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This week we speak with Suad Abdel Aziz, a Sudanese-American lawyer and founder of the human rights advocacy organization Decolonize Sudan. The Sudan Genocide is a topic we haven’t covered extensively at Useful Idiots, so Suad educates us with a history of the region, explains what’s going on now, and reveals how the US is involved.

Useful Idiots: Can you give us a brief history of Sudan and how we got to where we are?

Suad Abdel Aziz: Despite how mainstream media frames it, there is not an internal power struggle or civil war that’s happening in Sudan. What’s happening is a foreign-backed genocide, carried out by a militia called the Rapid Support Forces, or the RSF, as part of a colonial project to completely destabilize Sudan in order to seize land within a larger imperial scheme designed to extract resources, consolidate economic control of Sudan, and control Sudan’s foreign policy.

Beginning in April of 2023, the RSF violently seized Sudan, and over the course of over two years now, destroyed and leveled the bulk of Sudan’s infrastructure and has displaced over a third of the population, which is over sixteen million people. They have waged a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing marked by mass killings, including killings of entire family lineages, sexual violence, and the deliberate starvation of entire communities.

The RSF is only able to do this through the backing of the United Arab Emirates, who provide the funds, the fighters, and the weapons for this militia. In exchange, the UAE is extracting the resources of Sudan, with the main export that it’s smuggling being gold. And the UAE’s gold exports have increased by over 25% since this siege began.

Useful Idiots: What is the connection between Sudan and Palestine?

Suad Abdel Aziz: Sudan has historically been allied with Palestine and against Israel, which is key in understanding why the US seeks to align Sudan’s foreign policy with its own in order to serve its larger interests of domination of the Middle East. It’s very clear that if elections were to happen in Sudan, that the people would elect in anti-colonial Muslim governance. And this is a threat to US control of the Middle East and of Muslim countries.

Listen to or watch our full interview with Suad Abdel Aziz, unpaywalled for all listeners. And don’t miss our limited time deal: 2 MONTHS of Useful Idiots FREE. Your support of independent media means everything.

Plus, don’t miss this week’s Friday Free-For-All: Aaron Maté on Confronting Hillary Clinton

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At the Israel Hayom Summit in Doha, Hillary Clinton claimed that young people, specifically her own students at Columbia University, are brainwashed by social media into believing that Israel’s genocide of Gazans is bad.

Not only is this genocide denial, as a group of genocide prevention experts deemed, but it’s also just strange for a professor to mock her own students on a global stage.

And who else happened to be in Doha this week? That’s right, our own Aaron Maté. When he found himself standing outside of a lecture hall right near Clinton herself, he didn’t miss his opportunity:

“Secretary Clinton,” he asked. “You said that young people are brainwashed because of social media. What about young people who don’t want to see US-made bombs kill Palestinians? Any message for them?”

Her grin only widened as she walked away.

Hear Aaron’s analysis of his confrontation with the former secretary of state by subscribing to Useful Idiots. You’ll also get an examination into Chuck Schumer’s approval of Trump’s regime change war in Venezuela, our response to ADL Fraudfather Jonathon Greenblatt calling us “antisemitic Jews,” and yet another former Biden official justifying the murder of countless Ukrainians.

It’s a maddening Friday Free-For-All. Subscribe to watch the full episode here:

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This week we’re speaking to Pulitzer-Prize winner Greg Grandin about the Trump Administration’s regime-change war in Venezuela, which now is mired in controversy not just because we’re trying to overthrow a foreign government yet again, but also because Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth presided over a blatantly unconstitutional strike on a speedboat in the Caribbean.

Useful Idiots: Can you walk us through what Trump is doing right now in Venezuela and what is motivating him?

Greg Grandin: The big picture is the America First movement, which imagines that the United States no longer superintends a global liberal political economy in which everybody plays by the rules. That’s happened in the past, and Latin America is key to that.

But then, of course, there’s Venezuela and there’s oil. There was a split within the Trump administration between so-called moderates, who are tied to Chevron, and the war party, Miller, Rubio, and Hegseth. I think those speedboat attacks were the war party’s attempt to preempt any normalization of relationships with Venezuela.

And with Rubio, it’s a confluence of two different strands. One is he was a neocon before he became America First. But he’s also from South Florida, and he’s got deep ties to the Cuban community. And Venezuela is seen as the first step towards taking out Cuba, denying it its oil. So he’s doing it under the rubric of the War on Drugs, which of course is not Donald Trump. That’s a fifty year war.

Behind every single horror that Donald Trump represents exists a long train of U.S. presidents that had first put in the policies that make what Trump does today possible. And that’s nowhere clearer than in the Drug War, which started formally with Richard Nixon in 1973. So there’s many things flowing into it.

Useful Idiots: Do you think Trump will succeed with these plans in Venezuela?

Greg Grandin: The momentum to get Maduro out is quite strong and surprisingly orchestrated, which included the Nobel Peace Prize Committee giving María Corina Machado the prize, and she immediately fulfilled her role as everybody’s worst expectation of what could possibly happen. I can’t imagine any other Peace Prize winner immediately embarking on an alliance with Donald Trump to stage a coup. But that’s where we are.

I think that Trump wants Venezuela settled. That either means Maduro’s gone and some provisional government favorable to the United States is in power, or it means the Chevron faction within the Trump administration keeps Maduro and establishes some semblance of normalcy and keeps the oil pumping.

Now deportation flights have restarted after being halted for a little while. That’s where I’m a little bit dubious about whether Trump is going to go all in on Rubio’s visions. They don’t have enormous support in the United States. It doesn’t have support in the MAGA base. And obviously Hegseth is having all of these problems. The leaking of the footage of that double-tap speedboat killing suggests there’s deep discontent within the military…

Subscribe to watch the full interview with historian Greg Grandin. (Or watch it free with this deal. You’ll also get our Friday Free-For-All: Stephen Miller Says What He’d Do With Pete Hegseth’s Children)