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… read about Internationale Solidarity in the Chinese Diaspora.

When it comes to protest, the right chant and the right song can really make or break the mood. Writing at ChinaFile [[link removed]], Yangyang Cheng recounts a recent gathering in New Haven, Connecticut, where people gathered to sing and express solidarity for the protests in China. “Halfway through the hour-long vigil, the suggestion to sing the Chinese national anthem was raised for a third time,” Cheng writes, with the speaker this time insisting that the anthem was more than just the song of the state, but a call to arms against oppressors. The chorus is present tense, “The Chinese nation is facing the most perilous time!” Writes Cheng, “But what constitutes the Chinese nation, who decides, and where do the dangers lie? A literal blaze ignited months of pent-up rage and despair across the country. The prospect of being trapped in a burning building elicits a primal fear.” The recent blank paper protests have their origins in the burning deaths of Uyghurs, deaths protesters attribute in part to pandemic restrictions delaying aid. The burning became a cross-ethnic rallying cry against restrictions, and a cross-class one, as factory-corralled workers resisted ostensible safety measures used for social control. Cheng notes the rally ended with The Internationale, lyrics read off phone screens, a song of diaspora and solidarity alike.

Worker, Study

Immigration policies shape the way labor flows between countries, and especially, the way countries justify the arrival and types of labor they host. At Asian Labour Review [[link removed]], Le Phuong Anh and Long Nguyen examine the role of student visas in fostering an informal manual labor cohort in Japan.

Students on visas are only supposed to work 28 hours a week, but the high cost of loans, tuition, and life mean that working more than permitted is a vital and common survival strategy. It is so common, in fact, that those who want to work in Japan, with no intent of further obtaining an education, often turn to student visas as a way to get into the country.

“Working overtime also means that students are permanently under the threat of deportation and falling behind on schoolwork. Paradoxically, these risks do not deter students from working but rather encourage them to work more. This is because the risk has been internalized over time as an all-in gamble,” they write.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Leopard Beets

In the Caucasus mountains, between the Caspian and the Black Sea, the Persian leopard once freely roamed, The big cat once ranged from southern Russia through Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and into Turkey and Iran. Now, it exists in areas where people aren’t or are infrequently, adapting awkwardly to war zones and borderlands. Those static and not-so-static fronts feature camera surveillance, which sometimes catch images of the leopards on the go.

Andranik Gyonjyan and Tsovinar Hovhannisyan, a team of husband and wife wildlife researchers, study the leopards, despite the difficulties in doing so across front lines.

“For now, the pair find hope in the story of a three-legged male leopard spotted in Armenia via camera trap earlier this year. The animal appears to be plump, thus eating well, with a healthy coat. For Andranik and Tsovinar, it’s a reminder of how adaptive the leopard can be in its fight for survival,” report Saxon Bosworth and Luka Tkemaladze for The Beet [[link removed]].

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Outsourced Force: Part II

When order breaks down and war tears a country apart, local warlords are able to create ‘statelets of the exception,’ domains where their rule by force becomes the law. It is common to think of these warlords as freelancers of violence, rebels with more of an interest in plunder than a cause. While warlord rule is often studied as one variety of rebel governance, warlords sympathetic to a collapsing central government also exist, and rule in a meaningfully different way. These pro-government militias, elevated to statelet form, function as allied domains to an embattled central government.

In “ Rethinking armed groups and order: Syria and the rise of militiatocracies [[link removed]],” Yaniv Voller argues that pro-government militias offer a kind of outsourced security to an incapable central government, which both use to bolster their legitimacy.

“In militiatocracies, like those that emerged in Syria, Iraq or Sudan in the early years of the twenty-first century, the central government delegates its security commitments to allied militias. These militias then assume much of the burden of fighting insurgents, while the presence of regular forces is thin to non-existent,” writes Voller.

These militiatocracies are a symptom of a breakdown in order. Irregular forces can be called into action at the outbreak of a conflict, or may emerge in the course of fighting, as armed local groups consolidate and build power structures that can then, sometimes, choose to ally with a central state.

