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.
Is it really like that? On the topic of Azerbaijan against Armenia, the latter is apparently supported by the US, Russia and Iran at the same time?
No one is suporting armenia. Not even armenia. The current president is anti russian. The french dont really care they just like to whine. The iranians are afraid that if they get involved the us would use it as an excuse to invade.
And the baku regime is a us pupet regime that persecutes its own shia majority. It honestly should be part of iran.
Exactly. Pashinyan cowers in Yerevan and ignores the attack until riot crowds form at his palace. He did absolutely nothing to bolster NK defenses in this interim period. He refuses to activate the Armenian military proper to get involved. He's basically just surrendering, but in an even more cowardly way because he doesn't want the negative flack from that so he's just letting the invasion happen in front of him instead and pretending it isn't happening.
People ask why Russian peacekeepers aren't doing anything to stop the Azeris, why isn't ARMENIA doing anything? Why should Russia fight for a country that won't fight for itself?
Exactly. It is beggining to look more and more like the europenas offered him something maybe a chance of joining the eu if he "regularizes the border conflicts" or some other euphemism for genocide.
There's many problems with the Azeri government, but to have it become part of an Islamist state is a wild solution.
Iran is way better than Azerbaijan, they are anti-imperialist and don't persecute Shia
Its not an azeri goverment. It first and foremost persecutes the azeris. The azeris deserve to freely excersice their religion. The azeris are the same people as the iranians. And the iran goverment should protect its people.
Also iran is one of the most free most rapidly developing countries. Second only to south korea despite sanctions. Anti iran rethoric is based on western chauvinism. Yes there are wrong things iran does and im the first to critizize them. But overal they are way better than almost anyone else. Who saved the venezuelan oil industry from lack of industrial equipment and chemichal precursors? Who saved assad? Who defeated isis? Who is suporting palestine? They even colaborated with cuba on one of the vaccines...
I mean "supported by America" is a stretch since America ain't gonna do jack shit to piss off the Turks. They'll make a statement and that's it
I wouldn't say Armenia is "supported" by the US. The deep state likes Azerbaijan and probably favors them. They have a bunch of oil, they throw money around like crazy, and they buy a bunch of weapons. However, because of the organization of the American diaspora in America, and the compete lack of an Azerbaijani diaspora, Armenia does enjoy some measure of support in Congress.