 and the Benjamin co-founder of Code Pink. This will be a terrific show on using the sanctions on Venezuela with background and a capital calling emailing party to wrap up our Zoom. And we hope all of you will stay with us until the end because the action is such an essential part. First I wanted to share some updates. Medea, do you have any updates? Well, on Iran, there was a letter that came out today from a 140 members of Congress by partisan. Well, don't look so happy, Marcy. It's a bad one. Half Democrat, half Republican. And it was saying that the Iran nuclear deal has to be stronger and more comprehensive. And it was basically going against Biden's, the call to get right back into the deal with no preconditions. So that's bad. And there's even a worse one that's gonna be coming out by Menendez very soon from the Senate. So we are pushing back against those by contacting the Democrats who signed on and say, why the heck are you sabotaging your own presidents return to a nuclear deal that was working. And then on the positive side, the head of, I think it was the foreign minister of Ireland went to Iran to meet with Rouhani, the president there and talk about what they could do to get this deal going again. And that's kind of an end run around the British and the French who are really not helping very much to get the deal back in both countries back into compliance. So that's a good thing. So anyway, it's just a constant manipulations and it turns out that these two letters, ones that were signed by the in the house and coming out in the Senate were orchestrated by APAC, the Israeli, well, the US lobby group that's pro-Israeli government. So we have a lot of work to do to push back. Absolutely. Thank you. Hania, do you have anything? Absolutely. So we have been working on a petition in collaboration with Hassan El Tayyip who's the legislative manager for Middle East policy for France committee on national legislation. And we are telling the Biden administration to lift sanctions for COVID relief. I know we've talked about this, but this on our previous calls before, but this petition will be launched, hopefully by next week or possibly even sooner. So we are looking for organizations to help us co-sponsor and get the word out. Obviously, the more signatures we have on this, the better I'll share our form with you all. So whoever has an organization that wants to join and partner with us, you're more than welcome to. Well, pretty much what we're asking, President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Chief of Staff Ron Klein, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Janet Yellen, who is the Secretary of Treasury and Secretary of Commerce, Romando to do is to issue worldwide temporary general licenses to allow countries and locations sanctions by the US to receive the aid in relation to medicine and medical supplies and vaccines during COVID. And some of the countries that we're very concerned about and not limited to happen to be Iran, obviously, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, Sudan, Zimbabwe. And so we're hoping to again, push for as many signatures as we can and go from there. But that's all I have and I'll hand it back to you. Thank you, Maria. I wanted to state us on, let's see, the AUMF, there are two bills that have been introduced, one in the House, obviously one in the Senate to repeal the AUMF. And Biden has said that he is open to doing that. How seriously we take him at his word is another issue, but we do wanna support any effort to repeal it. We have a new portal at Codepin Congress. If you go to our site, it's a toolkit and it lists some of the legislation that we are following. So I invite you all to look at that and we'll probably share more of that with you next call. I also wanted to mention that in terms of the drone strikes, you know, they increased exponentially under Trump, although he told the CIA not to report civilian casualties or even the number of drone strikes. So there was no transparency. And now apparently Biden has told the CIA that we must be much more careful about this. And all authorizations must go through Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor to Biden. What else? Blinken leaked a memo that he wants to restart peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan. And there was the Washington Post story that emphasized that Mala Harris, our vice president, was in the situation room when the decision was made to bomb Syria and that she was the one in the Washington Post words who crystallized the need for action. So let's keep that in mind as we go forward. We have our special co-host tonight, Michelle Elner. Michelle, I want to say a quick hello. Yeah, I just want to thank you all for being here. My name is Michelle Elner. I am a Venezuelan American and one of the coordinators for the Latin American team at Code Pink. Terrific. And we're going to introduce you further in a minute. First, I wanted to thank a couple of people who have spread the word about Code Pink Congress. And then we're going to show a video that Michelle produced. She's incredibly talented. I don't know if you saw the video we did on Victoria Newland, but that was Michelle's work. I wrote the script, but she produced it. All right, so I want to thank Alan Minsky, a progressive Democrats of America, PDA. Let's everyone know before each Zoom call what we're up to and invites people to join us. So thank you, Alan Minsky and PDA. I want to thank Eric Mann, who just hosted a terrific show on Pacifica's network and we'll send out the link on the Google group and we have it interviewing Leo and myself and strategizing with us about how to get these sanctions lifted. Additionally, I want to thank Rachel Brunke and Frank Doral. They are organizing the Cold War Truth Commission. Rachel, are you with us? Yes, you are. Rachel, why don't you go ahead and let us know a little bit about what you're organizing. Hi, great. Hi, Marcy. Hi. Hi, Mediah, hi, Leonardo. Yeah, so Sunday, March 21st, it's going to be pretty much an all-day event from one to seven, one to eight maybe Pacific time. We're going to be holding the Cold War Truth Commission and put, as we say, putting the Cold War on trial. And what we're saying is that we are calling the Cold War and its entirety the third great crime of American history after the enslavement of Africans and the people and the land stealing and genocide against Indians, that the Cold War is that big of a story and that it didn't end, it's not over and we're putting it on trial. So we're pretty excited with the response and Code Pink is going to thank you very much. I organize with Code Pink and San Pedro also. And the response has been pretty phenomenal. We're going to have many, as we're calling them, testifiers. Daniel Ellsberg will be