 tonight co-hosted by members of the Code Pink Youth Peace Collective, Rushi Sen and Aiden Cross. So in a minute I'll introduce them. Our guests are going to talk about transparency or lack thereof and arms control sales, focusing on what they call small arms, which are pretty deadly, semi-automatic weapons that we ship all over the world. So we'll take action at the end on that. Biden had pledged to reverse Trump's position on these, the exporting of small arms, semi-automatic rifles. He promised that there would be more congressional oversight, but so far there has not been. So we'll learn more about that, but first let's introduce our co-host. Okay, and I think I mentioned Danica as a guest. She's in the Youth Peace Collective and she knows all about arms control sales, and we're also very happy to have John Lindsay Poland, who coordinates the Stop US Arms to Mexico project for global exchange. All right, let's introduce Aiden Cross. He's going to be one of our co-hosts. He is an America's correspondent for the London Globalist and a member of the Code Pink Peace Collective, and he can tell us more about himself in a minute. And Rushi Sen is a third-year student at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. So welcome Aiden and Rushi. Aiden, I tell us a little bit more about yourself, please. Good evening, everyone. I'm speaking from London in the UK. It's currently one past one in the morning. So yes, I am a correspondent for the London Globalist. I am also an undergraduate student studying international relations and Chinese at LSE. Now I have been instructed to explain how I found myself in the Peace Collective and thus written a script. So in a simplistic manner, I got very lucky. I signed up to some random event on Twitter, realised it was being hosted at midnight at UK time, and then subsequently joined the Peace Collective, where I found myself enjoying the splendid nature of the time difference across the Atlantic. Coming from a country, which is one of the core contenders for the title of the 51st State of the US, and prolifically involved with US imperialism, I found the Peace Collective's anti-imperialist stance extremely refreshing and have thus been encouraged to engage even further in the events hosted despite the impact of my sleep schedule as this event thus shows. I would strongly encourage every young person here who is even the slightest concerned about the action of status quo powers like the US to get involved with the Peace Collective, as well as being a joy to work with. Each member provides a diverse set of perspectives, and it is remarkable how much people know about even the most niche area of US and Western imperialism. So thank you very much, and I am once again grateful for the honour of co-hosting this event. Well, we are honoured that you're co-hosting, and testament to your commitment is that you're up at one o'clock and learning doing this, so yay. The Youth Peace Collective is for the youth. I think that the cut-off is what, around 30 or something? I guess I can't join, darn. Anyway, we're so thrilled that you're with us, and Rushi, tell us about you. Yeah, so I'm Rushi Sen. I am also extremely honoured to have been part of Code Pink's Peace Collective. I first got involved through Danica, who invited me to apply after I got involved in the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Fund. Throughout my time at the Peace Collective, I've been extremely grateful to have an outlet for my anti-imperialist politics and to have gotten the opportunity to work more closely with divestment campaigns and book club meetings, and I'll just reiterate what Aidan said. I've really found this to be an amazing opportunity, so definitely encourage all young people to get involved with this. And then with that, I'll turn it over to Marcy for an update on the National Defense Authorization Act vote in the Senate. Thank you so much, Rushi. We're really thrilled you're with us tonight. Okay, we know the National Defense Authorization Act passed, flew through the Senate. There were 88 votes for it, 11 votes against it. Some of the usuals, we thank them. They voted against it. People like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kristen Gillibrand, Ron Wyden, Jeff Merkley, Alex Padilla in California, and then there were three Republicans. I think I'm forgetting somebody in there, one a Democrat. If you know who I've forgotten, please put it in the chat. Lee, Paul, and Braun also voted against the NDA, a $778 billion authorization for the military budget. That's the Department of Energy and the Pentagon. It's $25 billion more than Biden had asked for. And now Senator Patrick Leahy, the chair of the Appropriations Committee in the Senate, said there are still things to be worked out because if you can believe it, the Republicans want even more money for the military. Meanwhile, build back better. We can't seem to get that through Congress, thanks to Joe Manchin. But Congress is all too ready to approve an outrageous military budget that really makes them poised to spend $8 trillion on the military over the next 10 years. On the NDA, it is an authorization. It's not an appropriation. So there's been some discussion amongst anti-war groups what this means. Is there any way to cut it? Because the money has not exactly been appropriated yet. It's all up in the air. The NDA, as it was passed in the Senate, sets aside $28 billion for nuclear weapons for what they euphemistically term nuclear modernization, which is, as I said, a euphemism because they're really going to produce new nuclear warheads for 600 ICBMs in Utah and that area. It also includes several billion dollars for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to China. And so that means a lot more arms will be sent to East Asia. It does remove the prosecution of sexual assault in the military from the hands of the commanders. But it didn't go far enough for the advocate for doing that, Kristin Gillibrand from New York, and she voted against the NDA. It also does not include a removed portion that would have required young women to also sign up for selective service. So thank you. Thank goodness for that. And now I want to turn it over to Medea to give us an update. She's been very busy. I can't keep up with her. Medea, what's going on? Well, somebody in the chat wrote that Ed Markey voted against the NDA. So that was, I think, the missing one. And it is lovely in the chat for you to be saying hello. I see we have people all the way from Japan to Portugal. And it is very exciting that we have our two members of the Peace Collective hosting this tonight. And thank you so much, Aiden, for staying up to do that. I wanted to give two updates. One is on the Cuba work because many of you actually helped us on that. And we had a resolution or a letter to Biden that was initiated by four members of Congress. And we had a goal of getting 80 members to sign on. And we thought that was a pretty significant goal. And we surpassed that by far and got 114 members. And that is really because of the grassroots work. So any of you who have not