Tag Archive for 'Finland'

Mikael Granlund SCORES!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTMwB_utAQE&feature=player_embedded

Finland wins the semi-final match against Russia in the 2011 IIHF World Championships 3 – 0.

Mikael Granlund scores the first goal of the match with an INCREDIBLE indoor bandy move.

-TPP

#4

Arto “Java” Javanainen, 1959 – 2011.

My childhood hero, a Finnish ice hockey legend and the best hockey player my hometown hockey team has ever had passed away today at the age of 51.

He holds a number of records in the Finnish hockey league. Here’re a few of them:

Most goals: 462
Most hattricks: 39
Most play-off goals: 38
Most goals in a season: 47

He played 668 matches in 17 regular seasons and had 462 goals and 330 passes for a total of 792 points, which is the 2nd highest points of all time. He had 99 matches with 3 points or more. He scored 6 goals against Helsingin Jokerit October 17th 1985.

Thank you for the memories, Java!

-TPP

Show CoCo in Finland!

Conan is not shown in Finland. The Tarja Halonen lookalike HAS to show in Finland. Do your part!

-TPP

Nokia extorts Finnish legislature to enact a law it wants

Nokia, the Finnish, yet multi-national, mobile telecommunications giant, has had some issues with its employees leaking confidential information to competitors and other outsiders.

Finnish privacy laws have made it difficult for Nokia to gather evidence about such incidents.

So Nokia did what all great MegaCorps do and decided they needed the laws changed. In US, they would’ve just put a few dollars in an envelope to a few key politicians, but that doesn’t apparently work as well in Finland as threats do.

According to a rather comprehensive report about it by Helsingin Sanomat, a leading Finnish newspaper, Nokia threatened to leave Finland, if a new law allowing snooping of employees’ emails didn’t get done.

A draft for a new law, dubbed Lex Nokia, was quickly put together and it’s being decided upon by the Finnish Parliament in two week’s time. Let’s see how the public outcry over Nokia’s actions affect the debate about the new law.

By bending to the will of Nokia, our legislators have, yet again, shown a remarkable lack of independent will and spine. Do they really think Nokia would have followed through? Moving their entire operations abroad would be very costly. Not that they won’t eventually do it anyway. Finnish labor is expensive.

-TPP

The Finnish Valtiollinen Poliisi (VALPO) cooperated with Nazi Germany in genocide

Oula Silvennoinen, a PHd. student in the Helsinki University, has released his PHd. thesis on the cooperation of the Finnish and German security police during WW II.

Allying with the Nazi Germany in WW II is a particularly delicate subject in Finnish history. The political consensus in the country is that Finland was forced to strike a deal with Germany, because there were no other allies out there when Soviet Union attacked Finland. The Finns have always taken solace in believing the alliance was out of necessity and that we didn’t participate in the monstrosities of genocide with Nazi Germany.

According to Oula Silvennoinen’s thesis that, however, seems to be pure fantasy. He’s claiming that the Finnish Valtiollinen Poliisi (VALPO) – roughly equivalent to FBI – together with their German counterpart formed a special unit called Einsatzkommando Finnland. The unit’s mission was to destroy perceived ideological and racial enemies on the northernmost part of the German Eastern Front.

The northernmost part of German Eastern Front means Northern Finland (Lappland) and ideological and racial enemies means jewish and soviet people.

Mr. Silvennoinen’s thesis claims that Finnish police forces took active part in mass murder of jewish and soviet people during the lifetime of the police unit.

So much for being the unwilling partner in crime. This is truly the most shameful moment in Finnish history. It’s even more shameful because this information is just now coming to public. None of the murderers were, to anyone’s knowledge, ever convicted of their crimes. It is, of course, too late now since all potential war criminals would have passed away by now.

-TPP

Finns are, like, totally hip with the Internets

Looks like Finns know a good thing when they see it. Firefox marketshare in Finland is approaching 50%, higher than in any other country in Europe.

We are smart. This proves it.

-TPP

Simo Häyhä – Baddest badass of all badasses

The story of a Finnish WW II sniper Simo Häyhä is pretty amazing. A soft-spoken farmer standing at 5 feet tall killed more enemy soldiers than any other sniper in any army in history.

His official kill count stands at 505 confirmed sniper kills. Even more amazing is that those kills were achieved in a 100 day span. By some sources it’s estimated that he killed one Soviet soldier for every hour of daylight during those 100 days. I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate though, but not entirely impossible given the short days during wintertime in Finland.

He was an unstoppable killing machine the likes of which the world has never known before or since.

Damn right!

-TPP

Heikki Kovalainen signs a contract with McLaren

Finnish Formula One pilot Heikki Kovalainen has signed a long-term contract with the McLaren Formula One team to replace Fernando Alonso.

With Kimi Räikkönen a World Champion at Ferrari and Heikki at McLaren the 2008 Formula One season is looking to be one hell of an exciting one for Finns!

Suomi voittoon!

-TPP

The American Dream is dead

Alter.net has an article basically saying the American Dream these days is a complete myth to the majority of people living in the United States and especially to those born in poverty.

As a whole the US residents are doing better, but the accumulation of wealth is concentrating more and more to the few that are already wealthy, so the stats are getting skewed by the well-to-dos doing even better while the average Joe is doing worse.

Upward mobility (moving up in the socio-economic ladder) is just as likely as downward mobility (getting poorer), and the number of people who are earning more than their parents but still moving down is increasing. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t look ok to me.

Living costs (education, healthcare, housing) are skyrocketing while earnings are staying flat or declining depending on how you factor in things like inflation. Things are not looking good for the middle class in America, and it’s downright scary for poor people.

Meanwhile European countries, especially in Scandinavia are doing extremely well. The mobility (one’s ability to climb up on the socio-economic ladder) is up to three times as likely in countries like Denmark and Finland than in the United States. Scandinavian countries are high tax, free education/healthcare type of countries, pretty much complete opposites of the United States.

While it’s easy to dismiss the article by merely claiming it’s done by those liberal rabblerousers, you can’t argue with the facts. The research is solid and it’s showing undeniably that the “trickle-down” economy bullshit is bad for America. It’s making rich people even richer, and poor people even poorer. That’s why I personally call it the trickle-up economy.

The data is showing the Big Government approach is actually better for your citizens than the Small Government approach. Imagine that. Let’s see if they learn that in the US before it’s too late. I’m not too optimistic myself.

-TPP

Finland is big time now

Looks like in its never ending quest to copy everything American Finland’s taken yet another step.

A high school student in Tuusula, Finland went on a shooting spree in his school killing 8 people earlier today.

It appears the shooter gave several clues about his intentions before the shooting. He was wearing shirts with gun imagery, drawing pictures of shootings and even placed a video titled “Jokela High School Massacre – 11/7/2007″ on YouTube before the shooting. He told others who asked about his behavior that he was just joking.

The shooter was arrested. There is no death penalty in Finland. Shame really. Although it might be unnecessary as the shooter shot himself in the head and is now in an intensive care unit in critical condition. Doctors are saying his prognosis is not good.

Update: The shooter has died in the hospital without gaining consciousness.

-TPP