 I can't believe how many of you have joined us this evening. So really exciting to see so many people interested in our topic tonight. So I'm Terry Mattson. I am one of the Code Pink Latin America Campaign Coordinators and I'm working this evening with Leonardo Flores and Michelle Elner who are part of our team also. And they will be helping with the technical stuff behind the scenes. So if you don't see them, please know they're there and they'll be doing the bulk of the work tonight. So let me get started and introduce tonight's program, what we're gonna talk about and have you meet our three guests and then we'll get the formal conversation going. But thank you so much. We all of us participating this evening feel so strongly about Nicaragua being in the US crosshairs of regime change now as it has been in the past more than once. And so we're so happy that so many of you are joining us tonight to learn more about this. So here we go. Welcome to tonight's Code Pink's Action On. This evening our topic is hybrid war, sanctions and regime change in Nicaragua. As the Renus Air Act, and let me tell you what this is, reinforcing Nicaragua's adherence to conditions for electoral reform. And keep in mind that Nicaragua has presidential elections November 7th of this year. So as the Renus Air Act moves through the US House of Representatives having already passed the US Senate, we want to share with you an informed conversation about regime change in Nicaragua in 2021 not being the first time, as I said before. In order to highlight the use of US legislation as a form of regime change, we are honored to be joined this evening by Vijay Prashad, Executive Director of the Tri-Continental Institute, Alex Main, Director of International Policy, excuse me, Alex, Director of International Policy for the Center for Economic Policy and Research and Jill Clark Gallup, a Friends of Latin America. We will break our conversation this evening into three segments, followed by a short Q&A session. We will close this evening's actionar with all of us honing our respective members of Congress demanding a stop to the Renus Air Act. And later in the program, I will share all the links necessary for phone numbers and congressional districts and names and all of that and also a script for you. So let's start this evening with Vijay Prashad and we're gonna have Vijay talk about this clash between a US favored privatized economy versus a public state organized economy, which is leading, this clash is leading to various forms of US hybrid war, hybrid war across the globe with Nicaragua being in the immediate crosshairs. So welcome, Vijay. A pleasure to have you with us this evening. Yeah, thanks, Teri. And I'm gonna come to the point you made in a roundabout way. I'd first like to remind people that the United Nations is a real organization. It exists unfortunately in New York City. There are 193 members of the United Nations. Of them, Nicaragua is a member state of good standing. In March of this year, 19 countries, 15 formerly joined a group called the Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter. That's what I just showed you. This group includes China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. And it's an important group because think of the language. They are a group of friends not to advance socialism in the planet but to defend the UN Charter. And I'd just like to remind you the United States government is, of course it may have forgotten but it is a signatory of the UN Charter. I just want you to remind you of that because I don't think people in the United States recall there are obligations for being a signatory to the UN Charter. Now, we know that the United States acts basically as a scoff law, not only in the American hemisphere but around the world. We've just seen that in Afghanistan. There is a form of destabilization of countries that the United States has mastered which we call hybrid war. And there are three aspects I want to quickly go through with you just to refresh your memory. The first is a political. Well, there is an election as Terry mentioned and then there's the United States Congress passing an act essentially creating a sense of doubt about the Nicaraguan election process. Sowing doubt, making people think, well, it's not going to be a real election. Intervening in the election even before it's taken place and so on. The Rensselaer Act is exactly an instrument of the hybrid war. It's a form of warfare by destabilizing or demoralizing people from their own political process. And I think that's important to bear in mind. That's only one aspect of it. In 2017, you might recall that the US passed the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act, Nica, a very cute name. This is part of the way in which the United States destabilizes countries economically. You can do that by casting aspersions at the economy saying there's corruption, saying that there's authoritarian governments that the economy is not a free market. I'll come back to that as the last point I'm going to make. It's not a free market. Therefore, the United States gets to utilize every instrument that it has and it has certainly a lot of instruments to destabilize a country's economy. Welcome to Richard Nixon's famous line with Chile. We're going to make the economy scream. It's quite easy to do that because the dollar is so dominant. It's quite easy to do that because the European allies help and here they will instrumentalize or weaponize the SWIFT system. Hard for countries to get money in and out if the SWIFT system is close to them. It's what Iran is facing at many levels. These sanctions, Alex is going to talk about them more, secondary sanctions, further sanctions and so on. They create doubt amongst shipping companies. Should they ship goods into a country? What does it mean for airlines to fly into a country? It creates a sense of doubt in the marketplace in basic commerce, not even in the production of socialism but basic commerce is destabilized because people just have doubt. If the United States says that they should not trade with Nicaragua, then how will they trade with Miami tomorrow? You see, so then they say, we'll skip Nicaragua. It's too small a market for us. We'll concentrate on the US market. This is a form of hybrid war. The third important form of hybrid war, very key is the information war. So easy to say this, that and the other thing is wrong with Nicaragua. Who is going to remind the US public that right after the Sandanistas came to power in 79, it was Jimmy Carter and his government that mined Managua Haber. The Sandanistas didn't come and destabilize Washington DC. From the very first day, they faced the wrath of the US government but that memory has disappeared. That's the information war. So easy to say Daniel Ortega, this, that and the other. And by the way, I would like to say on the record that the Nicaraguan process is not self identical with Daniel Ortega. It's what the information war seeks to do. They seek to make Daniel Ortega self identical with the Nicaraguan people and the Nicaraguan process. It's not true. It's a complicated process as is any human process. And yet that's exactly what they do. They destabilize even your thinking about what a process like that