The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3548 Uprising Against Ai Data Centers Sudan Torn Apart W Miles Bryan Dr Khalid Medani

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

It's Emmajority Report Thursday on the Majority Report On today's program: As members of the Trump administration revive Iraq War–era justifications for an invasion of Venezuela, Trump himself cuts through the spin and openly admits he wants the country's oil. Rep Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) gives an impassioned plea to Congress to stop "sleepwalking" into war with Venezuela. Miles Bryan, senior producer and reporter for Today, Explained, Vox's daily news podcast joins Emma for a conversation about the bipartisan uprising against AI data center construction across America. Khalid Medani, Associate Professor of Political Science and Islamic Studies and Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University joins the show to explain the horrific situation in Sudan. In the Fun Half: Brandon Sutton and Matt Binder join Emma. Bernie Sanders calls for a moratorium on building new data centers due to environmental impact and surge pricing on utilities. Meanwhile China's approach to AI is more efficient, greener, and they are absolute molly whopping the U.S. Brett Weinstein returns Joe Rogan's podcast to share some interesting thoughts on modern day mating. Matt, Emma and Brandon dig into Candace Owens backing off her Charlie Kirk/TPUSA conspiracy theories. All that and more. The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Check out IceRRT.com to find an ICE rapid response team nearest to you. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: SHOPIFY: To get 6 bottles of wine for $39.99, head to NakedWines.com/MAJORITY and use code MAJORITY for both the code AND PASSWORD.   ZBIOTICS: Go to zbiotics.com/MAJORITY to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use MAJORITY at checkout. AURA FRAMES: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/MAJORITY and use promo code MAJORITY at checkout. SUNSET LAKE: Head on over to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use the code WINTER25 to save 35% on their full lineup of CBD Tinctures for people and pets. This sale ends December 21st at 11:59 ᴾᴹ eastern. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

It is Thursday, December 18th, 2025. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar, and this is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Miles Bryan. Senior producer at Vox and reporter for today, Explain, will be with us to talk about the growing revolt against AI data centers. And later in the show, Dr. Khalid Medani will be with us to help understand the brutal conflict in Sudan.

Also on the program, Trump addressed the nation last night with a galvanizing speech about how the bulturing economy is not his fault. Like, literally opened this speech with that, blaming Biden. Thankfully, it wasn't him declaring war against Venezuela, which is what many people thought that address was going to be about. Maduro instructs his Navy to escort ships carrying oil, defying Trump's demands for essentially piracy. Speaking of the oil, Trump's just saying it now. No more narco-terrorism. Just we want the oil.

That's what we're doing. The House narrowly rejects. two war powers resolutions attempting to curb Trump's aggression towards Venezuela. Just 48 hours before the DOJ is mandated to release the Epstein files, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino says, I quit. He can't even get back into podcasting now because... Oh, he will.

But he will... But he can't say anything real. Yeah. So it just... Just like he did before. He also has the stupidest audience in the entire world. I know, but it's just like he's basically an asset now. Because everything he says, any real stuff is classified.

The White House tells federal immigration offices to start denaturalizing people. Despite the Supreme Court birth rate citizenship case still being ongoing, DHS fast-tracked a $1 billion contract to a $1 billion contract to a tributtal. Trump mega donor who is offering free private plane flights to deport migrants. And HHS cancels millions of dollars in grants to the American Academy of Pediatrics, studying infant deaths, identifying autism, and more because they criticized RFK Jr.'s vaccine policies. Marjorie Taylor Green's anti-trans bill, which would charge health care providers, with felonies for providing gender affirming care to minors

passes in the House. This is your right-wing populist, by the way. A new analysis of the 2024 election finds that $900 million in dark money was spent on both the Trump and Harris campaigns. Biden slash Harris. The U.S. approves $11 billion in weapon sales to Taiwan. And lastly, Kathy Hochel

signs a right to die bill that allows terminally ill New Yorkers to end their lives. All this and more on today's majority report. Hello everybody. It's an end majority report Thursday. Hello to Matt. Hello to Brian. Hello to our lovely audience,

who I like to suck up to on my days. Just building a popular resistance to Sam. That's what we're doing with the coup. Speaking of coups, that's actually a transition that could work there. That's what the United States is trying to do in Venezuela. Can I read a quote from the New York Times, which I don't normally do? Mr. Trump's announcement of a blockade cut senior officials at the Pentagon and at Southern Command in Florida by surprise.

On Wednesday, they scrambled to figure out the U.S. military's role in the action, U.S. officials said. I mean, the amount of incompetence might be the only thing that saves us. There was, at the height of Watergate, there was, like, a worry that Nixon would call on, like, a squadron or something like that to help hold power. But these sort of, like, erratic, and to be honest, Nixon did walk around and, like, talk with people, like, drunk and we're talking people at the Lincoln Memorial. So, like, he was pretty, this isn't entirely. unprecedented. It does, it is that, though. It's the same thing as like Nixon wandering around drunk, argued about football with, uh, with hippies. Yeah. Well, we had an, and I AM or ask is, is the Trump presidency more Nixonian or is it more like a Reagan presidency? It has the economics of Reagan

and the celebrity power of it. And madman. And yeah, but the, the illegality of Nixon and the, the vindictiveness and the pettiness. But so last night, as I mentioned, Trump addressed the country, and there was a lot of speculation in the lead-up to this address that this is going to be him declaring war on Venezuela, which by the way, he does not have the power to do. Congress has the power to declare war. What if I say they're terrorists in its weapons and mass destruction? Well, maybe he just declares it, like when Michael Scott declared bankruptcy. in all seriousness though though no that's supposed to be congress's purview but last night he ended up just like ranting and raving in this address blaming Biden for the economy within the first 60 seconds

he's talking about how the Democrats want to give transgender to everybody saying that Biden released people from insane asylums over and over and over again it looked very weak and desperate because we see the numbers that are coming out about his approval rating, which is in the toilet. And especially on issues like the economy and healthcare, the kind of kitchen table stuff that could really, really sink the Republican Party coming up in the midterms. I would just remind people when he says that I'm impotent about Biden's failing economy still after all these months that Biden's economy was actually kind of roaring by, you know, capitalist standards. Right.

when Trump took office and then he got in and in his inaugural address said this. You got it? There'll be a little disturbance, but we're okay with that. It won't be much. Won't be much. And also the farmers are going to have a fun time. And both those things turned out to be, well, I mean, understatements or lies. He also touted tariffs repeatedly in that speech, which, you know, he can't, he can't back off of his policies,

no matter how disastrous, it's anathema to him. But like, part of also what he was elected on was this notion that he was more anti-war than the Democrats. And the Democrats have no one but themselves to blame for that. Biden overseeing a genocide. Kamala Harris refusing to distance herself from that just left the lane open for the easiest possible argument just by default for Trump to make that case. See, when I was in power,

wasn't happening. When they're in power, you have Ukraine, you have this. And so it just, it, it was by default. People mention Nixon. Nixon won in a similar way, saying LBJ has this Vietnam war going on. I have a secret plan to end it. And the, the, you'll notice that many of the officials in the administration and the Republican lawmakers that go on television will consistently say that these attacks on these boats, these more than, I think two dozen at this point, instances of bombing boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific that have killed at least 99 people by this point. They will say that these were drug runners, that these were narco terrorists, and you'll hear that

from them in the press. The thing is that you're not hearing that from Donald Trump that much. You know what you're hearing from him? Kind of the truth. Getting land, oil rights, whatever we had, they took it away because we had a president that maybe wasn't watching, but they're not going to do that. We want it back. They took our oil rights with a lot of oil there.

