No, this is not the way it should have gone
When my bird can't fly here
Yeah, it would want to break its cage
It moves, but is just so numb...
Yeah, birds of paradise in their cages,
Do I see tears in their eyes?
Refrain:
And mute, they keep on singing
Those birds of paradise, full of wonder
Like hymns rising from their altars:
No composer, no lyricist at all
They give birth to the songs in their souls
Yeah, light years from here I saw
Saw your soul once, from above
No, we can't escape from each other
No-one will break us out of our cage
Refrain:
And mute, they keep on singing
Those birds of paradise, full of wonder
Like hymns rising from their altars:
No composer, no lyricist at all
They give birth to the songs in their souls
...
Hector: Paratiisilinnut (1992)
E2. Animals
This opposition, this... underground... How they spin their filthy lies. How they scurry about their holes and warrens like some damn... badgers, or mangy rats. They're vermin. Animals. We need to put them down.
A possibly apocryphal quote attributed to Major General Varis, a member of the National Committee for the Continuation of Government, in charge of internal security and in overall command of the Military Police. Date unknown.
An excerpt from the private diary of Jan Holmén, dated December 2013:
Getting to know and to understand the Finnish underground had opened my eyes to things I hadn't realized, hadn't really even thought of during most of the Project. Sure, you could sometimes see the people didn't like the Committee's rule. But so few of them were ready to go on the record about such attitudes. Now, after slowly building up trust with the Badgers (like the older members of the underground were known as, for some reason)[1] I was starting to understand more and more about the unknown part of this Finnish nation. It was both ugly and beautiful. Very soon, they told me, I would meet the legendary Big H himself, considered the godfather of the underground among the Badgers and their cubs.
Often feeling I had disappeared down the rabbit hole like Alice, I couldn't help thinking about that sunny day last summer when the bottom fell out of my plans. After all, I was all set up to return to Sweden for good, to spend time with Karin and the kids, to be a father and a husband again. All things packed up, without a care in the world – or so it seems now, looking back. That is a lie, of course, but such are the lies we tell to ourselves, often unconsciously.
The knock on the cabin door, and the words we heard from behind it... My heart skipped a beat and then my veins were full of ice water. What the hell was this?
”- Just open the door and nobody gets hurt.”
As Colonel Vartia reached out for his pistol, I looked around us. No way out, apart from the door – only the walls out of roughly hewn logs and two small windows a grown man like me or the Colonel could hardly use as an escape route.
We were trapped.
” - Colonel, going for the pistol is useless”, said the cool and collected voice outside.
” - You'll find the ammunition has been removed.”
As Vartia checked his weapon and cursed softly, I walked the few steps to the door and just opened it. What else was there to do? Certainly people this resourceful would bring it down soon enough anyway. The Colonel extended a hand to stop me but then let me reach the door unimpeded. With a creak, the door opened... To reveal the bashful face of Sergeant Sundin, my military protector during most of the Minne 1984 project. He stood there, his service pistol in hand, looking... ashamed of himself.
” - Mats,” I started asking him, ”what the hell does this...”
The Sergeant stepped aside to reveal two men behind his broad shoulders. An older man of indistinct age, bald, with a plain face and round steel-rimmed glasses, and a thirtysomething man with a crew cut. Both were wearing suits and long overcoats – a bit warmly dressed for the summer's day, I idly thought.
The older man waved me back inside the cabin.
” - Let us sit down and calm down now,” the man said in Finnish but with a hint of a Swedish accent. His companion hung back with Sergeant Sundin and along with Colonel Vartia and the stranger I settled around the log table inside the cabin. The man had closed the door behind him.
All the while, I had the irritating feeling that I knew this man from somewhere.
” - Who are you, and what are you doing here?”, I asked him. The Colonel just stared sullenly at the wall. I think he was gathering his thoughts about how to protest the situation.
The man smiled thinly.
” - I represent the organization you work for, and I've come here today to give you your new orders.”
I didn't quite understand.
” - What, Uppsala University? Or the Minne 1984 Project? Or... the Swedish Royal Academy of Letters?”
” - You're thinking too small, Holmén. For a man of your obvious intellect you are being a bit... unimaginative.”
The man's smile had disappeared.