is. Now interesting, I said at the top that the United States is a scoff law and here's the third point. United States operates just without care in influence or breaking the sovereignty of countries interfering in countries. This is actually against the UN Charter and the Charter of the Organization of American States which too often behaves as an instrument of US foreign policy. It's against its charter as well. You just have to read the first page of the OAS Charter. You don't even have to go into depth there. But then on top of that, the United States colludes with other countries and it's okay with the Lima Group which had to do with Venezuela. The US wasn't formally a part of that process but the Lima Group was exactly in violation of both the UN Charter and the OAS because the UN Charter and the OAS explicitly say that countries cannot band together in a mafia like grouping and try to influence another country. Only with the UN resolution is it possible for countries to come together like that not without a UN resolution. The Lima Group, well, since Peru has abandoned it should perhaps better be known as what it should have been on from the beginning which is the Ottawa Group. The Ottawa Group is an illegal mafia like gangster plot to overthrow a government in South America and because of the information why we don't think of it like that. We think it's a legitimate group of people because they wear suits and stand in front of the cameras that they are legitimate group of people who are doing something legitimate. They are an utterly mafia element trying to overthrow a government in good standing in the United Nations. By the way, Cuba is a government in good standing in the United Nations. Ask the General Assembly, they vote every year for an end to the embargo. Still the United States and its European allies get together, they create these mafia-like groupings and try to suffocate countries. That's what Nicaragua is having to deal with a plot against its process which is a violation of the UN Charter and the OAS Charter. And the final point I want to make, Terry did an excellent interview with Ivan Acosta who's the Minister of Housing and Public Credit that was on the Code Ping channel. Now, you see, why does the United States what is the need to go and try to suffocate Cuba or overthrow the government, not the government, the Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution? Why did the US get involved in overthrowing the government of Eva Morales? Why is the US government so interested in breaking the process in Nicaragua? Why? Why does the US do this in these specific instances? Why isn't it trying to overthrow the government in Honduras where the man who is the so-called president of Honduras has a brother who has been found guilty of drug trafficking and in the indictments that I've read sitting in a New York courtroom, the indictments implicate the brother who's the president and yet the United States does nothing about that. Why doesn't the United States go after the president of Colombia? Unfortunately, the New York Times ran such a fluff piece about him this week. It was almost like a paid advertisement for Ivan Duque. Shame on the New York Times for pretending that it's an objective newspaper. I thought that was just like a paid advertisement. I don't know how many of you read it. I read it, I had to hold my nose and finish the article because I felt it was my obligation to torture myself in the morning and appalling piece of journalism. But why not go after Ivan Duque's government? After all, look at the way they are behaving at the legitimate popular peaceful protests in Cali. Look at the implication in the drug trade. Why go after these? Because these countries are attempting to do something different. They're attempting to put people in front of profit. That is the key dividing line. They're not going after the government in Nicaragua because Daniel Ortega is authoritarian or they're not going after the government in Venezuela because Nicolas Maduro is authoritarian. That's ridiculous. You know it's ridiculous because guess what? The government of Saudi Arabia, that's a self-declared authoritarian government. So this is not a standard followed by the United States. The real standard is these are countries that are exploring a different way of building the compact between the state and society and these are governments that are not buckling to US pressure. If you don't buckle to US pressure and if you're trying to do something like the national plan for the fight against poverty and human development, which is what Nicaragua is doing, if you're trying to develop these processes, you have to be overthrown. It is not permitted to attempt an independent sovereign path of national development. That is simply off the charts. Look at how they are behaving vis-a-vis the government of Pedro Castillo in Peru. His foreign minister was not permitted. So much pressure for Hector Bejar to have to step down from that role. This is part of the hybrid war, friends. This is not something that's just happening in these countries like a tea party kind of, like a picnic kind of thing. This is rough and tumble stuff. Politics from the United States in Latin America is an ugly business. United States has never been a lawful player in any of these processes. It has always, always played a very ugly and dirty game. And as I said, it's an obligation of US citizens to stand up against their government, stand up against their class that dominates the government or offer an alternative path for US relations with these other countries, offer a different door, offer a different kind of handshake. This kind of gangsterism has to stop and you can stop it. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. We're all motivated to hear more now. Thank you so much, Vijay. Always appreciate your comments and you're so insightful and your analysis is always so spot on. So let me introduce to all of you our second guest this evening and the second part of our conversation, Alex Main who is with the Center for Economic Policy and Center for Economic Policy and Research, I'm sorry, Alex. And Alex is gonna discuss what sanctions actually are and how they are being used by the United States to influence policy and regime change in foreign nations, including Nicaragua at the moment. And then the third part of our conversation will be conducted by Jill Clark and she is going to talk about the specifics of the Renus Air Act that we keep mentioning to all of you this evening. She'll talk about the specific inclusions of the bill and can also share with you some of her experiences that she's had on the Hill loving against the bill. So next let's talk with Alex about sanctions specifically. So welcome, Alex. Thank you so much for being with us tonight. Very, thank you. Thanks very much to you and the others at CodePink for organizing this event and you're having me on the panel. And off the bat, I'd like to say I'm not a Nicaragua expert by a long shot but I was kindly invited to be on this panel to discuss something I do focus on a lot in my work at CEPR, Economic Sanctions. So I'm going to talk a little bit about US economic sanctions and how they hurt ordinary people in Nicaragua and many other places and why they