The Islamophobic and populist Perussuomalaiset (PS) is a party that attempts to revindicate far-right racists on the rampage and its leader, Jussi Halla-aho, is US President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic cheerleader.
Halla-aho, who has a conviction for ethnic agitation, breaching the sanctity of religion and being a racist smartass, stated his undying admiration for a president who is a chronic narcissist and defies science.
On June 4, 2019, Halla-aho tweets: “I dig. him. Trump is the best thing that has happened in a long time to the United States and to the Western world.”
As we all heard Thursday, President Trump suggested that a beam of light and a disinfectant like bleach, if injected in the body, could help kill the coronavirus.
Halla-aho’s and his party’s admiration of Trump reveals the kind of country they’d want Finland to be.
This blog entry is dedicated to the late Donald Fields, Helsinki correspondent of the BBC, The Guardian, and Politiken to 1988.
As a journalist writing from Finland for some of Europe’s biggest dailies in the 1980s like the Financial Times, there is one matter that stands out from those days: censorship.
The censorship that Finland imposed on its media was overpowering and near-complete. Even writing about topics like EU – then EEC – membership was out of the question. Foreign policy was the sacrosanct topic reserved for only a few “wise” men.
As one example out of many, in 1992 I wrote an editorial for Apu magazine about the scrapping of the treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance (YYA) with the Soviet Union. At the last moment, my editorial was taken down.
The only matter that remained of my editorial on the page was a black-and-white picture of Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signing the YYA agreement in 1948.
The then editor of Apu, Matti Saari, warned me: “I’m the only one that writes about such topics in editorials.”
Whenever I wrote a story that was critical about Finnish-Soviet relations, I’d get a call from the Soviet Embassy. Even the foreign ministry warned me that I would be blacklisted if I wrote critically as I once did for Spain’s leading news magazine Cambio 16 about the contraband of Bibles to the USSR.
A Finnish diplomat whom I knew in Madrid told me how furious they had been about what I had written. She said outright that if I continued to write about such topics, then I would be blacklisted by the foreign ministry.
Mike Hofman published in 2014 his thesis on media censorship during the cold war.
Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signing in 1948 the treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Agreement. Source: Yle.
Some of these “wise” men who guided Finland’s sacrosanct foreign policy during the cold war was the late Max Jakobson (1923-2013). I found out many years after his death that we were distant relatives. Our great great great grandfather was Jacob Weikain, who moved to Hamina in 1799 and was the first Jew to get a residence permit.
Believe it or not, history books in Finland to the 1970s still claimed that Finland was populated by two races, the Nordic and East Baltic. Eugenics was a big pseudoscience in Finland.Source: J.E. Aro, J.E. Rosberg, I Arvi F. Poijärvi, Koulun maantieto, WSOY, 1941. p.32.
Jakobson, like some of the hardliners of the foreign ministry, and associations like Finnfacts, whose job was to invite foreign journalists to Finland so they’d write positive things about the country, did not accept anyone diverging from the official interpretation of relations with Moscow.
In the minds of many foreign ministry officials, Finlandization, foreign policy dictated by the USSR, did not exist.
In the summer 1980 edition of Foreign Affairs, Jakobson wrote: “As a result, Finland is forever at the mercy of the itinerant columnist who after lunch and cocktails in Helsinki is ready to pronounce himself upon the fate of the Finnish people.”
The attitude that Finns never mind foreigners should see the country’s relations with the USSR from its perspective, reveals today Finnish exceptionalism. Foreign journalists and scholars should not give their opinion because they don’t understand our reality.
This exclusive attitude is highlighted by S. Muir and H. Worthen in “Finland’s Holocaust.” “Even when there was something written about Finland, the perspective of the foreign researcher was often criticized for hopeless objectivity and the blindness towards the specifically Finnish war-time historical context. In many cases, this has been more than justified (our emphasis).”[1]
How have the cold war years impacted Finland today? Is it evident in its immigration and asylum policy and the general suspicion of foreigners? Can we trace its impact to the rise of a racist party called the Perussuomalaiset (PS)?* What about the explosive increase of hate speech and racism?
As S. Muir and H Worthen as well as other scholars, it is clear that the roots of Finnish racism are rooted in its history.
