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.
Democrats racked up two more special elections wins in NH and PA. It's starting to look like the GOP is going to fuck up what should have been back-to-back slam dunks for them, election-wise.
The funniest outcome has to be Biden losing to Trump after fulfilling his lifelong dream of being president, making him once again an exceptional loser, only for the Dems to take both the House and Senate.
their brand is absolute dogshit. brandon will irish jig his way into his second term.
I have to assume right now that this flip is because of abortion, because they should absolutely be crushisg the Democrats just based on cost of living increases.
I do wonder if COVID and housing costs driving people to buy houses out in the boonies caused any blue shifts in GOP areas. Maybe that's part of why they want to end WFH so badly.
I'm also sympathetic to the theory that their rhetoric about Trans people is super alienating to people
I think if Trump is going to win against Biden then he basically needs to not really mention anything to do with "wokeness" and instead do the usual "folks, the economy, it's bad under Sleepy Joe! It was great under me until the china virus hit! more and more people are saying that we need to cut your taxes!" because otherwise people who just don't give a shit either way and are just grilling and want to keep things the way they were before this quasi-recession hit are just gonna tune out
there's absolutely a large subsection of America that likes the "anti-woke" shit but "keep your lifestyle where you can drive a car the weight of a modern battle tank down your suburban street to the restaurant chain where you devour burgers containing at least fifteen different pesticides and harmful chemicals that will kill you before age 70, taxes are low, you can keep being a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, life is awesome!" is a message that seems to resonate much better with more people
it's not as if the Republicans won't also be making life a living hell for every single minority group, they're already doing that in fact, the fascism just needs to be a background process while the middle class can grill
to fight this strategy, Biden would need to do literally anything, ever, that meaningfully improves the lives of people (as opposed to making their lives get worse but at a slower rate, like what has happened with lowering inflation rates - the inflation still happened! prices aren't deflating!). which is an increasingly dismal prospect as we soon enter the last year of his presidency
Anecdotally, my parents think their obsession with trans people is really weird, and they voted for Trump both times.
Not surprising. Average american is probably transphobic but GOP's constant ranting about furries and bottom surgeries is just deeply off-putting
Trump doesn't really dislike trans people either, he used to have trans women in his beauty pageants. Of course he'll probably still throw them under the bus come election time, but he was more focused on good old fashioned racism, and that's much more popular with conservatives.
Idk, he said some transphobic stuff previously at rallies this run. I wouldn't trust him. Also he had transphobic policies in his run.
I agree, that's what I meant by
It's just grifting for him, but that doesn't make his policy goals any less harmful
the abortion issue isn't going away by next year.
the GOP doesn't have a coherent response to bidenomics, with the fusionist wing railing against biden for being a stooge for Labor, when union support is resurgent. they do not have a coherent response to Biden's foreign policy. all they have is culture-war, which resulted in the worst midterm results in contemporary history.
and as much as libs and the "left" continue to be spooked by 2016: trumps's a loser, he's more of a loser than ever, and his ability to mobilize the CHUDs will not translate to the general election.
of course the dems can still lose (economic downward shock/unemployment skyrocking; biden dying or having a health issue close to the election date; kiev folding without Biden escalating). but if that doesn't happen, history remembers this as fait accompli, tbqh.