Free Republic

he two countries that handle homelessness the best are Finland and Japan. Therefore, we will look at how these two countries have approached homelessness to determine exactly which country handles homelessness best.Why Finland and Japan?Firstly, let's talk about the extent of the situation within each country. In our previous article on which country has the lowest rate of homelessness, Japan was determined as the country with the smallest percentage of people experiencing homelessness in the world, with a rate of 0.003%, which is approximately 1 in every 34,000 people.Finland was determined to have the 10th lowest rate of homelessness in...

The “World Happiness Report,” compiled annually by the United Nations and Gallup, has some bad news for America’s young people: For the first time since the survey began in 2012, the United States fell out of the Top 20 and down to 23rd place—driven largely by a major decline in good feelings among those under 30.Finland remains in the top spot in the report, a feat they’ve achieved seven years in a row. The U.S. hit an all-time low ranking in the World Happiness Report, tumbling eight spots to 23rd.A steady supply of studies has found that Americans feel glum...

Commenting on a Finland-based study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, Oskari Lahtinen, the author of the study, said, “The gender divide was probably most surprising to me. Three out of five women view ‘woke’ ideas positively, but only one out of seven men.” This reflects a similar phenomenon observed in other countries, and, in America, particularly in the younger generation. But why?

Sweden officially joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Thursday, a historic shift that highlights how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is transforming European security in ways he may not have foreseen. At a meeting in Washington, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson deposited the final paperwork with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the last step needed for the former militarily nonaligned nation to become NATO’s 32nd member. Sweden’s neighbor, Finland, joined last year. To justify his aggression in Ukraine, Putin cited the possibility of NATO expansion. Now, in one of the conflict’s many twists, his war has brought a...

There are currently around 600 ranges in Finland, compared with 2,000 at the turn of the 21st century. Consider the trend. It means 1,400 shooting ranges were closed and or destroyed in the last 25 years. It coincides well with the fall of the Soviet Union, and the belief Finland no longer had to worry about invasion. The hard lessons of the Winter War of 1939 - 1940 were minimized. Although completely outmatched by Soviet manpower and material, Finns fought the Soviet behemoth and kept their independence. They are said to have caused 300 thousand Soviet casualties while suffering only...

A recent article in the Telegraph was republished on Yahoo. The article touted the Finnish government’s decision to open 300 shooting ranges to encourage the development of shooting skills by Finnish citizens, for the purpose of national defense. From the article: “This is because of our defence model, which benefits from people having and developing their shooting skills on their own.”In 2023, Finland’s new Right-wing coalition agreed plans to increase the number of ranges to 1,000 nationwide by the end of the decade, as well as plans to allow diabetics to serve in the army and encourage more women to...

The right of the people to keep and bear arms isn't just about our individual ability to act in self-defense or defense of others. As the Founders knew, the body of the people capable of bearing arms (otherwise known as the unorganized militia) is necessary to the security of a free state as well. Second Amendment attorneys Chuck Michel and Kostas Moros have done an excellent job of laying out the arguments of the Founding Generation in their recent law review article entitled Restrictions "Our Ancestors Would Never Have Accepted": The Historical Case Against Assault Weapon Bans, but the government...

Russian forces are likely planning to double their forces on borders with members of the Western security alliance NATO, the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service said in a new report. The report says that Russia is planning to create a new corps, which can include up to 45,000 troops, at NATO’s borders in northern Europe. As of 2022, Russia had about 19,000 troops at the northern border. The 44th Army Corps would likely be based in the northwestern Russian city of Petrozavodsk near the border with Finland, according to the report. The Estonian intelligence assessment said the new Russian unit would...

Finland's conservative former Prime Minister Alexander Stubb has won Sunday's presidential election, final results show. He secured 51.6% of the vote, while his Green Party rival Pekka Haavisto, the former foreign minister, had 48.4%. Mr Haavisto has already admitted defeat. It is the first election since Finland joined the Nato military alliance. Mr Stubb, 55, takes a hardline approach towards Russia, with which the Nordic nation shares a long land border.

HELSINKI (AP) – Ex-Prime Minister Alexander Stubb is projected to win Finland’s presidential election runoff on Sunday against former Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto. Finnish public broadcaster YLE projected that center-right candidate Stubb of the conservative National Coalition Party wins the Finnish presidency with 51.4% of the votes, while independent candidate Haavisto from the green left will get 48.6% of the votes.

Finland’s flagship airline has announced that it will be weighing passengers as well as their luggage. Finnair said the move, which will be done on a voluntary basis through May, is designed to improve balance calculations that will enhance flight safety. “Finnair will collect data by weighing volunteering customers and their carry-on baggage at the departure gate,” according to a statement from the company. “The weighing is voluntary and anonymous, and the data will only be used to optimize Finnair’s current aircraft balance calculations.” Finnair said that weighing passengers will help ensure that the airline doesn’t exceed the set maximum...