They continue: “The myth of an ideologically unified Finland isolated from the attitudes and practices of its ally, the Third Reich, and generally unsullied by antisemitism has become an insupportable burden for contemporary Finnish historical and cultural studies, and indeed for contemporary Finnish society; the insensitivity toward these silenced histories provides a condition of continued racism and antisemitism. [2]
Cold War and Human Rights
My Finnish relatives are a source that helps me to understand the source of racism. It is right under my nose almost completely whitewashed by hostility and history.
Part of my grandfather’s family changed their surname in 1931 to Harvo from Handtwargh. Even if I never asked my grandfather why he changed his surname, I suspect it had to do with the rise of fascism and anti-foreign sentiment, which was fed by anti-Semitism.
While matters like my family’s Jewish background took decades to figure out, one of my greatest disappointments, when I moved permanently to Finland in December 1978, came when an Aliens’ Office official said that I wasn’t a Finn.
Citizenship in Finland is determined by the parents’ citizenship (jus sanguinis). Even so, I was not considered a Finn because my father wasn’t a Finn.
Even if people in this country are quick to point out that women where the first in Europe who won the right to vote in 1906, it was not until 1984 when they had the right to pass on Finnish citizenship to their children.
A year before women won such a right, the country had in force its first-ever Aliens Act. Before the act, foreigners were treated by the aliens’ authorities on a one-to-one basis. You had no rights and could be deported without the right to appeal.
The treatment of foreigners, especially Soviet refugees, was disgraceful during the cold war.
Migrant Tales has written onSoviet asylum-seekers in Finland in the past and how they were returned against their will to the USSR to suffer a gruesome fate in psychiatric wards and prisons. One of these that I met was Aleksandr Shatravka, who visited my home in 2011 with his wife Irina. Thanks to Aleksandr, whom I met thanks to Migrant Tales, I published in February 2010 in one of Finland’s first-ever extensive human- interest stories on a former asylum-seeker who was forcibly returned to the Soviet Union in 1976.
If Finland was hostile to refugees and suspicious of foreigners, the country was ruled until 1992 by the Restricting Act of 1939.
The Act prohibited foreigners from owning real estate and acquiring a majority stake in Finnish companies—limiting this to 20% normally and 40% under special permission. The Restricting Act stipulated that foreigners could not own shares in sectors like forestry, securities trading, transportation, mining, real estate, and shipping. Foreigners weren’t allowed to establish newspapers, never mind organize demonstrations, and be politically active.
If history shows us some of the roots of our racism and anti-Semitism today, it also sheds as well light on our restrictive asylum and immigration policy. It explains why the Finnish Immigration Service operates in the way it does and why it has been the object of much criticism.
One positive step in cutting the roots and sources of our racism was an independent investigation that confirmed in February that Finnish volunteers of the Waffen-SS Wiking Division engaged in violent acts against civilians and Jews in Russia.
Considering that the aim of the SS in Russia was a war of annihilation and genocide against Jews and other enemies of the Nazis, the conclusions of the investigation should not come as a surprise.
The big surprise, however, is that it has taken almost 85 years to connect the volunteers of the Waffen-SS dots to the genocide that took place in Russia during World War 2.
[1] Finland’s Holocaust: Silences of History, edited by S. Muir, H. Worthen, pp. 25-26.
According to Yaron Nadbornik, president of the 1,100-strong Jewish Community of Helsinki, the Finnish authorities acknowledge that there is anti-Semitism and it is a problem.
“The authorities have recognized during 2018-2019 that there is an anti-Semitism problem in Finland,” he said. “Before it was [for them] pretty unclear if such a matter existed.”
According to Nadbornik, the shift in attitude happened due to the activities of neo-Nazi and far-right groups in Finland.
The head of the Jewish Community of Helsinki said that hate speech continues to be the fertile ground for anti-Semitism and racism in Finland.
“More efforts [by the authorities] should be taken to address hate speech,” he continued, “because it is from there where terrible things happen.”
Nadbornik complained in an interview in 2017 that the government of Prime Minsiter Juha Sipilä was not doing enough to clamp down on online hate speech.
“Anti-Semitism has become more systematic and organized [since 2017],” he said, adding the groups use different online platforms to spread their hatred.
Nadbornik agreed that politicians should show more leadership against hate speech and social ills like anti-Semitism and racism.
“Politicians do speak out against hate speech but a lot more could be done,” he said. “President [Sauli] Niinistö’s speech denouncing anti-Semitism [and condemning neo-Nazi groups] was important because it reaffirmed that there is a problem [in Finland and steps must be taken to eradicate it].”
