Nine-eleven

Photo courtesy: Michael Foran

Ten years.  A full decade now of a world changed in a single day by 19 murderous men.  In some ways it doesn’t seem so long ago; in other ways it’s a lifetime.  My kids, especially my daughter who was only five at the time, probably have no real sense anymore of how life was any different before that day. 

Of course, it’s not the same for us living in Finland as it is for Americans Stateside.  As far as I can tell, life for Finns has not changed much except in the most superficial ways.  Thankfully, there have been no terrorist attacks here, and no pervasive feelings of insecurity.  A total of two Finnish peacekeepers have been killed in Afghanistan.  Finland was not among those willing to be dragged into the mess of the Iraqi war. 

So, the so-called War on Terror has been experienced by my family mostly as trivial inconveniences at airports, inconveniences that barely register with the kids since they’ve grown up with it. 

They don’t remember the days when boarding a plane was no more onerous than stepping on a bus, when a person could walk onto an airliner carrying a pocket knife or even – as my father would do – a .22 caliber bullet or two (he would sometimes have those in his pocket, for no particular reason).  Removing shoes and jackets to be x-rayed doesn’t merit a second thought for my children. 

We’re lucky that, on a very personal level, the events of 9/11 and its aftermath have not touched us much more profoundly than that.  Not so far.  Even ten years later, it’s too early to say it is quite over yet, as fears of a credible 10^th anniversary attack in New York this weekend show all too well.  Perhaps, it will never be completely over within my lifetime, and in another 10 years we’ll again relive that day in 2001 with as much emotion as people are doing today. 

In 2001, I had spent “that day” in an off-site training session at a conference center surrounded by damp forest on the outskirts of Helsinki.  As I walked to my car for the drive home that afternoon, I got a text message.  At the time, several of my colleagues at Nokia and I were beta testers for a new mobile phone service being piloted by one of the Finnish telephone operators.  As part of this new service, we “subscribers” received breaking news headlines three or four times a day as text messages.  I’ll always remember that this was how I learned of the death of Finland’s iconic comic filmmaker, Spede Pasanen, a decidedly parochial event that will always be linked in my mind to the attacks that took place in the US four days later. 

The text message that afternoon read that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.  I assumed it was a small plane, like a Cessna, a dramatic enough accident considering it involved the Twin Towers.  Long ago, when I used to play an extremely primitive version of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator, I especially enjoyed “flying” my CGI “plane” through the narrow airspace between the Twin Towers.  And not being a very good pilot, I would sometimes crash into one of the buildings.  It was easy to see how the same kind of freakish accident could occur in real life. 

But as I drove home, news came over the radio that it was a passenger jet that had crashed into the North Tower, an accident much harder to comprehend.  I called my wife, who immediately went online and fed me updates from CNN as I navigated rush hour traffic.  By the time I picked up my daughter from daycare, the second plane had hit and we began to realize the truly sinister nature of what was happening in Manhattan. 

I remained glued to the TV for the rest of the day.  My youngest son came in from skate boarding and found me standing in front of the TV, visibly upset.  And that’s how I remember watching the tragedy unfold, mostly standing, unable to sit, as I tried to take in first the horrible images of the fires raging out of control, and then the unworldly sight of the towers falling in on themselves.  I recall saying aloud, mostly to myself:  “There will be consequences.”  That sounds absurdly obvious, and it was.

Because we didn’t have a satellite connection in our house at the time, I could see only the Finnish news and couldn’t follow the full story being reported, beyond the stark images that needed no explanation.  A British friend with cable invited me over to his apartment to watch the coverage in English, and I sat a few hours there listening to the BBC or CNN until I felt exhausted. 

All that has happened since – the wars, the extra security, the changed political and diplomatic landscape – has now been woven into the fabric of “normal life”, so much a part of our world that we might often forget the enormity of the event that started it.  Not this weekend.  As each news outlet has aired its own special remembrance of that horrible event, commemorating the nearly 3000 innocent people who died that day, the footage and images from 9/11 bring back to me the shock and sadness I felt in Helsinki 10 years ago as we watched the US being attacked.

Bizarre footnote:  Finland has one especially strange connection to the events in New York ten years ago.  It turned out that for some time, perhaps even years, prior to that September a woman in Finland had been a pen pal with Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers.  Through that correspondence she had developed, what was for her, a close personal relationship with this man, whom she likely had never met. 

Though perhaps no one will ever know the full circumstances of her relationship with Atta, I’ve understood it was completely non-political, only personal, maybe delusional.  Beyond that, I wouldn’t want to speculate about the woman’s state of mind.  Suffice it to say that she felt a strong enough personal bond with Atta that, even after his murderous actions on September 11^th, her grief and sense of loss compelled her to commemorate his death.  Apparently, after several attempts, she was finally able to persuade the Helsingin Sanomat to publish an obituary for him, I dare say the only one printed anywhere in the Western world.  Even now, simply looking at the line denoting the date of death – “11.9.2001 New York City” – sends a chill down my spine. 

