August 26, 2026 • 70 mins
It's no secret that most Americans aren't too familiar with the nation of Sudan. This ancient, beautiful land has long been beset with challenges, conflict and resource extraction. In fact, as Ben, Matt and Noel learn in tonight's episode, there's a civil war happening in Sudan right now. And while this complex web of of warfare has multiple factors, more and more observers are increasingly concerned that there's a conspiracy afoot: Could powerful foreign countries and shady corporations actually be pushing this war for their own benefit, and dooming innocent people in the process?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
My name is Noel.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Max the Freight Train Williams. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Now, tonight's episode is
going to take us to a place that doesn't get
too much attention in the global West. We're talking about
(00:53):
the nation of Guys, when's the last time we heard
about Sudan in the United States?
Speaker 5 (01:01):
I'm going to just go ahead and be honest about it.
The only thing I know about it is from the
They Might Be Giants song that names all the countries.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
And isn't it, wasn't it once referred to as the Sudan?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Just like the Gabon or the Ukraine.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
The Gambia.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Oh, that's right. The Gambia.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
The last time I recall hearing about it is when
we mentioned it and discussed it in Strange News back
in 2023. Or was it Strange News then? Yes, it was.
When we were discussing current events and another major event
in the fighting that has been ongoing in the country.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, the outbreak of a civil war, which was actually
the third civil war in that country from 1956 to 2011,
the nation of Sudan was technically, to your point, Matt,
a single country. And we're saying technically because it had
(02:02):
a ton of problems. It had deep internal divides. Ultimately,
this led to its splitting into separate countries. One named Sudan,
one named, in a burst of creativity, Sudan. South Sudan.
And as we are recording now on August 17th, 2026,
(02:22):
one of these countries, Sudan, North Sudan, if you will,
is in the grips of another civil war that you
probably have not heard much about. And we can assure you, folks,
there are reasons you have not heard about it. So
our exploration tonight, our question tonight is, What's actually going
(02:44):
on with this war? And why do so many people
believe there is a conspiracy afoot?
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Well, we'll get into it right after a teeny tiny
word from a sponsor.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Here are the facts. All right, guys, we have to
talk about it. And folks, we have to be honest
with you. We as Americans are often challenged. When we
look at a map of the world and the countries
on the planet, and we have to point to a
(03:19):
country based on a name, many of us will hear
the word Sudan. And we will say, okay, somewhere in
the African continent, right? Somewhere on one of the biggest
continents on the planet. But can we find it? We'll
help you. It's in Northeast Africa. It's bordering the Red Sea,
(03:42):
and it's so strange that we all forget about this
country because it is ancient. Humans have been living in
the area we call Sudan for at least 50,000 years.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
If you're looking for it on a map, it's immediately
south of Egypt. So if you're checking out there, we
talked about the Sinai Peninsula pretty recently. If you're looking
at that peninsula and then the rest of Egypt, just
head south, you'll find Sudan. And just below that, of course,
South Sudan.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yes, South Sudan. And for a lot of us from
the States, you're immediately going to be thinking of North
Dakota and South Dakota. I don't know why. That's the most, like,
U.S.-centric reference point.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
What about the Carolinas? Oh, gosh.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Good call.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
How can we forget the Carolinas?
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Also, why is it Virginia and then West Virginia?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I bet we could answer that. I just have to.
Look at this machine right here.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
There we go. And as we're looking that up, we
do want to give credit where due. This land is
so ancient that it is home to the oldest open-air
huts in the world, as far as archaeologists know. And
it is also, troublingly, home to the earliest known human
(05:09):
war on the planet. It's a war that occurred in
11,500 BCE called the War of Jabal Sahara.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Wow, I don't know anything about that one, Ben.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, yeah. I don't think any of us were there.
Jabal Sahara is, according to most of the research, which, again,
often is Western-descended, this was the first time. what we
would call homo sapiens, beefed up with each other. We
(05:45):
also know that modern-day Sudan is the seat of the
Kingdom of Kush, K-U-S-H. Think of it, folks, as kind
of the Pepsi to the Coca-Cola of Egypt. If that
makes sense, they also did a ton of slavery.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
I have to ask, is that where the term Kush,
referring to marijuana, comes from? It's the only other place
I've ever heard, and I've never thought to question its origins.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
You know, this is why we should do an etymology show.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
I think that's true. Yeah, and you know what?
Speaker 5 (06:17):
Maybe we'll put a pin in that, and I'll answer
it at some point during the episode. It's a burning
question for anyone else out there. But no, I am
painfully unfamiliar. Huge blind spot for me. This region, these conflicts,
this history. So I'm happy to kind of be here
learning along with everybody.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
This kingdom of Kush looks really interesting. I don't know
enough to speak on it, but there's certainly information you
can find online. And it was a very old civilization
going back thousands of years. And it's right along the
Red Sea there from roughly Memphis down to Napata, it
looks like.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
These are the ancient progenitors of so much of modern
civilization today, right? These are the ancestors of empires. And
if we fast forward, we see that the kingdom of
Kush was largely forgotten, like so many other areas of
(07:16):
the African continent. What we call Sudan today was repeatedly
colonized by foreign powers, the Egyptians, the Ottoman Empire, and
later a supposedly Great Britain. All we're saying here, we're
painting the backgrounds. There is a great deal of unacknowledged
(07:37):
history in this part of the world, and that history
is often ignored for the usual terrible reasons. Good news, though.
New Year's Day, 1956, Sudan achieves independence.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
There's one thing I want to mention here, just before
we get into the more modern day. Something that occurred
right at the turn of the century before around 1900,
this thing that was known as, I guess, the condominium state.
It was a really weird term to be used when
it comes to statecraft and how countries are run. And
(08:14):
it's referred to as Anglo-Egyptian because it's the United Kingdom,
or Britain and Egypt, kind of having joint control over
a region, which I guess isn't unheard of. There are
several other territories that have kind of a joint situation
going on, besties, some frenemies that kind of do their thing.
(08:38):
But this in particular was just something I've never heard
of before.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
Ooh, and one more quick historical footnote, unrelated to anything,
the term Kush that I was referring to comes from
the Hindu Kush region spanning Pakistan, Afghanistan.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
It's a mountainous region.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
That has nothing to do with who we're talking about today,
in case anyone was yelling at their podcast device and
or at me.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
You know about Kooshtopia? Sorry, that's a comedy bang-bang reference.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Awesome. And perhaps, if we're tracing it back, perhaps that
push comes from that earlier society. Oh, no, now they're yelling.
Now we're yelling at the podcast again. We will make
this etymology show, and these footnotes are important. Because many
(09:27):
of us in the audience tonight, whether you're on Netflix,
whether you're on your podcast platform of choice, many of
us are old enough to remember when modern-day Sudan was
a single country. And you may remember well, in 2011,
this country split into two separate countries, which is crazy.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Right?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
This is bonkers sauce to a lot of people, which
is a phrase we made up. Modern Sudan was technically
a single country on paper from 1956 to 2011, but
it was by no means internally cohesive. It's because of
(10:14):
what we were referencing earlier there, guys. the Anglo-Egyptian rule
of colonialism had put people into boxes where those people
did not want to fit. They were doing this to
encourage domestic inequality and domestic dissent such that they could
(10:35):
control resources. So these two separate entities, what you call
South Sudan today and what you call North Sudan or
regular Sudan today, they didn't want to be a country.
Just to be clear, they didn't want that. Outside powers
did that. And the Egyptian forces and the British forces
(10:57):
had historically governed the north and south of this region
as separate entities. When the Brits were in control, they
heavily invested in the northern part of the region. They
put in a lot of money, a lot of infrastructure.
They invested in education. This was a K-shaped economy. The
(11:21):
south was an afterthought. So the northern part is more
associated with an Arab population, Islamic, Muslim background. The southern
part is associated more with animist or Christian background. And
(11:44):
it was a backwater. It's so weird because we said
Sudan becomes independent in 1956. It becomes collated or lumped
together right before it reaches independence. And the resource extractions
(12:07):
was always a huge deal. The South and the North
don't like each other. Might sound familiar for anybody who's
read about the U.S. Civil War. Two very different things, but..
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Well, yeah, well, we've talked about it before, how difficult
it is to attempt to enforce rule of law on
a bunch of different people who lead very different lives,
who have almost completely separate cultures in many respects, who
are then, they're all supposed to just listen to you
and follow all of your rules as the new whatever
(12:44):
group is presented as this is the new governing force.
That's not easy to do. And some people get really
upset about the new rules that are in place because
they don't really apply. They don't seem to apply to
your life and the world you live in in your
region of this, let's say, new country. But then everybody
(13:07):
is just expected to go along and do their thing.
And if you don't, you're going to get punished. And there's,
I think we're getting to it. Right around this time
when this is happening is when there's a full civil
war fomenting, right? Right as independence is occurring?
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Right after So to draw a sharp contrast with our U.S.
analogy of the U.S. Civil War, this is a dark chuckle,
and I shouldn't be doing it, folks, because historically, the
Arab population of the northern part of the Sudan, to
(13:48):
your point, Noel, they practiced slavery, human enslavement on the
southern part. of this region. So imagine if you are
living there in 1953, right? And you are old enough
to know people who have been enslaved by these folks
(14:09):
from Khartoum or what have you. You also know that
there are fights for control over precious resources. European chancers
have found oil reserves in in your neck of the woods,
in the South, the South has the resources. They have
(14:29):
that bubbling crude, that Texas tea, but the North has
all the colonial connections. They've got the international deals, the pipelines,
the profits, right? And these folks get beefed up. This
leads to what you're saying, Matt. The first civil war,
modern day Sudan, actually predates the independence of that country.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Yeah, that's kind of what I was saying. The tensions
were already there, and it's one of the reasons that
the UK and Egypt ended up signing over, basically relinquishing control.
It was because of some of the fighting, not full-on fighting,
but like I said, tension. That thing that leads to
(15:13):
civil war was there, and it was waiting for and
then it starts to break out.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, they wanted the advantages, but not the accountability. So
the First Civil War starts in 1955. Independence occurs in 1956.
So pay attention to what Matt was saying there, folks.
The First Civil War goes all the way to 1972
(15:40):
until there is a temporary peace agreement that leads to
a little more than a decade of relative or official piece. Also,
by the way, side note, it's the late 1970s when, uh,
an American oil company called Chevron discovers.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Oil in a little mom and pop operation, right?
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yes. Just so a little mom and pop operation. And
then after that surprise, there's a second civil war. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Second civil war is the one that, um, maybe you've
heard about perhaps. It's a crazy long one, 1983 all
the way until 2005. So think about 22 years of
civil war and the horrors that that would bring. We
know about the Civil War here in the United States
(16:32):
and just how many casualties there were because there were
so many different fronts on which that war was fought, right?
How many battles... At the time, it was the technology, right?
That was one of the worst parts, because if you
got hit with a piece of lead, a piece of shrapnel,
whatever it was, the surgeons aren't going to be able
(16:53):
to help you too much, maybe a little bit. The technology,
the medicine isn't there yet. It's a little different in Sudan,
but you're also in a lot of places where resources
are extremely scarce, and especially during times of the Civil War,
resources are scarce. Right. Everything from food to bandages to everything.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
And there is always an outside force that says, I'll
give you a little bit of help. I'll give you
a little alley oop. Like you're saying, Matt, this second
civil war ends in 2005 officially. It is thanks to
both parties agreeing what we call the Comprehensive Peace Agreement
(17:36):
in a burst of creativity. Part of this deal includes
the right for southern Sudan to vote whether or not
they want to secede from the country. They get this
vote in January of 2011. And in this vote, we're
(17:57):
quoting several international sources here, around 98 to 99 percent
of the people who vote choose to create their own country.
This is why South Sudan is a country now. But
also it's tricky because we're talking about voters. We're not
(18:20):
talking about the population. We're also talking about a place
that's not great at election monitoring. You know what I mean?
So how many people actually voted? Did Vladimir Putin really
get 104%? of the vote last time, et cetera, et cetera. Like,
(18:42):
was this rigged?
Speaker 3 (18:43):
I just want to point out that there are places
online that you can go to. Let me just give
you one example here. It's not the perhaps most concrete
and information-filled place to go to online to learn about
the timeline of Sudan and some of these civil war conflicts,
because obviously it's not civil war, right? It's tiny little
(19:08):
event here. major event here, series of a dozen smaller events.
