Black steel in the hour of chaos

I got a letter from the government the other day
Opened it and read it
It said they were suckers
They wanted me for their army or whatever
Picture me giving a damn, I said never.
Here is a land that never gave a damn
About a brother like myself
Because I never did
I wasn't with it but just that very minute
It occurred to me the suckers had authority.

**

I did, in fact, get a letter from the government today. In very archaic and plain weird terms, it said they were suckers, but they did have authority. I've been sentenced to 114 days in prison, effective July 3rd, for refusing to complete my "civilian service". Finnish legalese, by the way, is only slightly confusing, but it is very linguistically strange.

So, now it's official: I'm going to prison, most likely around the end of July. Under the Finnish system, 114 days translates to about four months real time, so basically I'll spend the fall of 2009 behind bars.

**

It's up to you not to heed the call-up
You must not act the way you were brought up
Who give you work and why should you do it?

Goodbye MJ.

Wow. I woke up for breakfast at our summer cabin in the Finnish countryside, only to be told that Michael Jackson is dead. Very weird.

He's been all over the music video channels for the last few days, and I can honestly say I never realized how much a part of my life he really was. I grew up during the high times of his career. I was, after all, born in the year that Thriller was released. His music was all around me through my entire life up to now, and it's only now that he's dead that I realize that.

I can truthfully say I always felt a strong sense of sympathy toward him. Sure, at times he seemed to be crazy, and I never could figure out why he started out black and later became white. Apparently he had vitiligo and lupus, but it's not like any of our media ever wanted to tell us that; they had a field day selling us "Wacko Jacko".

Having read about how he was abused as a child by his father, and realizing that the guy started working at the age of eight, you have to figure there's no way he's going to turn out like the rest of us. Behind it all there was a massive talent for music and dance, and watching it, even on just a music video, was a priviledge.

The high point of Jackson's vilification to the world was the child abuse trials. As he was acquited of all charges, I've never seen any reason to believe that the trials were anything but a massive exercise in cynical exploitation and money-grabbing by the kids' parents.

In so many ways his life was a tragedy, from childhood abuse to being turned into a freak by the world's media. That's what makes it all the more moving to watch his videos and listen to his music, and to understand that after and during all that, his music is filled with a positive message about us people getting along with each other. The fact that he went through what he went through and came out of it believing in mankind is testament to a great man.

**

At some point I had the audacity to come up with an epitaph for him.

He was black. He was white. It didn't matter.

We'll miss him.

Ewwwton Hewitt

Hej igen, kära läsare.
Vet ni vad som sker på sommaren, förutom att folk klär av sig till mångas förnöjelse? Ja, just det, Wimbledon är vad som sker (och dessförrinnan Roland Garros, men det är över nu); ett evenemang av stort nöje. Tennis råkar dessutom vara en av de idrotter som tycks vara som skapta för tv-spel, och enär såväl tennis som tv-spel ligger mig varmt om hjärtat torde det vara en lyckad kombination för mig. Under 90-talet stämde det alldeles utmärkt vid namnet Super Tennis till SNES (vad annars, med "Super" i namnet?), men jag kan inte riktigt säga att någon värdig tronföljare har kommit.

Eftersom jag kände mig lite nostalgisk spelade jag några turneringar, men jag upptäckte att mina 1337-skillz hade vuxit sig för stora för Super Tennis. Därför sökte jag lyckan på annat håll, och fann något fruktansvärt:

När spelarna rör på munnen kommer inget ljud, bara en textremsa. Briljant.

Virtua Tennis, med andra ord. Spelarna stönar oerhört fult, och jag kände igen flera av ljuden från den första inkarnationen... som har några år på nacken. Dessutom påminner ljudet från bollträffen påminner mer om en tuggummibubbla som spricker än en tennisboll, vilket inte är lysande med tanke på hur ofta man tvingas höra oväsendet. Publikens reaktioner är gräsliga; fyra, fem personer som ska låta som ett hundratal. Det ger ingen direkt inlevelse, kan jag lova.

Karriärläget är fruktansvärt tråkigt, då man tvingas utföra samma träningsmoment om och om igen för att kunna spela något som inte påminner om tennis i H75-klassen samt att man stöter på samma licensierade spelare om och om igen, oavsett rangen på turneringen. Det blir rätt löjligt när man stöter på Roger Federer (om du är pojk) eller Maria Sharapova (om du är tös) i en Challenger.