A very misguided tribute to a mass murderer.

Sharecropping and vice versa

I live on the northern edge of Helsinki in a suburb called Torpparinmäki, a community clustered around a hill that barely rises above the flat bottomland of the slow-moving Vantaa River.  The name Torpparinmäki translates in English to “Sharecropper’s Hill”, which gives a clue to the earlier tenants of this quiet neighborhood. 

View toward Torpparinmäki at harvest time.

While on the subject of Finnish place names, many of them, when translated, would fit perfectly with some countrified spots back in the States.  I used to live near a part of Helsinki called “Buckwheat Ridge”, which evokes a certain nostalgia for bygone Americana.  No doubt, there are scores of prim, upscale, gated communities across the US called “Buckwheat Ridge”. 

The Tuomarinkylä Manor house, built in 1790.

The name “Sharecropper’s Hill” perhaps doesn’t carry the same kind of cachet, but it’s still a nice place.  This used to be part of Tuomarinkylä Manor, a large farming estate, something close to what back in Georgia we would call a plantation.  This stretch of rich agricultural land at the confluence of the Vantaa and Kerava rivers was already a prominent estate by the mid-1700s.  The sharecroppers who used to work this land are long gone, but the “big house”, built in 1790, still stands today, restored as a museum.  And the land, or at least part of it, is still being cultivated. 

Checking out the livestock at Haltiala.

The Haltiala Farm, which butts up against the backyards of Torpparinmäki’s row houses and single-family homes, is apparently the last working farm within Helsinki city limits.  It’s owned and operated by the city and is a popular spot for families who want to briefly treat the kids to the sight (and smell) of farm animals.  At Easter, the public is even allowed into the stables where the newborn lambs are kept. 

Bikers welcome.

Haltiala also operates a small café that has been doing extremely good business all during this summer, especially – for some reason – with motorcyclists.  The farm is a big attraction as well for the flocks of geese that have been flying over our house lately to feed among the stubble of wheat and rye. 

Associating with the locals.

Some crops have been sown especially to be reaped by a different type of two-legged visitor.  Along the road leading to the farm are fields of peas, sunflowers and assorted other flowers that members of the public can help themselves to at harvest time.  In the past, I would get at least a bag or two of peas this way, but sadly I haven’t been paying enough attention in recent years and have noticed the fields are open for harvesting only after they’ve been trampled down and mostly picked clean. 

Searching for that last pea in the field.

Still, it’s a nice touch, I think, that in Helsinki even city slickers have the opportunity to share a slice of Torpparinmäki’s history and be a pea-picker for a day. 

Buyer's Remorse?

I think it’s great how some figures of speech in English perfectly sum up a concept in just a couple of words.  Though I’m sure Finnish and practically any other language have expressions that are just as pithy and colorful, I’d like to think that English is especially inventive this way, being as it is a hugely cosmopolitan and vibrant language.  Examples of such vivid word-parings that come to mind are “bar fly”, “mission creep”, and one of my all-time favorites, “pillow talk”. 

Lately, I’ve been seeing another such phrase sprinkled all over some of the political blogs I read:  “buyer’s remorse”.  This is the regret that someone feels after – sometimes immediately after – purchasing something that at first they were probably pretty excited about.  Usually it’s used in the realm of car buying, which has also given us “sticker shock” (the unpleasant jolt you feel when you first see the selling price of a car). 

Everyone has experienced the let down (another succinct phrase) you feel after realizing the wonderful piece of merchandize you finally got your hands on doesn’t quite live up to your expectations.  This has been my standard reaction to any laptop I’ve ever owned. 

However, the “buyer’s remorse” I’ve been hearing about over the last couple of weeks has nothing to do with commerce.  It has all to do with Barack Obama.  Various progressive commentators in the media and blogosphere have started expressing more than mere disappointment with the President’s performance.  They have moved on to outright regret over voting for him. 

The notion recently gaining some currency among these bloggers is that they backed the wrong horse in 2008 and that Hillary Clinton may have been the better choice.  Regrettably, I’m starting to feel the same way. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I think President Obama is a good and decent man.  And honest.  I have no reason to think otherwise.  I think he’s a smart guy and is much better suited for the job than John McCain would have been.  I also think he’s getting a raw deal (another good phrase) from many of the critics who blame him for not being an economic miracle worker. 

