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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums‘Neutrality is Beautiful’: Majority of Finns Want to Stay Away From NATO
16:34 30.01.2016
The Finnish government is assessing the effects of the countrys possible NATO membership, Yle broadcasting company reported, citing Foreign Ministry sources in Helsinki.
The work is being done in connection with the preparation of a report on Finnish foreign and security policy.
The Ministry has appointed a group of four experts to carry out the assessment, expected to be available in the spring of 2016.
Johan Bäckman, a leading Finnish rights activist and social scientist, said that despite the official viewpoint, ordinary Finns are not particularly happy about the prospect of joining NATO.
Why did they set up this group in the first place? I think the government bent under the pressure of the Americans and their friends here in Finland. And still, even though Finland, like many other countries, is now cooperating with NATO, the whole idea is not very popular among our people, Bäckman told Radio Sputnik.
He added that, according to the latest polls, a mere 27 percent of Finns favored NATO membership, while the rest said they did not like the idea.
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/europe/20160130/1033973510/finland-nato-neutrality.html#ixzz3ykyvh2EJ
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Purveyor
(29,876 posts)without your help...
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Took on the Red Army by themselves, and that's still something to brag about.
jrandom421
(1,003 posts)Igel
(35,300 posts)Their source, their neutral main character, leans a bit to one side. Of course, utter partiality is Sputnik's "neutrality." The root of that word is, after all, "neuter." Backman prefers neutering in the face of Putin's utter virility and takes every opportunity to blow Putin's horn.
The poll cited is a bit off. And the "latest poll" is a year old. 27 percent of Finns favored NATO membership, 57 opposed--hardly a stunning number. But still, the OP's text all but require us to think that 73% were opposed.
"I don't like that" =/= "it is not the case that I like that".
There's a fairly large academic discussion over verbs that have a strict two-way meaning where negating the verb = negating the verb's denotation. So "I don't like that" = "I dislike that." They're idiosyncratic, on the surface, but show decided patterns that surpass mere idiosyncrasy.
"I don't like to eat meat but I'm okay with eating it." That sounds a bit strange, more for some than for others.
This is different from "I don't love Kate" which does not mean "I hate Kate". We have no verb "dislove".
"I don't love Kate, but okay with dating her" is perfectly fine pretty okay sounding for everybody, at least on semantic grounds.
On this score Sputnik can't claim plausible stupidity, however obvious it may be in other situations.
Then again, I guess the idiom chunk is "to blow his own horn," and "to blow Putin's horn" might be taken to have some other meaning, esp. in the case of Backman. Gee, who could've known?
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)Purveyor
(29,876 posts)might be propagandized into submission?