” - Let us say that I represent the Swedish Crown.”
It was starting to dawn on me. That is where I knew his voice. I had heard it on the telephone. He had called me several times over the course of the Project, to give me security advice and warnings. I had assumed he was a Swedish Security Service liaison to the Minne 1984 Project.
” - You're Security Service?”
” - In practical terms that is close enough, I guess. I don't work for the Säpo, though. I think it might be best for you to consider me as one of the people the Säpo works for, as a matter of fact. You wouldn't want to ask the Security Service about me – the agents either don't have the clearance to know of me, or if they do know me, they lack the right to talk about it.”
The Colonel snorted derisively. The bald man looked at him silently for a moment.
” - The good Colonel here doesn't believe me. To be fair, I wouldn't either.”
And then the man told us what he knew of us. It was uncanny – he must have read all the files both our governments had on us, and then some. He must have also read all the Minne transcripts, I realized. Also the ones I thought were safely locked away. This man didn't have to say that he could destroy us if he wanted – he left it to us to understand it ourself. I looked at the Colonel and saw that he had certainly grasped the gist of it – he had gone deadly pale, and small beads of sweat dotted his forehead even if it was perfectly comfortable, not even that warm in the cabin.
” - And so, from now on, you can consider me as the representative of your employer. Colonel Vartia, you will continue with your work quite normally. But now you have some, ah, extra duties, too, you understand. And I expect those duties to be fulfilled. As for you, Mr. Holmén, for you the changes will be bigger – but rest assured, you get to work for the completion of the Minne 1984 Project, too.”
He regarded me with an almost fatherly look.
” - I have been impressed with your work on the project so far. It was all we ever expected of you, really, when we conceived the project and set its goals. And I am now speaking of both the objectives you know and the ones that will soon become apparent to you.”
The man removed his glasses and set them on the table.
” - I am a man who makes problems go away – or suddenly appear, if need be. Your Sergeant Sundin outside knows that – he might have lost his job and gone to prison for helping that murderer Valjakkala escape and kill all those people, even if unwittingly. Instead, he got away with a slap on the wrist – and since then, he has worked for me. So don't blame him for betraying you, Mr. Holmén. He has just been doing his job.”
The man put his glasses back on his nose. For a while, light glinted off them.
” - I have been doing this work for a very long time. I have the memory of an elephant – I remember a lot of things many people would want to forget. Work with me, and you will do all right. People always do well if they accept and honour the deals I offer them. They do very well indeed – in comparison to the other option.”
Joni, March 1st 2014
We packed up the stuff in the Lada and the Ford truck, all the placards, posters, supplies and all that stuff, while listening to some good music.
There were the usual ”Remember Lahti” posters, and others said ”Who killed Väyrynen?”. We also had piles of the ”The Men Who Saved the Nation and Betrayed the People” leaflets to spread around. The new version was even more potent than the last one, given all the new information that had been getting out these last months.
It helped a bit, but still whoever knew setting up a protest is so much work? Jeez. When I complained about it to the old guy he just shook his head and told something about preparation being more important than I know. Sure, I guess it is. But damnit, I was itching for some action!
Three-Finger Koivula (he had had two fingers cut out from his left hand by the Dogs, or that was what we had heard – I'd bet he had just tried to use an axe while drunk) told us that many people had been arrested in Lahti after the action there two nights before, but that most of them had been released in the morning. He said that maybe the Dogs are really holding on to the ”Olympic truce” we keep hearing about.
” - Better safe than sorry, though” said the bearded man in an old uniform jacket.
”- Make sure someone knows where you are at all times – if the Dogs will take you, at least then we will know where and when, and have some ideas how to proceed. Keep your wits about you out there. We don't initiate violence, we never do – let the blood be on their hands.”
We were a small group, but there were many cells like us – and we could form big crowds of people quickly by using modern communications, like Three-Finger had proudly told us. Some of the Badgers had these Swedish mobile phones that could send so-called ”short messages”, and they were used to rally people up. Wonderful technology, he said, but sooner or later the Dogs will realize what we are doing and shut down the ”towers”- what ever that means. Three-Finger had a mobile phone with him. Ericsson, it is called. It fits into a small bag, doesn't really weigh more than a kilogram – really nifty.
