True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 472: The Jane Street Coup
Aired: 2025-07-07
Duration: 01:53:41


=== Schumer's Old School Announcement (10:20) ===

[00:00:00]  Well, fellow citizens of South Sudan, youth and women of our nation, today I stand before you with a heart full of hope, a vision that burns brighter than ever, and a profound commitment to a beloved nation.
[00:00:14]  It is a momentous occasion, one that marks the birth of a new chapter in the history of South Sudan.
[00:00:20]  I am humbled to announce the formation of Revived South Sudan Party, a beacon of hope, progress, and unity.
[00:00:28]  in a time when our nation yearns for renewal.
[00:00:31]  This party is not just a political entity.
[00:00:34]  It is a covenant, a covenant that embodies the collective aspirations of every South Sudanese who dreams of a brighter future for our land.
[00:00:44]  It is a pact we make with the memory of our forefathers and fallen comrades, whose sacrifice paved the way for our freedom and a commitment to the generations yet to come.
[00:00:56]  Our manifesto, the roadmap we unveil today, is more than a document.
[00:01:02]  It is a promise, a promise to uplift our people, restore our values, and forge a path to prosperity.
[00:01:32]  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another amazing, unbelievable, incredible, beloved episode of Truanon Podcast.
[00:01:44]  I'm Liz.
[00:01:45]  My name, it is my pleasure to announce, is Brace.
[00:01:49]  I'm producer Young Chomsky.
[00:01:52]  You already said it was TrueNON, so I'm not going to, but I feel like we need that music swelling behind me.
[00:01:56]  I'm kind of feeling it.
[00:01:58]  A little royalty-free.
[00:01:59]  A little, some little keyboards, a little bit of, you know, some hope and change in the air.
[00:02:05]  Is that what I'm getting a whiff of?
[00:02:08]  It's my musk.
[00:02:09]  My hopeful musk filling the room in your nostrils.
[00:02:17]  Hello, everyone.
[00:02:18]  It's drunk on.
[00:02:20]  We have kind of an old school, a little old school app.
[00:02:24]  Every once in a while, something comes across our desk and we say, ah, there's been a coup attempt somewhere in the world, and it's time for us to take a look at it.
[00:02:36]  I put my pince nes on.
[00:02:39]  How do you say it?
[00:02:40]  Pince Nez?
[00:02:41]  Yeah, you would know.
[00:02:42]  Pince Nez.
[00:02:43]  I put my Pince Nez on, lower them, shuffle the paper.
[00:02:47]  Are you shoomering?
[00:02:48]  No, well, but the Schumer, he doesn't have the Pinsnaz.
[00:02:51]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:02:53]  It's more like a French.
[00:02:54]  You hit the Schumer in a second.
[00:02:56]  Oh, it's because you haven't seen me at the club.
[00:02:58]  Okay.
[00:02:59]  But I've been hitting the Schumer.
[00:03:01]  And the good thing about hitting the Schumer, sliding your glasses halfway down your nose and sort of looking over them at your target, is that actually it makes all women who are already beautiful even more beautiful because I think they're going to be anything.
[00:03:13]  Yeah, a little bit of a Monet, like they say.
[00:03:15]  And it gives me an excuse to get very close.
[00:03:18]  It's always great when you do that.
[00:03:20]  Hit the Schumer and then get so close you can smell the stench of hope and change.
[00:03:28]  That's true.
[00:03:28]  Or they can smell it.
[00:03:29]  I'm learning that it's Pons Nay.
[00:03:31]  So Pons Nay.
[00:03:32]  He's got the little glasses that old sort of corpulent French generals wore as they reviewed the plans for, you know, modernizing the artillery or whatever.
[00:03:40]  We are doing a coup review.
[00:03:42]  It's coup review time.
[00:03:43]  It's coup review time.
[00:03:44]  And I will say we've done a number of sort of coup reviews in the past.
[00:03:48]  Unofficial, and yet they should be recategorized as like the Venezuelan one.
[00:03:53]  Remember that one in the boat?
[00:03:54]  The Venezuelan one, of course, we had Bolivia, which also we might have to tell.
[00:03:59]  There's been a couple of things there even since then.
[00:04:02]  We had the, it was the DRC we did one.
[00:04:05]  And I feel like another one as well.
[00:04:09]  And we've sort of sprinkled in coup reviews amidst other episodes that involve the practice.
[00:04:16]  This is a full-on coup review episode.
[00:04:20]  So a few weeks ago, this fun headline popped up on Bloomberg.
[00:04:24]  And it said, Jane Street boss says he was duped into funding AK-47s for coup.
[00:04:30]  And I was like, it continued.
[00:04:33]  A Harvard fellow and another activist allegedly wanted to buy AK-47s, Stinger missiles, and grenades to topple South Sudan's government.
[00:04:43]  What they lacked was enough cash.
[00:04:45]  Jane Street co-founder Robert Grigneri concedes he put up the money saying he was duped into funding the alleged coup plot.
[00:04:54]  And it's like, all right, we've got so many good buzzwords there.
[00:04:57]  We've got Africa, we've got Harvard, we've got Jane Street, AK-47.
[00:05:01]  Love it.
[00:05:02]  It's perfect.
[00:05:02]  Let's do it.
[00:05:03]  Coup review.
[00:05:04]  So before we get into the details, what do we know?
[00:05:08]  So last year, the Federales charged two gentlemen with conspiring to illegally export arms into their home country of South Sudan.
[00:05:18]  So those guys are Peter BR Ajak, who we'll probably be referring mostly to as Peter BR during this, and Abraham Keach.
[00:05:27]  Who we might call Keech, but I also like just calling him Abraham.
[00:05:30]  They're both good.
[00:05:31]  They're both good people.
[00:05:32]  I really like, it's just that I always like calling people by the first name.
[00:05:36]  So one thing, just to get out of the way, and this is top line for me also, I really like South Sudan's names.
[00:05:43]  I like the people, the way they're named.
[00:05:44]  I thought you were going to say the names.
[00:05:45]  The name South Sudan.
[00:05:46]  Actually, frankly, I will be mentioning that.
[00:05:49]  I think the name South Sudan is, I understand why it's named that.
[00:05:54]  Sure.
[00:05:54]  Well, it's right there.
[00:05:55]  But it's a shitty name.
[00:05:56]  It's not a great one.
[00:05:57]  It's a shitty name.
[00:05:58]  And I think if there is some kind of coup there in the future, let's give it a new name.
[00:06:03]  Yeah, let's try something new out.
[00:06:04]  Let's give it a new name.
[00:06:05]  Bracelandia.
[00:06:06]  I don't think that I will be doing the coup there.
[00:06:09]  But if somebody wants to hire me to help them.
[00:06:13]  You probably have a better plan than this, which we'll get into.
[00:06:16]  I will definitely have a better plan than this.
[00:06:17]  So what do these guys do?
[00:06:19]  So it's the Fed say that they tried to buy $14 million in U.S. weapons to overthrow South Sudan's president and install an interim, quote, National Salvation Council, great name, which was going to be led by Peter.
[00:06:33]  Real quick here, just about coups in general.
[00:06:37]  National Salvation Council, I'm assuming this is a bit of, you know, they're sort of taking this from Sudan, when it was South Sudan was part of Sudan, had a couple versions of these.
[00:06:49]  But you always kind of want like a revolutionary command council when you win.
[00:06:54]  Everybody had.
[00:06:55]  You know, I mean, the Bathus had Bathus had about five or six of them.
[00:06:59]  Sure.
[00:07:00]  I think NASA had one.
[00:07:01]  I mean, that was like the free officers movement, but Sudan had one.
[00:07:04]  You sort of always want to have, and salvation is good.
[00:07:07]  You either want to call it like revolutionary, something, command council, or like national salvation.
[00:07:12]  That's pretty good too.
[00:07:13]  I mean, in our sort of post-communist revolutionary world.
[00:07:17]  Salvation makes more sense.
[00:07:18]  I think it's just, and especially, of course, with South Sudan's, you know, local history of Christianity.
[00:07:23]  I think that will be.
[00:07:24]  Who would you call yours?
[00:07:26]  Me?
[00:07:27]  Well, so my favorite one is the Derg from Ethiopia.
[00:07:31]  And I was just reading by the Polish writer Reichsard Kapolczynski or whatever the fuck his name is, Emperor, which is about the fall of Haile Selassie.
[00:07:40]  And the Derger mentioned sort of at the very end of it.
[00:07:44]  Fantastic book.
[00:07:45]  One of the best books I've read in a while.
[00:07:48]  But I would call it something like that.
[00:07:50]  I would call it like, you know, I don't know.
[00:07:56]  The Belden Directorate, maybe.
[00:07:58]  That's good, too.
[00:07:59]  Yeah.
[00:08:00]  I feel like I have to put myself kind of at the fore because a big problem with things like revolutionary command councils or national salvation councils is that there will be like several different political persuasions within it.
[00:08:12]  We'd really, for me, I want to, I want to get any sort of counter coups or other coups out of the way.
[00:08:17]  And I am just going to be the political ideology will have to just have my name in it so that people feel weird overthrowing it, even if they say they're like, you know, truer believers, because I will be straying from it immediately.
[00:08:31]  Okay, back to coup review.
[00:08:33]  So there was a pretty extensive undercover op to get all of this info on Peter and Abraham.
[00:08:39]  There were Homeland Security Investigations agents posing as Phoenix-based arms brokers that basically led the entire conversation.
[00:08:50]  These guys ended up getting their money from one of the founders of Jane Street.
[00:08:54]  If you don't know who Jane Street is, they are a kind of infamous ETF and options market maker.
[00:08:59]  They specialize in fixed income arbitrage, and they also famously hired Sam Bigman-Freed, fresh out of college.
[00:09:07]  I think that might be what people know about them.
[00:09:10]  In 2024, Jane Street made $10.6 billion on $17 trillion traded.
[00:09:18]  So they are like up there with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, in terms of how much fucking money they make.
[00:09:22]  They are huge.
[00:09:23]  They like infamously pay their interns 250K.
[00:09:26]  Like it is, they're crazy.
[00:09:29]  Now, suffice to say, Peter and Abraham did not get very far in the coup.
[00:09:36]  No.
[00:09:37]  They were arrested, like we said, March of last year, just a few days after the Jane Street guy wired them to cash for the weapons buys.
[00:09:46]  Now they are facing up to 50 years in prison each, and there's a trial date set for November.
[00:09:52]  But because it's true and on, you know what we got to do, which is before we get into the details of how all this went down, we need to go back.
[00:10:05]  So just at the top here, I recently made a comment on this show that many of our listeners took umbrage with.
[00:10:14]  The comment was that I don't like to wear shorts because they make me feel like a little boy.