On this date in 1597, Jaakko Ilkka, leader of a great Finnish peasant rebellion called the “Cudgel War”, was put to death at at Old Isonkyron Church. This evocatively named disturbance broke out in the last days of 1596, so the reader will perceive that the cudgels didn’t have much by way of legs; it took place in a Finland which was then still a part of Sweden. In a typical peasant rising pattern, they won a few early encounters wrong-footing the nobility before heavy soldiery was properly mobilized and smashed the revolt. While the peasants had usual peasantry grievances,...

Explanation: You might not immediately recognize this street map of a neighborhood in Jyväskylä, Finland, planet Earth. But that's probably because the map was projected into the night sky and captured with an allsky camera on January 16. The temperature recorded on that northern winter night was around minus 20 degrees Celsius. As ice crystals formed in the atmosphere overhead, street lights spilling illumination into the sky above produced visible light pillars, their ethereal appearance due to specular reflections from the fluttering crystals' flat surfaces. Of course, the projected light pillars trace a map of the brightly lit local streets,...

Russian strategic culture: Why Russia does things the way it does By Martti J. Kari, former intelligence Colonel in the Finnish Defense Forces BACKGROUND My background is that I have served in military intelligence for most of my career. I am an officer and an intelligence colonel who retired last fall. I started here in January at the university as a teacher. I teach intelligence. As I have spent most of my career in intelligence, Russia and the Soviet Union have always been my point of interest. As a young lieutenant, I was sent to what was then Leningrad to...

Finnish start-up company Aircohol is pioneering the creation of a vodka-like spirit using carbon dioxide (CO2) extracted directly from the atmosphere. This ground-breaking approach has the potential to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint by an astonishing 50 per cent. As they say in their own words ‘Aircohol is about saving the planet in a cheerful way!’ At the core of the process is a bioreactor that converts CO2 into alcohol through a two-day fermentation process, all while avoiding the emission of greenhouse gases. The results can be distilled yet further to produce a vodka-like spirit with an alcohol content of...

Senior Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen is facing being hauled through the courts again over “homophobic” Tweets and writings going back 20 years, despite having been acquitted in the case twice already. The Finnish Public Prosecutor is appealing a November 2023 court decision that Päivi Räsänen, a long-serving member of Parliament, party leader, and former national interior minister was exercising free speech when she quoted the bible and discussed homosexuality on several occasions from 2004 to 2019. Räsänen is the former leader of the Finnish Christian Democrats Party and holds orthodox views on the issue, having described homosexuality as a “disorder...

Back in November, Finland closed part of its border and accused Russia of trying to stir up trouble by sending migrants on bicycles to border crossings. Why bicycles? It seems that Russia has been bringing these migrants across the entire country (none of them are Russian) and then giving them bikes to travel the last few miles on their own. There’s video of Russian authorities handing out bikes from the back of a van. There are no Russians trying to cross the border. They're sending people without necessary travel documents from countries like Yemen, Somalia and Syria.Russia is taking advantage...

"Russia has never threatened Finland in modern history. We had no reason for confrontation," said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. The tone intensified further after Finland announced a few days before Christmas that it was initiating a new defense agreement with the USA, granting the country access to 15 bases on Nordic soil. Both Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership last year after Russia initiated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, fundamentally shaking the security situation in Europe. Sweden's application is still pending approval, while Finland formally joined the defense alliance as a...

Could a secret trip to Finland hold the key to an unresolved chapter in American history? Documents that were kept secret for 60 years have finally been released by the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo), according to YLE. On the night of October 10, 1959, Lee Harvey Oswald checked into Helsinki’s Hotel Torni. His passport identified him as an American, and he booked room 309 for five days. However, after just two nights, Oswald abruptly left, claiming a desire to return to the US, a statement later proven false. Oswald’s Mysterious Movements In Helsinki Oswald’s actions in Finland puzzled authorities....

A court in Helsinki ordered the pre-trial detention of Yan Petrovsky, a Russian neo-Nazi mercenary who has fought against Ukrainian troops, as he awaits potential formal charges on war crimes he allegedly committed in Ukraine, the Finnish media outlet Helsingin Sanomat reported on Dec. 18. Petrovsky is a co-leader of Rusich, a Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary unit that has fought against Ukraine. He is accused by Ukraine, and now Finland, of committing war crimes during the Russian invasion of Donbas that started in 2014. Finnish authorities arrested Petrovsky in July as he tried to fly to France under the name Voislav...