are immoral, illegal and should really be opposed by anyone who cares about human rights and international law. Again, the people that care about international law in Washington are few and far between but we're trying to change that. Over time, sanctions end up causing mass casualties, death, disease, mass displacements. In short, economic sanctions are a form of warfare, economic warfare. And so I'm going to start off talking a little bit about how sanctions, economic sanctions work in Nicaragua and elsewhere since this panel is on Nicaragua focused specifically on Nicaragua more than any other place. And in Nicaragua, the current Economic Sanctions regime derives from what's called the Nicaragua Human Rights and Anti-Corruption Act of 2018 which has that cute acronym NICA Act. It was introduced by the very hawkish members of Congress, Eliana Ross-Lettin on the House side and the Democrat Senator Bob Menendez on the Senate side. And the key component of this legislation is an instruction to the US Treasury to systematically block multilateral loans and grants to Nicaragua's public sector. And this has had the effect of depriving Nicaragua of much needed credit lines to maintain public spending levels in all sorts of critical sectors particularly during the pandemic but it's had more significant indirect effects. So foreign investors are very reluctant to invest in a small developing nation that's essentially barred from receiving support from institutions like the IMF, the World Bank. For a lot of investors multilateral support the country is often seen as a sort of guarantee that the country will remain solvent and financially stable. And for an economy like Nicaragua's that typically relies on a pretty high level of foreign investment. This policy does a lot of damage and we've actually seen foreign direct investment decline from around a billion dollars in 2017 to less than a third of that amount in 2019 and less than 20% of that amount in 2020. Though in 2020 you do have to factor in the effect of COVID containment measures like everywhere. And also ratings, ratings agencies have downgraded Nicaragua's credit ratings made it much harder and more onerous for Nicaragua to borrow. So all of this has undoubtedly had a big impact on Nicaragua's economic growth. Annual GDP per capita, which is a standard measure of economic growth has sunk over 10% in Nicaragua between 2017 and 2019. It sunk even more when you go into 2020, obviously. This follows an uninterrupted fairly strong growth streak since 2009. So the economy had been consistently growing until 2017. And so a big downturn like this, it essentially translates into higher levels of poverty, malnutrition and even mortality. There are lots of studies that show that when you have big declines in GDP growth that leads to a higher rate of deaths very simply. So that's more blood on the hands of the US. And note that I'm not suggesting that US sanctions are the only factor here. There are others and obviously the protests, the instability that took place in 2017 also caused a lot of economic difficulties but it's clear that these sanctions are a very significant factor. And now Congress wants to do more as Terry was mentioning and Jill's gonna go into more details with Renacer. And I guess Jill's gonna talk about that a little bit more later. Just to mention a few other US sanctions regimes. I mean, Venezuela, that's the country that CEPR has done the most work on in terms of the sanctions. You have a vast arsenal of sanctions there that have hurt the economy a great, great deal. And ordinary Venezuelans a great, great deal. And these were largely put into place under Trump, although they were started under Obama and they've been maintained entirely under Biden. You have financial sanctions, sanctions on Venezuelan oil imports to the US, secondary sanctions on foreign companies doing business with Venezuelas. Essentially an economic blockade much like what we see on Cuba. And it's led to tens of billions of dollars of lost revenue and has significantly deepened Venezuela's economic recession. Venezuela's had great deal of difficulty accessing sufficient foreign exchange. They've had to reduce their level of imports enormously. This has created major shortages of essential goods. It's fed into hyperinflation. It's led to many, many human casualties and extremely high levels of migration from the country. At CEPR we published a paper back in 2019 called Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment co-authored with economist Jeffrey Sachs where we look at Venezuela's mortality numbers. We show that the imposition of economic sanctions coincided with a high number of excess deaths around 40,000 and that was just for 2018. And of course since then there've been many more sanctions and we expect many, many more excess deaths and we're calculating that now. We're working on an updated report. I think everyone's familiar with Cuba. US sanctions, an economic blockade that's been in place since 1961. The sanctions were loosened a little bit under Obama then they were hardened and then they were vastly expanded under Trump. And Cuba observers from the left and the right have noted that this extra layer of sanctions imposed under Trump and maintained under President Biden have contributed to major economic difficulties which were a very big factor in the protests that took place in Cuba back in July. So as VJ was saying, these are of course destabilization campaigns through sanctions and we're seeing this in many countries at least 24 countries. We're seeing human casualties caused by US sanctions in Iran, North Korea, Syria, Belarus, Sudan. Note that there are overwhelmingly countries whose inhabitants are primarily brown and black. And in most of these countries we see similar phenomena of high inflation, shortages of essential goods, increased poverty, disease, malnutrition and mortality. So sadly, very sadly, sanctions are an extremely run-of-the-mill US policy tool. And the US is by far the number one purveyor of economic sanctions. They're typically, of course, in Nicaragua's cases through legislation, but typically they're imposed by the US president. President, the US president's granted these powers through a law from the 1970s called the International Economic Emergency Powers Act. I won't go into the details here unless there's time in the Q and A but there's really a strong case that these sanctions powers have been very blatantly abused by every president since this law was passed in the late 1970s. And unfortunately, the presidential use of sanctions, just right and left on a regular basis is very widely accepted in the US foreign policy community and among members of Congress from both parties. The humanitarian and human rights implications of sanctions are very, very rarely discussed even though the defense of human rights is often invoked when these sanctions are imposed. And it's pretty undeniable that these sanctions are designed to hurt ordinary people. In fact, that's the point of economic sanctions. It's to cause human suffering and despair in order to prompt people to exert pressure or rise up against those that rule the country. Very, very rarely works, but this is something that the US has convinced will work. And in the end, they