 Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon and welcome to Venezuela's elections and beyond. Our webinar today is a discussion about what we saw and included on December 6 while in Venezuela as international election observers. The four of us speaking today were invited by the Consejo Nacional Electoral, I'll refer to that as the CNE as we speak today. So the four of us were invited by the CNE to serve as international observers for Venezuela's national assembly elections which are held every five years. This is similar, so legislative elections similar to what in the States is referred to as the congressional midterm elections. Rick Sterling and I were in Venezuela December 2015 for the same elections and me again in May of 2018 for the presidential elections. For me personally this recent trip represents the 12 maybe 13th time I've been here in Venezuela. I am speaking with you today from Caracas and Alicja, David and Rick will be speaking with you from the San Francisco Bay Area this afternoon. The four of us participating today represent several different organizations but we're all part of the entire international CNE delegation. Three of us specifically part of the Code Pink delegation and David Paul with the Embassy Protection Collective. So I am with Code Pink, Alicja as an independent observer, David Paul was invited by the CNE as one of the Embassy Protection Collective and Rick Sterling is president of Task Force on the Americas. I should also just disclose to all of you watching this afternoon that David, Rick and myself also serve as Task Force on the Americas board members. Alicja, Rick and I traveled to Venezuela with the CNE with the delegation put together by Code Pink. It was Code Pink that actually received the invitation and David Paul received an invitation as an embassy protector. Let me just give you a little background. The former delegation dates were December 3 through 8. In addition to our observer training, our Code Pink delegation arranged two auxiliary meetings. One meeting was with those sectors of the opposition that did not boycott the elections but rather they participated in the electoral process on December 6. And our second auxiliary meeting was with dissidents Chabistas that ran their own candidates independent of the government coalition. Today I will be speaking with you about life under sanctions and that the elections occurred here in Venezuela despite this enormous hurdle and also that people voted despite the many, many inconveniences that life under sanctions creates for them day to day. Alicja will describe to you the electoral process in Venezuela how elections were and how elections were carried out on December 6. David will share with you what the participatory opposition is saying. So this will be relative to that one of the auxiliary meetings that we had. And I really encourage you to listen very carefully to some of the statements out there with us. These people shared a number of comments and a political position that we simply do not hear in the United States. And then Rick is going to discuss the importance of Venezuela in the hemisphere and beyond as well as what U.S. foreign policy may look like under a Biden administration. And so for all of you viewing this afternoon I just want to tell you we will be open for a Q&A session at the end of our presentations. And we ask you to submit your questions in the Q&A option. We will not be using the chat feature for this webinar. So please put your questions in Q&A. The chat is between us panelists only and is not open to the public. So okay so welcome everybody. And that's just a brief background of what brought all of us to Venezuela earlier this month. I want to just share with you my segment which is really pretty much more of a personal antidote. I've been here since December 3 and will be returning to the States early January. And so let me just share with you a few things that happened on election day. And then I also want to share with you a very personal dinner experience I had on the 24th that I think will help all of you understand the political context here in a different manner than what the U.S. mainstream media narrative is. So the biggest thing here is that I say cut off this because I'm to you live from there. The biggest thing here is that the sanctions make life very chaotic for people personally for businesses for government officials for everybody. And things are also very inefficient because of the sanctions. So it's very very difficult to plan anything when services are intermittent due to the inability to import parts and materials things necessary for maintenance of all sorts of things. Everything from your car to the plumbing in your shower. So we're looking at not being able to maintain water pumps, elevators, the metro system, the cars, buses, taxis, personal automobiles and on and on and on. And of course those are all things that in more detail should and can be handled under a webinar specific to sanctions. So let me just tell you some of the things that happened on election day. I was the morning of December 6. I was in the state of Miranda. And the first thing we saw driving to the polling center were these enormously long gas lines. The gas was supposed to arrive Saturday. It arrived early Sunday morning, I believe 2am and people started getting in line. The lines were hours long and perhaps even days long. So then you also had people having difficulty keeping their cars running. Tires are hard to get when you can't find them. They're expensive. It's same with batteries and belts and everything else that it takes to maintain your personal automobile. And those same things are true with public and private transportation systems including buses and taxis. So under those conditions, how do you get to the polls? Well, people