Finnish army "humour"...

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ihttp://koti.mbnet.fi/sinoli/Huumori/Iltavahvari/IMG_0543.JPG

Rest of the pics can be viewed here.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 17 March 2005 09:01 (twenty-one years ago)

That girl at the back is way hotter than Lynddie England ever was :)

― kate/thank you friendly cloud (papa november), Thursday, 17 March 2005 09:14 (twenty-one years ago)

tuomas you know what the obvious american joke is here, right?

― f--gg (gcannon), Thursday, 17 March 2005 09:42 (twenty-one years ago)

FINNISH ARMY?! HAHAHA!!

― f--gg (gcannon), Thursday, 17 March 2005 09:43 (twenty-one years ago)

(that "joke", my young friend f--gg, is not that "obvious" after all. if you care to think about the years just preceding wwII, especially)

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Thursday, 17 March 2005 09:58 (twenty-one years ago)

er well i know the sniper with the most notches in his rifle butt is/was a finn. and its history w russia is nasty, right? is that what you're talking abt? look it's pretty simple, the "joke" goes: [some country that is not america]'s ARMY?! HAHAHA!! inna freerepublic stylee

― f--gg (gcannon), Thursday, 17 March 2005 10:05 (twenty-one years ago)

okeij, okeij...

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Thursday, 17 March 2005 10:12 (twenty-one years ago)

and its history w russia is nasty, right

Often, but to address the specific point -- in late 1939 Stalin took the opportunity of World War II to invade Finland so as to pick up some territory. As he had the Red Army, which itself was larger than the population of Finland as a whole (or something like that), it was assumed to be a walkover. Except the Finnish army proceeded to grind the Red Army forces that were sent to a screeching halt due to superior equipment and leadership, and it was only after massive reinforcements that the Soviets finally won. (The fact that Stalin had been purging the Army a couple of years beforehand doubtless didn't help.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 17 March 2005 11:58 (twenty-one years ago)

(The fact that Stalin had been purging the Army a couple of years beforehand doubtless didn't help

Well evidently this's misleading us even further away from "Finnish army "humour"" as such, but - as per Stalin's pre-wwII purge of the red army leadership, there're now several Russian (younger-generation) historians who argue that that army-purge was one of the *reasonable* things Ol' Evil Jossif did, for many of those higher commanders weren't worth shit as war leaders... Go figure.)

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Thursday, 17 March 2005 12:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Up comes counterfactual history again: how do we *know* that the purged officers would have been any better or worse in WWII? They didn't have to fight in it.

However good or bad they were, losing such a large percentage of the officer ranks is bound to leave an army a little short of leaders.

― caitlin (caitlin), Thursday, 17 March 2005 12:47 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't know if the Soviets actually "won" after that really. They got the chunk of land they were after but that only lasted until the finns were reinforced by the Germans. I guess they did win the negotiations after the war tho, since they were awarded the land back.

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Thursday, 17 March 2005 15:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, they're making a Hollywood-style version of the Winter War. And for your listening pleasure: http://heninen.net/kaunotar/english.htm

― Guymauve (Guymauve), Thursday, 17 March 2005 17:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Sorry, I didn't have the time to explain the context of the pictures. These pics (apparently set up by privates just for fun) caused a mild scandal in Finland, because some of them obviously parody the Abu Ghraib pictures, which makes them to be somewhat in bad taste. Regardless of that, I find the implicit and explicit homoeroticism of them quite interesting. The Finnish army is usually considered very heteronormative, and conscientious objectors like myself (Finland has a compulsory military service, which can be substituted with a [longer] civil service) are often called "homos". Which makes picture like this quite amusing:

http://koti.mbnet.fi/sinoli/Huumori/Iltavahvari/IMG_0548.JPG

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 17 March 2005 20:26 (twenty-one years ago)

NSFW!

― Thermo Thinwall (Thermo Thinwall), Thursday, 17 March 2005 20:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Vintage WWII era photo of the Finnish army preparing to clobber the Soviets:

http://www.hut.fi/~vpsaarin/nainmeilla.jpg

― Lingbertt, Thursday, 17 March 2005 21:15 (twenty-one years ago)

"clobber the Soviets"

― nickn (nickn), Thursday, 17 March 2005 21:30 (twenty-one years ago)

robble @ dude on right

― f--gg (gcannon), Thursday, 17 March 2005 21:32 (twenty-one years ago)

and lo, a new photoshop meme is born.

― f--gg (gcannon), Thursday, 17 March 2005 21:33 (twenty-one years ago)

I think I posted the same pic to another thread...

Geoff, are you talking about the guy who's swallowing his fist?

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Saturday, 19 March 2005 11:24 (twenty-one years ago)

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