hurt a tremendous amount of innocent people. They're often described falsely by US officials as designed to just hurt country's leaders, not the general population. Some officials are franker even in public and I think Mike Pompeo should get a prize for his candor on this issue. So when he was Secretary of State, he was asked about the sanctions in Iran and he said publicly that things are much worse for the Iranian people with these sanctions and we are convinced that they will lead the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime. And he said similar things about Venezuela. So I argue and I think many people argue that these sanctions are not only immoral but illegal and VGA went into this a little bit. The human rights implications of US sanctions are barely mentioned in DC. What gets even less mentioned is that most US economic sanctions really violate international law. They are a form of collective punishment, pretty clearly and collective punishment is considered a war crime under the Hague and Geneva Conventions to which the US is a signatory. And then there are other treaties that the US has signed that are more explicit. VGA mentioned the Organization of American States Charter article 20 says no state may use or encourage the use of coercive measures of an economic or political character in order to force the sovereign will of another. That's pretty clear cut. And there are other treaties as VGA mentioned also the UN Charter cited by international law experts is prohibiting the US from imposing unilateral economic sanctions. And really of course all of this has been consistently ignored by the foreign policy establishment of Washington DC. So the good news, because I wanna end this on a positive note is that there really is a growing movement against economic sanctions in both in the US and internationally. Of course, Code Pink and many of you are part of it. And its components include opposing new forms of legislation that impose sanctions like Rene Serre, which Jill is gonna discuss soon. And also supporting various legislative efforts, reforms to presidential sanctions powers for instance. There's the Congressional Oversight of Sanctions Act that was introduced last year by Ilian Omar. There's the National Security Powers Act that was recently introduced in the Senate. We'll be introduced in the house soon that does these things that impose a congressional vote debate and oversight over any sanctions that are decreed by the president. There's legislation that's pending that requires the US Treasury, Department of State and other agencies to report on the humanitarian and human right of sanctions. You have members again, like Ilian Omar seeking to force more of a discussion on US compliance with international law. So all of these things granted are baby steps. I'm here in Washington DC and it all seems like a big deal but obviously there are really baby steps at this point. But along with the increasing criticism of US sanctions that we're seeing and we are seeing a lot more in the mainstream media for mainstream pundits. I don't know if people saw as recline in the interview that he did just last week. The name escapes me of the individual that he interviewed but where there was a very, very harsh critique of sanctions and we're seeing a lot more of that now. And we are succeeding I think collectively to force more of a public debate on the human consequences and the illegality of sanctions that most policymakers in Washington have been trying to avoid. And honestly, if that debate gets real traction I think it'll be clear that those who promote sanctions as a routine instrument of US policy really don't have firm moral or legal ground to stand on. Thank you. Sorry, I had to unmute myself. Thank you, Alex, really helpful and very informative. And I am glad you ended on a positive note that there is a shift within the United States, within the media and within people working on the Hill. And I think Leonardo and Michelle and I can certainly attest to that gradual shift. And most definitely our next guest, Jill Clark, although there is a shift but not fast enough and not strong enough as you alluded to, Alex. So let's welcome Jill Clark to conclude our conversation this evening. And Jill is gonna talk with all of us about the specifics of the Renicellar Act. And let me read to you again what it is because it just has this outrageous name that you can totally deduce what it's about just by hearing. Reinforcing Nicaragua, this is the US Congress wording. Reinforcing Nicaragua's adherence to conditions for electoral reform in Nicaragua. So with that said, welcome, Jill. Thank you, Terry. And I'd like to thank Code Pink for holding this webinar and inviting me to speak and also thank BJ and Alex for their excellent presentations. Just to give the audience a little bit of information about me, my mother is Nicaraguan. I have lots of family in Nicaragua. And here in, I live in Maryland where I work with a volunteer with the Friends of Latin America wonderful solidarity group. So I'd like to just point out something that first of all, I think that BJ and Alex has already told you enough to be against the Renicellar Act but I'd like to point out something like there's no doubt that Nicaragua is being subjected to the kind of hybrid warfare that BJ explained to you nor that it has entered the stage of financial war that Alex described. But the information war that BJ talked about has really been taken to a new height with the case of Nicaragua which I think is why so much of even the left in the United States is confused about what's happening in Nicaragua. And I just like to mention that there are people who claim to be the real Sandinistas who people, international activists who visited Nicaragua in the 1980s came to admire and whose lead they still follow unfortunately although they've abandoned the revolution. And I think that one can clearly draw a line at those who advocate for sanctions are clearly not on the side of the people in a given country. And some of the former Sandinistas who are now being in jail pending investigation into their crimes have been openly and publicly calling for sanctions on their own country. And I think that anybody who's still confused about Nicaragua that should give them pause as to whose side they're really on and whose interests they're really serving. But we're at a very dangerous moment in which it seems that Nicaragua which has been relatively stable and despite the setback since the NECA Act was introduced has still brought improvements to the people of Nicaragua. And I clearly believe that it has brought more prosperity to more Nicaraguans since 2007 since the FSLN came back into office than at any previous time in the country's history. And so let's explain what's in the bill and I have a couple of slides to share with you. And yes, okay. So as Terry said, the reinforcing Nicaragua's adherence to conditions for electoral reform is all about imposing the State Department's will on Nicaragua. It doesn't take much reading between the lines to see that any electoral forms that ever allow the Sandinistas to get elected would be unacceptable. So this bill would reinforce the NECA Act which Alex spoke about because some loans are getting through