coming on and testifying. Mediah will be testifying on Africa and the Cold War's thwarting of African liberation struggles. Kathy Kelly will be testifying. Brian Wilson, Ron Kovic, David Swanson, Norman Solomon, many others. I could go on in the list, but what I'll do is I'll put it in the chat and please join us because we're, might have time for public testimony, people coming on the call also, but we're going to be asking for testimony in the chat and of people's experience with the Cold War. So taking this one on. And lastly, just pretty exciting with Code Pink Congress is that we're asking everybody to, before they get on the call, before they come on to the event, to contact their congressperson. Let them know that they will be on this event, putting the Cold War on trial, asking for their congresspeople to either come or someone from the staff, but letting them know that if people are truly sincere about wanting to know what happened on January 6th and what is going on with our country, that we feel that this day will provide a lot of answers. So thank you. And once again, Rachel, what is the date of this Cold War through the mission? The date is Sunday, March 21st. Perfect. And I'll put it in the chat. Absolutely. And we'll continue to let people know about the event. And while you're on the subject of congressmembers, I do want to urge everyone, I imagine most of us know who our representative is, but some may not. You may have just moved or whatever. So please find out who is your congressperson, if you do not know, and also find out who is the person at that congressmember's office and at your senator's offices who deals with foreign policy, try to establish a relationship with that person. Also, I wanted to encourage anybody who lives in very nexus district or in Menendez's state of New Jersey, please email me if you wanna get involved. We need you with us at the grassroots level. Marcy, M-A-R-C-Y at CodePink.org. All right, let's go to the video of that Michelle Elner, our co-host tonight, produced about Venezuela to give us a little bit of background before we listen to our speakers. So Mary, if you could pull up that video, that'd be terrific. Sorry, one second. All right. I always forget to do share with sound. We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option. All options are on the table. All options are on the table. So after Socialist President Hugo Chavez took office, the U.S. began promoting routine change in Venezuela. For over a decade, the U.S. government has imposed over 150 unilateral coercive measures, also known as sanctions. Union across sanctions, blockheads and embargoes have a long-standing history. Spoiler alert, they don't work. In 2015, the Obama administration laid down the groundwork for a financial blockade against Venezuela, with an executive order declaring Venezuela an unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States. Venezuela, a threat to the largest superpower on Earth. Really. Then, just six months after Trump took office, he went beyond Obama's measure by sanctioning the Venezuelan government, the state oil company Pedevesa, and its U.S. affiliate Citgo. In April 2019, the U.S. State Department published and then deleted a fact sheet. Both of it had cost 763,000 barrels per day cut in oil production. Economist Francisco Rodriguez estimates that the 2017 sanctions cost the Venezuelan government $17 billion a year in lost oil revenues, and that this year's oil sanctions will cost an additional $10 billion. Sanctions is the strongest and most credible explanation for this behavior and the production of Venezuelan oil. By strangling the state-run oil sector and by freezing the government's foreign assets, the country loses its capability to obtain the foreign currency needed to import food and medicine. Then, on August 5th, 2019, the Trump administration imposed a total economic embargo against the Venezuelan government, freezing all its assets and prohibiting transactions with it. In addition, Trump, Pence, and Pompeo have all threatened military actions against Venezuela. Yes, of course, you heard. US officials say that the sanctions are not meant to hurt the Venezuelan people and that there are exceptions for food and medicine, blah, blah, blah. But in practice, things don't work out that way. Companies around the world are so far around the world. All right, and we're gonna have our speakers explain the secondary sanctions and how those impact people in Venezuela. And before I turn this over, I know, great, great peace by Michelle Elner. Before I turn this over to Medea to introduce Michelle properly, I do wanna say the Biden administration recently said that it will not reverse the Trump executive order increasing sanctions on Venezuela. We need to push back hard on that and push back on its recognition of the sky guido, as the president. He's never been elected president of Venezuela. And what that means is that he will have access to all the money that the Western nations froze of Venezuela's oil money. So that's crucial. We've got to push back on that and reach out. While we're listening to this tonight, think about how we can get out to people who should be with us, such as AOC, the squad. Ilhan Omar has been good, but the rest have been largely silent or is saying that they wanna follow the leadership of the Democratic Party, why? I don't know. So we'll strategize at the end, but Grinnell, Medea, go ahead. Yes, well, it's great to start out with a part of Michelle's video and Michelle herself was born in Venezuela, holds a bachelor's degree in languages and international affairs from the Sorbonne in Paris. She worked for a community-based programs in Venezuela and then she was an analyst for US Venezuela Relations. She joined the Code Pink team to work as part of the Latin America coordination, organizing election delegations to various places in Latin America. And she's also become a brilliant videographer. In fact, she just did a half hour video for International Women's Day about women in Latin America. So it's a pleasure to introduce Michelle and in the meantime, just to also say, it's great that some of you are putting your comments in the chat. Remember, you can use the chat to say hello and say where you're from, to put any comments, put any questions and Michelle and I will be collecting them for the Q and A. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you so much. Welcome, you all here. It's funny because I was watching this video that I made in 2019 and I recall, came to my mind the time when Obama declared Venezuela an unusual and extraordinary threat to the US. And I remember my friends in Venezuela calling me and saying, what, this is absurd. How can we be a threat to the United States? And yeah, I remember that. And at that point, we didn't knew that, I mean, the extent of the harm and the suffering that this executive order would bring to Venezuela. And then the saddest part is knowing the last week, as Marcy said, the Biden administration renewed that executive order and also promised to maintain the maximum pressure campaign that Trump imposed when he was president. Anyways, I just wanna thank you, Marcy, for the media and Hania for organizing this. A very special event for me as a Venezuelan. And it's special because when it comes to Venezuela, there's not much said in the media about sanctions. And when it's covered, it comes like this one-sided view of the country. And a lot of people, not only Democrats, but also progressive allies who are usually skeptical of what they see in the media, they accept everything that they hear and see from Venezuela. And most of those people or a lot of those people who are also actively opposed to war, they stay silent when it comes to sanctions because they think that, well, this is a harmless tool. And no, as a Venezuelan with my friends and family in Venezuela, I can say that this is not a harmless tool. This is a collective punishment. It's a crime against humanity and they're illegal. But also, Venezuelans are opposed to sanctions. For example, last year there was a poll reporting that 82% of Venezuelans opposed the sanctions, even those who are critical of the government. So tonight we will talk a little bit about this. We'll see what got us here, how those sanctions disproportionately affect women, their legality under international law and what's the outlook for the Venezuelan-U.S. relations under Biden? Well, but the part I like the most about this event is that we become protagonists of this event by writing to our congresspeople, I mean our government, to demand an end to all economic sanctions and the restoration of relations with Venezuela. So without further delay, I want to welcome Leonardo Flores. He is my comrade at Code Pink. He's also a Venezuelan. He's a writer, a senior analyst on Latin America and a coordinator for the Latin American campaign. And an amazing human being, by the way. So he will give us a general overview of the situation on the sanctions and the state of bilateral relations between Venezuela and the U.S. Thanks so much, Michelle. So Marcy asked me to talk a little bit about recent history in Venezuela, to kind of bring everyone up to speed, to kind of understand these attempts at regime change that have been ongoing since really the Bush administration. So I'm gonna start eight years ago, almost exactly, March 5th, 2013, President Chavez passed away after a long illness. He was a giant beloved by so many Venezuelans and people all over the world. And he really transformed the country for the better. But as soon as he passed away, the U.S. kind of smelled blood in the water and they thought that they would use this tragic event to finally overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution, to overthrow Chavezma, which had been their project since at least 2002 when the U.S. backed the coup in Venezuela. So after Chavez died, there were elections in Venezuela within about a month and a half, two months. President Maduro, who was then, I believe, the vice president, he was expected to win handily because Chavez had just won elections about six months prior in which he destroyed the opposition candidate. And the same opposition candidate was once again running. And it turns out, actually, that the election was much, much closer than expected. Maduro won by just over 1% or 1% at your point and that really kind of shocked everyone. And then the U.S. did something really interesting, which was that they kind of did not recognize the result of the election. And then they started saying, well, we never recognize results of elections. That's just something internal for other countries, which of course is not true because in every election in the world, right after there's a winner, the president of the United States sends a message to the new president congratulating them on the elections. Eventually, the Obama administration kind of de facto accepted that Maduro was the president. But I mentioned this because it was really foreshadowed what would happen with the Trump administration 60 years later. In 2015, the opposition won elections for the National Assembly. They took control of the National Assembly using the same electoral system that's been in place for nearly 20 years, which is really more secure than what we have here in the United States. And it involves a digital voting on a computer, but you get a paper printout of your vote, a receipt. And then that way you're able to make sure that the computer correctly entered what you wanted. And then there's a tally of the receipts that's compared to the digital tally to ensure that there are no differences in those two ways of counting the votes. 2017, and I'm gonna jump ahead. There's obviously a lot that goes on, but just to give you a sense. So 2017 was an interesting year because following months of kind of very violent right-wing protests. And when I say violent, I mean very violent. We had protesters who had homemade explosives, homemade bazookas, they booby-trapped streets, including putting barbed wire across lampposts to decapitate people on motorcycles. And that happened. Lots of deaths caused by these protesters. And the protesters were very much incited by the Venezuelan extremist right-wing. In many ways it's kind of similar to what we saw January 6th here in the US. But after these protests subsided, Venezuela held gubernatorial elections. And that was the last time that the opposition in Venezuela fully participated in elections. Since then they've engaged in the series of partial boycotts aimed at delegitimizing the vote. But at the time the opposition said those elections would serve as a referendum on Maduro. Their pollsters were projecting them to win something like 18 out of the 23 states. And they said, well, once we win all these states and once we show that we're a clear majority, then Maduro has to step down. Of course, there's absolutely no legal mechanism for why a president should have to resign if his party loses in gubernatorial elections. But that ended up being moot because the exact opposite happened. Chavismo, the movement behind President Chavez and President Maduro, they ended up winning 19 of 23 states in the last time. Again, that was the last time the opposition fully participated. Then in 2018, early 2018, after months of dialogue, an agreement is almost reached between the opposition and the government. It encompasses everything from the economy to how elections are gonna be carried out. And it was just about to be signed but the Trump administration sabotaged it. Then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, he