And that's, you know, that is what becomes a civil war.
If you go to rescuesouthsudan.org, you can find a timeline
that goes through a lot of these things that we're
going to be, we have to skip over because there's
no time for us to go through each little thing
(19:28):
that led, you know, to the end of the conflicts here.
It is important though, because there are specific movements, specific people,
specific actions, like splitting up one of the states even further, right?
And one of the things that they did in the
Second Civil War is attempting to take the South and
then trifurcate, turn it into three different things. but then also,
(19:51):
you know, And again, attempts to give kind of everybody
a little bit of what they want. What if you
guys are independent, we're independent, and they're independent, and now
we don't have to fight each other about whose rules
we got to follow, which king we got to bow to,
or whatever, president, whoever.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Let's just balkanize it. You know what I mean? Like
you said, everybody gets a condominium.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yeah, well, and again... history is filled with these pretty
good ideas that might help. But then there are other
folks that come along and say, no, that's a terrible
idea and it should be my idea. And oh, guess what?
Here's a coup. And then you just, somebody else's great,
terrible idea becomes the thing.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Exactly. Oh my gosh. You summed up human history so well.
As strange as it may sound, folks, those first two
civil wars were are not the one we are talking
about tonight. As we are recording, again, in August 2026,
there is a third civil war happening right now in Sudan,
(20:54):
the north one. The seeds of this third civil war
blossomed from the Sudanese revolution against the longtime wish-wish president,
or strongman, Omar al-Bashir, overthrown in 2019. There's a great
article by a journalist called Nazreen Malik, who in November
(21:16):
of 2025 wrote a summation of this for The Guardian.
Speaker 5 (21:23):
And here's a quote from that piece from November of 2025.
The short history of the Third Civil War has its
roots in Sudan's popular revolution of 2019. I imagine it's
referring to popular in terms of populists. in which President
Omar al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan for almost 30 years, was
(21:45):
deposed after months of protests. It was a revolution that
had two demands. First, the removal of a dictator, and second,
the ejection of the military, from whose ranks Bashir came
when he led a coup in 1989. From power, once
and for all.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Okay, we can all agree with that. Get rid of
the strongman, right? Go democracy. Get rid of the military.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Ben, really quickly, the idea of a popular revolution, what
would be the alternative?
Speaker 5 (22:19):
I guess there could be like a military revolution or
a foreign intervention. I've never heard it put quite like
that before, but I think that's a very descriptive way
of putting it.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yes, yeah. Power to the people is the way it's
always sold to the masses, right?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
I like that you put it that way, Ben, because
that's exactly what I was thinking, the way it's sold.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yes, speaking of selling stuff, yes, the third civil war,
which is happening now, folks, it has been hot ever since.
It's what some of the war nerds would call a
kinetic conflict, and it is vastly underreported in Western news.
(23:00):
Why is it underreported? Well, depending on who you ask,
it's because there is a conspiracy at play cough, cough,
proxy wars. Want to take a break for a word
from our sponsors?
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Yeah, man, might as well. No time like the present.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Here's where it gets crazy. All right, folks, Civil War,
the real story, allegedly, we have to say allegedly, the
current Civil War broke out on April 15th 2023, and
outside of a few nerds, the general public of the
United States was not aware of this. The Sudanese government
(23:46):
had already been, to your earlier point, Noel, heavily militarized,
and they were split into two diametrically opposed factions. They
used to be friends. They used to be BFFs, the
people in charge of this civil war, used to work together.
So can we introduce each side of the conflict?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Well, the first one that you've hopefully heard about, if
you've done any kind of searching for this or seen
a video or heard anyone speak about it, is the SAF,
the Sudanese Armed Forces. This is the group, the force
that would be, or I think is recognized by the U.N.
So the official government of Sudan's armed forces. Pretty easy, right?
(24:34):
Sudanese armed forces.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah. The SAF, as you said, Matt, the Sudanese armed
forces are the internationally recognized government, by which we mean
they're the folks who get to send folks wearing suits
and ties to the United Nations. They have an arch
nemesis on the other side of the conflict. The Government
(24:58):
of Peace and Unity. The Government of Peace and Unity
is controlled by a paramilitary group, a spinoff called the
Rapid Support Forces, or the RSF. So we have the SAF,
and then we have the RSF. And to be quite
honest with you, neither of them are the good guys.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah, they're... I guess we should acknowledge it here just
with the concept that nobody's kind of a good guy
on the sides of this conflict, at least the folks
who are shooting people, committing sexual atrocities. There are many
an accusation of genocide being thrown around here. And they
(25:47):
have been for a while. It is a horrific situation.
You're also looking at famine, like widespread famine. We're talking
the real horrors of civil war that have been ongoing
in Sudan for, for quite some time.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Systemic calculated famine, by the way.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
I was about to say like weaponizing starvation.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Weaponize.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Cutting off critical supply lines and things like that. And,
you know, strategically controlling a part or like a connection,
as you said, Ben, to the Red Sea there and
like where things can come in and out. There's all
kinds of stuff going down there that are just horrifying.
And I think that's You know, one of the major
reasons that there is not a good guy, but surely
(26:28):
there's a better guy, maybe?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Or a less evil is the idea, right? Yeah, this
is a great point. It's terrifying that we have to
make this point. It's also terrifying that this is not
making more Western news. So both of these... Both of
these sides of the civil war happening now in Sudan,
(26:52):
they function as cults of personality. SAF, the internationally UN-recognized one,
is led by a guy named General Abdel Fattah al-Barnan.
The other side is led by his former deputy, a
guy named Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo Moussa. His common nom de
(27:15):
guerre is... Hemeti. And nom de guerre is just a
fancy French word for war name. Name in war.
Speaker 5 (27:25):
As opposed to nom de plume, which would be like
pen name. I've never heard this before, Ben. This is
a new one on me.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
I hope it stays a new one for a lot
of us, because the idea is for a nom de guerre,
and pardon our French here, the idea... Oh, that did work. Literally.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
We're not swearing. It's the actual appropriate use of pardon
our French. I love that, Ben.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
It dates back to the idea that if you are
engaged in warfare or indeed committing war crimes, or if
you're a spy, et cetera, et cetera, you cannot be
found by enemy forces, right? So in this guy's case,
he was using this name probably to protect his family
at the beginning, but now it has become a brand
(28:11):
an icon. It's a conflict pseudonym. And he did work
for al-Burhan leading up to that 2019 revolution. And now
there are other mercenary groups, Koff-Koff, Wagner Group, Koff-Koff, getting
involved in both sides of this conflict at whichever juncture
(28:33):
seems most profitable. This is where you're going to hear
big wildcard names like the Sudan Liberation Movement or the
Darfur Joint Protection Force. These both sound very official, but
you have to realize that they are doing some of
(28:53):
the same evil things.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Absolutely. And there's dark money flowing into many of these
movements and groups, and that money ends up going to
more mercenaries to get soldiers of fortune. in adjoining countries,
countries that are not far away, but people who are
looking for an opportunity, any opportunity to make some money,
(29:16):
send it back to their families. And, you know, a
big paycheck that comes from joining up with one of
these groups and heading over to Sudan for a couple
of months, a couple of years, it is an unfortunately,
it's maybe a hard choice, but a good choice when
(29:37):
it comes to quick money. It's really messed up, right?
Because it is kind of like seeing an opportunity to
win a lottery of some sort.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
It's a devil's bargain, especially when we consider the economic opportunity,
the fact that people are participating similar to wars.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Of old, right?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Do you want to... watch your children starve to death,
or do you want to do evil things to help
your children survive? That is a great dilemma, and it's
occurring right now, folks. We cannot emphasize this enough. This
war is the most severe displacement and hunger crisis on
(30:23):
the planet as we record, at least per the United Nations.
This is not our opinions. This is the international opinion.
As of August of 2026, the UN, from earlier, estimated
that up to 400,000 people have died in this civil war.
An estimated 12 million people have been driven from their homes.
(30:47):
Many will never return, right? Their homes are gone. And
when we talk about who is right or who is
the good guy, who's the bad guy, who is more
or less evil, we have to remember that this conflict
is hinging on the idea of cults of personality. It's
(31:08):
a tale of two generals, if you will, right? The
SAF guy, General al-Burhan, he had been the leader of
Sudan officially since back in 2019. Post-revolution, he was controlling the,
get this guys, the temporary military junta, right? Their official
(31:30):
name was the Transitional Military Council, and he was only
in charge because the protesters, to your point, Noel, the
popular vote did not like the original leaders. The original
leaders of the revolution were seen as ops for the establishment,
puppets of foreign powers. And to be quite honest, those
(31:55):
protesters were correct. So this guy, this guy came in
like a substitute teacher, right? He's supposed to step down
in February of 2021 because it's a transitional temporary council,
but you know, spoiler, he, uh, Did not step down.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yeah. Bigger spoiler, Ben, a lot of folks that find
themselves in that position go, ooh, yeah, I know I
was temporarily supposed to be here.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
But maybe I'll just hang around.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
I'm already here.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
I'm already in this place.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
This place is kind of nice.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
It's kind of great.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
And, you know, maybe we'll make some renovations while I'm here, too,
and personalize it.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
For my own aesthetics. Maybe we'll guild some things.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
What about that?
Speaker 3 (32:43):
I get your point, Noel, but I do think there's
something to a warlord that gains power.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
A warlord.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Someone in the armed forces who gains control by force.
There's something to letting go of those reins that is
extremely difficult.
Speaker 5 (33:02):
Brother, there's something about letting go.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Of power for anyone that's extremely difficult.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
It's the same as corporations not being super stoked to
walk back prices after, say, an oil crisis or whatever
it might be. It's just not in the nature of
folks with power to ever want to give it up
without a fight.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah, like the steward of Gondor. I'm fun at parties.
I love that.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
Which one's that? Ben, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
When you said that, I hear Stuart of Gondor, and
I'm picturing like a nerdy dude with like a pocket protector.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
I'm Stuart of Gondor.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Oh, freight train is popping in. What's on your mind, Max? Oh,
Max says no. Thumbs down. You're just naughty?
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Thumbs down for Max.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
He's giving us disapproval about Gondor.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yeah, that guy hates Gondor.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
So..
Speaker 2 (33:54):
From this guy's perspective, General Al-Burhan, his side, he becomes
temporary king of the hill. And as Matt and Noel
and I were saying, he likes the view. And he says,
we have the mandate from the people. I can hear
(34:15):
them now from the bottom of the hill saying, you're
awesome and you should stay up there. And I do
not recognize, says Al-Burhan, the legitimacy of this upstart Osiris group.
I see them as terrorists and foreign puppets. But the
thing is, the thing is here, folks, that the other
(34:37):
side has the exact same allegations and accusations. It's like
a mirror life calculation. They're frighteningly similar. General Degalo or
Hamedi was also instrumental in that 2019 revolution and coup.
He became that deputy of that military council and the
(34:59):
guys both got too big for their britches. So both
of them are claiming that they have the mandate of
those people at the bottom of this proverbial hill. And
both of them are claiming that the other guy's claims
are patently and beat me here, freight train. And Everything
(35:20):
they say about the other guy mirrors what the other
guy says about them. It's a very rubber glue, rubber
versus glue, not me, not you situation. But millions of
innocent people are dying because of this. And also, there
is one thing we have to mention, officially. Khamedi is
(35:44):
rich as f * * k. He is one of
the most wealthy people in the entirety of Sudan. And
it's because of a corporation called Al-Junaid, A-L-J-U-N-A-I-D. This is
one of those corporations that kind of owns a little
(36:06):
bit of everything, like a chaebol in South Korea or
the Republic of Korea. They got mining and They got transport,
they have resource extraction, steel, iron, they invest in everything.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
But they got it by force because when this dude,
so what's his name again? Hamedi, how do you say
it Ben?