Unknown to Three-Finger, Matti had a knife with him, and later he was playing with it when nobody but me and Väänänen could see. That was of course against all the advice the older Badger had given us.
” - Holy fuck, man, are you out of your mind?” Väänänen said, ”The Dogs will bash your head in if they find that thing on you when we get out there!”
Matti just looked at him with a dark grin and shrugged.
” - Dogs? Ain't no Dogs there – we're going up against the Crows now, little brother.”
Can't say that his words and grin wouldn't have scared me just a bit, right then. This was Mikkeli, after all. It might well be Crows this time around.
BBC 1 News, February 27th 2014
”… the situation in Eastern Finland. Today our eyes are on Mikkeli, the capital of the so-called Finnish National Administration. George Warren reports.
…
Behind me, you can see the Hallitustori, or Government Square, packed with people waving small Finnish flags. Even though strikes and protests have rocked this small northern nation in the recent weeks, this gathering behind me is not a protest - rather, it is a celebration of the Olympic Games due to start in St. Moritz in a few days, a rally organized by the Eastern Finnish government itself in support of its athletes and probably the government's authority itself, which has become under question recently. This jubilation we see here, if somewhat subdued, is a far cry from the protest scenes from other towns like Lahti and Savonlinna, the centres of the national strike movement.
The people are up in arms now because of a sleigh of information has been coming to light about wartime and post-War wrongdoings by the Finnish leadership, people some of whom are still leading the Finnish National Administration today. The protests and strikes have been going on, on and off, since last November when the BBC first reported about the events taking place in Finland.
The government has been denying these charges, but they seem to be meticulously researched and sourced and not easily deniable. This information being released partly anonymously, partly by Swedish researchers employed by an oral history project supported by the Swedish state, is not the only reason for the protests and the growing strike movement in this still impoverished, politically and economically isolated nation, but it seems to have been the spark that has ignited a fire that for the while seems to only be growing. Only the ceremonies last week, on the 30th anniversary of the Third World War to remember and commemorate the victims of the nuclear holocaust of 1984 created something of a lull in the demonstrations - and now it seems that lull is over.
The situation has also been causing a deterioration in the relationship between the Eastern Finnish administration and the Swedish government, which while last week downplayed by Swedish Prime Minister Bodström marks a long-time low in the cooperation between Mikkeli and Gothenburg.
What you see now is material secretly filmed by a Swedish State TV crew two days ago, showing the Special Military Police the locals call ”crows” assaulting strikers in a public square in Savonlinna. It is estimated that tens of people were injured and at least dozens more arrested by the authorities in this heavyhanded action. The Special Military Police, heavily armed and using the Susi armored cars[2], here seen discharging water cannons to subdue a group of strikers, is the National Administration's elite crowd control unit.
The Military Police is commanded by Major General Varis, known as an ambitious younger officer who has rapidly ascended to a leading post in the National Committee, the governing body in Eastern Finland. The rumours among the international press now say that even if General Halonen is still being called the leader of the FNA, he should be now considered only ”first among equals” in the military leadership, if not just a figurehead as it were, and frequently being overshadowed by younger officers like Varis.
The escalating violence and uncertainty in Eastern Finland has also seemingly spread to the Swedish-supported Western Finland, the so-called ”provisional province” of Ostrobohnia, where in a surprise move the old commander of the Ostrobothnian Protection Corps, General Ahola, was yesterday reinstated as the commander of the paramilitary forces in the province. There are some indications that the Ostrobothnian forces are being mobilized – for what purpose, nobody seems to be able to say.
As the protests continue in Eastern Finland, and more people seem to join the national strike movement by the day, the political and military leadership here still seems to believe that the Olympic games and the boost to the national morale brought along by them will prove a cure to the instability plaguing the Finnish nation at this time.
I am George Warren in Mikkeli, Finland.
… and that was George Warren in Eastern Finland. We will keep you updated about further develoments in the Nordic area as this crisis continues.
You're watching the international news hour on BBC 1. We are on the eve of the first Winter Olympics after the Third World War, and in Switzerland the promise presented by the Olympic Games has...”
