Ovi Magazine Issue #14: Promises

the e-magazine

issue 14 / 2006

Editorials

E

ver since the beginning of this magazine, nearly two years now, including the planning and everything, Asa and I always try to decide the theme of the magazine a couple of months in advance, at least. It has worked most of the time, but sometimes we change plans at the last minute, well, the last minute for us means the day we publish the magazine, so at least we now know what the theme for the next issue will be.

During this period, Asa and I had to face a series of challenges, in both our personal and professional life, that often tested our patience, our will and our understanding. Adding to that, what we have gone through over the last five years, living as foreigners, you can imagine that the word ‘promises’ didn’t exactly come out of the blue.

Thinking of some promises we both got depressed, never fulfilled promises sometimes hurt, sometimes we got satisfaction in the sense that we both kept the promises we gave to our personal life and we are thrilled that when it came to the promises we gave to our selves and then our friends regarding Ovi magazine have been kept.

During the past month we have concentrated all our efforts and energy into the next step that we are going to do with Ovi magazine, a.k.a. The Ovi Project. I have mentioned many times that Ovi is a project that combines dreams and ideas and I would like to thank all the people who have helped and encouraged us, including the friend from Nigeria who sent us a mail ending: “God bless you all in Ovi magazine!” Thank you all.

In an issue about promises I think that sometimes we sound bitter, but think how many times you gave a promise you weren’t sure you could keep or you never had any intention of keeping, and this includes even small promises like “I will quit smoking” and “I will never go to this pub again” to the more serious ones, “I will love you for ever.” Somebody told me once, “I have promised never to give a promise that I cannot keep.” Now that’s called an oxymoron; she’s promises often never to promise again.

Going through the articles I think that there is far more we could say and write but we will return, after all life is full of promises.

John, our American partner and friend, is starting an adventure around the world with Indonesia as his first stop where he’s going to teach for a year. We all wish him good luck and remember your promise, John, to write about your new experiences and adventures.

Thank you to all the people who sent us mails, registered for the newsletter and post in our forum. Don’t forget that we have a blog and a forum, where you can join in some interesting conversations, including the parasites that come to the forum for only one reason: to personally harass us.

Thank you for joining us again and we hope you will enjoy this issue.

Thanos Kalamidas

Y

ou would expect the Ovi team to be full of life and bursting with energy after an extended break, well if the Ovi team is good at one thing it is exceeding expectations. During the six-week gap between issues, Thanos and I have been hard at work on many of our other projects, including the next major step for Ovi magazine which will be revealed in the coming months.

Ovi is still the primary topic of conversation with everybody we meet, both socially and professionally, and the number of staunch supporters seems to have spiralled to heights we could never imagine. Ovi seems to have captured the imagination of many of you and others are determined to help us fulfil our potential; we are both eternally grateful for all of your help so far.

We will publish anything sent to us, so long as it isn’t hateful and has been written constructively. Our team have proved to be exemplary contributors and this month they have continued in the same vein. Jan Sand has submitted a poem and an article tackling our theme ‘promises, our man in China F.A. Hutchison found some time to contribute and Giorgos Vrachliotis has two interesting PDFs within our pages.

Tony Butcher and Satya Prakash have written theirbusiness columns,Theo has anotherchapter of ‘The Dead Pinky’ and Jonathan Fisher’s ‘Death of the Party’ comic strip is here. We are pleased to welcome Ed Dutton to the team as he contributes two Finland-based articles to our contents, we welcome Mark Hayton back after a long sojourn and Phil Schwarzmann, minus his appendix, has written his Bilingual Illiterate column.

Those of you who have been following our blog will know all about the attacks that we have been subjected. Thanos and I are both professionals and understand that by participating in a public arena we are open to criticism - we wouldn’t have an open forum, blog and feedback box if we wanted to live in a bubble.

However, the nature of these attacks has been personal, tinged with hatred and prejudice, which are two things that Ovi magazine vehemently fights.

Politics, sport, culture, the environment and the offbeat are all covered within our pages, with a few contributions from Thanos and me.

Whether you are a staunch ally, first-timer or critic, please feel free to submit feedback about all articles and content because, whether you like it or not, Ovi magazine is not going away.

Our mission statement states that we may not agree with what you say but we will defend your right to say it. The aim of Ovi from the very first issue was to trigger dialogue and discussion between the writers and the readers, which can be seen in our forum and blog - thanks to Oli’s passionate beliefs, especially about seals. The online magazine is a nonprofit entity, we are not driven by economic gain, but want to share ideas and champion the idea of freedom of speech.

Asa

See you next month for issue 15 and boundaries.

promises

My vow to thee

By Asa Butcher

“I promise to help when times get bad and to let you have your privacy. Not to take drugs or become an alcoholic. To be honest and to love and help in times of trouble, I, Asa, take you to be my lawfully wedded wife.”

These are my own wedding vows written at the age of eleven and I have not stopped laughing about them since finding them in one of my old school books last week. In the space of 45-words, I manage to promise my future wife that times will get bad and there will be times of trouble, both probably due to my losing battle against alcohol and narcotics.

It is reassuring that I promised her honesty and privacy, plus there was a mention of love in there somewhere. Thankfully, my views on marriage have altered a great deal since my bachelor days in high school, although my parents are currently concerned about who were my role models at the time of writing those vows.

Nobody has any idea - at least they are not admitting to it - where the belief that abstinence from alcohol and drugs originated. Its inclusion highlights something sinister in my pre-teen subconscious or perhaps I was just a socially aware child who believed that a husband and wife should be free from addiction…except DVDs and chocolate, of course.

When the topic of ‘promises’ was chosen for this Ovi, my mind went straight to marriage and the words two people declare to one another.

Some stick to the tried and tested official wording, while others decide to spice up the ceremony with their own romantic creativity.

My wife and I went for the latter, which was made easier due to the service being a civil wedding and a little more flexible. Nerves held us back from choosing to memorise lengthy monologues, so we let the registrar read them to us in both languages and we merely answered ‘I do’, then ‘tahdon’.

I believe that our vows were a bit sugary, but didn’t trigger any vomiting among the guests. We

began by saying that the purpose of marriage is the establishment of a family for the common good of its members and the preservation of society, and that marriage is intended to be permanent to allow the family members to establish a happy home together.

My wife married a poor English lad, so there was no need for a prenuptial agreement, although I did happily offer to split my student loan debt in half. Following her polite refusal, I decided to re-read this verbal agreement and noticed one or two rather interesting loopholes in the contract, but when it

comes to the ‘unwritten rules’ they don’t need to be, err, written.

There was no sign of obeying the husband, death do us part, sickness and health, bad or troubled times and definitely no mention of alcoholism, which must all be positive signs.

Future requirements

By Mark Hayton

As a general rule I never make promises. In my so far short life, I have found myself to be in the past somewhat unreliable. Don’t misunderstand me, I am generally a well-rounded human being, and barring a few minor moral glitches along the way I have generally proven to be a man of dependability and honesty possessing timekeeping skills comparable to most pendulums.

My problem, should you choose to perceive it as such, is my sincerity. I like to stick to my word as often as possible, and one of the defining characteristics of a promise is its future requirements.

The fact is plans change, people change, lives evolve and sometimes its hard enough to adapt on your own … a promise is an extra weight to carry, in short, a promise is a burden.

I mean I do understand the good nature of promises they’re born always of good intentions and I understand the satisfaction received from actually validating faith and trust in something tangible … but its not.

You may believe, truly believe in something enough to carve it in stone and say that it will definitely occur, but that doesn’t necessarily make it so. You can never actually know what’s going to happen.

You can guess or make predictions and even use promises to try to insure you’re future but the tangible, immovable, inflexible promise will not adapt as you do. Nor will it change, for if it did, it wouldn’t be the same promise anymore, it would be an entirely new entity.

The most important concept to me isn’t how I or anyone else views a promise it’s the almost universal understanding of a broken promise … a lie. If you promise to do something or be somewhere and you’re not, the consequence is, at the very least, being perceived

as unreliable maybe untrustworthy. This, for me, is a high price

to pay when I try to think of the last time I had to promise to do

something I loved or be somewhere that I actually wanted to be.

promises

Little Napoleons

By Thanos Kalamidas

While writing an article about politicians and unfulfilled promises, I started thinking about promises that I fell into, unfulfilled promises and oddly the biggest number of them were professional promises. The truth is that for most of us after a certain age, let’s say around mid-twenty, what counts more is a promising career, even a promising job that can bring food to the table and let us live a life with dignity.

Looking back at more than twenty years of professional life and having enjoyed a good career, I think after one point you become aware of the promises that have no hope but you play the game believing that you can profit in different ways. This is what I have seen in recent years.

A friend of mine accepted a very low paid job that came with a lot of promises, many of which he knew would never be fulfilled; he just made sure that his business card read ‘Marketing Director’ in bold lettering. It took him three months to move to a different and far bigger company in a lower position, with the title ‘Assistant Director of Marketing’, but with a good salary and a promising future - he knew how to play the game.

A few years ago, I accepted a position in a company doing something that would employ something like 15% of my knowledge and 50% of my time. I took the job after becoming bored of being in front of my home computer all the time.

I thought it was a good chance to utilize the idea that work can give you some kind of social life, something that is much-needed, especially in a country where you are a foreigner and you don’t speak the language.

The owner of the company was a small self-centered man with a strong Napoleon complex. Money was the only motivation in his life and he naively thought that what drove him would work with everybody. However, since he was not willing to share any income with any of the people who worked for him, he used money as motivation in the guise of promises.

“When we get better, I will give you enough money to live like a

prince!” or “I have jobs for you to keep you busy 24/7 and I promise you will soon see.” In the meantime, the work for his small company was increasing, demanding more and more and I realized that al the staff were living on promises.

When the company became obviously profitable, a second round of theories were spouted, “I don’t pay you because I give you the chance to become legitimate in this country and build a reputation, otherwise who would ever know you?” The promises were still there, except that now they were accompanied by a new element: Loyalty. “You show me loyalty and I promise you that I will fill every minute of your day with jobs and money.”

Every month I watched the company grow bigger, while realizing that the little Napoleon was using 95% of my time and leaving me the other 5% to recover. He was monopolizing my creativity for his profit and not even throwing a bone to my side; brutally exposing his greed in the most obvious way.