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Hamedi or Hamedi.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
When this dude is running what was essentially a mercenary group,
like a border guard group, private security group, for the
leaders there in Sudan when he was in that group
they would go into the gold mines and take control
over them and then say oh mine now and now
all the profits from the gold mines go to their
(36:53):
corporation but it's really just this thing that they put
in place that they took over everything by force I
mean come on I mean that's like another tale as
old as time when there's a gold mine and you
have a bunch of guns and people just take it over.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
There it is. And that's One to Grow On by
Matt Frederick.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
That's One to Grow On.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
It's just wild to me. Like, you know, he's spoken
about in different ways depending on the outlet that you
look at and, you know, often not in a great light.
But he is like, there's a certain amount of respect
you'll see sometimes because he is a hugely wealthy man, right?
And his corporation controls all of these various things. They're
(37:38):
very diversified. As you said, Ben. But ultimately, they had
guns and they took stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
It's blood money, man. They've also been sanctioned up and
down the wazoo, but the money still flows because it's
hard to trace gold. That's going to pay off later.
There are multiple international watchdogs that consider Hamidi in particular
culpable for appalling crimes against humanity. Like we were saying earlier, folks,
(38:08):
participation in or orchestration of genocide. Look no further than
Darfur from 2003 to 2005. The systemic murder and the
institutionalized sexual assault of civilians. Darfur again, 2014, 2015. On
and on and on. And we're not saying the other guys, again,
(38:33):
are good as we record tonight. Both of those leaders,
if you talk to them, they're going to say they're
the good guys. They're the one true voice of reason.
There's a ton of history to this current tragedy. This
is just a brief overview. But if you're an astute
conspiracy realist, you're going to note these power struggles happen
(38:56):
all the time, like Noel and Matt and I have
already said. So why is this one metastasized? What makes
it so inherently different? According to the critics, these guys
themselves are puppets. They are figureheads in a larger conflict.
(39:17):
This is a proxy war waged by powerful outside forces
with agendas of their own. Dang.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
And through those agendas, they've claimed hundreds of thousands. of
lives and displaced millions.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
We'll be right back. Okay, we're back. Riddle me this, guys.
What is a proxy war?
Speaker 3 (39:47):
It's when I hire somebody to pretend to be Belgian
and go rob a Baskin Robbins. Wait, no, it's almost that,
but not quite.
Speaker 5 (39:58):
No, it's good.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
You caught me.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
You caught me. That was really good.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Because, you know, I should have done Belgium, but I
should have just gone with Haagen-Dazs like Noel said at
the beginning.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense work.
Speaker 5 (40:11):
It's a conflict where two or more major powers compete
kind of indirectly through their support of local kind of
grassroots political parties.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
Right.
Speaker 5 (40:25):
Or rather not political parties necessarily, but just groups fighting
groups other than they themselves fighting one another directly.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Perfect. It's like you said, two opposing forces, but they
don't want stuff. They don't want the consequences of a
conflict to hit them at home.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
It's like war mediation.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
In a terrible way. Yeah, war mediation is great. I've
never heard it put that way.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
That's brilliant.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Isn't this extremely common when it comes to the resource
extraction thingies that happen? Because a lot of the resources, well,
it didn't. I'm speaking too broadly here, but a lot
of the, a lot of the proxy wars that we
have read about have occurred in, on the continent of
Africa and South America, where there are vast resources that
(41:12):
one or two, usually at least two giant powers want
to have access to. But if they go in there
with their helicopters and, you know, their aircraft carriers and
whatever else, it's going to be big problems. But as
you said, Noel, if you just pay some groups that
are already in those countries with guns, and usually AK-47s,
(41:34):
to go and take over the mines, let's say, the
gold mines.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
Yeah, warring factions, let's call them.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
And is it not a way to sort of act
as a hidden hand to a certain degree?
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Very much so, yeah. AK-47s or... Our old favorite would
be Kalashnikov's. A good rap line about that is working
with the thing that sounds like a tongue rolling. So
whenever you hear somebody say that, they're talking about Kalashnikov's.
Is it not an AK-47?
Speaker 3 (42:06):
I think it is. I think a Kalashnikov is an AK-47.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
It's more fun to say.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Well, it's Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
Speaking of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, wouldn't the Korean War be
considered a proxy war with the U.S. and our allies
backing South Korea and the USSR and China backing North Korea?
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yeah, we'll call it the Vietnam War, right? The Cold War.
You know, example... If you're the emperor of Coca-Cola and
the king of Pepsi-Cola, and you both want the same resources,
but you don't want to be personally responsible for the problem,
then just find Dr. Enough or what's another soda? Dr.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Bob.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Dr.
Speaker 4 (42:47):
Bob's a good one, yes.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
That's a good one. Or Cheerwine or something like that,
and then fight it out over there. In real-world terms,
we're nailing it. Noel, I love this example. The most
famous proxy wars of the last century were between the
United States, the Soviet Union, and China, right? The Cold War,
the Vietnam War, the Korean War. Those are all very
(43:11):
U.S.-centric names for these.
Speaker 5 (43:13):
And they can be sort of extensions of larger historical conflicts, right?
Speaker 2 (43:19):
Yes, yeah, correct. I mean, not for nothing is Afghanistan
known as the breaker of empires, right? Anyway, you look
at the U.S., you look at Russia, you look at China,
these three stooges, swear to God, what a bunch of clowns.
This current civil, that's going to haunt me later, this
(43:39):
current civil war in Sudan is another example of that
insidious practice of proxy war. There's a guy we've been following,
a professor named Ismail Sati, S-A-T-T-I, if you want to
look him up. He wrote a piece in Sudan Horizon
from July of this year, and he was asking, were
(44:02):
the crises in Sudan solely the result of internal dissent,
internal failure? The answer is absolutely no. It's not because
any country is inherently, quote-unquote, better than another. It's because
this part of the world has historically been resource rich
(44:23):
and infrastructure poor. It has been predated upon. It has
the resource curse. The biggest warlords in the area will,
and I'll use that word freely and correctly, would still
have to depend upon outside assistance to get those Kalashnikovs, AK-47s.
(44:43):
They would still have to depend on on foreign expertise
to learn tactics of war and supply chains, right? And
they would need foreign funding to gain access to either
of those first two categories. Other powers, outside powers, people
(45:04):
who do not live in Sudan are fueling the fire here,
and they could not give less of a about what
happens to the civilians.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
Ben, let's really talk about that because it's such an
important thing, the weapons dealers that you're referring to, the
international ones that find a way to get shipment after
shipment after shipment of automatic weapons into every country that
is going through massive conflict. And it just happens all
(45:39):
the time. And there's a continual flow And it is
just not going to stop because there are weapons manufacturers
who are just pumping out these guns all the time.
And they've got to get sold because they're corporations and
they've got to sell more guns. And if you've got
bulk buyers that end up with a bunch, let's say
after a civil war ends and you only need so
(46:02):
many of the, you know, whatever M rifle that is
being used right now in Sudan. And there are a
bunch of like the type, I think it's a Type
56 that was originally Chinese, but then it goes somewhere
else for a time. It gets re-kitted when it's used
in a conflict, and now you've got a bunch of those.
Now we can sell those over here. And it just
(46:23):
passing along, making millions and millions of dollars along the way.
It is terrifying. When's the last time... I think, guys,
there was a weapons dealer, like an international weapons dealer
that was in the news pretty recently that got in
big trouble finally. Somebody got caught. But often these people
are shadows and it just occurs.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
Like Lord of War, right?
Speaker 3 (46:46):
But it's just crazy that that's real.
Speaker 4 (46:49):
Well, I mean, they're investors in human suffering. I mean,
that's like kind of the currency.
Speaker 5 (46:53):
Of the military industrial complex. And, you know, by backing
these groups and extending these kind of perma conflicts, they're just,
you know, escalating and continuing the Need to.
Speaker 4 (47:09):
Continue to manufacture all of these weapons of war.
Speaker 5 (47:12):
And it's there's always a conflict going on somewhere in
the world. Even if there wasn't one going on here
at home, you've got to kind of find one. You know,
you sell your weapons.
Speaker 4 (47:20):
There or create the need, create the need. Precisely.
Speaker 5 (47:26):
I mean, again, not to be too, I mean, I
think it's just kind of obvious. There's no moral core
at the center of any of this.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
The moral core would be profit from their perspective.
Speaker 4 (47:38):
It's the core.
Speaker 5 (47:39):
I wouldn't say it's the moral one, but I mean,
there is no like, oh, we're supporting these folks because
we believe in their cause.
Speaker 4 (47:45):
That's beside the point.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Well, you know, this is part of what, that's astute
and brilliant. This is part of what makes this a
special case uh of conspiracy here uh we do have
to point out that if you look on either side
of this conflict in sudan uh you will see puppeteers
(48:09):
right and we can walk through these very quickly just
just so everyone is aware if you look at the
saf right the internationally u.n recognized guys General al-Burhan has
the support of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia. These
(48:29):
are four countries that don't always get along. Officially, Egypt
and Saudi Arabia say, we're doing this, we're supporting SAF
because they're UN-recognized, and we want stability in this greater region.
It's important, given the economic impact and the proximity of
(48:51):
the Red Sea. stability, though. We'll get to that. Iran
and Russia are going to agree with that publicly, like
you were saying, no ideology and so on. But what
Iran and Russia really want are sweetheart deals for resource
extraction and footholds for naval bases. It'll further attempts to
(49:15):
control the Strait and the Red Sea. And on the
other side, you got Hamedi, right?
Speaker 1 (49:21):
RSF.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
They have a covenant with the United Arab Emirates. And
the United Arab Emirates is, I'm going to be honest here,
kind of a laundromat for funding from other countries that
want to keep stuff quiet. And like you were saying, Matt,
Chad and Libya are in there with a few spoopy-doop,
(49:43):
totally independent, totally not government, corporate-affiliated folks who run border-smuggling networks. Yes.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
Ben, I want to go back to our Iran episodes,
some of the things we talked about with the Strait
of Hormuz, and just how, as you were saying, how
important that strait is, right, for trade. And then just
a straight that a lot of people don't talk about.
I don't talk about it. I don't think about it.
I don't think about the straight there.
Speaker 4 (50:12):
I don't think the U.S. government did either until it
was a little too late.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Right, yeah. there's a teeny tiny little area there between,
is it Yemen maybe? And Djibouti and Eritrea. And it's just,
it's a tiny little part of where the land touched,
almost touches, but not quite. I mean, it's, it's actually huge.
If you, if you're standing there on one of the shores. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Like we couldn't swim there.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
Right. But, but if you've got massive ships, let's say
oil tankers, I don't know, military ships and things like that. It's, it's, Basically,
the tiniest little piece of water.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Yeah, it's like playing Risk. If I could control that
part and I could control the other part, then I
blocked it off. You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (50:59):
And you really are talking about, like, Saudi Arabia has either, right?
Saudi Arabia is going through one of those straits, basically. Yeah.
Because the section of them is filled by Yemen and
Oman and the UAE, right? Otherwise, you're going through one
of those straits. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
Absolutely. So what we're saying is these proxy forces that
are supporting the civil war on either side, they're not
super dupes concerned about what is happening to the civilians
who would rather a war not occur at all. The
United Arab Emirates is providing tons of logistical support and
(51:40):
a load of drone capability. And drones, let's remember, are
the future. of warfare for a time. And this training
also is, the training and the capabilities coming from the
UAE are also coming from earlier Western instructors. It's coming,
(52:03):
the call is coming from inside the House of the
United States in a very real way. And the reason
that the The reason a lot of people, let me
be careful with this, and you guys don't have to
edit this part out. A lot of people who are
smarter than us are certain that the reason the UAE
(52:27):
has gone 10 toes down on the civil war is
not due to oil. It's because of Sudan's gold trading network.
Sudan produced oil. 1.8 billion US dollars worth of gold
last year. Around that time, it was like, that equates
(52:49):
to 70 tons or something. And officially, nobody knows how
much gold is still under the ground in the country.
We just know it is a lot. Why is gold
more important than oil here? It's because gold It's because
(53:09):
bad guys love gold. If you get sanctioned, if your
currency is going bad, if you're a terrorist and you
can't have your stuff traced digitally or you have to
be careful what kind of currency you use, you can
just pay in gold. It's a tangible asset. You don't
(53:33):
have to go to a bank. It can be measured.
You can get all kinds of stuff with it. Gold
is experiencing a resurgence in relevance.
Speaker 4 (53:45):
Well, it's also peaking in value. Or it did recently.