Maria, February 27th 2014:
Again new protests, even here in town. Dad wouldn't have let me go out today if it wasn't necessary to get to my shift at the kitchens. Like Noora says, the policemen don't have the energy to keep us safe if they have to go hungry! And cook we did, all those potatoes and gravy and whatnot.
On my way home I saw some of the arrested protestors being loaded into police vans to be taken to to the jail. One of them shouted something rude at me and a policeman struck him. He started bleeding. It wasn't nice for him to shout such a thing but did he really deserve to be hurt like that? It hardly seemed fair, unless that... boy, well, he was just a boy, not older than me, had done something worse before. Somehow I doubt that, though.
When I told about this all to Dad, and especially when I told him about how it is not all right that the police are being so violent, Dad nodded and sat me down.
” - Maria,” he said solemnly, ”I know you will not like it when I say this, but this will probably not even be the worst we will see from the police or from the military. People are afraid, you see, and people who are afraid can do terrible things.”
”- Dad”, I said to him,”those protestors didn't seem so afraid. Not even when they were handcuffed and put into the vans.”
Dad just smiled, absentmindedly, before answering.
” - Daughter dear, the people who are afraid... It is not the people doing the protesting.”
”...it is March 3rd 2014, and the time is 13.00. You are listening to the YLE on 94,6 Mhz. My name is Matti Fagerholm, and this is the news. This evening the opening ceremonies will be held at the 14th Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz in Switzerland. The Republic of Finland will be represented at the opening festivities by the Vice Chairman of the National Committee for the Continuity of Government, General Koskelo, as well as our own Olympic athletes that during the following two weeks will be competing with the representatives of 13 nations in various winter sports...”
Notes:
[1] Which is an apt moniker when one thinks about it. The badger is a careful, nocturnal creature which lives underground and only comes out when it is dark to go about its quiet, unassuming business. It is a gentle animal, sociable among its own, but one that can also be dangerous when threatened.
[2] The rather ironically named Susi ("Wolf") or Suojelu-Sisu (”Protection Sisu”) is an armored personnel carrier build on the heavily modified chassis of a Czecho-Slovak Tatra all-terrain truck. The vehicles, used by elite military police and army units in small numbers, are armed with water cannons or with tear gas launchers and machine guns.
When my bird can't fly here
Yeah, it would want to break its cage
It moves, but is just so numb...
Yeah, birds of paradise in their cages,
Do I see tears in their eyes?
Refrain:
And mute, they keep on singing
Those birds of paradise, full of wonder
Like hymns rising from their altars:
No composer, no lyricist at all
They give birth to the songs in their souls
Yeah, light years from here I saw
Saw your soul once, from above
No, we can't escape from each other
No-one will break us out of our cage
Refrain:
And mute, they keep on singing
Those birds of paradise, full of wonder
Like hymns rising from their altars:
No composer, no lyricist at all
They give birth to the songs in their souls
...
Hector: Paratiisilinnut (1992)
E2. Animals
This opposition, this... underground... How they spin their filthy lies. How they scurry about their holes and warrens like some damn... badgers, or mangy rats. They're vermin. Animals. We need to put them down.
A possibly apocryphal quote attributed to Major General Varis, a member of the National Committee for the Continuation of Government, in charge of internal security and in overall command of the Military Police. Date unknown.
An excerpt from the private diary of Jan Holmén, dated December 2013:
Getting to know and to understand the Finnish underground had opened my eyes to things I hadn't realized, hadn't really even thought of during most of the Project. Sure, you could sometimes see the people didn't like the Committee's rule. But so few of them were ready to go on the record about such attitudes. Now, after slowly building up trust with the Badgers (like the older members of the underground were known as, for some reason)[1] I was starting to understand more and more about the unknown part of this Finnish nation. It was both ugly and beautiful. Very soon, they told me, I would meet the legendary Big H himself, considered the godfather of the underground among the Badgers and their cubs.
Often feeling I had disappeared down the rabbit hole like Alice, I couldn't help thinking about that sunny day last summer when the bottom fell out of my plans. After all, I was all set up to return to Sweden for good, to spend time with Karin and the kids, to be a father and a husband again. All things packed up, without a care in the world – or so it seems now, looking back. That is a lie, of course, but such are the lies we tell to ourselves, often unconsciously.
The knock on the cabin door, and the words we heard from behind it... My heart skipped a beat and then my veins were full of ice water. What the hell was this?
