 Our next speaker is Medea Benjamin, and she is a co-founder and director of Dynamic Peace and Justice Organization, Code Pink. She's also a leader of the Fair Trade Advocacy Group Global Exchange. She's the author of a number of books and articles on political issues, and she's organized tours of many countries that have been under attack by the U.S. So, Medea. Thank you. So, I want to thank Sarah for not only organizing this panel, but for the March, well, the sanctions kills coalition that's so important. And we're going to have a chance in March 13th to 15th to really use the information that we're learning here, and that's on the site. And in fact, in preparation for giving a 10-minute talk, I've read through almost every single article that's on the site of sanctions kill. And let me tell you, that should be like a college course. It is fantastic. So, read through them. And what it will do, you know, we are people who, like, our blood is already boiling by what our country is doing, but it makes you so mad to see that. It's like the mafia is in control of this country, the bullies, the sadists, they are just mean, horrible people that are making people's lives miserable around the world. This is not something new. I learned by reading on your website that Woodrow Wilson in 1919 had talked about sanctions being a lethal weapon that no nation could overcome if we imposed them. And we know in more recent history, we talk about Cuba sanctions being coming back 60 years ago. And you talk about the white settlers wanting to get a compensation. Same thing in Cuba. The ones living in this country want to be compensated for land they say they lost 60 years ago. And now the Trump administration has opened up the courts to allow those lawsuits to happen. You know why? To make people afraid of investing in Cuba. So these policies are designed to make people's lives miserable. And as we talk, I want to bring into the room some of the people that I've met by traveling to Iran, meeting a guy in the marketplace who came over when he saw we were Americans and started crying and asking, why is your government keeping my wife from getting the cancer medicine she needs to survive? She is dying and she is suffering. And we are suffering. And that is our government's policy to make these people suffer. Going to Cuba and going to a lovely little restaurant and learning that they've lost 80% of the business that they poured their entire life savings into because Trump now says that Americans shouldn't be traveling to Cuba. North Korea, the people, the women who now can't have a job in the textile business because textiles are now illegal for anybody in the world to buy because the US just says that throwing thousands and thousands of North Korea women out of their jobs. And as people have said on this, it's about regime change but that's not all it's about. We see in the case of attacking Venezuela, Cuba, and Garagua it's about the wonderful high that it happened to bring progressive governments to Latin America and create alliances like the Alba Alliance that was an alternative to the US and the US wants to destroy those alliances. And there's another issue I think it's important to understand this is also about domestic politics because if you look at Latin America and why there's been such incredible attacks on Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua it's not just that we want to overthrow their governments it's that we want to please a very small right-wing sector of this community that lives primarily in Florida, primarily in Miami and because Florida is such an important state in the elections they are the Democrats and Republicans imposing more and more brutal hardships on people in Latin America to try to win over their votes. And I see Casio there from Florida and I see Camilo there from Florida isn't this the truth? It is disgusting and it's a bipartisan policy. We also have to recognize while we hope this empire dies and dies quicker sooner than later let's just think about the power of the dollar right now and why the US can get away with these policies one thing is something that the majority of this country doesn't know anything about called the SWIFT system and it is the system of communication between banks and it's controlled by US companies and so the US can demand that the SWIFT system not process transactions that go from one bank to another anywhere in the world even if it's not a US bank also recognize that the currency for international trade is the dollar right now that has got to change and certainly there are countries around the world that are experimenting and trying to get off of the dollar but that's the only way this is really going to be changed when there's enough strength of alternative currencies so that the dollar is not the number one source of international trade the other thing that this Trump administration has done better than any others in recent history is really use those mafia type tactics to threaten other countries if they don't obey US sanctions and you see them threatening small countries all the time but they threaten big countries look at the daughter of the billionaire from China who is under house arrest in Canada right now facing extradition to the United States for having violated sanctions against Iran they are going after the big ones as well they are threatening China so much that China is now reducing the imports of oil that it has been buying from Iran and we see that this administration has absolute disregard for international institutions when Venezuela in 2018 took the United States to the International Court of Justice and won a ruling that said the United States cannot deny food and medicines what did the US do? they withdraw from the treaty on which that was based and we know John Bolton who thank goodness is no longer the national security advisor but you might recall when the International Criminal Court was talking about looking into the Taliban and US war crimes in Afghanistan what did the Trump administration do? they threatened sanctions against the judges of the International Criminal Court it is incredible and Jeff Makler who was up here was talking about how after the killing of Soleimani in Iraq how the Iraqi parliament voted to kick the US troops out of Iraq what did the Trump administration do? not only did they say we're going to impose sanctions on Iraq that will make the Iranian sanctions look tame but they also said they would hold on to the oil revenues of Iraq that who knew they're in the federal bank here in New York and the Iraqi parliamentarians looked at each other and they said that would mean the collapse of our country so the US has just so much economic power it is mind blowing and something that has to change and more and more countries are starting to see that I'm on my way next week to the European parliament where we're going to have a day long discussion about this and ask why is it that the Europeans have been so willing to be under the thumb of the United States and how the institution that they set up to counter the sanctions on Iran called INSTEX has not processed one transaction since the time it was set up over a year ago European people want to know why their governments aren't doing more so in just the remaining two minutes I have I want to say that we can use the power of our economic power as citizens and we are doing that very differently from the way our governments do it we are doing it from the grassroots up as has been the tradition in the United States civil rights movement, the farm workers movement using campaigns of boycott, divestment and sanctions against very repressive countries like Israel and that is an alternative to what our government is doing we're also starting a campaign to avoid again Saudi Arabia, a country that has perhaps the worst human rights record in the world but is the great ally of the United States we are as a community going into our schools our universities, our pension funds and calling for divestment from the war machine and I want to recognize Cody Urban here who works with Code Pink and you can talk to him about the divestment campaigns successes in our nation's capital divesting from the war machine successes now in universities that are calling for divestment and I think we can add divestment and the sanctions campaign as part of those local campaigns we do we also at Code Pink take people to these countries so they can see for themselves and come back with their own stories and I want to recognize Terry wherever you are Terry Mattson, there she is who is organizing a lot of the trips coming up to Cuba we have trips to Iran, we have trips to Honduras, to Bolivia if you want to learn more about them you could talk to Terry or you could look online and I just want to close by saying how excited I am that this movement has taken on this issue of sanctions recognizing that sanctions is definitely no alternative to war that sanctions is a form of warfare that people all around the world are dying because of our US sanctions and our job is to educate people about that activate them, make them as angry as we are and stop this government from imposing such horrific suffering on people around the world thank you thank you, media