I'm not sure where it's at now, but it had
surged in the last year.
Speaker 3 (53:54):
Well, yeah, because, you know, the fiat currency based on
faith doesn't work when the faith starts to go away.
Speaker 4 (54:01):
But you've got to have faith, Matt.
Speaker 3 (54:03):
You've got to have faith. Oh, my God.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
What about my coupons?
Speaker 4 (54:07):
Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
Can I eat my coupons? Can I just say I
totally forgot about the Suez Canal, you guys. I totally
forgot the Suez Canal exists.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
Oh, yeah, yeah, from earlier.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
So you can be in the Red Sea and kind
of head northwest and get through there. It's just if
they like it.
Speaker 2 (54:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:24):
If you want to talk about tiny strips of water,
a canal is as small as it gets if you're
a giant ship.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:31):
And we know that there are choke points. I think
your observation holds there, Matt. It's huge. Like, look at
the reason Singapore is a nation state of its own.
It's due to the Strait of Malacca. That's it. That's
the main reason. It's geography. That's what decides... in geopolitics often.
(54:54):
And the reason that so many powers are pushing for
one side or the other in the Sudanese civil war
that the West is ignoring is because if you control
the winner, if you bet on the right horse, then
you will control a vast network of of gold trading
(55:20):
in addition to a geographical advantage. So terrorists love gold, right?
I mean, people love gold. Like you were saying, Noel,
it has encountered this resurgence in relevance. It's anonymous. You
can launder it easily. It's interchangeable. Maybe that's an episode
(55:44):
for another day.
Speaker 3 (55:45):
Let's just do it by... Buy gold episode. That's what
it'll be called.
Speaker 4 (55:49):
Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
Buy gold.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
Dosh for gold. Dosh for gold. We'll finally make those
advertisers happy. Do you guys have any gold? Should we
buy gold?
Speaker 4 (56:01):
I have some gold jewelry, but that's about it. I've
got a chain and some earrings. Do you have ingots?
I do not have any. Not a one, sir. I mean, dude,
an ingot I think is worth 100K.
Speaker 5 (56:11):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (56:13):
Roughly. I mean, it's crazy.
Speaker 5 (56:14):
Like, I follow a lot of these, like, jeweler folks
in New York and, like, the Diamond District. And there's
this dude, Max, or his name is TraxNYC. He's always
out on the street, like, giving out gold ingots and
stuff for, like, these YouTuber, I'm sorry, like, TikTok kind of,
you know, promos.
Speaker 4 (56:29):
And, yeah, like, one gold bar, I want to say,
is worth upwards of $ 100, 000.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
Well, you're pretty successful. Can you get Freight Train, Matt
and I, each an ingot?
Speaker 4 (56:38):
I'll get you an ingot. I'll send you each an ingot.
For your birthday.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (56:42):
Missed it this year. Missed it this year.
Speaker 2 (56:44):
We'll see.
Speaker 4 (56:44):
We'll wait until it comes around next time.
Speaker 3 (56:46):
I've got a concrete basement and a sledgehammer, so I'm good.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
Yeah. And I've got the plans for Fort Knox.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (56:53):
I don't understand the implication there.
Speaker 3 (56:56):
Fort Knox is ran through.
Speaker 4 (56:58):
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 3 (57:00):
It was a reference to the John Wick, and I'm
just kidding.
Speaker 2 (57:03):
We're all just kidding, but so are other proxy nations
who are pushing this war. when they say they're looking
for stability. Remember this, folks. At this level of rarefied
air and no good guys, stability is almost always a
euphemism for control. So when these outside governments say they
(57:27):
want stability in Sudan or in the Red Sea, what
they mean is, in practice, they want trade and profit
that they can predict, steer, and get a vigorous off of.
Stability for them is economic advantage for them. Stability, they're
not thinking about the civilians. And second, this is an
(57:49):
important point as we wrap up. We talked about this
just a few minutes ago, ideological motivation. And Matt, we
mentioned this as well, right? The idea that if you
look at the actions of a secular government like the
United States, whenever a president tells you we're going to
(58:09):
war for our values of freedom, or insert word here,
everybody at this point should know that just means resource extraction, right? Control, command, conquer.
People don't really fall for it anymore, but in this
part of the world, when we are talking about expansionist theocracies,
(58:30):
that ideology does matter. There are world leaders who are
willing to spend hundreds of millions, billions of dollars to
advance the idea of what they think the world should
look like for everybody. That's, that doesn't make them non-rational
(58:50):
at all. It's just a different motivation. And I hope
that doesn't sound, you know, discriminatory. It's just the reality.
Speaker 4 (58:57):
No, it doesn't.
Speaker 5 (58:58):
But I do wonder, like, I mean, with a lot
of the rhetoric right now that's going on around like
communism and all of,– it seems like we're having a
resurgence in the demonization of the specter of communism and
all that stuff. And it surely seems entirely overblown the
way it's being discussed and just weaponized rhetoric. And I
think the Democratic Socialist Party of the present is certainly
(59:18):
a far cry from the communist party. party of the
Red Scare days, you know, or even as it exists
currently in other parts of the world. But do you
really think that that obviously that kind of rhetoric is
highly politicized and incredibly othering? Do you really think there
are folks out there that are fighting ideological wars for
real reasons that are like based in morality or based
(59:42):
in like, we want to create an image that we
see as being the right way to live and the
right way to be, or is it all just kind
of smoke and mirrors to line pockets and, you know,
create net gain, financially speaking?
Speaker 2 (59:56):
Excellent question. The majority of it is window dressing, again,
for resource extraction and control of populations and control of geography. However, Yes, Virginia,
there is a Santa Claus of ideology. There are very powerful,
(01:00:18):
ideologically motivated actors with great command who seek to... who
are totally fine, again, earning hundreds of millions or billions
of dollars. We're people to achieve their vision of how
the world should be. It's the greater good argument. And
(01:00:40):
for those folks... the money doesn't really matter other than
being a means to an end.
Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
And then it's like, isn't it crazy? It's, it's what
they believe. Just like everything you know is what you
believe because of what you've been told, what you've heard,
what you've experienced. They're just like you. It's just somebody
somewhere told them, Hey, here's what's actually real and important.
(01:01:07):
And it involves drone strikes and, So I'm going to
need you to strike all over Darfur. If you look
at the news recently of what's happening in Sudan, it's
all about drone warfare. From both sides attacking each other
with drones, killing civilians, sometimes in a court in a
small town, sometimes at a market, sometimes on a strategic
(01:01:30):
city that they're going after. There's so much talk about
the drone warfare happening there. between Russia and Ukraine, where
there are these, you know, Noel, I know in particular
you were talking about the drones that have the fiber optics,
the cables attached to them and all that.
Speaker 4 (01:01:46):
Just draping that stuff everywhere, yeah. Specifically in Ukraine, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
Yeah, but it's not the same extent, right? So maybe
it's not as remarkable when you see a headline about
it or see the images from there, but it's still
happening in Sudan.
Speaker 4 (01:02:00):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
I'm just imagining this kind of thing happening This happening
on several different fronts across the world where it's exactly
what you're talking about, Ben. These ideological forces that also,
you know, just want the stuff. Fighting with these unmanned
things with explosives that just wreak absolute havoc. And make
(01:02:23):
it near impossible for humans to live in an entire
swath of area. People have just been fleeing Sudan. As
we mentioned earlier, millions of people who have been fleeing
Sudan for decades now. And it goes in fits and starts,
but ultimately it's just not a safe place to be.
Speaker 4 (01:02:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
And add to that, we have in the great scheme
of things or in the grand scheme of things, a
recent terrifying development that even predates the drone. It has
fundamentally changed warfare. It is the corporation. The corporation is
a huge part of logistical force in any conflict now.
(01:03:07):
So for these corporations, just as their earlier versions, the mercenaries,
for these things, this is an issue of territory and profit.
That is their ideology.
Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
It is conflict.
Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
Colonialism in a new iteration. And just like the earlier
versions of colonialism, they don't care if innocents die in
the process. It's not even, it's terrifying. It's banality of evil.
And I hate that I have to keep saying that,
but Hannah Arendt is right. It is terrifying, not that
(01:03:40):
these corporations are not happy about collateral damage or acceptable losses.
It's way worse than that. It's way more empty. They
just don't think about it unless it affects the bottom line.
And to be honest, some of these folks are also,
by the way, hedging their bets. They're playing both sides
(01:04:03):
of the war in Sudan. Like Dubai handles something around 15%
of the international gold trade. So whomever wins, quote unquote,
this civil war, that business is still going to continue.
The gold trade will encounter massive benefits. Whomever picks the
(01:04:24):
right horse is going to have a stranglehold on the activities, therefore,
of multiple shady outfits that rely on the off-the-books gold
trade to fund stuff. I mean, we have so much
more to get to, but we've got to wrap it up.
Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
Ben, I want to make a point that is going
to seem unrelated, but it is so dang related, it
hurts our brains. The Financial Times did a little look-back-sies
at the Iraq War and contracts, government contracts, that went
out to specific corporations that you're talking about, Ben. KBR, which,
(01:05:06):
oh God, I can't remember, Kellogg Brown and Root, that's KBR,
It became Halliburton.
Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Delivering solutions, changing the world.
Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
That's right. It became Halliburton. And Halliburton ended up making
right around $ 40 billion throughout the Iraq War. So a
corporation via government contracts in a massive war in a
foreign land made $ 40 billion at a time when the
vice president of the United States was the former head
(01:05:36):
of that corporation that made $ 40 billion.
Speaker 5 (01:05:39):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Really let that sink in and think about that. The
power players, the war hawks that sit in these seats
in every country across the world. Not that doesn't mean
every country has war hawks. I'm not saying Belgium has
all the war hawks there. I'm just saying there exist
war hawks, folks who really like war because they know
the benefits, the benefits of that war.
Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
Yeah, again, the worst part is they're not, you know,
doing a Monty Burns thing, like steeply in their fingers
and going, instead they're saying, this is good for Q4.
And the death toll continues to rise. Look, if you
are listening from the United States, thank you for tuning in.
(01:06:27):
Just know Uncle Sam does not officially support either side
of this war. Instead, the current government has some lukewarm
talks about pushing for a ceasefire, peace talks, providing humanitarian aid.
We could, as a nation, do way more. We're not,
(01:06:50):
but we could. And this brings us back to the
main point. This is why it's a conspiracy. It is
an active proxy war happening right now. And to Matt
and Noel's earlier point, a lot of people don't care,
or they're betting on one side or the other, like
(01:07:11):
horses in a race while civilians are dying. Various Western
analysts in the U.S. and Europe and Asia and Latin America,
they agree with the assessment, the calculation that Middle Eastern
powers made so long ago. They seem to think that
the control of Sudan is apparently belongs with anybody but
(01:07:33):
the Sudanese people. That's the stuff they don't want you
to know. We disagree with that sentiment. We hope you
disagree with it as well. And we would love to
hear from you folks. We went a little long on
this one. We hope it was worth your time. Thank
you for tuning in. You can tell that this means
a lot to us because this is news that is
(01:07:55):
not getting reported. So please let us know your thoughts.
There are many ways to find us.
Speaker 4 (01:08:00):
There sure are. And a couple of those include the Handles.
Speaker 5 (01:08:03):
Conspiracy Stuff and Conspiracy Stuff Show, which you can follow
down to find us on your social media platform of choice.
Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
If you want to give us a phone call, our
number is 1-833-STDWYTK. It's a voicemail system. We would love
to hear... any monetary way we can give to projects
in Sudan that would be helpful to the people of
Sudan guys I'm imagining things like Doctors Without Borders as
(01:08:34):
a potentially good thing or maybe an Amnesty International I
don't know the efficacy of where that money or how
that money is spent in Sudan and how like who
it actually benefits but it would be cool to know
things like that so if you have information on that
why don't you call us and tell us about it
we'd love to hear from you And any other thoughts
you've got on this episode. If you want to send
(01:08:55):
us an email, we are the.
Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
Entities that read each piece of correspondence. we receive be
well aware yet unafraid sometimes the void writes back in
particular we would love to hear from anybody in the
sudanese diaspora anybody who has visited either uh Sudan or
South Sudan, we want to know the stuff that the
Western news is not reporting. So please, please, please, if
(01:09:21):
you have a moment, reach out to us directly. Conspiracy
at iHeartRadio.com.
Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
My name is Noel.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Max the Freight Train Williams. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Now, tonight's episode is
going to take us to a place that doesn't get
too much attention in the global West. We're talking about
(00:53):
the nation of Guys, when's the last time we heard
about Sudan in the United States?
Speaker 5 (01:01):
I'm going to just go ahead and be honest about it.
The only thing I know about it is from the
They Might Be Giants song that names all the countries.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
And isn't it, wasn't it once referred to as the Sudan?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Just like the Gabon or the Ukraine.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
The Gambia.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Oh, that's right. The Gambia.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
The last time I recall hearing about it is when
we mentioned it and discussed it in Strange News back
in 2023. Or was it Strange News then? Yes, it was.
When we were discussing current events and another major event
in the fighting that has been ongoing in the country.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, the outbreak of a civil war, which was actually
the third civil war in that country from 1956 to 2011,
the nation of Sudan was technically, to your point, Matt,
a single country. And we're saying technically because it had
(02:02):
a ton of problems. It had deep internal divides. Ultimately,
this led to its splitting into separate countries. One named Sudan,
one named, in a burst of creativity, Sudan. South Sudan.
And as we are recording now on August 17th, 2026,
(02:22):
one of these countries, Sudan, North Sudan, if you will,
is in the grips of another civil war that you
probably have not heard much about. And we can assure you, folks,
there are reasons you have not heard about it. So
our exploration tonight, our question tonight is, What's actually going
(02:44):
on with this war? And why do so many people
believe there is a conspiracy afoot?
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Well, we'll get into it right after a teeny tiny
word from a sponsor.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Here are the facts. All right, guys, we have to
talk about it. And folks, we have to be honest
with you. We as Americans are often challenged. When we
look at a map of the world and the countries
on the planet, and we have to point to a
(03:19):
country based on a name, many of us will hear
the word Sudan. And we will say, okay, somewhere in
the African continent, right? Somewhere on one of the biggest
continents on the planet. But can we find it? We'll
help you. It's in Northeast Africa. It's bordering the Red Sea,
(03:42):
and it's so strange that we all forget about this
country because it is ancient. Humans have been living in
the area we call Sudan for at least 50,000 years.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
If you're looking for it on a map, it's immediately
south of Egypt. So if you're checking out there, we
talked about the Sinai Peninsula pretty recently. If you're looking
at that peninsula and then the rest of Egypt, just
head south, you'll find Sudan. And just below that, of course,
South Sudan.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yes, South Sudan. And for a lot of us from
the States, you're immediately going to be thinking of North
Dakota and South Dakota. I don't know why. That's the most, like,
U.S.-centric reference point.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
What about the Carolinas? Oh, gosh.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Good call.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
How can we forget the Carolinas?
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Also, why is it Virginia and then West Virginia?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I bet we could answer that. I just have to.
Look at this machine right here.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
There we go. And as we're looking that up, we
do want to give credit where due. This land is
so ancient that it is home to the oldest open-air
huts in the world, as far as archaeologists know. And
it is also, troublingly, home to the earliest known human
(05:09):
war on the planet. It's a war that occurred in
11,500 BCE called the War of Jabal Sahara.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Wow, I don't know anything about that one, Ben.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, yeah. I don't think any of us were there.
Jabal Sahara is, according to most of the research, which, again,
often is Western-descended, this was the first time. what we
would call homo sapiens, beefed up with each other. We
(05:45):
also know that modern-day Sudan is the seat of the
Kingdom of Kush, K-U-S-H. Think of it, folks, as kind
of the Pepsi to the Coca-Cola of Egypt. If that
makes sense, they also did a ton of slavery.
Speaker 5 (06:01):
I have to ask, is that where the term Kush,
referring to marijuana, comes from? It's the only other place
I've ever heard, and I've never thought to question its origins.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
You know, this is why we should do an etymology show.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
I think that's true. Yeah, and you know what?
Speaker 5 (06:17):
Maybe we'll put a pin in that, and I'll answer
it at some point during the episode. It's a burning
question for anyone else out there. But no, I am
painfully unfamiliar. Huge blind spot for me. This region, these conflicts,
this history. So I'm happy to kind of be here
learning along with everybody.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
This kingdom of Kush looks really interesting. I don't know
enough to speak on it, but there's certainly information you
can find online. And it was a very old civilization
going back thousands of years. And it's right along the
Red Sea there from roughly Memphis down to Napata, it
looks like.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
These are the ancient progenitors of so much of modern
civilization today, right? These are the ancestors of empires. And
if we fast forward, we see that the kingdom of
Kush was largely forgotten, like so many other areas of
(07:16):
the African continent. What we call Sudan today was repeatedly
colonized by foreign powers, the Egyptians, the Ottoman Empire, and
later a supposedly Great Britain. All we're saying here, we're
painting the backgrounds. There is a great deal of unacknowledged
(07:37):
history in this part of the world, and that history
is often ignored for the usual terrible reasons. Good news, though.
New Year's Day, 1956, Sudan achieves independence.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
There's one thing I want to mention here, just before
we get into the more modern day. Something that occurred
right at the turn of the century before around 1900,
this thing that was known as, I guess, the condominium state.
It was a really weird term to be used when
it comes to statecraft and how countries are run. And
(08:14):
it's referred to as Anglo-Egyptian because it's the United Kingdom,
or Britain and Egypt, kind of having joint control over
a region, which I guess isn't unheard of. There are
several other territories that have kind of a joint situation
going on, besties, some frenemies that kind of do their thing.
(08:38):
But this in particular was just something I've never heard
of before.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
Ooh, and one more quick historical footnote, unrelated to anything,
the term Kush that I was referring to comes from
the Hindu Kush region spanning Pakistan, Afghanistan.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
It's a mountainous region.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
That has nothing to do with who we're talking about today,
in case anyone was yelling at their podcast device and
or at me.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
You know about Kooshtopia? Sorry, that's a comedy bang-bang reference.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Awesome. And perhaps, if we're tracing it back, perhaps that
push comes from that earlier society. Oh, no, now they're yelling.
Now we're yelling at the podcast again. We will make
this etymology show, and these footnotes are important. Because many
(09:27):
of us in the audience tonight, whether you're on Netflix,
whether you're on your podcast platform of choice, many of
us are old enough to remember when modern-day Sudan was
a single country. And you may remember well, in 2011,
this country split into two separate countries, which is crazy.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Right?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
This is bonkers sauce to a lot of people, which
is a phrase we made up. Modern Sudan was technically
a single country on paper from 1956 to 2011, but
it was by no means internally cohesive. It's because of
(10:14):
what we were referencing earlier there, guys. the Anglo-Egyptian rule
of colonialism had put people into boxes where those people
did not want to fit. They were doing this to
encourage domestic inequality and domestic dissent such that they could
(10:35):
control resources. So these two separate entities, what you call
South Sudan today and what you call North Sudan or
regular Sudan today, they didn't want to be a country.
Just to be clear, they didn't want that. Outside powers
did that. And the Egyptian forces and the British forces
(10:57):
had historically governed the north and south of this region
as separate entities. When the Brits were in control, they
heavily invested in the northern part of the region. They
put in a lot of money, a lot of infrastructure.
They invested in education. This was a K-shaped economy. The
(11:21):
south was an afterthought. So the northern part is more
associated with an Arab population, Islamic, Muslim background. The southern
part is associated more with animist or Christian background. And
(11:44):
it was a backwater. It's so weird because we said
Sudan becomes independent in 1956. It becomes collated or lumped
together right before it reaches independence. And the resource extractions
(12:07):
was always a huge deal. The South and the North
don't like each other. Might sound familiar for anybody who's
read about the U.S. Civil War. Two very different things, but..
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Well, yeah, well, we've talked about it before, how difficult
it is to attempt to enforce rule of law on
a bunch of different people who lead very different lives,
who have almost completely separate cultures in many respects, who
are then, they're all supposed to just listen to you
and follow all of your rules as the new whatever
(12:44):
group is presented as this is the new governing force.
That's not easy to do. And some people get really
upset about the new rules that are in place because
they don't really apply. They don't seem to apply to
your life and the world you live in in your
region of this, let's say, new country. But then everybody
(13:07):
is just expected to go along and do their thing.
And if you don't, you're going to get punished. And there's,
I think we're getting to it. Right around this time
when this is happening is when there's a full civil
war fomenting, right? Right as independence is occurring?
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Right after So to draw a sharp contrast with our U.S.
analogy of the U.S. Civil War, this is a dark chuckle,
and I shouldn't be doing it, folks, because historically, the
Arab population of the northern part of the Sudan, to
(13:48):
your point, Noel, they practiced slavery, human enslavement on the
southern part. of this region. So imagine if you are
living there in 1953, right? And you are old enough
to know people who have been enslaved by these folks
(14:09):
from Khartoum or what have you. You also know that
there are fights for control over precious resources. European chancers
have found oil reserves in in your neck of the woods,
in the South, the South has the resources. They have
(14:29):
that bubbling crude, that Texas tea, but the North has
all the colonial connections. They've got the international deals, the pipelines,
the profits, right? And these folks get beefed up. This
leads to what you're saying, Matt. The first civil war,
modern day Sudan, actually predates the independence of that country.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Yeah, that's kind of what I was saying. The tensions
were already there, and it's one of the reasons that
the UK and Egypt ended up signing over, basically relinquishing control.
It was because of some of the fighting, not full-on fighting,
but like I said, tension. That thing that leads to
(15:13):
civil war was there, and it was waiting for and
then it starts to break out.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, they wanted the advantages, but not the accountability. So
the First Civil War starts in 1955. Independence occurs in 1956.
So pay attention to what Matt was saying there, folks.
The First Civil War goes all the way to 1972
(15:40):
until there is a temporary peace agreement that leads to
a little more than a decade of relative or official piece. Also,
by the way, side note, it's the late 1970s when, uh,
an American oil company called Chevron discovers.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
Oil in a little mom and pop operation, right?
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yes. Just so a little mom and pop operation. And
then after that surprise, there's a second civil war. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Second civil war is the one that, um, maybe you've
heard about perhaps. It's a crazy long one, 1983 all
the way until 2005. So think about 22 years of
civil war and the horrors that that would bring. We
know about the Civil War here in the United States
(16:32):
and just how many casualties there were because there were
so many different fronts on which that war was fought, right?
How many battles... At the time, it was the technology, right?
That was one of the worst parts, because if you
got hit with a piece of lead, a piece of shrapnel,
whatever it was, the surgeons aren't going to be able
(16:53):
to help you too much, maybe a little bit. The technology,
the medicine isn't there yet. It's a little different in Sudan,
but you're also in a lot of places where resources
are extremely scarce, and especially during times of the Civil War,
resources are scarce. Right. Everything from food to bandages to everything.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
And there is always an outside force that says, I'll
give you a little bit of help. I'll give you
a little alley oop. Like you're saying, Matt, this second
civil war ends in 2005 officially. It is thanks to
both parties agreeing what we call the Comprehensive Peace Agreement
(17:36):
in a burst of creativity. Part of this deal includes
the right for southern Sudan to vote whether or not
they want to secede from the country. They get this
vote in January of 2011. And in this vote, we're
(17:57):
quoting several international sources here, around 98 to 99 percent
of the people who vote choose to create their own country.
This is why South Sudan is a country now. But
also it's tricky because we're talking about voters. We're not
(18:20):
talking about the population. We're also talking about a place
that's not great at election monitoring. You know what I mean?
So how many people actually voted? Did Vladimir Putin really
get 104%? of the vote last time, et cetera, et cetera. Like,
(18:42):
was this rigged?
Speaker 3 (18:43):
I just want to point out that there are places
online that you can go to. Let me just give
you one example here. It's not the perhaps most concrete
and information-filled place to go to online to learn about
the timeline of Sudan and some of these civil war conflicts,
because obviously it's not civil war, right? It's tiny little
(19:08):
event here. major event here, series of a dozen smaller events.
And that's, you know, that is what becomes a civil war.
If you go to rescuesouthsudan.org, you can find a timeline
that goes through a lot of these things that we're
going to be, we have to skip over because there's
no time for us to go through each little thing
(19:28):
that led, you know, to the end of the conflicts here.
