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Interview: Jirias Going In-Depth with mUsa: HIP HOP, RADICALISM, PROPAGANDA & MORE

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We have something special for you all today! We have an in-depth interview between two future pillars of the hip-hop industry, on the verge of making a difference in the world, and they have quite a bit in common, to say the least!

This interview was conducted by, George Fakes, who goes by the stage name Jirias. Jirias is a Palestinian-American rapper & writer based out of New Jersey who weaves in references of his Palestinian heritage into his music. Jirias is also a long-time blogger who is well connected with various multimedia platforms and independent blogs.

mUsa is a Pakistani-American artist, also based out of New Jersey, who brings musical innovation and political engagement to the table. As a first-generation immigrant, mUsa brings a unique perspective in today’s casually racist world. Incorporating revolutionary thought into his music as well as his writings, mUsa brings an entirely unique perspective to today’s world.

Below you will find several selections of transcripts from the original audio interview. You can find a link to mUsa’s work at the bottom of this piece.

Jirias: I’ve seen some of your articles, tell us a little about that. You do political stuff in music, but you manage to keep it separate as well in your writing, can you go into that?

mUsa: I started a website entitled 7th international. I created the platform to proliferate revolutionary thought and action by covering selected political & historical topics. This platform is the farthest thing from CNN or FOX. I also keep this platform separate from my music. I’m not really trying to put myself and my name out there through the website.

Jirias: What type of sources do you look for in arguments? What do you look for?

mUsa: I read a lot of books, meaning a lot of first hand & second-hand sources. Theoretical, historical and political works; never fiction. I like reading my news from the global south, as they are viciously slandered by western imperialists. I can see the inherent bias in most western news sources, which I still keep up to date with despite the obvious lack of accuracy. I don’t like Al Jazeera  because it is run by the Qatari government, who supports US imperialism in Syria. How could I read about Syrian news from an outlet that seeks to imperialize said country?

Jirias: Does this type of knowledge, when you have a factually based opinion on a country, does it distort all the news you hear from that source?

mUsa: You are just falling for propaganda by adhering to western imperialist sources. The public should know that almost all news sources in America are owned by the same company and most are owned by the same man; Rupert Murdoch. Fight against propaganda.

Jirias: We have previously been talking about Radical Islam, how it affects society and how people who live as Muslim Americans. What are your thoughts?

mUsa: Radical islam isn’t a real thing, it is a made up term by the west. If you want to talk about Islam you need to take a look at the history. There was no such thing as islamic extremism, in the modern sense, until the last 200 years.  That was a manifestation of imperialism and specifically western-backed ideology of wahhabism. If you go 1000 years back the moors in Africa, you will find a muslim woman actually created the first university known to the world. People in universities now use that platform to slander Muslims without even knowing the first universities were started by Muslims. It is a direct manifestation of western imperialism. All that knowledge has been taken away from us, they don’t want people to know that history because their system is built upon ignorance.

Jiras: There are generations of people and cultures that people ignore. People don’t realize we live in the tiniest percentage of human history.

mUsa: History repeats itself, you can’t visualize a cycle without a complete understanding of history. You can’t move forward without breaking the cycle.

Jirias: What do you think about the idea of history repeating itself?

mUsa: I believe it. As someone who studies history, patterns can be identified and accurately analyzed. You can’t really deny it.

Jirias: Do you think there is room for forgiveness?

mUsa: No. When it comes to Trump, Obama, etc. I don’t think there is room for anything but the complete destruction of those ideas and the people behind them. Those who have destroyed & raped the global south will have to atone for their complicity in genocide, imperialism and colonization. If people realize their errors and fight for revolution only then can they be forgiven through action. Going forward we must eradicate liberalism because it is not conducive to progress. The ideology of Gandhi is actually the exact opposite of revolutionary, there is no room in my heart for forgiveness for those who are responsible for sustaining hundreds of millions of deaths.

Jirias: It’s not really beneficial to always forgive people, like Kanye tweeted picture of the surgeon who essentially killed his mom, like you don’t need to love that guy.

mUsa: I don’t hate anyone. Love comes in different forms, that’s what many don’t realize. Revolutionary violence is actually an act of love, it is a manifestation of love for their people. Love isn’t just what you think it is, they want love to be a conformist idea that doesn’t threaten the system. For them, Love is only something that doesn’t threaten their existence. In reality, Love is the greatest revolutionary force this world has ever seen. A true revolutionary acts upon Love and Love only.

Jirias: Touching on the topic of radicalism again, what distinguishes a radical Islamist thinker from a violent westernized idea of an Islamist terrorist?

mUsa: I would consider myself a Radical Muslim thinker. What I mean by radical is that I want to change society in a revolutionary way, not by working within an oppressive system. We need radical change, we need to make change right now. We can’t wait hundreds of years before we start to give rights to the poor, the minorities and women. We can’t wait hundreds of years before we start to ease our impact on the environment; we literally don’t have that much time before the earth will be unsustainable for the global population. Everything is falling apart, we can’t just wait for things to happen. Radicals believe in destroying and freeing people from oppression while liberals believe in letting everything happen because they are too comfortable benefitting from an oppressive system.

