Old glory and a bullhorn

« Bush and Kerry plague just about every bus stop around Helsinki. We should retaliate with something that Finns try desperately to not think about enlarged and illuminated in full-colour glory on billboards all over town....how about Åke Blomqvist? Hmm, no, needs to be more cruel. I'll have to do some research over beer with my psyop crew. »

Nothing starts a Monday and a new week like another vague terrorism alert in your area of the globe. I guess some clerk from the American embassy took the ferry over to Tallinn, got drunk, and someone with a sense of humour started talking about bombing Latvia which, because noone in the US seems to have a current world map, translated into the Baltic and Nordic regions. The news of this warning hit the local Finnish media, in Finnish, long before the following arrived in my inbox. I guess posting email is an arduous, time consuming and difficult task to do quickly for all 40 or so registered Americans in Finland. I feel so much safer now.

The U.S. Department of State wishes to alert U.S. citizens, either resident in or traveling through the Nordic/Baltic region, that it has received threat information and urges all U.S. citizens in the Nordic and Baltic countries to be vigilant as to their surroundings, especially in centers of ground-based mass transit, and to report any unusual or suspicious persons, incidents or circumstances to the nearest police authorities.

The U.S. Department of State will continue to monitor this situation and will revise this announcement as appropriate should other information become available.

Woo! I guess I had best start reporting all those shifty-eyed suspicious looking foreigners here in Finland. I know this one guy, he's an American Libertarian living in Finland. I find that fucking suspicious or at least highly masochistic. He's not real likely to blow up anything though since he's more like Homer Simpson rather than George Jetson. I know quite a few Americans here who didn't vote, too. May I report them? In a country where a neighbour saying hello in the hallway of your apartment building can startle you and seem really strange, are we really supposed to embrace the Ashcroftian-Orwellian state of paranoia and report people? Considering that Herr Bin Laden specifically pointed out Sweden as a country they wouldn't target since it's not a NATO country or has troops in Iraq, it's safe to assume that Finland is in the same company. Also, considering Finland's border guard refused entry to 2 of the 911 hijackers, and possibly others, I think I trust the Finnish police when they say they have no reason to believe that there's anything to worry about far more than the fear machine that generates random, vague, unspecific bullshit every few weeks/months just to manipulate fear levels for some yet unknown purpose. Safer world, my ass.

I went out this afternoon in high hopes that I'd either get hit by a bus driven by a crazed terrorist or bombed on a tram. Sadly, as you can see, I was unsuccessful. Tomorrow I guess I'll just have to wrap myself in Old Glory, march down to Esplanadi, and start shouting through a bullhorn to attract the terrorists who clearly would be thrilled to acquire a target so easily. *cough*