Or, on second thought, maybe I agree with them.  I confess that, with the economic collapse that the US was facing in 2008, I was hoping Obama would be the second coming of FDR.  I can’t claim to be a student of the New Deal, but I’ve always had a lot of admiration for Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression, admiration passed on to me from my father who lived through those times and seemed to think a lot of FDR, despite not exactly being Democrat himself. 

When Obama was sworn into office, I was hoping he was going to rise to the occasion and guide the US through these troubling times the way FDR did in the 30s.  Instead, in the face of the conservative backlash following his election, Obama has proven to be far too accommodating to his opponents and, let’s be honest, far too weak a leader to get his agenda across to the American people.  With the exception of health care reform, that is.  That was a huge achievement, but even then it was only a halfway measure, a compromise – maybe a necessary one, but still a compromise nonetheless and one that didn’t gain him any friends among conservatives. 

In almost every confrontation with Republicans, Obama has been far too willing to give ground.  Perhaps he does this in the name of being practical or in the spirit of bipartisanship, which was a centerpiece of his campaign.  I, for one, wasn’t inspired by his promise to reach across the aisle to the other party, and it’s clear his conciliatory instincts haven’t exactly served him well. 

In the 2008 race, I was torn between voting for a history-making first black president or a history-making first female president.  I wanted to vote for both and, in a sense, I did.  I voted for Clinton in the primary, and was then happy to be able to vote for Obama in the general election.  And I was naturally thrilled that he won. 

At the time, I would have imagined that a Clinton presidency would have triggered an even fiercer backlash, given the history of the 90s and the strong hatred that Republicans still seem to feel for the Clintons.  Now, it’s hard to imagine how the backlash could have any worse, and I can’t help think that Hillary – as tough as they come and no stranger to political tangling – would have at least fought back. 

Still, I haven’t completely given up on Obama.  I wouldn’t want to see Clinton challenge him for the nomination next year, and I’ll certainly vote for him no matter what.  I just hope that, in the meantime, Mr. Obama begins to show more conviction and toughness and a willingness to finally give the Republicans a good dose of what can be summed up by another apt phrase:  “whoop ass”.

The Unthinkable

Anders Behring Breivik’s homicidal rampage in Norway a week ago has saddened many people here and has surely led to a lot of soul-searching as Finns come to grips with the very notion that something so awful could happen to a fellow Nordic country. 

The attack at Utøya also seemed to weigh heavily on the mind of my daughter, who is the same age as many of Breivik’s young victims.  The question that seems to be foremost on her mind is:  “Could it happen here in Finland?”

My gut response is to say, no, of course not.  It’s unthinkable that such a heinous act on that scale could ever happen here.  But, since I would have said the same of Norway a week ago, I guess we’re all being forced now to rethink the unthinkable. 

Not that Finland hasn’t already had its share of senseless gun violence.  We have the depressing distinction of having suffered through two tragic school shootings within the past four years – more than any other European country outside of Germany.  And the streets of Helsinki have seen at least one car bombing (that I can recall), but that was simply a settling of scores between criminals, as if that somehow makes it less worrisome. 

It’s not as if the prejudice towards immigrants that fueled Breivik’s hatred is unknown here.  The stunning rise of the Perussuomalaiset (True Finns) party in the last election attests to the anti-immigrant sentiment that appears to be growing in at least certain parts of Finnish society.  In fact, a prominent member of Perussuomalaiset, Jussi Halla-aho, a firebrand blogger and now a parliament member, was even quoted in the 1500-page “manifesto” that Breivik sent out just before beginning his killing spree. 

The manifesto, from the fraction of it that I briefly scanned, is an impressive document.  And not in a good way.  Obviously, the product of an obsessive mind, the manifesto lays out, in excruciating detail, precise instructions on how to carry out the kind of atrocity that Breivik inflicted on his countrymen. 

It also, as you would imagine, tries to explain his twisted world-view, which in a nutshell appears to be:  native Europeans should rise up, violently if necessary, to expel all non-European immigrants, especially Muslims, in order to re-establish a continent of ethnically pure European Christians. 

I can’t imagine anyone in Finland – anyone with any grounding in reality that is – sharing Breivik’s grand vision of a return to the Christendom of the Middle Ages.  But some of his attitudes and sense of grievance towards his Muslim neighbors are not, I would say, especially remarkable.  While many people here, maybe even most, aren’t noticeably bothered by the recent, though by European standards relatively small, influx of foreigners to Finland, it would be naïve to think others don’t view the changing demographics with emotions ranging from annoyance to anxiety to fear to outright hostility.  And, of course, there can be legitimate societal concerns about some aspects of immigration, which can be debated peacefully. 

