The toxic effects of collectivism rear its ugly Hydra-like heads in Finland, where the state wants to introduce a Chinese style ‘Internet Great Wall’ to stop people expressing political idea the state disapproves of. It also wants to prosecute Mikko Ellilä for the thought crime of expressing a dislike of multiculturalism.
It has been reported to me that Puumalainen said in a government press release in April that “racism” on the internet should be persecuted using the same methods as in the combat against child porn.Since all internet operators in Finland are required by law to block child porn websites, Puumalainen’s statement that “the same methods that have been successful in the combat against child porn should be implemented in weeding out racism on the internet as well” means that in Puumalainen’s opinion it ought to be possible for the government to establish a firewall that blocks all websites that Puumalainen accuses of racism.
In other words, Puumalainen says “racism” is a crime like child porn, and therefore “racist” websites such as blogs that mention crime statistics should be blocked by a governmental firewall.Mikko Puumalainen not only thinks that “racism” (such as data quoted from official crime statistics published by the Ministry of Justice, or by the Interpol, or by the United Nations) should be a crime, but that citizens should not even be able to access websites that Ayatollah Puumalainen has declared to be heretic
And what ‘racist act’ did Mikko Ellilä commit that enraged the state?
Quotes from official crime statistics published by the Ministry of Justice undoubtedly “help maintain an anti-immigrationist political climate” because they prove that e.g. the Somalis commit more than 100 times more (over one hundred times more, as in, over 10,000% more) robberies per capita than the Finns do.
Yup, he quoted official crime statistics. Given that Finland has one of the highest rates of internet usage in the world, I hope this provokes a powerful backlash against the control freaks who run the country.
See also:
http://tundratabloid.blogspot.com/2008/01/finnish-blogger-gets-fined-and-shut.html
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2008/01/muzzled-again-in-finland.html
So of course Finn bloggers should move off shore and blog under a ‘wink wink’ pseudonym and tell the courts to go fuck themselves (politely of course)
But what of the real issue?
The need to destroy Finland once and for all to get our vowels back?
Ezra Levant is still fighting his case in Canada. And I saw this interesting story the other week from the Land of the Free. It seems to be going on everywhere.
Stunning.
Oh, freedom is dying, apparently unstoppably. It’s been steadily dwindling for decades, despite the cries of one or two Pollyannas about how Thacther saved us from socialism. The 80s were probably our last chance, but we blew it because we elected authoritarian conservatives (even though they had one or two economically liberal ideas, they were authoritarians).
And so, round the U-bend we all go, remembering the salad days when we all said the Internet would be forever free, because it cannot be censored. Lolz.
Democracy is dead, killed by stealth. Individual freedom is dead, killed by stealth. The western world is nearly dead, dying by stealth. In retrospect, we should’ve let the Communists win. They’d probably all be hanging from lampposts by now.
Well today our Socialist Party in Portuguese Government wants to pass a law to forbid body piercings to under 18 years olds… and in another news about 7 “dangerous” canine races will be forbiden and those that still exist should be sterilised…A nice extermination program…
I do like that idea that ISPs should be required by law to block kiddie porn though, that seems perfectly sensible.
It does? Why?
I dunno…we could make this whole Internet thing a lot more anonymous than what it is. I just don’t think people see an overwhelming need to do so, yet.
I have respect for the Finns, I don’t think they’ll let this come to pass or if it does, the ideas will go “underground” perhaps prompting the first widespread use of aforementioned anonymizing.
Nate:
The problem is that technically feasible ways of making it anonymous require a level of technical sophistication possessed only by a tiny number of experts and super-savvy geeks. And even these ways critically depend on the assumption that you have access to foreign serves that are outside the reach of your government. If governments are willing to cooperate on providing information collected from their local ISPs to each other – as they increasingly are – then anonymity on the internet is outright impossible.
The only exception is if you steal the internet connection from someone else (which is easiest to do by leeching on unsecured wireless networks), but even that can be very tricky to do fully anonymously, and it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a serious crime.
