Hyvää Suomi ( now if we can only work on those social skills!)

What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

Finland's teens score extraordinarily high on an international test. American educators are trying to figure out why.

By ELLEN GAMERMAN

Helsinki, Finland

High-school students here rarely get more than a half-hour of homework a night. They have no school uniforms, no honor societies, no valedictorians, no tardy bells and no classes for the gifted. There is little standardized testing, few parents agonize over college and kids don't start school until age 7.

Yet by one international measure, Finnish teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in 57 countries. American teens finished among the world's C students even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they're way ahead in math, science and reading -- on track to keeping Finns among the world's most productive workers.

Finland's students are the brightest in the world, according to an international test. Teachers say extra playtime is one reason for the students' success. WSJ's Ellen Gamerman reports.

The Finns won attention with their performances in triennial tests sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group funded by 30 countries that monitors social and economic trends. In the most recent test, which focused on science, Finland's students placed first in science and near the top in math and reading, according to results released late last year. An unofficial tally of Finland's combined scores puts it in first place overall, says Andreas Schleicher, who directs the OECD's test, known as the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA. The U.S. placed in the middle of the pack in math and science; its reading scores were tossed because of a glitch. About 400,000 students around the world answered multiple-choice questions and essays on the test that measured critical thinking and the application of knowledge. A typical subject: Discuss the artistic value of graffiti.

The academic prowess of Finland's students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country's secret, including an official from the U.S. Department of Education. What they find is simple but not easy: well-trained teachers and responsible children. Early on, kids do a lot without adults hovering. And teachers create lessons to fit their students. "We don't have oil or other riches. Knowledge is the thing Finnish people have," says Hannele Frantsi, a school principal.

Visitors and teacher trainees can peek at how it's done from a viewing balcony perched over a classroom at the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, a city in central Finland. What they see is a relaxed, back-to-basics approach. The school, which is a model campus, has no sports teams, marching bands or prom.

Fanny Salo in class

Trailing 15-year-old Fanny Salo at Norssi gives a glimpse of the no-frills curriculum. Fanny is a bubbly ninth-grader who loves "Gossip Girl" books, the TV show "Desperate Housewives" and digging through the clothing racks at H&M stores with her friends.

Fanny earns straight A's, and with no gifted classes she sometimes doodles in her journal while waiting for others to catch up. She often helps lagging classmates. "It's fun to have time to relax a little in the middle of class," Fanny says. Finnish educators believe they get better overall results by concentrating on weaker students rather than by pushing gifted students ahead of everyone else. The idea is that bright students can help average ones without harming their own progress.

At lunch, Fanny and her friends leave campus to buy salmiakki, a salty licorice. They return for physics, where class starts when everyone quiets down. Teachers and students address each other by first names. About the only classroom rules are no cellphones, no iPods and no hats.

TESTING AROUND THE GLOBE

Every three years, 15-year-olds in 57 countries around the world take a test called the Pisa exam, which measures proficiency in math, science and reading.

• The test: Two sections from the Pisa science test

• Chart: Recent scores for participating countries

DISCUSS

Do you think any of these Finnish methods would work in U.S. schools? What would you change -- if anything -- about the U.S. school system, and the responsibilities that teachers, parents and students are given? Share your thoughts.

Fanny's more rebellious classmates dye their blond hair black or sport pink dreadlocks. Others wear tank tops and stilettos to look tough in the chilly climate. Tanning lotions are popular in one clique. Teens sift by style, including "fruittari," or preppies; "hoppari," or hip-hop, or the confounding "fruittari-hoppari," which fuses both. Ask an obvious question and you may hear "KVG," short for "Check it on Google, you idiot." Heavy-metal fans listen to Nightwish, a Finnish band, and teens socialize online at irc-galleria.net.

The Norssi School is run like a teaching hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines. Teachers must hold master's degrees, and the profession is highly competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job. Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they generally have more freedom.

Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. "In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs," says Mr. Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student test in 2000.

One explanation for the Finns' success is their love of reading. Parents of newborns receive a government-paid gift pack that includes a picture book. Some libraries are attached to shopping malls, and a book bus travels to more remote neighborhoods like a Good Humor truck.