The company never had any chance to get better, since the little Napoleon increased his ‘salary’ logarithm equally to the increasing income of the company. When the company made €100 profit his salary was 80, when it was €1,000 his salary became 980, when the figure reached €10,000 his salary was 9,980, and so on. There was never any chance for anybody else.

The promises would always stay promises to the level that he was willing to get more jobs and keep us busy 24/7, but he was not willing to give any more money. You see, in addition to his ‘I’m not

paying policy’, he added two more things. “As a principal I don’t pay because I get people from the unemployment office, I give them a chance and the state pays” and the third, “You look financially comfortable, you don’t need more money.” Perhaps he was confusing dignity with income.

I might sound bitter to some people and I could go on for pages saying stories about this certain man, such as how he uses foreigners as slave labour in the most abusive way. I was aware of what was going on while it was happening and

I helped these people whenever I could, but the choice to end our cooperation had to be at the right time.

Many people fell into his trap during the two years I worked for this little Napoleon and sadly he isn’t alone. The system gives them the chance to exist and they are exactly the ones who abuse the system.

So be careful to promises, in Greece we have a phrase: When you hear about too many cherries, hold a very small basket.

R.I.P. Green Party

By Thanos Kalamidas

With Iran speeding towards a nuclear bomb and Finland the first European country to build a nuclear plant in two decades, there is a lot of talk about nuclear power and the kind of energy it offers. This year we remember twenty years from the Chernobyl accident and I was expecting to see thousands of environmentally aware people demonstrating against the creation of new nuclear plant, especially Finland, a country that was so close to the accident era.

What’s going on with the Green Movement in this country? Is Finland’s Green Party asleep or dead?

Have the revolutionaries of the sofa died in front of their plasma screen televisions? The truth is that all of the Green parties in Europe have gone through a strong crisis over the past decade. They have lost their identity; they became a party that occasionally cooperates with the conservative sides of the society just to get an office in the government.

In Finland things are tragic. The Green Party has totally lost its identity with latest incident being a statement by its leader saying that the party is ready to make the necessary compromises for the general good. What sort of compromises?

You can bury the nuclear waste from your fifth nuclear plant without any problems, so long as we get a mahogany desk and leather furniture in our Parliament office. How far are they willing to compromise?

The Green Party in Finland started making mistakes from the minute it opened its door to anybody who claimed they are Green and then gave these people position, influence and power. Well done for the Green Party having immigrants as candidates, but who told them that everyimmigrantisenvironmentally aware, not racist and prejudiced?

Is the identity of being an immigrant enough? Does a party like the Greens need to prove that they are not racist? I have always thought that this is pat of its identity.

A long time ago I left the Green Movement,disappointedbytheturn the movement was taking. Now my disappointment has become anger.

What the hell have you done to our ideas and how the hell do you dare to call yourself Green? You look pink from where I am standing and in direct sunlight you look purple.

Do you think that all the things we did back in the ‘70s and 1980s were about the free use of cannabis?

When we were marching through Europe against nuclear power and nuclear bombs it was not so you could discuss today how many seats you will take in the parliament? Our mass demonstrations, blocking the road with our bodies and clashing with police were not just for you to watch as documentary footage on plasma screen twenty years later.

Thisisnotthemovementthesepeople dreamed of back in 70s one evening in Germany and however much it hurts me I can understand why the Green parties have become a joke.

When one of the most prejudiced and racist people I have met in my life is a member of the Green Party in Finland I feel that the Green Party is dead, at least in this country.

promises

Where are the ‘wows’?

By Asa Butcher

July 21, 1969: A small family sits in silence around their black and set television set in a town just outside London; it is approaching 0147. The images on the screen are difficult to make out clearly, but the sound is audible.

After years of anticipation everybody is in awe of what is unravelling before them, the tension fills the room as the fuel begins to run dangerously low and then Neil Armstrong says, “Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

Three and a half decades later NASA successfully lands two probes on Mars, but families across the globe are not sat around their plasma television sets watching in amazement.

What has happened to us? Mankind sending a probe to another planet is an incredible technological leap, but it seems as though it was not big enough to keep the world’s collective attention longer than a segment on the news.

when we see corpses while eating our dinner. Where are the massive protests seen during the Vietnam War? Where are the thousands of passionate anti-war campaigners demonstrating against the governments involved? One annual march against Bush, Blair and the war feels lightweight, plus if it rains on the day then numbers drastically drop - the British miners in the 1980s managed bigger demonstrations alone.

We have resigned ourselves to being helpless, toothless in the face of government and globalisation. McDonalds has spread across the globe, Bill Gates does monopolise the computer industry, what can we do about it and why should we care anyway? The world is hardening our cynicism, eroding our trust and numbing our disappointment, plus we are suffering from the mindset: it’s not my problem.

Every day we hear of another advance in technology in all areas of life, we are informed of another disease being tamed, but none of makes us stop what we are doing and say, ‘wow’. The speed of information is stopping us from absorbing these monumental breakthroughs leaving us apathetic to it all. Talk of cloning and cures for AIDS leaves us thinking ‘it’s about time’ and ‘why did it take so long?’

‘What is the point?’ many of us ask and this apathy is running through all aspects of our life.

A recent environmental report announced that a quarter of the world’s plant and vertebrate animal species will face extinction by 2050, but most of us reply, ‘And?’ The Green Party seems to have given up all hope, they collected signatures in a letter addressing fellow MPs, which isn’t much when campaigning against a fifth nuclear power plant in the year marking the twentieth anniversary of Chernobyl.

The past was no better, but thanks to distorted nostalgia people can remember the past as they wanted it to be and the danger with that is some try to replicate the past. Elvis Presley may have been the king in the ‘70s, but my generation are offered the impersonators, and Live Aid was a moment in time, while Live 8 was a poor diluted copy.

We fail to comprehend the significance of these scientific discoveries; we just absorb them into our daily lives by buying the latest mobile telephone with its built-in ironing board and Geiger counter. We have even been desensitised to the value of money with recent estimates that the cost of the war in Iraq could be well over $1 trillion, an amount that has no perspective, no reality, you can’t even visualise the amount of schools and hospitals that could build.

The two televised wars against Iraq and the invasion of Afghanistan have left many indifferent to the grim realities of war, especially

Global warming, sweatshops, globalisation and more have been accepted by the majority because if governments really wanted to instigate change then they would have passed a law immediately.

In the wake of the terror attacks on America and London, both countries rapidly invested billions, created new laws designed to combat terrorism and threaten our basic human rights, yet abject poverty and deteriorating health systems are prevalent in both these countries and nothing significant has ever happened.

Heroes become villains, like Michael Jackson, and villains become heroes, like New Labour in Britain; history is turned on its head as the past is idealised, becoming mythical in nature. Margaret Thatcher is now Tony Blair, Richard Nixon is now George W. Bush, which shows that we do not learn from the past forever condemned to repeat our mistakes.

Too young to remember the Royal Wedding of Charles and Diana, old enough to watch her funeral; missed man on the moon, but saw the space shuttle Challenger explode; Concorde is retired and hundreds have climbed Mount Everest; what is left to amaze, except death? Catastrophes always capture our attention with

the World Trade Center attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean Earthquake, but we feel like macabre voyeurs watching them on our plasma TV screens from the comfort and safety of our living rooms.

The magnitude of natural phenomena, such as the Northern Lights and the Grand Canyon, are vastly reduced after appearing in the media countless times that when we actually go we already have an imagined experience; the moment is watered down and a disappointment. On the other hand, we have areas of natural beauty that are in danger of vanishing forever, such as the Australian Coral Reef, so huge numbers of tourists visit before they vanish thereby contributing more to the criminal damage against our planet.

Our children may only be able to see an elephant in a history book soon, they will become legends like the dinosaurs, but at least they will enjoy the benefits of cloning, two-hour flights from UK to New Zealand, cures for cancer and AIDS, and computers that may finally be as fast as we demand of them. Perhaps they may reach a saturation point and stop, a five-minute respite to realize what the world has achieved and say, ‘wow.’

promises

Deficit promises and loses

By Thanos Kalamidas

It’s weird how much the promises of a leader on the other side of the globe affect the whole world, especially when these promises remain unfulfilled. In October 2004 and during his presidential campaign, President George W. Bush promised the American public that he will fight to half the national deficit of $512 billion.

Two years after, all the promises seem to be lies. According to the 2007 budget, the deficit is going to increase to $1.2 trillion over the next three years. The main part of this money, according to the administration’s strategic targets, is not going to help the increasing number of homeless, unemployed or people living below the poverty line in the USA, but to Afghanistan, Iraq and to help countries in eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea. It seems that the Bush administration shows a new interest in the former Soviet states despite the effect they shown themselves with Estonia, Latvia and Poland, for example having already joined the EU as full members.

It’s like this administration is lacking mighty enemies or are not happy about the ones already beaten, they are ready to create new ones.

The Baltic countries are not financially in the perfect spot but they are fighting their way and, looking at Estonia for example, they are doing pretty well.

Checking the inflation numbers in Poland lately you can see that they are doing really well too. So why?

Afghanistan definitely needs any help it can get. The problems there seem to be never ending and the Taliban are gradually returning to terrifying the people. The people of Iraq also need help, but between these two there is a huge difference. In Afghanistan’s case the whole world is involved, everything happened under the umbrella of the UN and there is even a Greek army based in Kabul. In

Iraq, the Bush administration took the responsibility of starting a war despite the disagreements inside UN that have nearly led to a series of misunderstandings within the western countries, plus they have taken Iraq into a civil war.

One of the prime targets in foreign policy for the last three administrations of the USA has been the war on drugs and it seems that this war is ignored by this administration despite the cost of life being far greater than the cost of life in any other war.

Far worse when the cost of life is among innocent people, kids, with teenagers in the majority.

A large amount of money goes to Muslim countries trying to change the locals’ idea about the superpower, with $470 million going towards cultural programmes. Pakistan, a strategic ally for the USA interest in the Muslim world, is taking $738 million for help in its war against terrorism, while only $50 million went to the victims of the Indian Ocean Earthquake.

Here I haven’t said anything about the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the whole of New Orleans, since everything is left there to its own destiny with the federal government doing too little to help and the recovery coordinator, Donald E. Powell, seems

to be drowning in the flood of bureaucracy and competing priorities.