Grundspelet är inte lysande heller. Den främsta bristen är vekheten i servarna, som är spelarens främsta vapen, egentligen. I Virtua Tennis, däremot, blir det ofta en svaghet att serva på grund av de knallhårda returerna. Grundslagen slår man genom att stå på samma position och ladda, vilket känns ganska intelligensbefriat. Man slår aldrig ut sig heller, vilket egentligen innebär att det inte blir ett enda Unforced Error. Inte mycket skicklighet som ligger bakom spelet, utan bara att springa från hörn till hörn och slå tills motståndaren inte klarar av att kasta sig längre.

Grafiken har ni fått se prov på i närbild, och det vill ni nog inte göra igen. Musiken behöver jag inte ens nämna, ty så vedervärdig är den.

Uselt, Sega. Sämre än Shadow the Hedgehog.

Doing something with your life

Not really. If there's one thing summer is good for, it's being useless, especially if you have a four-month stint at Her Excellency's pleasure coming up around August. This is how useless I've been:

Man, that round number looks good!

Nicky Shears Singers

Hei! Rad Rat här igen, enär Ab verkar ha tagit tjänstledigt under en obestämd tid. Det här blir Popped Collars nittioförsta inlägg. Jag vill passa på att fira det, samt det fina vädret, med ypperligt vackra och exotiska Nicole Scherzinger. Det blir väl inte mycket bättre än så, misstänker jag!

Ja just det, Michael Jackson är död.

Rape is legal in Finland

As I wrote previously, I'll be going to jail this summer for refusing to serve in the army. There's one kind of criminal I'll be extremely unlikely to meet there: rapists.

Phil, who I stole the title of this post from, quotes Helsingin Sanomat:

According to a news report aired by the commercial television network Nelonen on Sunday, courts in Finland have been handing out relatively lenient sentences in cases of sexual assault - even in some which have led to physical injury.
Nelonen examined all sex crime cases handled by Finnish district courts over the past year and found out that prosecutors and courts have considered acts involving injury to the victim, or in which the woman’s home has been violently broken into, and even in which the victim has been kept a prisoner for several days, to meet the definition of “coercive sexual contact”, a category of sexual assault considered less serious than actual rape.

The new category was introduced to Finnish law in 1999. Opponents of the new definition predicted at the time that the change would lead to more lenient sentences in sex crimes.
The Nelonen report found that more than half of those convicted of actual rape have to serve real prison time. Less than one in ten of those convicted of the lesser crime have had to serve custodial sentences.

The original purpose of the introduction of “coercive sexual contact” as a lesser category of sexual assault was to encourage the prosecution of cases in which one partner was not a fully willing participant of sexual contact, but which are not seen to qualify as full-blown rape.
The Nelonen report suggests that the change has had an opposite effect - that of letting real rapists off with lenient sentences.

My boldface. I apologize for the bad Hesari english, but the point is fairly clear. The original Nelonen story is here. There's some shocking stuff in it, some of which I'll summarize in English here.

**

There are three kinds of rape in Finnish law: rape, aggravated rape and "coercive sexual contact". Here is an example of "coercive sexual contact", a lesser crime than rape, from the Nelonen report:

A man, born in 1977, forced a woman to have sex with him in the disabled persons' bathroom of a restaurant by hitting her head into the wall and twisting her arm behind her. The woman could not call out for help because the man held his other hand over her mouth. Earlier that evening the same man had tried to forcibly kiss her in the restaurant. The state prosecutor demanded a sentence for coercive sexual contact, because the violence used was mild and the act was performed under mitigating circumstances. The public court decision does not set out these circumstances. The man was given a seven-month suspended sentence and ordered to pay 1000e in reparations.

Understand this: in Finland, if you beat a disabled woman's head into the bathroom wall and rape her, you are not going to prison.

The inept HS English tells us that "more than half" of those convicted of rape go to prison. What that actually means is that 54% of rape convictions result in a prison sentence where the convicted person actually goes to jail.

54%. Remember that a case like the one described above is seen, even by the prosecution, as less than rape. A rape must involve serious violence. Even then, only half of those convicted go to prison. Only 10% of those convicted of "coercive sexual contact" actually go to prison.

**

This is sickening. If you refuse to go to the army, the state has no qualms about putting you in jail. I'm receiving a far more severe sentence than the majority of Finnish rapists will ever receive. That's what passes for justice in this country.

Finland prides itself on being a "just state" on the model of the German Rechtsstaat. What this means in practice is that our Parliament passes laws that leave actual decisions on legality and sentencing almost completely up to the courts. In the case of sexual assault, the courts and prosecutors routinely apply the lesser penalties, even in cases where this seems to be bordering on insane.

