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Net Addiction Gets Finnish Soldiers Out Of Army
nerdb0t writes "Reuters is reporting that the Finnish Defense Forces have allowed some men to be excused from military service because of 'Internet Addiction.' The service period is 6 months - but that's too long away from the internet for these guys. Is this a joke? Is this a legitimate illness? Hm..where can I apply for disability..."
They don't get pardoned forever. It seems they got 'E' which means 'go home and grow a little'. So they need to come back and do their service 2-3 years later.
For record you can get 'E' just by requesting it, these guys were forced to 'E' due to addiction =)
(status of different letters in Finnish Defence Forces:
A - primary letter given to everyone, capable of active service
B - Some problem, maybe bad allergy or old injury
C - No service during peace time
D - No service (even if it's war time)
E - Service postponed )
People drop out of the military for many reasons. Most people can't cope with the sense of authority that the army instills. All of these are sent home to grow up for a couple of years - net addiction is not an excuse, it just means that you're psychologically unfit at the moment.
Military service is mandatory in Finland, and min. service time is 180 days, max. 362 days. You can also carry out the service as civil service (395 days) and in some cases as unarmed military service (330 days if I remember correctly).
www.mil.fi
Those that refuse to enter even civil service can be sentenced to (usually a minimum security) prison for 197 days (max.).
We use cell phones more than the internet, at least for now, so keeping in touch really isn't the thing internet is used for (cheap broadband is available in the south, the rest will have to pay their asses off on dialup or expensive broadband.)
The alcoholism isn't a problem for the military, since the drinking occurs on the soldiers' free time.
The thing about finnish military service is it's mandatory. If you don't want to do the punishment of 13 months of civil service, it's at least 6 months in the army. If you refuse both, you go to jail. Amnesty considers Finland one of the few countries that take prisoners because of their ideology.
The way to avoid service is to come up with a reason for them not to want you. The most common would probably be mental illness of sorts. There are countless stories about people doing the weirders stuff to convince their superiors they should be dismissed.
I think that would explain the net addiction. Somebody came up with a new way to avoid doing their time for another two years.
Yep, this is standard practice in the Finnish army. If you break down and say you can't take it anymore, for whatever reason, you can get out. But you'll have to come back after a few years (the assumption being that you have grown up a bit).
http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/F/Finn
However, with this bullshit, you wonder how they would fair now...
...and it has been happening for few years.
It's really not just their addiction that excuses them from serving their country.
I think the main reason is their lack of interest and ofcourse they are in a such a bad shape that it's impossible to manage the armyduties.
I mean that if you sit in front of your computer for 12 hours a day and then you suddenly have to wear 30-40 kilos backpack and told to march 10 kilometres.
/* If everybody would be like me the world would be much better place to be - at least in my mind. */
Umm, the conscripts serve 362 days at most. If you want to become an officer, you have several routes to choose from.
1. Go to the military academy (Officers)
2. School yourself in some civlian field and join later with your crendentials (i.e. electric engineers and the like) (Warrant officers)
3. Sign up after the army (NCOs).
It's entirely possible to make a career out of the army. Just because the conscription term is max. 362 days doesn't exclude anyone from staying longer as long as they work for the military.
The Finnish performance in WW2 was mainly due to four factors. One, Stalin didn't send enough troops to the Finnish front so the Finnish army wasn't completely overrun. Two, the winter '39-'40 was very cold, even by Finnish standards, so the Soviet mechanical advantage was lost. Three, the Finnish army was very good in the use of artillery. Four, defending your homeland gives you some extra boost compared to simply invading some other country. I don't think that the "quality of the soldiers" was that much different.
:)
However, the recent studies have shown that most young Finnish people would jump to the arms if Finland were invaded, so I don't think this net addiction thing has any effect on that
Most developed countries that practise conscription (manditory military service for all or at least all male citizens) anymore don't do it to maintain a serious force. The face of warfare has changed, as the latest Gulf conflict really demonstrated, such that lots of cannon fodder with machine guns, which is about all conscripts are good for, can't hold a candle to technology. Well you can't have a conscript flying a plane or driving a tank, that takes a volunteer.
Doesn't mean it's worthless though. It's an "in case shit", to borrow a Chris Rock phrase, policy. Suppose someone was trying to invade Finland and NATO just wasn't able to send immediate help. Maybe it's WWIII or something. Whatever, just suppose. If everyone has had basic training, when you draft them it takes much less time to get them up to speed. You don't have to train them from scratch, or send them totally untrained against the enemy, you just give them a quick refresher and they can fight.
This goes double for countries with Finland that have, shall we say, inhospitable terrain.
Thing is, even if Finaland made every able citizen in their country serve in the military full time, they'd still not have a real military force to speak of only 1 million people and at conscript level abilityies. Never mind you'd destroy the economy doing that. So they don't, they have a small perminant military for the little things that need it, and then give everyone a little training, just in case.
Switzerland takes theis to the extreme, actually requiring all their households to have a government issued machine gun, which their citizens learn how to use during manditory military service. That combine with the terrain would make Switzerand an iron clad bitch to invade. That, and the finincal cooperation, were the two reasons the Nazis didn't invade.
It's not a real common practice these days, but it still works.
I think the rally driver bit can be explained by the fact that the countryside is full of small gravel roads which, in addition, are covered in snow and ice half of the year. The kids who are unfortunate enough to live there have nothing else to do so they end up driving around in old non-licensed cars. There even exists a term for these cards: peltoauto (field card). I never heard the word before I went to the army and actually met people from the Finnish periphery (kind of a tautology...)
F1 is more of a mystery. The drivers seem to be coming from places with paved roads. Go-karting? Anyway, we have produced more than those two F1 drivers (I'd argue any F1 driver is by definition a world class driver): Keke Rosberg (1982 world champion), Mika Hakkinen, J.J. Lehto, Mika Salo, and Kimi Raikkonen.
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