The new world Bush administration is dreaming and its promises include funding military and propaganda programs, while cutting off money from the unemployed, education, health and agriculture. The wronged of all this will be the two-thirds of the American republic because, in this case, is included the middle class that are going to miss a series of benefits they enjoyed over the last decades; they have to be the ones to pay this huge deficit and that’s the promise.

Live by promises

By Jan Sand

We all live by promises. The future is an enigma we each face each day. We attempt to confront the threatening uncertainty by promising ourselves and everybody else caught in the net of time that we can control ourselves and everybody else to be secure. All our systems are based on these promises.

And beyond that, all living nature works on promises in many curious ways. The magnificent tail of the peacock promises the peahen that its owner is a suitable mate just as the rhythmic gyrations of the human female tail makes sumptuous visions arise in the mind of any healthy mature human male.

The striking orange patterns of the wings of the monarch butterfly that feeds on milkweed promises that its taste will be bitter and distasteful to predators. The viceroy butterfly is actually quite tasty to predators (one of which I am not) and it has evolved a wing pattern identical to that of the monarch to offer the same promise of being inedible to gullible butterfly munchers – a false promise that seems to be effective in preserving viceroys. The rattle of the rattlesnake, another example, offers a deadly promise that is as effective as an acquired store of atomic bombs in maintaining much peace in the world.

When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn the American five-cent coin, the nickel, had the portrait of an Indian on one side and a bison on the other. One of them (I am not sure which) promised faithfully to guarantee a cup of coffee or a subway ride or an ice cream on a stick or a ride on the ferry from the southern tip of Manhattan to Staten Island.

President Lincoln on the penny could only promise a gumdrop or two, a gumball, or your weight on a penny scale printed along with your fortune. But the Chinese, with their fortune cookies, have taken over that business as, I assume, the overture to their present conquest of much of the other manufacturing in the world.

Sadly, the promise of the Indian and the bison, is long vanished and even Lincoln cannot offer a gum drop anymore. And the chorus of all the dignitaries on all the printed money in the world which offers real goods to their owners weakens in resolve yearly. In New York, the last I was there, it cost one hundred and fifty cents to do what five cents did when I was a kid. So much for the promise of money.

The above mentioned buttock acrobatics of human females very frequently results in the mutual promise of the female and her admirer to love and honor their relationships for all eternity ignoring the intractable progress of the second law of thermodynamics to eventually reduce all mat-

ter to fine dust at a temperature slightly above absolute zero. It is only too human to become immersed in the enthusiasm of the moment but nature has a way of unbalancing rational appraisal of what may be possible and what isn’t. The very high percentage of improvement in human rational capabilities post the marriage ceremony results in about half of all marriages unchaining the participants. So promises of this category tend also to be ephemeral.

Politics, of course, is the richest field for the exploitation of temporary and unfulfilled promises although religion cannot be far behind. Religion has the absolute advantage over politics in that politicians are subject to consideration of their actual accomplish-

ments. Religious promises involve rewards after death and we have yet to see a dour parade of the returned dead carrying signs indicating that they have been bilked.

But who would deny humanity the unceasing joy of criticizing incompetent politicians who continuously default on their promises? The evident festival now taking place in the USA is a rare exhibition of the most marvellous opportunity its citizens have enjoyed for years. Unfortunately this celebration may well result in the major destruction of Earth’s capability to support life but you pays your money and you takes your choice.

iFormat

France eats the ‘Apple’

By Satya Prakash

After Adam and Eve, it is the turn of French government to eat the forbidden fruit, and that too is a huge bite. In the series of never ending controversial news emanating from France, this time it is the French government versus the online music sellers. The lower house of French legislature Assemblé National has passed a bill requiring sellers of digital music players and online music to become interoperable.

This simply means music brought from any store can be played in any digital music player, bypassing the whole concept of DRM (digital rights management). At present the music brought from stores of Apple, Microsoft, Sony, etc. can be played only in their own digital players.

This move will hurt all the players in the industry but Apple being leader of the pack is miffed most. It has sold 1 billion proprietary iTune music from its online store and 42 million iPods, which is considered the next best thing after bread and butter to happen in the music industry.

According to the bill, it is wrong, for example, the music bought from iTunes store to play only in the iPod. Apple has denounced the move calling it as ‘state sponsored piracy’ and vibes from US governments seems to be supporting Apple. The fact is, after burning the music bought from iTunes, it can be changed in any format and also iPod does not play only the music from iTunes store. So what was the need for this bill? France says it wants to stop a monopoly in the online music industry.

Customers at first might find it a welcome move but it is not. The music industry is still nascent and trying to stabilize after years of piracy, illegal download and sharing.

A mature music market will always be in favour of customers which could be wiped out due to this bill.

It has been time and again proved that competition in free market is the only thing which favours customers. The threat is not only from France but from other countries replicating the French move. Already in Denmark the government

is petitioned by local music sellers to introduce a similar bill.

It is yet to see how Apple reacts if the bill is passed by French senate and made a law. It might take off its iTune store from France.

It does not make as much money from iTune music as from iPod so this should be a worthy decision to operate in France under the new law. The other reason for making this move could be the fact that if in some way the music of iTune is

made interoperable in France this could be done in any other country. No one can stop a software to run in other places on internet.

Shutting the shop in one country makes sense than losing the whole business.

Is this latest move of French government confusing? To some it might seem so. On the one hand it is trying to create an open competition in the music industry and on the other hand it is blocking Ital-

ian company to buy the French energy firm or Netherlands based Mittal steel company to buy Arcelor. What it is for? Protectionism or free market? On a little deeper analysis the picture is crystal clear.

Anything is okay for France as long as it is in its favour. The only thing which works in France is nationalism.

My Mexican friend

By Thanos Kalamidas

I have a Mexican friend and last week he told me about the demonstration Mexican immigrants to the USA are organizing. I think that I had heard about it somewhere on the news but it is one of those things that seem so far away from the life of an immigrant in Finland so I didn’t give it a second thought.

What caught my attention was the way my friend said it. He actually sounded upset and he explained to me that over the last month he has been receiving chain mails from his ex-patriots asking him to join the demonstration. He explained that the demonstration included a boycott of the retails from the Mexicans who live in the states and marches, including street demonstration. Their only aim is to show the Americans that the Mexicans are a populated power and part of the American economy, so they have no right to ignore it or create tougher laws on their entrance into the country.

While my friend was telling me all about it I have to admit that I found the demonstration pretty fare in the sense that Latinos are underestimated in USA, even though they do have a great deal to say in the country’s economy.

Embarrassingly, the thought that maybe Greeks ought to do the same crossed my mind. After all, New York is top of the list of the most populated Greek cities and the Greeks even elected a Greekorigin congressman.

In a country where people are forced to immigrate since 40% of them live under the poverty line, with a corrupt government and system, where all hopes lead them to immigration, so why don’t they start fighting for change in their own country?

Our compatriots in the USA

complain of not having the same rights like other workers but most of the time the other compatriots use them like slaves, keeping them on low salaries.

However, they do have a job and some hope since the salary they get for one month is still higher than what some Mexicans get in Mexico for a whole year. My friend continued by adding that there is too much to be done, but we must start fixing our house before we start instructing and advising others on how to deal with theirs.

I know that it sounds conservative and the worker has rights

we must defend, wherever he/she works, and countries like the USA that advertise the equal way they treat all people who live in their land should know better.

On the other hand, there was a truth in what my friend said. A few months ago I became angry when a known Iranian lobbyist for the Iranian dictatorship in Finland wrote in an article, ‘Democracy is an ancient concept dating back to the 5th century BC. Somewhat surprisingly, it is still considered the best form of government by many people.’ What’s his alternative? The real theocratic dictatorship?

I don’t want to compare the poor Mexicans with any parasites but sadly the thought briefly crossed my mind. 40% under the limit of poverty is a huge and scary number, easy to believe when it comes to some other countries, but not Mexico. I hope our Mexican friends have made their mark in the USA but I hope much more that they will see and change their destiny in their own country.

promises

Unfulfilledpromises

By Thanos Kalamidas

Sometime at the beginning of the 1950s, while the whole of Europe was trying to recover from WWII and the huge financial crisis, a new phenomenon called Urbanism was moving whole populations from the countryside to the cities in search of a better life.

A politician, a candidate for the parliament, went to visit a far away village on the side of a mountain hoping for the people’s votes. The man was building up gradually in his speech and at one point he declared, “I will build for you the most modern port you have ever seen in your city, so there are jobs for the young people.”

Somebody from the crowd yelled, “We don’t have sea!” The politician answered quickly, “I will bring you the sea, as well!” Somebody else shouted, “The kids have all moved away, we don’t have kids anymore!”

Without missing a beat, the politician replied, “I will make you kids!”

This is a very old anecdote about politicians and I’m sure there must be some truth behind the story, well there is at least one truth: unfulfilled promises. Recently, there have been hundreds of surveys around the world asking why young people don’t vote, why aren’t they as politically active as they used to be?

The truth is that young people are far more politically aware than we were 30 years ago. They are very much environmentally aware and they ask exactly what young people were asking for hundreds of years now: education, employment and equality.

The problem is trust; trust is what the politicians call a promise.

The tragic thing about politicians is that they can promise just about anything to be elected and then conveniently forget it the next morning after the election. The worst thing is that they abuse our trust by promising exactly the same things the next time.

They didn’t build the port, they didn’t bring the sea and there is still no sign of the kids.

I remember politicians promising peace, a better life, better salaries, a

better health system and better education all my life. What did we get? We have international conflicts, oil crises, nuclear threats, increasing unemployment and an education system that falls to pieces constantly creating less and less educated people with worthless degrees. Once upon a time a high school degree was worth something, today if you don’t have a PhD you can not even be a bellboy.

Perhaps I could go on with examples from all around the world, from the liberal democratic west with the millions of homeless to the freedom and

equal east with the millions dead.

From the perfect health system to the high taxation, even the worst dictators started promising a better life.

Wherever we live, all of us will have heard the promises and have seen the dreams disappear from one day to the next. that the time came for compromises and cooperation with governments, even when they are administrated from conservative parties. So she decided not to be a brake for the majority and resign, even refusing to be a candidate for the next parliamentary elections.