did. And what I saw in Miranda State, despite the long gas lines, people did get to the polls. And one of the things people figured out was somebody sat in the car in the gas line while somebody else went to vote. And then they rotated positions and were able to vote that way. Other people walked. Other people took bicycles. And for people who fully intended to vote and chose not to because they stayed in the gas line. So that is just one aspect of how sanctions affected voter participation. Just whether you wanted to vote or not, those were the things you were, things like that, or what you were up against. People here are up against that every single day. And I have to say, I think all of us on this webinar this afternoon would tell you we were profoundly affected by the number of people who wanted to vote and did vote despite all the international obstacles placed against these elections and the domestic obstacles that the universal coercive measures put on people's daily lives here. It was really very compelling to see the voter participation. And we were very pleased to witness that. So I want to tell you just, I'm going to give you a few personal anecdotes just so you can understand exactly what people live with here. And I think it'll give greater credence to the voter turnout as well, how compelling it was that people did vote. So a couple weeks ago, I was headed to the airport to check on flights, departing flights. And I left with a friend of mine from downtown Caracas. There is a carterra highway that goes between the city and the airport. We were in a car that had bad tires, a bad battery, difficult to find replacement parts. And if you do find them, they're very, very expensive. So instead of driving directly to the airport, we took frontage roads when they were available or even went through a couple neighborhoods and used the side roads in case we broke down, we would have a better chance of finding help. So that's just, you know, logistic wise, that's just an extra hurdle or two you have to go through just to drive what's, I don't know what it is now, it's about a 30, 40 minute drive to the airport. So also, the house that I use here in Venezuela, I'm very fortunate to have a longtime friend and co-got delegation co-guide who allows me to use the family home. That house has a modern bathroom. We take bucket baths in that house because the shower plumbing needs fixed. It's impossible to find parts and the few parts that are available are well beyond the household income. So we are using a modern bathroom and taking bucket baths. So that again shows you, you know, an inconvenience and that's how you start your day even though you have, you know, modern technology. Regarding gas, last night I was supposed to join a Zoom meeting to prepare for tonight, today's webinar. And I was sitting in a friend's car holding that person's space in a gas line last night. And then when that person returned the car, I got on my cell phone. I called another friend of ours to get a motorcycle ride from the gas station over to the hotel I'm staying at that has good Wi-Fi in order for me to participate in our pre-webinar meeting. So these are very simple things for me to say. So that just gives you an idea. The last thing I want to share with you is Christmas dinner. And this is really, really important for you to understand that I'm living in a community called La Pastora. It's a very modest community, principally working class people principally Chavistas with opposition households as well. One of those opposition households lives next door to where I'm living. And I have visited with those people for many years in and out of Venezuela. They invited me and my host to Christmas dinner. So you have this opposition family that did participate in the elections on December 6. And two very strong Chavista household next door I'm staying at. We were openly invited to attend dinner. We had wonderful food, wonderful conversation. And we had some pretty strong arguments as well, but healthy, hearty political discourse. And we had they served us the traditional Venezuela holiday meal, which is ayaca, pan de jamón, and salada de gallina, y pernil, which is pork leg. This is not an inexpensive plate to prepare. And I will tell you, you see all over the country, because this is the national holiday dinner, people did went through astronomical hurdles to make this meal available. And so here are opposition neighbors preparing an expensive meal for their own family. And on top of that, inviting two more people into their house for a holiday dinner. And those two people are Chavista. So I cannot stress to you how important that meal was and that it is more common than not for people of opposing politics to be neighbors, to be friends, to look after one another, to share meals together. That we don't hear. So I want to leave you with those personal impressions as to how people voted on December 6. And I'll pass the baton to Alicja, who's going to talk to you about the physical aspect of elections, the actual process that people use on election day. So thank you, everyone, and welcome Alicja. Thank you, Teri. I am Alicja, and I am not a very able person doing these things, but I want to try my best to be very candid on what I saw and that I want to share with people. Arriving at Caracas was a bit lengthy, and we went through many of the biosafety measures just at the airport. And that took quite a bit of time for us and for all the other delegates that were coming, plus many checks on our passports. There's lots of safety things at the Caracas airport before we arrived to our hotel. Our delegation was housed in a very nice hotel called EuroBuilding, and it had a lot of areas where we were able to mingle with other delegates from other parts of Latin America and some Europeans. For the first day, we