It is important though, because there are specific movements, specific people,
specific actions, like splitting up one of the states even further, right?
And one of the things that they did in the
Second Civil War is attempting to take the South and
then trifurcate, turn it into three different things. but then also,
(19:51):
you know, And again, attempts to give kind of everybody
a little bit of what they want. What if you
guys are independent, we're independent, and they're independent, and now
we don't have to fight each other about whose rules
we got to follow, which king we got to bow to,
or whatever, president, whoever.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Let's just balkanize it. You know what I mean? Like
you said, everybody gets a condominium.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yeah, well, and again... history is filled with these pretty
good ideas that might help. But then there are other
folks that come along and say, no, that's a terrible
idea and it should be my idea. And oh, guess what?
Here's a coup. And then you just, somebody else's great,
terrible idea becomes the thing.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Exactly. Oh my gosh. You summed up human history so well.
As strange as it may sound, folks, those first two
civil wars were are not the one we are talking
about tonight. As we are recording, again, in August 2026,
there is a third civil war happening right now in Sudan,
(20:54):
the north one. The seeds of this third civil war
blossomed from the Sudanese revolution against the longtime wish-wish president,
or strongman, Omar al-Bashir, overthrown in 2019. There's a great
article by a journalist called Nazreen Malik, who in November
(21:16):
of 2025 wrote a summation of this for The Guardian.
Speaker 5 (21:23):
And here's a quote from that piece from November of 2025.
The short history of the Third Civil War has its
roots in Sudan's popular revolution of 2019. I imagine it's
referring to popular in terms of populists. in which President
Omar al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan for almost 30 years, was
(21:45):
deposed after months of protests. It was a revolution that
had two demands. First, the removal of a dictator, and second,
the ejection of the military, from whose ranks Bashir came
when he led a coup in 1989. From power, once
and for all.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Okay, we can all agree with that. Get rid of
the strongman, right? Go democracy. Get rid of the military.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Ben, really quickly, the idea of a popular revolution, what
would be the alternative?
Speaker 5 (22:19):
I guess there could be like a military revolution or
a foreign intervention. I've never heard it put quite like
that before, but I think that's a very descriptive way
of putting it.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yes, yeah. Power to the people is the way it's
always sold to the masses, right?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
I like that you put it that way, Ben, because
that's exactly what I was thinking, the way it's sold.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yes, speaking of selling stuff, yes, the third civil war,
which is happening now, folks, it has been hot ever since.
It's what some of the war nerds would call a
kinetic conflict, and it is vastly underreported in Western news.
(23:00):
Why is it underreported? Well, depending on who you ask,
it's because there is a conspiracy at play cough, cough,
proxy wars. Want to take a break for a word
from our sponsors?
Speaker 4 (23:15):
Yeah, man, might as well. No time like the present.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Here's where it gets crazy. All right, folks, Civil War,
the real story, allegedly, we have to say allegedly, the
current Civil War broke out on April 15th 2023, and
outside of a few nerds, the general public of the
United States was not aware of this. The Sudanese government
(23:46):
had already been, to your earlier point, Noel, heavily militarized,
and they were split into two diametrically opposed factions. They
used to be friends. They used to be BFFs, the
people in charge of this civil war, used to work together.
So can we introduce each side of the conflict?
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Well, the first one that you've hopefully heard about, if
you've done any kind of searching for this or seen
a video or heard anyone speak about it, is the SAF,
the Sudanese Armed Forces. This is the group, the force
that would be, or I think is recognized by the U.N.
So the official government of Sudan's armed forces. Pretty easy, right?
(24:34):
Sudanese armed forces.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah. The SAF, as you said, Matt, the Sudanese armed
forces are the internationally recognized government, by which we mean
they're the folks who get to send folks wearing suits
and ties to the United Nations. They have an arch
nemesis on the other side of the conflict. The Government
(24:58):
of Peace and Unity. The Government of Peace and Unity
is controlled by a paramilitary group, a spinoff called the
Rapid Support Forces, or the RSF. So we have the SAF,
and then we have the RSF. And to be quite
honest with you, neither of them are the good guys.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Yeah, they're... I guess we should acknowledge it here just
with the concept that nobody's kind of a good guy
on the sides of this conflict, at least the folks
who are shooting people, committing sexual atrocities. There are many
an accusation of genocide being thrown around here. And they
(25:47):
have been for a while. It is a horrific situation.
You're also looking at famine, like widespread famine. We're talking
the real horrors of civil war that have been ongoing
in Sudan for, for quite some time.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Systemic calculated famine, by the way.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
I was about to say like weaponizing starvation.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Weaponize.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Cutting off critical supply lines and things like that. And,
you know, strategically controlling a part or like a connection,
as you said, Ben, to the Red Sea there and
like where things can come in and out. There's all
kinds of stuff going down there that are just horrifying.
And I think that's You know, one of the major
reasons that there is not a good guy, but surely
(26:28):
there's a better guy, maybe?
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Or a less evil is the idea, right? Yeah, this
is a great point. It's terrifying that we have to
make this point. It's also terrifying that this is not
making more Western news. So both of these... Both of
these sides of the civil war happening now in Sudan,
(26:52):
they function as cults of personality. SAF, the internationally UN-recognized one,
is led by a guy named General Abdel Fattah al-Barnan.
The other side is led by his former deputy, a
guy named Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo Moussa. His common nom de
(27:15):
guerre is... Hemeti. And nom de guerre is just a
fancy French word for war name. Name in war.
Speaker 5 (27:25):
As opposed to nom de plume, which would be like
pen name. I've never heard this before, Ben. This is
a new one on me.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
I hope it stays a new one for a lot
of us, because the idea is for a nom de guerre,
and pardon our French here, the idea... Oh, that did work. Literally.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
We're not swearing. It's the actual appropriate use of pardon
our French. I love that, Ben.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
It dates back to the idea that if you are
engaged in warfare or indeed committing war crimes, or if
you're a spy, et cetera, et cetera, you cannot be
found by enemy forces, right? So in this guy's case,
he was using this name probably to protect his family
at the beginning, but now it has become a brand
(28:11):
an icon. It's a conflict pseudonym. And he did work
for al-Burhan leading up to that 2019 revolution. And now
there are other mercenary groups, Koff-Koff, Wagner Group, Koff-Koff, getting
involved in both sides of this conflict at whichever juncture
(28:33):
seems most profitable. This is where you're going to hear
big wildcard names like the Sudan Liberation Movement or the
Darfur Joint Protection Force. These both sound very official, but
you have to realize that they are doing some of
(28:53):
the same evil things.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Absolutely. And there's dark money flowing into many of these
movements and groups, and that money ends up going to
more mercenaries to get soldiers of fortune. in adjoining countries,
countries that are not far away, but people who are
looking for an opportunity, any opportunity to make some money,
(29:16):
send it back to their families. And, you know, a
big paycheck that comes from joining up with one of
these groups and heading over to Sudan for a couple
of months, a couple of years, it is an unfortunately,
it's maybe a hard choice, but a good choice when
(29:37):
it comes to quick money. It's really messed up, right?
Because it is kind of like seeing an opportunity to
win a lottery of some sort.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
It's a devil's bargain, especially when we consider the economic opportunity,
the fact that people are participating similar to wars.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Of old, right?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Do you want to... watch your children starve to death,
or do you want to do evil things to help
your children survive? That is a great dilemma, and it's
occurring right now, folks. We cannot emphasize this enough. This
war is the most severe displacement and hunger crisis on
(30:23):
the planet as we record, at least per the United Nations.
This is not our opinions. This is the international opinion.
As of August of 2026, the UN, from earlier, estimated
that up to 400,000 people have died in this civil war.
An estimated 12 million people have been driven from their homes.
(30:47):
Many will never return, right? Their homes are gone. And
when we talk about who is right or who is
the good guy, who's the bad guy, who is more
or less evil, we have to remember that this conflict
is hinging on the idea of cults of personality. It's
(31:08):
a tale of two generals, if you will, right? The
SAF guy, General al-Burhan, he had been the leader of
Sudan officially since back in 2019. Post-revolution, he was controlling the,
get this guys, the temporary military junta, right? Their official
(31:30):
name was the Transitional Military Council, and he was only
in charge because the protesters, to your point, Noel, the
popular vote did not like the original leaders. The original
leaders of the revolution were seen as ops for the establishment,
puppets of foreign powers. And to be quite honest, those
(31:55):
protesters were correct. So this guy, this guy came in
like a substitute teacher, right? He's supposed to step down
in February of 2021 because it's a transitional temporary council,
but you know, spoiler, he, uh, Did not step down.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Yeah. Bigger spoiler, Ben, a lot of folks that find
themselves in that position go, ooh, yeah, I know I
was temporarily supposed to be here.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
But maybe I'll just hang around.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
I'm already here.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
I'm already in this place.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
This place is kind of nice.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
It's kind of great.
Speaker 5 (32:33):
And, you know, maybe we'll make some renovations while I'm here, too,
and personalize it.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
For my own aesthetics. Maybe we'll guild some things.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
What about that?
Speaker 3 (32:43):
I get your point, Noel, but I do think there's
something to a warlord that gains power.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
A warlord.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Someone in the armed forces who gains control by force.
There's something to letting go of those reins that is
extremely difficult.
Speaker 5 (33:02):
Brother, there's something about letting go.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Of power for anyone that's extremely difficult.
Speaker 5 (33:09):
It's the same as corporations not being super stoked to
walk back prices after, say, an oil crisis or whatever
it might be. It's just not in the nature of
folks with power to ever want to give it up
without a fight.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah, like the steward of Gondor. I'm fun at parties.
I love that.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
Which one's that? Ben, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5 (33:30):
When you said that, I hear Stuart of Gondor, and
I'm picturing like a nerdy dude with like a pocket protector.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
I'm Stuart of Gondor.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Oh, freight train is popping in. What's on your mind, Max? Oh,
Max says no. Thumbs down. You're just naughty?
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Thumbs down for Max.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
He's giving us disapproval about Gondor.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Yeah, that guy hates Gondor.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
So..
Speaker 2 (33:54):
From this guy's perspective, General Al-Burhan, his side, he becomes
temporary king of the hill. And as Matt and Noel
and I were saying, he likes the view. And he says,
we have the mandate from the people. I can hear
(34:15):
them now from the bottom of the hill saying, you're
awesome and you should stay up there. And I do
not recognize, says Al-Burhan, the legitimacy of this upstart Osiris group.
I see them as terrorists and foreign puppets. But the
thing is, the thing is here, folks, that the other
(34:37):
side has the exact same allegations and accusations. It's like
a mirror life calculation. They're frighteningly similar. General Degalo or
Hamedi was also instrumental in that 2019 revolution and coup.
He became that deputy of that military council and the
(34:59):
guys both got too big for their britches. So both
of them are claiming that they have the mandate of
those people at the bottom of this proverbial hill. And
both of them are claiming that the other guy's claims
are patently and beat me here, freight train. And Everything
(35:20):
they say about the other guy mirrors what the other
guy says about them. It's a very rubber glue, rubber
versus glue, not me, not you situation. But millions of
innocent people are dying because of this. And also, there
is one thing we have to mention, officially. Khamedi is
(35:44):
rich as f * * k. He is one of
the most wealthy people in the entirety of Sudan. And
it's because of a corporation called Al-Junaid, A-L-J-U-N-A-I-D. This is
one of those corporations that kind of owns a little
(36:06):
bit of everything, like a chaebol in South Korea or
the Republic of Korea. They got mining and They got transport,
they have resource extraction, steel, iron, they invest in everything.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
But they got it by force because when this dude,
so what's his name again? Hamedi, how do you say
it Ben?
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Hamedi or Hamedi.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
When this dude is running what was essentially a mercenary group,
like a border guard group, private security group, for the
leaders there in Sudan when he was in that group
they would go into the gold mines and take control
over them and then say oh mine now and now
all the profits from the gold mines go to their
(36:53):
corporation but it's really just this thing that they put
in place that they took over everything by force I
mean come on I mean that's like another tale as
old as time when there's a gold mine and you
have a bunch of guns and people just take it over.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
There it is. And that's One to Grow On by
Matt Frederick.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
That's One to Grow On.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
It's just wild to me. Like, you know, he's spoken
about in different ways depending on the outlet that you
look at and, you know, often not in a great light.