Mrs. Suvi-Anne Siimes’ decision saddens me because democracy needs all the voices especially in a time of globalization. Romantic voices are the most valuable, from the other side her decision shows her deep romantic character and there is nothing else to be said than I hope she will not stay far away.

Socialism or Capitalism

By Satya Prakash

I find it quite difficult to explicitly term myself as endorsing socialism or capitalism. There are reasons for it.

Having been brought up in a socialist country I have imbibed socialistic ideas and my education has inculcated capitalism. As a result, I am neither a perfect socialist nor a capitalist.

The heart of socialism is equal distribution of wealth and if it proceeds to communism then it becomes “means of production to be controlled by all of a society”. Marxism proposes a series of changes which ultimately will lead to this. But Socialism for me is only ‘equality’. I see socialism as “to be given equal opportunities to acquire skills”.

The heart of capitalism is “means of production are owned by individual or privately owned”.

But capitalism for me is the one which breeds entrepreneurs. If a person has the skill and opportunity then he(she) be allowed to reap the benefits of his(her) hard work.

I am completely at peace because ‘my’ idea of socialism and capitalism are not in conflict with each other. Socialism gives everyone equal opportunity to acquire skills and then capitalism allows them to exploit their skills. One should not be limited to derive less benefits of his(her) skills cause others are not doing so.

The fault lies with the one who has less skills cause there was equal opportunity to gain skill.

It is in here that I place the concept of “free market” or laws of demand and supply. The only way I think skills could be valued properly is to let the market decide and not what some cartels or governments think of it. If you have been given equal opportunities then there should be no need of regulation.

Take for example – you are given equal opportunity of taking coal and gold. You want to take coal and then want some regulations to price coal more to gold. Isn’t this trying to cover your wrong decisions? Would it be fair to make others who chose gold to pay for your wrong decision? If you think that those who chose gold did it by fluke, then this is not true.

They would have invested in market intelligence and getting the pay off for it.

It is only free market that can deal with inefficiencies. Those who do treasury operations know that arbitrage gains are possible only due to inefficiency of two markets. It is much like there are two different water levels and the only way to make them come to the same level is to have a free flow.

I agree that a welfare state has certain social obligations.

There can be two ways to handle deficiency. Either make everyone deficient so that it ceases to be a deficiency or work to overcome deficiency.

Unfortunately most

of the time governments tend to go by former. Putting controls and regulations are way to do this. This is the reason ‘free market’ theory is not popular with ‘pseudo welfare’ governments.

To summarize, I consider the socio-capitalism in a ‘free market’ economy to be the best choice.

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Mullahs strike again

By Thanos Kalamidas

The puppet president of Iran Mr. MahmoudAhmadine said some days ago that Iran becoming a nuclear power marks the beginning of the second phase of the Islamic revolution of 1979. This now changes the dangerous balance in theArab Muslim world and their relations with the whole globe.

The dictatorship of the Ayatollahs celebrated their success of enriching uranium ignoring the advice and threats from both Europe and the USA. Iran made it clear that they do not believe that the USA will react militarily.

powers, plus they say even North Korea did it and it seems that everybody goes soft with them. Now they have their excuses they feel that nothing can stop them producing the Islamic bomb that will change the Arabic world.

Bush’s administration is trapped between an Iraq that is heading quickly towards a civil war and the rebirth of the Taliban in Afghanistan. From the other side, the European buyers of Iranian oil are nervously watching as the price of oil becomes a game in the hands of the crazy cleric hood of Iran, with their economies in danger.

The American administration already started making plans on how to deal with the situation but politically the space to move is very tight.

The USA has no relations with the Iranian regime for the last 25 years and the only solution remains the military option, but this time and especially after all the reaction to the invasion of Iraq it is urgent for the USA to have a wide number of allies.

The Iranian dictators are using their parasites, so called ‘reporters’, to lobby in Europe repeatedly saying that Israel is a nuclear power and that nobody said anything when India and Pakistan became nuclear

It seems like the Americans have helped the Iranian mullahs to increase their power and influence in the Muslim world, first by support-

ing Saddam in his Iraq-Iran war hoping that he would stop the expansion of the Ayatollahs and their revolution further in the early-80s and now with the invasion of Iraq and the space they gave to the Shiites to become involved and occasionally sabotage or provoke every effort to avoid the civil war.

The invasion of Iraq opened a whole new world of opportunities to the mullahs. Suddenly the other Arab countries, who, for years kept Iran in the corner, started listening to them and the idea of an Islamic bomb seems to attract them more and more giving the Iranians a good position inside the much-twisted Middle East politics.

How can Europe and the US deal with this new power? Difficult to answer, from one side everybody is waiting for the Iranian people

to take over their own destinies and overthrow the dictators, but 25 years of brainwashing seems to have worked well. From the other side, what happened to Iraq becomes the hardest lesson.

What about financial pressure and restrictions? This is something Iran obviously has learn to live with for the last 25 years and the only ones who feel it are the people, not the theocratic elite and their servants all around the world who are swimming in oil-dollars.

Hope to overthrow them? Hope in that country died long before the Ayatollahs, during the Shah’s era.

What is left? Wait! Wait to see when the Americans will invade.

Gray Wolf & a red sheepskin

By Thanos Kalamidas

The Turkish Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül admitted in front of the Turkish parliament that there is an undercover paramilitary organization under the name Gladio. Operating under the protection of the Turkish Army, there one and only mission was to prepare the road for Turkish army targets.

Mr. Gönül admitted that this group was active in Cyprus long before the invasion and they were engineering provocations, including provocations against the local Muslim population trying to make them look like actions from the Greek Cypriots.

According to the Turkish newspaper Tur-kishadailynews, this is the first time an active politician admitted the existence of any of these groups, even though, especially in Cyprus, the action of groups like the Gray Wolves have been proven. They also admitted that there is a group that still acts undercover under the instructions and protection of the Turkish army.

They are responsible for preparing the road to the tragedy in Cyprus and the dirty war against the Kurdish population that pushes towards genocide. They are the same groups that murdered any

democratic voice in Turkey and have stopped democracy at least four times in the past decades, plus they work against any democratic change.

According to the Turkish news agency, Gladio, the department of special wars, was created in September 1957 as part of the NATO plan, Stay-Behind. They were part of a network of paramilitary organizations in the member countries whose aim was to protect them from the communist danger - the code name was ‘red sheepskin’.

The Turkish army created special camps for this reason and converted criminals and fanatics from the extreme right for their causes.

They created an inner group of professional killers who act against Kurds, Socialists, Communists or anybody they baptized an enemy of the state.

Their cooperation with the Turkish

Mafia and the Gray Wolves became tighter in the ‘70s and 1980s, with the Kurds as their primary target. The first to talk about them was the retired colonel of the Turkish army, Ishmael Tansu, back in the early-90s when he explained how this group was responsible for creating all the excuses for the Turkish army to invade Cyprus and occupy a part of the island.

The general Kenan Evren, another dictator in a long series who took power with a military coup, wrote in his memoirs that in 1972 members of Gladio were responsible for the murder of over 38 people in North Turkey, while a group of left activists were celebrating May 1st in Taxim.

Lately, more and more incidents are emerging in the news about provocations in the Turkish Kurdistan - it is a hard, dangerous and life-threatening job to be in a news agency in Turkey. In one

of these provocations, the local district attorney included General Yaşar Büyükanıt, the future leader of the Turkish Army and chairman of the Stuff. As a result, the poor D.A. found himself under fire from the Turkish army that obviously still controls Turkish life, especially politics, thereby losing his job.

Turkey has a long way to go until they meet the criteria to become a member of the United Europe and there are two huge steps that the Turkish state has to take. First is to take all these little dictators, the uniformed little Napoleons, back to their barracks and give them their job description, which will not include involvement in politics and learn to be more open to what’s really going on in Turkey. The second step is to arrest and punish all those criminals responsible for what has happened in Turkey, however high their position.

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A Finn crosses the line

By Edward Dutton

Why is that so many books, plays . . . even cartoons . . . that stir-up controversy and are defended in the name of ‘freedom of speech’really aren’t that good? The history of the battle between free speech and censorship is littered with such examples. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence’s steamy sex romp that was banned in England until the 1960s, is generally seen as one of his least intelligent works. Critics generally agree that Salmon Rushdie has written far better books than the Satanic Verses. And Jerry Springer the Opera, which fundamentalist Christians have demanded be banned as blasphemous, is, in essence, not really saying anything new.

The same is true of the Danish cartoons that caused such controversy around the world. A picture of Mohammed with his turban as a bomb is significant because it’s questioning the accepted way of things; it’s challenging a taboo. The same is true of Duchamp signing a urinal and calling it art. It’s symbolically significant and stirs-up a debate over free-expression but it does little else. As a result of publishing these cartoons, Danish Embassies have been destroyed and, amazingly, a Finnish rightwing website Suomensisu.fi is under investigation by the police for republishing them. Many commentators have asked, ‘Was it really worth it?’ Was it really worth all this trouble for some not particularly good art?

But sometimes it is worth it. It is worth defending free expression if the example of artistic expression that you’re defending doesn’t just break taboos (like the artistic equivalent of saying ‘Fuck’ in front of the teacher) but is also, basically, good. It is worth defending if, even if it wasn’t breaking a taboo, it would still have something intelligent and original to say.

This is true of the 1979 Monty Python film The Life of Brian.

Of course, it crossed an important boundary in poking fun at Jesus and various cinemas in Britain refused to screen it. But it was also extremely funny and a profound satire of the Christian church and Christian belief.

It remains so even now, even though it is hardly as shocking as it would have been in 1979.

The same, I would argue, is true of the Brass Eye Paedophile Special, a satire (little known

outside the UK) of the British media’s hysterical reaction to paedophilia. It wasn’t just shocking . . . it was clever, looking at the arbitrary way that ‘child pornography’ is defined or examining the possibility of a rap artist like Eminem promoting not violence or street crime but paedophilia.

