From Revolution to Genocide in Sudan with Hamza Al-Muqawi

Speaker 1: Thank you.

Jared: Welcome everybody to another edition of millennials are killing capitalism live. Please take a minute. like the video, share it on social media, let people know that we're live and that we're having this conversation, whether you're on Twitter or Instagram or here with us on YouTube. The YouTube chat is the one that we'll use to respond to comments and questions if people have them. And so join us on YouTube if you want to engage in the conversation. Today, we're going to talk about Sudan, which we haven't done a whole lot. We've done it as kind of part of a few different conversations over the years, but never really anything that's just dedicated solely to the topic and the discussion. And obviously there's a lot to talk about. So looking forward to this. Our guest folks may have seen has been on Adnan Hussain's show. Shout out to Adnan. uh has been on uh justin on um you know the anti-empire um show with justin poter um and uh also i think east is the podcast and so yeah so just excited to have him on uh hamza is his name he's an organizer and writer whose work focuses on pan-african and palestinian solidarity He coordinates humanitarian fundraising efforts, which is really how I came to get to know him a little bit, for communities who need it most, and produces political analysis rooted in anti-imperialist principles. He created a website with verified Sudanese campaigns, sudanfunds.com, which I'll pull up in a little bit and I'm sure we will talk about today. and runs an aid network, I will let him pronounce it for me, that works both with community kitchens across Sudan and serves multiple refugee camps in Gaza with aid distributions. And links to that, both of those are in the show description. There's also a Telegram channel, Sudan News English, which is in the show description where he and others work to provide, on the ground uh updates of things going on in the genocide in the war in sudan so really grateful to have him um a couple just like a housekeeping thing for our patreon this month we do have a promotion currently that is in the show description so if you join at the five dollar a month tier or the annual version of that which i think is like 54 bucks basically you get 50% off if you do yearly. So you could get a yearly subscription at that $5 a month level for 27. Or you can get 50% off your first month. And that's at all the tiers, $5 and above, if you want to support the show. And even if you just want to do the dollar a month or $10.80 per year subscription, it really helps us. And just with that, like you do get bonus content, stuff like that. But most of what you get is access to our study groups, which we do, which are always like know often eight to i think the current one we're in is like 14 weeks or something like that and um so the next one won't open up until february but we'll do at least three next year and say you do a yearly subscription you have access to those all year long um so just encourage people to do that it's a fun thing to do honestly like reading with a whole bunch of other people who are anti-imperialists, who are trying to figure out their politics and sort through that together and understand these works, which sometimes can be difficult, honestly, to read all by yourself. Invite people to join in on that and really looking forward to having this discussion today with Hamza. I'm going to bring Hamza to the stage now. Hey man, it's good to be with you. Hey, it's good to be here.

Hamza Al-Muqawi: Thank you for having me, Jared.

Jared: Yeah, of course. You know, we've been going back and forth on this for a while and I'm glad we could finally kind of align our schedules to, you know, have this discussion with folks. And so maybe just to start, like, why don't we just kind of do an introductory thing and you can just share a little bit more about yourself and You know, share a little bit about, you know, some of the organizing work as well as like mutual aid or fundraising work that you're involved in related to Sudan.

Hamza Al-Muqawi: Right. So right now, like you mentioned before, we have the Sudan Fund website, which is basically just campaigns are brought up to us on our on the ground in Sudan. We speak to the people involved or we speak to the family that's in Sudan. We do the whole verification process. through multiple channels. And then if they pass a verification process, we put them up on the website. Sorry. That gives people an option of who to donate to, basically. And then we're also, the one that you mentioned after that, which is the aid network, the Abu Hurairah Aid Network. Sorry, I'm sorry. Let me just clear my throat real quick. Okay. So the Abu Huraira Aid Network basically works. We were partnered with community kitchens across Sudan from Omdurman. We were working with community kitchens in the Fasher up until it fell. We're working in around different areas in Darfur, as well as Khartoum State, Al-Ghazir State, a couple of other states, Kordofan in Sudan. And basically because those community kitchens already exist, they serve different neighborhoods in Sudan and we Um, help raise funds and, and send it over there. And they use that to help people, you know, some people that's their only source of food right now. And then in Gaza, we have teams in different refugee camps, um, that are on the network who basically just, uh, distribute. um different eight packages to families especially families who can't really come to like distribution points like um orphans disabled people um of the elderly that kind of thing we come right to the tent and sometimes it's ingredients um that they can cook with for like two weeks three weeks that kind of thing sometimes it's food that's ready last week we actually did meat which we haven't been able to do for I'm sure you know, for a very long time in Gaza. So yeah, so that's what we do for the AID Network. And then the last thing I'd like to bring up for right now is just we have a boycott. basically against the UAE, which we'll talk about later, and anybody basically who's backing the RSF, which is what's a big part of what people are seeing right now on the ground in Sudan is because of that, and it's because of the weapons that the UAE are bringing into Sudan through different methods. So we're trying to, like, hit their PR, their soft power, the stuff that, like, allows them to kind of, like, launder their image and able to, like, pretend like they have no parts in that. Um, and just basically expose them and just, just have their, like hit their pockets as much as we can. So they can, we're, we're hoping they can back off a little bit off of Sudan. So yeah, so that's, that's where we're at right now.

Jared: No, I appreciate it. And I look forward to kind of talking to you about that because there are a lot of elements of UAE soft power too, that, um, like we see all the time, all over the place. And, uh, it's, Yeah, I think it's great that you all are kind of shining a light on that and encouraging people to boycott. So let's kind of start, though, I kind of want to talk about sort of the last seven years as a starting point, right? Because, I mean, I know that we need to have some historical context for all of this, but you've written a piece which is also in the show description where you kind of lay out some of that history. You've also had a conversation with adnan where you went over like a lot of that history and so i encourage people to check those out i'll add adnan's um link to the show description as well um and we can get into some of that but i think you know like there was a lot of hope around um you know around sudan like in the last seven to five years ago, right? I remember we had a conversation with Bedore Allegra, who's also from Sudan, and really feeling like there's this revolutionary kind of upsurge. There's all this great stuff happening at the grassroots. People probably are familiar with the resistance committees and some of this stuff from several years ago. And there's the ousting of Bashir. Right. And then, you know, you just end up now we're in a situation right where, you know, people are talking about genocide or talking about like these horrific kind of war crimes that are going on there. um they're talking about you know obviously humanitarian situation which needs support and but because we don't get a lot of news and analysis in the west of what's going on in sudan i think it's difficult for people to understand like what happened you know how did the how did we get from point a to point b and maybe some people don't even know because there's so little coverage right about kind of how bad things are right now or how hopeful things were a few years ago. But I thought if we could talk a little bit about that recent history and kind of your analysis of like how that went and why it went the way it went. I think that would be a great place to kind of start the conversation and ground us.

