Rant about my Grandma's Suitcase

I never got to know my paternal grandmother, as she passed away before I was born.  I know little about her childhood, but I know she was pretty (one of the few surviving pictures is of her as a teenager, as she is crowned the “Miss” of her village) and that she was very talented and smart, but was prevented from getting a schooling by her father, who had views on “people getting ideas above their station”.  She left home young, to become a waitress in Viipuri (Vyborg), the nearest town.  I also know she grew up to be an open, lively, positive and sociable woman, in an apparent refusal to let her experiences shape her life. 

Viipuri is these days called Выборг.  It is a small town in Western Russia.  My grandma left it first sometime in 1940, either as the Winter War was raging around her, or as a result of the 1940 Moscow Peace Treaty, in which Karelia, the district in which she had been born and lived her whole life, was ceded to the Soviet Union.  She returned during the Continuation War, as the Finnish troops regained the territory.  She left in a hurry again, with only what she could fit in a suitcase, as the Soviet troops were advancing towards the end of the war.  This time she settled, for good, in Central Finland, which is where she met my grandfather.

This is my personal family background, but I doubt it is very rare.  Just among Finns my grandma's  experience, as traumatising and dramatic as it was, was not unusual.  Karelians evacuated into the (rest of) Finland numbered close to 500,000, which is about 12% of the population at the time.  Yet they were all settled and integrated.  People took them in and gave from what little they had in the harsh years following the war to those that had lost everything.  Other Finns moved in the opposite direction during the war: 70,000 children were evacuated to Sweden where they were received, cared for and kept safe.

Most European countries went through something similar in the 1940s, many of you will have grandparents or great-grandparents who were displaced or evacuated at some stage, or who had to, in some other way, seek and rely on help from others.

The evacuees from Karelia are hardly different from those fleeing the war in Syria and Iraq.  National policies in European states are what they are, but I am baffled by the lack of empathy, or indifference, or even open hostility, that so many individuals are demonstrating.  Have they forgotten their own family stories? 

I am very grateful for the fact that my grandma was helped on her journey and as she settled into a new life in Jyväskylä.  Here I am, partially as a result, having had all the chances in the world that she did not have.  It is my duty to help, in turn, those now fleeing their homes due to a brutal war that is not their making. 

#refugeeswelcome

Rant about Joining a Murderous Terrorist Organisation

 

I rarely rant about current affairs.  That is for people with more flexible schedules, and nimble minds.  I take time to think my rants through and then to write them.  I’m hoping the topics are not going to be moot a week from posting them.

But at the same time I feel that we are seeing something quite unprecedented here, so it would look odd in perspective, if somebody looked at these ten years down the line, and got the impression that I was ranting about pandas, heels and washing machines, as if there wasn’t a massive war going on, a war which scores of my countrymen (and some countrywomen) were joining.

In this day and age that post-dates Enlightenment by about 250 years, European kids are running off to fight the good fight, not for any noble humanitarian reasons, but in order to force a brutal religious dictatorship on people and off with their heads if they don’t conform.

There seems to be a certain amount of head scratching going on among people of just about every colour and creed in Europe.  We don’t understand why this is happening.  The parents and friends of these facebook-jihadists don’t understand why this is happening.

I actually find it quite easy to understand. 

It is happening because these people are young and because they are confused.  ISIS responds to their twin need of absolute certainty at a time when everything is uncertain and for adventure that just doesn’t get satisfied by playing video games.

Don’t you remember when you were young?  There are all kinds of confusing ideas going on in your head.  Your body is doing funny things.  You are supposed to start behaving like a grown up, having a life plan, deciding what you want to do with your life.  We all thought on some level that we were going to be special when we were kids.  We were going to have a purpose and make a difference.  We were going to change the world.  Now it was dawning on us that we probably weren’t.  Being a lawyer or a lab technician was not the master plan we had vaguely imagined as kids.  The adult that we were becoming was bound to disappoint everyone, but most of all the kid we had so recently been.

Add to that the confusion of living at the intersection of two cultures, which are both pulling you in different directions.  There is simply no way of satisfying everyone around you, the needs and wishes of your parents are diametrically opposed to those of (some of your) friends.

This is when someone comes and tells you that he has all the answers.  No need to make difficult choices, no need to feel inadequate and confused.  The answers are all there, in the holy book.  You are special, you have a mission from god.  You are god’s soldier.  You just have to follow the rules and orders.

But there is more.  You don’t just want certainty and a purpose.  You want adventure.  Boys will be boys, they say.  Boys drive too fast and they commit petty crime.  But that is all a bit lame, all a bit childish.  You get told that you get to go and BLOW SHIT UP.  And you can be absolutely certain that this is happening for a good cause.  Not just a good cause, but the only cause there is.  God’s cause.

Alas, a full circle.  It all comes together beautifully.  God is the answer to your need for certainty as well as to your need for adventure.

Now I don’t know how many of them are disappointed or scared or regretful when they arrive in Syria and reality kicks in.  I understand that the westerners hang out among themselves, so that will probably make it easier.  But I don’t know what happens to these people.  Chopping off someone’s head or taking part in gang rape is presumably a bit more difficult to grow out of than shoplifting.

So I don’t know much.  But I think I know why this is happening. 

Thoughts?

I also have an idea (not THE idea, just AN idea) how this could be tackled.  I’ll get back to that in my next rant.

