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.

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    62·
    1 year ago

    https://nationalinterest.org/feature/us-military-unequipped-high-intensity-combat-206817 (archived, is anyone else having trouble with archive.is / archive.ph? they seem to just not load at all for me)

    The U.S. Military is Unequipped for High-Intensity Combat

    The U.S. military’s system was for uncontested logistics, with the ability to conduct depot-level maintenance after evacuating vehicles from the front lines and heavy reliance on a contractor workforce for highly technical repairs. It also relies upon air superiority on the battlefield, which is not a given in combat against a peer competitor.

    Former Commandant Gen. David Berger stated that in a great power war in the Pacific, “It’s just fuel and bullets, that’s what I’m going to resupply. The rest you’re going to have to forage.” These logistical limitations will be acute when repairing damaged military equipment. Absent repairs, it may be impossible for Marines to get back into the fight.

    Besides the astronomical costs of many of America’s boutique and exquisite systems, the trade-off between the price of these systems and the systems that can kill them is becoming unsustainable

    U.S. adversaries will not allow it to build up the proverbial iron mountain of logistics, nor will it be easy to evacuate vehicles or bring forward parts via “just in time” (JIT) delivery by ship or aircraft.

    One of the reasons that the Afghan air force collapsed was the withdrawal of U.S. contractors. With the air force collapsing, ground units also gave up as they were no longer assured of resupply, medevac, or close air support. The U.S. military made the situation worse by having the Afghans move away from Soviet-era helicopters such as the Mi-17 and transition to the more technical and maintenance-heavy U.S. airframes. The U.S. military may face its own issues in high-intensity conflict, as defense contractors have withheld the intellectual property behind some of the newest systems, such as the F-35, effectively turning them into black boxes that only the contractors themselves can fully understand. American farmers can tell horror stories of the problems encountered with high-tech tractors and their fights with manufacturers such as John Deere over the “right to repair.”

    that bit about the Afghan Air Force was something I hadn’t heard before, absolutely amazing tito-laugh imagine having all of your military equipment be dependent on maintenance by foreign private contractors

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      47·
      1 year ago

      There needs to be a collective term for capitalists and their agents who accidentally brainwash themselves with their own psyops, they believe their own bullshit and as a result there can’t be rational or centralized planning in a system full of people who believe those things to be communist nonsense

      The same has happened in the private sector, like with that old Sears CEO, it’s a wonder to watch this emergent phenomenon finally metastasize after decades of unintentional incubation

      • daisy@hexbear.netEnglish
        17·
        1 year ago

        There needs to be a collective term for capitalists and their agents who accidentally brainwash themselves with their own psyops, they believe their own bullshit and as a result there can’t be rational or centralized planning in a system full of people who believe those things to be communist nonsense

        “Capitalists”.

    • Teekeeus [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      34·
      1 year ago

      The U.S. military made the situation worse by having the Afghans move away from Soviet-era helicopters such as the Mi-17 and transition to the more technical and maintenance-heavy U.S. airframes.

      Classic nazi mindset