Hamza Al-Muqawi: Yeah. So what, what happened was, was there was, I mean, the Sudanese revolution, 2019, 2018, 2019, that kind of time. And the main focus was taken down to Omar al-Bashir and his military apparatus, basically, that controlled Sudan. There was a group of Sudanese bourgeois. They ran the entire country. They were focused on Khartoum. If you weren't part of the Khartoum elite, you weren't going to. Succeed in any way. There was no opportunity for you. And I mean, the the phrases that were used during the revolution were more about bread and the lack of bread. But that was just kind of like a means to an end. Like it was just like. okay, now we can't even get bread. But really it was about the whole thing. I mean, it was just frustration with the whole system. It reached like a breaking point and then the people revolted, right? And even the two parties that we see today that are involved, they were involved from the very beginning. They were the ones used against the revolutionaries back then. The SAF and the RSF were both used to shoot at protesters and, you know, fight them or, and, and, um, Not like, like punish them for, for, for revolting basically. But basically finally I'm at Bashir falls. I mean, do the, the, like the people created their own, um, bottom up, like, uh, like the community kitchens, the resistance community, the, all the different kinds of apparel, like institutions that they created for themselves that didn't need the state. They need anybody from the outside to help them out. And they ended up dropping on Bashir, but at the same time, It was, in a way, it was kind of like the people, the SAF and the RSF and the people, the foreign powers that have all their investments into Sudan, realized that there was no saving Armand Bashir's regime.

Jared: It was over.

Hamza Al-Muqawi: So sometimes what they do, like you've probably, we've seen this in Egypt during the Arab Spring. We've seen this in different countries. places where they allow the dictator to fall. The dictator comes down, you know, everything seems like it's getting better. We go into the democracy, like where we're, we're going to civilian rule and then boom, it just kind of like flips one day. It just goes back into like a, like a military coup. And then like, we saw this in Egypt as well, right? We had the fall of Hussein Mubarak. We had Mohammed Morsi. We had the whole democracy. It felt really hopeful. And then, cool and then military dictatorship again and then we're just back to where we started or even worse sudan is kind of like in the same thing except the people really did like really did take down armand bashir they did like it it ended up happening but some of the people that were really that were still part of that army military apparatus kind of switched sides when they saw that the there was no saving him and they They became part of the new government. They were like, okay, we're going to, we're in a transition from military rule to civilian rule, but you know, you can't just do that transition all at once. So we're going to have like the military representatives and the civilian representatives, and they're all going to be in one transitionary government. And then eventually we're going to get to fully civilian rule. Obviously that never happened, but what really, the part that people really don't know about is that in 2021, um, Borhan, who's the leader of the SAF today, and Hamati, who's the leader of the RSF today, they colluded to overthrow the civilian government. And they did that in 2021. And that's, that kind of led us to where we are today. Like they overthrew the civilian government. They took power. They said, oh, we're just carrying out the will of the people or whatever. I mean, people were not happy with the civilian ruler who's Hamduk, who's That's a long story, but they weren't happy with him. But at the same time, they used that as an opportunity to just kind of like take control of Sudan again. And they were supposed to come up with like a power sharing agreement between the SAF and the RSF and the SAF wanted the RSF to come under the army and the RSF didn't want to do that. The whole thing was, is that this was all a plan from the beginning. Like the RSF was already colluding with the UAE By this point, by 2021, by 2022, by 2023, they were planning this. There was no real disagreement about power sharing or whatever. They just wanted some kind of excuse to overthrow the SAF and take over Sudan as a whole. So this was really, I mean, there was hope. There was revolution, right? It was getting to a point where there was real hope for Sudan. And then the counter-revolutionary forces in the region just didn't allow it to happen. Like, they had their own plans. They said, we can't allow a country like Sudan to take control of their own country, right? That messes up the whole imperialist thing that they have going on in Africa, in the Middle East, in the region, in the Red Sea. I mean, they can't have a... revolutionary country on the red sea right there with control to all those of all those resources all that gold all that oil all all the huge land the strategic depth into east africa and into north africa and even into the middle east so they they colluded with the rsf which in between in this time in between the el bashir falling and getting to uh the war breaking out in april 2023 they were actually used the rsf was sent into yemen to help the uae and the saudi coalition against the hutis against unsar law right this is where the UAE was familiar with the RSA and how they dealt, how they handled themselves as a mercenary group. Then they also used them in Libya to help out Haftar, the LNA, the ones in control of East Libya today, which is also UAE proxy. And then they were like, okay, cool. So these are really good mercenaries that we can use to carry out our plan in Sudan. And one of the biggest things that people don't even know about is that the UAE offered the new Sudanese government money to buy up, like, all the fertile farmland that they had. They wanted, because the UAE is a desert, you know, it's like a, it's a desert in the back of Amman. It doesn't really have any food source. Like it has a lot of money, but with the direction we're going right now with climate change and everything, money's not going to mean a lot in the next coming decades. Like it's going to become like a fight for food eventually. So the UAE is planning ahead for this and they're like, okay, let's buy this. The Sudanese government refused. And now they're just trying to take it by force. Basically, they've taken the gold by force. They try to take the Al-Ghazira scheme by force, which is why in December of 2023, you saw there was a few you might have saw on social media like Wed Medeni, which was the second biggest refugee city in Sudan, fell to the RSF. That was the UAE trying to take the fertile land for themselves through their proxy. But yeah, so I know I went in a whole lot of directions there, but that is what happened in the last seven years. There was hope.

Jared: imperialists got involved they sent in their their goons and that's that's how we are that's how we're there today um basically yeah so i wanted to pull up for folks i'm gonna try to make this a little bit bigger um because you're talking about this and i'm you know i recognize like geography is not the strong suit of americans um and uh um and i know i mean i know we have people listening from all over right but i want people to definitely understand kind of what you're talking about as you're situating this i think it's important to understand uh you know where sudan is geographically so obviously we're in here the north east you know corner of africa basically right below egypt as you say there's this whole section that is right along the red sea obviously which is very you know strategic for all the reasons we know we see you know, the strength of Yemen's blockade. We also know, you know, historically the Suez Canal, but the Red Sea is also, you know, it's not a very large waterway, right? So having both access to a port there, but also just coastline there. And then, you know, the Nile River there comes through, right?

