Kemijärvi

I've been meaning to write something about the closure of a Stora Enso pulp mill in Kemijärvi, but the story keeps growing in all directions, so I'll just do a quick recap of its main branches.

There's the government ownership angle. The government owns a plurality of Stora Enso stocks, so the opposition demands that it throw its weight around to influence Stora Enso's decision. (Here's the Left Alliance linking Kemijärvi and Bochum.) The government resists, preferring use its stocks to make money rather than politics - and, truth be told, most opposition parties would agree were they in the government.

There's the Massaliike (fi) ("Mass Movement") angle. It's a citizens group that wants to keep the pulp mill operational or, failing that, to set up a new mill in place of the old. The demonstration it organized when Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen visited Kemijärvi - a break from chatting with Dick Cheney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bill Gates - was a pretty effective spectacle.

There's also the Anaika Group angle. I find this part of the story quite confusing. Anaika wants to buy the mill's site to set up a wood processing factory. Some Kemijärvi folks seem to believe that the company isn't on the up and up, but in that case, what angle would it be exploiting?