As you know, they threw our companies out, and we want it back. We want it back. Then he shuffles away like he doesn't even know where he's going. I mean, he may not. Like, so he came out the other day and said that fentanyl, which is not traffic through Venezuela, is a weapon of mass destruction because he's using the Iraq war era

rhetoric to justify his now kind of his new Monroe doctrine. There was a speech that Pete Heges-eth had the other day where he said that the Monroe doctrine had never gone away and that were reasserting it. The idea that the United States has colonial dominion over

the Western Hemisphere, which, you know, was an 1800s policy that was meant to curb European colonialism in the region and assert U.S. dominance there. This is what the United States under Trump is saying is there basically their foreign policy. And we don't know fully the extent of Venezuela's oil reserves, but we know that it's some of the largest in the world. And what he's talking about getting, you know, kicked out of Venezuela. We want their oil reserves back. It doesn't matter about the sovereignty

of the people of Venezuela. Or that Chevron is operating with an agreement. We're not going to acknowledge. They don't acknowledge, but they want it all. That's the point. What they want is to actually kick out China. Exactly.

That's it. Right. And so, I mean, there were some estimates that China, I think, is response, or I wrote this down here, Yeah, Chinese buyers account for around 80% of Venezuela as oil sales, which to Matt's point, much of our foreign policy at this point, despite being offensive and, yes, genocidal, is defensive in attempting to curb China's growing influence given their power, their efficiency, their self-sufficiency, and using brute force and military might, to do so, whether that be in the Middle East or whether that be in Venezuela. And now Trump is supposedly being really tough on China.

It's not like he's saying, hey, China, don't purchase from Venezuela and using the United States' leverage there, which would be like probably the smarter thing to do if he was actually interested in doing that. No, dumbass bully. Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb makes me feel tough Department of War, baby. It's childish and immensely. dangerous. Yeah.

And so, you know, like, since this is by Chavez, when he came to power in the late 90s, it's been an obsession of neocons to this point. We've tried coups. We've tried saying our Western aligned guy or lady in this instance is the true president of Venezuela. We've tried sanctions. We've participated in like covert ops attempting to assassinate their leaders. And now Trump is just basically like, no, we'll do it with the military. And it's really concerning that yesterday two separate resolutions in the House, war powers resolutions attempting to kind of rein this in failed.

They failed very narrowly. You had a few Republicans defecting. Jim McGovern had one pertaining to Venezuela, where you had three Republicans join it, Marjorie Taylor Green, Thomas Massey, and then bacon. Yeah, which, you know, I guess you could expect. And then there was another one introduced by Gregory Meeks that also failed. But here is Representative Nadia Velasquez, who is retiring. She's a Democrat that's in her early 70s that's retiring and allowing her safe blue district to potentially go to someone in DSA. Love her

for that. Long time, long time progressive who's in her career in the House also been very vocal about trying to curb the authorizations for the uses of military force that I've been harping on over and over again because it's providing

this is the basis that the Trump administration is trying to use to wage this illegal and offensive war using the authorizations for the military force that the two that passed one after 9-11 in 2001, the other in 2002 used to justify that illegal invasion of Iraq, basically giving the executive branch all this broad authority to wage, to use wartime actions

without the approval of Congress, but pertaining to 9-11 pertaining to Iraq. That's why it's so important to call out the language that they're using here about narco-terrorists and fentanyl being a weapon of mass destruction because they're trying to fit their insane policy into this broad legal justification. And I don't think they should be able to do that. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together should understand that. But that's the pretext that they're attempting to deploy. So here is Representative Velasquez speaking about what needs to be done here. I rise today in support of this power war powers resolution. Twenty-three years ago, I stood on this same floor as Congress debated an authorization for the use of military force in Iraq.

The Bush administration relied on bad intelligence and outright lies to march America into a disastrous foreign intervention that cost trillions of dollars, took thousands of American lives and helped destabilize the region for a generation. Today, I fear we are watching history repeat itself. Once again, a far-right administration is using the same playbook. The justification this administration has provided to Congress and the American people, people is a joke. If this was about drugs, why seized an oil tanker and threaten an illegal naval blockade? If this was about drugs, why would the president pardon a drug trafficking former president of Honduras?

Awesome. Yeah, we can keep going a little bit. Yeah. This is not about drugs. This is about regime chain and control of Venezuela's resources. Nicholas Maduro is a dictator, and you don't have to defend him to recognize a simple truth. Venezuela does not pose an imminent threat and a war will do nothing to make America safer. Boom. All right. Really appreciated her bringing that context and the fact that, you know, she's been in Congress for for many decades and saw Iraq and stood in opposition to it. I just want to remind people of how Trump was talking about Iraq in 2016. just to give people a sense of like 10 years ago where we were,

how he'll lie and use any way to attack his political opposition in a manner that is populace, but like, or he crowdsurfs. Like that is part of what his political talent is. But, and it is on the opposition party that they've been unable to show this contradiction in any real meaningful way. how he talked to Jeb Bush in 2016, or I guess 2015, but in the 2016 race in the primary. Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake, all right? Now, you can take it any way you want, and it took Jeb Bush, if you remember at the beginning

of his announcement, when he announced the president, took him five days. He went back. It was a mistake. It was a mistake. It took him five days before his people told him what to say. and he ultimately said it was a mistake. The war in Iraq, we spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives. We don't even have it.

Iran is taking over Iraq with the second. We don't even have it. Well, there's the mask slips. Yeah, there's the consistency. But people get the point. Just a quick point. When they say war for oil, it's not to make gas prices lower. It's so American capitalists like Exxon profit from that natural resource being depleted

and not a state like China. Same as Iraq and the same as Venezuela. 100%. I mean, the Biden administration, if it was about keeping oil prices down, like, the Biden administration, just purely on a fact-based level, like, kind of broke the back of OPEC during his administration and really built up U.S. oil reserves now. It's disastrous for the climate. But the neocons and the capitalists and the Republicans should like that. That's an example of doing what Trump is saying he wants to do effectively.

But that's not a great power conflict. Yep. A word from some of our sponsors, folks. You know, at the end of the year, you got Christmas parties, you've got holiday dinners, you've got late night wrapping with maybe a glass of eggnog or a glass of wine. it is the season for celebration. But just don't forget, Zbiotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink. Probiotic drink. Zbiotics, pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic.

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It happens to me all the time. Miles, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thank you for having me. Of course. Let's talk about this kind of backlash to these billions of dollars of AI Data Center projects that are happening around the country, seemingly kind of unabated. until fairly recently. Your piece opens, speaking a little bit about a Pennsylvania kind of community coming together

and trying to push back against these data centers. Tell us a little bit about that story in particular. Yeah. So, as you said, there's billions, hundreds of billions of data centers in the works or plan for the United States. So it's not very hard to find an example of where one of these is coming. It's also not hard to find an example of where people are mad about it. it, but I looked at a proposed data center project in suburban Philly, a town called

Concha Hoccan. I live in Philly, so it was convenient for me to get to and cover, but the reason it really stood out to me is that the plan for this data center was to be in an old steel mill, is a steel mill that had been operating since the 1830s north of Philly. I really, like, you know, represented in kind of a literary sense, and in an actual sense, the old industrial economy. They powered these places, that created middle class jobs that help build these communities, yada, yada, yada. And the steel mill had been limping along since the 70s and ended up actually closing only last summer. So it's pretty recent. And it's this huge, you know, industrial building on the side of the river.