”- Just open the door and nobody gets hurt.”
As Colonel Vartia reached out for his pistol, I looked around us. No way out, apart from the door – only the walls out of roughly hewn logs and two small windows a grown man like me or the Colonel could hardly use as an escape route.
We were trapped.
” - Colonel, going for the pistol is useless”, said the cool and collected voice outside.
” - You'll find the ammunition has been removed.”
As Vartia checked his weapon and cursed softly, I walked the few steps to the door and just opened it. What else was there to do? Certainly people this resourceful would bring it down soon enough anyway. The Colonel extended a hand to stop me but then let me reach the door unimpeded. With a creak, the door opened... To reveal the bashful face of Sergeant Sundin, my military protector during most of the Minne 1984 project. He stood there, his service pistol in hand, looking... ashamed of himself.
” - Mats,” I started asking him, ”what the hell does this...”
The Sergeant stepped aside to reveal two men behind his broad shoulders. An older man of indistinct age, bald, with a plain face and round steel-rimmed glasses, and a thirtysomething man with a crew cut. Both were wearing suits and long overcoats – a bit warmly dressed for the summer's day, I idly thought.
The older man waved me back inside the cabin.
” - Let us sit down and calm down now,” the man said in Finnish but with a hint of a Swedish accent. His companion hung back with Sergeant Sundin and along with Colonel Vartia and the stranger I settled around the log table inside the cabin. The man had closed the door behind him.
All the while, I had the irritating feeling that I knew this man from somewhere.
” - Who are you, and what are you doing here?”, I asked him. The Colonel just stared sullenly at the wall. I think he was gathering his thoughts about how to protest the situation.
The man smiled thinly.
” - I represent the organization you work for, and I've come here today to give you your new orders.”
I didn't quite understand.
” - What, Uppsala University? Or the Minne 1984 Project? Or... the Swedish Royal Academy of Letters?”
” - You're thinking too small, Holmén. For a man of your obvious intellect you are being a bit... unimaginative.”
The man's smile had disappeared.
” - Let us say that I represent the Swedish Crown.”
It was starting to dawn on me. That is where I knew his voice. I had heard it on the telephone. He had called me several times over the course of the Project, to give me security advice and warnings. I had assumed he was a Swedish Security Service liaison to the Minne 1984 Project.
” - You're Security Service?”
” - In practical terms that is close enough, I guess. I don't work for the Säpo, though. I think it might be best for you to consider me as one of the people the Säpo works for, as a matter of fact. You wouldn't want to ask the Security Service about me – the agents either don't have the clearance to know of me, or if they do know me, they lack the right to talk about it.”
The Colonel snorted derisively. The bald man looked at him silently for a moment.
” - The good Colonel here doesn't believe me. To be fair, I wouldn't either.”
And then the man told us what he knew of us. It was uncanny – he must have read all the files both our governments had on us, and then some. He must have also read all the Minne transcripts, I realized. Also the ones I thought were safely locked away. This man didn't have to say that he could destroy us if he wanted – he left it to us to understand it ourself. I looked at the Colonel and saw that he had certainly grasped the gist of it – he had gone deadly pale, and small beads of sweat dotted his forehead even if it was perfectly comfortable, not even that warm in the cabin.
” - And so, from now on, you can consider me as the representative of your employer. Colonel Vartia, you will continue with your work quite normally. But now you have some, ah, extra duties, too, you understand. And I expect those duties to be fulfilled. As for you, Mr. Holmén, for you the changes will be bigger – but rest assured, you get to work for the completion of the Minne 1984 Project, too.”
He regarded me with an almost fatherly look.
” - I have been impressed with your work on the project so far. It was all we ever expected of you, really, when we conceived the project and set its goals. And I am now speaking of both the objectives you know and the ones that will soon become apparent to you.”
The man removed his glasses and set them on the table.
” - I am a man who makes problems go away – or suddenly appear, if need be. Your Sergeant Sundin outside knows that – he might have lost his job and gone to prison for helping that murderer Valjakkala escape and kill all those people, even if unwittingly. Instead, he got away with a slap on the wrist – and since then, he has worked for me. So don't blame him for betraying you, Mr. Holmén. He has just been doing his job.”