such as at the end of 2020 for pandemic relief and for hurricane relief where there hadn't been any from the international organizations for all of 2019 really since the passage of the NECA Act at the end of 2018. And so this new version that just passed the Senate also proposes kicking Nicaragua out of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. And it's through this agreement that the country provides more than 130,000 jobs to people in the free trade zones. And I think it may be over 200,000, I'm sorry I don't have the exact figure, but it would have a big impact on the economy. So targeted sanctions is a bit of a misnomer because this targets so much of the population, all officials in the government of President Daniel Ortega. And by extension, anyone who received government services because infrastructure, everything is going to be impacted, health services, medicines. Family members of President Ortega, members of the police and armed forces, members of the Supreme Electoral Council and then FSLN party members, 2.1 million people. It's about one third of the population of 6.5 million plus their family members, so that gets over half and elected officials and their family members. Also individuals or entities with businesses engaged in corruption and also with the president and his family and also any corruption in Nicaragua. So then also back to the information war is being perpetrated even through the text of this document. So part of it is it talks about human rights violations and it blames the government for all of the deaths in 2018. And we do not have time to explain the coup attempt of 2018. I would recommend that people read this free e-reader that you can download from the site of the Alliance for Global Justice AFGJ.org and then find other things to read. But and also Congress says that the Sandinista representatives in the National Assembly need to be punished because they passed some laws that the US Congress doesn't like. The foreign agents regulation law which requires citizens who receive funds from abroad to register as foreign agents and bars them from engaging in political activity. Imagine that. I mean, this is based on the US law, the FARA law that's been on the books in the United States since 1938. Congress also expresses its displeasure over the cyber crimes law that bars social media from spreading disinformation that leads to violence which the Nicaraguan people are very familiar with because they experienced this on large scale during the coup attempt of 2018 and the self-determination law that punishes people for openly calling for sanctions which we've already mentioned. So another important element of the context is that the US has an active coup plot underway targeting these elections as Terry mentioned. And this plot was leaked from the US Embassy in Managua last year as to be implemented by USAID. It's called Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua and it proposes three scenarios vis-a-vis the elections. The first is the opposition unites around one candidate and wins. Well, they never united and the polls show them not able to gain more than 20% if they were even only if they were united. Another is the FSLN wins a fair election but it is discredited or a crisis is created. They do seem to be very actively working on discrediting the current election process. And as Vijay mentioned, undermining people's faith in their own institutions. Or the third one is that the FSL wins and the transition is delayed but other tactics are used and certainly those tactics would include sanctions. So getting back to the Rina Ser act, other disinformation throughout the text is that the government of Nicaragua is corrupt. And this is a trope we hear incessantly from the government's detractors but with no evidence. So think about it. What are the most obvious signs of corruption in a country? Drug trafficking, crime and no results from aid money? Well, just to show you, this is the DEA's own map and thank you, Leo, for using this in an article that really impressed me. Look at these drug trade routes. They go around Nicaragua and look, the US's closest friends, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, they have all these lines going towards their country. Crime, Nicaragua, being in one of the most violent regions of the world has the lowest homicide rate. It's closer to that of the United States than even that of Costa Rica. And also Nicaragua has been recognized by the institutions that have been able to get loans to Nicaragua, the IDB, the World Bank, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration for transparency and good project execution with international aid money, even in the top 10 in the world for project execution of World Bank funds and good management of the economy during the pandemic. So very quickly, I'd just like to say that this disinformation seeks to keep you, American citizens, disinformed, both so you'll go along with the attacks and so you won't demand more of your government. Did you know, for example, that Nicaragua is a world leader in renewable energy? Its grid is about 80% renewables now and Nicaragua has been a thorn in the side of the big climate polluting countries at the climate talks, asking them to do more. Did you know Nicaragua is ranked fifth in the world and the best in the Americas for gender equality? Did you know that this government provides free healthcare, built 20 hospitals in the past 14 years and was one of the countries that made the most progress and reducing maternal mortality, infant mortality and malnutrition in one of the first to achieve the millennium development goals? Did you know that Nicaragua grants autonomy and land to its indigenous and Afro-descendant people? Did you know that the Nicaraguan peasant movement is a leader in the global peasant struggle and its government made food sovereignty into law and the country now produces almost 90% of its own food? This tiny and poor country is accomplishing things, our large and wealthy country is not. So as for responding to Reyna Sare, two Maryland based solidarity organizations, Friends of Latin America and Casa Baltimore-Limay, a Friendship Sister City project, have been working together since the end of June to stop Reyna Sare. We have met over Zoom and by telephone with every member of the Maryland delegation to Congress except for Ben Cardin, who is one of the original sponsors of Reyna Sare and refused to meet with us. But we have only been able to meet with their aides who seem receptive, but we have not received feedback from the principals. So early in our efforts, we learned that the bill passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee and as Terry mentioned, it's now passed the full Senate, but that was without discussion or an individual vote. So one thing we have been asking the aides that we meet with is to urge their bosses, their members of Congress, to demand a voice vote, a roll call vote because the way it passed the Senate, there was no support or opposition, no one spoke for it or against it. And that's a very cowardly way for senators to let this very harmful bill get enacted. So the bill still needs to pass the House Financial Affairs Committee, which is chaired by Maxine Waters, Democratic