The Finnish government is now a substantial way through its programme to cut €9 billion of public spending by 2027, including large reductions to social security (including housing, child, and unemployment benefits) healthcare, education, and municipal funding budgets, while it also increasing taxes on average earners. Cuts to healthcare provision have been particularly brutal, including a large reduction in hospital staff numbers, elderly care and disability services while redefining “minimum service obligations” to justify providing patients with lower quality care. The government has also slashed funding for organisations working on peace and initiatives which would address the new cold war-style relations with Russia.

And among the beneficiaries of a new tooled-up and aggressive Finland are the arms dealers of the Israeli apartheid-genocide complex, which in 2024 sold Finland its questionably functional “David’s Sling” air defence system for €316 million. Finland has also bought tank and ship missiles from the Israeli company Rafael which supplied most of the weapons and equipment used to commit the genocide of Gaza. The Finnish government said Israel’s genocide of Gaza would not stop it buying weapons from the country, a position which is par for the course among the morally bankrupt leaders of Europe.

  • axh@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    The entire post is propaganda. It’s enough to analyse the language used to see that. The author tries to show Finland’s conscious decision to, like most European countries, increase spending on defence, as “bad NATO is forcing them to cut children’s health care”

    • Narri N. (they/them)@lemmy.ml
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      5 hours ago

      Nobody asked the population if we wanted to join NATO, if we even believed Russia to be a threat, fuckface! This whole shit was an incredible show how undemocratic the whole west has always been. And still there are unthinking fucking dipshits like you, liberal or fascist – which doesn’t even fucking matter cause you’re made of the same fucking cloth anyway, parroting the same fucking talking points that the western puppets in charge are making! Why do you choose to be so fucking blind? You fucking sheep, you absolute fucking infantile fool!