Helvetin Pastori/Pastor of Hell

The Finnish presidential election was held just two days ago. It resulted to the incumbent Sauli Niinistö being re-elected with 62.7% of the vote, meaning this is the first time with the current voting system that a president was elected during the first round of voting. But, what do the results tell us about the future? The total result is: Sauli Niinistö (Independent) 62.7% Pekka Haavisto (Green League) 12.4% Laura Huhtasaari (Finns Party) 6.9% Paavo Väyrynen (Independent) 6.2% Matti Vanhanen (Center Party) 4.1% Tuula Haatainen (Social Democrats) 3.3% Merja Kyllönen (Left Alliance) 3.0% Nils Torvalds (Swedish National Party) 1.5% Now for one, you might notice that the results are very different than in the poll made by Accuscore that I mentioned in my previous post on the election. Well, first of all, it's actually not a poll, but a prediction and admittedly, I should have taken a closer look on that before my post. Accuscore does not do their own opinion polls, ...

I've mentioned in previous posts that Finland is holding it's presidential election on the 28th of January. I've also mentioned that there's a good chance that the incumbent president Sauli Niinistö will actually win in the first round of voting. The actual voting happens in just 5 days, so the question is, has anything changed? Well, for one, the chance of Niinistö winning during the first round is looking less likely. A recent poll made by Accuscore, gives Niinistö 49.2% of the vote. He's still strongly in the lead as the second and third place holders Pekka Haavisto (Green League) and Paavo Väyrynen (independent) hold 13.6% and 13.2% respectively. Basically, the main contest here seems to be for the second place between the two. Now, even if a second round is held, it's pretty clear that Niinistö will still win. Haavisto and Väyrynen both have some facts about them which prevent them getting over 50% of the vote even if it came to that. Haavisto actually ...

You read the title. There's no other way of putting it. Because of my past experiences talking about this topic, I did expect getting some butthurt idiots responding to me, but... Let's just say, I didn't expect this. The whole thing started couple of days ago, just after my previous post regarding the two pandas that recently arrived in Finland and the rather sinister motivations the Chinese government has when handing out these "gifts". The motivation behind this post was the fact that Finnish media did not do a great job exposing the questionable facts behind this. This frustration with the media, combined with sheer curiosity, led me to try out Twitter ads, which allows you to pay to get more exposure for your Tweets. I'm not planning on making this into a habit, but with the lowest amount of money you could spent with the most basic settings, my Tweet was seen by nearly 15 000 people, with close to 700 actions, about 200 of them being clicks on the li...

Finland has gotten crazy over pandas. Yes, pandas. Those cuddly little creatures that have become a symbol of conservation work as the logo of the World Wildlife Fund. Ever since the Chinese leader Xi Jinping made a stop in Finland in the spring of 2017 and talked about Finland getting pandas as a gift for our 100th independence day, the country has gone crazy. This has been especially true in the last few days, as the two pandas started their journey to Finland. They landed earlier today in Helsinki and as I'm writing this, they're making their way towards their new home in Ähtäri zoo. Others were exited about the fact, as only a handful of countries outside of China actually have pandas and as such it's a rare honor, while others were a bit... let's just say reserved about it. As you already might have guessed from the title, I fall into the latter category, but before we can take a closer look on why, we have to take a more general look at the matter. Now, as I sai...

Considering that my top two posts in terms of visitors are about Finnish conscription, you probably are already aware that I've made four posts on the topic(links at the end of this one as always). In these posts I've gone through the systems problems, including the human rights violations and the way Finnish lawmakers are blatantly ignoring them, the unnecessarily large number of trained reservists and gone through some of the ideas thrown around by politicians to try and "fix" perceived problems, which would actually make the system even worse. I've also talked about the general hostility towards people like me who advocate for abolishing this system, and mentioned my personal experiences of being a target of personal attacks because of my comments on news articles on the topic and getting blocked on Twitter by our current minister of defense after I questioned his statements on the issue. Even though I've already spent a lot of time talking about this, the ...

On the 28 of January, Finland will be holding it's presidential election. Unfortunately, there is no such sense of heightened emotion compared to to the 2016 election in the US, as the result is pretty clear already. But before going into that, let's take a look at some basics. Presidents are elected to six year terms, with a maximum of two consecutive terms. The winner is determined with popular vote, meaning the candidate with most votes is the winner(unlike in the US). In order to run, you need to be a native Finnish citizen, be nominated by a political party with representation in parliament, or have 20 000 signatures if you want to run as an independent. The elections have two rounds. During the first round all candidates are against each other and if none of them get over 50% of the vote, the two candidates with the most votes will run against one another in the second round two weeks later. What does the Finnish president do? Well, he mostly acts as a figurehead. Whi...

On the 28 of December 2017, multiple protests across Iran broke out, as a result of long lasting economic hardship and governmental corruption. Now, about week and a half later, the protests are still going on, with tens of thousands of people in multiple cities across the country express their frustration with the theocratic government. During that time, a bit over 20 people have been killed and estimated 1000+ people having been arrested. Apart from this Iranians living outside of Iran have been organizing protests in other countries, including a protest in front of the Iranian embassy in Helsinki. This is the most unrest the Iranian government has faced in years, but, where is it coming from? What are the roots of this? In this post, I'll give you some of my thoughts on the matter. First of all, even though economic hardship and corruption have named as the spark for these protests,they have quickly turned into protests towards the government. Iran is officially an "Islam...