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Leader of Rapid Support Forces ( RSF), Hemedti, gives speech after seizing the province of al-jazeera last week. He demands the surrender of the central government and claims the RSF support a democratic transition in Sudan and a professional structure of the military without political intervention. The RSF were a pillar of Umar al-bashir's grip on power and fought alongside Saudi-Arabia in Yemen against the Huthis. al-Arabiya is sa'udi-owned, and portray the RSF sympathetically. They are pretty bad and committed various atrocities, but the central government is not really good either, to put it mildly.

https://www.alarabiya.net/arab-and-world/sudan/2024/01/01/حميدتي-على-الجيش-السوداني-الاقرار-بأنه-خسر-الحرب-

Social Organizations Reject Javier Milei’s Decree

A new mobilization has been called for Wednesday in rejection of the DNU.

On Tuesday, social organization in Argentina mobilized in the Congress Square in rejection of the Necessity and Urgency Decree (DNU) issued by President Javier Milei.

Homeless people, UVA Mortgagees, Grouped Tenants and the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy (Utep) took to the streets in the Congress Square in rejection of the adjustment against the people. They are protesting under the slogan "Adjust the caste, do not leave us homeless".

Utep demands the repeal of the Rent Law and access to land, one of the main measures dictated by the Argentine president. "This decree goes over the heads of the other powers of the Argentine Republic in the name of a freedom tailored to the caste they supposedly came to fight," said the union.

According to local media, "they are thousands and thousands. They are people who must renew their rent in the short or medium term. And with the DNU of President Javier Milei they were left in total defenselessness". The decree is not yet in force, but in fact the Rent Law no longer applies".

Gervasio Muñoz, president of the Federation of Tenants said that "when Milei names as the first point of the decree the repeal of the Rent Law, it is clear that we have touched very sensitive interests of the economic power of Argentina."

He added, "the regulation of renting in Argentina is central for the egalitarian development of society" and said that "housing is not a dream, it is a right that is conquered and defended in the streets."

Likewise, the representative of Hipotecados UVA, Paola Gutiérrez, advocates the payment of fair and predictable mortgages over time. A public policy of access to housing cannot be left in the hands of the financial system, she argues.

A new mobilization has been called for Wednesday in rejection of the DNU, which has repealed the land law, aimed at preventing foreign ownership and appropriation of Argentine resources by foreign capital.

Argetina's Caputo's failure: The IMF warned him to forget about the 10 billion dollars he wanted in January (spanish only)

Minister Toto Caputo rushed a meeting with journalists to "announce" that there will be no extra disbursements from the IMF. It was his way of anticipating the news of the new failure of his international negotiations.

After hitting Wall Street's wall before taking office, when he had promised Milei that he would get 30 billion dollars from investment funds to disarm the famous "bomb" of leliqs, he now faced the IMF's rejection, which in the last hours warned him to forget about the 10 billion extra funds he was asking for. As LPO revealed, it needs that amount not to disarm the leliqs -it seems that it can live with that "bomb"- but to pay external creditors.

Sources familiar with the talks confirmed to LPO the IMF's refusal to advance fresh funds. "They will transfer the 2,300 million that were pending from the last part of Massa's administration and, at most, they will anticipate interest on SDRs for the first quarter for 3,900 million, but only to make up reserves", explained to LPO the source consulted.

That is why, in the talk with a small group of handpicked journalists, the minister acknowledged on Thursday that the funds coming from the IMF "will only be used to reinforce reserves". That is to say, he will not be able to cancel maturities, for example, with private parties.

"Caputo is very compulsive with the financial game", repeats the IMF Western Hemisphere director, the Chilean Rodrigo Valdés, to explain why he refuses to give Milei's minister freely available funds.

"The relationship with the organization is good, we are doing more than what they imagined, that is why the same agreement continues and we are going to meet the goals", Caputo justified himself this Thursday.

However, beyond the declarations of the occasion, the truth is that the maturity schedule that the country will have to face in the next months opens huge questions about the soundness of Caputo's plan, which so far only managed to add 2 billion dollars of reserves at the cost of a 120% devaluation and the closing of imports.

According to the calculations made by the Treasury Palace, the "minimum" financial need until having the dollars from the liquidation of the coarse harvest that enters in April/May, amounts to more than 20 billion dollars.

