Helvetin Pastori/Pastor of Hell

Let's take a look at one of the biggest clusterfucks in Finnish political history: The sote-reform. Since a lot of my visitors here are foreigners, I'll have to do some explaining first. Sote, is an abbreviation used when talking about heath and social services.  It's currently being thrown around a lot because of an effort to reform these fields, in order to combat increasing costs, which puts a lot of pressure on the system. Probably the main reason for this is the aging population, a problem facing large parts of the western world. Because of this, in order to guarantee the same services in the future, plans were devised to curb some of the increasing costs, mainly by simplifying the administration. You see, currently these fields are being controlled on the municipal level. Since individual municipalities are allowed these things themselves, this means there are multiple different ways to handle this, which makes the current system hideously complicated. The main idea...

I'm not sure if it's the same wave of motivation that took over me few days ago, or simply boredom, but here we are. Third post in three days, about the same topic. Anyway, let's look at how a few more countries treat conscientious objectors. First, let's come back to Europe and look at the situation in Switzerland. The system itself is somewhat similar to Finland in that they have mandatory conscription for all men and an alternative civil service for conscientious objectors. The biggest difference is that instead completing their service in one go, most conscripts first go through basic training, after which they are moved to the reserves and required to complete refreshment training every once in a while, however, it's possible to complete your service in one term. The total length of service is around 9 months for average conscripts and longer for officers. Based on what I've read, the alternative service seems to be somewhat similar to that in Finland, ...

As I said in my previous post, I feel more motivated to write than ever before. So here you go, the second part on the treatment of conscientious objectors around the world. First, let's stay in Europe and look at the situation in Turkey. Turkey does not recognize the right to conscientious objection. Because of this, the Turkish system has received heavy criticism from human rights organizations, which includes multiple conscientious objectors who took their case to the European Court of Human Rights and won.  Because of the decisions of the Human Rights Court, the Turkish government has promised to fix the perceived problems but has failed to do so. Weird thing about this is that the Turkish constitution technically would allow this "national service" to be completed as a form of non-military service, and leaves the specifics to legislators. However, despite this, the current law doesn't allow non-military service. This naturally means that conscientious objecto...

I've already talked about the treatment of conscientious objectors here in Finland in previous posts (links at the end of this one). This is because Finland still has mandatory conscription for men, an aspect of life here that I personally do not care for and neither do multiple human rights organisations. It's also a personal topic for me, as I am under Finnish law considered as a conscientious objector myself. However, even though the Finnish system has received criticism for human rights violations, there are countries where the situation is even worse. That's why as a part of the International Week of Action Against Militarization of Youth, in this post I will talk about the treatment of conscientious objectors in other countries. Some general information about conscientious objection before we go any further. The right to conscientious objection is derived from Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads: " Everyone has the right to freed...

Recently news broke that the Syrian army had defeated the last stronghold of Isis in the country, with the remaining fighters fleeing into the desert being hunted by government forces. This has been presented as the final nail into the coffin of the Caliphate, but while that may be true, it's not enough to get rid of the group.  The simple reason is that Isis as a group is ideologically motivated. The group has been founded on a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam and ideologies can't be destroyed by force. If we wish to some day completely get rid of this, we have to support reformists within Islam and change the way we look at criticism of religion Now, I can already see the comments denying that Islam has anything to do with this and people calling me an islamophobe or racist for suggesting this. Admittedly, as a 20-year old man from a western country, who was originally raised Christian and later turned into an atheist, I'm not the best person to talk about this. T...

While I said in my previous post that I would leave this topic alone for a while, there has been a change of plans. Next week, November 20-26, War Resister's International organizes The International Week of Action Against Militarization of Youth. Since I consider myself as an anti-militarist, I decided to take a head start on the campaign and talk about one more problem about Finnish conscription: the draft process itself. This is because the whole process has basically been created to benefit the military from the very beginning. First of all, the whole process is controlled by the military. This becomes perfectly clear from the very beginning. Some time during the spring of the year you turn 18, you will receive a letter from the military,  telling you it's time to step into service. The letter includes the actual date of your draft, a personal information form and a booklet detailing information about military service. It also tells you to take a medical checkup, on whi...

Please read part one before reading this. Link here. http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/11/absurdity-of-finnish-conscription.html Now as I mentioned in part one, the current system has received consistent criticism from human rights organizations for years, but despite this, there is no real will to change the current system. Actually, most of our politicians are simply trying to find new ways to keep the current system alive, which mostly means ideas to include women into the system in some way and/or to increase the number of people serving outside the military.This is because even though there have been calls to go the Israel route and simply expand the draft to include women, this idea is incredibly unpopular among the public as recent polls show that only around 25% of men and an even smaller percentage of women support this. Not only that, but this idea is actually opposed by the military, as they claim there is no need to increase the number of conscripts and that it wo...

Okay, I know I promised that I would continue with part two of the conscription debate next, but recent developments in Finnish politics are just something I have to write about. While in Finland we read about American politics on pretty much a daily basis, Finnish politics on the other hand, are rarely talked about abroad. This is a great pity as last summer there was bit of drama when our government nearly fell, because of one the coalition partners elected new leadership. This led to prime minister Juha Sipilä to announce that he would deliver his letter of resignation to the president, but literally at the last minute something happened, which allowed his cabinet to stay intact. Some backstory. In the 2015 parliamentary election, the Center Party won in a pretty spectacular fashion, which led to their leader Juha Sipilä to become prime minister. He then formed a governing coalition with the National Coalition and the Finns Party. The Finns Party had become one of the bigges...

As I mentioned in the introduction, Finland still has mandatory conscription and that I was going to write about it. Actually, one of the main reasons for starting this blog was so I could bitch about that topic. You see, this system has received major criticism from human rights organizations and it can be considered as one of the most questionable aspects about my dear homeland. You can probably already guess that I'm strongly against this system, but before we can go to the reasons why, we have to look at how the system works. First of all, the system only applies to men. Every able-bodied man is required to serve either in the military or in alternative civil service, which is what I personally chose. People living in the autonomous and demilitarized region of Åland are exempt from service, though they are allowed to volunteer. In total, about 75% of men complete some form of service, about 7% choosing civil service. Couple of dozen people also refuse both forms of service. T...

Well, hello there! My name is Eero. I'm a 20-year-old guy from Finland with a low tolerance for bullshit and an urge to call it out. I have strong opinions on multiple issues and created this blog to get my views out there, in hopes of causing some change in the world. My posts will probably mostly talk about the situation here in Finland, at least at first. However, I'm generally interested in politics all around the world, so most likely I will spend some time bashing Trump and other world leaders in the future, so don't worry about that. Now some more information about myself.  I live in a town called Kotka, in south-eastern Finland. My native language is Finnish, but I decided to start writing in English to test my skills and to get a wider audience for my views. Politically, I'm pretty strongly left-wing and the best terms to describe my beliefs would be either libertarian leftist, or progressive. I'm also a conscientious objector, as I the chose the altern...