Ymmersta school principal Hannele Frantsi

Finland shares its language with no other country, and even the most popular English-language books are translated here long after they are first published. Many children struggled to read the last Harry Potter book in English because they feared they would hear about the ending before it arrived in Finnish. Movies and TV shows have Finnish subtitles instead of dubbing. One college student says she became a fast reader as a child because she was hooked on the 1990s show "Beverly Hills, 90210."

In November, a U.S. delegation visited, hoping to learn how Scandinavian educators used technology. Officials from the Education Department, the National Education Association and the American Association of School Librarians saw Finnish teachers with chalkboards instead of whiteboards, and lessons shown on overhead projectors instead of PowerPoint. Keith Krueger was less impressed by the technology than by the good teaching he saw. "You kind of wonder how could our country get to that?" says Mr. Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, an association of school technology officers that organized the trip.

Finnish high-school senior Elina Lamponen saw the differences firsthand. She spent a year at Colon High School in Colon, Mich., where strict rules didn't translate into tougher lessons or dedicated students, Ms. Lamponen says. She would ask students whether they did their homework. They would reply: " 'Nah. So what'd you do last night?'" she recalls. History tests were often multiple choice. The rare essay question, she says, allowed very little space in which to write. In-class projects were largely "glue this to the poster for an hour," she says. Her Finnish high school forced Ms. Lamponen, a spiky-haired 19-year-old, to repeat the year when she returned.

At the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, school principal Helena Muilu

Lloyd Kirby, superintendent of Colon Community Schools in southern Michigan, says foreign students are told to ask for extra work if they find classes too easy. He says he is trying to make his schools more rigorous by asking parents to demand more from their children.

Despite the apparent simplicity of Finnish education, it would be tough to replicate in the U.S. With a largely homogeneous population, teachers have few students who don't speak Finnish. In the U.S., about 8% of students are learning English, according to the Education Department. There are fewer disparities in education and income levels among Finns. Finland separates students for the last three years of high school based on grades; 53% go to high school and the rest enter vocational school. (All 15-year-old students took the PISA test.) Finland has a high-school dropout rate of about 4% -- or 10% at vocational schools -- compared with roughly 25% in the U.S., according to their respective education departments.

Another difference is financial. Each school year, the U.S. spends an average of $8,700 per student, while the Finns spend $7,500. Finland's high-tax government provides roughly equal per-pupil funding, unlike the disparities between Beverly Hills public schools, for example, and schools in poorer districts. The gap between Finland's best- and worst-performing schools was the smallest of any country in the PISA testing. The U.S. ranks about average.

Finnish students have little angstata -- or teen angst -- about getting into the best university, and no worries about paying for it. College is free. There is competition for college based on academic specialties -- medical school, for instance. But even the best universities don't have the elite status of a Harvard.

Students at the Ymmersta School near Helsinki

Taking away the competition of getting into the "right schools" allows Finnish children to enjoy a less-pressured childhood. While many U.S. parents worry about enrolling their toddlers in academically oriented preschools, the Finns don't begin school until age 7, a year later than most U.S. first-graders.

Once school starts, the Finns are more self-reliant. While some U.S. parents fuss over accompanying their children to and from school, and arrange every play date and outing, young Finns do much more on their own. At the Ymmersta School in a nearby Helsinki suburb, some first-grade students trudge to school through a stand of evergreens in near darkness. At lunch, they pick out their own meals, which all schools give free, and carry the trays to lunch tables. There is no Internet filter in the school library. They can walk in their socks during class, but at home even the very young are expected to lace up their own skates or put on their own skis.

The Finns enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world, but they, too, worry about falling behind in the shifting global economy. They rely on electronics and telecommunications companies, such as Finnish cellphone giant Nokia, along with forest-products and mining industries for jobs. Some educators say Finland needs to fast-track its brightest students the way the U.S. does, with gifted programs aimed at producing more go-getters. Parents also are getting pushier about special attention for their children, says Tapio Erma, principal of the suburban Olari School. "We are more and more aware of American-style parents," he says.

Mr. Erma's school is a showcase campus. Last summer, at a conference in Peru, he spoke about adopting Finnish teaching methods. During a recent afternoon in one of his school's advanced math courses, a high-school boy fell asleep at his desk. The teacher didn't disturb him, instead calling on others. While napping in class isn't condoned, Mr. Erma says, "We just have to accept the fact that they're kids and they're learning how to live."

Original article posted here.