And when a developer went to the town council wanting to replace it with the data center, it felt very like listening to him talk at the meeting. It felt very like, oh, this is just sort of the story of the America's economic transition week. losing the steel mills, we're getting the data centers. Yay. Yeah. And like, I do want to actually like start with like, it is a good pitch. If you're a council member of like, you know, normal town USA, like this guy's like, hey, we're going to put in this data center.

It is going to pay tens of millions of dollars in taxes. You know what it's not going to do? It's not going to put any kids in the school district. It's not going to put more cars on the road. It's not going to require water. sewer hookup. It's kind of like a money machine. You know, you just accept the box. You get the box, and in return, you get a lot of tax revenue. So that's the pitch. It's interesting to me because it's being made all over the country to all sorts of communities. But the pushback in this community

was really intense, like all sorts of people rallied against it. You know, I interviewed a couple of them, just these young women who had never been political organizers who got super into this, learned all about data centers and all these things that concern them. And, you know, that data center projects now on hold. But it just sort of keyed me into this whole world of data center pushback, which is not something that's sort of like tracking neatly on political lines. But it's happening everywhere. Yeah. I mean, so tell us a little bit about the nature of that pushback. There was an article this morning in The Verge. Just you see these, these analyses that come out that it's like, seems like every day about just the amount of pollution this is causing.

The opening paragraph in this article is AI created as much carbon pollution this year as New York City and guzzled up as much H2O as people consume globally in water bottles, according to new estimates. Just to give people a sense of how much this has scaled up. Is that where, is that where, yeah, right, incredible and not in the positive sense. Like, is that the center of a lot of the. pushback that you reported on? Yeah, I would say I noticed two things.

One, maybe the biggest one is electricity bills, right? Like if you live in the Northeast, you're probably part of the PJM regional electric grid. There's been tons of data centers that have come online here, especially in northern Virginia in the last five or six years. And they've been driving up cost of electricity because they gobble up a huge amount of electricity. The pollution thing is interesting because a lot of data center projects now are including, like basically many power plants.

Like this one wanted to have its own natural gas power plant system that would help reduce what it's pulling from the grid, but it would mean that you have like a natural gas burning plant right next to your house if you live next to it. So that's not appealing. And then, you know, I think like one thing I want to be fair about is like I do think a lot of this opposition comes from a generalized like NIMBY sense that probably would be true for other uses too, right?

Like, do you have a house and it's like near a lot and they're going to put this like giant glowing, humming data center near you? You're probably not thinking like, oh, this is going to be great for my school district over the next decade. You're like, I just don't want the box. And that's, you know, that's a bipartisan force in American politics. Yeah, absolutely. And it connects, I think, and perhaps in a way that that's the silver lining, the economy, the

economics of daily life with the environment. I mean, that's in many ways what Alexandria Casio-Cortez and others were so press in about with the Green New Deal. And like how we can make that connection, I think, politically is by emphasizing this issue in particular. Yeah. And it also like, I know this comes up on the show, but it's hard to say exactly what the benefits of all this AI infrastructure building are going to be to normal people, or that's what I picked up in my reporting talking to people. They might have some abstract sense that it's supposed to sort of save the world, but like, what's it doing for you now? You know, like, okay, like you can you can make erotica on chat GPT or generate like a video with

a Disney character, but is it making a life better in a tangible way? Yeah. I know. And, you know, like what is tangible in that case? It's the big glowing box in your your neighborhood. Right. And the electricity bills that you're talking about, you wrote about how in New Jersey, this was really important in the governor's race. And you saw, I think, you saw Cheryl influenced by Zoron in many ways, like influenced by the affordability argument. She said, in her victory speech, I'm going to declare a state of emergency about affordability. And electricity was a part of that, right? I mean, talk a little bit about how her campaign embraced this. And it seems like it's a roadmap across the country for Democrats.

Super interesting. So yeah, Mikey Cheryl, who I also covered for the show, she was really smart politically. And she got ahead of this, this brewing issue, this kind of populist issue in New Jersey, which is their rates have gone up a lot. And, you know, some of that's attributable to data centers, some of it to other things. it's not always super easy to draw the one-to-one connection, just to be fair. But, yeah, she sort of made that a centerpiece of her campaign, trying to make sure that people's rates don't continue to go up.

And, you know, for my reporting, I talked to a couple of people who actually ran on data centers as having a negative impact on their voters' quality of life and on their electric bills. I talked to one guy who ran for a state Senate or a state representative, seat in Virginia in near Data Center Alley, where there's just a ton of these. And he was a Democrat, and he won a seat that had been a Trump 2024 seat. He flipped it 100% by running on data center opposition. And like, you know, he told me, like, I don't think I would have won without bringing this up in all of my conversations. Like, this is the thing that comes up over and over

again. And I just think I think this is so interesting because, you know, it just doesn't really map out onto our left-right politics, and it doesn't seem to come up with, like, the very big players that often. Like, you know, here in Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, a lot of signs are pointing towards him running for president in 28. He loves data centers, you know, he's super pro-data centers. Same with the Republicans in here. McCormick.

Same with, you know, obviously President Trump, very into data centers. I saw Bernie Sanders proposed a moratorium on them. I think today, it's in the last day or two. So maybe that's like the first inkling of it. Well, Miles, I'm going to push back on. you slightly. Like there's a huge difference between Josh Shapiro and a guy like Bernie, like, it's people that they're basically a little bit more corporately captured. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I don't disagree with you. I mean, like, you know, Bernie Sanders is like,

maybe we're seeing it now. But then, you know, you have, um, this guy James Fishback down in Florida, sort of running a far right campaign to beat Byron Reynolds to take the governor's office, um, to replace Ron DeSantis. He put out his launch video. Yeah, you know, big part, big, plank of it was I'm against data centers or I'll be against data centers if they're, you know, taking too much far water or electricity. Like it's a populist attack line, you know, across our two parties. Absolutely. You know, I, that is that the guy that said the train, that wants the train, the guy who was invoked Mussolini? Yeah, a little bit of, yeah, well, that's something that could be drawn from that video, yes. Yes. It feels implied. But, um,

Like the power usage here, can you talk a little bit about why, you know, you see how really people's electricity usage has flatlined residentially, but the commercial use is, and I think, you know, industrial would be the other category or I'm not exactly sure, but it's clearly being driven by companies, corporations, these data centers that are driving up prices. And like our grid just doesn't have the capacity. There are companies, I think, that are working on greener technology for this technology and how you can electrify the grid in a way that's not using fossil fuels and coal and stuff like that. But because there's this race to build these AI data centers to get ahead of regulation, it seems like, and the political backlash that you're talking about, they're using the dirtiest energy source as possible? Yeah, I mean, I'm seeing a lot of natural gas, independent hookup for data centers,

where they can say, hey, we're not pulling from the grid, but we are burning gas. In Pennsylvania, I think Microsoft is looking to reopen Three Mile Island, the nuclear power station that closed actually just recently and had that disaster in the 1970s to try to generate nuclear power. But I think you're right, Emma, like you're pointing to the fact that there's just this huge race and demand for all this, like, compute and this idea that, like, you know, if we don't have a million servers humming, a million more than China, they're going to beat us to some, you know, the end point of this sort of competition.

