The Con of the Season

Ireland's Commission for Aviation Regulation has urged a travel company called United Travel to wind down their business and refund the customers.

At least 1175 children and adults are booked with the agency to fly from Dublin to Lapland during the month of December, for the sole purpose of meeting 'Santa Claus' at his apparent home there.

But this is now unlikely to happen, as United Travel does not have a licence to operate. The Aviation Regulator refused to grant the travel agent a licence because he was unhappy with the company's financial situation.

Con Murphy, Managing Director of United Travel, says that he applied for a licence again this week, and that he is "hopeful the passengers intending to travel to Lapland will be able to do so", whether with him or another agent.

I will refrain from playing on the obvious that Mr. Murphy is aptly named. There are many like him who provide illusions, escapism, idiotic stunts and a whole variety of silly things to people with more money than brains.

When I heard of this, I first refused to believe it. But some research established that there is indeed a thriving 'industry' in Ireland that flies stupid and irresponsible parents and their gullible children to northern Finland each December, in order to meet 'Santa'. United Travel is only one of the agencies involved, but apparently the only one without a licence to operate.

The prices for these trips are quite substantial, especially when one takes into account that the people actually pay good money for a flight into the middle of nowhere, to encounter a figment of imagination, portrayed for gullible idiots by an actor who works for the company and is placed in some suitable stage settings.
People phoning into Live Line on RTÉ Radio 1 stated that they had paid as much as € 4000 for the ultimate exercise in self-delusion.

And there I was, under the impression that we are in a recession and money is tight. Obviously not yet tight enough when thousands of Irish people are willing to spend thousands of Euros each on such an unbelievably idiotic trip.

Since there are apparently three classes of idiots, United Travel offers three 'packages': the basic one-day round trip (fly to the middle of nowhere, meet a non-existent person, and fly home again) as well as visits of two and three days length.

On the company's website the one-day trip is described as follows:
"Upon arrival at the official airport of Santa Claus, having cleared passport control and customs, you will be met by your local guides in traditional Lappish costume to assist you to your designated coach and help you in collecting your thermal outfit (overalls, winter shoes, scarves, socks and gloves will be provided) for the duration of your stay in Lapland.
As soon as you get your thermal outfit organised, your elf guide will be waiting to transfer you to Santa's Winter Wonderland, which is reserved exclusively for United Travel guests, located around 30 minutes distance.
At Santa's Winter Wonderland, you will be welcomed by the sound of your favourite Christmas carols, which are played all over this magical playground. Keep yourself and your party warm with warm berry juice and ginger bread served beside the fireplace during the stay."

Similar texts - with more details - also describe the longer trips.
Just a few remarks to the text above:

• The place people are flown to is actually Rovaniemi, the administrative city of Lappi, the most northern - and by far largest - province of Finland.
• I wonder what Lappi's governor Hannele Pokka (in office since 1994 and the first woman to hold the post) would say to a dodgy Irish travel agent renaming her regional airport. (What would we say if someone in Finland would declare - for example - Knock Airport "the official airport of the Leprechauns"?)
• As both Ireland and Finland are members of the EU, there is neither a passport control nor any customs clearing. (After all, one of the main functions of the EU is a customs union.)
  
• People who cannot collect a few clothes without being helped by others must be in a serious state of physical and mental deterioration. (But then again, if they were sane and sound, they would never book the trip in the first place...) And anyone flying into the Arctic Circle without proper clothing and outfit is either an enormous fool, or suicidal.
• The website does not say if those clothes and shoes are given to every passenger to keep, or if they are worn by a different person every day. If the latter is the case, the concept of hygiene seems not to be part of the world United Travel and its passenger live in.
• It is interesting to learn that "Santa's Winter Wonderland" is "reserved exclusively for United Travel guests". Isn't it rather befitting that the imagined home of a fictional person is "reserved exclusively" for a company without a trading licence, which therefore is legally as non-existent as 'Santa'. (One wonders if there is any 'wonderland' at all, or if the whole thing is a massive con through and through... somehow the old story of the emperor's new clothes comes to mind...)
  
