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.

  • mkultrawide [any]
    ·
    9 months ago

    So it's confirmed that the "WW2 Ukrainian freedom fighter" that got a standing ovation in Canadian parlaiment yesterday was in fact part of the 14th Division of the Waffen-SS (aka 1st Galician Division). Who do I need to talk to to get the Canadian Polish and Jewish communities on the cuck rankings?

    • Parsani [love/loves, comrade/them]
      ·
      9 months ago

      Like did no one even think about this for a second? Or are we just at the point that applauding for literal WWII era nazis is cool and good?

      • RyanGosling [none/use name]
        ·
        9 months ago

        Yes. After Russia invaded, the west has been very adamant about uncritical support to everything Ukraine supports. Ukraine has only 3 options to select as national heroes:

        • Soviet Ukrainians - this is unacceptable because gommunism bad and is the same as fascism. Also because the USSR was evil and Putin wants to resurrect it
        • Mahkno and the anarchists - they will occasionally praise him, but can’t do it too much because he was an anarchist and they don’t want people to start getting funny ideas about the state
        • Nazi collaborators and Nazi Ukrainians - we already established that fascism bad, but these are good apples who only embraced Nazism as a means for Ukrainian independence. This means that they don’t actually believe in Nazism, which means we should also embrace their symbols and defend them at all times. Any criticism of them is a criticism of Ukraine and that means you support genocide

        Think of the Iranian quote about America’s heroes, but replace Spider-Man and SpongeBob with Bandera and the SS

        • KarlBarqs [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          9 months ago

          Nazi collaborators and Nazi Ukrainians - we already established that fascism bad, but these are good apples who only embraced Nazism as a means for Ukrainian independence. This means that they don’t actually believe in Nazism, which means we should also embrace their symbols and defend them at all times.

          Aka the Finland defence.

          Even relatively (vocally) left leaning Finns I've met dismiss their country's enthusiastic collaboration with the Nazis as necessary to defend against the tyrannical orcish Russian hordes, or however they put it

          • RyanGosling [none/use name]
            ·
            9 months ago

            How come they never talk about the Finns switching sides to the Russians side later on to expel the Germans

          • GenderIsOpSec [she/her]
            ·
            9 months ago

            been called unpatriotic for saying that finland was fash even before the winter war emilie-shrug

      • mkultrawide [any]
        ·
        9 months ago

        Canada had its own Nuremberg in the 80s where they excluded a bunch of evidence and decided that Nuremberg was wrong and that the whole Waffen-SS wasn't a criminal organization:

        While the commission's final report did state that the numbers were grossly exaggerated, the report also admitted it had not investigated materials kept either in the Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc countries, and that it further had not investigated an addendum list of 109 names provided late in the inquiry. Further still, it was later revealed that the commission withheld evidence and ignored the findings of other war crimes trials, such as the Nuremberg trials. The commission's decision to find the Waffen-SS 14th Galicia Division not guilty of collective war crimes was particularly controversial, as the SS had already been determined to have committed war crimes as an organization at earlier war crimes trials. It is thus difficult to determine whether the commission's conclusion that the number of suspected war criminals who either had or were residing in Canada was in fact exaggerated, given how much potential evidence wasn't considered.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desch%C3%AAnes_Commission

        kkkanada

      • iridaniotter [she/her, they/them]
        ·
        9 months ago

        This has been fine since 1945 when the west began integrating Nazis into their militaries, political offices, corporations, etc.

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]
      ·
      9 months ago

      A cross dedicated to the division is placed in Saint Mary’s Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery, in Elkins Park, in the suburb of Philadelphia. The American Jewish Committee declared that the monument should be removed.

      American Jews have become tankies

    • Commiejones [comrade/them, he/him]
      ·
      9 months ago

      Fuck me. Pretty sure this is my fault. I left Canada and now there is nobody there to scream about this stuff on the street corner.

    • SoyViking [he/him]
      ·
      9 months ago

      Claims that the Ukrainian Waffen-SS should have had "Nazi" sympathies are fake Russian disinformatskaya propaganda. The facts are that the freedom fighters were just fighting for wholesome democratic Ukrainian independence against the evil red-fash Soviet empire who was just as bad, worse in fact, than the Nazis.

      Ukraine's president Zelensky is himself Jewish and accusing Ukraine's national heroes of being Nazis is one of the worst forms of antisemitism imaginable.

      • Fishroot [none/use name]
        ·
        9 months ago

        Claims that the Ukrainian Waffen-SS should have had "Nazi" sympathies are fake Russian disinformatskaya propaganda.

        This is pretty hilarious consider that was also the excuse used by Chrystia Freeland when some Ukrainian anarchists managed to dig up shit on what her granddad did during WW2, which she said her life in politics was motivated by him which she has a close relationship with