And we can't really generate enough electricity fast enough to meet that demand. So in the interim, like normal people will suffer. because they can't afford as much. Like, the electricity is sold to the highest bidder. And China, yeah, spoiler alert is going to be this on this anyway and probably already has. The, like, the, you cited this analysis from Data Center watch in your piece where they looked at projects across the country and found that in the second quarter of this year, 20 data center projects were. almost a hundred billion dollars were either canceled or delayed. And so that's kind of speaking to the broader backlash that, you know, it's not just

centered in a few communities. It's growing. What did you find in looking at that analysis? I mean, it really just puts numbers to something that became clear to me when I was poking around. I think anyone, I think you could just Google data center pushback, like wherever you are in the country and you're just going to get like a flood of local, you know, county or regional level stories about stuff that's happening that maybe you hadn't even noticed.

Like, I'm here in Pennsylvania. I searched it and it's in the Philly region, but also in like deep red Western PA, sort of Trump country outside of Pittsburgh. I go to my wife's parents' house in near Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I look and there's like, you know, 10 of these. Just anywhere, you know, I think over the last couple of months, there's so many data centers under construction across the United States. And increasingly, almost any of those projects are starting to get, you know,

anxious residents pushing back for for a bunch of reasons. And I think most of the time they're not successful, but increasingly they are. Yeah. So a lesson for everybody. If you are, you know, just Google, Google where you are. Google your community, look it up, try to find if there is, you know, a data center, that project in the works. and you can voice opposition to that.

Would you recommend that site Data Center Watch that you cited? I feel like that could be a good resource for people. Well, okay, so this is interesting. Yeah. Data Center Watch is a research project that's frequently cited, including by me, as like a pretty comprehensive list of pushbacks on data center construction. It's not a nonprofit or anything. I saw some other news outlets get dinged for accidentally,

thinking it was like an advocacy group. It is a research project of an AI company that I think about the TENA Labs. You know, I talked to the guy who did the research. He said they're independent. But it's numbers, I believe, published, you know, as a service for people in the industry seeking to get data centers built or at least who tend to support data center construction. So, you know, that's definitely a place to look. But I think, you know, it's worth.

But noted. Well, take a number of other groups. And I should be clear, you know, I'm a reporter. I don't have, I'm not going to sort of offer an opinion on whether to support data centers or not. I'm just, like, you know, it's worth. No, that's me. I'll, I'll do that.

Yeah, I'll do that. Yeah. Miles, Brian, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Really appreciate your time. Where can people find your work? Thank you so much for having me. Please listen to today, explain. We're a daily new show.

We're very rigorous, but we're also like, and not stiff. You'll hear me there. Awesome. Thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, quick break. And when we come back, we'll be joined by Dr. Khalid Madani, Sudanese scholar, associate professor of political science and Islamic Studies

and director of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University here to talk about Sudan. We are back and we are joined now by Dr. Khalid Madani, Sydney scholar and associate professor of political science and Islamic studies and director of

of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. Dr. Medani, thanks so much for coming on the show today. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Of course. I saw you were on Democracy now this morning. Gosh, they're bookers. They know what they're doing. I'm wearing the same jacket, too, so I apologize. Well, I'm irrationally angry at them for scooping you first, but they're doing great work over there.

Now, obviously what we're about to talk about is horrifying. I want to back up for a bit because we've seen these updates in Sudan, the Yale analysis of satellite imagery showing thousands and thousands of bodies basically being disposed of. But before we get to that more current update, let's go back to the beginning, you know, of, or maybe not the beginning. But people will talk about spring of 2023 is when this civil war formally started. But in reading some of your writing, it might be more helpful for us to back up to say, 2011, 2018, et cetera. Sure.

I mean, I usually quickly begin with 1989. And the reason for that is that's really when the authoritarian state was established in Sudan following a military coup that overthrow a democratically elected government. That period between 1989. and 2018 was very formative. It was the period where the autocratic state was built. And there were a couple of very important things that are related to the war that I always like to highlight. Number one, there was a complete purging and dismissal of hundreds of thousands of people from the public service and bureaucracy. And they were replaced by Islamist stalwart, members of the very powerful

Islamist movement in Sudan. The Islamist movement in Sudan is, the only movement in the Middle East region in any Sunni Muslim majority country that took over power. And that's something that is a dubious distinction in the Arab and Middle East region. So that's really important to highlight that. Through the course of these decades, over 30 decades of rule, you had not only the dismissal of the bureaucracy, but also the complete monopoly of the domestic economy. That was the second pillar. And the third pillar directly related to the war that I think people should know is that it was also a period of what we call coup-proofing, that is establishing paramilitary militias that would do two things, very importantly.

One of them was to put down the insurgency in that four in the early 2000, that many people in the United States and elsewhere know that genocide of the early 2000. That was extremely important. So they used the Genjewid militia at the time as proxy to, enact earth scorch policies. That was the beginning of the ethnic cleansing in that for, over 200,000 civilians dead, over 2 million displaced. That becomes important. But another element that was key with respect to the paramilitary militia, the gingerweed that was later transformed and mutated into the rapid support forces, that is the second most important protagonist in this war,

the militias right now that are, you know, wrecking havoc and devastation in that four, was to also use them to put down the descent of civil society, particularly pro-democracy movement. So they had two very important kind of functions. One is to put down the insurgency in that four that led to that genocide in early 2000. And another very importantly is that they were used to stamp down, you know, public protest, intifathers that you know are very, very important and became very important following the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt that changed the entire political landscape of the Middle Eastern North Africa region. I mentioned that as a kind of prelude to saying that this is essentially the war that began in April of

2023 is essentially a war against civilians. It's a kind of a long way of trying to explain to your listeners and viewers why these two factions are basically butchering the population the civilian innocent population. And the reason they're both doing that is both of them are interested in making sure that the very important democratic revolution that began in 2018 that toppled the military regime would not restart.

And so both of them have one thing in common, and that is that they fear any kind of potential of a popular uprising among Sudanese civilians. And that becomes a really important aspect of this war. Why is that important? is because I'm always asked, and we are asked, who's the good guy and who's the bad guy? This war is very different from other conflicts,

in the sense that both protagonists are at fault. Both protagonists are enacting a huge kind of devastation against the civilian population. So you reference the Yale Research Laboratory, which is phenomenal and has documented this devastation, ethnic cleansing, displacement, and savagery in that war, and particularly now in North Darfur. But they also had a very important report that came out in October

where they documented in detail what the Sudan Armed Forces has done between October 24 and January 2025. And that is enact the same kind of ethnic targeting of innocent civilians in the central part of the country when they retook it from the rapid support forces. So long story short, in summary, both of them have a vested interest in maintaining their political and economic fortunes that they built over 30 years

because they were partners against the Sudanese people for all this time. But both of them are also really perpetuating wide range of mass killings, displacement, sexual violence, all of the litany of human rights violations that the Yale Laboratory has documented through their satellite imagery, but also so many human rights organizations amnesty international human rights watch. So I hope I didn't go on too long, but I just want to set up the context for why the war is so savage against the civilians. It's quite helpful. And when you're asked who's the good guys and who are the bad guys, perhaps it's more useful to say who is aligned with whom.