Jokela revisited: Times controversial take on Finnish killer (and Finland)

Similarities to other massacres - but this was a very Finnish affair

Watch video posted by the YouTube killer

Read Roger Boyes's response to your comments

In the old days Finns used to believe in the dark power of Tuonela, the mythical land of the dead. Now they believe in YouTube, the land of the virtual living.

The crazed marginalised teenager who takes out his frustration on his teachers and schoolmates, who chases them through classrooms like mice in a maze, has become a universal phenomenon: the massacres at Virginia Tech, Columbine and Erfurt in Germany conformed to a pattern. A pupil is snubbed, is deemed a failure, and retreats into an interior world that structured by his computer, video games that tap his inner aggressions, throbbing downloaded music and a locked room.

Related Links

• YouTube gunman kills eight at Finnish school

Sven Christianson, professor of psychology at Stockholm University, said: “There are distinct similarities with Virginia Tech. It could well have served as an inspiration.”

Above all, the young killer’s presentation of himself with weapons — a method favoured by Cho Seung Hui at Virginia Tech — suggested someone with low self-esteem trying to build himself up. The recorded warning of an impending bloodbath suggested a narcissistic personality, a youth determined to exert control, to choose between life and death.

Yet despite the common features with other massacres, the shoot-up in Tuusula was a very Finnish affair.

Finland is a land of wide open spaces, between 16-17 people per square kilometre. Lakes often separate neighbouring farmsteads. At this time of year it is sunk in almost permanent half-light and Finnish families count the days to their winter holidays when they can flee to the bright sunlight of south-east Asian resorts.

Clinical depression is high, the suicide rate too. But above all the Nordic winter isolates the young in the small towns: they arrive at school in the dark and leave it in the dark, travelling long distances to their homes. Friendship in the traditional sense is often a summer luxury.

And so friendship becomes virtual. The social networking sites are switched on the moment the Finnish teenager returns home. YouTube substitutes for television, which is regarded as dreary and middle-aged. About 75 per cent of all Finns use the internet. And Finland, the cradle of Nokia, has some of the cheapest mobile phone rates in Europe. Kids as young as 6 take mobiles to school; a child’s first text message is a matter of parental pride. None of this is unusual for modern Europe, but in Finland the high-tech world has become a normal, rather than an exceptional, substitute for the world of human contact. A youth isolated at school sinks even deeper into isolation when he has left the school gates: a recipe for trouble. Even more so in a country where guns are so readily available; Finland has the third-largest per capita ownership of handguns in the world.

The youth who ran amok signalled his intentions using the codename Sturmgeist89. The word means “storm-spirit” in German and probably refers to a Norwegian heavy metal band, but it provides a marker of sorts: when he took the gun in his hand he seems to have imagined himself as a hero, a corrector of wrongs. There is nothing very modern or YouTube-ish about that self-image. In ancient times the Finns used to worship Ukko, the mythic god of the sky and thunder.

Yesterday, invoking new gods and myths, an 18-year-old brought thunder down on a small frozen township. It was a sign of disturbed times — but also a very Finnish tragedy.

Murder ‘manifesto’

“I am a cynical existentialist, antihuman humanist, antisocial socialdarwinist, realistic idealist and godlike atheist. I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection. You might ask yourselves, why did I do this. Well, most of you are too arrogant and closed-minded to understand. I am ready to die for a cause I know is right, just and true. This is my war, my ideas and my plans. Don’t blame my parents or my friends. I told nobody about my plans and I always kept them inside my mind only. Don’t blame the movies I see, the music I hear, the games I play or the books I read. No, they had nothing to do with this. This is my war: one man war against humanity, governments and weak-minded masses of the world! HUMANITY IS OVERRATED! It’s time to put SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST back on tracks!"

Original article posted here.

Oh, those crazy Finns

7 die in 'YouTube plan' shooting

HELSINKI, Finland (CNN) -- At least seven people were reported killed when an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at a school in Finland Wednesday, in a shooting that appeared to have been planned out in graphic videos posted on Internet sharing site YouTube.

An image from a video posted on YouTube by "Sturmgeist89."

Medical officials told CNN affiliate MTV that the headmistress of the school in Tuusula, near Helsinki, was among the dead. It was not clear if the gunman was included in the fatalities.

The shooting, believed to be the first of its kind in Finland's history, was claimed to be the work of Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who has also published a manifesto demanding war on the "weak-minded masses" and pledged to die for his cause.