But when those legitimate concerns veer off into hatred, then we should all be concerned.  Despite Perussuomalaiset's strong showing in spring, I still hope the more hateful strains of xenophobia are not making major inroads in Finland.  But how do we know?  Under the surface, how can we be sure that some Finns don’t secretly harbor the beginnings of blind hatred?  I haven’t heard anything approaching such feelings expressed by any Finns I know.  On the other hand, it’s not a topic that has often come up in the past. 

What I told my daughter was that there are, of course, some people who are not comfortable with immigration and the changes it brings to Finnish society, the very kind of changes that Breivik rails against.  But, I hasten to add that most people, even those with the strongest anti-immigration views, are surely acting only through the political process.  It is only the thankfully rare individual who lets their extreme hatred take them to the point of murdering innocent people in cold-blood. 

And I believe that, though it doesn’t mean those individuals may not be out there, plotting in some isolated barn in the peaceful Finnish countryside.  As Breivik demonstrated with such horrible efficiency, it only takes one person to darken the lives of dozens of families and bring sorrow to an entire nation. 

I also tell my daughter that, especially after Utøya, I’m sure the police in Finland are being especially vigilant.  I’m sure that more than ever before they’re on the lookout for anyone disaffected and demented enough to hatch a similar plan.  At least, I hope they are.  I hope we all are.  

There has been a lot of talk in the media and in government in the past week about the potential threat that right-wing extremists might pose here and the changes needed to counter it.  After Utøya, I hope we will all be less complacent toward extremism and that supporters of the True Finns reflect on the dangerous path their anti-immigrant platform can lead them down.  They should.

So, when my daughter wondered if it could happen here, I responded with the same answer that I used to give when the kids would ask – at the beginning of our summer trips to America – whether our plane might fall from the sky.  I say, “Yes, it could.  But I don’t think it will.”  Otherwise, how else could you carry on?  

Oslo

We are still reeling from the horror of the attacks in Oslo and Utoya this week.  The thought that someone could slaughter innocent young people in such a mechanical cold-blooded manner, it is truly beyond belief.  And the fact that it happened in calm, sleepy Norway added to the shock.  It hits close to home to think that a peaceful Nordic country, much Finland itself, could be the site of such an outrage. 

Our hearts go out to families of the victims and, in fact, to all of Norway.  I can’t imagine the grief they are experiencing right now, especially knowing that it was brought about by one of their own, apparently a lone right-wing extremist. 

Early on, when it was “just” a car bombing, it was completely plausible to suspect it was the work of some international terrorist group, though Oslo doesn’t seem the most obvious target for such an attack.  While the events were still unfolding, the Norwegian foreign minister, speaking to the BBC, however cautioned against jumping to the conclusion that the perpetrators were Islamic jihadists.  He was wise to do so, and we can only wish others in the public space (journalists and bloggers) would have exercised the same kind of fair-mindedness. 

At news of the attacks, the American conservative blogger and Tea Party firebrand, Erick Erickson, immediately tweeted:  “Terrorist bombing in Oslo.  I bet you it was not Lutherans who did it.” 

Though he was not exactly unique in making that assumption, something about his tweet struck me as especially smug.  The next day in his blog, he admitted he was wrong.  But he also objected to criticism he received for his swift judgment, and then took the media to task for insisting on identifying Anders Breivik as a “conservative Christian”. 

I’m not quite sure why he found this so objectionable (he explains it in the blog, but I’m not sure I understand it), and I think he might be missing the point.  I think that the media, by emphasizing Breivik’s religion, weren’t trying to paint Christians with the brush of terrorism, but rather were attempting to counterbalance their initial speculations that al-Qaeda was behind the killings and discourage the kind of prejudice that might lead to knee-jerk reactions against Muslims in Norway.  And by “reaction”, I don’t mean violence.  I can’t imagine that someone in Norway would have retaliated violently against the Muslim community there – but, then again, three days ago I would not have imagined that anyone in Norway would have hunted down and shot nearly 100 happy young people. 

Interestingly enough, two days before the massacre in Norway, the state of Texas put to death a local man who went on a shooting spree of blind vengeance after the terror attacks of 9/11. 

In September 2011, white supremacist Mark Stroman set out to kill “Arabs” in the Dallas area and ended up murdering a Pakistani Muslim and an Indian Hindu.  He also wounded a third man.  None was Arabic, of course, and none had anything to do with the attacks in New York and Washington. 

The sole survivor of Stroman’s shootings, a Bangladeshi Muslim named Rais Bhuiyan, campaigned unsuccessfully for clemency for Stroman.  In pleading that his attacker, who he has forgiven, should not be executed for his crimes, Bhuiyan has said, “In order to live in a better and peaceful world, we need to break the cycle of hate and violence.” 

To which I – though not able to call myself a Christian – can only add “Amen”.