In order to obtain them, the Minister of Economy had a series of failures: he fought with Diana Mondino to activate the swap with China, he negotiated with Qatar and Saudi Arabia without results and his tour to Wall Street in search of investors was unsuccessful.

And if we consider the horrible relations Milei has with Lula, we can predict that Argentina is going to leave Mercosur, they already have Bolivia and Venezuela to occupy Argenina's place.

Between January and April the national Treasury will have to face payments in foreign currency for 17,240 million dollars according to data from the National Budget Office, although more than half of them, some 9,421 million, are intra public sector payments which are expected to be renewed automatically.

Anyway, the Minister insists that all the commitments will be fulfilled. Again without a spokesperson, Caputo exchanged messages with Twitter users who asked him some questions about the next steps to be taken by the portfolio. When asked about the upcoming maturity on January 9 of some US$ 1,955 million in interest on the Bonar 2030 (AL30), one of the government securities issued by Martin Guzman when he restructured the debt with private parties , Caputo confirmed that it will be paid. "Sure!", he answered.

Summary of the events after Belgorod attack. TL;DR they retaliated directly at the military and some logistics targets as expected. Be careful and don't buy into western MSM narratives about retaliation and whatnot.

Russian telegram write up below DD

Slavyangrad

two majors

Conservative Party Donors Are Involved in the Essequibo Issue

British companies showed their interest in the Essequibo after the discovery of over 100 million barrels of oil reserves in 2015.

Declassified UK published an article revealing that attempts to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro may be linked to the interests of British, American, and French companies seeking control over the petroleum resources in the Essequibo region.

Specifically, journalist Molly Antigone Hall's investigation disclosed that Barnaby Swire, a British entrepreneur who secured an oil offshore contract from the Guyanese government, donated substantial sums to the Conservative Party.

Declassified UK also found that Tullow Oil, which operates in the Essequibo maritime zone, is chaired by Dorothy Thompson, a non-executive director of the Bank of England Tribunal.

Despite its purported independence from political pressures, this financial institution withheld £800 million in international reserves belonging to the Bolivarian nation.

"The UK has vested interests in how the dispute proceeds and seems to be leveraging its influence to ensure Guyana retains jurisdiction over the area. Venezuelan control would likely result in a less favorable stance towards British companies," noted Hall.

In 2017, Greg Quinn, the British High Commissioner in Guyana, acknowledged that British companies' interest had increased significantly after the discovery of over 100 million barrels of offshore oil reserves in 2015.

Hall emphasized, "Several other companies benefiting from oil offshore Guyana have a history of financing British politicians. Royal Dutch Shell, securing the rights to market Guyana’s initial crude oil cargoes, contributed over £25,000 to Labour Party politicians from 2005 to 2012."

The investigative journalist added that Total Oil & Gas, a French company with offshore exploration licenses from Guyana, donated over £11,000 to various British politicians in the past decade. She also highlighted the involvement of the UK military in the issue.

"In July 2016, Britain’s Royal Navy provided a one-week crash course to four Guyanese personnel on protecting their Exclusive Economic Zone – the water stretch 200 nautical miles from Guyana’s shoreline, housing the oil fields," recalled Declassified UK.

perkele vittu saatana. That's all the finnish i know

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert, but I can share some experiences and things learned after having moved to Finland a handful of years ago. I wasn't very well read on history when I moved here, and especially I didn't know anything about Finland's participation in WW2 or that they even had a civil war. And on top of that, I had a lot to learn about socialist theory. (Still do!)

I'm still pretty bad at speaking Finnish. I've picked up a bit just through ambient exposure, but my day to day is in English. So I probably miss a lot of political context because of the language and culture gap. I can translate the news though. Finnish posters please correct me if I've misrepresented something!

• Who are the main political actors? Are they compradors, nationalists, international socialists, something else?

Newsheads probably remember the latest election which kicked out the incumbent Social Democrat party with Sanna Marin as PM due to a rightward swing. This swing brought a number of politicians from a previously more fringe party called the Finns Party or the True Finns Party. (Or I imagine them as the Basic Finns due to the name perussuomalaiset.) They seem like the American Tea Partyers but more racist. The new PM is Petteri Orpo of the national coalition party, typical European "center right" party. To form the government, they made an alliance with the Christian Democrats and the Finns party, the latter of which was controversial. The Social Democrats are doing the equivalent of "Orange Man Bad" now that they lost.