Congresswoman from Los Angeles. And so she is definitely one of our targets. But also in addition to this webinar, we want to help make this fight more public. And we are organizing a protest, an in-person protest at the Capitol on Monday, September 13th at 5 p.m. We hope that any of you in the Washington area will join us because it's time to make this fight visible. And I just like to say in closing that we need to combine this fight with the fight of other countries to free themselves of these sanctions. The American people need to be made aware as Alex and BJ were telling us that these unilateral coercive measures are illegal and mostly immoral and the American people cannot put up with them. Thank you. Thank you, Jill. Thank you so much. What a tremendously educational conversation all three of you have contributed to. We have, I just want to say something, listening to all three of you talk about hybrid war and sanctions. And one of the things that I think all of us who work against sanctions know, and I think this is one of the biggest things in our educational process with the American public is that they're silent to the American people. When people look at Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, US citizens will say, well, how bad can it be? There's no boots on the ground. We're not dropping bombs. How bad can it be? And so that people, we really have our work in front of us to get people to really understand how lethal sanctions are. And because there are real, the silence of them is something we really have to fight against. So we've got a lot of questions. And I guess I will have to ask my co-host, Leonardo and Michelle. We've got a lot of Q and A and we still want to make our calls to Congress. So how much time should we allow for Q and A? I think maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes, certain amount. Okay, does that? So let me pose, hold on a second. Let me pull some of these up. While you're doing that, Terry, I'd just like to say that, you know, the American people or the people in the United States now being told that the US has left Afghanistan. The Taliban representatives went to the central bank in Kabul and they said, how much do we have in the bank? And they were informed by the officials that the $9.5 billion that the Afghan people had in their bank is sitting in the New York bank and the US government has frozen that amount. So has the US really pulled out of Afghanistan? Just a thought. Here comes the sanctions regime. It's already. Okay, so these are some, so here is a question from Cheryl Labash. Hi, Cheryl, thank you for joining us this evening. So this I think is for our panelists as well as probably some of you when the audience can answer this as well. Cheryl's question is, any international legal action that could serve as an organizing tool, human rights day is coming up. No ideas. Well, what is human rights day to the United States of America, which is not a signatory to the Treaty of Rome, which established the International Criminal Court where the Venezuelan government has I think put forward an excellent dossier on the criminal human rights violations that sanctions imply. The UN special rapporteur, Elena Dohan, was in Caracas, traveled the country, wrote an excellent finding on the impact of sanctions on Venice. It's an excellent document. It's available at the special rapporteur's site. I mean, I would say that in the United States on the, what is it, the 10th of December, every year, 10th of December should be dedicated to fighting to end illegal criminal sanctions against over 30 countries in the world, including Zimbabwe, Lebanon and others. It's not just in Latin America. The United States has illegal, without UN Security Council sanctions against about 30 countries on the planet. I think everywhere in the United States, December 10th should be dedicated to educationals about the impact of economic war conducted by the United States against ordinary people around the world, many of whom, and I've been trying to research this, many of whom don't have shoes as a consequence of sanctions. Thank you, Vijay. So here, we have a series of questions and they're all, we're all related. So I'll try to weave it together because it's from several different people. Have any countries ever put sanctions against the US? Why don't other countries' entities bring the US to its heels regarding the inhumane results of sanctions? Do other countries ever unilaterally impose sanctions on others? So is there any example where other, has the US ever been sanctioned? Is it even possible to sanction the US with the control of the global currency and the overnight banking system? I'm not aware, Terry, of any broad economic sanctions. There have been targeted sanctions on individuals, plenty of those. I mean, usually as a response to US sanctions on individuals in those countries. So, China and Russia and others have a long list of sanctioned individuals, but even those sanctions have a lot less effect than the US sanctions on individuals because, as you mentioned, the US has so much control over the US financial system, just swift transactions themselves can't be carried out by sanctioned individuals. That's controlled by the US and that's the main way in which international money transfers are carried out. And basically the jurisdiction of most major banks in the world is in Southern New York and under the jurisdiction of the Southern District Court of New York and so you're really quite stuck. And for the same reason, some of these broader sanctions don't have as much of an effect, but I think it's something that could be effective if enough countries did it. There's the reluctance has to do with, of course, the interest in accessing the US market, but at some point, countries have to see a greater benefit to barring trade with the US and thereby saving lives in countries than continuing to trade with the US, one would hope. But it's very difficult with, plus all the multilateral organizations are essentially controlled by the US and its allies. So it's hard to get past it, but the majority of the countries are definitely opposed to these economic sanctions. The UN Human Rights Council has passed resolutions against sanctions, the UN General Assembly, of course, every year against the Cuban embargo and also against other sanctions, the vast majority of countries are strongly against them. So it is a question of them organizing, finding ways around the hold that the US has over the financial system. And some of this can be done through digital currencies and it's under discussion. You even have some European countries that are starting to take an interest because frankly, they're pissed off by all these sanctions as well. They wanted to do business with Iran and now they can't. So there are more and more people looking for ways to get around this US sort of stranglehold over the finances of the world. I think that's one of the... If I may. Go ahead, Joel. I really wish the best to the group of friends of the UN Charter and the countries who are trying to find ways to get around US sanctions. But I think we have a moral obligation, those of us who live in the United States and our citizens of the United States to pressure our government to stop this. We