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 @[email protected]’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.
I mean do they really expect Russia to fight another war on their behalf after they turned to the EU and USA? It really sucks but the Armenian leaders and the liberals brought it on themselves.
Russia is also under no obligation to defend NK. It’s not part of Armenia, so it doesn’t fall under CSTO. My understanding previously was that other CSTO members have been somewhat annoyed with Armenian for what they view as Armenia stretching out the conflict when the matter of who NK belongs to has already been settled internationally.
That settled interationally is bullshit.
The only countries that recognize NK as independent/not part of Azerbaijan are Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transniatria. Armenia doesn’t even recognize NK and doesn’t claim it as territory. There’s not really anyone claiming that it’s part of Armenia or that it’s actually independent.
What does that have to do with anything? The reality is that the people living there are going to get ethnically cleansed. And the baku regime was not even a country 40 years ago.
No here is arguing that they deserve to be ethnically cleansed. I said that Russia has an obligation to defend Armenia under CSTO, but that pretty much no one recognizes NK as part of Armenia, including both the Russia and Armenia.
Neither was Armenia, by that standard.
Of course russia has no obligation. If armenia and iran arent doing anything why should russia. I agree.
But going from there to “the legitimacy of a state is given by its international recognition” is bullshit. i think is a good criteria for the legitimacy of a state is “are these people overe there going to be eathnically cleansed without it?”.
As for armenia not exsisting either. I agree. It further strengthens my point that these borders do not matter.
This seems like a bad way to determine legitimacy, this is what Israel uses to justify its existence
Well ultimatley legitimacy is subjective. So i dont feel particularly strongly for any critera. But “we drew this lines less than 40 Years ago and now they are sacred” seems insane. Similarly “we have the suport of the international comunity” also seems dumb. Compared to those the one i proposed does not sound as derranged.
What decides the objective control of territory is force of arms. But is that the source of legitimacy?
As for israel. I have said before that i do not necessarily object to them having their own country. I object to it being in the middle east. I think we can all agree that some things happened last century and maybe germany can give them some land as compensation.
This is a take ive seen multiple times and i think its a little backwards. Russia never had a reason to fight on Armenia’s behalf, before or after they got so desperate they tried to get literally anyone to care about them. If they brought it on themselves its only that they didnt somehow manage to make some natural resources or important exports spring out of the ground so someone would care, because in the end, decades of close ties with Russia or “democratic values” aren’t enough for anyone.
Russia helped out Syria, Belarus and Kazakhstan out of their own pocket to maintain allies in the region. Syria doesn’t really have much more of a resource export economy than Armenia, and what little they have is currently illegally occupied by the SDF and American/kurdish forces and being stolen anyway. Yet Russia still helped.
The difference is that Syria and Belarus are loyal allies who stand up to the west. They developed their own armies and defenses and fight for their existence. Armenia doesn’t seem to want to do that, based on Pashinyan’s actions Armenia’s long term goal is to slowly be dissolved from negligent defenses and terrible diplomacy