Jirias: Where do you see your music and political aspirations coming together?

mUsa: I believe a political revolution can’t happen without a cultural revolution. The people need to be behind any revolution otherwise it will just be more of the same elitism. I personally believe that, due to systematic infiltration, Hip Hop has become another corporate tool of oppression. I’m not trying to sound like an old head. My music is never boom bap or reliant upon older hip hop aesthetics. All my music is forward thinking; both sonically and thematically. We need to change culture before the system. That is what I am currently doing with my music, my art and my writings. I’m not the only one, there will be others as well. But personally that’s what I’m striving for.

Jirias: You seem to be big on freestyling. You bring a different energy to the mic, do you wanna talk about that? In terms of the rappers I’ve worked with, there is a difference in your energy.

mUsa: Personally what drives me is expression, I couldn’t express myself growing up because I was a first generation immigrant. I felt the need to be heard, even if it’s just some on some light shit. I Express my emotions as raw as possible, without censoring cause fuck it. What I say is my expression. I paint too, I’m not very particular, my main form of expression is just raw. Going with the flow. Wherever the energy takes me I go.

Jirias: A lot of people are looking at places like Fox News, but they have no sources to look up. What do you think of sources?

mUsa: Too many people don’t use sources and people just eat it up just because it’s CNN. People think they have an illusion of free choice with all the different news channels. No, they are just different shades of bullshit. That’s what I call them, different shades of bullshit. It’s propaganda. Most of these news channels don’t even have proper sources and regularly are found to be 100% inaccurate.

Jirias: Alright thank you, any other topics you want to talk about?

mUsa: I’m about to drop hella music. I got this song I just dropped called “Please Shut The Fuck Up.” It’s fire. I talk about Syria, I already knew shit was happening before Trump so the timing of the release is extremely important as the bombings happened after I recorded the song. But you can still bump that shit in the whip with the windows down this summer. You aren’t gonna bump it like “oh shit, this is political shit.” A lot of people who don’t agree with my views will still bump my music and might not even recognize I have political messages, which is why I made the site.

 

You can follow Musa at:

https://soundcloud.com/king-mansa-musa

https://www.instagram.com/king_mansa_musa/

Twitter

Spotify

https://www.youtube.com/user/MystMusa

 

You can follow Jirias at:

https://www.instagram.com/george.fakes/

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrGeoFake

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AFRICA

The UK paid Rwanda an additional $126 million for the contested migrant plan.

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As the tab for Britain’s controversial proposal to relocate asylum seekers to the East African nation continues to increase, the United Kingdom paid Rwanda an extra 100 million pounds ($126 million) in April. This was in addition to the 140 million pounds it had already provided Rwanda.

Even though the Rwanda project is at the core of the policy that British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is employing to discourage illegal immigration, there have been no individuals sent to Rwanda as of yet due to legal challenges that have taken place since the initiative was introduced in 2022.

After Sunak’s immigration minister resigned this week, the polarizing policy is now regarded as a danger to Sunak’s leadership, which is anticipated to be challenged in the election that will take place the following year.

According to a letter that the British Ministry of the Interior issued on Thursday, the United Kingdom plans to give Rwanda fifty million pounds in addition to the 240 million pounds it has already provided to the East African nation.

The opposition Labour Party criticized the disclosures regarding the rising cost of a scheme that legal experts warned could collapse. Some parliamentarians within Sunak’s party are also expected to express their disapproval of the idea.

A statement by Yvette Cooper, the shadow interior minister for the Labour Party, on social networking site X, said, “Britain cannot afford more of this costly Tory chaos and farce.”

On Friday, however, the newly appointed minister for legal migration, Tom Pursglove, explained what he called the “investment” of 240 million pounds. He stated that once the Rwanda policy was operational, it would reduce the money spent on hosting asylum-seekers in the United Kingdom.

“When you consider that we are unacceptably spending 8 million pounds a day in the asylum system at the moment, it is a key part of our strategy to bring those costs down,” Pursglove explained to Sky News.

Pursglove stated that the money donated to Rwanda would assist in the country’s economic growth and help get the asylum relationship with the United Kingdom up and running.

There was no connection between the money sent to Rwanda and the treaty that the two nations signed on Tuesday, according to the letter from the Ministry of the Interior.

The treaty aims to respond to a ruling by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which stated that the deportation plan would contravene local laws based on international human rights standards.

“The Government of Rwanda did not ask for any payment in order for a Treaty to be signed, nor was any offered,” according to the correspondence.

After Robert Jenrick resigned from his position as immigration minister on Wednesday, Sunak made a plea to fellow Conservative parliamentarians on Thursday to come together in support of his Rwanda proposal. He stated that the emergency legislation the government had drafted to get the scheme up and running did not go far enough.

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AFRICA

UK interior minister travels to Rwanda to resurrect asylum plan.

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On Tuesday, the Minister of the Interior of the United Kingdom, James Cleverly, came to Rwanda to sign a new treaty. This was done to circumvent a court judgment that blocked the government’s contentious policy of transferring asylum seekers to the East African nation.

