Sure it's amusing that some Finnish guy has written a novel comprised entirely of SMS messages but it's the final graf of the AP story that has the real news: "Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen recently made tabloid front pages after reportedly having broken up with his girlfriend with a text." That's seriously cold. And mixed with Finland's record of pro-Nazi and pro-Soviet foreign polices makes me wonder if we're taking the Finnish threat seriously enough. It seems to be a country run by madmen. I was actually in the Helsinki Airport for an incredibly long layover once and it seemed frighteningly clean, even by Nordic standards.
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Burying the Lead
29 Jan 2007 10:06 am
Comments (39)
liberals are being too cavalier about the threat posed by the Finns
No one can doubt my credentials as a liberal. I've been well-known as a liberal for decades, and I still admire many aspect of traditional liberalism.
Therefore, I think it carries substantial weight when I say that liberals who don't support an immediate attack on Finland -- and sadly, this includes my old friends at the New York Times -- should all be subject to summary execution.
The reason for our complacency, of course, that no one wants to talk about, is that our government is beholden to a powerful pro-Finland lobby.
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen recently made tabloid front pages after reportedly having broken up with his girlfriend with a text." That's seriously cold.
Just another example of Europeans taking their cultural cues from America.
The reason for our complacency, of course, that no one wants to talk about, is that our government is beholden to a powerful pro-Finland lobby.
Damn you, Nokia!
We don't need to bomb Finland. Like in Iceland, the Finns believe leaving their children unattended in strollers outside shops is perfectly acceptable. We can just sneak over there and steal all of their babies.
We can just sneak over there and steal all of their babies.
This will be a cakewalk.
Just another example of Europeans taking their cultural cues from America.
Hardly. Many Finns were carrying two or three mobile phones (work, home, personal) back when Americans were marvelling at analogue roaming. They were certainly texting a decade ago, though I think it's only rumour that the 160-char limit on SMSes was designed to ensure that one could write a single Finnish sentence (20-letter words including 15 vowels).
That the Finns last a single winter without killing each other remains a wonder to me.
Hardly.
It was a joke - click on the link.
No need to sully our hands with baby-snatching. Being as Finland leads the world in per capita coffee consumption, I think a simple hot beverage blockade should do the trick.
The Oslo airport is even more pristine than the Helsinki one.
Really this baby stealing idea is a great plan! Not only will we destroy the Finns we'll also be able to address the shortage of white babies and hold off the brown hoard! Hotair should get on this right now!
No blood for cellphones.
I'll add that it has been 20 years since I was in Finland, but I remember enjoying it a lot. That being said, I was seriously traumatized by eating raindeer meat everywhere there. I mean, the meal on my Finnair flight was a Rudolph sandwich! (Rudolph was a bit salty.)
"I was actually in the Helsinki Airport for an incredibly long layover once and it seemed frighteningly clean, even by Nordic standards."
ah, but the cleanliness of the Oslo airport is less ostentatious and subtle - not like the glimmery sheen of the barborous HEL.
While shoddy furniture put together with allen wrenches is a Swedish plot, the Finns have a similar propensity for poplar, alder wood, and Baltic blue paint that is sure to undermine our morals and culture.
And what's with the funky language? Speaking in code is what it is. Do we really know what goes on in all those Finnish telephones?
Any liberal or leftist who is not morally blinkered by his or her own rhetoric should sign my Finneuston Manifesto, as soon as I draft it.
Given the Finnish proclivity for bloody resistance and guerrilla insurgency, not to invade would simply be irresponsible.
The Finnish novel you all should be reading, by the way, is the great Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi. Technically Finnish-Swedish, I guess. But boy, is it good.
I mean, the meal on my Finnair flight was a Rudolph sandwich!
Venison and a maraschino cherry?
And I remember a fair number of Finns who weren't wearing ties with their jackets. Clearly lunatics, all of them.
Matt, by drawing attention to the threat you've provided a valuable corrective to the influence of Finn-coddling British sketch comics.
http://www.mwscomp.com/sounds/mp3/finland.mp3
As a Finnish-American myself (for those confused by my last name, I'm Finnish on my mother's side), I spent a good part of the '70s hopefully waiting for the neocons' warnings of "Finlandization" to come true. They never did.
Now I'm reduced to trying to get what I can out of my ability to swing the New York State Italo-Finnish vote. So far, it isn't much.
