Sweden already in trouble - Finland following

Sweden has become famous of its street gangs composed largely of immigrants from developing countries. The problem was during the last few days demonstrated by two explosions (in Solna and Södermalm) in Stockholm, the capitol of the country.

That reality affected strongly results of recent elections of Parliament, which resulted in a huge increase of votes to Swedish Democrats supporting stringent immigration - and immigrant - policy, despite attempts to add a Nazi label on this party. 

It remains to be seen, if political change in Sweden lead to a factual change. It is, however, notable that immigration-driven gangs have also appeared to Finland. 

According to an older police officer, the number of Swedish-type Finnish gangs is currently eleven and include at least 200 people - most of them are adults and have roots outside the country (typically in the Islamic world). They are associated with many different crime types. 

According to the police officer, it is difficult to say how far Finns are from the situation in Sweden. In a long run it is, however, clear that similar problems will land also in the Eastern side of the Baltic Sea. And it is possible that - in addition to local immigrant-associated gangs - also their Swedish counterparts will appear.

The police officer points out that the current legislation in Finland hampers attempts to prevent - and even solve - crime. And therefore criminal career stands up to a young immigrant as a quick route to richness and fame. The attractiveness of this option is enhanced by the poor learning performance of many children with ethnic-cultural background in developing countries. 

Taken together: while Sweden is already in a big trouble, Finland seems to be following its footsteps with very little concern about its future. 

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
A notable difference between Social Democrats in Sweden and Finland
Increase of violence by youngsters in Finnish towns
Did police have the right to strip women

Scientific community discriminates its youngsters

Recent research showed that scientific reports are more easily published if their authors are well known and respected scientists - e.g. Nobel laureates. The results reported by an Austrian group showed that only 23 percent of reviewer´s recommended rejection on manuscripts, when a prominent researcher was the only author shown, whereas 48 percent did so when authors were not known and 65 percent if the only author given was a little-known person. The evaluated manuscripts were the same for all three groups.

For me, as a well known and old scientist in my field, but also a supervisor of young talented students, the figures given above are just disgusting. That is because it shows the hurdles for success to be higher for young people. And even worse: the Austrian study seems to imply that old veterans might easily publish less important findings or even rubbish.

The scientific evaluation of manuscripts is basically simple. The peer reviewer of a scientific publication is another scientist in the same field, who is expected to check that the methodology is adequate to the problem and the evidence obtained is correctly interpreted. And that the findings add sufficiently to the scientific understanding of the topic addressed. 

The bias observed by Austrians obviously affect also funding organizations. If the applicant is well known and has a long record of scientific success, he probably gets funding much more likely to his applications than a young researcher with minor achievements. 

Therefore it was interesting to learn, that some funding organizations - such as the British Academy or the Swiss National Science Foundation - have taken advantage of a lottery in their funding decisions. That is, if several project proposals are very close to each others - but there is not enough money to fund all - a lottery will be used to select the ones getting funded.

That should be beneficial to the regeneration of scientific community, and provide young innovative researchers better chances to get funded. After saying that, even this kind of a lottery will not provide equal chances to youngsters, but at least it would reduce the gap to us - the veterans already going towards the sunset of our brilliance. 

All in all, I suggest that at least part of the European Union research funding would implement lottery in its research funding process. For example, in the Framework Programs for applied research - where application process often has two rounds of evaluation - the second round including only top applications rated by evaluators, could be replaced by a lottery. 

And nationally, I would be happy to see Academy of Finland funding to be partly replaced by a lottery. The principle could be simple: in the first step, all applications rated as "outstanding" by expert panels would be provided funding, and thereafter the lottery would be used - instead of the Research Councils - to pick up proposals to be funded from applications rated by the expert panels up to a level of "excellent". 

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Scientific misconduct on prevailing theories is too attractive 
Should forbidden questions be answered or not?
Facts, US Supreme Court and the case of Roe v. Wade

Explanation of Finnish attitudes towards Israeli and Palestinians

Today I was reading about Israel´s air strike to Syria, which resulted in a death of five Al Assad´s soldiers. The reason for their death - according to Israel - was the Iranian presence in Syria. 