• In case there is actually a place with some 'Santa', being bombarded with piped music all day is a form of mental torture (banned by the UN) and can seriously damage one's mind. On second thoughts - those who go there have probably not much to lose in that matter.
  

Now, I regard myself as quite a tolerant man, and I have an open mind for all sorts of things most people would regard as unusual or weird. But this is way beyond the Pale, and I wonder how daft and brain-dead people must be who find this utter nonsense attractive, book it and pay € 4000 for it up front.

It is certainly the most shameless, tasteless and senseless commercialisation of the already highly secularised and consumerist idea of Christmas. And the fact that the company is selling expensive tickets without having a licence to fly really is the biscuit. It's definitely the con of the season.

But then again, people who are so devoid of brain functions that they willingly go for such a fraud and even tell Joe Duffy of Live Line how "devastated" they would be if they really could not fly to Lapland, probably had it coming and deserve to be taken for the fools they are. And - as an old word of wisdom tells us - a fool and his money are easily parted.

The Aviation Regulator has advised United Travel to wind down their business and refund their customers. But I have a better idea. Instead of giving back the money to fools who seem to have way too much of it, the sums paid for the flights should be seized by the Revenue Commissioners as a special new fools' tax.
As we are in recession and the government is so short of money, they can do with every extra Euro and cent. I would even go further and charge all 'Santa flyers' an annual levy of the same amount for the next three years. Hard times bring hard measures, and those who feel that they can in these times waste good money in the most idiotic way deserve to be punished.

Not even to mention the extra pollution and damage to the environment caused by the idiotic nonsense. Perhaps Finance Minister Brian Lenihan should modify his new air travel tax and raise it for any flights to Lapland to € 100 per passenger and flight.

Parents who drag their little children along to such a preposterous tissue of lies and exploitation should be charged with mental cruelty and child abuse. They should lose custody of the children.

It is bad enough to feed small children all the elaborate lies about Christmas and 'Santa', and worse to go to the so-called 'grottos' greedy shopping centres erect every December.
There mindless and cruel parents pay between 15 and 25 Euros (in some places perhaps even more) per child, in order to have their offspring conned even further by a fat man in a red suit, wearing a fake beard of white cotton wool.

Children are not stupid, and most know from observation how a real beard looks. So what is the point to usher a child for a few minutes into the presence of an obvious fake and pay good money for it?

Most modern people are really not fit to be parents, but in December they behave the worst.
Why are parents lying to children? And furthermore, why do they construct elaborate tissues of lies which are then supported by encounters with someone pretending to be a 'Santa'? (The most confusing thing for small children accompanying their mother or parents into the city is to see in the different shops several versions of 'Santa'. That a very young mind cannot work out properly and it can lead to all sorts of behavioural problems.)

Psychological research has well established that children are not stupid and can spot lies rather easily. Children also have a growing memory and often remember even the smallest details from their early years. When they grow older, they begin to realise that their parents are lying to them, and not just with regards to Christmas and 'Santa'.
This leads to mistrust and alienation, which can end in parents and children living in completely different worlds. Breakdown of family structures, disrespect for the parents, odd and unruly behaviour and petty crime are often the consequences. Some of these children will then progress through further stages into more serious crimes, gang culture and drug abuse.

Of course not every child that is dragged to 'Santa' ends up as a criminal or druggie. But there are many other kinds of illusion and escapism, often happily supported and even fuelled by the media, and especially television.
If we are wondering why our society is becoming ever more dysfunctional, we should look at the way that we - parents, teachers, the media and society as a whole - treat children and young people.

The disrespect we show children from earliest age onwards by feeding them with lies and all sorts of weird and unreal stories is stored, replicated and multiplied over the years, until the natural bonds of trust break. Once this happens, there is really no way back. And all attempts of repairing the damage later is not more than papering over the cracks, pretending - with another lie - that all will be fine. The cracks are still there, we cannot make them disappear. In most cases they will become larger with time, no matter how much we cover them up.