The mainstream left party (social democratic) afaict is basically the Left Alliance (Vasemmistoliitto) which was headed by Li Andersson. I think she was the last holdout one to not fall in line on the NATO vote, but eventually did. TheFinnishBolshevik on YouTube has a good video summarizing this moment in Finnish politics.

• What are the most salient domestic political issues; those issues that repeatedly shape elections over the last 10, 20 years. Every country has its quirks that complicate analysis - for example, Brexit in the UK.

I can't really speak on this topic but Finns seem obsessed with their eastern neighbor. So the main recurring issues are related to this, such as the question of joining NATO. In 2009(?) Finland and Russia opened a high speed rail line between Helsinki and Saint Petersburg (50/50 ownership). I think this was hugely popular at least among Russians who would travel to Helsinki for tourism, and also for whatever reason really like the Finnish cheese. This rail line is closed for good. The line was closed indefinitely after the 2022 Ukraine SMO, but just a few weeks ago the Finnish government took complete control over the sitting trains (remember, 50/50 ownership with Russia) and are talking about repurposing the trains for domestic use.

• What is the country's history? You don't have to go back a thousand years if that's not relevant, and I'm counting "history" as basically anything that has happened over a year ago.

I'd really love a Finn's perspective on this. And probably other hexbears know the history better. But in broad strokes, "Finland" before becoming a single nation was a collection of ethnically Finnish enclaves (for lack of a better word idk) in different regions. I don't know these details so well, but there are Karelians to the east, Häme in the south, and indigenous Sàmi in the far north. (Someone can expand here on the colonization of Sami region by Finland, Sweden and Norway!) But the Finland we know today is a unification of the different groups, just like was seen in formation of nation states elsewhere in Europe.

Important to note Finland has only had independence as a nation for a hair over 100 years thanks to the Bolsheviks. Prior to this, Finland was handed back and forth between Sweden and Russia. I don't know the details on the Christianization of Finland, but it probably happened during Swedish rule. Finnish tribes were originally pagan.

• What factions exist, historically and currently? If there is an electoral system, what are the major parties and their demographic bases? Are there any minor parties with large amounts of influence? Independence movements? Religious groups?

Passing on this question

• How socially progressive or conservative are they? Is there equality for different ethnic groups, or are some persecuted? Do they have LGBTQIA+ rights? Have they improved over time, or gotten worse?

Well, I think most here understand the folly of "Nordic Socialism" so I don't have much to say here. Finns are pretty racist against immigrants, but had (past tense) a relatively good social welfare state. Probably strongly influenced by the Soviets to the east and the Olof Palme social democrats to the west.

• What role do foreign powers play in the country’s politics and economy? Is there a particular country nearby or far away that is nearly inseparable from them, for good or bad reasons? Is their trade dominated by exports/imports to one place? Are they exploited, exploiters, or something in between?

Absolutely cucked by the US now that they joined NATO, but it was already kinda the case. I don't know their overall relationship with the EU. Finland and the other Nordic countries occasionally make cooperation deals. A note on terminology: "Scandinavian" refers to the peninsula of Norway and Sweden. Finland isn't Scandinavian, but they are "Nordic." Estonia also badly wants to be on Team Nordic to forget their Soviet past. This is partly because Finnish and Estonian are related languages. Occasional bilateral agreements between Finland and Estonia have tried to promote this.

• If applicable, what is the influence of former colonial relationships on the modern economy and politics?

I could write a fair bit here, but it probably suffices fo say being a colony of Sweden and the Russian Empire had a lasting effect on Finnish identity and political consciousness.

• Is the country generally stable? Do you think there will be a coup at some point in the future, and if so, what faction might replace them?

I don't foresee any coups on the horizon. The Finnish population is mostly in line with their politicians as far as I can tell. HOWEVER, it does make me smile to see pro Palestine protestors and student protestors doing their part in this otherwise hellish political situation. If any political movement happens, I think it will happen from below from poorly treated immigrants and seasonal workers, OR more realistically from Finns who lost social benefits as the welfare state is carved out by neoliberalism.