Helvetin Pastori/Pastor of Hell

I've covered this in my resent posts but now it's official . On the 27th of February 2019, the Finnish parliament voted 153-27 to end the special exception from military service given to Jehovah's Witnesses. This means the current status quo in which total objectors are not convicted is coming to an end. This is of course not a surprise but it's still depressing to see how little our legislators seem to care about human rights. So, what happens next? Well, next the bill has to be signed by the president. Theoretically, the president could just veto it which he wont do, because president Sauli Niinistö (side note: not related to minister of defense Jussi Niinistö) is very much a conscription supporter. Even if he did, the veto would only act as a delay as the parliament can override a presidential veto by voting on a bill a second time. It's been speculated that the bill will take effect as early as the 1st of April or by latest the 1st of May. Until then the statu...

This is simply another short update on conscription. In my two previous posts on the topic I covered developments regarding the proposed legislation two remove the special exemption from military service given to Jehovah's Witnesses and the parliaments Constitutional Committee giving it's support to it . Since then, another committee, this time the Defense Committee has reviewed the bill. Apart from this, there has been discussion what actually happens to all those total objectors who have been released by court, because it's not as clear as might seem. Not surprisingly, the Defense Committee supports the proposed bill. I'm not even a little shocked. I've made multiple posts on this topic and pointed out multiple times how blatantly Finnish politicians ignore Finland's commitments to human rights when it comes to this topic. Basically this means that the bill is now ready to go for a vote in parliament, which like I've pointed out, it's guaranteed to...

Well, it's been a while. It's been four months since my last post here, although that was not my plan. So, what has happened during this time? Short answer, work. As I've mentioned before, I actually work two jobs. Considering some of the things I've said here, it might be surprising that I work in security. I mainly work as a security guard and on the side as a bouncer. And as if working two jobs wasn't hard enough, bouncers mostly work nights, meaning I also have to deal with changing my daily cycle fairly regularly, which seriously messes up my sleep patterns.So basically, since I work to jobs, I don't have that much time to spend on writing and whenever I have any free time, lot of times I'm just too tired to focus on a longer post. Now, since my last post I've changed jobs. I was hired as a substitute for the Summer, during which my job was mostly to guard the entrance to an industrial area and monitor the traffic. However that ended in the end of...

I thought I could have let this topic be for a bit longer, but apparently no. Earlier today, news broke that Jussi Niinistö, Finland's minister of defense is worried about financial problems the military will see in the near future. His solution, among other things, included temporarily suspending, or at least limiting, the possibility for women to volunteer for military service. According to him, by not taking in volunteering women into service for a year, the military could save up to 4 million euros. Not surprisingly, this has led to a massive backlash against him. If you've read my blog before, you can probably see why this is a stupid idea. Finland still retains conscription for men. And I mean men. Women are not forced into service, meaning that every woman serving in the military is doing so of their own free will. On the other hand, the system has received a lot of criticism from international human rights bodies, most notable ones being the UN Human Rights Committee a...

As you can read from the title, it's once again time to talk about conscription. After the recent court case, where a conscientious objector was acquitted from charges caused by his total refusal to complete any form of service, it's clear that the current system is broken and needs fixing. Unfortunately, while not surprisingly, our minister of defense Jussi Niinistö sees conscription as something sacred and thus, is unable to admit that the system needs to be completely changed. Now, the court case I mentioned was all about discrimination. As you might remember, Jehovah's Witnesses have been exempt from service since 1987. The CO in question argued that the exemption given to Witnesses is discriminatory towards other CO's, who are sentenced to jail because of their refusal to serve and since discrimination of all kinds is banned by the Finnish constitution, this practice is in fact, unconstitutional. This has been argued before, but this is the first time a court t...

You know, when I started this blog, I wasn't planning on conscription being this big of a topic. But, since it seems to be a gift that keeps on giving, I see no reason to stop talking about this. Especially after the recent court case where a conscientious objector had charges dropped against them, which I covered in my previous post , the discussion has reached new heights. While I'm happy that this seems to have fueled the discussion to another level, this has led to some questionable actions by the government. As I said, I've already covered this case in more detail in the post linked above, so I'm not going into detail here. In summary, while Finland still retains conscription, Jehovah's Witnesses have been exempt from service since 1987. This has caused some controversy and over the years, multiple total objectors, meaning people who refuse both military and the alternative service, have argued that the practice is discriminatory towards other convictions an...

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...

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, ...

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...