This brought to my mind the attitudes of Finns to Israel. The people close to the political left - and liberal values - are almost invariably negative to the Jewish state, whereas many people with sympathy to the political right - and conservative values - support them. 

(The exception are deeply Christian Finns, who consider Israeli as the people specifically selected by the God. However, I am not writing about them in this blog post as the number of strictly religious people is not high in Finland.)

This distribution among Finns is weird because the society of Israel is politically - and especially in its values - much more liberal than any of its neighbors. And what independent Palestine would more than probably be. 

My explanation to this dissonance comes from the common affection towards the weaker side of a conflict. In Finland that may have been strengthened by the fact, that throughout our history we have been dominated by our bigger neighbors: we were the poor Eastern part of Sweden since medieval times until 1809, when Russia conquered our land up to the Torne river, which still today is the border between Finland and Sweden - often also called as the most peaceful border in the globe.  

Finally in 1917 we became independent as a result of a temporary weakness of Russia due to Lenin´s revolution. But even after that we were attacked by the Red Army in 1939 and although Soviet Union  was not able to join Finland in itself, Russian leaders strictly affected our foreign policy for decades. Therefore, all people of Finland have got a long history of being the weak one.

According to this, almost all Finns had much more understanding towards Israel that to its Arabic neighbors up to 1970´s. The situation was commonly considered as being similar to the biblical story of heroic David against evil Goliath. 

However, after the Yom Kippur war in 1973 it became clear that Israel was not the weaker one, but a strong military power supported by the United States. And at the same time, the position of David was slowly transferred to Palestinians - a development, where Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza played a major role.  

After that, the better and better flow of information throughout the globe has slowly changed the attitudes, and we have ended up into a nation with a weird distribution of supporters of Jews and Palestinians of the holy Land. Value liberal people economically on the left are mostly favoring ultraconservative Arabs, and conservative people supporting market economy are usually sympathizing Israeli. 

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
A notable difference between Social Democrats in Sweden and Finland
Ellet ole meidän puolellamme, olet meitä vastaan (text in Finnish, but translatable by Google translator)

The main consequence of Putin´s attack to Ukraine

Pax Russiana is cracking in Asia as shown by fights along the border of Kyrgyz and Tajik as well as between Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers. The reason behind these fights - in addition to local disagreements - is probably the poor performance of Vladimir Putin´s army in Ukraine.

As Russia is obviously not able to respond to those minor fights, they will most probably continue, and similar cases will appear also in other areas of the former Soviet Union. Ultimately, all those will most probably reduce Russian influence around its neighborhood. 

At the same time, Vladimir Putin traveled to Uzbekistan to look for help to cope with western sanctions against his actions in Ukraine. Although President Xi Jinping of China was very polite, it was extremely clear which one of the two country leaders was the boss. 

It was also clear that Xi is not willing to risk China´s relationships with the West because of Putin´s adventure to Ukraine, especially as they already are tense due to Taiwan case. But at the same time, he looks for possibilities to take advantage on Putin´s distress - such as purchasing cheap oil from Russia. 

In my opinion, this all indicates that Putin with his "special operation" confirmed the lowering of Russia from a global great power to a second level nation among the ranking of countries. And underlines the position of China as the only rival of US hegemony in the world.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Once upon a time in China and Taiwan
Could China take advantage on the weakness of Putin´s Russia?
Trump is leaving Africa

Vakartšuk of the Okean Elzy: Finnish history inspires Ukrainians

Okean Elzy is the most popular Ukrainian rock band. And they are right now giving a tour of concerts in Northern Europe. The leader of the band, Svjatoslav Vakartšuk, was interviewed by Helsingin Sanomat, the biggest newspaper in Finland. 

During the interview he told, that he went to register himself as a volunteer immediately after Russia attacked his home country. He was, however, asked to continue as a musician to give Ukrainians inspiration to stand the war. And that he has done. 

The band has decided to give 400 tickets of their Helsinki concerts to Ukrainian refugees in Finland. And part of the profit from the two concerts will be directed to the victims of the war. 