said the US would welcome a military coup in Venezuela and then he threatened to impose an oil embargo on Venezuela. In the meantime, the State Department also said that they would not recognize the results of elections in Venezuela. They said this in January, 2018, the elections hadn't even been scheduled yet at that point. So already you see this very blatant electoral interference on the part of the Trump administration. And in fact, there was a one opposition leader who was asked by the press if he was going to run in the election. And he said, why would I run if the United States has already said that they're not gonna recognize the winner? So that even includes opposition leaders who were told that they wouldn't be recognized. So that was a partial opposition point caught in the 2018 elections. There were other members of the opposition who did participate and who won a significant amount of votes but they lost in the election to President Maloudo. And when we read about elections in Venezuela, it's always the word fraud is always included. And there was no evidence of any fraud. And it was really just a ploy by the opposition and by the United States and the EU and a few other US allies to delegitimize the electoral process by pushing the opposition to boycott those elections. Fast forward to 2019 when this guy that nobody in the country really had heard of this kind of back bench legislator named Juan Guaido is appointed to be the president of the National Assembly. He gets to that spot because the opposition parties between themselves have this agreement of that they would rotate the chair of the presidency between various parties. Two weeks, about two, three weeks after he is appointed the president of the National Assembly, Juan Guaido goes into the middle of a plaza in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. And he says that he has declared himself the president of Venezuela, the interim president and he counts on the full support of the United States. This was a plot by the Trump administration. That was why that they had pushed the opposition to boycott the 2018 elections so that they could cast doubt on those elections and then impose their own puppet president on the Venezuelan people. So since that very infamous January, 2019 in Venezuela, we've had attempted coups, attempted insurrections. The Trump administration sent a fleet to the South Caribbean. It's basically just sitting right off Venezuelan waters. The Trump administration put a price on Maduro's head pretty much and other members of the cabinet. And we've also had all sorts of covert operations and attacks on the country that you rarely read about in US media. I mean, I'm sure many of you saw the so-called mercenary invasion, the Bay of Piglets. That's the most kind of infamous one. But even then they called Bay of Piglets just to kind of take away from the seriousness of the crimes that these people were going to commit. And so it's always when we see coverage of that, it's with this intention to kind of to make fun of Venezuela and to say, oh, these are ridiculous allegations. When in fact, they're very true and there's a lot of evidence that the US and Colombia are involved. And so throughout all of this, we also have devastating sanctions as we saw in Michelle's video. And since that video was from about almost a year and a half ago, I just wanna give a quick update on what the sanctions on the impacts of those sanctions. According to Venezuelan economists, Pasqualina Curcio, the estimated cost of what's called the economic war on Venezuela, which sanctions are a key component, it's cost the Venezuelan economy $194 billion. It's an astronomical number. It's really hard to like wrap your head around how much the economy has been impacted. And then we also know that oil revenues are down 99%. So this event as well as an oil producing country, the economy is almost completely dependent on oil and the economy has been completely cratered because of these sanctions. A report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research at Think Tank here in DC estimated in 2019 that in the first year of the Trump sanctions for there were 40,000 excess debts, meaning 40,000 people died because of those sanctions. And then a former UN independent expert kind of updated that number and said it was clinically closer to 100,000 people who had died and this was by in 2020. Even the US government accountability office has recognized the impact of the sanctions. They recently issued a report where they clearly say that the sanctions were one of the factors in destroying Venezuela's economy and in making it difficult for Venezuelans to live because the sanctions have also effected everything from healthcare to energy generation. And last month, the UN special rapporteur visited Venezuela and she issued a preliminary report that stressed the illegality of the sanctions and also stressed how they have violated the human rights of women, children, people in poverty and others. So I mean, that's the one thing that we on Code Pink are really working on hard right now is ending these really horrible sanctions on Venezuela and of course, ending support for Juan Guaido. And with that, I'll leave it so we can hear directly from our guests in Venezuela. Thank you, Lema. Well, that was, wow, that was a very condensed and very good overview of what's going on with the sanctions and the relation between Venezuela and the US. And now I want to welcome our next guest. There are Lorena Jiménez, Ibori Oropeza, Rebeca Madrid, and they are members of the Venezuelan feminist collective Género con Place. They are going to talk about the impact of the sanctions and how they impact women. So the Género con Place was born in 2008 and structure as a foundation in December, 2012. It is a feminist organization that fights for the human rights of women, girls, and adolescents and sexual diversity. Their work is carried out with emphasis on ethical comprehensive humanized approach with intersectionality criteria, taking into account the discrimination based on gender, age, ethnicity, diversity, territory, disability, and class. Guaranteeing the principles of equality and non-discrimination, promoting the empowerment of women and helping to build a culture of peace. Thank you for being here Lorena and Ibori. Thank you, okay. Thank you so much for having us today here with you. As I was introduced, I'm Lorena Jiménez, I'm a member of the Género con Place. Gender with class, because we believe that we don't only need class conscious, but also gender conscious. That's why the approach that we have as a group. We run a survey last year trying to measure the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measure on the enjoyment of women human rights. Our scope was