=== Cultural Divide in Sudan (14:24) ===

[00:10:20]  Now, in my studies of South Sudan culture, a culture which I admire and respect, I came across several references to shorts in a derogatory manner.
[00:10:31]  I'd like to read from the South Sudan subreddit right now: a brief conversation, really part of a part of a briefer part of a brief conversation about this subject.
[00:10:42]  One person says the South Sudanese seem to be seem to like most people who are kind of respectful don't wear shorts.
[00:10:48]  He's responded to by another user saying, Thank you.
[00:10:50]  What's so bad about shorts?
[00:10:52]  And that user responds: only boys wear shorts, not men.
[00:10:56]  They will make fun of you.
[00:10:58]  And so when my regime possibly comes to South Sudan, and by the way, I've thought of a new name for it.
[00:11:03]  No longer the Belden Directorate.
[00:11:05]  Asentia.
[00:11:06]  Asentia?
[00:11:07]  Asentia.
[00:11:08]  That one's pretty good.
[00:11:08]  Yeah.
[00:11:09]  But it should be Ascentia.
[00:11:11]  Like ASCII.
[00:11:12]  Like Essentia.
[00:11:13]  Yeah, Ascentia.
[00:11:14]  That's we are Essentia.
[00:11:16]  Because that we can kind of, that's like a little new age religion.
[00:11:18]  They're also coming up together.
[00:11:20]  Plus, the beloved water brands.
[00:11:22]  And a little rise and grind.
[00:11:23]  A little rise and grind there.
[00:11:25]  So to talk about South Sudan, we actually have to talk about the Sudan and Sudan.
[00:11:31]  So it's a little tough.
[00:11:33]  Just to get this out of the way, South Sudan is both the world's newest country and the world's poorest country.
[00:11:42]  And also, these metrics obviously are much more subjective.
[00:11:46]  The world's, they say the most corrupt country.
[00:11:50]  But it's yes, but it seems there's only like a few guys who actually control everything.
[00:11:57]  So technically, the corruption is really contained within just a few people.
[00:12:01]  So you could get rid of it fairly easily, which perhaps was Kir's plan.
[00:12:07]  So South Sudan is a landlocked country.
[00:12:11]  It is west of Ethiopia.
[00:12:13]  It shares a southern border with Kenya and Uganda.
[00:12:18]  It shares a western border with the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic and a northern border with, you guessed it, regular Sudan.
[00:12:28]  Just Sudan.
[00:12:29]  Just Sudan.
[00:12:30]  I got to be honest, really, it's a tough neighborhood.
[00:12:34]  You know, DRC has been engaged in a really crazy, we've talked about this in the show before, sort of civil war, cross-border war, sort of state of semi-anarchy.
[00:12:46]  Central African Republic, similar.
[00:12:48]  Sudan, obviously, is currently in a brutal civil war and has been in one for most of the past 50 years.
[00:12:59]  Ethiopia, obviously, also.
[00:13:01]  Not a great situation.
[00:13:02]  Not a great situation there.
[00:13:05]  You know, Kenya's all right.
[00:13:07]  And Uganda, you know, that's a deals man right there.
[00:13:12]  You know, we've talked about that in other episodes, but you know, they're making Uganda, Uganda has their eyes on making deals with Western governments, but South Sudan is not in the most ideal place for a country.
[00:13:23]  And again, it is landlocked.
[00:13:26]  So the Sudan was once a loose conglomeration of tribes and kingdoms.
[00:13:31]  It was like, I mean, there was sort of famous rises and falls of empires there.
[00:13:36]  Well, you had the Nubians.
[00:13:38]  What's the Nubian?
[00:13:39]  Shut the fuck up.
[00:13:40]  Famously.
[00:13:40]  And then the kingdom of Kush, also very famously.
[00:13:44]  And, you know, because they went up down to Egypt.
[00:13:46]  I mean, again, Sudan itself, if we're including southern Sudan with all of Sudan, because they used to be one country in 2011.
[00:13:55]  It's right next to Egypt.
[00:13:56]  It's right below.
[00:13:56]  It's on the Nile.
[00:13:58]  And so there was a lot of back and forth with Egypt.
[00:14:00]  There's a ton of like early African Christian kingdoms all throughout there.
[00:14:05]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:06]  And in the 14th and 15th century, it saw the rise of Islamic sultanates, which by the 1800s had declined into a loose conglomeration of warring kingdoms, fiefs, and tribes.
[00:14:16]  That is until the Turco-Egyptian invasion of 1821.
[00:14:22]  So at this point, there's an Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, the famous Albanian-born Muhammad Ali, who was fresh off his victory in putting Egypt on the path to modern statehood and beating back the House of Saud in the Arabian Peninsula.
[00:14:38]  And he's like, all right, I'm feeling myself.
[00:14:40]  I'm feeling pretty good.
[00:14:41]  I haven't rebelled against the Ottomans yet.
[00:14:44]  He sets his sights southward and he descends on the Sudan in an extraordinary military campaign.
[00:14:50]  I think he takes only about 10,000 guys.
[00:14:52]  They're mostly living off the land.
[00:14:54]  And they go down there for gold, slaves, ivory, and timber.
[00:14:59]  Wow.
[00:15:00]  I know.
[00:15:00]  Kind of a classic.
[00:15:02]  Yeah, I was going to say.
[00:15:03]  And you know, obviously, also, this is the 1800s.
[00:15:05]  Kind of everybody's like, ooh, we're going to go to descend on Africa for gold, slaves, ivory, and timber.
[00:15:10]  Sure, ivory for my trinkets.
[00:15:12]  Exactly.
[00:15:12]  Well, you know, but I do, I want to push back on you sort of belittling ivory there.
[00:15:17]  I do find it as an aphrodisiac in sort of powder form, Rhino horn in particular, to be very effective.
[00:15:23]  Some of us don't need that.
[00:15:25]  And natural.
[00:15:26]  Yeah, yeah, I know.
[00:15:26]  But I don't need it.
[00:15:27]  I don't need it.
[00:15:28]  I still take it.
[00:15:29]  The Ottomans, in classic Ottoman fashion, introduced heavy taxation, which led to widespread private land ownership.
[00:15:37]  Because before that, there was a, you know, like in many places, sort of a system of land transfer that wasn't, you know, sort of the modern capitalistic version or feudalistic version, I guess, that you'd think of it.
[00:15:52]  The Ottomans also engaged in huge amounts of slave raiding in the south of the country.
[00:15:58]  So Sudan at this point, I mean, it's not a country yet, but at this point, this sort of northern part of Sudan and still to this day is like very deserty.
[00:16:10]  And the southern part is super arable.
[00:16:14]  The northern part is also significantly more inflected with Arab culture.
[00:16:20]  And they speak Arabic up there.
[00:16:22]  In the southern part, obviously this comes later after the Ottomans, it's actually English speaking.
[00:16:27]  And people are, I don't know the racial classification here, but it's like more like black, you know?
[00:16:34]  All right.
[00:16:35]  So just keep in mind that for some of the context.
[00:16:38]  So the next ruler of Egypt, Ismail, was pressured by the British to end the slave trade in Sudan, also in Egypt.
[00:16:45]  But it becomes so integrated into parts of the new Sudanese economy that the Egyptians have been kind of building up under their, you know, aegis that there was widespread resistance to this.
[00:16:57]  And so this went on for a good 60 years, this sort of like low-grade kind of insurgency against the Ottomans who are occupying it until the Mahdi came.
[00:17:09]  So the Mahdi is basically a descendant of Muhammad, the goat.
[00:17:15]  And the Mahdi is supposed to come, he rules for a while.
[00:17:18]  And then I think it's like six or seven years.
[00:17:19]  And then Jesus Christ, you know what I'm talking about?
[00:17:23]  Sure.
[00:17:23]  The one of the goats, right?
[00:17:26]  Some say the goat.
[00:17:28]  Some say God, even, which I don't really get how that works, but he's going to come down.
[00:17:33]  So the Mahdi's kind of keeping the seat warm for him.
[00:17:36]  And Jesus Christ is going to come down and rule.
[00:17:38]  So there was a Mahdi in Sudan.
[00:17:42]  Lucky for the Sudanese, a guy named Muhammad Ahmed, who in 1881 organized discontent in the region along religious lines, declaring jihad against Egypt, which at this time was, you know, obviously the British had arrived.
[00:17:57]  There was changing it around a little bit up there.
[00:17:59]  There's all these big battles.
[00:18:01]  The movie Khartoum with Lawrence Olivier is about this.
[00:18:04]  Have you seen that?
[00:18:05]  I have not.
[00:18:06]  Me either, but I know not a big Laurence Olivier person.
[00:18:09]  And you know what?
[00:18:10]  It's, I don't think I've ever seen one of those movies that the British made about like some of our boys in Africa.
[00:18:16]  Sure.
[00:18:16]  You know what I mean?
[00:18:17]  They're always like, oh, we fucked them.
[00:18:20]  It's like, guys, you guys have guns.
[00:18:24]  You know, their whole thing is, yeah, the British ever, they always like, everybody always kind of makes these movies like, oh, you know, we had to fight these guys in this savage land who only had spears.
[00:18:34]  They have to always kind of be like, but there was 50,000 of them.
[00:18:37]  Right.
[00:18:37]  You know what I mean?
[00:18:38]  Because you guys had guts.
[00:18:39]  You guys had guns.
[00:18:40]  You know what I mean?
[00:18:41]  So it's like kind of unfair.
[00:18:45]  They win, actually.
[00:18:47]  The modest win.
[00:18:50]  Unfortunately, the Mahdi immediately dies after they take Khartoum.
[00:18:55]  But doesn't that mean that Jesus Christ is going to come?
[00:18:58]  Yeah, you'd think.
[00:18:59]  Yeah, I kind of, yeah, it's, yeah.
[00:19:01]  I mean, maybe I guess he was like a pre, maybe he was the Mahdi for the Mahdi.
[00:19:06]  I see.
[00:19:06]  Okay.
[00:19:07]  And his successors, of which he had, I think, three.
[00:19:09]  Three Russian doll kind of situations.
[00:19:11]  Exactly.
[00:19:12]  You kind of got to keep, you got to keep the seat warm until the next goat comes along, you know.
[00:19:17]  Unfortunately, his seat was divided amongst three of his followers and they did not get along with each other.
[00:19:24]  We're going to see a lot of, I guess, basically going to see the scene replay itself later in Sudan's history.
[00:19:35]  So the modest still retain control of the country or like, you know, sort of control of certain parts of the country until the mid-1890s, when the British swoop in, accompanied by one Winston Churchill, who documents it in the book, The River War.
[00:19:50]  Have you read that?
[00:19:51]  I have not.
[00:19:52]  No.
[00:19:53]  The British come in kind of famously under Kitchener, who goes and desecrates the Mahdi's tomb and beheads and digs up his body and beheads it.
[00:20:04]  Sort of his revenge for Khartoum.
[00:20:07]  But I'm like, that's, you're a fucking, that's.
[00:20:09]  The British were savage.
[00:20:11]  This is like the 1890s.
[00:20:12]  Yeah, they don't give a fuck.
[00:20:13]  Those people, I'm going to say that.
[00:20:15]  They're taking out their Victorian repression on anyone they could.
[00:20:21]  It is really nuts.
[00:20:22]  I mean, there's a bunch of different like they blew up his body, but it seemingly like settled that they cut his head off.
[00:20:28]  And so technically, now Sudan was ruled jointly by the British-Egyptians in something in an arrangement called a condominium.
[00:20:37]  But in practice, it was the British that controlled it at all the highest levels, like governors and, you know, most of the upper echelons and mid-echelons of the civil service.
[00:20:46]  It was only the lower parts of the civil service that were filled out by Egyptians.
[00:20:50]  So this is the part, I promise this is going to be relevant to what we're talking about later.
[00:20:56]  So the British ban Islam from the south of the country and they send missionaries in and really heavily Christianize it.
[00:21:03]  It was like mostly animists before then, although obviously they were Christians there.
[00:21:07]  While the North remained heavily Islamic, they also kept the South much poorer, even though it had significantly more arable land than the South, excuse me, than the North.
[00:21:19]  They also, you know, it's kind of the classic like colonialist like.
[00:21:25]  Yeah, you keep the place where all the, where all of the resources are poor as shit.
[00:21:29]  So they stay under your thumb.
[00:21:31]  Exactly.
[00:21:31]  And like you oftentimes, like you sort of try to build up an educated elite, right?
[00:21:36]  And what the British do is they build up an educated elite from the north and they basically don't let any southerners in.
[00:21:46]  Which, you know, is going to work out fine.
[00:21:50]  Well, something I noticed, so as a citizen.
[00:21:52]  This also played itself out in many African countries, by the way.
[00:21:55]  We like went over this before.
[00:21:57]  This happens every time.
[00:21:59]  I got it.
[00:22:00]  I mean, obviously, no take backs, but the British are kind of like the French did this too.
[00:22:06]  What they would do is they're like, all right, time to create it, like, you know, in a sort of upper class there, people we can control.
[00:22:12]  They start a college or they send people off to college in, you know, whatever, in the, in the metropole.
[00:22:18]  That's the main area, right?
[00:22:19]  Sure.
[00:22:19]  In the metropole.
[00:22:20]  And then those guys are like, they discover nationalism and like, oh, we hate the British now.
[00:22:24]  Right.
[00:22:26]  And the problem is, this is actually the other thing I noticed.
[00:22:30]  So the two main things, and then they obviously, they'll do the independence movement, but then they start a military college.
[00:22:38]  And the guys they send to like the new military college or to military schools in the Soviet Union or in the West, those guys do the coups 20 years later on the independence guys.
[00:22:49]  I see.
[00:22:49]  So this is really actually not just a coup review.
[00:22:52]  We're now kind of in colonial state theory review.
[00:22:56]  Yeah, I don't know what I would have done.
[00:22:59]  Put on your best thinking colonial hat.
[00:23:04]  I would have sent everybody to college.
[00:23:06]  That's good.
[00:23:07]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:23:07]  I would have emptied the country out for like, or like put them all in one place and be like, we're making one crazy campus.
[00:23:13]  We're going to have amazing dorms.
[00:23:15]  I'm going to introduce kegs to you guys.
[00:23:17]  We're going to bring some girls over from the other countries.
[00:23:20]  Right.
[00:23:20]  And kind of divide the countries, break up tribes into frats.
[00:23:26]  And then once they're all educated and satiated and fat on desire and gluttony.
[00:23:35]  Yeah.
[00:23:36]  That's when you come back in, tear down the universities and send them all back to the countryside.
[00:23:41]  Exactly.
[00:23:42]  And then be like, so it's kind of like a, you know, that was a dream.
[00:23:46]  I'd be like, that was a dream.
[00:23:47]  You know what I mean?
[00:23:48]  Now it's time for to re-educate.
[00:23:49]  Yeah, I would also teach a bunch of wrong things in the college.
[00:23:52]  Right.
[00:23:53]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:54]  And I would never teach about nationalism or anything like that, anything like that.
[00:23:59]  Because they did that.
[00:24:00]  And that oftentimes, well, that led to basically the birth of the nationalist movement in the 1930s.
[00:24:08]  So the Republic of Sudan gained independence in 1956.
[00:24:13]  The two main political parties were the Democratic Unionist Party, which is really funny because obviously it's the sort of Northern Irish kind of pedophile party in the UK.
[00:24:22]  And the Omo Party.
[00:24:24]  I like that name better.
[00:24:25]  I know.
[00:24:25]  It's sort of, these are kind of like, I know, but it's like kind of the randomly, like the Omo party really.
[00:24:31]  I mean, at least that's different.
[00:24:32]  I know, but it's like you have your religious party and you have your fake British party.
[00:24:37]  Southerners were barely represented in the independence movement and were basically given no positions in the government.