You know, you have the United Arab Emirates being a major player here in its backing of the rapid support forces. but maybe even if we could go back to 1989 and how that Islamic insurgency came to be and what role foreign powers played in that potentially because I see this described as a proxy war now, but I wonder how long the proxy goes back. Yeah, it's a really very important. Sudan came to prominence in the region

and globally in the 1990s. It became the reason I mentioned, it was the first and only Islamist movement to actually capture state power is that it became in the throughout the mid-1990s the hub of Islamist movements. Every Islamist movement, you know, from the Egyptian one, Tunisian one, the Hamas, all of them really kind of centered their work and operations because they were clandestine organizations in Khartoum, in Sudan. They were invited because following the coup, the Islamist coup, which was very, very important. So that becomes important. As you may know, famously, Osama bin Laden, of course, was hosted in Sudan during that period.

And that, of course, led to the imposition of over two decades of sanctions on the part of the United States against Sudan and the European Union also. So you had a very strong Islamist movement that begins very early on in the, really in the 1940s, but captured state power. Why? Essentially, because they did something that no Islamist movement in the Arab region was able to. to do, although they tried. And that is by the mid-19 or early 1980s, they infiltrated the armed forces. It really is the only Arab-speaking country where the Islamist movement successfully recruited mid-ranking military officers and then plotted through a variety of different ways. As opposed to, sorry, just to draw that distinction for people, being an outside group militia. This is an integration into the formal Sudanese military.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And if you add to that, then the creation of the Genjaheed by the state, the military regime of Ahmed Bashid at the time did two things. One of them, of course, was to incorporate the Islamist movement as the most important constituency, not only in the army, but a wide range of security services, but they also established these militias, the Jemjahid. And then in 2013, they're the ones, the central government, Bashid regime, actually also financed and established the the rapid support forces promoting Mohammed Hamdan de Gallo. So it's this kind of partnership that ended in divorce, in a violent divorce later on. In 2017, the military regime in Sudan actually legalized constitutionally the rapid support forces as part and parcel of the army. So one thing that people don't always perhaps understand is that it's basically a Frankenstein monster created by the Sudan armed forces that now has, you know, led to. this rivalry, which is really important. We can speak about why that rivalry came about and why that

violent divorce emerged. Please do, but I just want to make sure that I'm fully understanding. So the formal Sudanese armed forces integrated the RSF, the rapid support forces, which are backed by the UIA that I just mentioned, into the formal military structure. And now they've empowered them. And these are the two factions that are waging this brutal war against civilians at this current moment. Absolutely. And let me talk about the UAE just one second. The UAE comes in much earlier than now.

It comes in at the invitation, essentially, of the former regime as early as 2014. And I think your listeners and viewers may want to be interested to know that both the Sudan armed forces and the militia, the rapid support forces, cooperated with the UAE at the time and Saudi Arabia to send mercenaries to Yemen to fight alongside. the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. And so while the UAE absolutely supports, and there's clear evidence, the rapid support forces not only logistically, but through really the importation of smuggled gold worth $2 billion a year

in the gold mines controlled by the rapid support forces, their history really into that dates much earlier. They also played a very formative role, and I think it's very important to emphasize both Saudi Arabia and UAE and Egypt in working against the pro-democracy revolution and supporting the military coup of October 2021 that overthrew this very fragile democratic experiment in Sudan. So they're very much, A, opposed to a democratic transition in Sudan

because it threatens the neighboring countries, and also they are very interested in having a so-called reliable proxy in Sudan. Each one now, of course, has different proxy, in order to safeguard their strategic and financial interest and investments. And finally, I think it's really important to emphasize to everyone that what we're seeing in Sudan now is similar to Yemen, a huge competition between Saudi Arabia and UAE over the RETI region. And that is the larger regional story. And the people in the midst of that story are the innocent civilians in Yemen, but of course

in Sudan as well. So you're saying a competition between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, over that control? Absolutely. Okay. Can you expand on that because, you know, Iran is, I would say, the power that was more emphasized in my view in the Yemen. I mean, the forced famine, the horrific block.

I mean, well, I guess that's distinct. We're talking 2015. That's probably maybe where I'm tripping myself up here. Talk about a little bit about Iran and their role then as well. Sure. Well, Iran has, you know, since basically the failure of Saudi Arabia in particular to really win the war in Yemen, as you probably know, there's been a rapprochement with respect to Saudi Arabia and Iran. That's really important to keep in mind. Yes. Partially brokered by China, right, which is very threatening to the United States or should be. Absolutely, yeah. But since Saudi Arabia increasingly does not see the United States as powerly enough or necessarily a vice. viable partner, so to speak, in the region. They've tried very hard to have this independent policy

with respect to Iran. And that has to do, you know, people forget that the houthis are in Yemen. They're on the border of Saudi Arabia. Right now, there is this impending conflict between the proxies of Saudi Arabia and those of the UAE in Yemen that just happened yesterday. I really would encourage people to look at how important that is. So Iran has had this kind of rapprochement. What is less known and talked about is the kind of conflict. competition between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. On the one side, the Saudi Arabian vision is to have stability and unity of these countries, Sudan and Yemen, because of the Red Sea interest, and they have, you know, Crown Prince and Salman, as you know, I think

people really underestimate his investment in the Red Sea area worth trillions of dollars that this kind of Saudi Arabian vision 2030. That is so important to him. That's why he went to Trump and asked him to solve the Sudan problem, as it as one important example. On the other hand, the UAE has a very different vision. For them, it is to support proxies, to have control over the ports and resources, and that for them does not require stability and unity of these countries, but rather supporting financially and logistically, whether it's the southern transitional council in Yemen,

now in the eastern part of or western part provinces of Yemen, and across the Red Sea coast of Yemen, or, of course, the rapid support forces bordering Libya in that force. So I hope that's not too complicated, but it's really important to understand that a lot of what's happening, what we call these regional hegemons, have emerged in a way that has kind of marked the decline of U.S. influence necessarily. I always say that the U.S. essentially subcontract its policy with respect to Sudan and the Horn of Africa to the real powers in the region, direct powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Well, I mean, is that in part due to the fact that the oil reserves are not necessarily as deep as initially thought?