And that's not all they do. At the end of 2008, public feeling in Finland was inflamed against the Eastern Finland appeals court (HS), because of a case heard in November 2008. There, the appeals court found that five adult men, previously sentenced for the rape of a 15-year old girl, were not, in fact, guilty of rape.

The girl had been given alcohol until she was drunk, tied to a bed and raped by all five men. The Eastern Finland appeals court decided that the men were guilty of sexual abuse and aggravated sexual abuse of a minor, but not rape. According to the court, it could not be proved that the men themselves had gotten the girl drunk and tied her to the bedposts; therefore they could not be found guilty of rape. Their sentences were halved. (HS)

So, to recap: not only is beating a woman's head into the wall and sexually assaulting her not rape, but tying a drunk minor to a bed and gang-raping her isn't rape either.

Iltalehti has summed up several interesting previous decisions of the same appeals court over the 2000's:

* In October 2003, a 33-year-old man's jail sentence for rape was changed to a suspended sentence because of his employment history. He had held a steady job for a long time, and his employer had decided to terminate his employment if he went to jail. He didn't have to!

* In September 2003 a 33-year-old man's prison sentence for attempted rape was commuted to a suspended sentence because he had no previous convictions and had paid a large sum in reparations.

* In September 2002 a 27-year-old man had his prison sentence commuted to a suspended sentence and community service, again because of his job.

**

Finnish courts and prosecutors will, even in cases involving physical violence, not even call for a sentence for rape if the sentence can be handed out as "coercive sexual contact". Of those sentences for rape, barely half actually end up in prison. Of those who do, if they're in Eastern Finland, clearly a trip to the appeals court is worth the trouble, as if you have a good enough job, you won't have to go to prison.

As a feminist and as a human being, I'm disgusted. Overall the Finnish justice system seems dedicated to bending the law in favor of men convicted for sexual assault. Do we really want to live in a society where physically assaulting a disabled person and forcing them to have sex with you is not a serious offense? In a country where an appeals court believes that it's possible that a drunk 15-year-old girl tied herself to a bed in order to be raped by five adult men? I'm sorry, coercively sexually contacted by five men.

I'm not even going to start on the common problems of sexual assaults and domestic violence, like the fact that most go unreported. The way our justice system handles even those that are reported is appalling.

A brief comparison: Finnish internet pundit Seppo Lehto got two years and four months in prison for creating obscene web pages insulting and defaming Finnish politicians and civil servants (HS). The guy who beat a disabled woman's head into a wall and raped her didn't get a prison sentence at all.

From my own perspective as a person actually going to prison in a month or so, this is totally bewildering. I've refused to complete my "civilian service" and because of that, I'm going to jail. If I had, instead, attacked and raped a woman in a bar, I wouldn't be going to jail. I just can't get my head around that.

That's the country I live in. And I'm not proud.

Insert Title Here

Det har varit ont om inlägg den senaste tiden, jag vet. Man kan säga att vi på Pawped C. har tagit semester, eller gått i ide (ute?), under sommaren. Sommaren har hittills präglats av uselt väder, tristess och kanske den sjukaste dygnsrytmförskjutning jag någonsin gjort. Lyckligtvis finns ljus i horisonten, enär slutet av denna usla månad närmar sig, om än långsamt. Pengar kommer återigen finnas på kontot, vilket innebär stora möjligheter att underhålla sig. Bara nu till helgen ska jag spela Battletoads med en kamrat (nej, inte Ab, tyvärr) vilket, efter några linor eller några puffar, är oerhört trevligt!!!!!11

I övrigt har jag tittat på en del film denna månad, och återigen begrundat vilka filmer jag gillar allra mest här i världen. Jag kom fram till att svaret är T2 och Rambo 3. Två filmer som ligger mig varmt om hjärtat och till dags dato fortfarande är så fantastiska att jag blir bindgalen när jag tänker på det. Dylik action görs inte längre. Om en scen i en film innehöll en Hind och en stridsvagn som kolliderar, då använde man helt enkelt en Hind och en stridsvagn som fick köras in i varandra. Om en helikopter skulle flyga genom en tunnel jagandes en fruktpickup, då flög man en djävla helikopter genom tunnelhelvetet. 2000-talets storslagna actionfilmer verkar filmas till 90% på green screen. Många scener har också en tendens att vara extremt överdrivna. Det är faktiskt sorgligt. Tänk om dekapitationsscenerna i Rambo 4 hade filmats på gammalt hederligt vis. Proteser och riktiga stuntmän, och inte en kulspruta med animerad mynningseld och flygande kroppsdelar som ser så datoranimerade ut att jag vill gråta.

Nu gråter jag på riktigt. Det betyder att det är dags för Dödligt Vapen.