=== Sudan's Complex Politics (15:48) ===

[00:24:44]  A small communist front at first had limited reach, although that would definitely change.
[00:24:51]  And technically also, the first Sudanese civil war was already taking place with southern tribes that are united, although oftentimes they fought with each other against the central government even before it had declared independence.
[00:25:03]  The first coup was a few years after independence by General Ibrahim Aboud, possibly with CIA assistance or at least complacence.
[00:25:15]  He promised to curb communist influence, which was growing.
[00:25:17]  And as you can imagine, it's the 1950s.
[00:25:21]  1970s were 60s were a great time to be a communist in parts of Africa.
[00:25:25]  Well, parts of Africa.
[00:25:27]  And so he was obviously sort of delaying a problem that would grow very large for them.
[00:25:32]  He has sort of a military dictatorship while a popular revolt leads to the overthrow of military rule and a return to democracy in, I think, the mid-1960s.
[00:25:40]  Though still it's mostly governed by these sort of northern elite parties, the UMA and the DUP.
[00:25:45]  And they in turn struggle to contain the growing communist movement and are overthrown by a NAR-style officers' movement in 1969.
[00:25:56]  So this is where we have like a revolutionary command council.
[00:26:00]  I can't remember exactly what it's called.
[00:26:01]  Like what the specific name was.
[00:26:03]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:03]  But obviously you're doing your officers' coup here.
[00:26:06]  And so your officers' coup, obviously, it's like you got your colonel is like the best rank for that because the generals are often a little too well.
[00:26:14]  You got it, you got to keep them in line.
[00:26:16]  You got to keep the generals in line.
[00:26:18]  Because they have their own aspirations.
[00:26:20]  They're all generals.
[00:26:21]  That's true.
[00:26:22]  Yeah.
[00:26:22]  And they're competitive with one another.
[00:26:24]  That's fucking true.
[00:26:25]  That is true.
[00:26:26]  I know.
[00:26:27]  And they always, they're scheming too.
[00:26:29]  Like, it's hard.
[00:26:29]  I feel like what you're, if you're going to do a military coup, the best rank is colonels.
[00:26:36]  because I feel like you're still, you got one foot, you got one, you know, you, you got one foot in the real world and you got one foot in the crazy world of being a colonel, you know?
[00:26:46]  But I feel like there's a brotherhood of colonels that it's generals can have their own thing going on.
[00:26:49]  Yeah, because they're all also political actors.
[00:26:52]  Yeah.
[00:26:53]  And the big thing is whenever there would be like a military coup in, I mean, most of this happened sort of in the Middle East, but it happened in Africa too, but this happened basically in several, like I'm almost every Middle Eastern country, not everyone.
[00:27:09]  The Hashemites escaped much of this, but you had like a officer's coup and like some of your officers were like Arab socialists or like Arab nationalists, right?
[00:27:20]  You have your Bathists, which might have some crossover there.
[00:27:25]  But then you're going to have your communists.
[00:27:28]  Right.
[00:27:29]  And it's sort of like who kind of you might, I mean, the case of Syria, literally every kind of guy couped each other from the Revolutionary Command Council or whatever, from the Bathist Council.
[00:27:41]  In this case, the communists were like not in charge, but a couple, I think it was 71, the communists try to do a coup and it really sucks.
[00:27:52]  Like the communists, the communist colonels or maybe major general, I don't know at that point, but they try to do a coup on the guys in charge, Nimiri.
[00:28:03]  It doesn't work.
[00:28:04]  And Nimiri, who is nominally a socialist, moves his support away from the Soviet Union because obviously the 69 coup, you know, we're pro-Soviet at this point, right?
[00:28:16]  That's who's helping us do it.
[00:28:18]  But he accuses the Soviets of helping the 71 coup, like left-wing coup on him happens.
[00:28:23]  And he's like, fuck that.
[00:28:24]  Now I'm going to hang out with the Chinese.
[00:28:25]  Ooh, really?
[00:28:26]  Stab him in the back.
[00:28:27]  I know.
[00:28:28]  And this is what always happens.
[00:28:30]  You move away from the Soviets, you move to the Chinese.
[00:28:33]  But they're not ready yet.
[00:28:34]  They're not ready yet.
[00:28:35]  And you move to the U.S.
[00:28:38]  And that's what happens in a lot of different countries.
[00:28:42]  It's, you know, there is just like now a even larger sort of like insurgency against the North from the South.
[00:28:50]  Ethiopia brokers like a kind of peace deal between the South and the North, granting the South some autonomy.
[00:28:55]  The central government, still led by Nimiri, renegs on that on 82.
[00:29:01]  And it's the same year a bunch of oil is discovered in the South.
[00:29:06]  Wow.
[00:29:07]  Yes.
[00:29:07]  In the border region.
[00:29:09]  Change the board a little bit.
[00:29:10]  And Nimiri is like getting closer and closer and closer to the government.
[00:29:13]  Remember, he's been in power since 69.
[00:29:15]  In 83, he's like, you know what?
[00:29:18]  I'm Muslim now.
[00:29:20]  We're doing Sharia law.
[00:29:21]  And he declares Sharia law in the entire country and that Sudan is an Islamic state.
[00:29:28]  He gets close to Israel during the same period.
[00:29:30]  It's seen as a bastion of anti-communism and then the horn.
[00:29:33]  You know, Ronald Reagan says nice things about him.
[00:29:35]  He opens up a CIA station.
[00:29:38]  And at 83, he splits the South from being one administrative division into three different ones.
[00:29:43]  And that leads us to what is basically the second Sudanese civil war.
[00:29:48]  This time led by the SPLA.
[00:29:51]  Yeah, the Southern People's Liberation Army.
[00:29:53]  I think people have heard of this, if they've heard of anything with Sudan.
[00:29:58]  Yeah.
[00:29:59]  It starts in 83, led by a guy named John Gerang, who is a South Sudanese revolutionary who studied at Grinnell College in Iowa.
[00:30:09]  Small, I think it's a liberal arts college.
[00:30:13]  Yeah.
[00:30:14]  He is like kind of nominally Marxist.
[00:30:18]  He's sort of still seen as like this really major figure, like charismatic guy who like was, you know, going to be a major player in whatever happened in Sudan.
[00:30:30]  I watched in our documentary about, well, I'll talk about that in a second.
[00:30:36]  His second in command is a guy named Salvakir, who is a little, let's say, different.
[00:30:41]  And this is, can you read from their manifesto?
[00:30:43]  This is from their original manifesto.
[00:30:45]  The immediate task of the SPLM is to transform the Southern movement from a reactionary movement led by reactionaries and concerned only with the South, jobs, and self-interest into a progressive movement led by revolutionaries and dedicated to the socialist transformation of the whole Sudan.
[00:31:06]  Well, that's quite broad.
[00:31:08]  Yeah.
[00:31:09]  I mean, so, so what he's saying there is like, so there is in the South, like a lot of the like insurgency against the government up until this point is basically on tribal lines.
[00:31:21]  And like it is reactionary in that sense, right?
[00:31:24]  Like it's sort of semi, it's just, it's not, um, it's not really united politically whatsoever.
[00:31:31]  And, and, and what he's saying, what Gerang kind of always was like, we can have secession, but I want to actually just make a whole new Sudan in the first place.
[00:31:40]  Right.
[00:31:40]  United North and South.
[00:31:42]  So there is a coup in 85 in Sudan, which institutes a democratic government, but that doesn't last very long.
[00:31:49]  And that itself is couped in 1989 by the famous Omar al-Bashir in alliance with Islamist groups.
[00:31:57]  And he also now declared Sharia law.
[00:32:01]  Yeah, we're back to Sharia law.
[00:32:02]  We're back to Sharia law.
[00:32:03]  That also starts a big war against the SPLA.
[00:32:07]  Yes.
[00:32:07]  And in 94, they announced their ideology because, you know, listen, after 91, everyone was like, we're not communists anymore.
[00:32:16]  Like, basically.
[00:32:16]  They had a new spin on it.
[00:32:18]  If, yeah, but if you were doing like, we're still, you, if you haven't won your communist insurgency yet, right?
[00:32:24]  Not everybody did this, obviously.
[00:32:27]  Not in every, but in a lot of these sort of like in a lot of the kind of the African bush wars, there'd be like a communist faction.
[00:32:33]  They'd be like, we're a liberal Democrat.
[00:32:35]  The fucking Khmer Rouge were like, we're liberal Democrats now.
[00:32:38]  Well, they kind of, yeah, I mean, they were.
[00:32:39]  They were.
[00:32:40]  Yeah, they were.
[00:32:42]  But they were like, we're going to do this thing called New Sudan, which I read so much about and has absolutely no bearing really on much of this episode.
[00:32:50]  Although, in the political thought of Peter BR, it does, it is, I would say, a guiding star.
[00:32:59]  But Gerang is now also the guy in charge of the SPLA being courted by the U.S. However, not known as a reliable partner.
[00:33:05]  Meanwhile, Sudan is like whole of Sudan is kind of in turmoil.
[00:33:09]  There's obviously the famous genocide in Darfur.
[00:33:12]  Sure.
[00:33:12]  Remember Ryan Gosling's t-shirt?
[00:33:14]  Oh, no.
[00:33:14]  What was his t-shirt?
[00:33:15]  Just said Darfur, I think.
[00:33:17]  Really?
[00:33:18]  Yeah, it was when he accepted Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards.
[00:33:21]  He wore the Darfur shirt.
[00:33:23]  That's what you do.
[00:33:24]  You got to hit him with the Darfur shirt on the MTV movie awards.
[00:33:27]  Take that jacket off.
[00:33:28]  That's what the 2000s were about, man.
[00:33:29]  2003.
[00:33:31]  Great.
[00:33:31]  Wow.
[00:33:32]  I wonder if that was, was that, I wonder if that happened before or after we started invading Iraq.
[00:33:38]  But, you know, there's the famous genocide in Darfur, which led to responsibility to protect.
[00:33:44]  Oh, we know it.
[00:33:45]  We love it.
[00:33:45]  We miss it.
[00:33:46]  We miss it.
[00:33:47]  Well, and then that also makes a big impression on our protagonists of this episode, who will get, and this is why we have to talk about this stuff because a lot of this stuff goes into the coup here.
[00:33:57]  The U.S. at this time grows close to the SPLA, who are still fighting.
[00:34:01]  So the SPLA have been fighting since the 80s with the Sudanese government, still have not won, but under military and external pressure, because they do win a bunch of big battles, there is a peace deal with the central government and the SPLA in 2005.
[00:34:16]  And the deal is you get six years of autonomy in the South, and then you get a referendum for independence.
[00:34:21]  John Gerang is made vice president of Sudan.
[00:34:25]  And you know how the Mahdi died right after they took Khartoum?
[00:34:29]  Yeah.
[00:34:31]  Right after he becomes vice president of Sudan, he goes to Uganda, John Gerang, and allegedly meets with, because remember, there is oil in the South.
[00:34:43]  This is newly discovered oil fields in the early 80s.
[00:34:46]  This might be a huge source of wealth to a relatively poor nation that, especially in the South, never really industrialized that heavily.
[00:34:54]  Still very agrarian.
[00:34:57]  John Gerang, and also a lot of the concessions are to Chinese companies.
[00:35:02]  They actually still are.
[00:35:04]  But Gerang goes out there and apparently meets with the ambassadors from Holland.
[00:35:12]  Okay.
[00:35:12]  From the UK and from the U.S. relating to oil.
[00:35:19]  Wow.
[00:35:20]  And there is, I mean, again, I watched an hour-long Al Jazeera documentary about it last night alleging that something funny happened.
[00:35:29]  And I just read a bunch of shit.
[00:35:30]  I don't know.
[00:35:32]  Nobody seems to really know.
[00:35:34]  But what we do know happens is he leaves that meeting in Uganda.
[00:35:37]  He's flying back in a helicopter.
[00:35:40]  Oh, no.
[00:35:42]  And visibility is poor.
[00:35:44]  It's a mountainous region.
[00:35:47]  Yeah.
[00:35:48]  And he crashes and dies.
[00:35:51]  Obviously, probably something funny happened there.
[00:35:53]  Probably something funny happened there.
[00:35:54]  Apparently, the meeting didn't go well.
[00:35:56]  But I think something happened there because what happens next is so fucking crucial to a lot of people coming in to South Sudan.
[00:36:07]  Yeah.
[00:36:08]  So his second in command, Salva Kir, takes over.
[00:36:14]  You've seen pictures of this guy, obviously.
[00:36:16]  Yes.
[00:36:17]  If you haven't and you're driving, look him up.
[00:36:20]  What is his signature item of clothing?
[00:36:22]  I think you're familiar with it.
[00:36:24]  It's similar to yours.
[00:36:25]  It's a motherfucking Texas Stetson.
[00:36:28]  A fucking oil hat.
[00:36:30]  A cowboy hat.
[00:36:32]  Given to him by our oil man-in-chief, George W. Bush, aka Mr. Pretzel, aka the shrub.
[00:36:43]  But George Bush loves this guy, Salva Kir, the second in command, now first in command of the SPLA.
[00:36:51]  He gives him this hat, and Salva Kir has allegedly never been photographed without wearing this hat.
[00:36:57]  This was, he was going to give it to it in 2006.
[00:37:00]  It is 2025.
[00:37:02]  He has been wearing this cowboy hat for 20, for 19 years.
[00:37:07]  I mean, he's been wearing it so long, it's come back in style again.
[00:37:09]  I know, and there's all these, I was, God, I spent way too long looking at this.
[00:37:12]  There's all these theories.
[00:37:13]  I'm like, did he buy new ones?
[00:37:14]  But like, it looks like the original one still.
[00:37:17]  No, you got it.
[00:37:18]  It's like, got to be one of those things where he's like, you never watch the cap.
[00:37:21]  It's his lucky.
[00:37:23]  The hat stays on.
[00:37:24]  Yeah.
[00:37:25]  You know the hat stays on.
[00:37:26]  So the six years go by.
[00:37:30]  It's 2011.
[00:37:31]  And there is a independence referendum, as promised.
[00:37:35]  And Kir is leading the sort of the southern movement.
[00:37:39]  The referendum wins by 98.6%.
[00:37:43]  Yeah, maybe.
[00:37:44]  It could be.
[00:37:45]  Probably.
[00:37:46]  Maybe.
[00:37:47]  You know, who knows?
[00:37:50]  There is not an elected government.
[00:37:52]  It is Salva Kir and his vice president, Reek Mashar.
[00:37:58]  So Kir is, there's two main tries.
[00:38:00]  Like there's a lot of tribes in South Sudan.
[00:38:02]  The two main ones are Dinka and Newer.
[00:38:06]  Dinka, I think, are more populous.
[00:38:07]  Kir is Dinka.
[00:38:09]  And you might have heard of the Dinka before because it was a basketball player that Dinka Dunker.
[00:38:15]  Maybe we'll talk about him later.
[00:38:17]  But Kira's Dinka.
[00:38:20]  His vice president is Nuer.
[00:38:23]  His vice president, Rick Mashar, had actually split from the SPLA with his own SPLA.
[00:38:27]  There's like 50 different SPLA, by the way, even today.
[00:38:30]  But he had split off from the SPLA in 91.
[00:38:33]  They kind of came back together.
[00:38:35]  Again, they are not elected yet.
[00:38:36]  They're just appointed.
[00:38:37]  They're going to oversee an election in 2015.
[00:38:40]  So they're going to like sort of oversee the first four years of the country.
[00:38:44]  And they're like, in 2015, we're going to have democratic elections.
[00:38:47]  And this is decided upon by, you know, everybody.
[00:38:52]  Two years later, Kira is like, actually, I fucking hate everybody in my cabinet and I should just be in charge and fires everybody, retires, I think, over 100 generals, which, by the way, I don't know how many.
[00:39:04]  You didn't mean 100 generals?
[00:39:06]  I mean, I'm not sure.
[00:39:07]  You clearly, it seems like he didn't.
[00:39:09]  I mean, I guess not, but I'm like, how many do you, how many spare generals do you have that you can fire a hundred?
[00:39:14]  I think it was like 117 generals.
[00:39:16]  The problem with firing generals is that then they're pissed and then they go work for the other side.
[00:39:20]  So if you got to hoard generals, just keep hoarding them.
[00:39:24]  This happens so often is people fire generals.
[00:39:28]  Like it's Franco, for instance, right?
[00:39:31]  They didn't fire him, but like the Republic of Spain fired a bunch of generals.
[00:39:36]  And then they were like, Franco, you talked about revolting against the government.
[00:39:41]  We're going to send you to the Canary Islands.
[00:39:43]  No, keep an eye on him.
[00:39:45]  You know what I mean?
[00:39:46]  Plus, also, here's a rule of history, historical rule.
[00:39:50]  If you send him to the island, he's fucking coming back.
[00:39:52]  He's coming back to the island from the island.
[00:39:55]  Yes.
[00:39:55]  At least once.
[00:39:56]  Maybe the second time, not so much.
[00:39:58]  But if you set him to the island the first time.
[00:40:00]  He will come back.
[00:40:01]  It's, I mean, thank you for saying this because people always think that sending a guy to an island as exile is going to work.
[00:40:08]  There's no way he's getting off this island and coming back.
[00:40:11]  Newsflash.
[00:40:12]  It's like every movie.
[00:40:13]  He comes back.
[00:40:14]  He's coming off the.
[00:40:15]  They kind of got a crystal got off the island for Christmas.
[00:40:17]  He's coming back.
[00:40:18]  He's coming back.
[00:40:18]  The empire has to be rebuilt.
[00:40:20]  He will come back.
[00:40:21]  He will come back.
[00:40:23]  He also dismisses his vice president Mashar, who's like, well, he dismisses Mashar after Mashar is like, I'm going to run against you in 2015.