And strangely, it seems that the only country in the world that has published an intelligent and interesting cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed is not Denmark but Finland. Indeed, what makes it stand-out is that it dares, very explicitly, to argue the case for free speech, lampoon the hypocrisy of Finnish politicians such as Tarja Halonen in their reaction to controversy, and portray the Prophet Mohammed – drawing upon the Koran – in one cartoon strip. Perhaps the most interesting thing about it was that it centred around a cartoonist debating free speech with Mohammed himself, who was deliberately drawn in such a way as to obscure his face so that he couldn’t be accused of drawing of Mohammed.

It also showed the Finnish President, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister condemning free speech and prostrating themselves before Muslim extremists.

The cartoon was published on the website of the Oulu (Northern Finland) based cultural magazine Kaltio and, needless to say, the editor Jussi Vilkuna, was sacked for refusing to remove them. Oulu City Council, who had commissioned some pictures from the Oulu-based cartoonist himself (one Ville Ranta) of the arch-free-speech defender and Finnish states-

man J. V. Snellman, responded by telling the cartoonist that his services were no longer required.

Subsequently, and probably due to the terrible publicity it caused for the Council, Ranta has been re-employed by them.

There’s no point trying to describe the cartoon. I might as well try to paint a picture of a novel. But it is very good. And it’s not Denmark (famed for its free speech) that has produced no. No. It’s by a cartoonist from Finland (a country with a long history of self-censorship which was a semi-dictatorship until the end of the Cold War).

Various commentators such as the Finnish blogger ‘Frog’s Eye View’ have recommended that companies that withdraw their adverts from Kaltio because of the cartoons, such as Sampo, should be boycotted, as should the magazine itself. That may be so. I would simply say that we should defend the Danish cartoonists but we should be even more vociferous in defending Ville Ranta. Because his cartoon goes much further than theirs. It lampoons the government response, examines free speech in detail. Beyond the iconoclasm, it has something, something intelligent, to say

Social Class Finland

By Edward Dutton

Social class used to THE big issue amongst the politically active . . . before ‘racism’ became more prominent.

Every country has some kind of class structure, though it is only a minority, like Britain or Italy, which really seem to be aware of it. Finland is perhaps one of the countries that is least conscious of social class.

Finns see themselves as egalitarian, all Finns together, a country where class distinctions are old-fashioned, out-dated nonsense. And there’s no reason not to believe that Finland is, as EFinland puts it, ‘an almost classless society.’ There’s no reason not to believe this until you live here . . . and realise that ‘class’ has clearly survived.

According to Finland: A Country Study, the traditional class structure of Finland was pretty clear. At the top you had the nobles and the Gentry who spoke Swedish and then everyone else, who usually spoke Finnish. At the top of this pile were the priests, then the middle-class (porvari) and then the ‘peasants’ (which was pretty much everybody) and finally ‘paupers.’

And even now, when you come and live in Finland, you can see that this hasn’t quite died away.

Swedish-speaking Finns were the aristocracy, and there are still many hangovers from this in today’s Finland such as the embittered phrase, ‘Swedish Folk, Better Folk.’ There is not anymore a sectarian divide between Finnish-speakers (95 percent) and Swedish-speakers (5 percent). It would be ridiculous to suggest that there was when, according to Finland: A Country Guide, there are numerous linguistically mixed marriages, especially around Helsinki. But there are hangovers.

In many ways, the position of Swedish-speakers in Finland is a bit like the position of ‘whites’ in Zimbabwe twenty years ago influential, privileged, distinct . . . but not in charge. According to journalist Therese Catanzariti,

Swedish-speaking Finns tend to be wealthier and more educated.

But they also have their own schools, their own churches, their own university, their own (consultative) Parliament, their own political-party (Swedish People’s Party, which is usually part of the governing coalition) and their own newspapers.

Despite their tiny number, they have built-in influence in all nationalised organisations and are highly significant is businesscircles – Fazer, Stockmann, etc.

There is no clearer evidence of their aristocratic status than that it remains compulsory for all Finns to learn Swedish, the language of a tiny minority, in school. In these ways, like white Zimbabweans, Swedish-speakers are a kind of colonial relic.

Of course, it’s not that clear cut at all. The divide between the two groups, especially amongst young people, is less and less.

And there are working-class Swedish-speakers. But there is still a divide to some extent.

The next social class down was the priests who, according to Virtual Finland, are still highly revered. In modern Finland, this might be extended to priests and ‘other highly educated people’, such as those with doctorates, (which many Finnish priests seem to have). According to Lizette Alvarez, writing about Finland in The New York Times, education is highly respected in Finland, far more so than in Britain or America, where money talks.

The vicar and the academic are probably the most respected jobs in the country. Representative academics even attend the

President’s Independence Day Party, alongside Bishops. Unlike in many European countries, there’s no evidence of the national church collapsing. Vicars (and academics) are far better paid than in most of Europe.

A vicar has clout here and is a public figure.

Perhaps beneath them are lawyers, businessmen, doctors . . . normally university educated, wealthy people. They’re probably better-off than the academic . . . but education seems to be the be all and end all. Some are the New Rich are perhaps seen as evidence that Finland is less egalitarian than it used to be . . . so they’re probably hit with a sixty percent tax rate. They also tend to be associated, negatively, with the party Kokemus.

They are certainly promoted in the media . . . and this is especially the case with the wealthy Finnish-speakers running companies like Nokia.

In some respects, they are the new upper class. But according to Antti Piippo, a leading Finnish industrialist, the notion of wealth is sneered at by many Finns. ‘Porvari’, which refers historically to this class, is term of inverted snobbery, a bit like ‘yuppie.’ Teachers might be put somewhere in this class (though without the wealth) as, unlike in many countries, they have must have Masters Degrees.

The majority of Finns were peasants and this majority now do ordinary office-type jobs and probably haven’t been to university . . . though maybe to a polytechnic. But even here there is a class distinction based around . . . of course . . . education. There

are the seventy percent who went to Luokio, the more academic school - when you graduate you receive a white cap which is a huge Rite of Passage in Finland; you have a party and every photographer’s window is festooned with photographs of be-capped teenagers.

Then there is the minority, usually the working-class of Finland, who went to ‘Vocational School.’ This kind of school is known as Ammattikoulu in Finland and ‘Ammis poika’ is a term of abuse, similar to ‘Red Neck.’ And then at the bottom of the pile are the group that Finns refer to as ‘drunks’ or ‘Pummit’ (Bums) and who, stereotypically, do not work and have no education. As with a lot of Western countries, unfortunately, many asylum-seekers and Romany might also find themselves here. Sociologists, such as Christian Churchill, also claim that there is separate, international class of super-celebrities such as David Beckham.

But very few of these would be Finns.

However, Finns like to think of Finland as an egalitarian society in which people go about their business and don’t judge others. So, unlike in popular books about Britain or Italy, there’ll be nothing in books on Finland about social class. But perhaps there should be. Many Finnish writers come out with reams on ‘Finnish racism,’ which can be seen in the package designs of chocolate or whatever it might be. This may be true. But social class, and its distinctions, (and all that goes with it) is certainly alive in Finland . . . even if it might not necessarily be well.

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Polish example

By Asa Butcher

In an April edition of The Daily Mail, they revealed that an estimated two million Poles will have arrived in Britain since EU borders were thrown open to eight east European countries in 2004. This figure is remarkable and you cannot fail to be amazed when you realise that the population of Warsaw, the Polish capital, is just over 1.9million.

Britain’s population is predicted to break through the 60 million mark this July, which equates to Poles making up 1.6% of the population. To give Finns some perspective that would mean 84,800 Poles living in Finland, which is difficult to comprehend when you think that there are approximately 113,000 foreigners in the country and Poles are found under the ‘Others’ column.

Britain’s Office for National Statistics says that Poles are arriving at an average rate of 100,000 a month, although they don’t have figures for the actual number who have stayed and keeping tally is near impossible. The statistics are startling for Britain but it seems that the majority of people are happy with the influx of Polish workers; a reaction not usually associated with the xenophobic populace.

What are the Poles doing for Brits to be so accepting of the influx?

While visiting the UK recently and later reading comments on a number of forums, I have learnt that a very large majority of Poles have an excellent reputation as being hard workers. I was told stories about their punctuality, their willingness to do a honest day’s work and perform their tasks to a high standard.

Over 340,000 Poles are legally registered in the UK, each of them paying tax, National Insurance and contributing to society, plus many employers say that Poles are less likely to call in sick.

The self-employed Poles may take cash-in-hand, but they still endeavour to do a good job and are beginning to kill off the cowboy companies that prey upon the public. So, what is keeping them away from Finland?

I suspect the language barrier is the greatest obstacle and the lack of an established Diaspora in the country. At least when they arrive in the UK, they have approximately two million fellow countrymen as potential customers and speaking Polish is a given. However, many Brits who have hired Poles praise the level of the English spoken and have faced no difficulties.

Forget a single European currency, perhaps it is time to negotiate a single European language, which I suggest to be English, since I am extremely biased. Finland could take the first step by adding English to the official languages of Finnish and Swedish; a step that isn’t that huge with the majority of business using English as the working tongue.

There is a chance that language is not the reason Poles don’t want to emigrate here, there could be cultural, geographic, economic or even political reasons why many don’t come. In the end, the simple reason could be that they don’t want to hear endless North Pole jokes.

Hold onto your hats

By Tony Butcher

So far this year stocks and commodities have been as strong as an Olympic power lifter, cruising to multi year highs on the back of some major buying by Hedge Funds and Pension Companies. The current price has leapt passed fair value and entered the stratosphere of speculative pricing.

I read an article which said that if copper and nickel increase in value another 20% then it will be financially beneficial for Americans to melt down some of their coins for their base metal values.

This really shows how far we have come since the beginning of the year.

I talked about a stock market correction back in late January, but the markets do not seem interested in retracing their gains from the first four months of the year yet. All major markets have been supported by good buying from Hedge Funds and ‘Black Box’ programmes. These are preprogrammed computer systems which automatically fulfil buy or sell orders given the current market trend.

The Acquisition and Merger activity/speculation is certainly helping keep the European and United States equities on a firm footing, especially from the expected takeover of the London Stock Exchange by the American firm Nasdaq.

Just keep an eye on the Stock Market’s reaction to the continuing gains in the Oil market.

Crude cruised to around $75 a barrel late in April and this could provide the dampening effect which I still feel is well overdue.