President Niinistö’s condemnation came after the Turku Synagogue was the target of vandals on Holocaust Remembrance Day in January.
Nadbornik said that the Synagogue of Helsinki was also vandalized several times in winter with paint and stickers.
“The coronavirus [pandemic] has fueled racism against the Chinese and Jews in Central Europe and the United States,” he concluded. “We haven’t seen this problem in Finland, and I hope I never will.”
If you had the opportunity ever to know Ali, one of the first things you’d know is his arduous journey from Finland to Iraq and hopefully back. During the roughly three years lived in Finland, the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) to tell him that he isn’t wanted here.
This is his situation today: Ali left voluntarily in June 2018 to Iraq, got married to his sweetheartin Turkey in October of the same year, and applied for a visa to Finland on the grounds that he is married to a Finnish citizen.
After a long wait, their chance to live together in Finland was dashed last autumn by Migri, which claimed that their marriage is fake.
Both have appealed the decision to the administrative court.
“Sometimes I lose hope and it is really a stressful feeling,” said Ali’s wife. “I hope things will work out. We will find a way.”
Apart from doing everything legally, the couple sent a letter to Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo asking her to intervene in their case.
“I haven’t got any reply from her office,” said Ali’s wife. “Not even confirmation that they received our letter.”
There is always a question that arises from Ali: “How long before I can be by my beloved wife’s side?”
If there is one matter that characterizes Migri in Ali’s and his wife’s case it is the sheer cruelty and arbitrariness of how Migri treats asylum seekers from the Middle East, Ali’s case is one from a long list of other Middle Easterners married to a Finn.
Just like Finland’s inhumane family reunification policy, the human right to establish a family in Finland is denied by a country that claims to value social equality and justice.
In my book that is called hypocrisy.
A message* from Ali (12.4.2020):
Hi Enrique,
How are you, it’s been a long time since we chatted. I hope you are feeling well. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m not having good days as I once did a long time ago. I don’t know what to do, but I remember you. You’ve always lent a friendly ear, and thank you for helping us in our ordeal. There are many thoughts, some that appear when I’m working or when I’m resting. Matters become worse before I go to sleep. Every time I close my eyes, an image appears of a picture (see below) I took in a police cell I was detained.
This picture was taken by Ali while in detention in a police cell in Mikkeli.
My heart starts to beat faster when I remember the unfair treatment I received in Finland by the police. It generates a lot of anxiety and sadness. I sometimes watch movies before going to sleep to forget. But I cannot sleep as so many things are swimming around in my mind, like the nightmares, the nightmares I see every night. One of these is of the police running after me. I try to run, but there is nothing I can do. I cannot escape. The nightmares are so intense that I can’t stop them from appearing. I tried many times by not thinking of what happened. I tried everything even with the help of video calls with my wife every day and every night. But it’s to no avail. The nightmares appear. I wish I could do more and be stronger, but it’s so hard. I’m sorry for sharing this with you.
Tässä mielipidekirjoitus, joka julkaistiin maaliskuussa Karjalaisissa. Tarjoisin kirjoitusta ensiksi Helsingin Sanomiin, mutta tuli seuraava vastaus: “Kiitos kirjoituksesta. Runsaan tarjonnan takia meillä ei ole mahdollisuutta julkaista sitä.” Karjalaisissa poistettiin muutamia kohtia kirjoituksesta. Tässä alkuperäinen kirjoitus.
Yksi lehdistön tärkein tehtävä on olla yhteiskunnan vahtikoira ja valvoa kaikkien oikeuksia. Kuinka hyvin Suomen lehdistö valvoo vähemmistöjen, kuten muslimien, oikeuksia?
Osa ihmisistä ja vähemmistöistä eivät tiedä kuinka tärkeä rooli ja vastuu lehdistöllä on demokraattisessa yhteiskunnassa. Lehdistön vapaus kuuluu sananvapauteen ja on lakisääteinen. Jos viimeiset tutkimukset puhuvat totta, Suomessa esiintyy liian paljon syrjintää työmarkkinoilla ja poliittinen maahanmuuttovastaisuutta leimaava retoriikka rehottaa.