went to visit the Comité Nacional Electoral offices, and you can see these delegates from Arabic countries from their clothings and their nice group of people behind them. But many of us, I don't know how many were at this building, and we were actually, we went through the whole process of the election step by step, practicing with the machines just to understand how simple and how friendly and easy it was to do it without any concern making the election, really an available process for people that even were not very diverse and electronics, like myself. So there were about 14,200 boarding sites all over Caracas, and all were equipped, completely equipped by well-trained, see any workers and computers. The next thing that we did was we went to visit, oh I stepped something. So we saw that during this process that we learned that we saw that the universal was made completely universal for anybody that could go and visit the site and go through the simple process for a steps process. It was completely safe. There was a lot of biosafety. They talk a lot about biosafety protocols, which means distancing, mask wearing, hand sanitizing, and so in every site we saw that kind of safety. Also, they were completely, they had to stop all political propaganda. No party could do any political advertising around the whole city of Caracas for I think three or four days before the elections. They also stopped any alcohol from being consumed, and so for that reason the people were very safe. There was not rousing or activities that were not really very civil. The machines, the boarding machines, also once they were used by the person that was going to be boarding, stored secretly the choices of the person that was boarding, and it was completely inaccessible for anybody in that room, but the person, the only spit a little bit, I will talk about it later on, spit a little bit proof of that. As I said before, everybody that could participate could do it and make it a free process. We also visited a site where all the computers were stored, and that site was heavily fortified by military. The military played a very important role supporting not only the infrastructure, but also the places where the machines are stored, and these machines have been outdated completely before and after the elections, so they could not be tampered, damaged, or hacked, but in any way. In fact, these machines are so completely guarded that it would be impossible to do anything against them, except burning the building and that happened just in this year earlier, and so all these machines are completely new. We also walk around the city and we visited different sites and talked to people, and there was a community, not a community, but just a bunch of people that were very enthusiastic about the foreign observers, and that's what they were doing. They were taking pictures, and you can see that these people looked very healthy physically. They were enthusiastic. There's something about the Venezuelan people, about their happiness, their joy, and their pride about the process. What they say, we are a democratic country and we vote for our leaders, and that is equated with being a Venezuelan. That's how proud they are of their elections. The day of the elections, we were taken into a small, it's not a small, it's another state called Aragua, and in Aragua we were welcomed by the director of the state, the direction of the electoral offices there, and she, of course, again, she showed us every process, every little detail that they were taking care of in Aragua, and again they were supported. You can see a friendly army guy, and there were more army people, and this is the director, and we were sitting in front of her asking questions and being taught about all the things that were going to happen. Their job was to make sure the elections were running well, and if any problem were to happen, they were there to support technology-wise, safety-wise, or in any other way. The voting in itself, it takes about two minutes or a bit more, and there are four clear steps that people go through, and they have a lot of experience because this is not the first election, they have done it many, many times, and so the first one, the first step that they need to go is they show their identification that is checked against an electronic machine, plus they use their finger, you can see this machine is a scanner, and they put their finger in that little hole there, and that opens the machine, the electoral machine, that sends an information to the electoral machine where the computer is open with the information from this particular person based on the fingerprint. In that space, the person can select their candidate, do the vote. No, that's the last stage, Rick. Go back. Can you go back? Okay. So here is the person in the hole with the voting machine selecting their candidate, and that it takes a very, very little time for them, and then this person is going to receive a little proof of the voting, and that little proof is taken to another box, and deposited in that box, and that little tab that proves the voting is going to be used when they edit, when they audit the elections. Yeah, I'm almost finished, yeah. So the final step is people signing up in a roll, in a ballot in roll, where they have actually their signature and fingerprint, and that's checked again during the auditing. Well, there was one thing that was interesting for me, and that was the testigo. This person that you see is a testigo, and to me it was completely interesting to see two people like this person, and there were two of them sitting in the side of the room, and they were not workers, they were not going to vote or any of that, but they were sitting. So I was wondering, what is this person doing here? And I went and I approached one of them, and I