Ian B:
Glad(?) I am to notice that I’m not the only Jeremiah posting here.
I have no way of telling the median age of commenters but I would hazard a guess that I am twice the age of most. I mention this because I wasn’t born in an era when a TV was part of the normal furnishings and the rot was well under way, thus making it as acceptable as the box.
I do not gainsay that life, for many, is a great deal better than in my younger days. For everything there’s a price. The tribute we are now paying for the way of life we think we have gained is the continuing loss of our basic freedom(s) and, short of some very ‘interesting times’, we are not going to get them back. As anyone who has lived deprived of freedom will tell you…without it you are nothing.
I think that ‘luckylucky’ & I probably share the same bolt-hole and yes, it’s happening here too, in a very small way. One can forgive young democracies for stupidities but there can be no absolution for the UK. Rend your garments & weep.
What’s wrong with racism?
I wonder if it’s unjustly negitive discrimination solely by virtue ofrace (whatever THAT is deemed to entail that week) that Puumalainen is raving about?
Two points.
First mr Ellilan seems to have,
putting it politely,
a rather simplistic view of race and racial relations
and I dont think I’d visit his site more than once.
Second, the likes of Mr Puumalainen, doesn’t trust my judgement and wish to prevent me from viewing such sites at all.
That really pisses me off
So the Maxwells Silver Hammer award goes to mr Puumalainen.
I think that, in the U.K., y’all have rather more pressing affairs to worry about.
Jesus Ian B, why don’t you run a red light camera and get it over with already? One day we’ll look at your sacrifice and think “power to the people!!!”
Dale recently tried to get people to accept defeat in terms of global warming and think about ways of minimizing the downfall. Now Ian wants us to stop pretending that there is even a fight to begin with.
What the hell is wrong with you people?
I can say this online right now:
The Government Is A Waste Of Time And Resources!!!!
And no one will either arrest me or frankly give a flying rats ass one way or the other.
Let’s worry about the things that are a problem, like defeating the most recent threat to personal liberty:
ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM.
We did a bang up job of defeating Nazism, Communism, statism, facism, etc.
The reason we won is because WE ARE RIGHT.
Stop pretending we aren’t already.
The reason we won is because WE ARE RIGHT
The reason we won was because we chose to fight.
If Ian B wishes to give up and roll over, that is his choice. We can fight on his behalf. In the meantime, we have a generational fight going on, and if Ians children and grand children choose not to thank me for fighting for their rights, then fine. At least they will have reason to feel grateful, even if they don’t.
My surname is Ellilä, not Ellilän. The form Ellilän means Ellilä’s, as in Mikko Ellilän blogi = Mikko Ellilä’s blog.
There has been a lot discussion about my case on the internet, but mainstream media has held a very low profile. Newspapers have published a couple of rather short news items about the case, but I have not been interviewed. There were 4-5 news photographers at the trial yesterday but I don’t know whether any stories of the trial have been published yet. I read one newspaper today and didn’t notice anything. Maybe the story will come out after the verdict is announced. Yesterday’s trial ended with the judge and the jury saying they will need time to consider the arguments and will announce the verdict on 23 March. (It’s common procedure in Finland for the court to reach a verdict after the actual trial in cases where the verdict is not as obvious as in simple cases involving e.g. petty theft.)
There was recently a massive demonstration in front of the parliament house against the very law that forces internet service providers to maintain this blocklist because this blocklist has been repeatedly and systematically abused by the police. Student organisations of major political parties have demanded that the minister of communications resign because of her support for that apparently unconstitutional censorship.
Read more about it:
Cheers Mikko. Name corrected.
Have you actually looked outside lately?
Some of us here speak from a UK perspective, others US & yet others from elsewhere…which is just as it should be. But, understanding those perspectives is, for some, a guessing game.
The “WE WON” triumphalism is a typical example of not even understanding what ‘winning’ means. There’s a deal of difference between winning & being on the winning side.