In his interview Vakartšuk told that "you may not know how much your history inspires us. You showed that a small country can resist a much bigger neighbor. That is a common theme of discussions in Ukraine. Thanks for that."

I am pleased to hear that the sacrifices given by my grandparent´s generation are still used for something good. Both of my own grandfathers were injured during the second world war, but stayed alive. After saying that, I want to emphasize that I certainly hope Ukraine as an independent country will do the same! 

And to become another example of a small country surviving an unfair attack by its much bigger neighbor. And indeed: right now the situation seems to be excellent! Slava Ukraini!

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Tradition of low professional ability among Russian security agency and dictators
It takes heroes to avoid genocide
An ignorant mediahouse failed again in historical facts

A notable difference between Social Democrats in Sweden and Finland

New members will soon be elected to the parliament of Sweden. Therefore an analysis of attitudes and values of Swedish parties was published in Aftonbladet - an afternoon magazine - as a part of a voting advice application. 

The economic, environmental and educational dimensions were as expected, namely Left Party being the most "progressive" in economy and related issues and Moderate and small Christian Democratic parties located at the "conservative" end of the distribution. Social Democrats were on the "progressive" side, but with some distance from the Left and Green Parties. All of that would have been quite similar among the corresponding parties in Finland - except that Social Democrats might have been placed closer to the other left wing parties.

The surprise, however, was seen in the immigration policy. There the Swedish Social Democrats were clustered among the right wing parties - very close to the Liberal party and not far even from the Swedish Democrats, considered previously as an ultra right or even a Nazi group due to their criticism against the previous immigration policy. That would not happen in Finland, where Social Democrats - the current Prime Minister party - is still advocating mass immigration from developing countries. 

The reason for the difference between the two Nordic Social Democratic parties is obvious. Sweden is already in huge trouble with their immigrants, and therefore former immigration policy is not popular among voters. In Finland, the problems are so far only rising, and not evident to everyone. 

The question arising is: would voters - or even politicians - in Finland understand, that repeating the unsuccessful immigration policy conducted in Sweden would repeat the Swedish outcome in Finland too? I certainly hope so, but unfortunately can not see much evidence for that. 

Previous thoughts on the same topic:

Increase of violence by youngsters in Finnish towns
Riots in Sweden: what next?
The Danish government proposed reforms for immigration policy

People with Middle Eastern and North African inheritance identify themselves as non-Whites

The US government classifies people with Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) inheritance as white in official statistics. Therefore, any potential disparity – whether positive or negative - concerning these people remain hidden. 

In a research report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA was examined in two different experiments. 

In the first one it was studied how MENAs and other Whites perceive the racial status of MENA traits such as ancestry, names and religion. The results showed clearly that both MENAs and other Whites consider MENA related traits as MENA rather than White.

In the second analysis it was figured out how MENA individuals identify themselves. When given the option, most MENA individuals self-identified themselves as MENA or as both MENA and White. This was especially typical to second-generation individuals and Muslims. 

It was also found out that MENAs who perceive more anti-MENA discrimination identify themselves with MENA identity. Thus, racial hostility seems to strengthen group identity among people. 

Northern Europe, and especially Finland, was for a long time almost free of people with Middle Eastern and North African ancestry. The situation changed suddenly in year 2015, when a high number of people from Iraq appeared to Finland as a side stream of Syrian refugees due to a poorly considered statement by the Prime Minister of the time.

Namely, the PM of the time – Juha Sipilä – said that he will provide his house to refugees for temporary living. That was in Iraq interpreted largely as an invitation to Finland, and a mass migration of people looking for higher standard of living started.

Today, it is quite obvious that Iraqis in Finland consider themselves different from other people. They concentrate on separate neighborhoods, and have not shared religious ceremonies with the long-time Muslims with Tatar ancestry in the country. 

In Finland people are not officially divided to different races. Some statistics, however, are made according to the first language or country of birth. They show very poor integration of Iraqi immigrants in the Finnish society - including high rates of sexual and other violence crime. That is in stark contrast to Tatars, who are today an integral, well living and invisible part among inhabitants of the country. 

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Increase of violence by youngsters in Finnish towns
Should forbidden questions be answered or not?
American black population more vulnerable to the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2