But he is like, there's a certain amount of respect
you'll see sometimes because he is a hugely wealthy man, right?
And his corporation controls all of these various things. They're
(37:38):
very diversified. As you said, Ben. But ultimately, they had
guns and they took stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
It's blood money, man. They've also been sanctioned up and
down the wazoo, but the money still flows because it's
hard to trace gold. That's going to pay off later.
There are multiple international watchdogs that consider Hamidi in particular
culpable for appalling crimes against humanity. Like we were saying earlier, folks,
(38:08):
participation in or orchestration of genocide. Look no further than
Darfur from 2003 to 2005. The systemic murder and the
institutionalized sexual assault of civilians. Darfur again, 2014, 2015. On
and on and on. And we're not saying the other guys, again,
(38:33):
are good as we record tonight. Both of those leaders,
if you talk to them, they're going to say they're
the good guys. They're the one true voice of reason.
There's a ton of history to this current tragedy. This
is just a brief overview. But if you're an astute
conspiracy realist, you're going to note these power struggles happen
(38:56):
all the time, like Noel and Matt and I have
already said. So why is this one metastasized? What makes
it so inherently different? According to the critics, these guys
themselves are puppets. They are figureheads in a larger conflict.
(39:17):
This is a proxy war waged by powerful outside forces
with agendas of their own. Dang.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
And through those agendas, they've claimed hundreds of thousands. of
lives and displaced millions.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
We'll be right back. Okay, we're back. Riddle me this, guys.
What is a proxy war?
Speaker 3 (39:47):
It's when I hire somebody to pretend to be Belgian
and go rob a Baskin Robbins. Wait, no, it's almost that,
but not quite.
Speaker 5 (39:58):
No, it's good.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
You caught me.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
You caught me. That was really good.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Because, you know, I should have done Belgium, but I
should have just gone with Haagen-Dazs like Noel said at
the beginning.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense work.
Speaker 5 (40:11):
It's a conflict where two or more major powers compete
kind of indirectly through their support of local kind of
grassroots political parties.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
Right.
Speaker 5 (40:25):
Or rather not political parties necessarily, but just groups fighting
groups other than they themselves fighting one another directly.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Perfect. It's like you said, two opposing forces, but they
don't want stuff. They don't want the consequences of a
conflict to hit them at home.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
It's like war mediation.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
In a terrible way. Yeah, war mediation is great. I've
never heard it put that way.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
That's brilliant.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Isn't this extremely common when it comes to the resource
extraction thingies that happen? Because a lot of the resources, well,
it didn't. I'm speaking too broadly here, but a lot
of the, a lot of the proxy wars that we
have read about have occurred in, on the continent of
Africa and South America, where there are vast resources that
(41:12):
one or two, usually at least two giant powers want
to have access to. But if they go in there
with their helicopters and, you know, their aircraft carriers and
whatever else, it's going to be big problems. But as
you said, Noel, if you just pay some groups that
are already in those countries with guns, and usually AK-47s,
(41:34):
to go and take over the mines, let's say, the
gold mines.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
Yeah, warring factions, let's call them.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
And is it not a way to sort of act
as a hidden hand to a certain degree?
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Very much so, yeah. AK-47s or... Our old favorite would
be Kalashnikov's. A good rap line about that is working
with the thing that sounds like a tongue rolling. So
whenever you hear somebody say that, they're talking about Kalashnikov's.
Is it not an AK-47?
Speaker 3 (42:06):
I think it is. I think a Kalashnikov is an AK-47.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
It's more fun to say.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Well, it's Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
Speaking of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, wouldn't the Korean War be
considered a proxy war with the U.S. and our allies
backing South Korea and the USSR and China backing North Korea?
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yeah, we'll call it the Vietnam War, right? The Cold War.
You know, example... If you're the emperor of Coca-Cola and
the king of Pepsi-Cola, and you both want the same resources,
but you don't want to be personally responsible for the problem,
then just find Dr. Enough or what's another soda? Dr.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Bob.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Dr.
Speaker 4 (42:47):
Bob's a good one, yes.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
That's a good one. Or Cheerwine or something like that,
and then fight it out over there. In real-world terms,
we're nailing it. Noel, I love this example. The most
famous proxy wars of the last century were between the
United States, the Soviet Union, and China, right? The Cold War,
the Vietnam War, the Korean War. Those are all very
(43:11):
U.S.-centric names for these.
Speaker 5 (43:13):
And they can be sort of extensions of larger historical conflicts, right?
Speaker 2 (43:19):
Yes, yeah, correct. I mean, not for nothing is Afghanistan
known as the breaker of empires, right? Anyway, you look
at the U.S., you look at Russia, you look at China,
these three stooges, swear to God, what a bunch of clowns.
This current civil, that's going to haunt me later, this
(43:39):
current civil war in Sudan is another example of that
insidious practice of proxy war. There's a guy we've been following,
a professor named Ismail Sati, S-A-T-T-I, if you want to
look him up. He wrote a piece in Sudan Horizon
from July of this year, and he was asking, were
(44:02):
the crises in Sudan solely the result of internal dissent,
internal failure? The answer is absolutely no. It's not because
any country is inherently, quote-unquote, better than another. It's because
this part of the world has historically been resource rich
(44:23):
and infrastructure poor. It has been predated upon. It has
the resource curse. The biggest warlords in the area will,
and I'll use that word freely and correctly, would still
have to depend upon outside assistance to get those Kalashnikovs, AK-47s.
(44:43):
They would still have to depend on on foreign expertise
to learn tactics of war and supply chains, right? And
they would need foreign funding to gain access to either
of those first two categories. Other powers, outside powers, people
(45:04):
who do not live in Sudan are fueling the fire here,
and they could not give less of a about what
happens to the civilians.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
Ben, let's really talk about that because it's such an
important thing, the weapons dealers that you're referring to, the
international ones that find a way to get shipment after
shipment after shipment of automatic weapons into every country that
is going through massive conflict. And it just happens all
(45:39):
the time. And there's a continual flow And it is
just not going to stop because there are weapons manufacturers
who are just pumping out these guns all the time.
And they've got to get sold because they're corporations and
they've got to sell more guns. And if you've got
bulk buyers that end up with a bunch, let's say
after a civil war ends and you only need so
(46:02):
many of the, you know, whatever M rifle that is
being used right now in Sudan. And there are a
bunch of like the type, I think it's a Type
56 that was originally Chinese, but then it goes somewhere
else for a time. It gets re-kitted when it's used
in a conflict, and now you've got a bunch of those.
Now we can sell those over here. And it just
(46:23):
passing along, making millions and millions of dollars along the way.
It is terrifying. When's the last time... I think, guys,
there was a weapons dealer, like an international weapons dealer
that was in the news pretty recently that got in
big trouble finally. Somebody got caught. But often these people
are shadows and it just occurs.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
Like Lord of War, right?
Speaker 3 (46:46):
But it's just crazy that that's real.
Speaker 4 (46:49):
Well, I mean, they're investors in human suffering. I mean,
that's like kind of the currency.
Speaker 5 (46:53):
Of the military industrial complex. And, you know, by backing
these groups and extending these kind of perma conflicts, they're just,
you know, escalating and continuing the Need to.
Speaker 4 (47:09):
Continue to manufacture all of these weapons of war.
Speaker 5 (47:12):
And it's there's always a conflict going on somewhere in
the world. Even if there wasn't one going on here
at home, you've got to kind of find one. You know,
you sell your weapons.
Speaker 4 (47:20):
There or create the need, create the need. Precisely.
Speaker 5 (47:26):
I mean, again, not to be too, I mean, I
think it's just kind of obvious. There's no moral core
at the center of any of this.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
The moral core would be profit from their perspective.
Speaker 4 (47:38):
It's the core.
Speaker 5 (47:39):
I wouldn't say it's the moral one, but I mean,
there is no like, oh, we're supporting these folks because
we believe in their cause.
Speaker 4 (47:45):
That's beside the point.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
Well, you know, this is part of what, that's astute
and brilliant. This is part of what makes this a
special case uh of conspiracy here uh we do have
to point out that if you look on either side
of this conflict in sudan uh you will see puppeteers
(48:09):
right and we can walk through these very quickly just
just so everyone is aware if you look at the
saf right the internationally u.n recognized guys General al-Burhan has
the support of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia. These
(48:29):
are four countries that don't always get along. Officially, Egypt
and Saudi Arabia say, we're doing this, we're supporting SAF
because they're UN-recognized, and we want stability in this greater region.
It's important, given the economic impact and the proximity of
(48:51):
the Red Sea. stability, though. We'll get to that. Iran
and Russia are going to agree with that publicly, like
you were saying, no ideology and so on. But what
Iran and Russia really want are sweetheart deals for resource
extraction and footholds for naval bases. It'll further attempts to
(49:15):
control the Strait and the Red Sea. And on the
other side, you got Hamedi, right?
Speaker 1 (49:21):
RSF.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
They have a covenant with the United Arab Emirates. And
the United Arab Emirates is, I'm going to be honest here,
kind of a laundromat for funding from other countries that
want to keep stuff quiet. And like you were saying, Matt,
Chad and Libya are in there with a few spoopy-doop,
(49:43):
totally independent, totally not government, corporate-affiliated folks who run border-smuggling networks. Yes.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
Ben, I want to go back to our Iran episodes,
some of the things we talked about with the Strait
of Hormuz, and just how, as you were saying, how
important that strait is, right, for trade. And then just
a straight that a lot of people don't talk about.
I don't talk about it. I don't think about it.
I don't think about the straight there.
Speaker 4 (50:12):
I don't think the U.S. government did either until it
was a little too late.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
Right, yeah. there's a teeny tiny little area there between,
is it Yemen maybe? And Djibouti and Eritrea. And it's just,
it's a tiny little part of where the land touched,
almost touches, but not quite. I mean, it's, it's actually huge.
If you, if you're standing there on one of the shores. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Like we couldn't swim there.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
Right. But, but if you've got massive ships, let's say
oil tankers, I don't know, military ships and things like that. It's, it's, Basically,
the tiniest little piece of water.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Yeah, it's like playing Risk. If I could control that
part and I could control the other part, then I
blocked it off. You know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (50:59):
And you really are talking about, like, Saudi Arabia has either, right?
Saudi Arabia is going through one of those straits, basically. Yeah.
Because the section of them is filled by Yemen and
Oman and the UAE, right? Otherwise, you're going through one
of those straits. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 (51:17):
Absolutely. So what we're saying is these proxy forces that
are supporting the civil war on either side, they're not
super dupes concerned about what is happening to the civilians
who would rather a war not occur at all. The
United Arab Emirates is providing tons of logistical support and
(51:40):
a load of drone capability. And drones, let's remember, are
the future. of warfare for a time. And this training
also is, the training and the capabilities coming from the
UAE are also coming from earlier Western instructors. It's coming,
(52:03):
the call is coming from inside the House of the
United States in a very real way. And the reason
that the The reason a lot of people, let me
be careful with this, and you guys don't have to
edit this part out. A lot of people who are
smarter than us are certain that the reason the UAE
(52:27):
has gone 10 toes down on the civil war is
not due to oil. It's because of Sudan's gold trading network.
Sudan produced oil. 1.8 billion US dollars worth of gold
last year. Around that time, it was like, that equates
(52:49):
to 70 tons or something. And officially, nobody knows how
much gold is still under the ground in the country.
We just know it is a lot. Why is gold
more important than oil here? It's because gold It's because
(53:09):
bad guys love gold. If you get sanctioned, if your
currency is going bad, if you're a terrorist and you
can't have your stuff traced digitally or you have to
be careful what kind of currency you use, you can
just pay in gold. It's a tangible asset. You don't
(53:33):
have to go to a bank. It can be measured.
You can get all kinds of stuff with it. Gold
is experiencing a resurgence in relevance.
Speaker 4 (53:45):
Well, it's also peaking in value. Or it did recently.
I'm not sure where it's at now, but it had
surged in the last year.
Speaker 3 (53:54):
Well, yeah, because, you know, the fiat currency based on
faith doesn't work when the faith starts to go away.