need to build a movement. And as VJ say, have education on human rights day about this. We need to, as we were doing, about the Nobel Prize for the Cuban doctors, we need to raise a campaign around awareness about sanctions. We need to make the American people see how ugly these are and that this is warfare. That's, we need to do a lot of education. So I've got a couple of things. I think a couple of these questions have been answered through Alex. Why don't countries boycott the World Bank and use alternatives like bricks? Well, there are alternatives being constructed but not fast enough and not big enough to counter the US system. And there's a question here. Is there any effort to reach out to the European Union and other international entities to publicize and counter our behavior? The Europeans, as Alex said, are they're now barred from doing business transactions with Iran and the French too and a number of countries who had direct business relationships. What happens is this ripple out effect, this sanctions have these secondary and tertiary effects on trading partners. And so that is one of the things the European Union is speaking out against. And then we have a question here. Why has it been so difficult to get progressives to defend countries like Nicaragua or Venezuela from US aggression? Yes. That's a good one for every one of us sitting here tonight. I would like to answer the third one because firstly, I think the Europeans are as bad as the US. Look, I mean, I know the British are no longer Europeans but the British are the ones that stole the gold of the Venezuelans and so on. I don't actually think the city of London received any orders from the US Treasury. I think they did that on their own. They have an old imperial history. They don't need to be taught by the United States how to behave like jerks. So I mean, I don't think anybody should wait for the Europeans to send in the European Marines to save the day. They just don't exist, okay? Guys, it's not gonna happen. So why is it so easy for so-called progressives and sensitive people in the United States to hate on the Venezuelans or Nicaraguans or their process? Because in one sense, I think people don't know what it means to build a revolutionary process in a poor country. I mean, look, Venezuela is for all practical purposes a very poor country. And to somehow equate, you know, Nicolas Maduro, the president of Venezuela with Adolf Hitler or to equate Daniel Ortega with Adolf Hitler is ridiculous, you know? I mean, how many people have Maduro or Ortega by their actions or even their government actions? How many people have they hurt? Meanwhile, how many people have Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden? How many people's lives in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria, you know, in the, how many people's lives have been destroyed? I've seen it with my own eyes in Iraq and Afghanistan. You know, how repulsive it is that people still believe progressive people in the United States that Obama was a great president, you know, the murderous regime by the United States against these countries. And yet, and yet somehow the information was so sophisticated, goes after Daniel Ortega, goes after Nicolas Maduro and destabilizes people's faith in the process. It's not easy to build socialism. It is very, very hard. And there are all kinds of contradictions and complexities and these governments make a lot of mistakes because they are led by human beings and there are human beings in the government. And yes, there are instances of corruption and instances of nepotism and instances of all kinds of rot, but they will be dealt with as part of the process, you know? It's interesting that people in the United States have no patience with the process in Venezuela or no patience with the process in Nicaragua, but at the time of elections, they'll say, well, we've got a lineup behind the Democrats. I mean, you know, I don't understand people in the United States sometimes. They're forgiving of the Obamas and they're forgiving of the Nancy Pelosi's, but there is not an ounce of solidarity with the very complexity of building a process in Cuba or Nicaragua or Bolivia or Venezuela or indeed let's leave the continent here and go to the continent of Africa where it is perilously hard to push any process, you know? So quick to run people down, so quick to buy the right-wing propaganda and this is there from democracy now to the nation, you name it, you know? All the liberal outlets so casually disparage these processes. Believe me, I'm fed up of this. This thing just bothers me to no end. So if I can just say something- Go ahead, we're approaching eight o'clock and I wanna make sure we call Congress tonight. So, and I see Kent, you've patiently had your hand raised and we'll get to you next. Okay, just, yeah, I agree in general with everything that BJ's said and sadly, I don't think we can ever hope from real solidarity from any progressives, certainly in the US Congress, but, you know, with enough constituent pressure because that's what it takes and nothing really happens. That's good in Congress without some serious grassroots pressure. You can get them to at least speak out against some of the horrors of US policy towards these countries. And just recently, for instance, there was a letter on Venezuela. It was a very imperfect letter, it had problems. Nearly 20 members of Congress signed it and it does come out very, very strongly against the sanctions. It comes out strongly against many aspects, all of the current aspects of US policy towards Venezuela really, no solidarity, but at least opposition to, you know, some of the most egregious things that the US is doing in that country. And that's worth something. You know, again, we can't have high expectations in this town in Washington, DC, but to have a little bit of opposition and to try to build on that opposition to, you know, US foreign policy, it's crimes in other countries is something. So thank you, Alex. And I mean, you all have to know how many years Alex has been working against sanctions on the Hill. Just every day, day in and day out, you are there. And Jill has been there in recent months every day. So Kent, let's take your question if you've had your hand raised. Hi. Hi. This is a great meeting. I'm learning all the kinds of things I didn't know. I wanted to ask why a question, out of that nine billion sitting in New York, what would you recommend be done with it? Well, if you don't mind, Derry, shall I just go ahead? Yeah, yeah. It's an important question because it's the next phase of warfare. Right. So it is the sovereign funds of the Central Bank of Afghanistan. So the Central Bank of Afghanistan should be entitled to move it as they will. It's not US funds. I don't like the Taliban. I think the Taliban are a terrible political force. I think they represent social forces I don't like. They are not the government of Afghanistan. When a government of Afghanistan is created in Kabul, the government will have some say over Central Bank operations. And I think the Central Bank should be able to access their own money. I mean, what gives the New York banks the right to say, no, you are right or wrong? It's exactly the argument. And I'm going to give you an anecdote that the US is used regarding Venezuela, that you are not the recognized government. You know, when the IMF said that they were going to give out a special dispensation of the early part of the pandemic, Venezuela immediately applied for their own money that was at the IMF. And the IMF refused. So I called the IMF and I talked to one of the spokespersons and he said, well, you know, it's a question of the non, we don't recognize the government. I said, but on your own website, you have the name of the representative of the government of Nicolas Maduro. 