“Incumbent regimes are usually wary of forces outside direct state control because of their unruliness and potential for disloyalty and poor performance.26 However, a weak central government is compelled to rely on such forces and also limited in its ability to prevent predation and targeting of local populations, even when these processes undermine government interests,” writes Voller.

One effect of these arrangements is that a local pro-government warlord, in exchange for providing security, can demand greater concessions from the central government. Those concessions are easiest to extract when the government is at its weakest and most in need of allies, but the dynamic is such that warlords can set favorable terms for their demobilization, should the war be won and the central government ready to reconsolidate power.

Voller closely examines the role of militias in the Syrian civil war. One feature is that the embattled Assad regime, facing a popular uprising, sought to arm and mobilize ethnic and religious minorities, creating local allies dependent on the central state and fearful of their neighbors. These groups, in turn, took those arms and organized to defend themselves from local violence. As a kind of militia-regime symbiosis, service in militias exempted local recruits from national conscription, which would have sent them to fight far from home.

“Although garnering power in regional enclaves, militia leaders have not become warlords in that they have not sought to destroy the existing order,” concludes Voller. “Their enclaves did not turn into rebelocracies, not simply because they did not seek to overthrow the government, but because their symbolic and actual presence has been crucial for the militia commanders' legitimacy and the overall sense of security.”

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Olatunji Olaigbe channeled [[link removed]] the frustration of many World Cup viewers with broadcast restrictions in their countries, who turn to VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks, as a way to skirt region-locked broadcast rules. VPNs are often touted as privacy tools, a way for dissidents to speak truth and communicate without government interference. While that’s a nonzero part of their role, they’re also simply a way to cut out censorship or broadcaster paywalls. “In many countries in the Global South, especially where digital inclusion and access is often a significant issue, sports fans regularly use VPNs to watch events,” wrote Olaigbe.

Patrick Cox listened [[link removed]] to Udi speakers in the village of Zinobiani, Georgia. The town, which is celebrating a centennial this year, is the modern home of Udi, a rare and increasingly little spoken language. Udi speakers once existed across the Caucasus, and some communities still speak it in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia, but it’s in a town in Georgia that the language has somewhat persisted, after the poet Zinobi led the people out of the crossfire in regional wars. “Maybe calling Udi a dying language isn’t accurate. Perhaps it’s someplace between dying and living. And maybe it's just as important that people revere the language, and that it’s a key part of Udi identity,” wrote Cox.

Andrew Connelly interviewed [[link removed]] striking nurses outside a hospital in Northern Ireland. The workers are picketing in the bitter cold, after the government refused to offer wages that kept pace with inflation. Healthcare across the United Kingdom is already suffering staffing shortages, imperiling the ability of patients to receive treatment, and the workers are arguing that wages well below inflation will keep those jobs open, far more hardship than temporarily endured during a strike. “Ministers seem to think that they can win a war of attrition, including by calling in the army [[link removed]] to perform some duties,” Connelly reported, though the prospect of strikes from postal workers, train drivers, airport workers, and ambulance drivers, as well as healthcare workers, will strain the capacity to respond.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

Russian conscription extends to residents of the North Pole [[link removed]].

Ditch any old mnemonics, this is the new Holland/Netherlands explainer [[link removed]] you need to see.

One drone light to draw their fire [[link removed]], and others lurking in darkness to find them.

Everyone loves the heartwarming tale of World War One’s Christmas Truces [[link removed]], except for the brass far from the front, who hated the idea that soldiers might decide to take a holiday from war [[link removed]].

Insecurity through transparency [[link removed]].

Want to win the World Cup in 36 years? Try walkable urbanism [[link removed]], unless you catch financial penalties first [[link removed]].

Hear the sound of reindeer bivouacking? That’s just Santa Clausewitz [[link removed]].

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Critical State is written by Kelsey D. Atherton with Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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