Russia’s Elections Are Over Before They Begin

Russia’s elections for the State Duma, the country’s parliament, end today. Yet the winner was clear even before the voting began, because the chamber consists almost entirely of Putin and war supporters, after nationwide participation by the country’s only openly anti-war party was blocked.

That is why the most interesting thing about the election is not its outcome but what happens at noon today. Russia’s opposition has urged people to vote at precisely that time, in the hope of creating crowds at polling stations.

The possible crowds are, of course, of no significance in themselves. But their size could provide an indication of the level of support for the opposition — or at least of how many of its supporters have the courage to publicly express a political opinion against the regime. Even that, however, has little significance beyond perhaps causing some irritation to Putin — assuming anyone dares to tell him about it.

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The State Duma itself has an interesting history. Its first incarnation was created after Russia suffered defeat by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. The defeat was a tremendous humiliation for the Russians, as it was the first time a European great power had lost a war to an Asian state.

The defeat contributed to the revolution that broke out in Russia. As a result, the tsar’s absolute power was curtailed and a representative assembly, the Duma, was established. At the time, however, only a small proportion of Russians were allowed to take part in its elections. The impact of the lost war also extended to Finland, where the first Red Guards were established, the first Russification period came to an end, and Finland — then a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire — gained a unicameral parliament.

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There was no need for a Duma during the Soviet Union, but it was re-established in 1993, during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. It serves as the legislative body of the Russian Federation, responsible for passing federal laws as well as exercising parliamentary oversight over the government and other state institutions.

In practice, the Duma’s significance has dwindled to almost nothing under Vladimir Putin, and it has become more of a false façade for his dictatorship: it looks like democracy, but in reality it is merely a dictator’s rubber stamp. If even that.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Putin's Growing Crisis in Ukraine and an Uncertain Endgame for Russia
Independence and the Sword of Damocles
Is President Putin on his way to repeat the destiny of Czar Nicholas II?

German Democracy at Work: The People’s Will Prevails

The German state elections have attracted an exceptional amount of attention because they are bringing about a historic change, with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party pushing the long-standing party of power, the Christian Democrats (CDU), into the ranks of the minor parties.

We got a preview of this a couple of weeks ago, and more is coming this weekend in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The main source of dissatisfaction is Germany’s immigration policy, which is transforming the entire society in a radical way.

In addition to immigration policy, many other things are changing in Germany because the AfD also has other policy positions that differ from those of the CDU and the Social Democrats, with whom it has shared power. Examples include the party’s policies on the euro, Russia, and climate change, all of which differ from the views of the political establishment in Berlin and also from those of most other European leaders.

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As a result, coverage of the AfD’s success in the Finnish media has at times resembled disaster reporting (example, another). At the same time, it has been forgotten that the German political transformation is about nothing more and nothing less than a democracy functioning exemplary well, in which change follows from the political elite pursuing policies against the will of the people. In other words, from allowing the mass migration of people from developing countries that has radically transformed German society.

At the same time, the political transformation in Germany’s states demonstrates the beauty of democracy because it forces a reluctant elite to accept the will of the people. This would not be possible in pseudo-democracies such as Russia or China, but in Germany, popular government appears to be working.

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That is why we Finns—and our media as well—should also praise and celebrate the functioning of German democracy. At the same time, we should encourage Finns to use the power granted to us by the Constitution.

According to it, “state power in Finland belongs to the people.” And we will have the opportunity to exercise that power next time on April 18 next year.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Lessons from the Abdul Ballout Case
The Forgotten Empire That Shaped Modern Europe
Shock in Berlin: AfD Surges, Merz Stumbles

Paternal Cousin Beats Maternal Cousin as a Spouse

Marriage between close relatives—or, more precisely, the inbreeding among children born as a result of such unions—is harmful. This is because offspring are more likely than usual to inherit the same gene variant from both parents.

In such cases, recessive genes become expressed in the children's phenotype, causing recessively inherited diseases to manifest. As a result, children born to related parents face a higher risk of congenital structural abnormalities, developmental disabilities, deafness and blindness, as well as infant and child mortality. In addition, inbreeding reduces the cognitive ability of offspring born from such relationships, which has a negative effect on their success in life.

If marriages between relatives occur within the same family or community over several consecutive generations, genetic diversity decreases and the genetic risks increase further. Despite these disadvantages, marriage between cousins is common in many cultures.

More than 10 percent of the world's population enters into such marriages—this has also become increasingly common in Finland and other Western countries in recent years as a result of increased humanitarian immigration. For this reason, it has been suspected that such marriages may be associated with some benefit that has caused this—in itself highly harmful—cultural practice to become established in some cultures.

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One such benefit was identified in a study published by French researcher Olympia L. K. Campbell. It concerned the effect of kinship relationships on conflicts within the household, i.e. domestic violence.

The study was based on two competing hypotheses. According to the first, blood kinship would align spouses' interests and increase monitoring by relatives, thereby reducing men's incentives and opportunities to use coercion. According to the second hypothesis, close kinship networks would place family unity above women's autonomy, suppressing help-seeking and making it easier to control women.

Campbell compared these hypotheses using data collected from approximately 36,000–46,000 women in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Turkey. In this dataset, marriage to a first cousin was associated with a 2.5-percentage-point lower probability of physical intimate-partner violence compared with marriages in which the spouses were not blood relatives.

For a woman, this corresponds to an approximately 11 percent lower relative risk of violence. In addition, the researcher found a similar reduction in coercive controlling behavior toward wives.