For Britain, WW2 was a Pyrrhic Victory…we lost…everything. And only in recent years have we repaid the enormous financial debt we incurred with the US…which made us pay for every last round of .303 we fired while they made up their minds.
For the Soviet Union it was, at terrible cost, a great victory…having defeated one of the most formidable armies in History & establishing political hegemony over vast swathes of Europe.
For the USA it was a great victory…yes, also at unpleasant cost…but divesting Britain of its every asset in the Americas and, not least, in achieving one of Roosevelt’s great aims: the destruction of the British Empire.
Time we got this ‘winning’ business in perspective.
As for ‘rolling over’…as a young man I sneered at the appeasers prior to WW2 until I realized that anyone who had experienced the carnage of WW1 (only a few years before) would have to be stark raving bonkers to even consider repeating it.
When push eventually came to shove…and alternatives had disappeared…most of the appeasers fought bravely…& many died for their country.
For those who do not yet understand the UK perspective, do not be misled into thinking that those of us who are presently on the edge of despair for what remains of our country would not fight the last good fight to save it.
permanentexpat,
Very well said, sir. Bravo.
If even quoting facts is going to be made a crime we have come to a bad place.
As for opinions:
If politicians and administrators will only allow opinions with which they agree to be published (denouncing other opinions as “hate speech”) then freedom is dead.
As Perry is fond of saying “the state is not your friend” and this includes democratically elected governments.
The left used to say “we oppose the so called freedom of cutting taxes and economic regulations – but we are in favour of the true freedom of such civil liberties as freedom of speech”.
At least they are consistent now – they are against “economic” freedom (i.e. people being allowed to keep their own money and other property and freely use these things in civil interaction) and they are against freedom of speech.
Yes Ian, I have looked outside recently. I simply don’t share your opinion that freedom is dying. It is on the ropes if not completely defeated in certain places, whereas it is growing in other places it didn’t exist previously *cough*IRAQ*cough*.
There are most certainly compelling cases to be made -such as this foolishness out of Finland- that many of our freedoms are in danger, but the fact remains that there is overwhelming and abundant evidence that technology is allowing the light to reach in to places it had no chance once before. And with this technology comes the bumbling attempt by the state to control it. History shows that this will fail. Ask China how well things are going with this whole “we can have the olympics and hide all our problems simultaneously without anyone noticing” foolishness.
The genie is out of the bottle. It’s not going back in.
Tman:
But you’re missing the point. Technology is indeed undermining those regimes that are still running old-fashioned, non-democratic, unpopular totalitarian/police states by providing easy access to outside information from freer parts of the world. However, when it comes to the situation within the Western countries themselves, this effect obviously doesn’t exist. Here, and in countless other cases frequently discussed in this blog, we have an example of the modern, fully democratic soft totalitarianism in action. People running the show here know very well what they are doing, and they know how to make the technology actually work in their advantage. And face it – as much as we’d like it to be otherwise, many of these soft-totalitarian policies are popular or at least leave most people indifferent. Thus, it doesn’t make much sense to extrapolate from what happens when technology reaches impoverished places ruled by hated tyrants.
Nate said,
There’s hope. They invented this stuff, remember?(Link)
Pa Annoyed:
I saw that same story too. I can only imagine how much your government would be salivating over this, due to the pseudoanonymous bashing they keep getting from blogs run by their own cops. Come to think of it, my own boss would probably get aroused over the prospect of keeping us from posting anonymously online, if he weren’t too damn dumb to know what a blog is in the first place.
In any case, even if Kentucky passes this into law, I wonder how many ISP’s will simply end up sending the bill to Tennessee and Ohio PO boxes?
Mikko:
I’m confused. Is it the police who actually filter the supposed child pr0n, like the Great Firewall of China? Or do they simply supply a block list to private ISP’s like the old MAPS RBL?
After that remark, Ian B can never run for President of the United States. He won’t be censored, he just would never be able to win.
The trial of Mikko Ellilä 14.3.2008 – English translation