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.
Canada's house speaker apologizes for honoring a fucking nazi, as if he wasn't aware. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/anthony-rota-ukrainian-veteran-apology-1.6977117
They really fucked up this time, when you're trying to claim Ukraine doesn't have a nazi problem quite possibly the worst thing they could have done in terms of optics is to give a nazi a standing ovation along with Zelensky.
Lol they made the speaker take the fall. Should be removed for this tbh. Cute all the parties are denouncing this because they couldn't do a simple 1+1=2 tho. The ruling class are morons.
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Trudeau in three weeks:
"I'd like to apologize for all the times I forgot I
did blackfacemet with a literal Nazi"Justin Trudeau demonstrates his comedic timing by tweeting about Yom Kippur right after honoring a Waffen-SS soldier.
https://nitter.net/JustinTrudeau/status/1705976748939108835
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we're really gonna have to start apologizing for the lack of terror
we used to know that nazis were the bad guys. Not anymore I guess
He said that nobody could've known, except for Justin Trudeau. Sure, you fascist asshole.
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You can see the exact moment that's fucking funny
This is the funniest video I've seen in a while
Tf is he talking about? The Soviet Union was made up of various groups of people. If this Nazi was fighting after the Second World War, he would be fighting Ukrainians who were part of the Red Army. FFS this guy was literally fighting against Zelensky's own grandfather, who was a Red Army soldier.
He fought against 8 million Ukrainians. He was a traitor to his own ethnicity.
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honoring a waffen SS volunteer *urkel voice "did i do thaaaaat?"
This and that other clip are all good and hilarious but what I'm wondering is if Zelensky is not getting any direct flak for this and if not why not.
I think you can conjure up and deranged excuses about western leadership incompetence or even lack of education. Sure why not but how is it even remotely possible that the Ukrainian leader, the guy went there to ask you to Slava Ukraini and all that shit didn't know and still doesn't know about the Nazis?
How do you even begin to reconcile the previous narrative "oh but the Nazis are only a cute smol bean part of the army now no biggie" about Azov and now turn around 18 months later and suddenly you're embarrassed and forced to apologize for saluting the Nazis? Either the nazis are no big deal or they're a fucking big deal, which one is it?
This is what frustrates me the most, other than a comedic episode this changes literally nothing about anything unless people start pushing against Zelensky.
Feels like Zelensky isn't making more mistakes - just that the elite faction against the war is finally refusing to give him any more passes.
How could anyone have known that this former member of a volunteer SS unit had a Nazi past?
Being in the SS doesn't necessarily make you a Nazi! Just like me having 12 inclined swastikas tattooed on my face and my body doesn't make me one.