Keväällä julkaistaan uusin eurooppalaisesta muslimeihin kohdistuva rasismi ja syrjintä kertova raportti (European Islamophobia Report). Suomen osiossa kuvataan kuinka eritysesti Oulun seksuaalirikosten uutisointi sekä myöhemmin al-Holin naisten ja lasten kotiuttaminen vaikuttivat muslimiyhteisöön.
Ilta-Sanomat kirjoitti vuonna 2015 “laitonta” pakolaisista.
Kuten Oulun kirjoitukset osoittivat, poliitikot (erityisesti perussuomalaiset ja myös hallituspuolueesta mm. kokoomus), innostuivat leimaamaan koko muslimiyhteisön. Huhtikuun eduskuntavaalit oli yksi tärkeä moottori, joka innoitti poliitikot tähän ja lehdistö tarjosi hyvän alustan levittää tätä sanoma.
Mielestäni yksi tärkein lehdistön ominaisuus on olla reilu. Sanat ovat, kun luoteja. Tykillä ei kannata kärpästä ampua.
Suomalaisen lehdistön reaktio ei yllätä. Eräs brittitutkimus (Muslim Council of Britain) paljasti, että keskimäärin 59% kirjoituksista olivat puolueellisia ja negatiivisia muslimeille.
Suomesta löytyy paljon esimerkkejä negatiivisista ja jopa rasistisista jutuista 1990-luvulta, kun iltapäivälehdet kirjoittivat somalipakolaisten tulosta Suomeen. Tässä muutamia lööppejä Ilta-Sanomista: ”Somalit saaneet huijaten turvapaikkoja” (27.4.1994), ”Somalit jäävät Suomeen” (7.8.1996), ”Miksi venäläiset ärsyttävät suomalaisia?” (1.8.1995). Vuonna 2015 sama meno näytti jatkuvan: ”IS paljastaa: Tänä vuonna Suomeen 10 000 laitonta pakolaista.
Pakolaiset eivät voi olla ”laittomia”, koska he ovat maahan tullessaan hakeneet turvapaikkaa, mikä on yksi ihmisoikeuksista.
Mediatutkija Anu Koivunen kirjoitti Suomen Kuvalehdessä (25.01.2019) kuinka lehdistö käsitteli Oulun tapahtumia.
”Myös Yle osallistui paniikkiin julkaisemalla viikon aikana yli 50 verkkojuttua Oulun seksuaalirikosepäilystä ja seksuaalirikoksista,” hän kirjoitti. ”Lisäksi aihe oli esillä Ylen ajankohtaisohjelmissa: A-Talkissa, Ykkösaamussa, A-Studiossa, Aamu-tv:ssä, Politiikkaradiossa ja Sannikka & Ukkola -ohjelmassa.”
Koivunen ei sitä kerro kolumnissaan, mutta veikkaan, että hyvin vähän, jos ollenkaan, muslimitaustaisia asiantuntijoita käytettiin lähteenä kirjoituksissa.
Al-Holin suomalaisten naisten ja heidän lastensa kotiuttamisessa näkyi samaa ”paniikki”: Yle julkaisi ajalla 2.-21.2019 yhteensä 71 kirjoitusta, kun samaan aikaan Helsingin Sanomat julkaisi 36.
Toki lehdistöllä on velvollisuus kirjoittaa aiheista, jotka vaikuttavat yhteiskuntaan ja kiinnostavat tai huolestuttavat suomalaisia ja vähemmistöjä.
Mikäli Suomi ja sen lehdistö haluaa kasvattaa uskottavuutta eri etnisten ryhmien kanssa, yksi positiivinen askel olisi kouluttaa ja työllistää lisää vähemmistöjen edustajia toimittajiksi.
Olen varma, että uutistoimituksesta löytyy hyvin vähän vähemmistöjen edustajia. Jos Helsingissä asuu n. 16% vieraskielisiä, niin kuinka monta tästä ryhmästä on edustettuna Suomen suurimmassa lehdessä?
Lehdistöllä on tärkeä rooli siinä, millaista yhteiskuntaa rakennamme tänään ja tulevaisuudessa: onko se reilu vai puolueellinen vähemmistöjä kohtaan?
Enrique Tessieri valtioteiden maisteri, vapaa kolumnisti, Migrant Tales-blogin perustaja, European Network Against Racism (ENAR) hallituksen jäsen (2016-2019) ja European Islamophobia Report Suomen osion kirjoittaja.