YouTube appeared to have removed the videos, many of them featuring Nazi imagery, shortly after the incident.

The school involved in the shooting was identified as Jokela High, attended by more than 400 students, aged between 12 and 18.

A video posted on YouTube earlier Wednesday, by a user identified as "Sturmgeist89", was titled "Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007."

The video showed a picture of the school which then disintergrated to reveal an image of a man resembling Auvinen against a red background, pointing a gun at the screen.

The clip is accompanied by the track "Stray Bullet", by rock band KMFDM, whose lyrics were also quoted by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the students behind the Columbine High School massacre of 1999.

Sturmgeist89 also posted videos of the same person shooting an apple in a wood with a handgun, as well as clips from the Nazi Nuremburg rallies.

Jarkko Sipila, a reporter with MTV, told CNN that the shooting happened around noon Finnish time (1000 GMT) in the quiet town around 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Helsinki.

Here is the original video that appeared on YouTube (the one good thing about the crap site LiveLeak is that they carry all kind of crap by fascists and racists and other social deviants)

Sipila said some of the pupils had fled to a nearby elementary school while police surrounded and sealed off the high school. Finnish news agency STT carried police comments that they had been fired at.

The Associated Press reported comments from Kim Kiuru, one of the school's teachers, on radio station YLE.

Kiuru described how the headmistress used the public address system around noon to tell pupils to stay in classrooms.

He said he locked his classroom door, then waited in the corridor for more news.

"After that I saw the gunman running with what appeared to be a small-caliber handgun in his hand through the doors towards me, after which I escaped to the corridor downstairs and ran in the opposite direction, " Kiuru said.

The agency reported Kiuru as saying that he saw a woman's body as he fled the school, before telling his pupils to leave the building through the windows.

Sipila said that at least four people in the school had suffered gunshot wounds and that others had been injured by shattered glass.

He added that the gunman is thought to have had a fascination with dictatorial figures such as Hitler and Stalin.

Sipila said that Finland, which has a population of about five million, has around two million firearms, although gun laws are tough. "We do not know where he got it from," he said.

Police are scheduled to give a press conference at around 1500GMT.

weazl will publish his "Manifesto". The essay is as follows:

Natural Selector’s Manifesto

How Did Natural Selection Turn Into Idiocratic Selection?

Today the process of natural selection is totally misguided. It has reversed. Human race has been devolving very long time for now. Retarded and stupid , weak-minded people are reproducing more and faster than the intelligent, strong-minded people. Laws protect the retarded majority which selects the leaders of society. Modern human race has not only betrayed its ancestors, but the future generations too. Homo Sapiens, HAH! It is more like a Homo Idioticus to me! When I look at people I see every day in society, school and everywhere... I can’t say I belong to same race as the lousy, miserable, arrogant, selfish human race! No! I have evolved one step above!

Naturality has been discriminated through religions, ideologies, laws and other mass delusion systems. Individual, who is going through his/hers natural power process and trying to live naturally, but is being told that the way he acts or thinks is wrong and stupid, will usually have some reactions which might be considered as "psychological disorders" by the establishment. In reality they are just natural reactions to the disruption of natural power process. They will have some of the following (depending on individual's personality): feelings of inferiority / superiority, hostility, aggression, frustration, depression, self-hatred / hatred towards other people, suicidal / homicidal thought etc... and it is completely normal.

Humans are just a species among other animals and world does not exist only for humans. Death and killing is not a tragedy, it happens in nature all the time between all species. Not all human lives are important or worth saving. Only superior (intelligent, self-aware, strong-minded) individuals should survive while inferior (stupid, retarded, weak-minded masses) should perish.

There is also another solution to the problem: stupid people as slaves and intelligent people as free. What I mean is that they who have free minds, are capable of intelligent existential and philosophical thinking and know what justice is, should be free and rulers... and the robotic masses, they can be slaves since they do not mind it now either and because their minds are on so retarded level. The gangsters that now rule societies, would of course get what they deserve.

Of course there is a final solution too: death of entire human race. It would solve every problem of humanity. The faster human race is wiped out from this planet, the better... no one should be left alive. I have no mercy for the scum of earth, the pathetic human race.