applied to 900 and nine women from 23 Venezuelan states. We are 24 states. The age of the participants was between 30 to 64. The way we did this was online due to the pandemic and the confinement by the pandemic. And what we had over there was a realization that people, the women felt that 95.71% of the women survey pointed out that the violation on the human right to food among the main and most serious impact that the unilateral coercive measures have generated on the population. And particularly on women, which has compromised the integral health of our population with an emphasis on impregnant women and lactating children. That's kind of the, as Riley pointed out before by Leonardo, people have felt as the main issue, or the main impact that these unilateral coercive measures have had on our daily life. The other thing we had was 93.84 of women indicated that among the main negative impacts, the lack of coverage and quality and access to basic services such as water, electricity, gas, telecommunications and turning the living conditions harder, especially for women head of household. Most of women's are heads of household in Venezuela, which demand more time to access and creating a more precarious quality of life. The other impact that women pointed out and our survey pointed out was the right to health. And 92% of women surveyed pointed out that among the main negative impact that the unilateral coercive measures had was on the health issues derived from the impossibility of purchasing medical supplies produced abroad. And this was by the fact of denying the possibility of effective enjoyment of women human rights, since it deteriorates our quality of life and limits the decision making related to motherhood and the full exercise of their sexuality in safe and pleasant conditions while turning women vulnerable to controllable diseases. There are some numbers where you can see that the Venezuelan government used to get the supplies, the medical supplies from abroad and bring it to Venezuela. This was for cancer treatment or long-term illness. And now it cannot be given as it used to be covered before by the public health system. So that was kind of like one of the impact, the third impact that the women were pointed out as the main issue of the unilateral coercive measure. The other thing that they pointed out was the increase in unpaid care work. 86.91% consider that the unpaid care work carried out by women specifically care work in homes, school caring for children and the elderly and people with disability and other people in situation of dependency are greater. Now that women have to be more time at home since the, as we mentioned before, the quality of basic services has decreased. So now women need to take care of more of these people with dependencies assuming more social services than used to have before, while you have all the coverage by the government as well. The other impact that we were able to measure or the people pointed out was the institutional impact. 75% of the women survey indicated that it impact generated by the unilateral coercive measures on the institutional coverage of care and protection for women and girls has affected them a lot. These we infer a direct relation between the increase of unpaid care work that we mentioned before and the decrease in the institutional capacity, which one now it became a private problem that falls exclusively on women and particularly those in the most in the poorest condition. The other impact is was 73.37% of women survey highlighted that among the main impact is on the right to health as I mentioned before due to the lack of supplies of medicines for treatment for cancer, HIV, AIDS, cardiovascular diseases, affecting the quality of life, their quality of life and the relative, especially those that are dependent on these women. The other impact that it was highlighted was that 47.63% of women considered that the exercise of their sexual and reproductive rights have been affected since before the sanctions in 2015 as it was rightly pointed out by Leonardo and Divirio, the 65% of women on reproductive age had universal coverage for their sexual rights and reproductive rights. So right now there are charges of contraceptive and high prices has been a constant since the beginning of the sanctions and the illegal blockade. So, but we have also had the notice due to this survey that the first differentiated impact that these has on women with disability. Among the women are the most vulnerable ones at this point but women with disability or some kind of disability or with people with disabilities in their care because there are other kinds of category that they are in the country has been the most affected ones during the since the unilateral coercive mission started in 2015. Until 2014, there was an optimal and regular free distribution of supplies and technical aid necessary for different types of disability, especially moderate and hearing such as wheelchairs, catches, canes, hearing aids, among others. Currently, these are very difficult to access since most of them used to be bought by the Venezuelan government to the people with disability especially to women with disability. These are, has undermined the quality of life and the right to health of these population as mentioned before. Also, the, sorry. The, these alignments, typical for a disability conditioning of women has been like, they have to be renewed and there was a group of population that they had discovered, but since like this was in 2015 and right now we are in 2020, 2021. These are issues that are with the usage they start fading away and most of them are also not able to find medicines as it was also part of the main issue. So it's, we can infer that the possibility in the short term that the, they will decrease the life expectancy of these populations and this is worrisome for us at this point. The other thing that is not measured in their survey but is very important to highlight is the psychological violence induced by this unilateral coercive measure. And it's today in Venezuela an expression of the structural violence that goes through the other forms of violence since finding food and finding medicine and being really hard to live and then finding gas and then sources of livelihood. It's, it gets a really pressure on the people and like what they say when they imposed this unilateral and illegal blockade on the country. Thank you. Sorry, am I taking too long? Well, yeah, we wanted to talk a little bit. Sorry, so thank you so much for having us here. We just wanted also to highlight that after that the US Congress approved the Act 113-278 in 2014 was kind of the main issue that issue all the other executive orders. So I guess that's where we wanted to highlight as the main part of the, I guess, your