Newspapers' days are numbered.

Today is a special milestone for The Daily Telegraph, almost as important as the 160th anniversary last year.  For Thursday 25th February 2016 is issue number 50,000.   But with the state of print media, noting the imminent closure of the hard copy of The Independent and The Guardian's continued moves to an online-only paper, The Daily Telegraph would be lucky to make another 5,000 print days.

Finland laughs out loud at extremists

As national governments and the European Union struggle to come up with a viable plan to deal with the refugee influx from the south, unpleasant far-right elements have taken to form vigilante gangs that aim to harass and intimidate newcomers. Finland is no different and a squad of thinly veiled neo-Nazis calling themselves the ‘Soldiers of Odin’ (after the Norse god) has arisen, originating in the northern town of Kemi, near an entry point for migrants. Blaming crime on immigrants, especially those who are Muslims, they patrol the streets menacingly. The ‘Soldiers’ have been boosted recently by the sex attacks in Cologne and Sweden and the alleged cover-ups in both places, plus an unprecedented surge in sexual attacks in Helsinki on New Year’s Eve that the capital’s police have blamed on some Iraqi asylum seekers (though this conclusion has been disputed). The ‘Soldiers of Odin’ Facebook page has 29,000 ‘likes’.
In 2015, Finland did receive a 900% increase in immigrants entering the country compared to 2014 yet is still well below the EU average for foreign composition of the population. Moreover, there are plenty of Finns outside of the government and police who are disturbed by the antics of the ‘Soldiers’. Some Finns have taken to combatting these patrols not through angry marches (for Finns are mostly peaceful and non-violent) but through mockery. ‘Lol’, the textspeak for ‘laugh out loud’, has an international currency (though not for the current British prime minister) and some multilingual Finns have adopted it to become the ‘Loldiers of Odin’. A comedy collective that claims both groups are clowns and wants to march alongside the ‘Soldiers’ night after night, they wear an amalgam of bathrobes, pyjamas, white face make-up and red noses.
In Tampere, the ‘Manchester of Finland’ (from its industrial, red-brick past) and a short bus ride away from the town of Nokia, the local branch of the ‘Soldiers’ were in the midst of questioning some non-white people on the street, demanding to see their victims’ ID cards and asking if they Muslim, when they were intercepted by the Loldiers. One of the latter, named Daffodil, said, “The night was dark and full of terror, we spread some fun to correct this error!” Such fun included playing around in shovelled snow, kicking balls and shaking tambourines.
One of the Loldiers, dressed in a striped dressing gown, a bushy beard and a ‘traditional’ horned Viking helmet (along with other various items of clothing underneath commensurate with protection against -30 degrees) proclaimed himself jokingly as Odin and said, “My soldiers are keeping the streets safe. Everyone can be safe tonight.” Another waved a flag which on one side had a splayed mockery of a swastika on one side and on the other ‘Sieg Fail’. The ‘Soldiers’ were unimpressed (later griping online about ‘anarchist clowns’) and, embarrassed, beat a rapid retreat out of the town centre. The Loldiers waved goodbye and sang them a farewell song. Is laughter the best way to confront fear and intimidation in a manner going back to Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator and David Low’s cartoons? The issues surrounding the level of immigration are serious and integration and assimilation into Finnish values will take time. But vigilantes like the ‘Soldiers of Odin’ are themselves against Finnish values of tolerance and compassion and if they can be shamed to keep off the streets, those who seek a new and peaceful life in Finland will be better able to participate in society. In that sense, the Loldiers perform a valuable service at the grassroots level in a way that is both uniquely Finnish and appealing to the universal aspect of humour.

Big brother doesn't always know best

When the US government of Barack Obama came out in favour of Scotland remaining part of the United Kingdom, it was something I welcomed but was denounced by Scottish Nationalists as meddling in 'internal affairs'.  The same response has been drawn from EU-phobes campaigning for the UK to leave the European Union after many briefings that Washington D.C. prefers this country to remain in the 28-member club.  There is something deliciously Beijing-style about the complaints on the impingement of sovereignty from these two groups.
Ash Carter, the US Defence Secretary, it is reported today, has made an intervention in the debate about whether to retain Trident as part of the UK's 'defence' capabilities.  In his words, Trident enabled Britain to “continue to play that outsized role on the global stage that it does because of its moral standing and its historical standing.  It’s important that the military power matches that standing and so we’re very supportive of it.  We depend upon the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom depends on us, that’s part of the special relationship. We build Joint Strike fighters together, we build Trident missiles together.”
Now, I'm not going to criticise the US for taking a position on this - the fierceness of the argument has made them sit up and listen rather than just take the UK for granted that it will renew.  In both, the Scottish and EU cases, the US was acting from selfish reasons that, from my perspective, just happened to chime with the best in the national interest (or nations' interest).  Here, though, Carter makes the same vague arguments as those in this country, except he's not as brazen to say that Britain will be undefended as he knows the US nuclear umbrella protects all in NATO, nuclear- and non-nuclear-armed.
Contrary to Carter, Trident actually diminishes Britain's role because it means there has to be cutbacks to other service branches.  One of our two new aircraft carriers has to be mothballed and neither has a full complement of an air arm.  Aircraft carriers (and auxilliary vessels), sufficient numbers of troops that can enforce governmental policy-making, an air strike capacity - these are the instruments that allow the UK the military power to match its moral and historical standing.
The much vaunted special relationship is a one-way avenue since the USA helped divest the UK of the latter's empire to replaced by the former's informal empire.  But without really explaining why the UK needs Trident, Carter said something important - "We build Joint Strike fighters together, we build Trident missiles together."  That's the nub of it - Carter is acting as cheerleader for his own military-industrial complex, where there would be job losses if Britain did not retain Trident.  Also, the USA would have to increase it burden marginally of patrolling the North Atlantic corridor as the UK became a 'freerider' like every other NATO apart from France, which has a genuine independent nuclear deterrent - how the US would dearly love the French to adopt a British model of dependence on the US.  But that's not in France's interests and nuclear weapons where the US has the final say on their deployment is not in Britain's interests either.