Image is of President Hakainde Hichilema and President Xi Jinping on September 15th, from this article.
Zambia is a country of 20 million people, located in southern Africa. Breaking free from British rule in the 1960s, the new government was a one party state ruled by the socialist UNIP party with its leader Kenneth Kaunda, who was a strong supporter of the Non-Aligned Movement (and was its chairman from 1970-73). Its economy has been and remains characterised by copper exports - it is the second-largest copper exporter in Africa - and the economy deeply struggled in the 1970s due to the price of copper plunging. After the fall of the USSR, and due to violent protests, Kaunda stepped down and instituted a multiparty democracy, which has been maintained without (successful) coups to this day, though there are warnings by the leader that some are plotting a coup, given the trend right now.AA
Earlier this year, in June, Zambia struck a deal to restructure the $6.3 billion in debt that they are burdened with, of which China is the single largest creditor.Reuters Though he has typically been more West-friendly, last week, President Hichilema traveled to China for two days, meeting with various companies, and Xi Jinping himself. They elevated their relationship to that of a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.Xinhua He and Xi have agreed to the increased use of local currencies in trade.BB
Hichilema said Zambia thanks China for supporting the African Union's entry into the G20 and China's positive role in resolving the Zambian debt issue. The Zambian side abides by the one-China principle, highly appreciates the guiding philosophy and principles of Chinese modernization, and hopes to learn from China's development experience.
Hichilema has also said:AN
"We can do more, faster, because the needs are tremendous in Zambia. I heard some of the solutions are here. All we need to do is to combine the two together."
Check out @Othello@hexbear.net's discussion of The Wretched of the Earth!
The Country of the Week is Singapore! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The news summary for last week is here!
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
Beneath all the shitposting and memes about the war, the most
moment i've felt about this was when i was in Cuba earlier this year. I had a conversation with an older russian man, and he showed me pictures on his phone. Pictures of his youth, hanging out with friends, drinking, partying, etc. But, he also showed me pictures of his unit. A ragtag mix of russians and ukrainians. All under the red banner. He showed me a picture of him at a cafe with those same people many years later. 2021. He doesn't know if he'll ever see them again.Zelensky Grabs Whatever Office Supplies He Can Get Hands On In Capitol, Saying He Needs It For War
People got really mad on twitter over this one lmao
[Poland/Ukraine]
Poland stopped sending weapons to Ukraine over the dispute over the Ukrainian state forcing the lifting of the agricultural import ban for Eastern European countries. Transit of goods will still be maintained, but the weapons are set to be used for domestic buildup purposes from now.
It's currently election season in Poland and Slovakia, and the local agrarian petty/bourgeois doesn't exactly want competition.
Is this the Ukrainian government's most foolish mistake since the start of the war? Pissing off their staunchest supporters?
pentagon defense procurement paper from last year
conclusions:- no commercial application for missiles makes them unprofitable
- china makes everything
- nobody wants to invest in domestic manufacturing
- nobody wants to work in manufacturing, much less for the DoD
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/us-military-unequipped-high-intensity-combat-206817 (archived, is anyone else having trouble with archive.is / archive.ph? they seem to just not load at all for me)
The U.S. Military is Unequipped for High-Intensity Combat
The U.S. military’s system was for uncontested logistics, with the ability to conduct depot-level maintenance after evacuating vehicles from the front lines and heavy reliance on a contractor workforce for highly technical repairs. It also relies upon air superiority on the battlefield, which is not a given in combat against a peer competitor.
Former Commandant Gen. David Berger stated that in a great power war in the Pacific, “It’s just fuel and bullets, that’s what I’m going to resupply. The rest you’re going to have to forage.” These logistical limitations will be acute when repairing damaged military equipment. Absent repairs, it may be impossible for Marines to get back into the fight.
Besides the astronomical costs of many of America’s boutique and exquisite systems, the trade-off between the price of these systems and the systems that can kill them is becoming unsustainable
U.S. adversaries will not allow it to build up the proverbial iron mountain of logistics, nor will it be easy to evacuate vehicles or bring forward parts via “just in time” (JIT) delivery by ship or aircraft.
One of the reasons that the Afghan air force collapsed was the withdrawal of U.S. contractors. With the air force collapsing, ground units also gave up as they were no longer assured of resupply, medevac, or close air support. The U.S. military made the situation worse by having the Afghans move away from Soviet-era helicopters such as the Mi-17 and transition to the more technical and maintenance-heavy U.S. airframes. The U.S. military may face its own issues in high-intensity conflict, as defense contractors have withheld the intellectual property behind some of the newest systems, such as the F-35, effectively turning them into black boxes that only the contractors themselves can fully understand. American farmers can tell horror stories of the problems encountered with high-tech tractors and their fights with manufacturers such as John Deere over the “right to repair.”
that bit about the Afghan Air Force was something I hadn't heard before, absolutely amazing
imagine having all of your military equipment be dependent on maintenance by foreign private contractorsNYT: Evidence Suggests Ukrainian Missile Caused Market Tragedy
From their original article:
A Russian missile strike in Kostyantynivka that killed at least 17 and injured more than 30 others was one of the deadliest in months.
> I storm into the room, flinging the doors open"The Poles! They've stopped sending weapons to Ukraine because of their stupid little trade war over grain; the cracks are forming, the united coalition is splintering! How long can this last? Once the spigot dries up, how fast will Ukraine fold? What new horrors will be wrought in this new multipolar world?"> my gf turns to me," what the fuck are you talking about, go make some tea"> I go stare at a screen for eight hours pretending to care about "action items" as I mutter on about Lviv/LwówWork Slack Channel: "Has anybody heard about this really old documentary called 'Tiger King'?"Pondering the orb of global misery with y'all is fine but god damn do I sometimes feel insane.
I'll never tell~ It's definitely not up my aaaaaaaaaass~
Communists and conservatives coincidentally not supporting Ukraine (nominally for the latter): proof that communism and fascism are the same
Liberals and conservatives systemically and deliberately supporting and funding every war, invasion, and occupation by domestic forces: mature, bipartisan, proof that democracy works
NATO pulling a color revolution in Armenia only to leave them to their fate to be invaded by another NATO vassal is just evil.
They would definitely have overlooked the Armenian genocide if Turkey was in NATO at the time.
I’m from New York and I’ve just received a letter (draft) demanding me to fight for The Ukraine.
What the fuck is going on
Georgia’s security service accuses Ukrainian official of plotting coup
The deputy chief of Ukraine’s military counterintelligence is planning an overthrow of Georgia’s government, its security service says.
On Monday, the SSG said Giorgi Lortkipanidze, the deputy chief of Ukraine’s military counterintelligence who used to be Georgia’s deputy interior minister, was plotting “destabilisation aimed at a violent overthrow of the government”.
The SSG said antigovernment protests “are being planned for October and December, when the European Commission is set to publish its decision on Georgia’s EU membership application”. It said the plot “is being carried out with the coordination and funding from a foreign country”.
👀
I was thinking the past few days that this really has a chance of ending up like what America has done to the Middle East. Looking more likely by the day.
And yet Europe will continue to worship them. The politicians will be too cucked to do anything about it.
Reddit is probably the worst place to see how a foreign population feels about particular geopolitical issues. I've visited some Central American subs and most of them are huge America worshippers who still talk about Ukraine and how they need to support it. They also endlessly find ways to blame or hate Russia while excusing everything wrong that the US does.
This is not reflective at all from what I've experienced since the war took off. Nobody's really talking about Ukraine and local elections are taking most of the attention. Opinions on Russia are generally pretty good, much better than China.