work that they want to carry out on the Committee on Foreign Relations in the Senate. And that's kind of the genesis of what we think it is the beginning of the blockade as it is at this point. Thank you, Michelle. I'm sorry, I took so long. It's okay, no, thank you. Thank you for your presentation for all the numbers that we don't know. We ignore most of this and we don't understand that women are the most vulnerable group that bear the brunt of the damage caused by the sanctions. So thank you so much. I just want to say hello to everybody who's in the chat saying where they're from. There are people from Venezuela, from every part of the world. Just encourage you to ask your questions via the chat and we will see them at the end. And now I want to welcome our next guest, Carlos Rón. He's the Venezuelan Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America and President of the Simón Bolívar Institute for Peace and Solidarity among people. He was a former chapelle d'affaires of Venezuela in the U.S. until 2018. Carlos is like part of the family every time he never declines an invitation made by Code Pink. So we appreciate that very much. Carlos will talk with us a little bit about the legal aspects of the sanctions, how they violate international law and the effects of the over-compliance. And this is very important because a lot of time I come across people that say, well, I'm not going to say anything about this because I don't like Maduro. I think Venezuela can have a much better leader. And besides exceptions, there are exceptions on food and medicine, so whatever. But it's not a matter of liking or not liking a president. It's a matter of not allowing our government to infringe on the international rule of law. But also we need to understand that in reality, those exceptions are made meaningless by the over-compliance that Carlos will talk about right now. So welcome, Carlos. Thank you, Michelle, and good evening, everyone. I'm sitting like this because I was just running back from a meeting we had with our friends who are here. And I wanted just to steal a couple of minutes from the time just to introduce them to you because I think they're a very important part of this conversation as well. We have Ángel Prado from the El Maisal commune in Venezuela and Agonio Ortega from the admirable peasant march who were both our representatives in a way of the Venezuelan land-growing movement, land-workers movement. And we were just here in another meeting, but I ran away here. And I wanted them to say just a couple of things and gave you just a greeting. I explained all the work and the support that we have received from the Solidarity from Code Bank and from everyone else in the US, especially in the defense of our embassy, but all the time in defense of what it's just right for the Venezuelan people, they have a very particular experience because they are people that are in charge of, I mean, their work, their everyday work has to do with agriculture, has to do with the feeding and the producing of food in our country. So they have seen also firsthand how these so-called sanctions actually affect something that should not be affected because according to the paperwork and what they say, they always said that the food and medicine are not part of the sanctions. Well, they could tell you how that's not true and they could tell you a bit of how production is affected. Anyways, they just want to say a quick hello and I don't know if Leo is going to help me or Leo will help me with the interpretation. So I'll let Ángel just say a few words and then we'll come back to the rest of it. Greetings from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. We're so happy to be able to count on you who are in the North. So we are very grateful for the solidarity and gratitude for the solidarity. You are a precious committee that tells us that in a moment we will defend Chavismo. Chavismo is very powerful where we also have friends and brothers. We're very appreciative of your solidarity and we remember seeing you out on the streets defending Chavismo defending Chavismo from the empire. We'd like to reaffirm that the people in Venezuela are still fighting and that the consequences of the of the blockade affect everyone, especially agricultural workers and communes, yet we remain firm, ideologically and politically, behind our president, Nicaragua. We contribute to this cause and we believe that a better world is possible and the peoples of the world must continue to join together to fight against imperialism and achieve the victory of the people. Thank you. We'd like to affirm our commitment to building Bolivarian socialism and socialism around the world. That's our cause. A better world is possible. People of the world must unite to fight imperialism and achieve a definitive victory. Well, a greeting to all those compatriots and brothers of the struggle that are on the land of Angela Davies. This is the campesina area, one of the actors of the admirable campesina march. And in one way or another, ratifying his commitment to President Nicolas Maduro and the way it affects us, the multifactorial blockade, by the United States, by the US government. So, greetings to all of our siblings and comrades in the struggle who are in the land of Angela Davies. We're from a rural area, part of the peasant movement, and we affirm our commitment to President Maduro. And, you know, we're facing a multifactorial blockade imposed on us by the US government. The sector that influences the purchase and the supply of the supplies and the production, the multifactorial blockade affects all sectors, at least in the health of the peasant, in the fertilizers, and the vaccination of animals in every sense. So, that's why the march was to tell the US government the capacity of the campesina and the willingness to defend this revolution in the lands that are. So, Venezuelan peasants engaged in march in 2018 as a result of the blockade, the blockade affects everything that affects supplies, it reduces production, it even affects the health of rural people. It makes it harder for us to get fertilizers and vaccines for our animals. And that's why we carried out this march in 2018 to show the capability and the determination of peasants in overcoming this blockade. Well, it's a pleasure to, at least, transmit that health to you and to give you that manifestation of what affects this multifactorial blockade. Thank you very much, and thank you to everyone who multiplies this solidarity that you are doing. We're very happy to transmit these greetings to you and to tell you how we're affected by the blockade. Thank you so much to everyone. We hope this amazing amount of solidarity becomes multiplied throughout the world. Well, thank you. Thank you all for just bearing with us for a