So if you want to live in a better society, stop lying to children and stop exploiting every last bit of culture, lore, tradition and imagination for the sole purpose of making already rich people even richer.

Few people seem to remember that the modern image of 'Santa' in its commercialised form was created during the 1920s in the USA, by no other than the Coca Cola company of Atlanta, Georgia.
They used it first to increase their sales figures during the Winter, when people were naturally less thirsty than in the Summer.
And as the corporate colours of Coca Cola are red and white, 'Santa' was clad accordingly (and still is).

The traditional roots of 'Santa' go of course much further back into history and mythology. They combine several figures - animistic wood spirits, Pagan gods and a Christian bishop - into one fictional creature, which is depicted and enacted quite differently, depending on the country, its culture, tradition and religion.
But that is really an article in its own right, and I will write it tomorrow, the traditional feast day of Saint Nicholas.

Until then I can only urge you to keep your sanity - and your money - and stay well clear of the Con of the Season.

The Emerald Islander

International Exercise VIKING 08

150 troops from the Irish Defence Forces are currently participating in the multinational, computer-assisted exercise VIKING 08, which began on November 3rd and will end on November 14th. This is the fifth in the VIKING Exercise series, which started in 1999 under the principles of Partnership for Peace (PfP).

The joint military, civilian and police exercise creates a realistic scenario based on complex, UN-mandated Chapter VII peace support operation, which includes security assistance during parliamentary elections.

Over 2000 international personnel (civilian and military) across eight sites in seven countries (Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Norway, Austria and Switzerland) are involved in the exercise.
Ireland's contribution is centred on the Military College in the Curragh and mirrors a Multinational Brigade HQ with staff from Ireland, Sweden and Austria.

Brigadier General Dennis Murphy, GOC 2 Eastern Brigade, is in command of the Defence Forces personnel.

The overall aims and objectives of VIKING 08 are for both civilian and military staffs to enhance their individual knowledge and planning skills, as well as to practice co-operation and co-ordination to ensure understanding of the roles and capabilities of the various organisations.

VIKING 08 is a learning exercise for an identifiable audience that may serve on this type of operation in the future.

Representatives from the Department of Defence, the Civil Defence, the Garda Síochána, the Irish Prison Service, Irish Aid, the Irish Red Cross, the Health Service Executive (HSE), GOAL, Concern and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees are participating in the exercise.

For more details and updates visit >
http://www.mil.se/en/Organisation/Exercises/Viking-08/

2008 Nobel Prize for Peace

The 2008 Nobel Prize for Peace has been awarded to Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland, diplomat and international negotiator, "for his important efforts, on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts".

Martti Oiva Kalevi Ahtisaari was born on June 23rd, 1937 in Viipuri / Finland, where his father Oiva was a non-commissioned officer in the service corps.
Oiva Ahtisaari, whose grandfather had emigrated to Finland from southern Norway, took Finnish citizenship in 1929 and changed his surname from Adolfsen to Ahtisaari in 1935.
The war took Martti's father to the front as a military mechanic, while his mother Tyyne moved with her son to Kuopio to escape immediate danger. Kuopio was where Martti spent most of his childhood and first attended school.

In 1952 the family moved to Oulu and Martti Ahtisaari joined the local YMCA. After completing his military service (Ahtisaari still holds the rank of Captain in the Finnish Army Reserve) he began to study through a distance-learning course at the teachers' college in Oulu. Thus he was able to live at home while attending the two-year course, which qualified him as a primary school teacher in 1959. He also was an avid student of foreign languages, and besides his native tongue he also speaks Swedish, French, English and German.

In 1960 Martti Ahtisaari moved to Karachi in Pakistan, to lead the YMCA's physical education training establishment there. During this time he became accustomed to a more international environment. As well as managing the students' home, the job involved also the training of teachers, which in itself suited him well.
He returned to Finland in 1963 and attended the Helsinki Polytechnic Institute. He was also active in organisations responsible for aid to developing countries and joined AIESEC, the world's largest organisation of university students.

