All of us who have children in Finland know the high quality of our educational system. Its high standards have been noticed abroad by the 2009 OECD Pisa study, which placed Finland in third after Shanghai and South Korea.
Tag: xenophobia
What racism means to me
For me, racism, like indifference, is the worst social ill that inflicts our societies. Because racism has to survive and because racism is astute, it has found many ingenious ways of hiding its snister self and motives.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: Swiss deportation referendum success puts human rights at risk
Amnesty International urges the Swiss authorities at all levels not to enforce the deportation of foreigners convicted of certain criminal offences if this will result in human rights violations after voters backed the move in a referendum on Sunday.
A just ending for racist graffiti in Mikkeli in eastern Finland
I got an email from Zuzeeko who writes the neat ?On the Road to Success blog and recently launched with some other people a new magazine called ?Dunia?. ?This is what he wrote:
Racists out of the Finnish closet
If I had to ask a question about racism today in Finland, I would try to understand its extent and how it manifests itself. Why has racism raised its head today in Finland? Should we thank those that have exposed this murky side of ourselves?
Polls are polls in Finland
The recent rise of the anti-immigration True Finns in the polls should be taken with tweezers. Does it represent the will of the people and how much of it will translate into MPs for the True Finns in the April 2011 elections is another story.
Freedom of expression and religion
What does freedom of expression mean? For me it represents a Montesquieuian framework of society where all the parts watch over the other. These checks and balances are crucial to ensure that basic civil liberties enshrined in documents such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights are vigorously defended and encouraged.
Two questionable eras in Europe with the same message
Two posters (apologies for the offensive content) from different eras: One that is anti-semitic from Germany in 1940* and the other from a referendum in Switzerland in 2009 on a ban of building minarets on mosques. Even though these posters were printed in different periods, the message is the same: barbarization of a group. *The…
Can Finland deal with the challenge of immigration?
Some claim that Finland is at an important juncture concerning immigration and its role in our society. There are already clear signs that the Finns want to deal with this challenge in a civil manner without the usual dose of fearmongering and nationalistic bravado.
Populist chatter and a tale of elk flies
There is a True Finn candidate in the April 2011 elections that spreads elk flies everytime he opens his mouth or presses on the keyboard to bash immigrants. His multicultural name, James Hirvisaari, gets a lot of free publicty whenever blogs like mine which comment on his extremist views.