little bit, but I think it's important for you to see that firsthand because, again, these are the problems that we have due to these illegal coercive unilateral measures. One of the things that we begin always by saying and stressing, we don't call them sanctions because sanctions implies that you did something wrong and somehow they have a right to punish you because something that you're wrong. And this is not true. I mean, we're not, we're not being, there's no legal basis for this. I mean, one of the, we often tell people so that they know that the only acceptable sanctions on their international law are those applied by the United Nations Security Council. Anything else is a unilateral measure which is illegal, which is constitute an act of war. And when you have consequences, such as the consequences you have here in Venezuela, where you have that we say, you know, there's a form of collective punishment, where a whole population is affected because of measures taken by another government. Well, those are considered crimes against humanity and there's, you know, there's also status in international law that, you know, are supposed to take measures against it. The point is, you know, when we talk about this issue, and sort of the message I want to get across, because I know you talk to a lot of people who are often skeptical, who often have criticisms or not understanding that they don't even agree with, you know, politically or ideologically where Venezuela is, is stands. See, the thing is that we're not talking, we're not asking, in a sense, that you support us ideologically that you believe in socialism that you believe in President and like him as a person or as a president. The issue here is that these measures are being taken are against international law. These are not legal, it doesn't matter what you think or, you know, or believe about the government. What it is, what is true, though, is that what the United States is doing is something against law and it's something that hurts people and hurts people in many, in many ways like Lorena, of course, also expressed and our friends here. Just at the end of the, at the end of the middle of February, sorry, we had a visit of the UN Special Rapporteur for the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures against or on the enjoyment of human rights. And here she issued a brief report on her initial findings. And I think it's very important to look at what she said because she, in a way, she summed up that, you know, these measures are completely illegal. The US actually never questioned or never replies that issue of the legality or not of these measures. They'll go, they'll go and say, well, you know, yeah, the, you know, what the hardships in Venezuela are not the fault of them of the sanctions. They are who, you know, the president was to blame was the government was to blame, but they never really enter into the issue of whether these measures that they take are legal or not and they are that's because they're not and because there's no defense to this issue. And when you look at the, you know, the, the findings of Miss Juan, she, she explicitly says that, you know, you know, sanctions against the recording this from her statement. You know, the, you know, she underlines that the urinal sanctions against oil, gold, mining and other economic sectors, the state owned airline and the TV industry constitute a violation of international law, and the wrongfulness is not excluded with reference to countermeasures. The announced purpose of the maximum pressure campaign, which is to change the government of Venezuela violates the principle of sovereign equality of states and constitutes an intervention in domestic affairs of Venezuela that also affects its regional relations. Why am I quoting this because I think it's important for us to understand that the United Nations in the person of these special operators have analyzed have seen because they came here they saw all the you know they've seen all the documentation they've seen all the executive boarders they've seen all the measures that have been taken. And comparing this with international law they come to the conclusion these are in violation of international law and it's something very important for people to understand and also to talk about. Now, I think that one of the most serious problems of these measures is that they don't, they don't, it's not only what is said or what is written or literally written in any of these executive orders, but actually, when it comes to implementing these you know, electoral court measures, how they get implemented. And the issue of over compliance, being that banks, companies, different actors feel a pressure that you know, at the time that they're going to have any relation or business or anything to do with Venezuela, to the point that they rather not get involved, not engage Venezuela because of the fear that, you know, something might happen to them. So it's not so the problem here, the effect the effects on Venezuela is not because of compliance but because of over compliance of entities that feel that they're going to get hit for far worse. I'll give you an example which is very important for our current situation with the issue of the COVID-19 vaccines and all the taking care of the COVID-19. Any country in the rest, you know, around the world that is not under the sanctions regime of any sort can go to the market and buy protective equipment, buy medicine, you know, in any shape or form. And that will be, you know, they will just pay the price that they need to pay and I would say this is an easy transaction. In Venezuela, first you hit the problem that some of these companies are not interested in selling to us because they believe that, you know, selling will have these surprises. So, you know, they don't want to risk getting punishment or losing other business that they have in the United States by selling something to Venezuela. So that narrows down our capabilities of buying something to very few companies. These very few companies knowing the disadvantages that we have, then they spike up prices and make it more difficult, more expensive for us to purchase whatever we need to purchase. But even then, when we do find these companies that we're able to purchase from, then comes another problem, which is the fact that we are blocked from the U.S. financial system. So transactions such as, you know, a deposit or, you know, just a payment are blocked within the banking system. We, you know, we may send the payment and it could be frozen, it could be sent back. Right now we have around the world, but mostly in the U.S. financial system, we have around $7 billion are literally frozen. This is money from the Venezuelan people, it's money from the Venezuelan state that we cannot