I mean, I know that there was the secession of South Sudan where much of the oil was located and that was a big part of the economic, you know, uprising and fury from the population, if I'm not mistaken, or if you could clarify that for me, that was. be great. Sure. You know, the regime in Sudan basically got a gravity weakened in 2011 because they lost their most important source of revenue. At that time, over 70% of the revenue was coming from the production and export of oil that was basically funneled into two ways into the military and security establishment. And frankly, also as a form of, how do you put it, carrots, you know, doled out to different populations or constituency in Sudan. Once South Sudan seceded in 2011, basically all of that oil and its revenue evaporated. And at that point, the financial kind of, you know, basis of the state in Sudan, the autocratic state, essentially fell apart. It gave way to

this grand revolution or very important revolution, although it was really, activists had been, you know, working on that kind of popular uprising for decades, but certainly the weakness of the state because of the loss of oil opened up this possibility of a popular uprising that overthrew the regime. Following that, beginning in 2012, another commodity comes into play that becomes central to the conflict, and that is gold. Sudan is the third largest exporter of gold in Africa, the 12th largest in the world. If you look at gold prices because of global economic insecurity, you can quickly understand why there's this kind of convergence over extraction of gold and why that is so important. So really, this is a war about maintaining power, but between

the two warring factions, if you look very closely, even at what's happening in that four, where there's gold and uranium and oil deposits, or you look to different parts of the country, you will find that it is essentially and has been for decades a war around resources in one of Africa's and the Middle East are really richest countries. And that's what we call the resource curse as well. So it's very important to highlight both the domestic factors associated with the conflict, but the proxies and what their interest in Sudan is. It's not only in strategic interest in the Red Sea region, but also people should not underestimate the importance of these resources for the, for United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Both countries are really engaged in what we call,

of course, energy transition that is less dependence on oil. And both the countries are really looking to the longer term future where it won't be oil, but other forms of resources, including agricultural resources, that become essential to their sustainability. I mean, and you can see how they're trying to spread their influence into things like entertainment and sports here in the United States. That's a very, very, you know, obvious attempt to wean themselves off of just being, you know, a petro state in that way. Can you talk a little bit about Egypt and their role in this? I mean, or because they border Sudan, I believe. And then, you know, we also, of course, have the genocide ongoing in Gaza, Egypt borders the Gaza Strip.

Like, the proximity is something I'd love for you to flesh out here because, as you say, like, it's maybe not direct U.S. involvement in the same way that we would in other conflicts in the Middle East. But obviously, the interests of our proxies are important here as well. Absolutely. There are three very important actors, Saudi Arabia, the UAE. obviously the United States, they have formed a quad. We can discuss that in terms. I'm sure Trump has been speaking about it and so has his in-law, Musaqqqqqa Bolas, but Egypt is historically the most important for a number of reasons. One of them, of course, it shares the border with Sudan, and any kind of democratic push and success of a transition to a civilian democracy is directly

threatening to the regime in C.C. We can't forget, of course, the kind of popular revolution of 2011 in Egypt. That's number one. So from the Egyptian perspective, supporting or having a reliable partner is really key. And that partner has always been historically the military in Sudan. That is something that's very important. But why also is Sudan so important to Egypt and for people interested in history, the Nile waters run through Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia? And of course, over the past decade, the Ethiopian government has established something that is existentially threatening to Egypt, and that is the Renaissance Dam, which Egypt believes will cut off its lifeblood, its water. And so the rivalry historically and even currently between Egypt and Ethiopia

makes Sudan even more important to Egypt and their alliance with the military important, because they need that partnership, that alliance in order to really compete, or rather you know, kind of contest this Renaissance stamp that Ethiopia has built. Quick interjection. Does that increase Egypt's perhaps reliance on the United States and Israel or incentivizing it to having a closer relationship with that? Because Ethiopia's dominance in the Red Sea is increasing? Well, it definitely makes it incentivizes them to have a closer relationship with the United States.

The closer relationship with Israel is a complicated one because they're domestic issues that people underestimate. Of course, no country in the region is all powerful. But to normalize relationship, let's say, with Israel that, for example, Bahrain and the UAE have done, is too overly politically risky on the part of Egypt, although there has been great pressure recently, very recently, to push that along. So there are domestic concerns because of the border, of course, with Gaza. and the one thing Egypt doesn't want to do is to get into that hot water. But certainly there's a friendly relationship between Israel and Ethiopia, which I think is very, very important to highlight.

Right. I'm looking at a map here, and my spatial reasoning is not my strong suit. I did not even realize the size of Sudan's, basically, you know, shoreline with the Red Sea. It gives, I think, a lot of people, it gives a lot of context about why this is so strategically important in that way. I guess let's turn then to more recent events. Maybe we can go then to 2023, how this horrific violence began and where we are today. Sure. The war began because of the consistent stubbornness on the part of the. pro-democracy activist. I'm not saying this kind of to be to romanticize the popular uprising,

but just to be very clear. What happened is that there was a competition between both the Sudan armed forces and the rapid support forces. That kind of alliance and partnership over two decades, political, military, and economic fell apart because the Sunnis civil society continued to protest to insist on a transition to civilian rule. In the context of that, the international community, the African Union, the United States, and even the Arab countries oversaw something called the Framework Agreement, essentially talks to renew a transition to civilian democracy. There were two contentious issues in that agreement. One of them was to merge the militia into the Sudan Armed Forces, security sector reform. That, of course, directly threatened

the rapid support forces that over two decades had built a huge financial empire. You can see them using that money to devastate that for and the entire country, with the aid, of course, of the of the UAE in part. But the other issue that is less discussed is that the Sudanese kind of pro-democracy activists and civilian politicians had insisted on dismantling the financial assets that were amassed by the former regime. It was something that has never been attempted in the region, in Africa, the Arab world, and that is to dismantle the financial assets of what was a deep state.

So that then threatened the Sudan armed forces. Taken together, that becomes a really important point of contention between the two. And finally, very importantly, the transition to civilian democracy threatened, and this is extremely crucial, the stalwarts of the former Islamist regime organized around the party called the National Congress Party. It is, now without a doubt the first spark of the war was actually instigated by members of the national congress party these are hardcore hardline Islamist officials and members of the islamist movement in Sudan that saw in a transition to civilian democracy that necessitated their exclusion that they saw it as an existential threat and they sparked this conflict between the militia and

and and their own militia linked to the Sudan armed forces in april of 2020. 2003 that quickly escalated into this huge war, first in the capital of Khartoum, that became destroyed, and then it really kind of caught on like wildfire. And so right now, those who insist on the continuation of the war are essentially former Islamist members of the former regime that were literally brought out of jail after they were imprisoned during the, after the revolution. And so here we find ourselves in a military stalemate in terms of the military situation, but we also find intransigence on the part of the Sudan Armed Forces with respect to actually implementing or even entering negotiations that potentially are brokered by the United States and the

other regional powers. And can you talk a little bit about how the RSF is presenting itself to the public. I believe, I remember reading that, you know, they have this kind of PR push to be like the were the anti-Islamist group, but like, obviously, as we're talking about here, there's no, there's no good protagonists. These are all kind of outgrowths from the same rotten, rotten foundation. Yeah, well put. Thank you for putting it that way. The Sudan Armed Forces, you know, kind of public relations campaign is that this is a war for dignity and a war to really preserve the dignity of the Sudanese people against an illegal militia that they actually created and legitimated. On the part of the rapid support forces, their campaign is a very simple one.

