at the law itself. Both President Halonen and Prime Minister Vanhanen expressed their distress at the outcome and 80 MPs signed an early day motion seeking to amend the law that the Supreme Administrative Court had applied. Eventually the European Court of Human Rights intervened with a request to stay the expulsion pending a review of the cases in question. It was also interesting to see how many of the “sour” wing of the peruSSuomalaiset turned out to be total pussies when confronted with real cases of human suffering arising from a “strict” immigration policy (but of course, the victims were white).
The Koskinen case is a better example, and here it is more clear that Janakkalan Hannu simply had sufficient political credibility and confidence to be able to survive the backlash from a Constitutional faux pas. Koskinen was censured by the Attorney-General for his comments on the Alpo Rusi case, but of course this was after he had completed his term as Minister of Justice. A scandal, certainly, but nowhere near enough to bring down a highly respected and long-serving senior politician.
By contrast Halal-hölynpöly is a spiteful little man who thinks far too much of himself. It’s no surprise that he has few political friends, and it didn’t take much to push him off his perch.
I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with someone who who approaches such race-related issues with a prejudiced mindset. If you read my comment, you would have noticed that I stated that it is okay to disagree with a ruling without been dismissive of it. In Haha-aho’s case,he was supposed to show great restraint in criticising such a ruling since he is an active member in another arm of authority in Finland.
Whatever Tarja or Koskinen did or said, can’t ever be justify Haha-aho’s racist behavior. If they were wrong, they were wrong, and it shouldn’t in anyway, justify Haha-aho’s foolishness.
How dare you call hate speech orracism against another group of human beings “irrelevant”? Well, unless you share the same bigoted mindset that he has. Racists are uncultured. They must get a life!!!