The man put his glasses back on his nose. For a while, light glinted off them.
” - I have been doing this work for a very long time. I have the memory of an elephant – I remember a lot of things many people would want to forget. Work with me, and you will do all right. People always do well if they accept and honour the deals I offer them. They do very well indeed – in comparison to the other option.”
Joni, March 1st 2014
We packed up the stuff in the Lada and the Ford truck, all the placards, posters, supplies and all that stuff, while listening to some good music.
There were the usual ”Remember Lahti” posters, and others said ”Who killed Väyrynen?”. We also had piles of the ”The Men Who Saved the Nation and Betrayed the People” leaflets to spread around. The new version was even more potent than the last one, given all the new information that had been getting out these last months.
It helped a bit, but still whoever knew setting up a protest is so much work? Jeez. When I complained about it to the old guy he just shook his head and told something about preparation being more important than I know. Sure, I guess it is. But damnit, I was itching for some action!
Three-Finger Koivula (he had had two fingers cut out from his left hand by the Dogs, or that was what we had heard – I'd bet he had just tried to use an axe while drunk) told us that many people had been arrested in Lahti after the action there two nights before, but that most of them had been released in the morning. He said that maybe the Dogs are really holding on to the ”Olympic truce” we keep hearing about.
” - Better safe than sorry, though” said the bearded man in an old uniform jacket.
”- Make sure someone knows where you are at all times – if the Dogs will take you, at least then we will know where and when, and have some ideas how to proceed. Keep your wits about you out there. We don't initiate violence, we never do – let the blood be on their hands.”
We were a small group, but there were many cells like us – and we could form big crowds of people quickly by using modern communications, like Three-Finger had proudly told us. Some of the Badgers had these Swedish mobile phones that could send so-called ”short messages”, and they were used to rally people up. Wonderful technology, he said, but sooner or later the Dogs will realize what we are doing and shut down the ”towers”- what ever that means. Three-Finger had a mobile phone with him. Ericsson, it is called. It fits into a small bag, doesn't really weigh more than a kilogram – really nifty.
Unknown to Three-Finger, Matti had a knife with him, and later he was playing with it when nobody but me and Väänänen could see. That was of course against all the advice the older Badger had given us.
” - Holy fuck, man, are you out of your mind?” Väänänen said, ”The Dogs will bash your head in if they find that thing on you when we get out there!”
Matti just looked at him with a dark grin and shrugged.
” - Dogs? Ain't no Dogs there – we're going up against the Crows now, little brother.”
Can't say that his words and grin wouldn't have scared me just a bit, right then. This was Mikkeli, after all. It might well be Crows this time around.
BBC 1 News, February 27th 2014
”… the situation in Eastern Finland. Today our eyes are on Mikkeli, the capital of the so-called Finnish National Administration. George Warren reports.
…
Behind me, you can see the Hallitustori, or Government Square, packed with people waving small Finnish flags. Even though strikes and protests have rocked this small northern nation in the recent weeks, this gathering behind me is not a protest - rather, it is a celebration of the Olympic Games due to start in St. Moritz in a few days, a rally organized by the Eastern Finnish government itself in support of its athletes and probably the government's authority itself, which has become under question recently. This jubilation we see here, if somewhat subdued, is a far cry from the protest scenes from other towns like Lahti and Savonlinna, the centres of the national strike movement.
The people are up in arms now because of a sleigh of information has been coming to light about wartime and post-War wrongdoings by the Finnish leadership, people some of whom are still leading the Finnish National Administration today. The protests and strikes have been going on, on and off, since last November when the BBC first reported about the events taking place in Finland.
The government has been denying these charges, but they seem to be meticulously researched and sourced and not easily deniable. This information being released partly anonymously, partly by Swedish researchers employed by an oral history project supported by the Swedish state, is not the only reason for the protests and the growing strike movement in this still impoverished, politically and economically isolated nation, but it seems to have been the spark that has ignited a fire that for the while seems to only be growing. Only the ceremonies last week, on the 30th anniversary of the Third World War to remember and commemorate the victims of the nuclear holocaust of 1984 created something of a lull in the demonstrations - and now it seems that lull is over.