Continuing with the data there are still some big earnings reports to come from the United States and the First Quarter US GDP growth figures too. Whether the markets ignore any weaker data and continue their relentless rally will be very interesting to watch.

Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Chairman, will testify before the Joint Economic Committee before the start of May and the stock market will be keeping a

watch on his language. After the latest Federal Reserve minutes, the rhetoric from the Fed was suggesting they are very close to ending their current cycle of raising interest rates. Confirmation from Mr. Bernanke would easily have the power to lift the Stocks in the United States to record highs; so hold onto your hats for an eventful May.

European Bond Markets got a swift, sharp shock from the European Central Bank leader Jean Claude Trichet, when he told reporters at the April monthly post-rate decision news conference, the futures markets had not priced in the ECB’s rate predictions correctly.

Expectations of several faster 25 basis point moves has been

changed to a more gradual approach of one 25 basis point move in each quarter of the year.

This would bring interest rates in the Euro Zone to around 3-3.5% by the first quarter of 2007. The ECB’s next move in rates is likely be at the June meeting and the markets will listen closely to what Mr. Trichet has to say at his news conference.

HoriZones

Tille and Melle

By Asa Butcher

His only comfort was six shots of morphine a day and a toy giraffe named Melle, but Tille, a six-month-old Swedish boy, managed to capture the hearts of people around the world. Tille suffered from a very rare disease that always leads to death in babies and those of us who were caught up in his story helplessly waited for news of his death.

A couple of weeks after his birth last September big blisters appeared on his face that later became sore wounds. A couple of months later EB was diagnosed. During his last two months, he had lost more than half of his weight and barely ate or drank.

Doctors had warned many times that the end was near, yet, against all odds, he continued to fight day after day, living on air and love - Tille finally passed away on Saturday 16th April.

The disease is called Epidermolysis bullosa (EB) and he suffered from Herlitz, the worst kind. Babies with Herlitz have approximately 6-8 months to live and no child has lived to see their second birthday. An estimated one in every 50,000 births is affected by some type of EB, which occurs in both sexes and every racial and ethnic group.

According to medical dictionaries, it is a rare genetic disease characterized by the presence of extremely fragile skin and recurrent blister formation, resulting from minor mechanical friction or trauma. However, the condition is not contagious.

His mum, Therese Vesterlund, and dad, Nicklas Svensson, didn’t want to let his pain go on and chose not to put him on a life support machine. They wanted him to

die at home, in peace. They told him that it was ok to let go, they were ready. They said it would be a relief to find him dead in the morning; it wouldn’t be nice for them, but for Tille.

The whole of Sweden followed Tille’s story and the family are receiving loads of mail, letters and presents from Finland, Norway, Germany, the USA and more.

Thousands have read his mum’s online diary, which she started writing after the diagnosis in an attempt to work with her feelings. At the same time, she started a discussion forum about children with deadly diseases and the response became enormous.

If you want to donate to the EB foundation by purchasing a butterfly pin badge for 20SEK (about 2€), then contact Tille’s dad Nicklas: tille6699 <-at->yahoo.se

promises

A tsunami of promises

By Thanos Kalamidas

One year after all the concerts and after the lights were turned off in the big halls, where famous people were donating huge amountsofmoneybetweenfireworksandanunbelievablecompetitionoverwhogivesmore,theonlythingthathappensinSri Lanka is darkness, poverty and hunger.

The southern part of the country was nearly destroyed by the tsunami, men of all ages have left, immigrating in search of money, while the women and children left behind are searching for food and the help never really came.

The picture of the land and its people remind that the help and the thought lasted as long as the lights lasted in the shows and the concerts. $300 is enough for a woman and her two kids to live for a year and she was one of the lucky ones to get this money from an NGO, actually she was one of the 200 lucky ones, but the population that suffers in Sri Lanka reaches far into the hundreds of thousands.

The official number of dead reached 30,000 and there is another 60,000 still missing. Men have moved to Middle East to find jobs and send back money, if that is possible. What is left from that tourist paradise is a huge wall on the seaside–supposedtoprotectthepeople from a future tsunami - and the debris ofthedemolishedhouses.Accordingto the local customs, small graves on the sand stand as a reminder to all the fishermenmissingintheocean;graveyards that stand among the debris that was once an exotic coast.

The average temperature is 35 C and the water that brought the nemesis is all around. The locals try to rebuild everything as quickly as possible but there are no Germans, no Italians, no Brits and no Finns this year. The dinner includes fish if they are lucky to catch one, plus there are bananas and sometimes pineapple.The prices in the hotelsthatsurvivedoffertotaldiscount - Intercontinental charges $65 a night in this small paradise but are without anyreservationsandthelocalsmaking something like $100 a month doesn’t

look promising. The locals are complainingthatthegovernmentonlygave help to those who supported them.

Inacountrywheretheseaislife,nobody wantstoenterthewatersagain,nobody wants to swim. The sea that gave them lifeforsomanyyearsbecametheworst enemyleavinghundredsoforphansbehind. The majority of these people still live in camps created by the UN, but still the food is little and the future not so clear. The UN does its best but how many places can they cover and help withouthelpthecontributingcountries

keeping their promises.

This is not the first time I’ve written something about the victims of natural disasters and the role these fundraising concerts or gatherings have done. I thought that LiveAid would have been a lesson to the organizers and the ones who were inspired by the idea, but unfortunately it was not. More Live Aids came with a variety of names to help these people fight with dignity, but ultimately it seemed the only aim was to resurrect Bob Geldof and the others.

During all these events many people realized the PR potential of helping. In Finland there was a race between companies and celebrities over who gave more or whose name was on the list.

Nowwhydon’ttheyanonymouslygive their bank account details to one of these hundreds of orphans or did they only donate formarketing reasons, not to save a life? Funny what happens to people’s memories after the lights are turned off.

On ‘Promises!’

By F.A. Hutchison

‘The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have PROMISES to keep, and miles to go before I sleep!’ Henry David Thoreau And what are the ‘promises’ Thoreau is talking about? The ‘promises’ to himself to really live!

To discover! To find out! To take ‘the road less traveled!’ (Robert Frost).

To become who you really are, this is the task!

Why else do we live? To buy a new boat? To have children? To make

a million dollars? To travel? To live materially? God forbidden if we do, as it’s a wasted opportunity, a wasted life in my opinion.

And granted… ‘The woods are lovely,’ and inviting, this material world, but to live on the surface of things is to hardly live at all.

‘Promises, Promises!’ I think a play/movie by that title! What does it mean?

When people think of such ‘promises,’ they think mostly of some kind of integrity, and keeping (fulfilling) these ‘promises.’ Our parents tell us this is important. But, the most important promises are the ones we make with ourselves: ‘I’m going to…’ ‘I will!’

Don’t let yourself down, or you will forever be unhappy! Keep the

promises you make with yourself, and you will be forever happy!

The one promise I made to myself, long ago when I was young was, ‘I will never regret not doing!’ And I have kept that promise! And I am very happy for such, now 66-years of age!

Kashigar, China

Xinjiang

Province,

HoriZones

Bio-perversity

By Asa Butcher

Another model projecting habitat changes, migration capabilities of various species, and related extinctionsin25“hotspots”haspredictedthataquarteroftheworld’splantandvertebrateanimalspecies will face extinction by 2050.Would that be the same prediction as a United Nations report on the state of the global environment in May 2002?

Fouryearsonandnothinghasimproved; the biodiversity is still in serious trouble, while most of us have admitted we have gone too far to save ourselves. The World Atlas of Biodiversity estimate thatoverthepast150yearshumanshave altered nearly 47 per cent of the Earth’s land surface and life will be threatened on almost three quarters of the total land surface within the next 30 years.

The UN are relying upon a miracle to save the healthy forests left in the world, but even that won’t be enough to save the equatorial rain forests of Indonesian Borneo - once known as the lungs of Asia - from illegal logging and ecological meltdown. US botanists believe that half of all plant species could be facing extinction, although some claim they are exaggerating and it is only one out of every eight species in the world - and nearly one of three in the United States.

Americans are on the verge of having no streams free from chemical contamination, more than 2,300 of New Zealand’s plants and animals are threatened with extinction and half of the plant and animal species in Norway are in dangerdue toglobalwarming,andabouttwopercent of flowering plants in Peninsular Malaysia have become extinct since 1950.

Over the next five decades, nearly 80 per cent of the Arctic will be taken over byindustrialdevelopmentandthiswould be the tip of the iceberg if they hadn’t started melting. Humanity’s impact has increased extinction rates to levels rivalling the five mass extinctions of past geologic history, which does not take a biologyorecologydegreetosoundterrifying.

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is a comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plant and animal species. The latest update was the 2004 Red List, which listed 7,180 animals, 8,321 plants and 2 species of lichen as endangered- no genus is safe, especially the wild cats.

The African lion population has fallen

by almost 90% in 20 years, tigers have plummeted 95 percent worldwide since the start of the 20th century, plus the Sumatran tiger faces extinction in the next 10years.Free-roamingcheetahsinSouth Africa, the snow leopard, the Arabian leopardandtheFarEasternleopardare alldangerouslyclosetovanishingforever.

One-third ofthe world’s primatespecies now face a serious risk of extinction, especially orangutans that have been reduced by up to 50 percent. Almost all species of bear, Africa’s black rhinos, Asian rhinos, the hippopotamus, seven species of horse, ass and zebra that survive in the wild, giraffes in Niger, koalas, California sea otters, the European rabbit, the Spanish lynx and four species of penguins are all in jeopardy, and that is just a fraction of the land mammals.

The situation is no better beneath the waves, with some whales, dolphins and porpoises so endangered they could vanish within a decade, primarily the Antarctic blue whale, Maui’s dolphin and the Indus Dolphin, which has suffered due to inbreeding. Ninety per cent of all large fish have disappeared from the oceans in the past half century and some scientists say that they are witnessing “a collapse in the system”.

Sharks are being slaughtered in huge numbers,asarebluefintuna,bluemarlin, white marlin, swordfish, sailfish, bigeye tuna,sturgeonandashortageofcodand tuna has forced fishermen to plumb the depths of the oceans to the cost of rare species, some hardly known to science.

North America’s freshwater animals are the most endangered species group on the continent, an estimated 20 million seahorses were taken from the wild last year, two-thirds of the world’s tortoises and freshwater turtles are under threat.

