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.

  • Parzivus [any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Haven't seen many people talking about the new Hersh article, he has some interesting claims:

    Major portions of the Ukrainian army have stopped going on the offensive at all

    The CIA is becoming very skeptical of the possibility of a Ukrainian victory, and a significant rift between intelligence agencies is forming

    Quote from an intelligence official: “The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going. The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House.”

    https://archive.is/2023.09.21-111210/https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/zelenskys-bad-moment

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Major portions of the Ukrainian army have stopped going on the offensive at all

      I had suspicions this is what it has turned to now. The commanders seem like they don't want to do suicide tactics anymore, have no trust in nato and don't really believe that they can break the defensive lines anymore. On top of this the army is all conscripts at this point, these people are just hiding in mud holes trying to survive.

      The CIA is becoming very skeptical of the possibility of a Ukrainian victory, and a significant rift between intelligence agencies is forming

      Pretty sure they reached this stage 6 months ago or more.

      Quote from an intelligence official: “The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going. The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House.”

      "The soldiers aren't willing to die anymore" lines up with what I was thinking. It's not that these soldiers were willing to die before either, the issue is that all the soldiers that WERE willing to die have done so already. They now only have the people that aren't willing to.

    • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      This article has some big stuff if it's true:

      A byproduct of the Biden administration’s neocon hostility to Russia and China—exemplified by the remarks of Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who has repeatedly stated that he will not currently countenance a ceasefire in Ukraine—has been a significant split in the intelligence community. One casualty are the secret National Intelligence Estimates that have delineated the parameters of American foreign policy for decades. Some key offices in the CIA have refused, in many cases, to participate in the NIE process because of profound political disagreement with the administration’s aggressive foreign policy. One recent failure involved a planned NIE that dealt with the outcome of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

      CIA or some other intelligence agency doing minor scale mutiny over the batshit foreign policy choices of the administration?

      • Parzivus [any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Imagine being so bloodthirsty that the CIA tells you to chill

        • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          1 year ago

          it's not even that, it's being so insane and out of touch that the CIA, famous for insane and out of touch things like MK Ultra, is thinking that our current administation has gone too far...

      • Parzivus [any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        They don't ban you, they just delete it without telling you. Happened to me with the NYT story about the Ukrainian missile hitting that market a few days ago

    • milistanaccount09 [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I can't seem to get through the archive's captcha, do you have another way to bypass the paywall?

      • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-dns-over-https#w_excluding-specific-domains for Firefox

          • ImOnADiet@lemmygrad.ml
            ·
            1 year ago

            nvm figured it out holy shit im so happy ive been having to pull up the thread on my phone when I want to read an archive link for weeks now!!!

        • ziggurter [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Hmm. The section on "excluding specific domains" you linked to seems to have been removed. :-(

          Looks like this might be how, though: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/dns-over-https#w_add-sites-to-the-exceptions-list