Hamza Al-Muqawi: then just connection to you know ethiopia eritrea chad south sudan of course um you know this is like a colonial wet dream to have sudan i mean just look it's it's libya's right there egypt's right there the middle east is literally like across the sea you have the nile river you have the suez canal you have chad central african republic ethiopia somalia is within reach like all like literally if you have sudan like I mean, any revolutionary, any anti-imperialist movement that might want to rise up in this region is going to be choked out. Like, having Sudan is akin to controlling that entire region. Like, you don't even have to control every single place specifically, but you're able to use that as a launching point, which I'm sure that's part of the, like, I'm sorry to interrupt. It's just, like, the UAE is, the Sudan isn't their end-all, be-all. Like, they have a plan that's been going along. They have parts of Somalia, like plant land and Somaliland that they already have under their control in a way. The east side of Libya, they bought up so much of Egypt financially, so they basically own a lot of Egypt as well. They're filling the president of Ethiopia's pockets. They have a plan for this whole region of Africa and the Sahel, and they want to have I mean, just look at DP World, which is their port company. Like they have ports all around Africa. They've been setting up this kind of like corridor. This is what I call it, like a transnational corridor in this entire region. And it's for multiple reasons. And if they hold Sudan, that's kind of the key for the rest of the pieces will fall into place very, very easily.

Jared: Yeah, I was trying to also pull up and I'm going to do it here in a second just for folks, a map that shows. Let's see. This is not a great one, but at least it'll give folks the geography of the UAE in relation.

Speaker 1: Let's see how small that is. That's not too bad. Let's see.

Jared: Right. So the UAE is actually like over here. I don't know if people can see my cursor, but it's like north of Oman and Saudi Arabia. It's a small country here. And it's, you know, it's not close. I mean, it's close to some degree to Sudan, but it's definitely a different place there. And so maybe you could say a little bit just to help people understand of You talk about sub-imperialism and the UAE. What do you see as the UAE's role as an actor regionally? I know you see it serving a role for Western imperialism, but could you talk a little bit about what that looks like to you?

Hamza Al-Muqawi: The UAE is like an interesting phenomenon because it's in a way we are already kind of familiar with the kind of state and entity that the UAE is in Israel in the way that it's not a real country. It's not a real culture. It never existed before, right? They needed like an arm, a military base in the region to control the Middle East. And then they create this whole thing of Israel, right? And the UAE is kind of the same way. We had in Amman, There was a socialist revolution that was getting very successful and the British were starting to get very afraid of that. So they basically buy, they buy the loyalty of the seven states that were in Oman who ended up creating the UAE. and one of the things that they they did that for is for counter-revolution um against our many socialists that was the first goal which is just like cut them off from each other and um like we need somebody there who's gonna whenever we need something like they'll carry that that out us for like then they'll carry that out for us i mean we see this also in a way in jordan like air of faces but They carry out the will of the West, right? They'll even like risk their own lives, like knocking down those like Yemeni missiles or Iranian missiles to fall on their own land rather than risk hurting, you know, Western goals. So we start with this on many socialist thing. We start with them doing that. And then they eventually just take on this counter-revolutionary role, this sub-imperialist role, right? They're taking, I mean, Libya had their own revolution, right? They, I mean, there's an argument to be had about whether that was Western back the revolution or what the goal one to have there. That's not what I want to discuss here, but they wanted to get things under control. Basically, they couldn't have that just go to the people, right? So they have the UAE back this guy, which is how start to take over all of Eastern Libya. I mean, I'm sure the goal is all of Libya, but right now that's what they have, right? And they... It's basically just like in a way the uae to the west is kind of like what the rsf used to be to the sudanese government it was just we want to do this thing but we don't want to dirty our hands and our image so we're just going to send you guys to do it for us but i think in this situation i don't even think they have to tell the uae to do anything anymore i think the uae knows what the role is and they take it upon themselves to just start doing things like what's going on in sudan like they saw there's a revolution a revolution in sudan a successful revolution where the people the working class which is exactly what that revolution was it was the working class like the bourgeois was not involved at all. It was not a color revolution. It was the Sudanese working class and they could have succeeded. And it's, I don't even like to say that the revolution died or ended because right now what we're seeing right now is the revolution versus the counter revolution. That's what's playing out. It's the Emiratis versus the Sudanese people. It's the foreign powers versus the Sudanese people. So their role is, stop any revolution stop any successful revolution make sure that it fails make sure that the people regret ever standing up against the western-backed puppets or against any any western interest and make sure they they never want to they never want to rise up in there ever again and also teach their neighboring countries a lesson like all the people who are watching sudan right now like wow look look what happens when you try to stand up to do a revolution look you you you get genocided you get massacred right let's you know even if we were considering something we're not going to do anything so but if sudan was successful that would be very bad it would create for them not for us that would create a chain reaction where a lot of different countries might rise up and that would quickly go out of control for the west and even for the sub-imperialist nations who basically they get the like as long as they clean up the messes that the west creates with everything that they do they get to keep all the all the all the change all the gold and all the stuff that they they exploit and everything like that so it's also making them very very wealthy and and helping them maintain their lifestyle um so that's the role they they do they basically they they use their money they use their soft power they use their influence they use their real power they use anything that they have they can buy up like right now they've they basically bought the african union's silence like every time they have an observer role in the african union every time sudan tries to push for anything they're not allowed to like because the uae has they they sent him at the who's the leader of the rsf to meet up with so many of the african leaders and i'm sure that they've bribed them they've bribed uh william ruto uh the president of kenya who has a whole lot of issues with him but yeah like see they they work with all the puppets to basically just maintain that imperialist world order that's their role it's it's maintenance and it's cleanup um just to keep it simple

Jared: no appreciated um some good questions in the chat i'll get to in a second uh other like i know we touched a little bit on the geography aspect are there other aspects of kind of the history of sudan you know obviously we've mainly been talking about the last you know 10 years roughly or so um that you think are like kind of really important to understand you know this this current war or like