=== Breaks and Comebacks (15:39) ===

[00:40:32]  And of course, within two years of the country's independence, we have the South Sudan Civil War.
[00:40:38]  Yeah.
[00:40:39]  So this devastated the country, led to famine, floods, no government help.
[00:40:44]  I mean, tons of the country has been flooded various times.
[00:40:48]  I think right now there's big floods there.
[00:40:50]  Mass displacement, rape, ethnic cleansing, which ended in a draw with Mashar back in Juba and a host of splinter rebel groups still occupying large parts of the country.
[00:41:02]  Kir is still the president.
[00:41:04]  Yes.
[00:41:05]  It's 2025 and the elections have been again recently postponed to December 2026.
[00:41:14]  The elections that were slated for 2015, there has never been an election in South Sudan.
[00:41:26]  So now this brings us to Peter B.R. Ajak.
[00:41:32]  So Peter BR was born in Sudan, back when it was Sudan, in 1984.
[00:41:39]  I think he's a Dinka by his own telling.
[00:41:42]  So he's born in South Sudan.
[00:41:44]  And according to his own accounts, his village was untouched by war until 1989 when the Sudanese army sacked it.
[00:41:52]  So he was carried by his father to a refugee camp in Ethiopia.
[00:41:56]  I mean, this is one of many long, fucked up, horrible treks that he had to go on as like a very small child.
[00:42:05]  He's had a really tough, he had a tough, tough, tough, tough childhood.
[00:42:11]  His father, by the way, you know, so his father takes him to this refugee camp in Ethiopia and he sort of drops him off and his father joins the SPLA.
[00:42:22]  His dad has actually like made it.
[00:42:25]  He lived through the war, not only lived through the war, he is, I believe, at the last I could find of it.
[00:42:30]  He's currently serving as a major general in the South Sudanese armed forces as the chief of moral orientation.
[00:42:38]  Interesting.
[00:42:39]  Also, I love that title.
[00:42:40]  I know.
[00:42:40]  And well, no, the interesting thing is, I could do that.
[00:42:46]  The chief of moral orientation is like, oof.
[00:42:49]  I know.
[00:42:50]  CMO.
[00:42:51]  I would be, you know, really.
[00:42:54]  You'd be good at that.
[00:42:55]  I would be so good at that.
[00:42:56]  Cracking the whip.
[00:42:57]  I think his, so his father-in-law, too, is the, which is funny because it doesn't really like factor very highly into like some of the reporting on him.
[00:43:06]  But his father-in-law, I believe, is chief of staff of the South Sudanese Armed Forces.
[00:43:11]  But he doesn't like his dad.
[00:43:13]  I don't think so.
[00:43:15]  And he definitely doesn't like his father-in-law because in the many interviews with Peter BR that I've watched, he often describes the army upper echelons as being alcoholics who are just wasted all the time.
[00:43:25]  Wow.
[00:43:26]  They're just drunk as fuck all day.
[00:43:28]  So they need to get me in there so I could be the, I can reorganize this moral orientation.
[00:43:32]  But I'm like, I'm not sorry.
[00:43:33]  The chief of moral orientation is drunk on the job.
[00:43:37]  I mean, that's kind of closer.
[00:43:39]  Maybe this country does need a coup.
[00:43:41]  So in 1991, the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia collapses and the Sudanese refugees are kicked out.
[00:43:49]  That includes Peter.
[00:43:52]  At that point, the Dinka and New Air factions of the SPLA, and it's not completely along those lines, but that is sort of in general sort of what happened, had split.
[00:44:01]  And South Sudan was, you know, kind of it was, South Sudan wasn't a country yet.
[00:44:06]  This is the 90s.
[00:44:07]  But within the insurgency in South Sudan, there was also a civil war that was sort of like an inter-tribal, you know, there was like reprisals and massacres, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:44:18]  So BR joins the SPLA.
[00:44:23]  And again, we're talking about a child here.
[00:44:26]  This so-called red army of kind of child soldiers.
[00:44:32]  So it seems like, you know, I'm not super familiar with what he did.
[00:44:35]  Again, he's like 12, 13, but it seems like he has a tough time.
[00:44:40]  You know, he describes sort of being like really confused and walking around a lot and like kind of having these, I'm sure, like horrible come and Z style experiences all the time.
[00:44:50]  Yeah, he's a fucking child soldier in Africa.
[00:44:52]  Exactly.
[00:44:53]  Yeah.
[00:44:53]  In the 90s.
[00:44:55]  He ends up in Kenya eventually, sort of, you know, out of the army or out of the Red Army and via a U.S. program for the lost boys ends up in Philadelphia.
[00:45:07]  So real quick, we should say who were the lost boys for people who don't know.
[00:45:12]  This was an entire generation of war orphan boys, many of them child soldiers.
[00:45:19]  We're talking like 20,000, primarily Dinka newer boys that were like around age six or seven, right?
[00:45:28]  They fled Sudan during the Second Civil War.
[00:45:30]  The nickname came, ended up coming from aid workers.
[00:45:33]  Obviously, it's borrowing from Peter Pan.
[00:45:35]  And they were, you know, all of them kind of walked over a thousand miles across Sudan to Ethiopia and then back through the desert to refugee camps.
[00:45:44]  So they're like literally walking around guns in hand.
[00:45:47]  I mean, you can, I think people can picture this where they've seen all of the press around this.
[00:45:51]  I mean, it was a, it was a huge moment in the 90s.
[00:45:53]  Half of them died of hunger, dehydration, or attacks from animals or other soldiers.
[00:46:00]  Now, there was a special State Department program that selected about 3,600 of the boys for resettlement in the United States.
[00:46:09]  And it became this like big human rights symbol.
[00:46:13]  Remember, like at this time in the 90s, like human rights and the U.S. as like the international policeman of liberty, freedom, the individual right of all mankind.
[00:46:28]  I mean, this was what the U.S. stood for.
[00:46:30]  They were the kind of bastion of, I mean, that's what, that's kind of the PR move that they were making, right?
[00:46:36]  And so, you know, this whole group of kids became like a big symbol for that for the U.S.
[00:46:46]  And many of them went on to found nonprofits that would support education or water projects or like conflict resolution work in South Sudan.
[00:46:55]  Those are a little bit of euphemisms.
[00:46:57]  You know, I mean, I think people can kind of read between the lines.
[00:46:59]  The Lost Boy community is like actually still a pretty key bridge between South Sudan and the United States and is often kind of used for a lot of like leaning on for like a lot of diplomatic or even more kind of investment work, we'll say.
[00:47:16]  Yeah.
[00:47:16]  And, you know, Peter was one of these kids who got this basically like resettled in the United States.
[00:47:24]  I mean, he was resettled during the war.
[00:47:25]  His parents were actually not dead.
[00:47:28]  He wasn't an orphan, but, you know, who knows where the fuck his dad was.
[00:47:31]  He's off somewhere fighting in the SPLA.
[00:47:34]  So he moves to Philadelphia with three other Sudanese kids and he joins the 11th grade class at high school.
[00:47:40]  He joins an 11th grade class at a high school there.
[00:47:43]  Speaks no English.
[00:47:45]  I mean, this guy is pretty impressive.
[00:47:47]  You know, he speaks no English.
[00:47:48]  Yeah, totally.
[00:47:48]  Gets a job with UPS.
[00:47:50]  And again, 11th grade, goes into LaSalle College in Philadelphia and then ends up at the Harvard Kennedy School where he goes for his master's and becomes a teaching fellow in macroeconomics.
[00:48:01]  That is kind of a crazy trajectory.
[00:48:05]  Yeah, to go from child soldier to that in like what, like a 10-year period is pretty fucking crazy.
[00:48:11]  I mean, the guy is, again, I've listened to a lot of interviews with the guy, watched a lot of interviews with him.
[00:48:16]  He's a very intelligent guy, like very clearly intelligent in some respects.
[00:48:22]  Although in some, maybe some critical thinking skills where maybe could use some work.
[00:48:29]  He, this is from a little bio actually that he wrote for about himself.
[00:48:36]  Second, he was inspired by the ideals the Kennedy School embodies and the dedication to public service it instills.
[00:48:41]  Quote, this school offers a way to turn that passion into concrete policy steps, he says.
[00:48:46]  So he was one of those guys.
[00:48:47]  He was like, I'm going to come up with like policies and shit like that.
[00:48:50]  He earns a, I mean, he eventually gets out of there with a master's in international development and public administration.
[00:48:57]  So he's got a master's from Harvard in international development.
[00:49:00]  He comes into contact there with the concept of responsibility to protect.
[00:49:06]  R2P.
[00:49:08]  I mean, he also claims that various Brookings Institute writings, such as sovereignty as responsibility, make a huge effect on him.
[00:49:17]  I bet they did.
[00:49:17]  I mean, I'm sure that they did.
[00:49:19]  That's the kind of shit they taught there.
[00:49:21]  And he was very sort of, he was very enmeshed in that kind of community.
[00:49:24]  In fact, he was supposed to give a talk at Harvard just after, well, he was arrested before he could.
[00:49:30]  You know, he's like still in that community.
[00:49:34]  He graduates sort of just in time for the independence of South Sudan.
[00:49:40]  So according to interviews with Peter, he's actually a pretty real believer in the original mission of the SPLA with Gerang.
[00:49:46]  I mean, he has his critiques of it, but he actually invokes his experiences in the Red Army somewhat positively.
[00:49:53]  You know, he actually eventually started like a Red Army veterans kind of association that he no longer ran after a few years, but was still pretty close to.
[00:50:02]  And again, this is mostly made up of former child soldiers here.
[00:50:05]  So he moves to South Sudan very early in South Sudan's independence and works for the Ministry of Defense and also at the same time, the World Bank and like, you know, sort of consults for a host of international forums.
[00:50:16]  I think he's like, you know, he's working with the IMF there and becomes kind of like the guy in South Sudan to a lot of these Brookings Institute types.
[00:50:24]  And he also starts the South Sudanese Wrestling Federation.
[00:50:27]  Okay.
[00:50:28]  There is a actually really sad 10-minute documentary on Vice, like Vice Sports or whatever.
[00:50:34]  He loved making these little documentaries about the war zone in Africa back then, but it's like pretty heartbreaking because it's like showing him trying to get this thing together.
[00:50:43]  And this is during like peace talks that are failing.
[00:50:44]  I think it's like 2015.
[00:50:46]  It's just not.
[00:50:47]  And it keeps getting canceled.
[00:50:50]  You know, I think he gets it's very clear that he gets increasingly frustrated with the like, you know, really autocratic rule of Kier, rampant corruption, sort of the descent into chaos and anarchy that he sees happening in South Sudan.
[00:51:06]  And one of his big things becomes generational exit in South Sudan, where he's like, you guys who run the country now, Kier, and et cetera, you're too old.
[00:51:16]  We need young men to come in there.
[00:51:18]  And he starts these like youth forum kind of things there.
[00:51:20]  He's kind of like speedruns through all of these like Washington policy ideas on how to like, you know, Westernize states and like chaos.
[00:51:32]  I know it's, it's so, I mean, I think this stuff is important to mention because we can see Peter really trying these like Brookings Institute type ideas of like, we're going to do this.
[00:51:43]  And like, we need to like focus on the youth in this sector and this sector and this sector and then just really get disillusioned, disillusioned, disillusioned as nothing works.
[00:51:53]  You know, he knows like he like breaks with, he's part of, he's, he's married into the elite.
[00:52:00]  His father is part of the elite and he breaks with that.
[00:52:04]  He really does.
[00:52:05]  I mean, he is also like, you know, this Western educated guy.
[00:52:07]  He's got a little money.
[00:52:08]  But he breaks with like this sort of old guard elite who actually have entrenched power in the country.
[00:52:13]  And, you know, he talks about corruption a lot.
[00:52:15]  And, you know, it's, it frankly is true.
[00:52:17]  Kir, the president of South Sudan, literally owns like every company.
[00:52:20]  Cowboy Kier.
[00:52:21]  Yeah, Cowboy Kir.
[00:52:22]  He owns like every company.
[00:52:23]  His daughter is the person collecting the taxes.
[00:52:25]  It is like nothing fucking works in South Sudan.
[00:52:28]  Again, it is literally the poorest country of the world.
[00:52:31]  That country that you're thinking of, like, oh, isn't that poor?
[00:52:34]  No, you are wrong.
[00:52:35]  South Sudan is poorer than that.
[00:52:36]  It is fucked up in like, it's fucked up there.
[00:52:40]  And it's, it's, and, and Kir is, as just does nothing.
[00:52:44]  I mean, it's just, it's like a fake government, basically.
[00:52:47]  Peter breaks with the government, becomes both a critic of Machar, the, you know, sort of the guy the opposition leader, and Kir.
[00:52:56]  And in 2018, he is arrested at Juba airport on his way to a martyr, and Juba is the capital of South Sudan, on his way to a Martyr's Day celebration with the Red Army Foundation.
[00:53:05]  And he wasn't told the reasons he was arrested at first, sort of post-hoc charges.
[00:53:10]  And eventually, those charges become terrorism and treason.
[00:53:14]  So they're political.
[00:53:15]  They're political.
[00:53:17]  I mean, no, 100% he's just arrested for being like a sort of a dissident here.
[00:53:21]  South Sudan has a lot of really crazy laws.
[00:53:23]  Like they'll do like 90-day bans on social media and stuff like that.
[00:53:27]  That won't be enforced because they don't have the ability to like actually do like a firewall or anything.
[00:53:32]  They'll just be like, it's illegal to do this and you will be arrested if you do.
[00:53:35]  There's all these bans on like filming anything.
[00:53:37]  It's really like the government sort of make these decrees about like security and stuff that are kind of impossible to be enforced on any like technological level.
[00:53:47]  And so it'll become like the result of those will just be basically arbitrary detentions of people.
[00:53:54]  During his time in jail, there's an uprising on October 7th, which eventually leads to the October 7th movement, which many of whose leaders were killed.
[00:54:03]  And so it's probably good that didn't really take off because, again, this is 2018.
[00:54:06]  That would have not flown so well today.
[00:54:11]  But he doesn't take part in it, but he gives these interviews to Voice of America during that.
[00:54:15]  Of course, he's.
[00:54:16]  Of course.
[00:54:17]  You know, he got them on the sally.
[00:54:20]  And the standoff, though, was resolved peacefully.
[00:54:23]  Again, many of the leaders were later killed.
[00:54:26]  His terrorism charges are dropped and then he's recharged with disturbing the peace.
[00:54:31]  Now, this is from a Euro News article.
[00:54:33]  BR and the other detainees inside the national security prison participated in media interviews that have created fear and insecurity in the public, which is against the law, the judge told the special tribunal at the high court.
[00:54:44]  That's literally because of the interview he gave to Voice of America.
[00:54:47]  Yes.
[00:54:47]  Yeah.
[00:54:49]  And the reason, I mean, to be fair, the reason that they revolted in the prison is because they were just held with no charges or like court dates or anything.
[00:54:56]  They were just like kind of in the national security, like the police.
[00:55:00]  But also, let's flip this for a second.
[00:55:02]  Yeah.
[00:55:02]  Because I'm not on Cowboy Kir's side.
[00:55:04]  No.
[00:55:05]  However, if you are a man in a cowboy hat that he never takes off and you run everything in that country, which is war-torn, chaos, you're just trying to feed your daughters with Western oil companies.
[00:55:22]  Yeah.
[00:55:23]  And you've got the son of a major general, now Western educated, now, you know, member of what we'll say international human rights elite, who has been schooled in both Brookings and IMF thought.
[00:55:42]  And he's coming here and he's given all these noisy interviews to CIA-funded outlet Voice of America, R.I.P. Wouldn't you be, you know, getting on his ass?
[00:56:00]  I'm saying that, so again, as many listeners will know, I am fucking completely apolitical.
[00:56:08]  This is Ms. Ball and Mr. Strike.
[00:56:09]  We're calling balls and strikes.
[00:56:10]  Balls and balls and strikes.