asked, what are you doing here? And he said that he was a testigo, a witness, and I said, what are you being a witness for? And he said, from my political party, and the other person was from another political party also being a witness. And I asked him, well, what political party are you a witness? And he said, well, Partido Comunista de Venezuela, and he was very proud when he said that. And for me, that's the first experience, completely out of the world, I had the body in many elections in Walnut Creek. And I never saw a political party witness in my present. And I'm thinking about the Communist Party witness that will have been almost impossible. So I will tell you that I was super impressed with the training of all the committee national electoral workers, they did the outstanding job, the process of the voting was completely easy, safe, secure, free for anybody that could participate in the elections, regardless of their education, their political affiliation, or their wealth, or any of that. This is an experience that makes me very proud of having been international observer. Thank you for your patience. And David is coming after me with a little bit more interesting explanation of the environment of before the elections and after. Do you hear me? Yes. Okay, hi. Yeah, I just wanted to say a little, it may be basic for some, but maybe not for others, just say a little bit about a history of political parties in a little historical context. For many decades, the political landscape was dominated in Venezuela by two parties that took turns, basically Democratic Action Party and the Social Christian Party. They're basically neoliberal policies and there was quite a uprising against those right before, which led to Hugo Chavez being elected in 1999. He used the wealth of the oil revenues to help the poor establish regional alliances independent from the US domination. And this led to a 20-year economic war and effort to destabilize the Venezuelan government and interference in their elections, threats against candidates who did not boycott elections, funding right-wing opposition and basically backing the coup in 2002 where they kidnapped Hugo Chavez. In 2015, the opposition won the National Assembly elections and this emboldened their efforts for regime change. In 2018, Maduro was re-elected as president in a very open election, similar to one we just observed. In 2019, Guaido, who was a very unknown deputy in the National Assembly, and sort of, as I understand it, by just a routine rotation, was assigned the president of the National Assembly. He, after consultation with Pence and Trump, declared himself president of the country. It was illegal, it was no constitutional basis for it, but he and his far-right colleagues have continued this opposition agenda, which is calling for foreign intervention, sabotage of infrastructure, taking over embassies in other countries, mercenary attacks, assassination attempts, threats for military invasion, and increased sanctions, which is what Terry referred to some of the effects of that. And all of this has prevented any kind of recovery from the economic crisis which Maduro faced, given the drop in oil prices when he first came into office and the economic sanctions, which began with Obama, well, not just with Obama, but made worse when he declared Venezuela as an economic security threat to the United States. But despite all this economic crisis, the sabotage and threats, Maduro was always committed to having some dialogue with the opposition. And he met a number of them this last summer, including the Catholic Church, and they made an agreement to be against, to end the need for the end of sanctions. They negotiated an increase in the number of delegate seats in the National Assembly and also some new members for the Electoral Council. But the far-right was still characterized by Juan Guaido of the Popular Will Party and Leopoldo López of the First Justice Party. Both of them were implicated in the violent and deadly protests in 2014 and 2017. And Guaido was also implicated in the corruption and theft of many of the funds that were seized when the U.S. absconded the Sitco oil refineries owned by Venezuela and the United States. The disincreasing suffering of the people, the shortages of medicine, shortages of food, and other vital spare parts of the sanctions, and this treasonous activity by Juan Guaido and the far-right was something the moderate opposition groups wanted to distance themselves from and they decided to participate in this National Assembly election. The Democratic Action and the Social Christian, the two main previous parties participated and many others. Falcón, who belonged to the Progressive Advance Party, who actually ran against Maduro in 2018, he participated and he said the far-right policies were basically a fantasy and that only the electoral path was the way to go. Capriles, a far-right leader who ran for president in the past, he said that there is no leadership in the opposition currently. And he had mentioned to the United States that they should ignore Guaido, that he's not the leader that they should be paying attention to. We had this meeting, which Terry referred to, with the five of the main opposition moderate groups. They had an alliance, they called the Democratic Alliance, and some of the things they expressed were very frustrated that there was no progress from the policies of the far-right, and they seemed to be more in line with the interests of the United States instead of Venezuela. They felt there was a great need to restore the Democratic political process through elections. They all denounced the sanctions, the violent and undemocratic actions of the far-right. And although they thought there were some irregularities in this election process of the National Assembly, sometimes not