In 1965 Martti Ahtisaari joined Finland's Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He first served in the Bureau for International Development Aid, eventually becoming the assistant head of that department. Later Ahtisaari transferred to the diplomatic service and held a number of embassy posts, mostly in Africa. After several promotions he became Finland's Ambassador to Tanzania, Zambia, Somalia and Mozambique.

Following the death of the UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, on Pan Am Flight 103 (which exploded due to a bomb on board over the Scottish town of Lockerbie) on December 21th, 1988, Ahtisaari was sent to Namibia in April 1989 as the UN Special Representative to head the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG).
After completing this task, he became a member of the council that was seeking a peaceful settlement of the civil war in Bosnia.

He was still in this position, when Finland's Social Democratic Party asked him to become their candidate for the upcoming presidential election. After a change of the Constitution the President of Finland was directly elected by the people for the first time in 1993 (previously an electoral college made that decision) and thus the party was looking for a candidate without political baggage.
Ahtisaari accepted the candidacy and his politically untarnished image was a major factor in the election, as was his vision of Finland as an active participant in international affairs.

He narrowly won the election in the second round, beating his opponent Elisabeth Rehn of the Swedish People's Party, and served as Finland's first directly elected head of state from March 1994 to March 2000.

His term as President began with a schism in the Centre Party government, led by Prime Minister Esko Aho, who did not approve of Ahtisaari's active involvement in foreign policy. There was also some controversy over Ahtisaari's speaking out on domestic issues, such as unemployment.
He travelled extensively in Finland and abroad and was nicknamed 'Matka-Mara' (Travel-Mara).
His monthly travels throughout the country and his meetings with ordinary citizens - the so-called maakuntamatkat (provincial trips) - greatly enhanced his political popularity.

As President Martti Ahtisaari supported Finland's entry into the European Union, and in a referendum in 1994 a majority of 56% of Finnish voters were in favour of membership.

Following his invitation, Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton met in Helsinki. He also negotiated alongside Viktor Chernomyrdin with Slobodan Milošević to end the fighting in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo in 1999.

Often encountering resistance from the Finnish parliament, which preferred a more cautious foreign policy, as well as criticism from within his own party, Martti Ahtisaari did not seek re-election in 2000.
He was succeeded by the foreign minister Tarja Halonen, who became the first female President of Finland and is still the incumbent, now in her second term.

Since leaving office, Martti Ahtisaari accepted positions in various international organisations and founded the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), an independent non-governmental organisation with a goal in developing and sustaining peace in troubled areas.

In 2000 and 2001 he came to the North of Ireland and - together with Cyril Ramaphosa of the ANC - inspected IRA weapons dumps for the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (under the Canadian General John de Chastelain) as part of the Northern Ireland peace process.

In 2005 Ahtisaari successfully led peace negotiations between the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) and the Indonesian government through his non-governmental organization CMI. The negotiations ended on August 15th, 2005 with a treaty on disarmament of GAM rebels, the dropping of GAM demands for an independent state of Aceh, and withdrawal of non-organic Indonesian forces.

In November 2005 UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Martti Ahtisaari as Special Envoy for the Kosovo status process, which was to determine whether Kosovo should become independent or remain a province of Serbia. (Kosovo had been administered by the United Nations since the 1999 Kosovo War.)
Ahtisaari opened his UN Office (UNOSEK) in Vienna, from where he conducted the Kosovo status negotiations.
Those opposed to Ahtisaari's settlement proposal, which involved an internationally-monitored independence for Kosovo, sought to discredit him. Allegations made by Balkan media sources of corruption and improper conduct were described by US State Department spokesman Tom Casey as "spurious", adding that Ahtisaari's plan is the "best solution possible" and has "the full endorsement of the United States".

However, in July 2007, when the EU, Russia and the USA agreed to find a new format for the talks, Ahtisaari announced that he regarded his mission as over.
After a period of great uncertainty and mounting tension Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia in February 2008. (see my entry from March 1st)

Ahtisaari strongly defended the actions of US in the crisis that preceded the current war in Iraq. After the war had started, Ahtisaari said: "Since I know that about a million people have been killed by the government of Iraq, I do not need much those weapons of mass destruction". (Iraq's - non-existent -weapons of mass destruction were the primary reason the USA gave to justify the attack.)