It is literally the appropriation of the goals of the revolution. They are literally, in the context of displacing and killing and enacting all this violence, believe it or not, what they are saying is that they are secularist, they are pro-democracy, pro-woman's rights, that they're all about diversity. And so they're essentially taking the script, all of the demands, all of the slogans of the popular pro-democracy revolution, incorporating it, establishing this parallel government. And now they're, you know, working as hard as they can to establish institutions of law and order in order to not only maintain their economic wealth, but also to, to tell the Sudanese and the international community that, look, we have a stable governance structure

in that four or, you know, in part in territories they control. So both of them are using social media, public relations, and of course Sudanese are caught in the middle of those. But I can, even though you may hear conflicting reports from Sudanese, recently, Sudanese political parties, civil society organizations in Nairobi were very clear in condemning both parties, arguing for a truce, humanitarian access, a return to a civilian democracy, and supporting a political solution rather than the continuation of this war. For people, to bring it back to where we started as we wrap here, this group that's presenting themselves as for women's rights, pro-democracy, was, it has been very, very,

very, very credibly accused of mass atrocities and war crimes and was a part of, And you can talk a little bit about what the Yale Laboratory found with the satellite imagery. Mass, mass graves, burning of bodies, destruction of bodies to cover up their crimes. This was a pretty enormous report that had come out just a few days ago. Well, there's no family or individual in Sudan that has not been victimized by the rapid support forces. Let me just give you the big picture. So all of us lost our homes, right? So I think you're from New Jersey or New York.

Imagine overnight losing your home. And the militias come in and basically take over everything and begin enacting sexual violence. That's why people fled in their millions within a month. One of the largest capitalists in Africa and in the Arab world, you have basically evacuated to the point of it being a ghost city. And that had to do with the level of violence, the rapid support forces enacted in the urban. areas. From there, of course, we begin with that four, in that four, where many of them, of course, operate prior to El Fashir and the reports from Yale, from the Yale Laboratory, you had the ethnic targeting of the mass elite, with 60,000 people killed in one day in central DAT four.

You then go to El Fashir. It's not only these pictures that are showing the displacement and also the report is, by the way, the Yale Laboratory is providing such a great, service because no one is able to report in that four, the civil society activist, human rights activist, journalists, lawyers, everyone has been executed, detained or displaced. And this is why we have to rely on these images. But prior to that, that fashion, Northern Dat Four was under siege for 18 months. And I don't think people really understand what a siege is. The siege is that you basically, not only can you not leave the area, you also don't have access to food or any kind of resources. It's what Israel did to Gaza.

What Israel did to Gaza. If you itemize everything that you in your show have followed in Gaza, it is the same infrastructure destruction, the same displacement, the same induced famine is what we're seeing. And so it's not just today or yesterday. It's had been going on for two and a half years now. And I just really want people to understand that. I also want people to understand in the central regions, how ethnic-targeted killings have The Yale Laboratory has also demonstrated that in the breadbasket of Sudan in the central part.

Finally, we have now the fighting in the border areas between Sudan and South Sudan that is promising to expand the war to South Sudan itself. And I think it's really important to emphasize that in addition to the instability of the Red Sea, which is the reason that I'm going to be frank why the United States and the Quad have come together. These are countries that have realized that the war has reached such a peak, has expanded so much that it is literally undermining their economic and strategic interest. And that's why Ben Salman asked Trump, you know, so-called to fix this problem. So they've reached this level of bloodshed that now it's hurting their pocketbooks. Can you speak a little bit more about South Sudan? I'll wrap with you shortly.

but that's a session effort. I mean, what were the outside players involved here? And why is the war expanding to South Sudan an escalation? What South Sudan, as it separated, the people that were really involved were the United States, Norway, and the European Union, what was called the Troika. I was in Washington then at the Brookings Institution. So I followed it and I was part of that. And the issue here was very simply put that it ended up being an agreement for succession, a divorce, so to speak, that was brokered by the Troika, the U.S., Norway, the EU, without any input from civil society in South Sudan or Sudan.

Essentially, it was broken by two authoritarian regimes and leaders, one in Sudan and one in South Sudan. Why is that important is that the government in South Sudan, is not only illegitimate, it has used the majority of its oil, 90% of the revenue in South Sudan comes from the oil to finance its military and devastate the local population in South Sudan. So I really want to emphasize how these two things are linked. Why is that important is that right now in the quad, one of the things that are crucially problematic, Emma, is that we're talking about countries being brought together in absence of any Sudanese input at all. No civil society organizations are involved in these so-called talks, no political parties that are civilian.

Basically, if it continues on this path, it's essentially reaffirming and legitimizing the two warring factions that have devastated the entire country. And that is exactly what happened when South Sudan's deceded, even though many of us were warning that you have to include civil society, as was done in Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, in order to have a sustainable transition to peace. So these conflicts are very related. They're the worst and longest standing conflicts in Africa. And so in addition to the Red Sea, which people deeply care about because it affects 13% of trade, and Egypt has lost 50% of its trade because of the Houthi attacks, because they began with Gaza. That part is a really important part of this war, absolutely. But another part is South Sudan

that no one seems to be interested in covering, despite the real kind of, you know, disparaging remarks the Trump administration makes about South Sudanese continually, including denying them any kind of access to come to the United States. So if you look at these two conflicts, you'll understand the predicament of the war in Sudan. I mean, and it's just so informative and important to emphasize that we're still drawing borders on the continent of Africa based on colonial ambitions. less than 15 years ago. I mean, and it like, we cannot speak about these things as past or as in ink. I mean, it is continuously changing and important to emphasize, obviously.

Absolutely. In every case, you find that there are these outside powers that are excluding, and this is the same in Yemen as well, they're excluding the local populations and the legitimate population, that can actually, you know, in that, you know, kind of implement a ceasefire, monitor a ceasefire, and ensure a transition to a civilian democracy. So there are two things. One of them is this neo-colonial, of course, persistent policy where outsiders decide the fate of local populations,

which I think is extremely important to highlight. But also I think that there is a real disillusionment with respect to the very possibility of a civilian democracy in these so-called, you know, poor, countries. I mean, the disillusionment with democracy globally has, you know, and international institutions and human rights institutions and the UN has impacted these wars, including Sudan, where there is kind of no serious discussion about conflict resolution of human rights implementation, of actually pushing towards democracy, even though the majority of African countries are actually

believed they're not governed by democratic institutions. And so when I see coverage that disparages the possibility of democracy, in Africa. I find that really racialized and problematic. So, oh, yes. I mean, and you're preaching to the choir in the sense of it's the same way that in the West speaking about the Middle East, it's just that like these are savages that cannot understand our liberal democratic values when you basically see that the Western democracies are actively over and over again undermining democratic institutions, self-actualization. for people across a variety of different countries in the Middle East.