enough access on state media, although there was many other media, they said that it was not fraud. It was not a fraudulent election. And they also said that they would tell the United States, the new administration, that. Some other quotes from some of the representatives there, the movement for change rep said, reconciliation is vital, and we must end the dual government with two presidents and two national assemblies. The Progressive Advance Party rep, Falcone's party, said the sanctions are only hurting the Venezuelan people, and there needs to be negotiations, not confrontation. The hope for change rep said, we need to end the polarization. And they felt that their Democratic alliance was caught between the challenge of working with a corrupt, inefficient government, as they saw it, and a radical opposition using violence and undemocratic means. Also, there was a left-wing opposition of various groups, and they formed an alliance called the Popular Revolutionary Alternative. They were independent of the ruling party, which was a little unusual for these elections. They are quite critical of some of the concessions they feel the government is making to the right, and concerned with labor rights, wages, and privatization. But despite all the hardships that this government and the people have been facing, the shortages, the fuel, the pandemic, I agree with what's been said already. It was very impressive that nearly six million people still came out and voted, and two-thirds of them voted for the government party, the United Socialist Party. The fact that this election even occurred in many opposition parties now are participating is an example of the Venezuelan people asserting their sovereignty and resisting U.S. interference in their elections and their internal affairs. Yes, the right is very divided, and the left has a lot of serious critiques of the government. But the main opposition party here is the U.S. government itself. It still remains a great threat to the peace and stability of Venezuela, and Venezuela faces many challenges as we go ahead. And I think Rick is going to talk about some of those in his talk, and I'll hand it over to him. Okay. Thanks very much, David, and it's great to be with you all today. It was an exciting time going to Venezuela. It was difficult traveling on the plane with a mask the entire way, and they were very cautious. They had a lot of biosecurity measures in Venezuela, as Elisha was mentioning. The December 6 national assembly election in Venezuela was an important milestone, and it's not just the socialist government that's saying that leaders of the opposition also said the same thing. They said the election of the new national assembly should put an end to the pretense that there are two national assemblies and two presidents. The election should confirm that there's only one legitimate national assembly and one legitimate president. That is President Maduro. The oppositional leaders thanked us for coming to Venezuela to be an election observers, and they expressed the hope that we would convey the reality that U.S. sanctions are profoundly hurting the Venezuelan people and should be stopped. They also conveyed the hope that we can normalize relations between our two countries. These opposition leaders said that Venezuela is a sovereign country and should be allowed to chart its own course without foreign pressure and influence. So one might ask why has the U.S. been so hostile? Probably it's because Venezuela has been independent ever since Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela. In 2004 Venezuela and Cuba initiated the Bolivarian Alliance known as ELBA, along with seven other Latin American Caribbean countries. They promoted mutually beneficial trade outside the domination of the United States. For many years when oil prices were extremely high, Venezuela was a lifesaver to those countries providing cheap oil to all of them. In 2005, Venezuela launched the satellite-based TV and media network known as TELASUR. This allowed for education and news programming from an independent and progressive perspective, breaking the domination of U.S. and oligarch controlled networks. In 2006, President Hugo Chávez addressed the United Nations General Assembly with courage and accuracy, but also much humor he referred to U.S. President Bush, the previous speaker, as the devil. He noted that the scent of sulfur was still in the air at the podium. This brought a lot of laughs from the audience, but Hugo Chávez went on to make a very important point that the U.S., that the United Nations needs to be reformed so that it can do its job more effectively. Unfortunately, this has not been successful. The United Nations is still weak and violations of international law continue with impunity. Just four months ago, on August 14th, the U.S. illegally seized oil tankers, four oil tankers headed for Venezuela with precious oil. The U.S. hijacked the tankers, took them to Houston, and offloaded 1.1 million barrels of fuel. As a result of sanctions on refineries, airports, and chemicals, plus the seizure of refined petroleum such as this, Venezuela is facing a severe energy crisis directly imposed by the United States. If the United States doesn't wish to trade with Venezuela, that's their right. That's the right of the government, but it is entirely different matter when the United States seeks to prevent any country from trading with Venezuela. That harkens back to the infamous Monroe Doctrine and is a clear violation of the United Nations Charter. We had a private meeting with Venezuela's Deputy Foreign Minister for North America, Carlos Roan. We asked him about his thoughts about the incoming Biden administration. We were quite curious about that. Carlos said he's not optimistic. He thinks that the Biden and the Democrats may