Hamza Al-Muqawi: you know the resources or you know anything like that that you just kind of want to highlight as well um from sudan you mean right like yeah yeah so and this is also kind of to to answer one of the questions in the chat as well um in in a way right so the amal bashir dictatorship had basically the sudanese on forces was the bourgeois and also the people in charge, right? So it's a military dictatorship we've seen in a lot of different countries in the global south. These people would use any method to keep control over. So when the British, the Anglo-Egyptian control of Sudan was in place, they made Sudan into a factory of exploitation and of like exporting resources, basically. So when All the different dictators that came after, including the Amal Bashir and Sudanese Armed Forces dictatorship, these people just maintained the factory of exploitation. They maintained it in any way possible because it also filled their pockets. They were allowed to do any corruption they wanted to as long as those resources went from point A to point B, which is from the Global South to Western pockets, to corporations, to billionaires, to wherever it needed to go. So There were people that caused them trouble in this factory. Um, there were people that, that had to, that had to, uh, cooperate and sometimes they wouldn't. Some of these were South Sudanese people, right? There was a lot of oil in South Sudan, and this was a very, very important, um, um, to maintain this, but the South Sudanese people were not happy about the way the North treated them after independence. The North cast them aside. They didn't allow them. I mean, for context, most of the time, South Sudanese people are darker than North Sudanese people. A lot of them are not. Most of them are not. Actually, no. All of South Sudanese people, if I'm not mistaken, are not Arabized. They don't speak Arabic. So this caused a lot of, like, they didn't want, the North Sudanese did not want them in the government. They did not want them to have any real power, but they still wanted to control them and have power over them. This created a very long struggle in the Sudanese Civil War, two of them actually, which was basically South Sudan wanting to take their own independence. So this was a big part that so if you see that it's a ethnic group or ethnic minority group in Sudan who is coming in the way of the extraction that the Sudanese bourgeois was trying to continue carrying out and they needed any method to crush those revolts, right? So we see this already with South Sudan. Now this happened again, this happened in the Nuba Mountains We have the SPLMN, which is the northern version of the SPLM, which is the South Sudanese revolutionary organization. They're situated in the Nuba Mountains. The Nuba Mountains also host the ethnic minority groups that are in Sudan, and the SAF has brutalized them over the years. And then we have one of the more relevant to today's um thing and the creation of this entire monster as we know it and that the rsf which is um therefore therefore is rich in gold therefore is rich in oil therefore is rich in i'm pretty i'm sure i'm pretty sure even diamonds and just a whole lot of resources are in therefore but the darfurian people are many of them are not Arab, uh, Arab buys, like they're not Arab buys Africans. A lot of them are, uh, ethnic groups, uh, for, or Zagawa or different people who do not speak Arabic. And there were these, uh, Arab buys nomad, nomadic tribes, nomadic groups. Um, not, not just from Sudan, also from Chad, also from those areas, they had previously gotten some, some money from Gaddafi in the past. his pan arabist uh days but they would basically just cause trouble for the different ethnic groups like they they didn't really have any land of their own or anything of their own so they would just come and steal cattle they'd come and steal like whatever they can but they knew the area really well their ancestors have been there for a very long time so when the saf wanted to crush the darfurian revolts of the early 2000s They didn't send SAF soldiers since they were already involved in so many war crime investigation and ICC, ICJ, all this kind of stuff. They didn't want to continue that bad PR that they were having. So they paid these people, these tribes, these nomadic Arabized people to basically deal with the problem for them. And those people committed genocide. And at the time, those people were called the ginger weed. So all of this was about resources. All of this was about maintaining the factory of exploitation. Right. And they they outsource the violence to the ginger weed, which means in Sudanese dialect, devil on horseback. And for one of the questions in the comments, no, I'm not Sudanese. I'm actually from North Africa, but I've been following this for a very long time. Well, yes, they continue. So those people. did a i guess you could say a good job at genocide and at massacring and at taking out like ethnic minorities and stuff and they didn't just kill the people who were revolting they they like came down with the iron fist they wiped out like villages right so this makes them this put them in good standing with amal bashir at the time and muhammad hamdan degelo was the leader of them so he which is Hamati the one we know as Hamati today right Hamati he as a gift he gets a gold mine from which he has been passing off the gold from that to the UAE as well to this day but um they basically they were brought in to Khartoum and they were allowed to create this official militia called the rapid support forces by 2013. They were sent on different mercenary missions by Amal Bashir all around Sudan. And then outside of Sudan, they went to Libya, they went to Yemen, they went to different places. They worked for different countries as well. They even worked for the EU to like do border control for Europe. Like if they caught migrants coming up from the part that's beyond Sudan, they would like stop them, basically. And they were receiving money and funding from the European Union for this. So that group becomes the RSF, which becomes the RSF that we know today. But at one point, the RSF was still basically Sudanese, except for the leader. He's actually from Chad. He's not even from Sudan. But that group like now isn't even sudanese anymore like they're mostly they're whoever the the uae can find like they hire anybody they hire they've hired colombians they've had ethiopians people from chad people from south sudan people from different areas it's just whoever needs money whoever's willing to commit the atrocity but yeah so all of these different things it's ethnic minorities who want their rights want their freedom want their liberation coming in the way of the extraction process that the Sudanese bourgeois needed to do on behalf of the West. And this ended up creating multiple issues, including the RSF that we know today. So I hope I hope that that all came together the way I wanted it to.

Jared: I appreciate it. So let's talk about the UAE a little bit more. So, you know, one of the things that i think about when i think about the uae is uh and i you know i think we're gonna have a conversation a little bit more on sports washing with alex avenia this month too um but is like there's like three emirates cups like so the there's one going on right now uh if you're a basketball fan there's the nba emirates cup uh and then um you know there's there's multiple ones in you know football or soccer um and then there's also like kind of just the the branding around dubai right um one is like as you referenced it as you know them being created uh you know in part to as like counter-revolutionary against you know oman um the the thing that i was thinking about actually is in matteo capazzo's book behind me about libya like he talks about how Dubai was held up as the alternative to them. Stop being anti-imperialist and difficult, be like Dubai. We hear this language also related to Gaza as well right now. You don't have to be this, harboring terrorists. Obviously, I'm saying this very sarcastically, but that's what the West would say. You can be a capitalist port city like Dubai. It's held up regionally as this thing that is held as an aspiration for basically western imperialism to say to states that are resistant to western imperialism of look how poor your anti-imperialism makes you right like no discussion of like sanctions right or military bases or all of the things done to like destabilize countries that try to choose a different path of development but you know look at the alternative you could be like dubai right um and then obviously recently especially within the last year and i don't even know if this actually has connections to actual dubai but like dubai chocolate is is everywhere in the west it's like become this big thing they sell it at malls and in all these different stores and so on and so It's just an interesting thing where it's like, obviously, it's a very small country. It's a country that I think most people in the West don't really know much of anything about. But they know it through these kind of branding or marketing exercises. Right. And obviously, you know, they may have known about it also as a, as like a tourist destination or something like that too. So maybe we could talk a little bit about some of these elements of UAE soft power and how it kind of brands itself and the different, different ways. It's also an interesting place because at one point oil was like very like significant to its economy but it's really not anymore it's like one percent of their GDP right now and they've really diversified into other areas like you know sports and tourism and other things like that as well so yeah anything that you would want to say about all of that yeah so starting with the Dubai chocolate thing only because