Rant about the Truth -- as told by White People

A few months ago I was passing by the Peace Palace, the UN complex here in Geneva.  It is the site of many demonstrations, and on this particular day a group of Tamils was displaying posters with shocking pictures of cruelty, accompanied by slogans of what was happening in them.  According to the descriptions, the picture was in each case that of a Tamil, sometimes a child or a civilian woman, tortured/raped/killed (or all three) at the hands of the Sinhalese.

The allegations in the posters were shocking, outrageous. 

I marched to the info stand and told the gentlemen manning it that I knew what the Tamils had been through during the last months of the civil war in Sri Lanka, and that what had occurred probably amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.  I told them that I supported their cause and that they were right to protest in front of the UN, as it was about time the international community did something about the atrocities.

The reason I did this was that I had seen all the images on their posters before.  I had seen them, and the slogans, put into context.  I knew who the kid was (Balachandran, the son of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the founder of the Tamil Tigers), I knew who the woman was (Isaipriya, a Tamil news anchor).  I knew all this because not long earlier I had seen a documentary called “No Fire Zone”, which had made me hate humanity and have nightmares.  If anyone is interested in seeing what people are capable of during civil war, watch this documentary, it is really good.  Even if it will make you feel anything but good.

I don’t know if the Tamils holding the protest outside the UN cared about my expression of solidarity.  But I’m guessing that not all that many passersby gave such unqualified endorsements of their cause.  This is because not many people had seen the documentary.  This fact gave me pause, because if it had not been for the documentary, I would have been quite suspect of the protesters’ claims, outrageous as they were.

Would I not have believed the protesters so easily if I had not seen the documentary, because I, along with many others, have become jaded by fake and manipulated images of atrocities in Syria and elsewhere?  If this is the answer, then it is a healthy one.  In the days where everyone can easily falsify pictures, one should be slightly wary of photographic evidence, especially when emanating from interested parties.  (Even if countries such as Iran or North Korea haven’t quite completed the advanced course on photoshop yet ...) 

Or was it because “No Fire Zone” had been made by – let’s be blunt about it – a bunch of Whities?  Do I trust Whities to tell the truth more than I trust the Tamils actually on the ground, suffering through it all?  A worrying thought, but one that I have not been able to entirely shake.  It is a frustrating example of internalised racism.  Frustrating because (if it is true) I can’t rid myself of it and frustrating because it is so profound.  Somebody please pass the brain bleach, I don’t want to be like this!

On the more important, and less self-important, issue of what happened to the Tamil people and will there be consequences for this, there are some good news.  The UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution on 27 March 2014 to open an enquiry into war crimes in the final stages of the civil war in 2009.  I don’t know if this was because of the Tamil protests or the documentary.  “Who cares?” one could say, the main thing is that something is happening.  Or then again, if the world in general is suffering from collective internalised racism, then that would indeed be a problem.  So let us assume that the UN is not (only) finally reacting because a bunch of white people said so.

Rant about "the new face of Russia, efficient and friendly and open to the world"

 

I am not quite sure whether to laugh or cry.  It is all just so absurdly, cynically, poetic.

I felt a tiny tinge of vindication with all the brou-ha-ha preceding the Sochi Olympics, where it looked like finally the grand lie of “politics should not be mixed with sport” that had been perpetuated around the Beijing Games and the human rights violations that they were built upon was not very often voiced.  To the contrary, we heard all kinds of noises about gay rights, corruption and environmental degradation.  Us Westerners were eagerly wagging our fingers, and it seemed to work to some extent: Putin went on to release a host of political prisoners, including most famously the Pussy Riot performers Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina as well as Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the run up to the Games.  We could all slap ourselves on the back and focus on the sport.

The sports were as fascinating as ever, nobody can fault that.  However, I was mortified to find out how completely, utterly we forgot all about the moralistic posturing once the Games were on the way.  The corruption and environmental degradation had not gone anywhere, but instead of continuing to highlight this, the REAL cost of the extravaganza to the people most affected, Western media was unanimously gushing over how great the organisation was and how gleaming the brand-spanking new event venues.  Environmental activist Evgeny Vitishko was sentenced to 3-years in prison on trumped up charges and the indefatigable Pussy Riot were beaten and detained during the Games.  Did you notice?  If you noticed, did you care?  If you did, good on you, you were just about the only person in the whole world.

This is what the President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach said at the closing ceremony; it pretty well sums up the general media feeling about the Games:

President Bach thanked Putin for his “personal commitment to the extraordinary success of these Olympic Winter Games”, as Putin watched on from the stands.

(…)

Bach said the 25,000 volunteers had shown the new face of Russia, efficient and friendly and open to the world, and described the Sochi Winter Olympics as “the Athletes’ Games”.

Earlier in his address, the IOC President urged global leaders to follow the Olympic society in displaying peace, tolerance and respect, which he described as sending a “powerful message” around the world.

You do not launch a military invasion of foreign territory on a day’s notice.  This means that while President Putin was lapping up the praise of the foreign media and politicians for his “personal commitment” to the “extraordinary success” of the greatest winter sports event of the world, one that apparently “display[ed] peace, tolerance and respect” and the “new face of Russia (…) open to the world”, he was preparing indeed to send a “powerful message around the world”, but not quite the one we thought was coming.