even be worse. The Democrats put on an air of showing about human rights, but they continued to interfere with other countries. Carlos Roan also had interesting observations about the impact of Exile Venezuelans in Florida who he said were playing a similar role to that of the Cuban Americans in Florida. They demonize their homeland and support US aggression. They don't feel the pain caused by the sanctions. Florida is an influential state in the United States system, as we know, so the lobbying and the pressure of Venezuelan Exiles, if it's unchecked, can be especially dangerous. A few days before the election on December 2, Carlos Roan wrote an op-ed published at the Veldai Discussion Club. He makes the point that Venezuela wins just by carrying out its election. He notes that in recent months progressive forces have voted in several countries. In Bolivia, the candidate for the movement towards socialism, Luis Arce, won the presidential race. This reverses the bloody coup against Evo Morales from one year ago. In Chile, the birthplace of Latin American neoliberalism, Chileans voted overwhelmingly yes in historic referendum to rewrite their constitution that was put in place by the dictator Augusto Pinochet. Venezuelans voted for their national assembly on December 6 despite constant pressure and efforts to undermine and sabotage the election. In March of this year, almost all the existing election machines were destroyed in a very suspicious fire. Almost 40,000 new voting machines had to be built, tested, and certified to carry out the election and they did it. The U.S. even imposed sanctions against individual members of the opposition who agreed to run in the election. That's how bad it is. As Carlos Roan wrote, quote, the new U.S. administration will have to decide if it will continue to recognize a non-existent government with no clear or constitutional path through legitimacy. The new national assembly will no longer be a platform for politicians to plead for U.S. intervention. Instead, the new national assembly can push legislation to overcome the blockade and it can turn into a new space for real political dialogue between the government and opposition. Challenges will continue but the U.S. will need to reassess its Monroe doctrine. For Venezuela and the Latin American progressive movement, these elections will be another victory of resistance and resilience. So that was Venezuela's deputy foreign minister Carlos Roan talking about us just a couple of days after the election. Finally, I want to recommend a book for those who are on the call today interested to learn more about Venezuela. I read it very recently myself. It's Dan Kovalik's book, The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela, How the U.S. is Orchestrating a Coup for Oil. It was published in 2019. It's very readable, concise, and accurate. It gives a good overview of how Venezuela was dominated by the U.S., how it broke free with Hugo Chavez, how it has struggled valiantly to preserve its independence for the last two decades. Dan's book gives details of Venezuela in the overall context of U.S. foreign policy based on empire. Now it's up to us to put maximum pressure on the Biden administration to stop interfering in Venezuela. We hope we will be able to work together with all the people on the call and invite you to contact us. For all our sakes, the U.S. needs a new foreign policy of respect and noninterference in the affairs of other countries. It is vital that Venezuela be able to govern itself and develop however it chooses. Thank you very much. And thanks for coming today to today's presentation. And I think we've got 10 minutes or so for questions. Thank you, everyone. Thank you to Alicia, to David, and Rick. And there's two things I'd like to share with all of you watching this afternoon before. I think we have three or four questions. But there's a couple, two things I would like to just be clear about. Our delegation meeting with Carlos Ron occurred on the evening of December 7. We were, we met with him and of course he is, you know, a member of the diplomatic corps of the Venezuelan government. We met with him after the elections and also after we had delivered our delegation report to the C&E president. And then just to clarify the situation with Juan Guaido and the National Assembly, the session of the National Assembly in which he stood up and declared himself president, we should all be clear that that session of the legislature has expired. Just like in the U.S. Congress, you know, when a session is over, it's over and you open up a new session. That new session of the National Assembly will open on January 5, and the new assembly members will be sworn in. And so this is when, I think, when David mentioned the meeting with the opposition leaders that this whole magical, wishful thinking of two parallel governments will go away January 5. And so it's going to be very curious as to how the U.S. chooses to handle that because that session with Juan Guaido is over. So let me just take a quick look at some of the questions that have come in. I know I saw something, I think I saw it in the chat, so excuse me. But Alan Fisher, I think if you're still there, you were asking if about the transition in party leadership and presidential leadership and perhaps a woman, I will encourage the other three panelists to answer this as well. But please keep in mind that the current vice president is a woman. Delcey Rodriguez is the vice president. And so I think we can all presume that she's in that position because of her past experience, her talent, and is perhaps even being groomed for a higher office. So does anybody else want to add to that? So, okay. Laura, hi, Laura Wells. Laura is asking what Latin American countries are still part of the Pink Tide. Are any other countries