The situation has also been causing a deterioration in the relationship between the Eastern Finnish administration and the Swedish government, which while last week downplayed by Swedish Prime Minister Bodström marks a long-time low in the cooperation between Mikkeli and Gothenburg.
What you see now is material secretly filmed by a Swedish State TV crew two days ago, showing the Special Military Police the locals call ”crows” assaulting strikers in a public square in Savonlinna. It is estimated that tens of people were injured and at least dozens more arrested by the authorities in this heavyhanded action. The Special Military Police, heavily armed and using the Susi armored cars[2], here seen discharging water cannons to subdue a group of strikers, is the National Administration's elite crowd control unit.
The Military Police is commanded by Major General Varis, known as an ambitious younger officer who has rapidly ascended to a leading post in the National Committee, the governing body in Eastern Finland. The rumours among the international press now say that even if General Halonen is still being called the leader of the FNA, he should be now considered only ”first among equals” in the military leadership, if not just a figurehead as it were, and frequently being overshadowed by younger officers like Varis.
The escalating violence and uncertainty in Eastern Finland has also seemingly spread to the Swedish-supported Western Finland, the so-called ”provisional province” of Ostrobohnia, where in a surprise move the old commander of the Ostrobothnian Protection Corps, General Ahola, was yesterday reinstated as the commander of the paramilitary forces in the province. There are some indications that the Ostrobothnian forces are being mobilized – for what purpose, nobody seems to be able to say.
As the protests continue in Eastern Finland, and more people seem to join the national strike movement by the day, the political and military leadership here still seems to believe that the Olympic games and the boost to the national morale brought along by them will prove a cure to the instability plaguing the Finnish nation at this time.
I am George Warren in Mikkeli, Finland.
… and that was George Warren in Eastern Finland. We will keep you updated about further develoments in the Nordic area as this crisis continues.
You're watching the international news hour on BBC 1. We are on the eve of the first Winter Olympics after the Third World War, and in Switzerland the promise presented by the Olympic Games has...”
Maria, February 27th 2014:
Again new protests, even here in town. Dad wouldn't have let me go out today if it wasn't necessary to get to my shift at the kitchens. Like Noora says, the policemen don't have the energy to keep us safe if they have to go hungry! And cook we did, all those potatoes and gravy and whatnot.
On my way home I saw some of the arrested protestors being loaded into police vans to be taken to to the jail. One of them shouted something rude at me and a policeman struck him. He started bleeding. It wasn't nice for him to shout such a thing but did he really deserve to be hurt like that? It hardly seemed fair, unless that... boy, well, he was just a boy, not older than me, had done something worse before. Somehow I doubt that, though.
When I told about this all to Dad, and especially when I told him about how it is not all right that the police are being so violent, Dad nodded and sat me down.
” - Maria,” he said solemnly, ”I know you will not like it when I say this, but this will probably not even be the worst we will see from the police or from the military. People are afraid, you see, and people who are afraid can do terrible things.”
”- Dad”, I said to him,”those protestors didn't seem so afraid. Not even when they were handcuffed and put into the vans.”
Dad just smiled, absentmindedly, before answering.
” - Daughter dear, the people who are afraid... It is not the people doing the protesting.”
”...it is March 3rd 2014, and the time is 13.00. You are listening to the YLE on 94,6 Mhz. My name is Matti Fagerholm, and this is the news. This evening the opening ceremonies will be held at the 14th Winter Olympic Games in St. Moritz in Switzerland. The Republic of Finland will be represented at the opening festivities by the Vice Chairman of the National Committee for the Continuity of Government, General Koskelo, as well as our own Olympic athletes that during the following two weeks will be competing with the representatives of 13 nations in various winter sports...”
Notes:
[1] Which is an apt moniker when one thinks about it. The badger is a careful, nocturnal creature which lives underground and only comes out when it is dark to go about its quiet, unassuming business. It is a gentle animal, sociable among its own, but one that can also be dangerous when threatened.
[2] The rather ironically named Susi ("Wolf") or Suojelu-Sisu (”Protection Sisu”) is an armored personnel carrier build on the heavily modified chassis of a Czecho-Slovak Tatra all-terrain truck. The vehicles, used by elite military police and army units in small numbers, are armed with water cannons or with tear gas launchers and machine guns.
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