HELLO TO ALL THAT... AGAIN
This time it is Finland. The brutal and nasty truth that is war memory returns to haunt many folk. New photographs "emerge" from the archives of government and military and newspapers can no longer ignore bad and sad facts of war. After the recent freedom of information act in Finland people ask : just how much more can we take?

The biggest newspaper in Finland ( Helsinki Sanomat : an on-line English language version is available) is one of many influential news reports that are asking the question : "What is to be done" now we know more of the truth of our war?" and indeed this question is a big one. But the bigger question is this -- why cover the bad and sad and difficult bits up in the first place? What many local folk have known for generations ( executions and awful happenings from all sides of war) the news papers today take more seriously. The internet is a part of this and so is the changes brought about by government legislation on freedom of information over the last few years. But what Finland is today asking about in public is no Finnish thing. We only need to have a few young German or Austrian friends to realise that.

My own past contacts with the UK taught me many a lesson. I doubt even today that there is reliable information available there concerning the killing of British soldiers by British soldiers and especially the murder of British officers by the rank and file. In Finland too executions were happening. i have one working friend who wrote that he was lucky to be alive and owed his life to a fairly big business boss of a factory. You see his grandfather was waiting in line to be executed ( he was too left wing) but the business boss stepped in and said that this man, the grandfather, was an excellent worker and should be saved. Stories like this are so common that we must ask why the newspapers and official news reports fail in the truth stakes.
OK : there are overt and covert actions at work here both by organisations and by individuals. But there is also something equally ( perhaps more) scary. There are "Structures" out there which move against truth in war or truth in everyday life. It may some time before we can say Good Bye To All That.