Interestingly, marriage to a paternal cousin reduced the risk of physical violence more than marriage to a maternal cousin. Thus, it appears that the protective effect stems from the authority of the man's relatives over men, rather than from the spouse's kinship itself. 

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Blame the Philanthropist Or Understand the Facts
Society, Genetics, and the Impact of Consanguineous Marriages: At the Intersection of Education and Heredity
Cousin is not just a delicacy, but also a hindrance to social success

The Overlooked Factor Behind Finland’s Falling PISA Scores

The PISA results published yesterday, which measure schoolchildren’s academic performance, showed that the performance level of Finnish, and many other European, schoolchildren had declined since the previous assessment. The reasons for this have been discussed in the pages of one Finnish media outlet after another, and at least the obvious impact of social media on children’s ability to concentrate has not been downplayed.

However, one factor that has quite evidently contributed to the decline in our schoolchildren’s performance has received remarkably little attention. Namely, the indirect effect of poorly performing immigrant children and young people on other pupils.

Of course, it is impossible to say anything with certainty about this without proper research, but even common sense suggests that the disruption these pupils are known to cause, and the special attention they require from teachers—which comes at the expense of the time available for teaching other schoolchildren—would seem to be plausible candidates for explaining, for example, the [surprising decline] in the learning outcomes of children from socioeconomically advantaged families.

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I was particularly surprised when Professor Mari-Pauliina Vainikainen, who commented on the issue on  television —and was wearing a rather striking floral decoration on her head—explicitly denied that immigration has an impact on learning outcomes (at around the 15-minute mark in this recording). She justified this by saying that the gap in academic performance between immigrant young people and native Finnish young people had narrowed since the previous assessment.

Her reasoning is, of course, factually correct in itself, but her conclusion seemed odd given that the impact of immigration is known to have significantly worsened the conditions for maintaining order and concentration in school classrooms. Even more peculiar was the realization that I could not easily find a Finnish source to link to documenting this phenomenon, which is familiar to the parents of children in all kinds of ethnically diverse classrooms.

In any case, it is clear that if pupils from the majority population have to study in a more disruptive environment than in previous years, this will affect their learning. The same applies if, because of the additional attention required by immigrant children, they receive less time and instruction from their teachers than they did in the past.

It would therefore be good if researchers and funding could also be found for studying these factors. Above all, we should develop a pedagogical solution that would eliminate these problems from Finnish school classrooms.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Finnish Families Flee Immigrant-Dominated Areas Over School Safety Concerns
Finnish Immigration Policy Limits Freedom of Expression
Attitudes Toward Immigrants Are a Problem in Schools

Israeli Ministers’ Statements Are a Victory for Hamas

Last night’s news reported that Israeli ministers had hardened their rhetoric concerning Palestinians. Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who represents the Likud, the main governing party, said that Israel would empty Gaza of its inhabitants as soon as the United States identifies a place to which they can be deported.

Such statements are not in accordance with any international law; quite the contrary. Even so, they are less extreme than the fantasies voiced by Katz’s ministerial colleague and leader of the Otzma Yehudit party, Itamar Ben-Gvir, about assassinating 30–40 Gazans every night.

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In both cases, the ultimate consequence of the ministers’ publicly voiced thoughts for international politics is unambiguous: they weaken Israel’s position. And by doing so, they strengthen sympathy for Palestinians elsewhere in the world, thereby empowering activism that supports them.

It is of course clear that Katz’s statements are in reality much more serious than Ben-Gvir’s fantasies about assassinations. This is so simply because he represents the ruling Likud rather than some small extremist party.

Furthermore, Katz’s statements are made more credible by the fact that no solution guaranteeing Israel’s security has been found to the problem of Gaza even over the course of decades—as the terrorist attack of October 7, 2023 clearly demonstrated. This undoubtedly frustrates even those decision-makers in the Jewish state who would like to find a peaceful and lasting solution to the problem of the two peoples of the so-called Holy Land.

On the other hand, it is quite clear that the publicly voiced thoughts of the ministers mentioned above are like winning the lottery for Hamas, whose position had already weakened after the terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, and its consequences. After all, no significant Western politician can defend or support genocidal statements—or even calls for the forced displacement of a population—coming from ministers of a democratic government. Not now, and not in the future.

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It therefore remains to be seen how the situation between Israel and the Palestinians will develop in the future. The positions we have now heard did not arise out of nowhere, but reflect the deep frustration among Israeli Jews with the unresolved Palestinian issue, which has continued for decade after decade, and with its terrorist consequences.

Unfortunately, solutions are in short supply in a situation where neither side trusts the other. Nor did the Palestinian leadership accept independence at the time, even though it was offered.

Moreover, at least Hamas still has no genuine desire today to give up its dream of extending its rule—as they themselves put it—“from the river to the sea,” meaning over the entire territory of present-day Israel. And at the same time, to remove all Jews from the area.

That is why it seems to me that the confrontation and violence between the populations of the Holy Land will continue for decades, if not for centuries. And I would not be surprised at all if the solution—whenever it inevitably comes—were to follow the ideas expressed by the Israeli ministers discussed here. Or, alternatively, the dreams of Palestinian terrorists of driving the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Finland’s Foreign Minister Explained Why the States That Have Recognized Palestine Are Well-Meaning Fools
Optimism and Reality of the Gaza Peace Proposal
Palestine’s Statehood and International Law