As xenophobic parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party blame visible minorities for growing coronavirus infections, the same is being spread by people by people who should know better.
The rise of a racist party like the PS during the 2010s, which reinforced many Finns’ xenophobic views, suggests that labeling and racializing will continue to pick up as do deaths caused by the coronavirus.
While exceptionalism and many other blindspots may keep us from seeing inequality in our health care system in Finland and other EU countries, the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) is spot on by stating, the #inequality doesn’t just make pandemics like #Covid_19 worse – it could cause them.
Despite such good insight by ENAR, PS MPs like Veikko Valin offer their own mumbo jumbo explanation as to why COVID-19 infections are higher among the Somali-speaking community.
He tweets: “Somali-speakers in Helsinki have nine times higher infections than white Finns. They claim it is because they have a poor command of the Finnish language. I suspect it has to do with eating with their fingers, having large families, bending over at mosques, and hanging out all day at shopping malls. Or it could be Trump’s fault.”
Disgraceful and racist. Ladies and gentlemen, an MP of the PS.
One of the matters that the coronavirus has exposed as well. is how populist anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* assail migrants and minorities, especially Muslims.
Helsinki Mayor Jan Vapaavuori was quoted as saying in statementthat he is concerned by the rapid rise of coronavirus infections among the Somali speaking community.
“Close to 200 cases have been identified to date, which translates to 1.8 percent of the Somali community in the capital, compared with the 0.2 percent average among all of Helsinki’s residents,” the statement said. “In light of this recent worrying trend, the City of Helsinki and HUS hospitals have stepped up their efforts to prevent further contagion.”
While Migrant Tales alerted its readers about how minorities could be more susceptible to infection, the PS has criticized state-owned broadcaster Yle for offering information about coronavirus in the Somali, Kurdish, Farsi and Arabic languages.
One PS official that was highly critical of the broadcasts was party secretary Simo Grönroos. “On morning TV they suggested that broadcasts in [these people’s] mother tongue should be expanded. This is not the way to go. If they want to hear the news in Arabic they should move to an Arabic-speaking country.”
It was last summer that PS MP Ano Turtiainen thanked the ebola virus for doing its part in keeping population growth in Africa.
Back then, he had no idea that the white people like him in Europe would be the victims of a deadly killer called coronavirus.
While exceptionalism and many other blindspots may keep us from seeing inequality in our health care system in Finland and other EU countries, the European Network Against Racism is spot on by stating, the #inequality doesn’t just make pandemics like #Covid_19 worse – it could cause them.
Look out also for a racist blame game against minorities for higher coronavirus infections.
Social inequality is the culprit, not the minorities’ fault because his or her illtreatment, microaggressions, and social exclusion may have undermined his language and social skills.
After MTV broke a story about coronavirus infections at the Luona-managed Nihtisilta reception center in Espoo, Migrant Tales got confirmation Wednesday from the company that there are two infected asylum seekers with coronavirus.
We had reported Tuesday, citing a source at the reception center, that the possible number of infected asylum seekers could number 7-10.
Migrant Tales got in touch with Luona’s Business Director Suvi Salonen, who did not return our call or answer our email concerning the number of infected asylum seekers.
Some measures taken by the asylum reception center is that none of the residents eat together in the cafeteria. Contrary to the infected residents, whose food is brought to them, each person gets his food from the cafeteria and eats it in his room.
The Nihtisilta reception center is bursting with trash.
A Migrant Talesstory last week asked why the government has been issuing social distancing recommendations to avoid crowded environments, but these guidelines did not apply to reception centers. Why hadn’t they taken steps to make such camps less crowded?
Ahti Tolvanen wrote: “The problem has been noticed and measures taken in other countries but not in Finland. In Greece, two refugee reception centers were recently placed under special quarantine restrictions…Portugal has taken a more proactive measure by issuing temporary resident permits to all asylum seekers until the summer to allow them to try and find safe work and accommodations and to escape high-risk institutionalization.”
MTV published today the dire situation of refugees at the Luona-managed Nihtisilta reception center in Espoo. An anonymous Iraqi asylum seeker said there is no soap to wash there hands, and there is a lot of concern about coronavirus spreading.
Migrant Tales got in touch with an asylum reception center resident in Espoo who confirmed the concern and dire situation of some asylum seekers.