Hamza Al-Muqawi: Okay, so I've been saying on different social media sites that I do not think that that's a coincidence. It does have something to do with Dubai. And it is like, that started around the same time that we got, we spoke to Macklemore's team as the boycott that we're running and we got him to cancel his show. And a lot of the headlines at the time about Dubai were, Macklemore cancels Dubai show over involvement in Sudan. And then the same thing with SZA, same thing happened, right? And around that time, more headlines started coming out and more stuff in the media started coming out about Dubai specifically and their involvement in Sudan. So it just kind of felt like they were just countering that with some kind of you know craze i mean these influencers are are bought like very easily like they're that's kind of how it took flight and then as soon as something catches on and influences make it a thing then people want to buy it as soon as people want to buy it then obviously capitalists will serve that market though but and you're right like i go to 7-eleven or i'll go to anywhere it's like always there's always a dubai chocolate right there so i do not think that's a coincidence i do think that was kind of like a A laundering method, kind of like a drowning the news method, like something to just make the conversation about something else very quickly. And Dubai was already, and the UAE as a whole, was already kind of starting to be mentioned in like the early 2000s, 2010s. about their involvement in different crimes, different human rights violations in their own nation and also abroad. And I do think that this played a huge part into them starting to invest a lot into like, for example, right? Some of the most popular teams that you might see in like the Premier League um in the uk will always have the emirate emirates uh airways or it had um sponsorship right and this this kind of like causes like a rewiring for people like you're you're seeing this thing all the time associated with the thing you like it like it's not gonna make you look at this in a negative way and on the other hand also you see they most definitely were paying i mean people like future people like different rappers different R&B artists different celebrities from all the different like walks of life were coming to the UAE coming to Dubai posting about it on Instagram wearing the thobe the long white thing and the red you know cover on their head and and doing that whole thing like ah come to Dubai guys look how fun it is look how whatever it is like it was it's all it's all like uh It's like it's for moments like these, like they do this for moments like these, right? Because all people associated with Dubai before this point was all like. oh it's like this like fun place you can go to it's like new york city on steroids it's so cool burj khalifa and it has all this pretty stuff and you can all the my favorite celebrity went there and also they own like they have they have sponsors to my favorite soccer team and and the nba has cups um sponsored by the uae right like this is when you say things like, oh, the UAE is involved in this or is involved in that, people are have a knee jerk reaction. They kind of be like, like, no, you don't know what you're talking about. Or like, no, like, like, I'm not going to stop going. Like, I've had people tell me this. I'm not going to stop going to Dubai just because of something that you're saying. Like, it's probably not even true. Right. Like it kind of they they pay a lot of money to be involved in whatever kind of like they have they host art galleries right like international art galleries they host them there right they host music music festivals they host celebrities they host soccer players they host basketball players they host football like nfl football players and football players obviously in the soccer way right like it's like whatever possible pr thing that they can do they've done it right and they have a lot of money so it's really not that difficult to to

Jared: do that um so that's yeah i just want to ask you about also like the like there's like i don't know the exact term is kafala system like so there's like like nearly slavery right in uh the uae also on like a very large scale um could you talk a little bit about that system and help people understand like that exploitation as well? Cause obviously this is also where a lot of the wealth comes from.

Hamza Al-Muqawi: Yeah. So, I mean, when you see these big buildings and the glimmering lights and everything, that's all built by either South Asian or African people that they bring over and the way they do it is they, they will offer you in your home country. They will hit you up on some, some WhatsApp or a social media site or something like that and, and offer you a great job in your field. Right. offer you a lot of money as soon as you come over there whoever brings you over there they basically sponsor you for like a visa right and they have like a specific visa just for this system they take away your passport you're not allowed to go back to your home country and then they pay you scraps and then you just have to work there and this so many people like say that oh my cousin my uncle my whatever went to the uae and we haven't heard from him since Um, and this happens quite a lot and they they'll pay you scraps. They'll pay you a tiny bit. So they'll be like, well, technically it's not slavery, but they'll take away your, your passport. You're not allowed to go back home. Um, many times people die in like, from like heat exhaustion from that kind of thing. I mean, they like the Birch Khalifa, like that was all them. That was all, even during COVID they've had some of these people that's under the kafala system, um, dress up as hand sanitizers and like have the Emiratis like pump sanitizer from a person. There's a person that's a hand sanitizer. That's the kind of dehumanization that they put people through. But yeah, it's basically that. They'll trick you into coming into the UAE. Then the person who brings you there will take away your passport, take away your identification, take away any type of like legitimate way that you have to go back home and then you're just stuck there and then you have to work for them. And, and, and usually it's for like a certain number of years or something like that. But some people like maids and whatnot, and maids is a very nice word to say, honestly, it's slaves, the slaves that they have in their houses, the ones that are cleaning their homes and taking care of their kids and whatever. Um, stuck there sometimes for life they're never left to go back and they go through a lot of abuse as well at the hand of at the hands of the people who are bringing them there so yeah it is it is slavery pretty much yeah and I was going into

Jared: this the other day and i can't quite find it but like the the emirates airline also for people should know like it's owned by the what's called the emirates group which is basically like it's it's owned by the ruling class of you know so it's like essentially state but it's like an even smaller set of actors right than probably the entire state um you know and so when you and it's one of the largest in the world, it's like worth like $60 billion. It's huge. So yeah. I don't know if you had anything else, but so let's talk a little bit about the boycott then. Like when you look because I know that boycotting you is one of the things that you have pushed, you know, how to how to like what targets do you have? You have a website for this and like how do you how do people know like what to boycott to ensure that they're not supporting the way

Hamza Al-Muqawi: Yeah. So, uh, we have an, uh, an Instagram that's, uh, at defund the UAE. Um, there's a couple of different, uh, targets. There is, um, uh, give me one second. I'm just going to pull out, pull up a link real quick. Um, that's okay. So there's like, uh, the, the boycott the UAE. There's like a website. I'm trying to remember the exact URL, what it was, but that has like a lot of targets as well. Our main targets are tourism, like going to the UAE itself. We're also targeting Uber and Shell who have huge, huge connections to, they make huge profits off of the UAE. They have huge investments there and they, They profit a lot off of whatever money the UAE is making off of this. There's also a couple of gold companies and jewelry companies that we have listed. We have an infographic. I don't...