Oceanicplanktonhasdisappearedfrom the waters off Northern California, Oregon and Washington, and more than a quarter of the world’s coral reefs have been destroyed taking hundreds of species of plankton and shellfish with them.

The oceans are being emptied and even the skies are being erased, with more than a fifth of the world’s bird species threatened and the expansion of intensive farming threatens more than one third of Europe’s most important areas for birds. One parrot species in four is in danger, as is the Seychelles scopsowl, the albatross, all but a quarter of Hawaii’s native birds, the Philippine eagle, India’s peacock population and even New Zealand’s national symbol, the kiwi bird, could vanish in a decade.

Half the world’s bat species are fighting for survival, seventy per cent of all butterfly species in Britain have shown signs of decline and British ladybirds face a tough battle. Seven per cent of England’s insect species have become extinct in the past 100 years, including the Essex emerald moth, the blackveined white butterfly and the large tortoiseshell butterfly all through habitat loss. Bees in SW Germany, Britain and Italy are being killed off in the millions.

Fourteen species of amphibians have disappeared from Australia in recent years, the golden toad has gone from Costa Rica, an infectious disease is wiping out entire frog populations and driving many species to extinction.

Nearly 15,000 species are threatened on this planet, although it seems that harp seal numbers are far too high, and there appears to be absolutely nothing to stop thisglobalslaughterinitstracks.The2006 IUCN Red List will be published in May and we can only shake our heads as the number steadily creeps towards 20,000.

promises

Afterlife promises

By Thanos Kalamidas

It has been proven that in the last few years, while civilization and science are full of promises and move forwards ever faster, humans are finding ways to kill and kill themselves fulfilling ancient promises. Actually, people use this advanced technology to kill themselves faster taking more innocent people with them.

Fanatic Muslims, mullahs and presidents give them promises of a paradise with Uris dancing all around and lots and lots of rice, in exchange for their life in this world. As more infidels die, the better their position in this paradise Allah created and there is even a cash bonus.

Iran and other Arab states give some extra money and generous help to the family of the bomber, of course undercover.

What is this afterlife promise that leads a young man or woman to strap a belt full of explosives and blindly detonate it in the middle of a square ignoring the fact that the people around him are totally innocent, not aware of his drama or demands, not for any other reason but just because of age? I don’t think any three or four year old is aware

of what’s really going on in Palestine, even if they live there.

Why the promise of an afterlife reward is enough to sacrifice this life? The Pope John Paul II back in 1933 introduced the ‘Evangelium Vitae’ (the Bible of Life) again.

According to this dogma, the human life is holy from the minute of conception to the natural death.

During the Crusades, the Catholic Church was promising eternal life in paradise if a crusader died on a mission to take back the Holy Land. A number of men, with the promise of being able to be with Allah in paradise, crashed planes into the World Trade Center in New York taking some thousands of innocent lives with them.

An American president signs a declaration of war and kills

thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghans in the process, many of whom went to paradise in the name of international peace. To that, you can add the soldiers who got killed in the last years in Iraq and definitely went to paradise to join the rest.

I will never forget the pictures on CNN of soldiers praying before the invasion of Iraq. What were they praying for? To kill as many they could? To survive the war? To go to paradise if they were killed? For their victims to go to paradise?

Amazingly, the American president seems to be a strong believer, praying often and mentioning God as often as he can.

Has he got a promise for an afterlife paradise position? How many times has he sent some-

body to his death? Starting from the period he was Governor of Texas and Death Row to the innocent people who died in Iraq.

The target was Saddam and his followers, but are we even going to find out how many others got killed? How many that had nothing to do with the regime and just happened to live and breathe in the same country?

Does the promise of a holy afterlife excuse murder? Perhaps we are dealing with different paradises?

One for the Muslims, one for the Christians, one for the Buddhists and one for the Hindus, imagine if they all met up there? Soon paradise will become hell and I would much rather stay where I am.

Sports

Terrace terrorism

By Asa Butcher

Did you know that a fortnight before the England-Tunisia 1998 World Cup game in France European police foiled a terrorist plot that involved shooting some England players and throwing hand grenades into the stands? This is true.

The horrific plan is explained in an overlooked book by bin Laden biographer Adam Robinson called ‘Terror on the Pitch’, which quotes letters outlining the Algerian Armed Islamic Group’s plot.

The group had obtained seats close to the pitch in the Marseilles stadium and were targeting Alan Shearer, David Seaman and manager Glen Hoddle, plus grenades were to be thrown into the stands.

Simultaneously, others would enter the US team’s hotel and murder players, and some would crash an aircraft into the nuclear power station near Poitiers.

You won’t be relieved to hear that only 70 of the 138 people put on trial were found not guilty and Jean-Louis Bruguiere, a French judge who has spent the past two decades fighting an international war on terrorism, is ‘especially critical’ of the World Cup arrests.

The public release of these facts has increased Germany’s concerns over the security of the coming World Cup finals, especially with the Iran national team in town.

In December 2005, there were some calls by Germans for Iran to be banned from the finals following the call by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the destruction of the State of Israel.

Further calls were made to expel Iran after Ahmadinejad stated that the Holocaust was a myth invented by the Jews who had fabricated a legend under the label ‘massacre of the Jews’.

Understandably, this is a sensitive aspect of history to Germany and Holocaust denial is a federal crime, but Sepp Blatter, the head of FIFA, naively announced that ‘politics had no place in sport’. In the face of this statement, we just have to be thankful that Denmark didn’t qualify and end up in the same group as Iran. However, an Italian member of a new European neo-Nazi movement has warned that the World Cup is set

to become a battleground between fascists and Muslims.

The Italian daily Republica published a statement by a member of AS Roma’s ultras hooligan group which states that neo-Nazis across Europe met to plan unified attacks against supporters from Islamic countries, “We are united.

For the first time we are talking and planning together, with the English, the Germans, the Dutch, the Spanish, everyone with the

same objective. At the World Cup there will be a massacre,” said the Italian ultra.

‘Politics has no place in sport’ is a sweet sentiment but when the first street battles make the riots in France resemble Mardi Gras, then Sepp will be making a different statement: “<INSERT TEAM> will be sent home if the hooliganism continues.”

NOTE: Iran’s national team will set up their pre-World Cup training camp in the German town of Friedrichshafen, which is best known for having been home to the Zeppelin airship. For those who don’t know, Zeppelin airships are filled with volatile gas and could explode at any moment, which sounds suspiciously like Iran’s President.

Coaching promises

By Thanos Kalamidas

I know, I know, I’m going to talk about Panathinaikos again, but in an issue about promises I could not escape that. I have the feeling that some things I say about my team apply to most of the football teams in the sporting world, maybe even with other team sports too.

Over the last two years, Panathinaikos has gone through three coaches and only god knows how many superstar players. Starting from the players, Panathinaikos followed the example of Olympiakos, the other side of Greek football, by spending money on big players from Latin America. This was in response to the purchase of Rivaldo, who despite his age had a fantastic season with Olympiakos.

It resulted in players reaching their retirement coming from Argentina and Brazil to Panathinaikos, all because Panathinaikos had to follow Olympiakos’ example. Unfortunately, these players that had never played in Europe only came for one reason: money. It took only two games to find out that the only thing they could do was carry the balls to the field and be there.

Panathinaikos’ last coach, the Italian Alberto Malesani, came to the club full of promises. He promised European cups and said that nothing less than Real Madrid was good enough to stop him on his way to the cup. That was the first month.

By the third month and after an unbelievable reverse score at home, the coach changed his promise to ‘the national league is ours.’ This lasted less than a month and after that it was the second position so we could take part in the Euro Champions League and the unveiling of his five year plan. Man, that was the best of all. A five year plan!

We are building the team now and in five years we will get everything.

In the meantime we are fighting to stay in third and the other teams were having a better season because most of them weren’t afraid of the name Panathinaikos carries, which is a psychological boost for a team before the game even starts - I am surprised that we

are not fighting against relegation.

I think Mr. Malesani was the worst in a series of bad coaches and what makes him the worst is that he started his career in this team with too many promises.

The fans know better than anybody else what good times and bad times mean. They were there during both, actually stronger through the bad times. Giving promises to trophy thirsty supporters before adapting to the climate of the team is too much when you can not fulfill them.

This crowd is aware of what the title means. These people lived the glorious days of the final in a European champion league when football was pure and not just business. Panathinaikos is not a small local team to which you can give promises; it is a team with over a hundred years of history and an active role both locally and internationally. They have cultivated legendary players in European football and the fans crossed continents to see their team playing.

In the last few years coaches have become like shooting stars,

they have a good season in a local league and suddenly they think they can handle anything.

This is fine when their next step is a team just over the team they were coaching, but when they get hold of the hopes of thousands in teams that are used to leading, promises are not enough.

I just have to hope that Mr. Malesani isn’t the same with his children and when he promises them a bicycle he gives them a five year plan on how to buy a bicycle hoping that in the meantime they will forget all about it!

promises

Promising computer art

By Thanos Kalamidas

A few years ago - I think more than three decades - there was a big conversation about comics: Are they art? The questions went on to ask if they should be dealt as a main form of art or part of the mainstream. Thanks to the Beat and Pop Art movement, and especially thanks to Roy Lichtenstein and his comic inspired paintings, comic art became the 9th art after cinema and photography. Later, even big names in literature started writing whole theses about comics, with the bright example of Umberto Eco. Computers are something very new, even compared to comic art that has some centuries behind, it counts only as a few decades and its popularity has mainly been over the last three decades. The Internet started becoming popular at the end of the last century and even though a century sounds a long time it is just a few years and it has already started producing art.

Computer art is the most promising form of art and, though it might promise the moon and all the stars of the universe, oddly enough it seems that it is the only one that will

manage to fulfill its promise. Another issue with computer art is that through the internet it is accessible by everybody.

I have seen many works on the Internet. A lot of them good, the majority from not good to really bad, some hideous and others are brilliant and really inspiring works.

Works where the computer hasn’t replaced the talent, but when the talent used the mouse, the keyboard and the pad as an instrument to express the most inspiring feelings.

I think what I found more inspiring

is the works that combine digital painting, sound, animation, photography and video. It’s like seeing all the forms of art in one. A few years ago all of as were in awe at a fantastic exhibition in Berlin, with the title ‘Scream’.