24 hours later, they removed his name from the website. You know, this is basically airbrushing. So in my feeling, it doesn't matter whether I like a government or don't like a government, the United States does not have the right to unilaterally make a decision about the funds of another country. That's the principal thing. It's not a political issue. It's a principal thing. Now, the Afghan people must fight over their government who gets the right to control their money and so on. But the United States does not have the right to unilaterally seize the money of a central bank from another country. Thanks, Spiney. I've tarried just quickly one comment. President Biden's speech last night, I thought was very refreshing in a number of ways. His sincerity and competence. But one thing he said as a veteran and familiar with veterans issues was he used the word post-traumatic stress without using the D word disorder. Most of the time, this malady with symptoms of headache dreams is due to a normal reaction to an abnormal event. So I just say that. And thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing that. Because that is not, you know, I can tell you I was married to a veteran. So it's a very real thing and it's not something that the majority of US citizens understand that when soldiers come home, that doesn't mean the war is over. And for many of them, the war is just beginning, the reintegration war into the United States and back into civil society. So everyone, I want, oh, I have one more question that just popped up and I hope you can all stay, and I don't want to lose you for our phone calls to Congress. But Henry has, well, we're talking about Congress and doing a congressional action this evening. Henry has asked, can we find one member of Congress to initiate a letter or resolution calling on ending this regime of sanctions that we can all organize around? In March, 79 members of Congress sent a letter to Biden calling on him to reduce and eventually end the blockade against Cuba. Can we organize our members of Congress to join this? So here's something either overall or Nicaragua specific, which Jill has been talking about. Alex, maybe you can briefly tell us if that's possible, because this is what you do. Actually, yeah, this is something that we've been working on for a bit, you know, trying to see some legislation that actually prohibits all economic sanctions for all the reasons that, you know, we've given. And I think it could happen and we'll need a lot of grassroots support for that legislation to go anywhere at all. So we'll certainly keep you posted if it does happen. And we'll be out front with that at Code Pink for sure. So I want to thank all of you for attending and I wanna ask you all to stay. I'm gonna share with some information with you in the chat as to how to reach your Congress member. And I'm gonna share with you a script for our calling this evening. But I wanna thank our guests and you are all free to open your mics and thank them as well. I think we had, you know, a master's course in sanctions and specifically how they're being targeted towards Nicaragua ahead of the presidential elections there in November. Thank you. Now I'm going to show up, because I'm going to... Yes, to thank you. Thank you, guys. Thanks so much, everyone. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Vijay. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. We're lucky to have all three of you in one evening, really, really thankful for that. Thank you. It's a great conversation. Thank you. So don't go anywhere. I'm gonna share with you. Let me pull some things up here to put in the chat. If you know your... Yeah. If you want, Terry, I can share my screen and for the script. Okay, I'm gonna put the links for contacting your congressional. This is for everyone. I think it's... Yeah, okay. So all the links are there, but yeah, if you could screen share, that's great. And then I've just posted in the chat how to find your congressperson... Oh, here's the capital switchboard. Okay. And then there's also a link in the chat if you need your congressional member's phone... Direct phone number, if you don't have it. And I also posted a link if you need to confirm who your representative is. So if we could take... There's 60 of you still on. Thank you so much. This is great. This is great, Jill. You have a good crowd with you tonight. Okay, so somebody's asking me to post the chat. The chat is on the screen. Do you want me to put it? I mean, the script is on the screen. Do you want me to put the text in the chat as well, or are you okay with it the way it is? Could you tell us how we get our own member of congress' phone number? Because they don't have... Mine doesn't have it on his website. Okay, so I just posted in the chat. Let me find it. Yeah, absolutely. If you have their local office number, please feel free to call. But in the chat, we have the capital switchboard. So if you know the name of your representative, you can just use the capital switchboard, which is 202-224-3121. If you don't know the name of your representative, you can use that link that Terry said to find your representative and then call the capital switchboard. So the capital switchboard number's on the screen. So I'm gonna mute myself and I'm gonna call my congressman, who is Jared Huffman in California. In response to a question in the chat about the House or Senate, the Vanessa Act actually passed in the Senate in a voice vote a couple of weeks ago. I think it was actually a little over a month ago. So we are focusing on the House. To the office of Lisa Blunt Rochester, please. Hello, my name is David Paul. I've been a constituent for many decades. And I really urge you to not... How's everyone doing? Do you need a little... Is everyone okay? Can we help you with anything? Do we have anyone here from Los Angeles? Anyone who could help us target Maxine Waters? I forgot to tell people that the reason Maxine Waters is targeted is because she's the chair of the Financial Services Committee and the bill has to pass that committee before it can come to a floor vote. So we can call Maxine Waters. You can email the committee or you can call Maxine Waters and ask her to not bring it to a vote. You can leave a message. Let me see if I can get the information for that. That's great, Jill. Thank you, Jill. Sure. So how many... Should we get to stop? Yeah, I think so. We have 39 of you. I'm so thankful for all of you staying with us this evening, start to finish and participating in the phone calls. It's so important that we stop the passage of this bill. And thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you for taking action. And please... Hey, Becca.