positioned to join the Pink Tide? Maybe Rick, that's a good one for you. Actually, I was looking at some other questions. I think the question was about the Pink Tide. Basically, it looks like in Argentina, you had the election of Cristina Fernandez and the other, the Fernandez team that overturned the ultra-right government in the past. That was a very progressive step. Of course, in Bolivia, as we were talking about in October, they had the very important election which reversed the coup, the election in Chile. Bolsonaro is on shaky grounds in Brazil. In Nicaragua, Nicaragua is also very important because along with Venezuela and Cuba and Bolivia and formerly under Ecuador, under President Correa, that was a block of countries that strengthened each other. So I think what's critical, what's really critical now is that Venezuela be able to survive through this very difficult period and strengthen. And it's, the tide was going against what they call the Pink Tide, but now it looks like it's going the other direction and things are moving in a more hopeful trend. So thank you, Rick. Does anybody else want to add to that? Okay, so we have a series of questions here from Susan Scott. Hi, Susan. Thank you for joining us tonight. So Susan asks, what do you think should be at the top of our list for advocacy regarding Venezuela? End of sanctions, end of recognition of Guaido, and how should we best do that advocacy? Letter to the Biden team, assist in Venezuelan, oh, the international, oh, the ICC complaint, sorry, ICC complaint, work with right opposition, Falcón, Capriles, or the left opposition, or both, and please give us websites for ongoing information on Venezuelan English and Spanish. Okay, who wants to tackle all or part of that, or should we each kind of chime in? I'll type in a couple of very good websites, and maybe David can take a crack at the other question. Yeah, I was going to suggest Orinoco Tribune and Venezuela Analysis for two things. Also, Alliance for Global Justice has a lot of good information on Latin America as well as, in terms of advocacy, I think ending this, I don't think the United States cares too much either administration about international law and the international court. But, I mean, any avenue through the UN, the International Court of Justice, criminal court is all important. I think we have to make more visibility in the media, using social media, media in general, letters to the editor about the effects of sanctions, the cruelty and illegality of sanctions. And of course, pressure our representatives. There is hardly any voice at all in Congress speaking out against the sanctions, specifically on Venezuela. And there should be a voice there, and people should be pressuring their local representatives. Of course, you can write letters and send petitions to Biden, but I think it's going to come through other channels. But yeah, there's all kind of avenues. I don't think there's one thing that people should be doing, but I think speaking against the sanctions and highlighting the effects of the sanctions is really important to keep highlighting. Does anybody else have anything else they want to add? I mean, I guess, Susan, and for the audience in general, Susan knows this personally, that so much of my Latin America work for the last five, 10 years has been focused on Venezuela and specifically the last five years work on lifting the sanctions. And I personally feel the work regarding sanctions really has to go to the community level in the United States in order for us to better influence congressional members on the Hill. There is a sense in the United States that sanctions are not a form of warfare. And I think that's the biggest work we all have to do is educating the American population of all demographics that sanctions are hybrid warfare. And there's this tendency to say, well, we're not dropping bombs on Venezuela or Iran or North Korea or Syria or any of the other 35 countries under sanctions right now, 33% of the world's population. To really get people to understand that, no, there's no bombs being dropped. There's no troops on the ground. But sanctions are a form of warfare. And I think we could argue are even a more egregious form as they're a slow form of genocide. And for me, that's really where the crux of my anti sanctions work is this broader educational effort for the American for the US population as a whole. And with a better informed public, we have a better chance of influencing Congress from DC pushing down and from local communities pushing, pushing up. So I just want to add, I agree with that. The media war is something that's confusing. And the propaganda that comes through the media. So we do have to, we have to educate the public to put that pressure, I totally agree. And people can do that however they can. But we need to educate people. Okay. What's the status? Susan Scott is asking the status of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington. Do you know David? Well, it is empty after they kicked the activists who were trying to defend the embassy out and arrested us. They let the Guaidos, Vecchio, fake ambassador go in for some photo ops and then left and then they boarded it up. So it's not being used as an embassy. There is no personnel who can do any diplomatic or embassy functions because the Guaidó and his people have no power to do that. So it is empty. And also the US embassy in Caracas as well. So it is basically not functioning as an embassy. There's a question about the conversation with the left opposition. Can you comment on that? Maybe Terry or David briefly? It should be Terry. I wasn't in that meeting. Oh yeah. Yeah. So this was a meeting that our second auxiliary meeting that we organized with Paul Dobson of Venezuelan analysis. And he shared with us the, you know, there is, there