There were video pictures on huge walls that were forming shapes with bodies moving in the background and people screaming. I know that for the fans of classic art this sounds outrageous, but art evolves like anything else in life and the entrance of video, or better moving and animated art, is the natural evolution,

after all, Leonardo da Vinci taught us that science and art go hand in hand.

I’m sure that soon we will see a better view of computer art and probably a live online exhibition with serious interest and the necessary attention. After seeing the works that I mentioned before, I am looking forward to it and somehow I feel envy for all these new creators that freed themselves from the two dimensional canvas with which I still have to fight.

Empty promises

By Asa Butcher

The recent announcement by the developers of the new Wembley Stadium that it will not be ready until 2007 won’t come as a surprise to many people, since we have become so used to broken promises that it is of no wonder that we are so cynical.

Promise after empty promise are declared by politicians, athletes, husbands, wives, bosses and students, each one eroding the little trust we have remaining. When will we learn to keep our mouths shut and just get on with the task assigned to us because, inevitably, our words of declaration and intent always come back to haunt us.

Politician promises are emptier than the inside of a ping-pong ball; they are the worst offenders and habitual ones at that. It amazes me that they insist on spouting fiction come every election: More hospitals, more schools, improved care for the elderly, no tax hikes, a free car for every constituent and a dozen more manifesto guarantees.

Tony Blair is the embodiment of this style of politician, especially if you look at the health system in Britain; he managed the impossible by making it worse than Thatcher

did, but now he can’t blame it on the previous leadership. Promises roll off the tongue to pacify the voters, telling them what they want to hear but knowing you will renege the moment you turn away. If you want political change then you had better join a board of directors at an international corporation.

done. He was quoted as saying, “I definitely want to carry on playing here...my intention was to come here to stay,” but within a year he had been sold, hardening the cynicism of the supporters. They player would do well to remember the words of Carl Jung: “The man who promises everything is sure to fulfil nothing.”

I agree with the quote that suggests voting for the man who promises least because he’ll be the least disappointing, which immediately brings to mind the countless football players who have signed for football clubs around the world.

The new player, the manager and the director tell the fans that the club have the next Pelé, God’s gift to the soccer world, then six months later we want them sold in the January transfer window.

False hope and full of the proverbial bull, yet player after player, athlete after athlete, make the same outlandish claims before the start of each new season. I can never stop myself from laughing during the Athletes Oath at the start of each Olympics, when every athlete promises to play fairly and obey all of the Olympic rules, and then the first positive drug test is announced before the end of the first week.

For example, before the start of the 2000/01 season Newcastle signed the Argentinean player Daniel Cor-

We all fall victim despite telling ourselves, in the words of The Who, ‘We won’t be fooled again.’ Yet we are. Remember the scare monger-

ing before the arrival of the Millennium? Computers will meltdown, planes will drop from the sky, dogs will marry cats and further Apocalyptic warnings, but we didn’t see any of these prophecies and there were no shortage of promises from the respective experts.

Sadly, we have ourselves to hold accountable for the majority of broken and empty promises beginning from ‘I will love you forever’ to ‘I do’. Napoleon Bonaparte once said the best way to keep one’s word is not to give it, and that is some good advice from our short French friend, “Don’t worry, Josephine, I’ll have this battle at Waterloo all sewn up before tonight…trust me!”

iKritic

Hard Rock Eurovision

By Asa Butcher

Controversy and public uproarare hardly words commonly associated with Eurovision, but this yearwe are going to see fireworks thanks to the peculiar entry democratically chosen by Finland’s public.

1982 entry from Kojo is mathematically the worst song ever.

The song representing Finland at the fifty-first edition of the Eurovision Song Contest in Athens, Greece, will be Hard Rock Hallelujah by Lordi, amelodictheatricalheavy-rockband known for performing wearing extraordinary monster costumes. Before progressing to the final on May 20, they will have to be voted one of the top ten in the semi-final a few days beforehand.

A portion of the Finnish public has suddenly realised the reality of sending Lordi to Greece, but it is too late; if you didn’t want them to go then they should not have allowed them to audition. Relax Finland! It is not as thoughyourreputationatEurovision is going to be harmed by a professional rock group dressed as monsters and wearing full make-up.

Since the country’s 1961 debut, they have managed to amass a number of dubious honours, including participating the most times without winning. From the 37 entries, they have finished last on eight occasions, received zero points three times, have not received full marks for a song since 1977, are the only country to perform last and come last and the

The list goes on. The 1998 entry ‘Aava’ by the group Edea is the song with the least number of unique words;itsrepeatedlyricswere,“Aava maa, avara, kauneus, suuruus, Isa”.

Finland were one of four countries to sulkily withdraw from the competition because of the absence of a tiebreak rule, plus they hold the record of three songs with titles that have no meaning, ‘Yamma Yamma’ (1992), ‘Pump Pump’ (1976) and ‘Tom Tom Tom’ (1973).

‘Tom Tom Tom’ saved Finland’s blushes by placing sixth in 1973, which is still the highest placing the countryhasenjoyed,althoughAnneli Saaristoreceivedthehighestnumber of points (79) in 1989 with ‘La Dolce

Vita’. Marion Rung, the singer of ‘Tom Tom Tom’, was the first nonEnglish/Irish singer to legally perform in English.

You see, Lordi cannot fail to further embarrass Finland in this competition and I have a suspicion that they will be making the doubters choke on theirdisparagingwords.TheEurovision finals are in the middle of their ‘Bringing Back the Balls to Finland’ tour, so they will be prepared to rock Athens and the audiences across Europe. If all else fails, Lordi can always rely upon the spirit of political and geographical voting and get points from Estonia, Sweden and Norway.

RoboCrap

By Asa Butcher

RoboCop 3, 1993 Directed by Fred Dekker What was that? RoboCop arrested my attention and RoboCop 2 let me off with a caution, while RoboCop 3 was mere police brutality. It was the film equivalent of Rodney King and his encounter with some of LAPD’s finest batons, and now I am left wishing the bail had been paid and 104-minutes of my life had not been stolen.

It is unusual for one of my iKritics to be negative, but my trip down RoboCop memory lane has left the sting of mace in my eyes. Thanos’ RoboCop Trilogy box set was on the verge of being borrowed forever but a travesty known as the second sequel left me wondering why one of the Prime Directives was not: Protect the public from pointless movies.

In the same vein as the first two movies, RoboCop 3 launched immediately into the film and then twenty minutes later the main man appeared, except that it wasn’t ‘the’ main man. Peter Weller had refused to reprise his role due to scheduling conflict with Naked Lunch and Robert Burke had been chosen to squeeze into the iconic costume, but the suit left no room for any acting ability.

Burke had probably taken a proper look at the screenplay and realised it was not worth the bother. He had the luxury of being hidden behind a mask for the majority of the film, leaving his fellow actors to take the heat. Felton Perry as Johnson, Robert DoQui as Sergeant Warren Reed and Nancy Allen as Officer Anne Lewis are the only three to appear in all three films and this time Allen demanded her character to be killed in the first half of the movie - lucky girl.

Omni Consumer Products are still going strong and are still after Detroit, but this time they have invested in mercenaries to clear the area chosen for their new project, Delta City. Poor OCP, they had no chance. This company invests millions of dollars into their robotics and then a little girl reprograms the awesome ED-209 robot in a few minutes: “I am now authorized to... be loyal as a puppy.” All credibility has evaporated before RoboCop even makes an appearance.

The mercenaries are led by Paul McDaggett, played by John Castle, who made me feel embarrassed to be English, although to be fair he was probably cringing with every piece of dialogue he uttered: “In twenty seconds, everything within 30 metres of where we’re standing will be atomised. We’re DEAD, ya stupid slag!” Painful, yet he cannot be singled out because the entire cast looked bored.

Back to the plot and, oh no, the mercenary army is fighting against an underground resistance and RoboCop must decide where his loyalties lie - what could ever happen? The tension was unbearable, or was that the unbearable lack of tension? Frank Miller and director Fred Dekker’s screenplay just falls flat and has more holes than a villain has after resisting RoboCop. The film even resorted to flashbacks from the first two films and I

swear the same sets were used. The only saving moments came during scenes with Rip Torn, Stephen Root and future West Wing star Bradley Whitford, but they were few and far-between, while the special effects were so funny that this would be the one reason to watch number three - a flying RoboCop was almost worth the preceding 100-minutes. Barely.

iBite 100 or 200? Where shall we start this countdown?

Weeks or days? This thing about Iran makes you wonder all the time!!!! ********** And how many days until the World Cup in Germany?

Is Iran playing against USA? ********** If USA scores first how are the Iranians going to react? Are they going to change their attack methods?

Nuke them!!! ********** And how are the Americans going to answer?

96, 95, 94, 93 …..

Demolish them and turn them into a democracy. Civil war is optional.

Should we start counting seconds? Iran or Iraq?

*********** What happened by the way with Berlusconi? Is he leaving?

Or is he staying, hoping to make new friends among the inmates? *********** Ovi blog had the picture of the German Chancellor’s ass, then an Englishman’s penis.

********** When Iraq didn’t oblige by the UN and the Security Council decisions, the USA invaded. Now Iran’s not obliged the UN and Security Council decisions, the USA will invade.

Turkey is ignoring every decision of the UN and the Security Council for the last 30 years, shall we expect USA to invade Turkey before or after Iran? **********

We definitely cover every issue!!!

The Third World War started!

**********

Only it is the First World Energy War!

Add some Iranian trash…

**********

…and the blog becomes really multicultural!!!

Does anybody listen to the Bad Boy’s radio show?

**********

Not you!!!

Pinocchio had Geppetto.

**********

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has Ayatollahs and bad suits!!!

A friend of mine bet with me that Lordi will win the next Eurovision!!! The bet is an external hard disk!!!

*********** I am still wondering if the Iranians will meet the USA in the World Cup, will they play defense.

360 GB please!!!

The weather report says that it will rain bombs that day!!!

Melisani is out of Panathinaikos, Berlusconi resigned, a better day shines already!!!

********** Berlusconi is still the PM of Italy.

The Italians complain that he’s still in Italy!!! **********

***********

********** 86, 85, 84 …. ************