The babies will greet us as liberators.
I would be concerned about increasing the Danish influence in the area, another member of the Axis of Nordic Evil.
Ellenberg is intentionally confusing things. The Finnish-Swedish Nordofascist alliance is a myth! Don't you all know that they're fighting each other? If we go up there and get involved, we're just going to get our brave young men and women caught in the middle of a civil war, baby-stealing or no.
I know I'll get denounced as an anti-Finnite for this, and my journalistic career will undoubtedly suffer, but integrity demands that I name names: The real culprit here is the powerful Finland-America National Interest Public Affairs Committee, or 'fannypack'.
re the Finnish PM text-breakup thing, what struck me was that they have a leader who is unmarried and has a dating life. It is pretty much inconceivable that the US could have a president like that. (Maybe Condi would have some kind of outside chance of becoming president, but dating??)
"the Finnish proclivity for bloody resistance and guerrilla insurgency"
The American press is confused enough about covering terrorism--should people who blow themselves up be called "suicide" bombers or "homicide" bombers? Now we're apparently going to tangle with the Finns, leaving our media to deal perplexedly with Suomicide bombers
I bought a car in Finland in 1988 (for export to the Soviet Union). I signed a whole bunch of $20 traveler's chack BEFORE the cashier at the car dealer (Toyota) told that there was a PER CHECK commission. Don't you think we should bomb them back into the stone age?
I propose a moratorium on the "I-was-in-a-European-country-once-and-this-is-what-I-saw" post. Also on the "European-country-fact-X-and-remember-WWII/Communism/Eurovision" post.
If we steal their babies and bring them back her, won't they just form a Finnish fifth column and grow up to destroy our nation from within? Could it be their evil plan to provoke us into stealing their babies for just such a purpose?
Prime Minister Vanhanen's dad, Professor Tatu Vanhanen, is co-author with Richard Lynn of the decade's most important work of underground social science, "IQ and the Wealth of Nations."
As a Finnish-American, I am happy to finally have the crushing weight of my sorta-countrymen's conspiracies lifted. Skiing, excellent healthcare, reindeer racing, wife-carrying competitions, copious coffee consumption - it was all just an elaborate means to install in the highest reaches of the American mass media a man who looks just like the Finnish president. Today, "The Late Show," tomorrow (or so), "The Tonight Show"!
With that goal accomplished, perhaps the power-mad feminists and txters in Helsinki will finally end my family's multi-generational mission here in the states and let us get back to the good architecture and widely-available music education that is typical of Suomi.
We're going to need Homeland Security to blanket the Upper Midwest to guard against the crypto-Finnish menace.
http://house.michigan.gov/rep.asp?DIST=110 Michigan Rep. Michael Lahti, sir, I ask you can you prove you are not working for our enemies?
It's not fair to label them pro-Nazi or pro-Soviet, it was just old General Mannerheim playing a bad hand excellently. As the War Nerd put it...
"These brave folks sure as Hell don't deserve to be the name tag for appeasement. Hell, I'd like to see any of these neocon jerks do what the Finns did in hundreds of forest battles, using the tactic they called "Motti" to chop Soviet columns that outnumbered them dozens to one into bite-size pieces, then kill them piece by piece. I've read that some Finnish soldiers used to vomit after these battles, just because they'd killed more men in a day than the whole population of their home villages..."
http://www.exile.ru/2006-December-29/war_nerd.html
A Finn once bit my sister.
WOOT SUXOR SMSAUTHOR BASTARD LSO SCRAWLS BOOX W/OUT COMMA OR PUNCTUATION IN FANTASMIGINARIAN US FROGS N SCANDINAVIANS DISS HIM N WIL GOT HIS SHITTY SCALP N FUCKIN FINISH THAT FINNISH COPYCAT OF LA DISPARITION LUV N C U ALL L8TR DUDZ
The Finns will finsh, HA!, themselves off with suicide, booze and cigaretes before any baby snaching will even do half the job.
You have to be very careful about the finns they are really from Mars with devilishly smart brains and high high weapons technology. I know I was married to one.
Comments closed February 12, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
While I don't really have an opinion on the wisdom of bombing -- I can see arguments for and against -- I've long been worried that liberals are being too cavalier about the threat posed by the Finns.
Posted by Spencer | January 29, 2007 11:14 AM