Jared: Okay. Let me see. There's a private chat. So if it's a link, you can drop it in there and I can pull it up.

Hamza Al-Muqawi: Yeah.

Jared: So... Got it. Boycott. Don't work.

Hamza Al-Muqawi: I also know that now the Boycat app has also added our targets into their app as well. So if you already have that, there's a Sudan section now. So I'm sure that that can help as well.

Jared: yeah yeah another thing i would say too for folks is that the uae also definitely played a role in the destabilization of of syria too like they they switched sides at different points but they ultimately were definitely like a net um you know on the side of the west and basically overthrowing uh the syrian government um so yeah that's another just another example of what they do but so this is the this is the website here yes ah cool all right so yeah this is just boycott uae.org i will put that in the chat as well um also folks if there's other questions that you have uh i can You know, we can share them with Hamza. Let's talk a little bit more about the mutual aid work and so on. So, you know, how do you see this? Like, I know there's different views around, you know, so-called charity or like, you know, obviously you're very engaged in, you know, not just charity. work related to the Sudan, but also to Gaza, which is how I think you and I first got connected. So what is your kind of analysis on the utility or the purpose of these efforts to get resources to people in these places?

Hamza Al-Muqawi: I mean, the way I always frame it for people, because it seems like people kind of sideline those efforts. They doesn't feel as glamorous as posting red triangle videos uh and you know cool like edits of which i also make i also enjoy i also enjoy edits of you know kasem frying whoever they're frying you know but at the same time um it might not feel as glamorous but it really is one of the most important things um like if People in Gaza and people in Sudan, like people in al-Fasha, for example, are specifically being starved by the imperialists, by the enemy that we are fighting. That's a war of starvation, like they're waging a war of starvation, which means one of the fronts of their war is food. That's something very important, is resources, is keeping people alive. So it... it's not just like the utility is not only keeping people alive but you're literally fighting back against them you're fighting that front of the war like if if for example if we're If we see ourselves as allies in solidarity with the people on the ground who are fighting the main war in every way possible, fighting the genocide, fighting to stay alive, then us keeping people alive, us finding ways to combat the war of starvation that they are waging is really us fighting this front of the war. We are helping Like, they want people to starve to death. They want people to give up. They want people to feel the pressure and either leave their homes or surrender, you know, allow, like, if they're under siege and they're not getting any food, they wanted people to leave Gaza, for example, right? They wanted people to leave al-Fasher or they wanted people to surrender al-Fasher.

Jared: In both cases, this was the case, right?

Hamza Al-Muqawi: But if you're keeping people alive and you're helping people people stay alive right something that the resistance for example couldn't focus on at the time they're they're busy fighting the military battle right so the least we can do is at least keep their family and their friends and their neighbors and the people above them alive it's it's very important it's it's combating the war of starvation like i said before um and i really like the utility is not only just Oh, we're helping people. It's charity, like the way NGOs do it. Like, you know, it feels good to help people, but it's literally an anti imperialist struggle that that you're doing by keeping the targets of imperialism alive, by helping them survive another week and another month and another year when all the efforts are by the imperialists to to stop that, to to get them to to collapse, basically. So that's my take on that.

Jared: No, I think that's great. Good question. What's up, Don? So the question is, what media outlets would the hosts recommend to keep up to date with the Sudanese genocide? And are there any books that you recommend to learn more about the history of this crisis? I mean, one, just to shout out so that Hamza doesn't have to shout out, is the Telegram channel, which is in the show description that Hamza and others run to kind of keep people up to date on news updates. But are there other places that you look or you think do a really good job covering this? Because I know that, you know, it's a spot... I mentioned at the beginning that we haven't covered a whole lot and I also know that's the case for a lot of other news outlets, even ones that are anti-imperialist in the core is that it's just not getting a lot of coverage and there's not a lot of good analysis that people unfortunately are getting as a result of that. So what are some of the places that you look to or you suggest?

Hamza Al-Muqawi: Yeah. So unfortunately media outlets are not really doing much, but there was like individuals in like groups who are doing, um, there's a very good account on, on, on Twitter. I don't know if you guys have Twitter. It's literally called, wait, I could type in the private chat, but, um, it's, uh, BS on blast. She does very, very good work. She, um, like covers a lot of what's going on in the ground, uh, consistently. So that's the account right there. Her name is Sarah. She's Sudanese and she covers a lot of that.

Jared: A lot of the stuff is basically on Twitter. There isn't really...

Hamza Al-Muqawi: I don't really have a website or something where people, because, you know, the media really isn't, isn't covering it the way they should. Or if they do, it's like once every like three weeks, they might cover one event out of the dozens of events that are happening in between. Um, um, when they release like news, there's also, um, but this is an Arabic and that's why I recommend that people go on the telegram. Cause I translate, um, Sudan, um,

Jared: This is the person you were saying? Yes.

Hamza Al-Muqawi: Yeah, she covers a lot. And then also at the end of every day, she has... If you scroll down, I'm sure it's on her pin. She has a... Yeah, see today's quick update. So usually she has like an update for the day. You can open it and then there's like a thread of different events that's happened throughout the day. And she also shares some of the best analysis and stuff like that from even different accounts. So you might even find on their different accounts that you can follow that are also consistent, you know, from Sudan.

Jared: Yeah, sorry. I think you, oh, Sudan war is another one. All right. I'll pull that one up too.