=== Abe's Illegal Arms Deal (15:01) ===

[00:56:12]  That's what I'm just saying.
[00:56:13]  That's what I'm just saying.
[00:56:14]  Look, from his side, you got the cowboy hat on.
[00:56:19]  You know, you got to take things in your own hands.
[00:56:22]  I'm going to step back here and said, remember how I said how Kier canceled, like, fired all these guys in like 2013?
[00:56:28]  Yeah.
[00:56:30]  I'm arresting those guys on trumped up charges.
[00:56:32]  I'm not firing them.
[00:56:33]  You know what I mean?
[00:56:34]  So I'm nipping this in the bud before it starts.
[00:56:36]  Oh, Machar was trying to kill me.
[00:56:39]  So he's in prison now.
[00:56:40]  And oops, he tried to escape.
[00:56:42]  He's executed.
[00:56:43]  Just don't set him on an island, but you don't have to worry about that because you're landlocked.
[00:56:46]  You're landlocked.
[00:56:46]  There is no island, you know?
[00:56:48]  I'm doing big treason charges, char trials for everybody back then.
[00:56:52]  We get some of these IMF guys in here.
[00:56:55]  I'm sending him out.
[00:56:57]  I mean, that's the problem.
[00:56:58]  I'm like, because if I'm Kier and we got this like Harvard kid coming back here, you know, one of those lost boys who was once a child soldier in the army that I commanded, I'd be like, hmm.
[00:57:09]  Well, you want to co-opt.
[00:57:11]  And if you can't co-opt, you want to do semi-internal exile while he's still working for you.
[00:57:16]  So you want to send him out to a particularly difficult area with a lot of fighting and either hope he gets killed or stage an accident or have a couple guys basically be his minders that he is like teaching, but they're reporting directly back to you.
[00:57:29]  Well, that's not what happened.
[00:57:31]  Not what happened.
[00:57:33]  Huge international pressure on releasing Peter.
[00:57:38]  Because remember, Peter is not like an unknown quantity.
[00:57:40]  No, I was just saying human rights.
[00:57:41]  He's very well known.
[00:57:42]  It is difficult.
[00:57:42]  You're going to arrest like a hugely well-known human rights guy.
[00:57:46]  Well, that's also why this coup that we will eventually talk about or coup attempt is so crazy.
[00:57:51]  Yes, yes.
[00:57:53]  He gets pardoned.
[00:57:54]  He leaves the country for Kenya, back there again.
[00:57:57]  He's staying there for a while.
[00:57:59]  And there he goes on TV.
[00:58:00]  And according to an article I read in the South Sudan Post, he goes on TV and alleges that President Salva Kir could not address like this memorial for I think like dead SPLM members that was taking place in Kenya because he was hungover.
[00:58:19]  And so one of Peter's big things is he's always like, Kira is fucking drunk all the time and he does witchcraft and he's a sex addict.
[00:58:27]  Well, don't make him sound cool.
[00:58:29]  I know.
[00:58:29]  And he's got a cowboy hat.
[00:58:31]  He never takes a cowboy hat out.
[00:58:32]  Sorry, but that's crazy.
[00:58:33]  So the South Sudanese, this is also Kir's thing.
[00:58:36]  This is a problem with Kir, too.
[00:58:38]  The South Sudanese summon the Kenyan ambassador because of Peter BR going on TV and like dress him down for allowing this to happen in their country.
[00:58:51]  And this continues after, well, they like keep, they're sending out missives about like Facebook Live videos that he's doing.
[00:58:58]  The official government of South Sudan is sending out like, you know, statements refuting points that Peter BR is making in Facebook Live things that he does.
[00:59:07]  So BR is supposedly tipped off by someone in the South Sudanese government, which I could see this happening, that there's an assassination plot by the secret services of South Sudan against him.
[00:59:18]  So he flees to the U.S.
[00:59:19]  He writes this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about it.
[00:59:23]  He then finishes his PhD in Cambridge and settles in the U.S. as a refugee.
[00:59:30]  And the year is now 2021.
[00:59:31]  And he spends the next couple of years making connections.
[00:59:35]  He starts a political party, the revived South Sudan Party.
[00:59:39]  Not a great name.
[00:59:39]  Well, you might remember that from the opening of this episode.
[00:59:43]  And he makes a bunch of YouTube videos, a podcast.
[00:59:47]  He accuses, again, Kier of all sorts of crimes.
[00:59:51]  He frequently cites this book called, I think, A Bloody Nile, which is written by this guy, Tim something.
[00:59:59]  I could not find evidence that this book exists.
[01:00:01]  And the South Sudanese government says that the book doesn't exist.
[01:00:06]  He posted a like not Dropbox, a Google Drive link to it on Peter did on his Facebook page.
[01:00:12]  And I looked at it and I'm pretty sure Peter wrote the book, but it's about like corruption in South Sudan.
[01:00:17]  That's a good move.
[01:00:19]  Yeah.
[01:00:19]  God, AI really is going to make all of this so much easier.
[01:00:22]  I know.
[01:00:23]  I know.
[01:00:23]  Well, I think it's a pretty detailed book, although it's also unfinished literally within the PDF.
[01:00:28]  It just ends in half a word on like page 113.
[01:00:31]  But one of the reasons that I think he might have written it is because before, I believe before he posted the book, he posted this quote on his Facebook page that also appears on one of the front pages, the first pages of the book, A Bloody Nile.
[01:00:48]  If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.
[01:00:55]  Damn, that goes hard.
[01:00:56]  Yeah, it's pretty.
[01:00:57]  No wonder that's by Genghis Khan.
[01:00:59]  Genghis Khan.
[01:01:01]  So, so, okay, we have this guy who's been a human rights guy.
[01:01:04]  You know, he was a, he was a fucking child soldier, horribly traumatized by, by war.
[01:01:09]  He genuinely has been a big peace activist in South Sudan since he returned to the country.
[01:01:16]  I mean, that was part of the reason he did the wrestling thing was like, it was like a way to bring different tribes together.
[01:01:21]  There's huge South Sudan, it is very arable there.
[01:01:24]  Only 5% of the land, I think, is actually like tilled, but this huge cattle culture, one might say, unfortunately, including a lot of cattle raiding.
[01:01:33]  But he was sort of bringing different people together to do this, you know, this peace initiative with the wrestling.
[01:01:38]  He's trying to like make these connections.
[01:01:40]  He's a peace guy.
[01:01:42]  And then suddenly he's posting Genghis Khan quotes on fucking Facebook.
[01:01:49]  What happened?
[01:01:58]  All right, so.
[01:01:59]  So let's get to this attempted coup.
[01:02:04]  This all starts back in February 2023.
[01:02:07]  Now, Abraham Keach, I'm probably going to call him Abraham.
[01:02:12]  Just letting you know.
[01:02:13]  Abe.
[01:02:14]  Abe.
[01:02:16]  He calls in from an unnamed African country.
[01:02:20]  I think it's Uganda.
[01:02:21]  It's going to be Uganda or Kenya, I think.
[01:02:23]  Yeah, I think it's Uganda.
[01:02:25]  But he says he's, quote, mobilizing forces on the ground and he joins this opposition planning call with a bunch of South Sudanese generals and then also unbeknownst to him to undercover U.S. agents posing as weapons brokers.
[01:02:43]  Interesting.
[01:02:44]  So I want to say that Abraham, Abe, Abe Keach, Abe, he's actually a Utah-based South Sudanese emigré, but he runs a like trucking and surplus arms brokerage.
[01:02:59]  So he must have already been on these investigators' radar and already been communicating with them about something else.
[01:03:09]  And that's kind of how they got brought into all of this.
[01:03:12]  It's interesting that he's in Utah, I assume in the Salt Lake City area, because you remember the DRC coup.
[01:03:19]  Yes.
[01:03:20]  Those guys were also in the Utah, in Utah, in Salt Lake City.
[01:03:25]  Yes.
[01:03:26]  So Abe is on the phone with these guys and he like touts all of his like recent reconnaissance trips to Juba and says, okay, the Kier government, it's not going to last.
[01:03:35]  It's going to collapse imminently.
[01:03:38]  We need guns.
[01:03:39]  We need guns.
[01:03:41]  Even though, and he says this on the call, I'm sure you know the country is under sanctions.
[01:03:46]  Okay, yes.
[01:03:47]  Also, this is important to mention.
[01:03:50]  I think it's 2018, South Sudan is under arms, an arms embargo.
[01:03:56]  Sudan, too, but I don't know if it's a matter of time.
[01:03:57]  Sudan, yeah, at some point.
[01:03:59]  Sudan is also under arms embargo, although the UAE might take issue with that.
[01:04:03]  We're not even talking about the Sudanese civil war that's going crazy.
[01:04:07]  Yeah.
[01:04:08]  But South Sudan is under arms embargo.
[01:04:11]  It is illegal to import arms into South Sudan.
[01:04:16]  Yes.
[01:04:16]  For the government or for anybody else.
[01:04:18]  Yeah.
[01:04:18]  So about a month later, after this call, Abe returns to the U.S.
[01:04:22]  He lands at JFK and immediately texts one of the brokers, again, undercover U.S. agents, to arrange an in-person inspection.
[01:04:31]  He's like, I need ammo.
[01:04:33]  It's more urgent than rifles.
[01:04:34]  And then he's like, let me ask these guys about smuggling routes.
[01:04:38]  Okay.
[01:04:39]  He goes to Arizona to get a walkthrough at an arms warehouse in Phoenix.
[01:04:44]  All of the undercover agents lay out a bunch of AKs, PKM, machine guns, an RPG launcher for him, like a bunch of shit.
[01:04:52]  Yeah, there's pictures of it.
[01:04:53]  There's pictures of it.
[01:04:54]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:04:55]  He like shoulders a bunch of them and like kind of is like posing with them and like trying them on and talking a bunch of shit.
[01:05:01]  He sketches out a potential starter order about 50 to 200K, kind of low, to be honest.
[01:05:08]  And he asks them about sneaking the shipment off a US base.
[01:05:13]  Now, the DOJ doesn't say in which country, but for that, I'm going to guess Kenya.
[01:05:18]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:05:20]  I was looking up to see what that could be, but it's, it's going to be Kenya, I guess, or Uganda.
[01:05:25]  Yeah, I think, well, you know, who knows?
[01:05:28]  No, the problem is, is that Abe doesn't have any money.
[01:05:32]  Oh, you need that.
[01:05:33]  That's one of the most crucial things to buying guns.
[01:05:36]  Yeah.
[01:05:36]  And he's like, not only do I not have any money, but because of the sanctions, we are going to have to disguise the wire payments for, you know, make it look like it's for something else.
[01:05:48]  And we need to figure out how we can get these in.
[01:05:50]  And so he's pushing the agents for information on different smuggling routes, which is weird because I'm like, shouldn't you know that?
[01:05:57]  But I don't know how like this guy is.
[01:06:01]  Well, the thing is, with, I mean, this is, this is what's so strange to me about this entire operation, right?
[01:06:07]  There has been, I mean, famously, there's a lot of cross-border stuff with Uganda and DRC.
[01:06:13]  There's actually some big article about that.
[01:06:17]  There is also like all this stuff with Uganda and South Sudan.
[01:06:21]  I mean, the SPLE used to fight Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army across the border.
[01:06:26]  I mean, the borders are rather porous in these places.
[01:06:29]  And like, I understand, like, yeah, you know, eight military trucks filled with RPGs or whatever.
[01:06:34]  You might want to keep that.
[01:06:35]  You know, you might want to smuggle that just because someone might just rob you.
[01:06:40]  There's a lot of banditry around there.
[01:06:42]  But it's a little, I'm like, you don't know at all how you're going to do this.
[01:06:47]  Yeah, it seems unclear.
[01:06:48]  I mean, he during this call, the undercover agents keep pressing to him.
[01:06:54]  They're like, you know, what you're doing is illegal, which is also we, I would say, if I am Abe, immediately, if my arms dealer is telling me that what I'm doing is illegal, I'd be like, yes, you're an arms dealer.
[01:07:08]  Yeah.
[01:07:09]  Why is that something you need to flag?
[01:07:11]  What you do is illegal.
[01:07:13]  Yeah.
[01:07:14]  I mean, it's so we don't know exactly like how these guys presented themselves because it seems like from context, they might have been like, we do do legit work.
[01:07:25]  It's really the sanctions that they're like really saying.
[01:07:27]  Like, you, you know, you can get caught.
[01:07:29]  Yeah.
[01:07:29]  There are international sanctions.
[01:07:31]  This is illegal.
[01:07:32]  But they're like, basically, Abe's like, don't worry about it.
[01:07:35]  Yeah, I know it's illegal.
[01:07:36]  They say that the undercover agents seem to, at many different junctures in this, be like, this is illegal.
[01:07:41]  There are sanctions.
[01:07:43]  And Abe's whole thing and later Peter's whole thing is like, we know there's sanctions.
[01:07:47]  We know this is illegal, but we are doing this crime with you in America.
[01:07:52]  So you and I were talking about this, and you kept mentioning like, it's so crazy to bring guns into Africa.
[01:07:58]  There are so many guns in Africa.
[01:08:00]  I mean, genuinely, fucking our part of our Pol Po series ongoing, our ongoing El Polpo series is about just that.
[01:08:09]  Like there was a huge, not only the big influx of Soviet arms in the 1970s, and obviously prior to that, sort of aging World War II, oftentimes British weapons, but like in the 90s, there was huge in 80s and during like the, you know, the golden age of African bush wars, there was all of these, like the country was flooded with guns.
[01:08:29]  So by 2023, there's like, I mean, fucking, how many fucking guns are there?
[01:08:34]  So I was looking into this because I was like, damn, yeah, you're right.
[01:08:37]  That seems like a little funny.
[01:08:39]  But it, the thing is, is that what they have there is kind of a grab bag and aging.
[01:08:45]  Yeah.
[01:08:46]  So there are about 40 million civilian-held firearms that circulate Africa.
[01:08:52]  40 million?
[01:08:52]  Yes.
[01:08:53]  Basically, what that kind of amounts to is 3.2 guns per 100 inhabitants, which is like, to think about that, that's versus 120 in the United States.
[01:09:04]  Yeah, which is also crazy.
[01:09:06]  We have so many fucking guns, dude.
[01:09:08]  It's crazy.
[01:09:08]  I wish we could say that with real vigor about this podcast.
[01:09:13]  Yeah, with your chest.
[01:09:14]  I know, just so we had them on mounts on the walls, like those veterans podcasts.
[01:09:17]  Oh, my God.
[01:09:19]  This, you know, these numbers exclude also the roughly 11 million state military weapons.
[01:09:26]  And then, of course, there's like an unknown amount of rebel stock.
[01:09:30]  These are all coming from like international organizations' estimates, but they should be pretty, you know, they're pretty spot on.
[01:09:36]  So there are in total about 1 billion firearms in the world.
[01:09:40]  You get those numbers up.
[01:09:42]  But we're counting nukes as like, those should count for a certain amount of time.
[01:09:45]  Not firearms.
[01:09:46]  I know, but I'm saying like.
[01:09:48]  Do you think a nuke should be like 20 firearms?
[01:09:50]  But I'm like, but I'm like, okay, so you're a tank guy and you're on the machine gun.
[01:09:54]  Obviously, you have a sidearm too, or maybe you have like a little, like a short AKs.
[01:10:00]  But are we counting that machine gun as a firearm?
[01:10:03]  That's not firearms.
[01:10:05]  We need to count big arms in this too, because some guys just fly planes and stuff.
[01:10:08]  So you're right that basically since 2017, Africa's share of the amount of firearms has only gone up.
[01:10:18]  And most of that is driven by imports into the active war zones rather than like any kind of local manufacturing.
[01:10:24]  Well, I do want to say that there is an amazing there's so Sudan itself, northern Sudan or Sudan, regular Sudan has a domestic arms manufacturing company called Military Industry Corporation, which has a website that's on the you know, you can you can look at on the Wayback Machine that advertises their products, which a lot of kind of misspellings.
[01:10:49]  But you can buy a Moktar, which is a appears to be a copy of a Soviet submachine gun.
[01:10:56]  They have a domestic automatic grenade launcher.
[01:10:59]  They have a bunch of pistols and a AK-47, which they refer to as a submachine gun that they domestically make.
[01:11:08]  What are they chamber in 762?
[01:11:12]  Yeah, not a submachine gun.
[01:11:13]  Not a submachine gun.