move, we cannot use to purchase medicine or to do anything that we want because they are under this blockade. So, and this is, again, this is not because it says explicitly on any of the executive orders, you have to, you know, ban Venezuelan transactions, but rather because it says that if, you know, they issued warnings. So the first morning in 2017 where they said any money coming from the Venezuelan state, the Venezuelan government could be product of illicit activities. Therefore, you should be careful of how you handle the money and you should be, you should make sure that you look into those finances so you can verify where it comes from. What that implies is we had banks accounts closed, we had, again, these accounts frozen, you know, all these difficulties so that we were able to somehow, you know, carry out normal purchases and normal transactions on behalf of the Venezuelan government. Why is this important? Because for many, anytime you approach the US government on this and you say, well, look, you know, the sanctions are affecting the Venezuelan people, the sanctions are hurting how people are getting fed, how people are getting, you know, access to medicine, they'll say, well, no, that's not true because in the sanctions there are provisions that say that, you know, healthcare, medicine, food, these are not supposed to be sanctions. But that's not true because, you know, fine, you know, they'll say that food is not on the, you know, on the essentialist, but when you realize, like our friend said, you know, that they can make a purchase of fertilizer, then you're blocking food production. If the gasoline can, or, you know, gasoline components can enter the country, you're blocking food production in a sense as well. So these are, these are issues that take place. And in the, even, you know, when you look at the, there's letters that have been written by the members of Congress. There's one letter on February 11, 2021, which literally says the following. This is promoted by Ilan Omar and Truy Garcia and Elizabeth Warren. It says, existing protocols and licenses have proved woefully insufficient to meet the enormity of the challenges shared by the people around the world in the face of the pandemic. Even when licenses and humanitarian exemptions are available over, there is a persistent problem of over compliance, particularly from the financial sector. This has led to catastrophic humanitarian consequences in various parts of the world. This has not been a sort of same here. This is a group of U.S. lawmakers recognizing that this is an issue. The GAL report that was commissioned by House Foreign Affairs Committee by Gregor Meeks also said that, you know, also called it to the impact, the negative impact of the sanctions. And I quote, according to the experts we interviewed and literature were reviewed, U.S. sanctions have had a negative impact on the already declining Venezuelan economy. Due to the U.S. sanctions, fewer buyers are willing to purchase Venezuelan crude oil and those who do will only purchase it at heavy discount. In addition, Venezuela now has to transport its crude oil to countries farther away than the United States, which increases transportation costs. And as a result, the Maduro government is collecting less oil export revenue by selling less crude oil at a higher cost and a lower price. Sanctions also affected the availability of diluents needed to blend Venezuelan heavy crude, which Venezuela previously imported from the United States. This is important, again, because if we don't have fuel, if, you know, it also has an impact on how we produce food, how we, you know, tend to emergencies, how we can get around the country. Again, the issue here and what I want to leave you and of course I'm sure we will have questions and answers that, you know, that we can hopefully reply. But, you know, the big, the big issue here is these measures are illegal, these measures are against international law. There's no legal basis under which these measures can be taken. We have to go back to, you know, diplomacy and or to another way of interacting with the United States, but the United States government cannot keep on exerting this type of pressure on the people of Venezuela. Because this is not hurting one group does not hurting one person is not hurting one person this hurting a whole general population, and this is something that is simply not not fair and not just I'll leave it at that and whatever you open to any questions that you may have. Thank you. Thank you so much Carlos thank you so much for that. This is a treat you gave us. Please say hello to the communeros or compañeros tell them that I will love love to be in my style soon. I saw the act of commemorating the anniversary of the my salary was it was very moving for me. I just want to encourage everyone to stay so we can do an action also please Lorena Carlos Leonardo please put your emails and if you have what page, or you know, social media handles that we can follow you, and we can. I can Marcy you can take it up from here. Thank you so much Michelle and Carlos Lorena Leo, such a moving evening brought me you know I had such a lump in my throat, and the criminality of what we are doing in Venezuela is beyond belief. So I urge everybody on this call. Questions yes go ahead and ask them. They're posting information in the chat can always email Leo at code pink Leo you'll put yours in the chat as well. We're now going to move to our action portion we have 104 people on the call. Can we do that, can we thank our guests by giving him a big clap and thank you. Okay, and now Mary is going to post again you can share your screen Mary and post our script and of course this is not something that you have to be married to it's just a guide. We're going to call members of Congress our members are representatives and our senators urge them to speak out about lifting the sanctions not only on Venezuela but on you know dozens of countries that we're imposing sanctions on so that they can get relief under and get the vaccines and so forth. And also we have some additional language in our message to President Biden about Venezuela. And that is that the United States States should cease. Second paragraph here it's recognition of one guy though as interim president he was never elected president. He should not have access to all the money that has been frozen in Western banks. It's a dialogue and restore relations with the popular the elected government of Venezuela. All right, so let's say I urge everybody pick up phone or start your emailing, and let's get to it and also if when you're done if you could post in the chat your commitment, how many other people can you get to do this. So we will amplify our efforts. Let's go. Thanks. Do you understand what we're doing.