“We are Iraqi, Afghans, and Somali refugees [at the Nihtisilta asylum reception center] and have been living there for five years,” said a refugee. “There is not enough hygiene care [by Luona] since we cannot afford to buy sanitizers.”
The asylum seeker said that all the money they receive monthly is 90 euros. The reception center does not provide any soap, detergents, or towels.
On each floor of the reception center, there are two bathrooms, which houses about 100 people.
“On the third floor [of the reception center] there is coronavirus infected asylum seekers,” he continued. “They [asylum reception staff] don’t give us any information about those that were [allegedly] infected.”
The asylum seeker said that he and others are especially concerned about the situation.
“There are no staffers, management, social worker, a nurse at the reception center,” he concluded. “Only security guards and kitchen workers.”
A bit of history
News about the Nihtisilta reception center was published in Suomen Kuvalehti and Migrant Tales about the death of an Afghan asylum seeker, Jayyed Abbas Jaffari (1995-2016).
Luona denied that there was any negligence or inadequate treatment on their behalf surrounding Jaffari’s death.
In January 2016, there were a lot of stories coming out of reception centers that pointed to the ill and deficient treatment especially by Luona, a private company, of asylum seekers.
Here’s what Migrant Tales has heard after Jaffari’s death:
Employees at Luona have resigned due to the poor and humiliating treatment of asylum seekers as well as to the deficient medical attention they receive by the company;
Luona’s employees are informed not to call an ambulance without prior permission of the manager, who is difficult to reach and does not answer the phone;
One of the reasons why some patients, probably Jaffari, didn’t get to the hospital on time was because they had to get permission from the manager, who is speculated to be sleeping on Sunday morning and/or had his mobile phone switched off;
Jaffari visited the nurse at the Espoo reception center for three consecutive days. He was told to take Paracetamol and drink hot tea;
The manager who was on duty did not appear at work for two weeks after Jaffari’s death;
Many other medical treatment issues of asylum seekers are reported daily at Luona’s reception centers;
Employees and asylum seekers have complained to FIS about the situation;
FIS and the police have brought up Jaffari’s death and are said to be carrying out some sort of investigation to clear up the matter;
The Finnish parliament sent a questionnaire to Luona inquiring about how it runs its reception centers.
During 2016, Migrant Tales published score of stories about the poor treatment of asylum seekers at some Finnish asylum reception centers.
Stories published by Migrant Tales’s “Supermen”* on asylum reception centers during 2016.
* “The Supermen” are a group of concerned citizens who helped to expose the abuses and racism at some of Finland’s reception centers. Some of them want to be anonymous because it would impede their priceless work in exposing future injustices and abuses of asylum seekers, migrants, and minorities.
We have all heard the case for increased testing for coronavirus (COVID-19). But we need other tests like those that will judge our politicians and how they handle COVID-19.
An article in the Washington Postinterviewed a black man in Louisiana who said that “wearing a facemask won’t protect us from our history [of slavery and Jim Crow].”
In the United States alone, coronavirus strikes and kills blacks, Latinos and other minorities disproportionately.
Apart from exposing our wasteful investments on defense and weapons spending, which give us a false sense of security, the pandemic exposes in our faces as well the chronic social inequalities of our societies.
Not only are the most vulnerable groups suffering in the United States but minorities in the UK and other countries of the world.
There is mounting evidence – and it should not surprise us – that blacks, Asians and other minority communities in the UK are hit the hardest. According to the BBC, over a third of the patients critically ill in hospitals are minorities.
It would not surprise me either in Europe that members of the Romany minority and Muslims may experience much higher infection and death rates than white Europeans.
The fact that we still do not have any official statistics on the latter is quite revealing. Such information is also important because minority communities must take steps to protect themselves from the deadly virus.
When will COVID-19 end?
I believe that the pandemic will end when we put on the defensive and tackle effectively social inequality, boundless greed, environmental destruction, laissez-faire globalization and capitalism, populists that worship dictators, and the billionaires that are screwing things up big time.
In an interview in Córdoba three years ago, Finnish screenwriter Aki Kaurismäki said: “We must exterminate the rich and the politicians who lick their asses.”
While the rich indirectly kill people through their wealth accumulation, “extermination” may mean forcing rich people to pay much higher taxes and severely cut off their money machines, which are the capital markets.
Such wealth should not end up in their greedy pockets of the 1% but used for creating global well-being and improving the lives of everyone on this planet.