=== Drone Warfare Innovations (14:59) ===

[01:11:14]  No.
[01:11:14]  And they also call their AR ripoff a submachine gun as well, the Tehran.
[01:11:22]  Get it together.
[01:11:22]  But I'm like, it's they.
[01:11:23]  It was a translation issue.
[01:11:24]  I know.
[01:11:25]  I'm kind of wondering there.
[01:11:27]  But, you know, there's, I guess, local licenses.
[01:11:30]  I don't know.
[01:11:30]  But there isn't like, you know, but there are guns there.
[01:11:34]  Yeah, but most of the rifles in sub-Saharan areas are like 30 to 50 year old Kaleshnikovs or like Chinese Type 56 variants.
[01:11:43]  But that, yeah.
[01:11:44]  I will say, as somebody who used in my own, you know, experience with using a AK, I think mine was from like 1971.
[01:11:57]  Those motherfuckers still work really good.
[01:12:00]  But you do want new, like they wear it down, right?
[01:12:02]  And like a lot of times replacement parts, even for the guns that we were using, were made by like local metalsmiths and stuff.
[01:12:08]  And so like we were using, we had snipers in the, you know, in the Syrian Civil War with Mos and Nagants from like 19 fucking 20.
[01:12:17]  Well, the other issue is that like ammunition is often really like mismatched or degraded.
[01:12:21]  Yes.
[01:12:22]  Which is why there's like a huge like number of incidents of faulty ammo.
[01:12:27]  Yeah.
[01:12:27]  And that becomes a real, that becomes a big issue.
[01:12:29]  So, you know, in South Sudan alone, just to compare, 2009, there are about 2.7 million pieces in combined small arms and light weapons.
[01:12:41]  By 2023, and this is from the UN, there are between three and four million.
[01:12:48]  So that is like an insane rapid growth.
[01:12:53]  Yeah.
[01:12:53]  And just in a pretty short amount of time.
[01:12:55]  So why smuggle weapons in?
[01:12:58]  Now, we mentioned this.
[01:12:59]  Sudan and South Sudan are both under UN arms embargoes.
[01:13:03]  So government buyers need clandestine foreign supply chains because local secondary markets cannot meet the large uniform orders without attracting detection from international bodies.
[01:13:16]  That's very true.
[01:13:17]  So what happens is usually that elites amass large cash stockpiles that can then be quickly converted into arms before sanctions tighten or international audits begin.
[01:13:30]  And so you'll see like these kind of like rush spikes or these like burst purchase patterns, which actually happens in this case.
[01:13:39]  It's like right around like February when these guys are talking.
[01:13:42]  Interesting.
[01:13:43]  Now, there's also, this is like the really big issue, which is that there's big capability gaps in local stockpiles.
[01:13:50]  So almost like all of these stockpiles almost never include man pads, drone jammers, modern optics, or night vision gear.
[01:14:00]  Amnesty had this investigation in 2024 that showed a bunch of Turkish anti-material rifles and like Chinese drone jammers and UAE armored carriers getting into Sudan despite the embargo.
[01:14:14]  And all of that is just like not coming locally.
[01:14:17]  There's just no way.
[01:14:19]  In this instance, in this coup plot in particular, they were looking for FIM-92 Stinger missiles, which is kind of crazy.
[01:14:28]  I mean, you know, it's pretty legit.
[01:14:30]  Like that's like a pretty coveted U.S. system.
[01:14:33]  Yeah.
[01:14:34]  You mentioned this, but like the African shoulder-fired missiles are like these like 1970s vintages.
[01:14:40]  They're like SA-7s, SA-14 types.
[01:14:43]  I mean, the thing is, like in, because the drone stuff is like the FPV drone stuff that we've seen, obviously, to great effect in Ukraine, but also we saw it in sort of that last gasp of the Syrian civil war, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:14:56]  Obviously, everyone knows about the FPV drone sort of renaissance in warfighting, but some of that stuff hasn't made it to sort of certain far-flung conflicts.
[01:15:08]  And I was looking because they, yeah, they're talking about stinger missiles here, shoulder-fired missiles.
[01:15:14]  And I was like, well, okay, like what is South Sudan's Air Force looking like?
[01:15:19]  And South Sudan Air Force is actually, obviously, air power, if you have that, you are a massive advantage.
[01:15:26]  But they have such little air power that you kind of could take it out with enough stingers.
[01:15:31]  They have, I think, 10 Russian attack helicopters.
[01:15:34]  They're only planes.
[01:15:36]  I mean, you can arm trainer planes, what they're called, sort of like cheaper, you know, oftentimes like propeller planes.
[01:15:42]  But like, you know, that's probably not going to be very effective.
[01:15:45]  And you can shoot that down with a stinger.
[01:15:46]  So like potentially a group with enough shoulder-fired rockets, like that aren't RPGs or whatever.
[01:15:53]  I mean, that's technically those are grenades, but you could take out the entire South Sudan Air Force.
[01:15:59]  Well, none of the stingers don't really show up in Africa.
[01:16:03]  Yeah.
[01:16:04]  They've been seen, you know, Afghanistan, obviously, Iraq, I think also in Ukraine.
[01:16:10]  They made their way to Ukraine.
[01:16:12]  By the way, I'm talking about like illicitly, not like us giving them.
[01:16:16]  But they're not really in the mix here.
[01:16:20]  So these guys were kind of, you know, they're on the forefront trying to get some cutting edge stuff.
[01:16:24]  I mean, it's smart to do.
[01:16:25]  Listen, as a, as just a little coup review stuff here, this is actually not a bad idea.
[01:16:33]  I mean, the problem is, is that the U.S. might want to keep an eye on somewhere some of those stingers are going.
[01:16:37]  But if they are taking into consideration air power here and they're coming into this with an air force, they're obviously, I mean, I don't really, we don't really know what their ground forces are even looking like.
[01:16:50]  You want to have that sort of counter there very early on.
[01:16:53]  And that's smart of them.
[01:16:54]  They're buying the AKs.
[01:16:55]  I don't really fully get because I'm like, you guys probably already have AKs, but I get you maybe want some new ones.
[01:17:01]  But the stingers there, I'm like, you guys, that's thinking ahead.
[01:17:04]  But this is what I don't get because I know these guys are based in the U.S., but then part of me is like, but do they really know what's going on?
[01:17:13]  Because why wouldn't they then use the multiple smuggle lines from literally anywhere else in the world that can get stuff into South Sudan?
[01:17:25]  Because to bring it from the U.S. is very complicated.
[01:17:28]  Like now there are, you know, some pretty key smuggling routes.
[01:17:35]  One is pretty infamous.
[01:17:38]  It's called like the Toyota War Trail, which is very cinematic sounding.
[01:17:41]  And it goes from Libya to Chad slash Darfur and then down into Sudan, South Sudan.
[01:17:48]  That's where you get in AKs, BKMs, RPGs, MAMPAS, all that.
[01:17:54]  Then there's another one that goes from Mombasa to Djibouti to Juba.
[01:18:00]  And that's usually like created small arms and ammo that is containerized and they like kind of hide in kind of like agro equipment loads.
[01:18:09]  Oh, of course.
[01:18:10]  Yeah.
[01:18:10]  Very cool.
[01:18:12]  And then there's another one that goes from the Red Sea from Yemen down to Eritrea and then over to Kassala.
[01:18:21]  And that'll be how they get in like Iranian or Yemeni AKMs, mortars, bigger explosives, things like that.
[01:18:28]  But then there's also air cargo that comes in from the Gulf states.
[01:18:32]  Yeah.
[01:18:33]  And that'll be super heavy weapons, modern drones, and also armored cars.
[01:18:39]  So those are like big ass fucking cargo planes.
[01:18:42]  That makes sense.
[01:18:43]  The only problem with that is getting, if you're, if you're, if, if, if you're the South Sudanese government, you're trying to buy that.
[01:18:49]  Yeah.
[01:18:50]  The Juba airport air list of aircraft incidents at the Juba airport is one that has, let's say there's a high rate of failure.
[01:19:01]  Do not fly into Juba.
[01:19:03]  You know, I don't want to, you know, I, I love the South Sudanese people.
[01:19:07]  I don't want to say that don't visit South Sudan, although I'm not going to recommend you visit South Sudan.
[01:19:11]  I don't know if you can right now.
[01:19:13]  You can.
[01:19:14]  You can go anywhere if you want.
[01:19:15]  Isn't there a travel ban?
[01:19:17]  Oh, is that regular Sudan?
[01:19:19]  But you can still go there.
[01:19:20]  There's a travel ban from them coming here.
[01:19:21]  Yeah, but I figured it out.
[01:19:22]  They could probably still go there.
[01:19:23]  No, they'll probably like forged.
[01:19:25]  They want the foreign currency.
[01:19:28]  But Juba's airport, which is the only airport in the country, or the only actual real airport.
[01:19:34]  There's other like sort of Bush airports.
[01:19:37]  I would not fly in there.
[01:19:38]  There's a lot of, there's a lot of accidents around that airport.
[01:19:42]  Okay, but these guns, the ones that Peter and well, soon to be Peter, but Abe want to bring in, they're coming from the U.S.
[01:19:50]  Okay.
[01:19:51]  Sorry, just one more interruption too.
[01:19:53]  To do with Libya.
[01:19:54]  This is actually what I don't understand.
[01:19:56]  And this I think is kind of Peter's fault a little bit, but also Abraham's because he's in Utah.
[01:20:02]  What I don't understand is why they're looking for these guns in the U.S. and not from Russia.
[01:20:07]  But that's what I'm saying.
[01:20:08]  I don't know why they're trying to sort because I don't think Abe knows what he's doing, which is also why he's mixed up with a bunch of fucking undercover homeless security agents.
[01:20:17]  I mean, I'm just like, I'm like, dude, Russia, like, first of all, Russia has like a lot of infrastructure in Libya that you could use.
[01:20:25]  There are weapons there.
[01:20:26]  But you don't even have to go through Russia for this.
[01:20:29]  You just go through like any fucking brokerage in Libya.
[01:20:32]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[01:20:34]  But like, if you're looking and you're like, listen, we're institutionalist guys.
[01:20:37]  You know, we want some institutionalist weapons.
[01:20:40]  You know, it's like, okay, not Russia directly, but obviously, you know, you go for like the Africa Corps as they're called now, but the Wagner Group, you know, they're present in the Central African Republic.
[01:20:54]  Well, I think some of the answer to this might lie in the fact that Peter is involved.
[01:20:59]  Exactly.
[01:21:00]  Because Peter is tight with the U.S. and he's there to spread, you know, his Brookings Institute-informed democracy.
[01:21:08]  Now, let's get back to Abe.
[01:21:12]  So he, like, there are multiple encrypted calls in which Abe says that there's this DC power broker named Peter and that Peter has recently changed his mind and now backs an armed solution to the political situation, which I love that kind of not so much euphemism, but delicate way of putting that.
[01:21:38]  Yes.
[01:21:39]  An armed solution to the political situation.
[01:21:42]  Well, here's the other thing too.
[01:21:44]  And this is another little coup advice here.
[01:21:46]  Euphemisms are your best friend.
[01:21:48]  Sure.
[01:21:48]  I mean, we love using euphemisms in general, right?
[01:21:51]  Yeah.
[01:21:51]  But you know, if you don't want to say like, you know, we, we, it's like, it's, you don't want to say like we executed this, you know, dissident figure.
[01:22:00]  You want to be like, he's retired.
[01:22:02]  You know what I mean?
[01:22:04]  He went to the big island in the sky.
[01:22:06]  Exactly.
[01:22:06]  Oh, he left.
[01:22:08]  I love that one.
[01:22:08]  He left.
[01:22:09]  He left.
[01:22:09]  Oh, he's, you know, he's, it's, it's like if you get, you know, if you get me too, you're like, I'm spending more time with my family.
[01:22:15]  Sure, you know, it's like one of those things.
[01:22:17]  Yeah.
[01:22:19]  So Abe says, interestingly enough, we'll talk about this a little bit later.
[01:22:24]  He says that South Sudanese opposition leaders are lobbying the White House and the State Department in order to get assurances on post-coup recognition.
[01:22:35]  So Abe introduces Peter on a video call.
[01:22:38]  Peter is in DC and acknowledges on the call that there is a sanctions risk, but wants these arms dealers, who again, in fact, are undercover agents, to be his preferred vendor once he takes power.
[01:22:54]  Because that's the plan.
[01:22:56]  Right.
[01:22:56]  The idea is that Abe is going to fly to the offload site, meet the crates and manage the convoy north.
[01:23:03]  And then Peter is very cute.
[01:23:06]  He stresses that like for this coup, we need both internal and external friends.
[01:23:12]  And he's like, I'm going to remain in the U.S. long enough to, quote, shape the narrative.
[01:23:17]  That's what he calls it.
[01:23:19]  And then enter South Sudan once rebel commanders have the guns and are ready to go.
[01:23:24]  So the idea there is then that generals would stage simultaneous assaults on Juba's army, like their headquarters, and then also the state TV transmitter while crowds demonstrated downtown.
[01:23:38]  Look, this is very Western informed.
[01:23:41]  The crowds demonstrating downtown, cheering for, you know, the opposition.
[01:23:47]  But we have to give some credit there.
[01:23:50]  At least they're like, we're going to take the TV station.
[01:23:54]  No, sure.
[01:23:54]  Because obviously you need to seize all communications immediately, right?
[01:23:59]  Of course, of course.
[01:24:03]  We're running into a red flag really early here, though.
[01:24:06]  One is that Peter himself, if he wants a pride of place in this sort of national salvation government, Peter, where are your guys with guns?
[01:24:17]  Because he thinks these guys are his guys, but I'm like, I don't think these guys are your guys.
[01:24:22]  You don't understand from your country's immediate many experiences with this exact same thing that these other guys here in the National Salvation Front won't be like, why are we taking orders from you?
[01:24:32]  My guys have the guns.
[01:24:34]  My guys are at the TV station.
[01:24:36]  You're in fucking Arlington.
[01:24:38]  He thinks that all of this is going to produce like the optics of like a popular upright rising that has this like big disciplined force.
[01:24:45]  And so he will kind of like be swept into power naturally.
[01:24:50]  Like it really does read like he's, it's like fucking like like American policy paper bullshit about like a color revolution.
[01:25:00]  Yeah.
[01:25:01]  A little bit.
[01:25:02]  It does kind of have that feel, but it's like when someone doesn't believe like color revolutions work anymore and you actually need just like a proper coup.
[01:25:09]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:25:10]  It just, to me, it seems like, you know, Peter is a well-known opposition figure.
[01:25:17]  And I think going from peace activist to, let's euphemize this a little bit, to a conflict activist is, you know, there's other guys that have been doing this a lot longer and know a lot more about conflict activism than you.
[01:25:35]  And I'm just like, I think he's really overestimating maybe his role in this because he's replicating so many things that have been done in Sudan and South Sudan's past.
[01:25:48]  And for some reason, he thinks he'll be different.
[01:25:51]  Well, he does say that he's like trying to give these arms dealers who again are undercover federal agents that once he's in power, like, you know, they're going to be his guys.
[01:26:03]  Like, I'll be free to buy up whatever, which is a really interesting statement that he makes because he's basically suggesting that once he gets in power, the sanctions will be lifted.
[01:26:12]  Yeah.
[01:26:12]  That's what he's saying.

