Helvetin Pastori/Pastor of Hell

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...

On the 23rd of February 2018, the Helsinki Court of Appeals made a land mark decision. The court acquitted a total objector, meaning a person who refuses both military and the alternative civil service, from charges on "refusal of civil service", on which he had previously been sentenced to 173 days in prison. This is the first time this has happened, so the question is, what does this decision mean for the future? First some background information. In my first post on this matter , I mentioned that Jehovah's Witnesses have been exempt from conscription since 1987. This is because back in the day, Witnesses were practically the only group of total objectors in the country. Just like today, the system received a lot of criticism on human rights violations, not the least of which was directed towards the practice of imprisoning  total objectors. In an effort to end the criticism, the Finnish government at the time passed a law which allows Jehovah's Witnesses to avo...

On the 22nd of February 2018, Amnesty International released it's annual report on human rights. Since I live in Finland, I decided to take a look on what they said about my country. In this post, I will take what the report said and give my comments and some additional info on the topics discussed. Refugees and asylum seekers "Many changes in the law introduced in 2016, including restrictions of the right to free legal representation and reduced time frames for appeals, continued to affect refugees’ and asylum-seekers’ rights. The likelihood of asylum-seekers being forcibly returned to countries where they might be at risk of human rights violations (refoulement) was increased. The government had not evaluated the combined impact of these changes by the end of the year." Short time ago, I actually made a post on this matter . After a a court in France was concerned about Finland's standards on returning asylum seekers and refused to return an Iraqi man whose ...

Earlier this year, the youth organization for the National Coalition (referred to as "the organization" from now on) gave a statement, saying that conscription needs to be updated for today's society and that the government should start the process during this election cycle. While one organization giving statements like this might not seem like such a big deal, there are a couple of reasons why this might be significant in the future. For one, making changes to conscription or abolishing it has mostly been an issue talked about by the political left. The National Coalition on the other hand is basically a center-right party, meaning these statements are coming from the other side of the political spectrum. It's also one of the largest parties in the country, currently holding the second highest number of seats in parliament and is one of the three parties forming the governing coalition. Also, this statement is coming from the party's youth organization, essent...

This is a sightly edited version of a post I made to a short lived blog I started back in 2015. It's one of two posts I made on the issue of gun violence and control in America. I decided to re-post both of them here, because of the fact that the situation in America on the issue of gun control is practically the same as it was back in 2015. I think, I've developed a lot as a writer since then, and I think you will notice it. That being said, feel free to enjoy the ramblings of a 18-year-old boy, who was going through some changes in his life and was desperate to went out his frustration.  Link to the other one here First of all, I mean every single word I wrote in my previous post and you won't hear an apology over that. I'm only making this post because the original one didn't really come out like I planned it. Basically, I thought I had enough time to write it, before I had to leave for practice. (I train martial arts that's all you need to know) Orig...

This is a sightly edited version of a post I made to a short lived blog I started back in 2015. It's one of two posts I made on the issue of gun violence and control in America. I decided to re-post both of them here, because of the fact that the situation in America on the issue of gun control is practically the same as it was back in 2015. I think, I've developed a lot as a writer since then, and I think you will notice it. That being said, feel free to enjoy the ramblings of a 18-year-old boy, who was going through some changes in his life and was desperate to went out his frustration. Link to the other post here   As we all know, the US has the highest gun ownership rates in the world. It also has the highest number of homicides and gun related crimes in the developed world. Actually, more Americans have died in gun related accidents and crimes than actual wars. This is not normal! No matter what you say makes this acceptable. This trend could be easily changed, but ev...

I already had a post planned out and I even began writing it. But before I could finish it, something happened that I simply can't ignore. The thing is that in response to the 2015 refugee crisis, Finland's current government led by prime minister Juha Sipilä has made some questionable changes to our immigration policy, especially when it comes to the treatment of asylum seekers. This has led to a massive increase in the percentage of rejected applications and recently news stories have revealed the dark consequences this has. The worst part is that the government was warned this would happen, but they chose to push through the changes to legislation anyway and has refused to scale back their changes despite heavy criticism from the opposition and groups like Amnesty International. What changes have they made? For one, they made restrictions to the access for legal help for asylum seekers. In court, asylum seekers can't be represented by private law firms, meaning they hav...