are dissident Chavistas and that they, instead of joining the government coalition for this year's National Assembly elections, they formed their own coalition. It had very, very small turnout. But I think the takeaway from that conversation, first of all, dissident leftists are allowed a voice and a political space in the country. And so are the opposition as long as they're not violent and or trying to overthrow the government, which those people wouldn't be allowed to behave that way in pretty much any other country on the planet as well. So it was what was interesting for me personally and the rest of you please feel free to join in was that some of the some of the dissatisfaction expressed by the dissident left was not different from a couple of the things expressed by the participatory opposition. One, they didn't feel there was equal media access and part of that was their own financial weaknesses as political parties, not not solely the government. And they felt the electoral process was free and fair and absent of fraud, which is why they chose to form their own political coalition and participate in the elections. So they're dissatisfied with some I think David mentioned a good part of this that the some of the neoliberal sprinklings of neoliberalism that they see entering the economic system here in Venezuela. But and that there's and lifting the sanctions and and keeping the US out. So it was a really it was a very interesting conversation. And again, I want to emphasize the fact that they are dissidents, dissident leftist, but they were allowed political space to form their own parties and to participate in the elections. So is there anything else you want to add? All right. It's, I guess we should wrap up. Do we have time for one more? Why don't we take one more and then and then we'll just let all of you know that this has been recorded this evening. And so we have the ability to watch again. And share it with you. So I don't know, there's a number of questions here. What do you, what do you guys? So Mark Stansbury is asking speak more to this impact on low intensity conflicts such as embargoes, sanctions, blockades, drones, unilateralism, coups, etc. Oh my gosh, Mark, that's like a webinar in another cell. I mean, a really, really good one. And I suspect you, you probably know quite a bit about all of those items that you've mentioned. And I guess I will just say, as far as sanctions, you know, was really, really, you know, clear being here, all of us, to see the many, many obstacles that the people and the government the people of all political persuasions were up against on election day that, you know, there was, there's so many international hindrances and domestic handicaps to participate in yet people did. But I think everything that you have mentioned embargoes, sanctions, blockade, those are forms of hybrid war, as we spoke about earlier, and their forms and drones. Since they don't involve, you know, human beings flying them in the air, just from, you know, a ground base. U.S. citizens have really become, in my opinion, and the rest of you please join in in this, really anesthetized to the horrors of war. And that's why I mentioned earlier, the work regarding lifting sanctions embargoes blockades really has, for me personally, has to begin with educating the U.S. population, you know, in neighborhoods in communities so that people understand it is heinous form of warfare, a form of slow genocide, and it is equally if not more gruesome than forms of warfare that U.S. citizens are used to seeing. I want to just add, Rick, to that point, another resource is sanctionskill.org has a lot of resources, a toolkit for people to, for public education around the sanctions, and there's a national coalition of many activist groups working on specifically on sanctions, so sanctionskill.org. I would encourage people to check that out, as well as those other resources we mentioned before. Thanks, Nick. Before we wrap up, maybe, Terry, you could comment. We've got a question from Anne Wright. Are there many U.S. citizens living in Venezuela and any U.S. NGOs with programs in Venezuela? Well, hi, Anne. I'm so happy you're with us this evening. I, you know, I have to tell you, I, as of, you know, this year's visit, I was here in January and then again, now, I honestly, I do not know how many U.S. citizens are living in this country at the moment. You know, the diplomatic corps left February, I believe they had a two-day march to the airport evacuating the embassy. But those are really good questions, Anne, and I will, while I'm still here for another week or two, I will look into that because they're both really good questions and really be fascinating to know how many U.S. citizens are actually living here at this point and also which NGOs are still on the ground and active. So that's some good research for me to do while I'm still here. And thank you for the question. Yeah. So, so shall we wrap up now? Yeah, let me just say before it, before we let all of you go, David had mentioned sanctionskill.org, and I want to just take this moment to promote a sanctions kill Friends of the ATC delegation to Nicaragua, February 13 through 23rd. It is yes to sovereignty, no to sanctions. It is a delegation itinerary focused on studying the early phase of a U.S. sanctions regime. So many of us participating this evening, we have followed Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and a number of other countries that have been under sanctions for many, many years and we're familiar with how that regime works and what the long-term effects are. But this trip in February will allow you to see the early stages of a sanctions regime. And so that will be an educational delegation to study that. And you can find more information at sanctionskill.org and Friends of the ATC.