Speaker 4 (54:01):
But you've got to have faith, Matt.
Speaker 3 (54:03):
You've got to have faith. Oh, my God.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
What about my coupons?
Speaker 4 (54:07):
Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 3 (54:08):
Can I eat my coupons? Can I just say I
totally forgot about the Suez Canal, you guys. I totally
forgot the Suez Canal exists.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
Oh, yeah, yeah, from earlier.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
So you can be in the Red Sea and kind
of head northwest and get through there. It's just if
they like it.
Speaker 2 (54:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:24):
If you want to talk about tiny strips of water,
a canal is as small as it gets if you're
a giant ship.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:31):
And we know that there are choke points. I think
your observation holds there, Matt. It's huge. Like, look at
the reason Singapore is a nation state of its own.
It's due to the Strait of Malacca. That's it. That's
the main reason. It's geography. That's what decides... in geopolitics often.
(54:54):
And the reason that so many powers are pushing for
one side or the other in the Sudanese civil war
that the West is ignoring is because if you control
the winner, if you bet on the right horse, then
you will control a vast network of of gold trading
(55:20):
in addition to a geographical advantage. So terrorists love gold, right?
I mean, people love gold. Like you were saying, Noel,
it has encountered this resurgence in relevance. It's anonymous. You
can launder it easily. It's interchangeable. Maybe that's an episode
(55:44):
for another day.
Speaker 3 (55:45):
Let's just do it by... Buy gold episode. That's what
it'll be called.
Speaker 4 (55:49):
Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
Buy gold.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
Dosh for gold. Dosh for gold. We'll finally make those
advertisers happy. Do you guys have any gold? Should we
buy gold?
Speaker 4 (56:01):
I have some gold jewelry, but that's about it. I've
got a chain and some earrings. Do you have ingots?
I do not have any. Not a one, sir. I mean, dude,
an ingot I think is worth 100K.
Speaker 5 (56:11):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (56:13):
Roughly. I mean, it's crazy.
Speaker 5 (56:14):
Like, I follow a lot of these, like, jeweler folks
in New York and, like, the Diamond District. And there's
this dude, Max, or his name is TraxNYC. He's always
out on the street, like, giving out gold ingots and
stuff for, like, these YouTuber, I'm sorry, like, TikTok kind of,
you know, promos.
Speaker 4 (56:29):
And, yeah, like, one gold bar, I want to say,
is worth upwards of $ 100, 000.
Speaker 2 (56:32):
Well, you're pretty successful. Can you get Freight Train, Matt
and I, each an ingot?
Speaker 4 (56:38):
I'll get you an ingot. I'll send you each an ingot.
For your birthday.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (56:42):
Missed it this year. Missed it this year.
Speaker 2 (56:44):
We'll see.
Speaker 4 (56:44):
We'll wait until it comes around next time.
Speaker 3 (56:46):
I've got a concrete basement and a sledgehammer, so I'm good.
Speaker 2 (56:50):
Yeah. And I've got the plans for Fort Knox.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 4 (56:53):
I don't understand the implication there.
Speaker 3 (56:56):
Fort Knox is ran through.
Speaker 4 (56:58):
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 3 (57:00):
It was a reference to the John Wick, and I'm
just kidding.
Speaker 2 (57:03):
We're all just kidding, but so are other proxy nations
who are pushing this war. when they say they're looking
for stability. Remember this, folks. At this level of rarefied
air and no good guys, stability is almost always a
euphemism for control. So when these outside governments say they
(57:27):
want stability in Sudan or in the Red Sea, what
they mean is, in practice, they want trade and profit
that they can predict, steer, and get a vigorous off of.
Stability for them is economic advantage for them. Stability, they're
not thinking about the civilians. And second, this is an
(57:49):
important point as we wrap up. We talked about this
just a few minutes ago, ideological motivation. And Matt, we
mentioned this as well, right? The idea that if you
look at the actions of a secular government like the
United States, whenever a president tells you we're going to
(58:09):
war for our values of freedom, or insert word here,
everybody at this point should know that just means resource extraction, right? Control, command, conquer.
People don't really fall for it anymore, but in this
part of the world, when we are talking about expansionist theocracies,
(58:30):
that ideology does matter. There are world leaders who are
willing to spend hundreds of millions, billions of dollars to
advance the idea of what they think the world should
look like for everybody. That's, that doesn't make them non-rational
(58:50):
at all. It's just a different motivation. And I hope
that doesn't sound, you know, discriminatory. It's just the reality.
Speaker 4 (58:57):
No, it doesn't.
Speaker 5 (58:58):
But I do wonder, like, I mean, with a lot
of the rhetoric right now that's going on around like
communism and all of,– it seems like we're having a
resurgence in the demonization of the specter of communism and
all that stuff. And it surely seems entirely overblown the
way it's being discussed and just weaponized rhetoric. And I
think the Democratic Socialist Party of the present is certainly
(59:18):
a far cry from the communist party. party of the
Red Scare days, you know, or even as it exists
currently in other parts of the world. But do you
really think that that obviously that kind of rhetoric is
highly politicized and incredibly othering? Do you really think there
are folks out there that are fighting ideological wars for
real reasons that are like based in morality or based
(59:42):
in like, we want to create an image that we
see as being the right way to live and the
right way to be, or is it all just kind
of smoke and mirrors to line pockets and, you know,
create net gain, financially speaking?
Speaker 2 (59:56):
Excellent question. The majority of it is window dressing, again,
for resource extraction and control of populations and control of geography. However, Yes, Virginia,
there is a Santa Claus of ideology. There are very powerful,
(01:00:18):
ideologically motivated actors with great command who seek to... who
are totally fine, again, earning hundreds of millions or billions
of dollars. We're people to achieve their vision of how
the world should be. It's the greater good argument. And
(01:00:40):
for those folks... the money doesn't really matter other than
being a means to an end.
Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
And then it's like, isn't it crazy? It's, it's what
they believe. Just like everything you know is what you
believe because of what you've been told, what you've heard,
what you've experienced. They're just like you. It's just somebody
somewhere told them, Hey, here's what's actually real and important.
(01:01:07):
And it involves drone strikes and, So I'm going to
need you to strike all over Darfur. If you look
at the news recently of what's happening in Sudan, it's
all about drone warfare. From both sides attacking each other
with drones, killing civilians, sometimes in a court in a
small town, sometimes at a market, sometimes on a strategic
(01:01:30):
city that they're going after. There's so much talk about
the drone warfare happening there. between Russia and Ukraine, where
there are these, you know, Noel, I know in particular
you were talking about the drones that have the fiber optics,
the cables attached to them and all that.
Speaker 4 (01:01:46):
Just draping that stuff everywhere, yeah. Specifically in Ukraine, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
Yeah, but it's not the same extent, right? So maybe
it's not as remarkable when you see a headline about
it or see the images from there, but it's still
happening in Sudan.
Speaker 4 (01:02:00):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
I'm just imagining this kind of thing happening This happening
on several different fronts across the world where it's exactly
what you're talking about, Ben. These ideological forces that also,
you know, just want the stuff. Fighting with these unmanned
things with explosives that just wreak absolute havoc. And make
(01:02:23):
it near impossible for humans to live in an entire
swath of area. People have just been fleeing Sudan. As
we mentioned earlier, millions of people who have been fleeing
Sudan for decades now. And it goes in fits and starts,
but ultimately it's just not a safe place to be.
Speaker 4 (01:02:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
And add to that, we have in the great scheme
of things or in the grand scheme of things, a
recent terrifying development that even predates the drone. It has
fundamentally changed warfare. It is the corporation. The corporation is
a huge part of logistical force in any conflict now.
(01:03:07):
So for these corporations, just as their earlier versions, the mercenaries,
for these things, this is an issue of territory and profit.
That is their ideology.
Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
It is conflict.
Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
Colonialism in a new iteration. And just like the earlier
versions of colonialism, they don't care if innocents die in
the process. It's not even, it's terrifying. It's banality of evil.
And I hate that I have to keep saying that,
but Hannah Arendt is right. It is terrifying, not that
(01:03:40):
these corporations are not happy about collateral damage or acceptable losses.
It's way worse than that. It's way more empty. They
just don't think about it unless it affects the bottom line.
And to be honest, some of these folks are also,
by the way, hedging their bets. They're playing both sides
(01:04:03):
of the war in Sudan. Like Dubai handles something around 15%
of the international gold trade. So whomever wins, quote unquote,
this civil war, that business is still going to continue.
The gold trade will encounter massive benefits. Whomever picks the
(01:04:24):
right horse is going to have a stranglehold on the activities, therefore,
of multiple shady outfits that rely on the off-the-books gold
trade to fund stuff. I mean, we have so much
more to get to, but we've got to wrap it up.
Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
Ben, I want to make a point that is going
to seem unrelated, but it is so dang related, it
hurts our brains. The Financial Times did a little look-back-sies
at the Iraq War and contracts, government contracts, that went
out to specific corporations that you're talking about, Ben. KBR, which,
(01:05:06):
oh God, I can't remember, Kellogg Brown and Root, that's KBR,
It became Halliburton.
Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
Delivering solutions, changing the world.
Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
That's right. It became Halliburton. And Halliburton ended up making
right around $ 40 billion throughout the Iraq War. So a
corporation via government contracts in a massive war in a
foreign land made $ 40 billion at a time when the
vice president of the United States was the former head
(01:05:36):
of that corporation that made $ 40 billion.
Speaker 5 (01:05:39):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Really let that sink in and think about that. The
power players, the war hawks that sit in these seats
in every country across the world. Not that doesn't mean
every country has war hawks. I'm not saying Belgium has
all the war hawks there. I'm just saying there exist
war hawks, folks who really like war because they know
the benefits, the benefits of that war.
Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
Yeah, again, the worst part is they're not, you know,
doing a Monty Burns thing, like steeply in their fingers
and going, instead they're saying, this is good for Q4.
And the death toll continues to rise. Look, if you
are listening from the United States, thank you for tuning in.
(01:06:27):
Just know Uncle Sam does not officially support either side
of this war. Instead, the current government has some lukewarm
talks about pushing for a ceasefire, peace talks, providing humanitarian aid.
We could, as a nation, do way more. We're not,
(01:06:50):
but we could. And this brings us back to the
main point. This is why it's a conspiracy. It is
an active proxy war happening right now. And to Matt
and Noel's earlier point, a lot of people don't care,
or they're betting on one side or the other, like
(01:07:11):
horses in a race while civilians are dying. Various Western
analysts in the U.S. and Europe and Asia and Latin America,
they agree with the assessment, the calculation that Middle Eastern
powers made so long ago. They seem to think that
the control of Sudan is apparently belongs with anybody but
(01:07:33):
the Sudanese people. That's the stuff they don't want you
to know. We disagree with that sentiment. We hope you
disagree with it as well. And we would love to
hear from you folks. We went a little long on
this one. We hope it was worth your time. Thank
you for tuning in. You can tell that this means
a lot to us because this is news that is
(01:07:55):
not getting reported. So please let us know your thoughts.
There are many ways to find us.
Speaker 4 (01:08:00):
There sure are. And a couple of those include the Handles.
Speaker 5 (01:08:03):
Conspiracy Stuff and Conspiracy Stuff Show, which you can follow
down to find us on your social media platform of choice.
Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
If you want to give us a phone call, our
number is 1-833-STDWYTK. It's a voicemail system. We would love
to hear... any monetary way we can give to projects
in Sudan that would be helpful to the people of
Sudan guys I'm imagining things like Doctors Without Borders as
(01:08:34):
a potentially good thing or maybe an Amnesty International I
don't know the efficacy of where that money or how
that money is spent in Sudan and how like who
it actually benefits but it would be cool to know
things like that so if you have information on that
why don't you call us and tell us about it
we'd love to hear from you And any other thoughts
you've got on this episode. If you want to send
(01:08:55):
us an email, we are the.
Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
Entities that read each piece of correspondence. we receive be
well aware yet unafraid sometimes the void writes back in
particular we would love to hear from anybody in the
sudanese diaspora anybody who has visited either uh Sudan or
South Sudan, we want to know the stuff that the
Western news is not reporting. So please, please, please, if
(01:09:21):
you have a moment, reach out to us directly. Conspiracy
at iHeartRadio.com.
Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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