And then, of course, in Africa, like, it's just the, it's the opposite of what the Western governments say. They want more autocrats because it's much easier to control resources if you have autocratic leaders than having to deal with, like, oh, the messy democracy of people wanting a say and how their resources are extracted. Yes. I mean, there's always a discussion of Sudan and normalization with Israel, because, of course, you know that we're also Arab and we work in the region.

and study the region. And the issue here is that that normalization was going to be basically forced-fed to the Sudanese population in the context of a military regime. No one had any say in terms of these huge kind of agreements. And then people in Gaza, of course, become, you know, they don't have the time to do the research, obviously. They become astonished and despondent because they're like, why are these people in Sudan supporting something like this? Well, the fact is that they're not. The people who are being supported are these military autocrats, being supported to perpetuate and implement these outside agendas. And so, you know, the more people talk about this and the more, I know you've covered so many different countries and also,

you know, people who actually are legitimate voices, that becomes important. It's difficult in the case of Sudan because the coverage is less, but hopefully that will increase. I am trying to do that with this interview. You know, of course, I think Gaza takes such an outsize, not outsize, it's very important, but because of our direct intervention, that sometimes the more indirect proxy ones get, it's harder for people to understand. So really, just lastly, I know I've kept you for quite a while, but I wanted to make sure our audience understood the aspects of this, of this horrific conflict. What are the death tolls? Do we know? How can we know? What is your best estimate? And then even displacement figures

as well. Well, the death toll in that four has reached over, at least what we know, it's an underestimation, 300,000. The displacement is about half a million into Chad. That, you know, that becomes a really big problem. The displacement within the country is 12 million. There are about a million in Ethiopia, two million that fled to Egypt, and a million and a million and a half in South Sudan. So basically, the country has been devastated. In addition to that, approximately two-thirds of the population is facing food insecurity, one-third famine. That becomes important to people to understand. A siege basically is one where people don't have access to food, so they're eating branches wherever they can. Humanitarian aid is very minimal, even not only

because of the war, but also because of the lack of interest in financing, which is really important. Elfashir saw the displacement about 70,000 into the northern camps. And within that Fashit itself, we don't know, but the estimation probably is 150,000 killed. In addition to that, the horrors, I think people will understand of mass killings, people that when you hear that people are put into graves, if you look at the report of the Yale laboratory, some of them are put into those mass graves alive. And in addition to the sexual violence and abuse that is rampant. And there's a logic to this violence. I don't want to go into it and do this academic thing. But the level of violence really has to do with resistance. The way that insurgent organizations and militia

work is that you enact a very high level of violence. And that's why it's shown on social media by the rapid support forces in order to engineer violent and coercive consent. In other words, telling people, if you don't join us, you know, you will basically suffer these consequences. It is, there's no other way to put it, where survival becomes the only commodity you have. And that is an logical explanation for this kind of devastation beyond ethnic targeting and the racial discourse. But I want people to understand that there's a lot, there's a brutal,

to this level of violence, and that's why it is so severe and difficult to describe. Well, Dr. Khalid Madani, a Sudanese scholar, associate professor of political science and Islamic Studies, and director of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. Dr. Medani, where can people read more of your work? And despite my joking, people should really check out your appearance this morning on democracy now if they want to learn even more. Yeah, that democracy now is characteristically short, but yours is longer. I have a website called chahidmeddi.com, and, you know, people can go into that. I post interviews and articles there, and the most recent one is called militants and militias,

the authoritarian legacies and the political economy of war in Sudan. It's published by the American Political Science Association newsletter, and you can just Google me, And it gives you a rundown on specifically the economic aspects of the war and the economic underpinnings of the war and why the war began based on both the economic interest of the waring factions, but also the external interest as well. It's a primer. I kind of wrote it for people who are not too familiar with the war. And, of course, I will recommend people watch your show as I do all the time.

Oh, well, that's very sweet. We will put a link to that in the video description. description, podcast description, and at majority.fm. Dr. Medan, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Matt, and the rest of the crew. Much appreciated.

Okay. Thank you so much. You know, we're way too late for Best Devs, but that would have been one that I was dropped. I literally dropped it into Best Dev 26, Doc, when I started yesterday. Yeah, I mean, this is, yeah, the kind of interview that makes me remember why I like doing my job.

It's been a long year, folks. It's been a long year. Matt, you had a great interview this week with one Graham Platner. What's happening over in the Jackman Show and at Left Reckoning? Yeah, I realized I haven't uploaded it to the podcast feed yet, but everyone can go check out on YouTube or the TwitchVod. Taco Graham Platner, 45 minutes about, I mean, a few questions. Like, why don't you, why did you say you're not a socialist?

Graham's not comfortable call himself any more than the economic populist, which as far as Senate candidates go, fine with me, and also his mercenary stuff and also some of the other stuff that I like about him,

like standing up for Somali migrants up there and ran on Medicare for all, not just in the primary, but saying he's definitely going to run in the general, and that's kind of the reason he's running. So I check that out. It was great talking with Graham yesterday.

And we have Brandon Sutton. Hello, Brandon. Hello, hello, hello. I was just watching your interview. It was not, unfortunately, cops or ICE agents with DUIs, which I know would have been a more. We do other things.

Yeah, we can cover some other important topics. What's happening on the discourse? Well, I mean, but we've been doing some of what you just described, cops getting DUIs. But we just today covered Dan Bongino's, I guess, shameful exit from the FBI.

Well, his tenure there was shameful in general. But his exit from the FBI. We covered... Quiet tenure at the FBI kind of like, right? Like, he quiet quit like in July. Yeah, he, he, after the cover up, his job was done. And so he quiet quit the FBI in July. Then he kind of popped up like two weeks ago to take credit for the Jan 6th bomber being caught.

And then he retired to go back to being like a Rumble billionaire or whatever, whatever he was doing before. It's so funny because they jumped all over their Jan 6 bomber being caught thing by accusing the wrong person based on like a gate analysis, which is like how people walk. And then like they find the guy next, but nobody, they can't really even use it. It's, I even, I haven't really followed the story, but it's just funny. Like the first thing, it was Glenn Beck saying we have confirmation based on like how people walk. But Matt Binder. Matt Binder. Well, check out the discourse folks.

And Matt Binder. What's happening with you? No, nothing to promote today, but I would like to give a shout out to a longtime listener of this show. My dad, Binder Dad, he's been having a rough month health-wise. Oh, my gosh. And so just keep him in your thoughts. And he's watching the show right now, I'm sure. So if you want to say hello to him in the chat, go free.

Yeah. I AMER. Hello, Matt's dad. Yes, shout out Matt's dad. Thinking of you. Yeah, definitely. A long time. It's been in the chat for a long time. Yep.

Well, if you want to support this program, you can become a member at join the majority report. com. It's not going to get to you in time for Christmas, but you can still enjoy some merch. The max left beanies are on the site. You can get the safety whistles as well if you're thinking about protecting your kids. community from ice and more. We've got merch, shop.m. Majority ReportRadio.com. All right. We will probably not take calls today because I went so long on that interview, but needed to do so. So we'll read your IMs and we'll play some clips and we'll have some fun.

See you in the fun half. Okay, Emma, please. Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report. Wait, whoa. Look, Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World. So, ladies and gentlemen, It is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday. Yeah, I think you need to Timpur River for Sam. That's cool.

Sir, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why. So it's offered a twerk. Sushi and poker with the boys. Sushi and poker. That's what we call the biz.

I just think that what you did to Tim Poole was mean. Free speech. That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible. I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here. Twirp? Ugh.

Sushi. Oh, sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my fucking mind. Someone's offered a twirp? Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys. Logic.

Twerkie and a kid. I think I'm like a little kid. The people just don't understand. I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but like, I absolutely think the U.S. should be providing meat with a wife and kids. That's not what we're. We're talking about here. It's not a fun job.

That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real foot. That's like the way to the world on the shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore. It was so much easier. One of the majority of report was just you.

You're happy. Let's change the subject. You're doing great. Now, shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult parts about this show. This is a pro-killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's kind of a better.

the hatchet left his best tron violet twerreth incredible theme song i bumblers emma viglin absolutely one of my favorite people actually not just in the game like period