Finnish intellectuals and the professor of history Juha Sihvola, who thinks the current war in Iraq is not justified, criticised Ahtisaari's conclusions about the morality of the war, saying that they were "astounding".

And Johan Galtung, the Norwegian founder of peace studies, also criticised heavily Ahtisaari's way of handling peace processes. Galtung claims that "Ahtisaari does not solve conflicts, but drives through short-term solutions that please western countries". He further says that Ahtisaari "lets the EU make use of him". According to Galtung, "Ahtisaari does not hesitate to favour solutions that bypass the United Nations and international law".

On the other hand, the Prime Minister of Finland Matti Vanhanen said that Ahtisaari has been "very determined in his peace negotiations" and that results are only achieved when peace processes are being moved ahead determinedly.

It is not unusual to hear and read such different statements. No-one who stands in the limelight of international politics has only friends or only enemies. People always takes sides, and have their own views, assessments and opinions.

The Nobel Committee in Oslo, which awards the Prize for Peace (while all the other Nobel Prizes are awarded by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm) must have weighed the different arguments and opinions of Martti Ahtisaari before they made their decision. They have found him worthy of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Peace, and he is certainly a worthy recipient.

Furthermore, the prize will help the work of the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI), the organisation Martti Ahtisaari founded and uses for his peace negotiations.
The 71-year-old, who is married and has one son, is in good health and will certainly be strengthened and inspired to further initiatives by receiving this high international honour.

Having met him once briefly in Belfast, when he was here as member of the Decommissioning Board, I remember a man with determination, strength and will power, who is nevertheless very polite, speaks softly and has a certain charisma. And whatever his critics say about his work in Kosovo, for Ireland he has done a lot of good. With our thanks for that we combine our heartfelt congratulations and wish him good health and further success for many years to come.

The Emerald Islander

Finnished

I don't like to write about killers. In my opinion they don't deserve publicity and are getting already too much as it is, especially from the sensationalist tabloid papers and certain private TV stations.

And this is not about the 22-year-old Finnish man who ran amok yesterday in the local vocational college of Kauhajoki (photo left), about 330 km north-west of Helsinki. (As it happens, I know the place from a visit there, many years ago. And I would never have thought that it would ever make headlines in the world's media. But these days no place, no matter how remote it is, seems to be safe any more...)

No, this is about gun control. We all know how appalling the system of free guns for all is in the USA and how often we hear of massacres from there. Nevertheless a significant part of the American people still cannot see sense and insists on universal gun ownership as a principle right.

Well, I am not an American and don't live in the USA. And I even refuse to set foot on US soil since the coup d'etat that brought George W. Bush to power in 2001. So I am not really concerned with the USA as such, except that it concerns me how their policies have an ever growing influence on the rest of the world.

Here in Europe more and more people have an American lifestyle and misbehave in the same way as they see it done by Americans in films and on TV. But fortunately we have very strict gun-control laws, which means that few people are allowed to own guns and massacres carried out by mad people are very rare.

Finland, being a large country with a small population, has strict gun laws as well. But since it is very densely forested and many people live in rural and rather wild areas, the policy of allowing gun ownership (especially for hunting rifles) is somehow more relaxed than in other European countries.
However, yesterday's massacre, which was carried out with a handgun, has woken up the Finnish people and started a discussion about the matter. And that is a good thing in the wake of a very bad and tragic day.

Finland's President Tarja Halonen (photo right) called the incident "shocking and sad", and one can expect changes to the country's gun laws in due course.
"We have to have very serious discussions and studies on what to do," she told a news conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, which she currently attends.

"Among the topics for discussion will be general gun control and the differences between hunting rifles and handguns," said Finland's Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb.

So it is not unlikely that liberal gun ownership in Finland might end soon, and the idea that anyone can run around toting a loaded gun - as it is still the case in the USA - is finished for good.

The Emerald Islander