The Rwandan plan is at the core of the government’s attempt to reduce migration, and it is being closely monitored by other nations who are considered to be considering policies that are comparable to Rwanda’s.

In a decision handed down a month ago, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom stated that such a move would violate international human rights norms embedded in domestic legislation.

Following the decision, the United Kingdom has been making efforts to revise its agreement with Rwanda to incorporate a legally binding treaty that guarantees Rwanda would not remove asylum seekers brought there by the United Kingdom. This is one of the primary concerns of the court.

Several attorneys and charitable organizations have said that it is highly improbable that deportation flights will begin before the election. With a lead of more than ten percentage points in the polls, the opposition Labour Party intends to abandon the Rwanda policy if it is victorious.

A meeting between Cleverly, who arrived in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, on Tuesday morning, and Vincent Biruta, the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, is scheduled to take place to sign the agreement.

“Rwanda cares deeply about the rights of refugees, and I look forward to meeting with counterparts to sign this agreement and further discuss how we work together to tackle the global challenge of illegal migration,” Cleverly says.

The United Kingdom aims to transfer thousands of asylum seekers who came to its beaches without authorization to Rwanda under the plan that was agreed upon the previous year. This discourages migrants from crossing the Channel from Europe in tiny boats.

In exchange, Rwanda has been given an initial payment of 140 million pounds, equivalent to 180 million dollars, along with the promise of additional funds to cover the costs of housing and medical treatment for any deported persons.

THE PRESSURE
A great deal of pressure is being put on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to reduce net migration, which reached a record high of 745 thousand people in the previous year, with the vast majority of migrants entering through legal channels.

“Stop the boats” is one of the five goals that Sunak has set for his government. The influx of asylum seekers who pay people smugglers for their crossings of the Channel, which frequently take place in boats that are overloaded and not seaworthy, is one of the aims that Sunak has set.

The Supreme Court determined that the Rwanda plan should not be implemented because there was a possibility that refugees who were deported would have their claims incorrectly evaluated or that they would be sent back to their country of origin to suffer persecution.

In the latter part of this week, it is anticipated that the new treaty will be followed by the release of legislation declaring Rwanda a so-called safe nation. This law is intended to prevent legal challenges against the planned deportation flights.

Despite this, this will probably result in a fresh set of political and legal difficulties.

An immigration attorney at Harbottle & Lewis named Sarah Gogan stated that the government’s policy will be challenged due to Rwanda’s history of violations of human rights provisions.

“Rwanda is an unsafe country and this is not a quick fix,” added the politician. “You cannot in a matter of weeks or months reform a country and turn it into one with an impartial judiciary and administrative culture.”

Another “gimmick” was what Yvette Cooper, the spokesperson for the Labour Party’s home affairs department, called the most recent measures proposed by the administration.

Whether or not to design the law in a way that would avoid subsequent legal challenges is still up for debate by the administration.

Several members of the Conservative Party in parliament are putting pressure on the government to incorporate a “notwithstanding” clause into Rwanda’s policy. This clause would disapprove the domestic and international human rights commitments of the United Kingdom regarding Rwanda.

However, some politicians within the ruling party, such as Robert Buckland, have stated that such a move would be “foolish” and undermine the Good Friday Agreement, which is primarily responsible for ending three decades of carnage in Northern Ireland. This is because the European Convention on Human Rights supports the treaty.

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AFRICA

Madagascar leader wins presidential vote, constitutional court says

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On Friday, the High Constitutional Court of Madagascar certified Andry Rajoelina, the current President of Madagascar, to be the victor of the election a month ago, essentially granting him a third term in office.

Following the dismissal of several challenges submitted against the preliminary results by the electoral board, the court said that Rajoelina collected 58.96% of the votes that were cast.

Florent Rakotoarisoa, the chairman of the High constitutional court, stated that “Andry Rajoelina is elected as the president of the republic of Madagascar and is taking his functions as soon as the swearing (is conducted) comes to an end.”

The rejected challenge was submitted by the politician Siteny Randrianasoloniaiko, who received 14.39% of the vote, according to the court. This was one of the challenges that was denied.

Ten of the thirteen candidates chose not to participate in the election; nevertheless, their names were already on the ballot, so they could still divide the remaining votes. The court reported that the turnout was 46.35 percent.

The election on November 16 was preceded by weeks of demonstrations, during which the opposition accused Rajoelina of having fostered conditions that were unjust to the election.

The charges that the vote was rigged have been refuted by Rajoelina, and the army has issued a warning against any attempts to destabilize the country.

As far as the opposition is concerned, the voter turnout for the election was the lowest it has ever been in the country’s history.

Hajo Andrianainarivelo, a former minister who was one of the candidates who chose to abstain from voting, has committed to fight against what he has described as a lack of respect for the rules of the state and the tyranny of the people.

“The popular fight begins now,” he declared on Thursday referring to the ongoing conflict.

Rajoelina, now 49 years old, initially won power in a coup in 2009. After resigning from his position as the head of a transitional authority in 2014, he went on to win another election in 2018 and regain his position as president.

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