Hamza Al-Muqawi: Yeah, but this one is in Arabic. That's the only thing. I mean, you could use the translate feature if you want. If you don't, I also, this is one of my sources that I use to post on the Telegram. So if that works for people, they can also just go into Telegram and just catch that in English.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Jared: Got it. All right, let's see. Is there anything else from the chat? Appreciate you, Hamza, for this. This is great to connect with some different folks. Somebody also raised up some good campaigns to donate to Sudan and Congo, the Doctors Against Genocide, and solar panels to hospitals, et cetera. Thank you for that. Um, yeah, I mean, the only other question I had to you is, you know, what are, in your estimation, some of the reasons for this kind of lack or gap? You know, I mean, I realize that involves you to get into like people's psychology and other things like that. I mean, Often when I hear Sudan, it is in relation to people talking about Gaza or talking about Palestine and saying, hey, we need to pay attention to what's going on in Sudan and what's going on in the Congo as well, which I agree with. And I think most people do. But I think the question that we raise already, you can kind of see in this discussion that you know, there aren't a lot of sources in English. And I think that's, I mean, one is we have to get better at even using tools, like you said, of even just, know as limited as online translation may be and the problems that exist with it like making that effort to translate stuff that's in other languages i think is something that we should be doing if we don't speak those other languages right to just broaden the analysis that we get because within the anglos phone sphere there is just going to be some limitations um And Black Alliance for Peace also shout them out. I know that they do work to keep up and to provide analysis of what's going on in Sudan as well. We did talk about that a little bit in our AFRICOM discussion last month. And yeah, I mean, what is your thoughts on that? Like, is it just that there's not been... like one of the things with Gaza that we can say, right, is that there's been a clear effort by Palestinians over the last, you know, 30, 40 years, right, to get their analysis out, not just in Arabic, but also in English, right, which required them also to then you know, people like Rifat Alarir, you know, and others, right, of saying, like, okay, I'm going to actually teach English specifically for the purposes of people being able to provide analysis to the Anglophone world, even though it's not the primary language here, right? And I think, obviously, we can see the fruits of those kind of efforts in terms of that. I mean, It shouldn't obviously be on the colonized people, on the people who are under war and oppression to have to learn another language to teach it, to share what's going on with people in other parts of the world. obviously we can see, you know, I guess the benefit to some extent, I mean, obviously what's happening in Gaza is absolutely horrible. So, you know, there's also limitations of awareness raising even in general, but yeah, I don't know what your thoughts are on the kind of the gap or the, the difference between coverage between, you know,

Hamza Al-Muqawi: one section or another or why there's more information in certain areas versus other areas i mean i'm gonna be completely honest uh number one number one thing and this is something that i've observed personally like this is something number one thing is just people like internalize uh anti-blackness and people just not caring as much about black people as they care about other people this is just i'm gonna just be very straight up that's one of the biggest reasons i've seen right people see that Uh, and they're just like, they just keep scrolling. Right. And there has been an effort and I'm talking about people on the ground in Sudan, typing their stuff up in Arab, in English, I mean, and posting what's going on in English. Like there were people have been, uh, like posting now for years in English, like from, not from just when this started, like from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, right. Like posting from Sudan in English, trying to raise awareness. But on the other end also is when things happen in Africa, I feel like the media, the way they framed it, people just kind of like, ah, another civil war. It's one of those civil wars over there, you know, in one of those places. Like, this is something that you always hear. Some people, like, genuinely have thought, like, when you try to talk to them, they're like, I thought there's always a civil war over there. Or I thought this is the same civil war that started, like, 30 years ago or something. Like, they never even thought that the civil war ended. They think this is just all one big civil war. They think that people over there are always fighting and it's too complicated and it's like some tribal stuff that they won't understand. There's also people who genuinely were giving us a lot of pushback because they were saying that we're just trying to distract from Palestine and we're Zionist Asians pushing Sudan to take away from the palestinian cause or something like that i've also run into that that's that hasn't been one of the bigger ones but that is something that some people genuinely believe they believe that the other causes were brought up only to bring away from palestine and while and and i can see why people might think that's because when the zionists are looking for something like why doesn't anyone talk about yemen why doesn't anyone talk about sudan why doesn't anyone but they don't even talk about sudan You're talking to Sudanese people who are actually just trying to advocate for their people. But yeah, it's the lack of media coverage. It's the lack of people having the willingness to look into things. And also, it's just, I guess, the truth about Sudan isn't as mainstream. And I'm sure that the buildup of years and years and years, which has reached the breaking point of the Gaza genocide, is a part of, I mean, we've seen, like, every time something happens in Gaza, more and more people kind of, like, wake up to it, right? And then I guess another factor of it would be as well, like, people in Sudan can't record what's happening, the way people in Gaza can. People in Sudan, I mean, we're talking more about lot of times it's bombs or it's something from like the top like you know from far away or drone strikes and stuff like that while i mean there are soldiers on the in the ground in the right there throughout the thing but then in in sudan it's always militiamen that are like in front of your face like you can't really record their crimes if you're that close you will probably end up being uh killed too as well so that's another thing and they literally threaten people not to record the rsf there's a lot of different factors but now the rsf are like literally recording it themselves so like i feel like if people want to like they will and it took in faster falling and for all those atrocities for people to finally like you know kind of like wake up a little bit and kind of pay more attention so i'm hoping that this momentum can stay well yeah i really do think it's a

Jared: the two main reasons to probably be anti-blackness and just ignorance people just not knowing what the reality is no i appreciate that i think that you're right about that and i appreciate folks in the chat also um you know i think it's important to consider what africa and africa represents for the average people on the level of their imagination not much progress has been made um chidi macha also said africa is just naturally a mess in quotes that's why people don't pay attention no clue that it's a mess due to a western footprint on the continent yeah and i mean i think this is this connects to i think ali khadri talks about it in the accumulation of waste but it's also something just in general of this idea that media implants in our minds of countries that just can't get it together. Like this idea that it's a backwardsness thing and that they can't figure out how to rule themselves. And so it's always becomes a problem you know and again i'm i completely disagree with this right but this is sort of the narrative is that it becomes a problem of people's incapacities to self-rule and stuff like that and obviously you see the you know unfortunately like that the logical outcome of that line of thinking becomes the way that the West treats Haiti and treats, you know, Gaza now, right? Where you have basically, you know, the UN Security Council saying these countries cannot, you know, or these people cannot self-govern, right? And so we have to impose, you know, a colonial government of these kind of, you know, coalition of the willing basically to run their affairs for them until such a time that we determine that they're capable of doing it. And that has a long history as actually a tactic of colonialism that doesn't call itself colonialism, although it's connected in with direct colonialism as well. absolutely imperialist thinking for sure um and so yeah i mean i think that all those things are at play as well as the the anti-black racism a kind of general anti-african viewpoint too obviously knowing that not everybody is is black in africa in the way that you know people imagine um especially in north africa but you know this this just general view right uh that we have in the west that you know, doesn't look at imperialism. It doesn't look at resource extraction and militarism and the types of development that have been allowed, right. Which is also important is that the development that have been allowed in this country are to get in these countries have been to get the resources out of them, not to actually allow for people to, um, you know, have infrastructure that they need for themselves and for their societies. So yeah, much appreciated. Um, does it say flip side of phil at most sudan or haiti or congo is just a rhetorical wedge for people we say why don't we care about yeah so i think um this is a this is a tricky thing i think the what i would say to this is it can't just it can't just be that right um is that if it is just a rhetorical wedge then it does become kind of what you're talking about where, you know, it could be a tactic that anybody could use to say, oh, you shouldn't care about what you care about because you don't care about all these other things, right? The flip side of that is that, you know, I remember, I don't know if Kali Akuna, I think Kali Akuna said it when he was on here, actually. He was like, we can't be selective internationalists, right? We're either internationalists and we care about all of, like every struggle around the world and understanding it. um or we're being selective right and there is something to that you know if you're truly an internationalist then you know sudan should be important like you said they had a revolution there there are a lot of people there that you know we should care about and who have politics also that are interesting and dynamic and you know Obviously, on a human level, we should care about all of these places as well. But that means we have to actually do the work to do the education. And I think breaking out also of that monolingual English sphere is also a big issue. maybe people dip a little bit into you know stuff in the western hemisphere even if it's in spanish right because of proximity but struggles in other parts of the world is often a place where um you know we fall short so anyway i appreciate you sharing resources and this discussion um uh yeah um just looking to see if there's other comments that i missed Good point on chocolate from Chitty Matcha, too. It's one of those products that also always comes at the barrel of a gun. You know, it's native to Americas and grown in millions of acres of land in Ghana where people can't grow food or live on that land, right? The other thing I should say about this too, just for people to understand the scale of it, like if you just Google it, like 90% of the workers in the UAE are immigrants, right? And they all are kind of under that kafala system we were talking about earlier that is, you know, akin to, you know, modern day slavery, slavery, however people want to talk about it. But basically all of the structures that you were talking about that, you know, make sure people are paid very paltry sums for long, hard labor and under, you know, forced labor and without their passport so they don't have the ability to return. Right. That's like the baseline. And, you know, that's that's most of the working class of those of that society. And of course, we would one of the things I think is important, too, is we would hear about all of these things. Right. If if it was that the UAE was actually, you know, antagonistic to the West in some way, right? But we don't like, the United States doesn't care at all, right, about labor conditions in the UAE because it's their buddy, right? And I think that's the same thing, like with, you know, I mean, Israel obviously being a stark example, right, of, you know, Of course, you're going to overlook settler colonialism and overlook apartheid and even overlook genocide, right? Because it's your partner that's doing it.