=== Reformer's Ambitions: Lifting Sanctions? (05:43) ===

[01:26:13]  Yeah.
[01:26:13]  No, it's definitely.
[01:26:14]  Which does give credence to some ideas that maybe there were some bigger forces at play backing him, maybe tacitly, but still.
[01:26:24]  So, but for the coup, he's like, look, we need anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
[01:26:29]  And at another meeting, interestingly enough, Abe, he's got opposition generals and undercover agents on the call.
[01:26:37]  And he starts discussing how the weapons are going to be used to, and this is a quote, help secure key areas in South Sudan near oil fields and gold mines.
[01:26:47]  So just like, I want to leave that there for a second.
[01:26:50]  So Peter starts brainstorming how they can smuggle the guns.
[01:26:54]  They are going to like basically need to disguise the crates as aid, he says, and they're going to need to get fake invoices to make it look legit.
[01:27:02]  So he parcels stuff out and he's like, look, I know how to do that.
[01:27:06]  We just like, we need to make it look like it's going to a refugee camp.
[01:27:10]  And he has all this stuff.
[01:27:11]  And he's like, look, we've got to make it look legit.
[01:27:13]  And this is what he says.
[01:27:14]  He says, what you will need to do, though, is we will need to like bill it as like something that is more creative, such as humanitarian whatever.
[01:27:25]  Just like, you don't want to be on a call with federal agents saying you're going to call it humanitarian.
[01:27:30]  Yeah, say it's fucking tampons or something.
[01:27:32]  As the fucking Harvard educated, you know, international human rights speaker.
[01:27:38]  And again, devil's advocate here.
[01:27:40]  We're on nobody's side, but you know what?
[01:27:43]  I'll play devil's advocate for Peter here.
[01:27:45]  It feels like he had been so enmeshed in this world of humanitarian stuff and at this point has to have a certain degree of cynicism.
[01:27:53]  So it's like, yeah, it's humanitarian, whatever, you know, whatever you want to say.
[01:27:57]  Yeah, because he's seen it.
[01:27:58]  He's seen it all before.
[01:27:59]  Yeah.
[01:28:00]  But they still have the issue of the money.
[01:28:02]  They don't have any fucking money.
[01:28:04]  And so Abe is telling the fake arms dealers that Peter has, through his connections in Washington, D.C., secured a benefactor.
[01:28:17]  Enter Gary Kasparov.
[01:28:20]  Yeah, you didn't bet that that's where we were going.
[01:28:22]  No, no.
[01:28:23]  Who is Gary Kasparov?
[01:28:25]  Gary Kasparov is a former world chess champion and I think most known now for sort of being like a Russian dissident or like a outspoken critic of Russia.
[01:28:36]  He's also the former chair of the Human Rights Foundation.
[01:28:39]  And he also subscribed at one point, although I believe no longer, to Anatoly Fomenko's new chronology theory, which espouses the belief that a lot of things that we like think, I haven't looked at this stuff in a really long time, so forgive me, but that like there's a lot of phantom time that has basically like been inserted into the chronological history of mankind and that things that happened like what we think of as like the Bronze Age actually happened like,
[01:29:10]  I don't know, maybe like in like 1200 BC.
[01:29:13]  So the ancient Egyptians were like, it wasn't like 3,000 years ago.
[01:29:17]  It was like, let's say like a thousand years ago.
[01:29:20]  Damn, that's crazy.
[01:29:22]  Yeah, I mean, he was pretty, his whole thing was like, yeah.
[01:29:26]  Is that because of like weird fossil records or some shit?
[01:29:28]  I don't know.
[01:29:28]  I mean, I think it was just like, it was the 90s.
[01:29:30]  It was Russia.
[01:29:32]  You know, I think people were just kind of like.
[01:29:34]  They're trying new stuff out.
[01:29:36]  Yeah.
[01:29:37]  Yeah.
[01:29:38]  But he, he was really into like until like, I believe up until like the mid-2000s.
[01:29:43]  But yeah, I mean, so that's Kasparov.
[01:29:47]  So him and Peter probably linked up around 2022.
[01:29:52]  The Human Rights Foundation has an annual Oslo Freedom Forum.
[01:29:56]  Maybe you've heard about it.
[01:29:58]  It's kind of like a platform for exiled dissidents of countries that the West has interest in, you know?
[01:30:07]  And so they elevate these kind of guys to, you know, wax poetic about whatever is wrong with the country.
[01:30:13]  It says that, you know, it's claimed that Peter and Gary kind of maintained contact for a long time.
[01:30:21]  And Peter reaches out to Gary and says, I don't know what he says, but Gary ends up introducing him via email to Rob Granieri, who is the 53-year-old co-founder of Jane Street Capital.
[01:30:36]  So Gary emails him.
[01:30:38]  Gary emails Rob and says that he knows, and this is a quote, a South Sudanese reformer who needs bridge financing.
[01:30:46]  Well, now, that's a great euphemism.
[01:30:49]  We are, Gary, I got to tell you, man, I think, obviously, your light has dimmed a little bit over the years.
[01:30:58]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:30:59]  No longer.
[01:31:00]  Well, you know, maybe you were one of the greats of chess at one point, but we are making new kinds of autism every day that will be able to beat you.
[01:31:07]  Plus, of course, Chad GBT, which will someday soon learn how to play chess.
[01:31:12]  And once it does, it is really going to be good at it.
[01:31:14]  It's going to kill AlphaGo.
[01:31:16]  It's going to kill Alpha.
[01:31:17]  I mean, it's going to demo.
[01:31:18]  Fuck AlphaGo, by the way.
[01:31:20]  That thing was fake.
[01:31:20]  There was a guy in there.
[01:31:21]  It was a Chinese guy in there.
[01:31:23]  Great chapter on that, by the way, in The Maniac.
[01:31:28]  I haven't read it.
[01:31:29]  Yeah, that's great.
[01:31:31]  But I got to tell you, Gary, I appreciate you there.
[01:31:36]  I think you should get involved, let's say, in the internal politics of even more African countries.
[01:31:41]  If there's anyone at any trading firm listening, I am also a reformer who is looking for bridge financing.
[01:31:48]  I too am a reformer who's looking for bridge financing.
[01:31:52]  The thing is, bridge financing, what is, I guess it's like loan me the money.

=== Bridge Financing Requests (02:40) ===

[01:31:56]  Yeah.
[01:31:57]  Like, I need you to bridge this area where I don't have money to the area that I do have money.
[01:32:01]  This is the thing.
[01:32:02]  Why would Rob lend this money?
[01:32:08]  And I think there's a lot of questions about that.
[01:32:14]  You know, you could, he is like a human rights kind of guy, which is.
[01:32:19]  Well, you hired Sam Bankman free.
[01:32:21]  No, but he is kind of like known as being involved in a lot of like humanitarian causes, international bullshit, la da But when you have a reformer who says he, like you've got a South Sudanese reformer who needs to secure bridge financing, you're not like thinking you're getting interest back, right?
[01:32:39]  There's like some other thing going on there.
[01:32:43]  I don't know.
[01:32:43]  Let's put that aside for a second.
[01:32:45]  So Gary actually attends the first meeting.
[01:32:49]  It's somewhere in Midtown and he like hooks these two up.
[01:32:52]  At a kava.
[01:32:53]  At a kava.
[01:32:54]  No, there's actually like several meetings.
[01:32:57]  There were some inside Paul Hastings, which is like a huge, very famous law firm.
[01:33:03]  There were some that were facilitated by Peter's lawyer, interestingly enough.
[01:33:08]  And weirdly, Michael Holtzman was at the table during these meetings.
[01:33:12]  Now, Michael Holtzman is a 30-year PR heavyweight.
[01:33:18]  He's a longtime partner at BLJ Worldwide, which is a huge public relations firm.
[01:33:23]  He was the director of public affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations.
[01:33:27]  He did a stint in the Clinton era executive office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
[01:33:32]  He was like also doing advisory work for the State Department.
[01:33:36]  He's a registered foreign agent of Qatar, Libya, Morocco, Syria, countless other countries.
[01:33:42]  But he's also the guy who got the infamous Arose in the Desert profile placed in vogue of his then client, Asma al-Assad.
[01:33:55]  So this guy is good.
[01:33:57]  You know that article, right?
[01:33:59]  The famous article I got pulled from Vogue that was like a pictorial about Osma al-Assad, where she looked, by the way, I don't think she looked that great.
[01:34:06]  She's beautiful.
[01:34:07]  Yes, but it was like shot by, it looked like, I think it was shot by Annie Leibowitz, or it's like in that Annie Leibowitz style.
[01:34:13]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:34:14]  It's called A Rose in the Desert.
[01:34:16]  And I think Vogue like got rid of all traces of it.
[01:34:21]  You can still see it.
[01:34:22]  Obviously, Internet Archive.
[01:34:23]  Yeah.
[01:34:24]  Yeah.
[01:34:25]  So I don't know when this came out exactly.
[01:34:27]  2011, 2012.
[01:34:29]  There's like not, I mean, there's an old Atlantic article that talks about the big hullabaloo about it.

=== Prices And Monoculars (08:31) ===

[01:34:37]  But it was, you know, I mean, they were, I'll just read from it.
[01:34:42]  This is what they say.
[01:34:43]  Osma al-Assad has British roots, whereas designer fashion worked for years in banking and is married to the dictator Bashar al-Assad, whose regime has killed over 5,000 civilians and hundreds of children this year.
[01:34:54]  So it was like right when all of this beginning of like the Arab Spring.
[01:34:58]  Yes.
[01:34:59]  And all this was kind of happening.
[01:35:00]  Anyway, back to Holtzman.
[01:35:03]  Most recently, he was involved in a scandal where he was actually, he was advising Qatar on bidding for the World Cup.
[01:35:09]  Like this guy's a fucking, like, you know, he's a big mover and shaker, right?
[01:35:13]  He's probably a blast to go to Kava with.
[01:35:16]  Dude, you got to go take him something a little bit darker than Kava.
[01:35:20]  Can you imagine Chipotle Bowls?
[01:35:22]  All right.
[01:35:22]  The Sunday Times leaked an email in which Holtzman boasted of his like four-month campaign to undermine all the other countries that were competing for the World Cup bid, including Australia and the U.S.
[01:35:37]  And he, it's, you know, they say that he hired like former CIA and MI6 agents and recruited a bunch of different journalists to like seed all this negative press about other countries.
[01:35:47]  And so there weren't any like official charges, but FIFA did this huge investigation that I think got folded up real quiet.
[01:35:56]  And then Qatar just kind of like dropped them as, you know, working with his firm.
[01:36:01]  But anyway, just trying to, this is a guy who is like at these meetings, right?
[01:36:07]  With Rob from Jane Street and Peter and like Gary.
[01:36:14]  So there doesn't seem to be any indication that the feds are going to charge Gary or Rob, certainly not Holtzman.
[01:36:22]  And that is like, it's obviously because they're fucking standing.
[01:36:26]  Like these guys were securing bridge financing for this whole thing.
[01:36:30]  For a fucking coup.
[01:36:32]  Yes.
[01:36:32]  And actually, I will say Peter's lawyers have pointed this out and are like, you're charging the two Africans, but not the guys who actually got secured the money.
[01:36:42]  Like, what the fuck?
[01:36:43]  Yeah, because these guys would not have been able to do this without bridge financing from via Gary Kasparov from Rob Gruneri of Jane Street Capital.
[01:36:54]  Yes.
[01:36:55]  So all of the lawyers around Rob Grigneri have like basically said like, oh no, he got duped.
[01:37:03]  He was tricked.
[01:37:04]  He was bamboozled by the evil African.
[01:37:07]  I do not think that is what happened.
[01:37:09]  Me either.
[01:37:10]  I don't think it's what happened at all.
[01:37:11]  I think, I mean, listen, I feel like I know Peter.
[01:37:16]  Again, I have, there has not been an hour that has gone by that I haven't listened to Peter's voice in this past week.
[01:37:24]  I feel like Peter is a guy who just, you know, he's just a little frustrated.
[01:37:28]  And it's one of these, these, these guys like Gary, these guys like Rob manipulating him in the fucking Midtown Kava to be like, we got to go with Abraham Keach's plan and we got to get these fucking AKs.
[01:37:39]  We're going to give you millions of dollars.
[01:37:41]  So regardless, somewhere around a week after the meeting, the last meeting, four wire transfers totaling $2 million land in an account that undercover agents control.
[01:37:53]  So Peter tells them that they have to spread out the payments to avoid bank review, which is true.
[01:37:58]  You can't, you know, the banks will flag shit.
[01:38:01]  So with the first wires already in, Peter and Abe, they fly to Phoenix and that's when they sample a bunch of the wares.
[01:38:10]  They sign two documents.
[01:38:12]  Now, the first one is a real close to $4 million weapons contract.
[01:38:18]  And we were looking at this and it's pretty, I mean, I want to talk about this real quick.
[01:38:24]  The prices are good.
[01:38:25]  Very fair.
[01:38:26]  I mean, AK prices in the U.S. have gone up astronomically in like the past 15 years.
[01:38:32]  They're saying a thousand AKs, which is really not that many, for $350 each.
[01:38:37]  I don't know if those are modern.
[01:38:38]  I mean, obviously AK-47s, not like, like there's obviously way more modern iterations of the AK rifle.
[01:38:46]  Maybe those are newer ones, but $350 each, $350 each.
[01:38:52]  That's a good fucking price.
[01:38:53]  I know you're buying in bulk, but I'm like, dude, turn that around and resell that because you could be making like 800 bucks off those fucking AKs per Peter.
[01:39:02]  Forget the coup.
[01:39:04]  300, what are called PKM rifles, which is, no, a PKM is a machine gun.
[01:39:09]  I've used a PKM.
[01:39:11]  That's like the classic sort of Soviet machine gun.
[01:39:14]  $675 each.
[01:39:16]  Again, these are incredible prices.
[01:39:18]  200 RPGs, 575 an RPG.
[01:39:25]  That's crazy.
[01:39:25]  It's really good.
[01:39:27]  Now we've got.
[01:39:28]  We got to hook ourselves up with these feds.
[01:39:30]  I mean, I'm saying at that price, you're losing money not buying it.
[01:39:33]  You should.
[01:39:34]  This is a good deal.
[01:39:36]  Okay, I'm sorry.
[01:39:38]  That's how they got them.
[01:39:39]  But it's like they underpriced them to, you know.
[01:39:42]  You know, part of me does suspect that the prices that the Homeland Security Undercovers were offering were so good that they were tempting because there are parts of the charging documents where they're like, they're saying that Keech and Peter are talking about maybe talking to some other supplier.
[01:39:58]  And I'm wondering if they're like, we can get it for you cheaper.
[01:40:00]  See, this is a great example of how the federal government can come in and actually set a price to really get a market under control.
[01:40:09]  Yes.
[01:40:09]  No, it's and they're talking about, I'm not done yet.
[01:40:12]  They're talking about what else they got here.
[01:40:15]  They're offering a bunch of, you know, a couple million rounds of 7.62 by 39, 17 cents a piece, 7.62 by 54.
[01:40:23]  I don't know.
[01:40:24]  I have only had an AR in the U.S.
[01:40:27]  I don't know how much 7.62 ammo is here per round.
[01:40:30]  Obviously, that sounds pretty cheap.
[01:40:31]  You're buying bulk.
[01:40:32]  A bunch of high explosive rounds, $600 each.
[01:40:37]  That's a lot.
[01:40:39]  70 PSL sniper rifles.
[01:40:41]  Now, those are, I'm going to make a rude joke at PSL's expense, but I'll, you know, they've had a tough time lately.
[01:40:49]  Those are just like SVDs, which I've also used.
[01:40:52]  Those are $1,092 each.
[01:40:55]  And then a bunch of satellite phones, hand grenades, $60 each for the M67 hand grenades.
[01:41:00]  The Stingers are 80K.
[01:41:02]  The Stingers are going to be expensive.
[01:41:04]  The Stingers are going to be expensive because there's systems, right?
[01:41:07]  And there's a whole thing.
[01:41:08]  There's a whole thing with that.
[01:41:10]  A bunch of radios too, which and sat phones.
[01:41:14]  Do you see though at the bottom of this invoice?
[01:41:18]  So it's subtotaled out.
[01:41:21]  And then there's a fee attached to it that just says transportation.
[01:41:24]  That's $575,000.
[01:41:27]  Yeah.
[01:41:27]  Yeah.
[01:41:28]  It's a lot.
[01:41:28]  I mean, they also, I want to mention too, Night Vision.
[01:41:32]  They're only ordering 10 Night Vision monoculars for $12,000 each.
[01:41:37]  Dude, that's not that good of a price.
[01:41:39]  I mean, I don't know.
[01:41:40]  I have limited experience using Night Vision.
[01:41:43]  I only used, I mean, are they monoculars?
[01:41:46]  I mean, no, it can't be.
[01:41:47]  I'm wondering if it's a benefit.
[01:41:49]  I don't know, you know?
[01:41:50]  Yeah, monocular.
[01:41:51]  I've used night vision monoculars.
[01:41:53]  That's like you're looking through it with your hand.
[01:41:56]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:41:57]  Like, it's not like the motherfuckers you flip down.
[01:41:59]  Maybe it is, but the ones that I've, the monoculars that I've used are like handheld.
[01:42:03]  They look like, you know, almost like little camcorders or something.
[01:42:07]  And it's like, you kind of just use that to scout rather than to, you know, you can't really use that in a gun at the same time.
[01:42:12]  Anyways.
[01:42:13]  But yeah, I want to go back because that's $575,000 transportation fee that they tacked on.
[01:42:18]  That's them paying themselves, just to be clear.
[01:42:20]  That's what's happening.
[01:42:21]  Okay.
[01:42:22]  Now, there is a second fake contract that they create totaling the same amount.
[01:42:29]  And this is for the humanitarian whatever.
[01:42:31]  This is the line item.
[01:42:33]  One, consulting services to develop security provisions for field activities related to human rights, comma, humanitarian, comma, and civic engagement inside South Sudan refugee camps billed at $1 million.
[01:42:47]  Two, items required to implement activities associated with contingency refugee operations, parentheses, to include but not limited to initial site surveys, communications equipment for associated personnel, access control equipment, perimeter fencing, traffic control equipment, fire suppression prevention equipment, et cetera, billed at $1 million.