Collective Deindividualization: Totalitarianism & Delusions Of Democracy

Collective deindividualization is a phenomenon where individual will be trained as part of the mindless herd controlled by state, corporation, church or some other organization, group, ideology, religion or mass delusion system and adopt it's rules, morality and codes of conduct. This phenomenon has been familiar in all despotic, authoritarian, totalitarian, monarchist, communist, socialist, nazi, fascist and religious societies troughout history. Also, the modern western democratic republics have the same phenomenon. It is just done so that people will think they are free and don't realize they are being enslaved. Majority of people in society are weak-minded and ignorant retards, masses that act like programmed robots and accept voluntarily slavery. But not me! I am self-aware and realize what is going on in society! I have a free mind! And I choose to be free rather than live like a robot or slave. You can say I have a “god complex”, sure... then you have a “group complex”! Compared to you retarded masses, I am actually godlike.

Totalitarian governments rule people through education system, consumerism, mass media, monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force (police, military) and laws discriminating people who think differently than the majority. Democracy... you think democracy means freedom and justice? You are wrong. Democracy is a dictatorship of the moral majority... and the majority is manipulated and ruled by the state mafia. Modern western democracy has nothing to do with freedom or justice; it is totalitarian and corrupted system. Laws are made over the heads of the people and people are being brainwashed to support the system and connected to the institutional structures immediately after their birth. Societies are being ruled by manipulative and charismatic politicians who only care about the interests of majority, and who do not base their decisions on reason but emotions and feelings of the masses. These masses let the authorities of state to make all the important decisions for them. The masses will get an education, they study, get a job, go to work and vote in elections. They think they are free and don’t criticise or question the system. They have become robots. It is like a constructed mechanism in mind, that leaves little choice for an individual to think, talk and act independently.

Three Kinds Of Humans

There are three kinds of human personality types in this world:
1)individualistic human (3% of the world population)
2)manipulative human (3% of the world population)
3)mass human (94% of the world population)

#1 & #2 type of personalities are intelligent, creative and self-aware. They have chosen bit different paths paths. #3 type of personalities are less intelligent and less creative, weak-minded people controlled by #2 type of personalities. The percentages are only estimations though but are based on Gaussian distribution and history of human race and how humans have organized into societies. And this is the way it has always been ever since humans started to organize into communities.

Another way how to divide people is bit different but is based on the same facts, human nature and history. The division is based on the level of intelligence and quality of mentality:
1)intelligent (3% of the world population)
2)slightly retarded, so called “normal people” or “robots” (94% of the world population)
3)highly retarded, “vegetables” (3% of the world population)

Total War Against Humanity

Hate, Im so full of it and I love it. That is one thing I really love. Some time ago, I used to believe in humanity and I wanted to live a long and happy life... but then I woke up. I started to think deeper and realized things. But it was not easy to become existential... knowing as much as I know has made me unhappy, frustrated and angry. I just can’t be happy in the society or the reality I live. Due to long process of existential thinking, observing the society I live and some other things happened in my life... I have come to the point where I feel nothing but hate against humanity and human race.

Life is just a meaningless coincidence... result of long process of evolution and many several factors, causes and effects. However, life is also something that an individual wants and determines it to be. And I'm the dictator and god of my own life. And me, I have chosen my way. I am prepared to fight and die for my cause. I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection.

You might ask yourselves, why did I do this and what do I want. Well, most of you are too arrogant and closed-minded to understand... You will proprably say me that I am “insane”, “crazy”, “psychopath”, “criminal” or crap like that. No, the truth is that I am just an animl, a human, an individual, a dissident.

I have had enough. I don’t want to be part of this fucked up society. Like some other wise people have said in the past, human race is not worth fighting for or saving... only worth killing. But... When my enemies will run and hide in fear when mentioning my name... When the gangsters of the corrupted governments have been shot in the streets... When the rule of idioracy and the democratic system has been replaced with justice... When intelligent people are finally free and rule the society instead of the idiocratic rule of majority... In that great day of deliverance, you will know what I want.

Long live the revolution... revolution against the system, which enslaves not only the majority of weak-minded masses but also the small minority of strong-minded and intelligent individuals! If we want to live in a different world, we must act. We must rise against the enslaving, corrupted and totalitarian regimes and overthrow the tyrants, gangsters and the rule of idiocracy. I can’t alone change much but hopefully my actions will inspire all the intelligent people of the world and start some sort of revolution against the current systems. The system discriminating naturality and justice, is my enemy. The people living in the world of delusion and supporting this system are my enemies.