Hamza Al-Muqawi: Well, if it's China or Iran and I had 1% of the kafala system, we would never hear the end of it. There'd be 15 articles a day from Washington Post and the New York Times and the Huffington Post and every single... cnn would be covering it all the time you know they'd be they'd have uh vice news would have a episode about it or something like that like but you you rarely hear about it you used to hear about it back in you know a couple years ago maybe here and there but other than that they don't really they don't really like to cover um the uae or saudi arabia their two gulf besties

Jared: Yeah, no, absolutely. And Don, so I asked a question about like Twitter was talk about the continued relevance of Twitter despite recent international relations. And then I asked for a little bit of more clarity and said, wanted a deeper dive into the relevance of social media over mainstream media outlets. Is social media a major outlet given the lack of coverage from network news? One thing that I would say related to that conversation, Don, is that had a conversation i guess it was earlier this week um and i'm blanking on the guest's name so i'm i'm apologies but i'm going to look it up real quick but it was about really connected a lot with social media and Palestine. It was about digital settler colonialism, Palestine in terms of servitude, which is a book that was written by Omar Zaza. Omar was the guest for that conversation. His book talks about this quite a bit, and it's very interesting. And I mean, like one of the things that he wants to dispel is this idea that social media is different in like really meaningful ways from corporate media, like it's another form of corporate media. But at the same time, obviously, and these websites are really working overdrive, I think, to make sure that we can't see a lot of the good reporting and stuff like that that goes on there more and more but there are still people right there are tons and tons of people that are on these sites that you know are working to educate themselves and to study stuff and to share information like hamza here and other folks that he's you know working with and following and uh so i think that's the thing is that you know for better or worse it's it's here and it's something that we have it's not necessarily um a net positive on the whole but if you know how to use it then you know there are ways to find things and connect to things that you probably wouldn't be able to otherwise right and so i think certainly we have to have a larger critique of on the whole you know most people are not using these apps to like really educate themselves about you know imperialism anti-imperialism radical politics like that's a niche you know within all of these spaces that is kind of always under attack to a certain degree um but those things those things do exist in these spaces as well right and so i think that's the that's kind of the rub of it but i think part of what um you know, our guest Omar talked about in that discussion is, you know, you can't rely also that that role will always be there. Like people will try to use it there, but these apps, like part of the reason that they're, they're pushing so hard on the algorithms or they want to show us cat videos all day or, you know, whatever else is because they recognize how much, for instance, specifically with regards to Palestine, that, you know, social media has become a space where people can get different analysis and news and actually break with the imperialist perspective on it. And so it's it is a that is actually a threat. And it's a threat that both, you know, Twitter or Instagram or Meta, or all these companies are actually constantly trying to combat, which is why they ban people. It's why they shadow ban people. It's why Palestinians have more and more trouble sharing their fundraisers, all of that stuff, because they recognize that people are using these tools in ways that they actually don't want us to be using them. All right. Anything else you want to say in closing, Hamza? Any reminders or just other things you want to share or plug?

Hamza Al-Muqawi: I mean, you know, everything that we shared already and all the stuff that we plugged already, I hope people check them out and, you know, share them themselves and promote them as well. It'd be a great help to the work that we're trying to do. And if you're trying to follow along with the news in Sudan, the telegram channel will be a great resource. I'm hoping that can help you guys out as well. And, uh, just wanted to second what you just said because I'm on my, I think 17th or 18th Twitter account since October, 2023. So yeah, for sure. I think they definitely don't want us to, to be talking about this kind of stuff, but yeah. Um, um, thank you for having me and thank, uh, everybody in the audience for listening and following along. It's, um,

Jared: Right on. Yeah, I just wanted to lift this up to somebody shout out Upscrolled. I'm not, maybe the second one is Redbook. I'm not as familiar with that one. But Upscrolled is a project, which we did talk about in that conversation with Omar as well, of tech against apartheid, right? So it is actually, it's like a It's a very Instagram-like app that's created specifically to avoid censorship of pro-Palestine stuff and anti-imperialist stuff. So people should definitely check that out. And yeah, man, appreciate the work you're doing. I encourage people to check all of the links in the show description to follow and support and check out Sudan Fund, share it with folks. and yeah we'll be continuing i'm sure we'll do you know people ask for more conversations on congo and on sudan and i'm sure that we will be doing more of that uh in the coming months you know get some different folks in with some different perspectives and um yeah appreciate you hansa this was great thank you for joining me today of course thank you for having me jared really appreciate it yeah