=== Stupid Contracts Scheme (06:48) ===

[01:43:08]  Three, shipping, installation, and training of systems and equipment, billing at 1.972975.
[01:43:18]  I mean, it's just like one of the worst fake invoices I've ever seen.
[01:43:22]  But here's the thing that I think.
[01:43:24]  If Peter is coming up with this, he's seen all this shit before.
[01:43:28]  So maybe this is really as like, this is how bad the fake invoices for this kind of shit look.
[01:43:36]  Yeah.
[01:43:36]  I mean, it's, it's, it's funny because like you probably could, there's so much aid waste and malfeasance that you probably could kind of get away with this if you weren't using.
[01:43:48]  No, I think they would.
[01:43:50]  I mean, I think that this is like unremarkable.
[01:43:52]  It's just hilarious to read it out loud.
[01:43:55]  Totally.
[01:43:55]  Now, there's other cash involved.
[01:43:57]  As people probably know, true and on rule, you always take care of your guys.
[01:44:00]  Always take care of your guys.
[01:44:01]  So Abe says that he got 50K and then he says he got another 225K through the same U.S., like intermediary U.S. account that was sending it to the undercover arms dealers.
[01:44:15]  He forwarded that first payment, 50K, to the generals on the ground in South Sudan.
[01:44:20]  So he kept the 225K for himself.
[01:44:22]  Respect.
[01:44:24]  Anyway, the feds like find, you know, all of this goes through and the feds finally file, you know, they filed a complaint in late February.
[01:44:33]  And then both Peter and Abe are arrested 24 hours later.
[01:44:37]  So none of this shit gets off the ground.
[01:44:39]  No.
[01:44:40]  Abe was picked up with six bags packed for an evening flight to Uganda.
[01:44:45]  He had five pairs of high-powered binoculars and like full military style kit on him.
[01:44:50]  And then he like confirmed later in an interview with cops that like the weapons were meant to quote support a coup.
[01:44:58]  Okay.
[01:44:59]  Let's be honest there.
[01:45:00]  Not something you want to say.
[01:45:02]  And then Peter was arrested in his home in Maryland.
[01:45:06]  The trial is set for November.
[01:45:09]  And there's just like a few parting interesting tidbits that I want to mention.
[01:45:14]  So the defense team is arguing something called the public authority defense.
[01:45:19]  And the basic idea is that the defendant argues, I can't be guilty because I thought I was acting with the blessing or at least the silent approval of the U.S. government.
[01:45:29]  So the defendants then have to produce credible evidence of authorization.
[01:45:33]  And then once they do, prosecutors have to disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
[01:45:38]  Yeah.
[01:45:39]  Which is interesting.
[01:45:40]  So it only works if the official authority has like power to authorize the act.
[01:45:45]  So you can't be like just some guy in government or like some like affiliated office.
[01:45:51]  Yeah.
[01:45:51]  So they are trying to say like the State Department knew and was, you know. supporting it.
[01:45:59]  And this would be because to the time period when Abraham and Peter were arrested, this would be like Biden-Trump era.
[01:46:08]  I mean, mostly Biden era.
[01:46:09]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:46:10]  So their lawyers have come out and said that like U.S. officials were aware of and tacitly supported the plan to replace the South Sudan's government.
[01:46:21]  I'm like, I wonder if, because China has like, China, I think is one of their main trading partners has like kind of close relationships with the government.
[01:46:28]  I think they have some of the oil concessions there.
[01:46:30]  Yeah.
[01:46:30]  I'm wondering if this was like.
[01:46:32]  Well, I'm sure.
[01:46:33]  And Peter is this like famous dissident.
[01:46:36]  Like it makes sense.
[01:46:37]  It makes sense.
[01:46:38]  Now, the State Department says no fucking way.
[01:46:40]  We don't know this guy.
[01:46:42]  But Peter says he pitched the reconstruction plan to State Department officials.
[01:46:48]  And prosecutors admit there was a meeting, but they say that they refuse to bankroll, quote, any non-democratic regime change.
[01:46:56]  But is that something they say officially, but then they're like wink wink?
[01:46:59]  Or like, what's going on here?
[01:47:01]  Well, I mean, let's let's pull back for a second.
[01:47:04]  The State Department is not, I mean, maybe they will, but I have my doubts that the State Department of 2023 is going to let this guy walk in and be like, yes, you have our full support for a coup in South Department.
[01:47:18]  No, of course.
[01:47:19]  They have to have, they have to say like deniability there, right?
[01:47:23]  There has to be euphemisms used.
[01:47:25]  There has to be.
[01:47:26]  Many bridge financing.
[01:47:27]  You need bridge financing for, you know, democratic reconstruction in, you know, in this whatever, whatever state.
[01:47:34]  Like that's the kind of stuff that you're saying there.
[01:47:37]  You know, you need a conflict resolution to this conflict zone.
[01:47:40]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:47:41]  Yes.
[01:47:42]  And so it could be a case where everybody's using so many euphemisms that the meeting, nobody could even tell you what it's about.
[01:47:49]  But I have my doubts that this would happen in an official meeting in the State Department where they'd be like, I mean, I'm not saying that wouldn't happen with maybe somebody else, but with a guy like Peter who doesn't have, you know, his chances, it's kind of a coin flip there, right?
[01:48:04]  Not really even a coin flip.
[01:48:05]  It's like, it's not too.
[01:48:07]  I don't know.
[01:48:07]  We've backed crazier things before.
[01:48:09]  I know, but I'm like, did they also, did they sick HSI on him after that?
[01:48:13]  I don't know.
[01:48:14]  I mean, look, there's a couple things to mention, which is like also the fact that Holtzman and they're meeting at these like DC law firm offices, you know, these big law firms.
[01:48:25]  Like that's fucking weird.
[01:48:27]  Yeah.
[01:48:29]  They also say that Rob Grigneri thought he was backing a U.S. approved transition effort, not an illicit arms deal, which also would make more sense.
[01:48:38]  Yeah.
[01:48:39]  Because I don't think you give bridge financing.
[01:48:44]  I think this guy is like, he, no, I don't think that he would just be like, yeah, for a coup, it's got to have, again, some euphemisms.
[01:48:51]  And the State Department is backing it and it's safe.
[01:48:54]  You know what I mean?
[01:48:55]  Like all of this stuff.
[01:48:58]  So now they're asking for State Department cables, emails, meeting notes, anything that would touch any discussions of regime change ops in South Sudan from October 2023 to the present day.
[01:49:10]  That's very interesting.
[01:49:11]  They're also asking for CIA operational and analytic files reflecting contacts with Peter, Abe, and all of their military allies.
[01:49:22]  Also very, very interesting.
[01:49:24]  Now, the feds have come out and said that's all classified.
[01:49:26]  Of course.
[01:49:28]  And so all of this remains in limbo whether or not any of it's going to come out.
[01:49:33]  Peter or any of your legal team that's listening to this, you're, you know, you're on your, you know, I'll say a lot of people smuggle cell phones into jail.
[01:49:40]  Peter, with your background at Harvard and the World Bank, you might be using that cell phone to listen to podcasts.
[01:49:48]  Your legal team, hit us up because I want to see these files too.
[01:49:51]  Leak, maybe?
[01:49:52]  Well, don't leak.
[01:49:53]  We don't leak.
[01:49:53]  We're not journalists.
[01:49:54]  We're comedians.
[01:49:55]  And all this obviously is alleged.

=== Hidden Costs and Meetings (02:24) ===

[01:49:57]  But I'm curious too to see how this went down because Peter does not strike me as somebody who is totally stupid and in over, I mean, he's in over his head, but he doesn't seem stupid.
[01:50:11]  And he's a little more, I mean, it doesn't seem a little naive in some parts, but I think that there maybe is something to his defense there.
[01:50:21]  Now, I want to do a little bit of a coup review breakdown here.
[01:50:24]  And this one's pretty easy because, frankly, nowhere.
[01:50:28]  Your plans were not good.
[01:50:31]  The plans to get arms maybe could have been done better if they were through an actual real arms dealer and not undercover security at home and one of your big problems here is searching for arms within the U.S.
[01:50:50]  And I get that you live here.
[01:50:51]  I get that you're institutionalist.
[01:50:52]  I get that you have a house.
[01:50:54]  You know, you're living in Maryland.
[01:50:55]  You're, you know, Keech is out in the shop local.
[01:50:58]  Yeah, I get you're a locavor, but, you know, maybe let's take some, maybe let's take a trip to the Djibouti.
[01:51:05]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:51:06]  Maybe let's take a trip to Libya.
[01:51:08]  Maybe let's set up some fucking, you know, some meetings with some other people in these countries.
[01:51:13]  Check out Mombasa.
[01:51:14]  Check out Mombasa and try to get your arms on the black market there.
[01:51:19]  Obviously, you've been offered a great price here.
[01:51:21]  And this is something I really, I think a lot of people understand implicitly, but maybe not.
[01:51:27]  If the price is too good to be true, you really, really want to want to maybe take a step back and consider.
[01:51:34]  You know, it's a thousand AKs for $350 a piece seems really fucking good.
[01:51:39]  And I'm just saying that should have been one of your big red flags there.
[01:51:42]  Those AKs also, I get, you could have gotten those in Africa.
[01:51:46]  I'm sorry, you could get new AKs in Africa.
[01:51:48]  The Stingers, I understand.
[01:51:49]  You've got to search for, you know, in other markets for that, maybe, or at least a bunch of Stingers at the same time.
[01:51:55]  It's still, it was a big, it's a big problem to be doing in the U.S. Because unless you have explicit support, they could still, you know, you guys are being sloppy.
[01:52:05]  You guys are doing this kind of like, you're having these meetings in the Kava, you know, you're the sweet green over the kombucha and talking about this.
[01:52:12]  We, we need you to be doing this in in Kazakhstan.
[01:52:16]  Yeah, plus, you know, get a price like that.
[01:52:19]  You know, there's a hidden cost.
[01:52:20]  There's a hidden cost.

=== Coup Reveal: Zero Out of 10 (01:19) ===

[01:52:21]  And so this is, of course, a zero out of 10 coup, right?
[01:52:24]  Well, it didn't happen.
[01:52:25]  It didn't happen.
[01:52:26]  And that's what I'm saying.
[01:52:27]  But it did have Gary Kasparov involved.
[01:52:30]  It had the potential to be.
[01:52:32]  And honestly, I don't know what his forced disposition on the ground is like.
[01:52:37]  We have the making here of a coup that could work.
[01:52:40]  We have generals potentially on your side.
[01:52:43]  Maybe even your dad.
[01:52:44]  We don't know.
[01:52:45]  Maybe your fucking father-in-law.
[01:52:47]  We don't know.
[01:52:48]  That would be good.
[01:52:49]  But we have generals on your side.
[01:52:52]  They take over.
[01:52:53]  And then, yeah, we have a classic coup situation where you're in your civilian coalition with a bunch of military men and they're going to coup you.
[01:52:59]  And then we're delaying the elections for another 10 years.
[01:53:02]  But yeah, I mean, you could have had something great here, but you know what?
[01:53:07]  You were too, your eyes were set too close to home.
[01:53:24]  Well, I think that was a pretty good edition of Coup Reveal.
[01:53:26]  Me too.
[01:53:27]  Yeah.
[01:53:27]  And I hope we never have to do another one.
[01:53:29]  I hope there's no more.
[01:53:30]  Well, I hope there's a couple more coups, but only in countries that I decide.
[01:53:33]  Until then, I'm Liz.
[01:53:35]  My name is Colonel Belden.
[01:53:37]  I'm Producer Young Chomsky.
[01:53:39]  And this has been Druinan.
[01:53:40]  We'll see you next time.