I am ready to die for a cause I know is right, just and true... even if I would lose or the battle would be only remembered as evil... I will rather fight and die than live a long and unhappy life.

And remember that this is my war, my ideas and my plans. Don’t blame anyone else for my actions than myself. Don’t blame my parents or my friends. I told nobody about my plans and I always kept them inside my mind only. Don’t blame the movies I see, the music I hear, the games I play or the books I read. No, they had nothing to do with this. This is my war: one man war against humanity, governments and weak-minded masses of the world! No mercy for the scum of the earth! HUMANITY IS OVERRATED! It's time to put NATURAL SELECTION & SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST back on tracks!

Justice renders to everyone his due.

- Pekka-Eric Auvinen (aka NaturalSelector89, Natural Selector, Sturmgeist89 and Sturmgeist).
I also use pseydonym Eric von Auffoin internationally.

Original article posted here.

A new country found to have been in the CIA web: Finland

CIA funded Finnish Social Democrats since 1940s -Book


The US Central Intelligence Agency began to fund Finland's Social Democratic party in the latter half of the 1940s, according to a book launched Tuesday by Mikko Majander, a Finnish historian.

Dr Majander, having studied new primary sources consisting of SDP treasury records taken to Sweden in the 1950s, estimates that up to 80 per cent of the party's funding came from abroad in the 1940s and 1950s. The total figure includes aid from other Nordic countries and Finnish immigrants in the US.

According to Dr Majander, 1949 was a key important watershed in the official US approach to Finnish politics as it marked the time when the Americans became convinced, thanks to the suppression of a Communist-led strike movement, that Finland had not turned into a Soviet satellite. The US viewed the SDP as the only significant force capable of keeping communism in check in Finland.

Cash aid was out of the question because of Finland's postwar controlled economy. Dr Majander discovered that the Finnish government had looked the other way as a number of parties and dozens of NGOs received "charity donations" of goods like, coffee, fruit, nylon stockings, lipstick and even cars, benefited from considerably reduced duty and tax rates, and then sold them on for handsome profits.

Although all parties engaged in so-called charity trading, the SDP's operation was the biggest.

Original article posted here.

This will not be the answer for the American sinkng ship

U.S. family seeks political asylum in Finland

Family with three young kids will get answer in several months, officials say NBC World Blog

HELSINKI, Finland - An American family with three small children has applied for political asylum in Finland, immigration officials said Friday.

The five family members came to Finland on Tuesday from Germany, said Minna Serradj from the Directorate of Immigration.

“It’s very unusual for a U.S. citizen to apply for asylum,” Serradj said, declining to give details in line with a policy to protect asylum seekers. “I don’t remember when we last had Americans applying.”

Serradj declined to comment on local media speculation that the parents possibly were seeking to escape serving in the U.S. armed forces in Iraq.

“We will handle the case just like all the others,” she said, adding a decision will be made in three to six months.

Finland has one of the smallest proportions of foreigners in Europe, amounting to just over 2 percent of the 5.3 million population. Last year, 38 of 2,300 applicants were given political asylum.

Original article posted here.

Finally, some good news

Feuding Iraqis meet for secret peace seminar in Finland

HELSINKI: Representatives from feuding Sunni and Shiite groups were meeting behind closed doors on Friday to discuss ways of ending the bloodshed in Iraq, officials said.

Crisis Management Initiative, a conflict-prevention group headed by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, said it was hosting a seminar to examine how lessons learned from peace processes in South Africa and Northern Ireland could be applied to Iraq.

"The only thing I can say is I was approached by those who have been organising this event, and (asked) whether they could come with the Iraqis to Finland," Ahtisari said.

Ahtisaari said he cleared the meeting and CMI's participation with the Finnish government. However, Ahtisaari, who was attending an unrelated peace conerence in Copenhagen on Friday, said he was not taking part in the Iraq seminar in Finland.

CMI said it was covening the closed-door meetings in conjunction with the John W McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies of the University of Massachusetts Boston.

The Finnish Foreign Ministry said it was not involved in organizing the meetings.

Organizers would not say who was attending the seminar, except to say that both "Sunni and Shiite groups" had arrived.

Original article posted here.