become our Code Pink Congressional Liaisons and would like to, you should talk to Marcy and Shay. How do they do that? It should be in the chat, the link that they can click on and sign up. We have 75 congressional liaisons, point people in different congressional districts. And we do believe that it's very important that we have strong advocacy from the constituents. And I put in the chat something that we're doing tomorrow night, which is a fabulous group called Belly the Beast that has been doing some of the greatest about 10-minute videos on U.S. Cuba policy. And their last one was just spectacular. We're going to be showing it tomorrow. And the star of the show will be with us from Cuba. So if you would like to, the link is there for you to RSVP. It's at, I think it's 7.30 Eastern time tomorrow night. And then on the Afghanistan front, a number of us who were very concerned about the result of U.S. freezing the assets of the Afghan people once they pulled out started out in August, focusing on trying to get members of the media to talk about the impending catastrophe. Well, that has happened. And I'm just amazed at the good reporting that's come out from New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Al Jazeera, the daily podcast that the New York Times does. I mean, incredible reporting. Just heartbreaking. You couldn't watch or read this stuff without feeling how miserable the U.S. empire is and that they bombed people for 20 years, then get out and take revenge by stealing their money. And this is over $9 billion that belongs to the Afghan people that we are not giving back to them. And it's causing the collapse of the economy. So we were involved in two letters in Congress that were sent to Biden at the end of last week, urging him to unfreeze these assets and also be more generous on the humanitarian aid front. And we will be continuing to push people to call the White House to tell them to unfreeze this money, let the Afghan people have the assets that belong to them. Yes, we posted in the Google group, if you're not a member, please let Shane O'Shea of CodePink.org. We posted an action alert. We do ask that everybody on this call email the White House to say it's time to unfreeze these assets. We don't want to go from occupation to starvation. Thank you. All right, Rushi, back to you. Yeah, so thank you, Medea. So next we have Danica. So Danica Katowicz is the Middle East and Peace Collective Coordinator for CodePink. Danica graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor's degree in political science in November 2020. Since 2018, she has been working towards ending US participation in the war in Yemen. At CodePink, she works on youth outreach as a facilitator of the Peace Collective, CodePink's youth cohort that focuses on anti-imperialist education and divestment. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Aiden and Rushi gave such great pitches for the Peace Collective. It really warmed my heart. Literally such an amazing group starting divestment campaigns all over. Highly recommend. If we also wrote a manifesto, if you're not under the age of 30, you can support us by going to read that. I put the link to our page in the chat. CodePink.org forward slash Peace Collective. Please go read our manifesto. It's called The World Without Empire. It's very great. All co-written by us. And also, Marci mentioned the draft, draft expansion being taken out of the NDAA. I will brag humbly that the Peace Collective did publish a co-written article in Truthout calling expanding the draft. Called expanding the draft is not feminism, abolishing it for all genders is. It was very great. It got circulated on the hill before the before the NDAA got voted on. So props to the Peace Collective. But anyway, I will be talking about arm sales. I'll make my presentation a little shorter to give John more time. But I will be going over the very basics. Can everyone see my screen? That look okay? Cool. Very basics of arm sales. How the US sells a weapon to another country. My focus will be mostly arm sales that go through the State Department. Because the issue that John Lindsay Pollan will be talking about is the shift to the Department of Commerce, which the problematic nature of that will make sense very soon. So to this very basic, I'm not going to get into all the weeds. So everything is a little bit more nuanced than I'll be describing. But so there's two main ways the US sells weapons to another country. Foreign military sales or FMS and direct commercial sales. So for foreign military sales, the US government sells weapons to another country. So it's like, if you hear the US sold weapons to Israel or the UK sold weapons to Saudi Arabia, two things that have been often those two examples. And then direct commercial sales are a US company to another country. So Boeing can directly sell weapons to Israel or Lockheed Martin can sell directly to Saudi Arabia. So both ways happen. Two pieces of two laws kind of govern arm sales, help give procedure to arms sales in the US. There's the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act. Some highlights from these two laws, Arms Export Control Act, it requires end use monitoring, which I'll get into in a second. It requires the State Department to notify Congress of a sale if it's over a certain threshold. So when arms are sold from the US to another country and it's under a certain threshold, then Congress does not need to be notified about the sale. We don't often hear about those sales. The information does come out eventually and it does add up to billions of dollars. So they're not like, it's not insignificant, but there is less transparency there with sales that aren't absolutely massive. And then it gives rules for the State Department to license a sale. Then the Foreign Assistance Act. I think the most significant part of this that I love to emphasize because of Jeff Abramson, who is here today with us, I believe I saw his name in the chat. Section 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act prohibits security assistance like arm sales to foreign governments if they regularly and consistently violate human rights. So that's something we don't talk about enough, but our own law like bans us from selling weapons to countries that regularly and consistently violate human rights. So like for example, would it technically be legal for us to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia? Like the US just announced a huge sale of missiles and we have to ask the question, does this go against Section 502B? Is Saudi Arabia regularly and consistently violating human rights in Yemen? Code Pink would say yes. So this is very basic. Okay. So it's more nuanced than this, but here's sort of the process for how the US would sell weapons. So there's a negotiation between two countries or a private company and a country. Like I said, those two sales I mentioned earlier, there's a period of negotiation. What does that country want to buy? How much are they going to sell it for? Et cetera. The Arms Export Control Act requires the State Department to notify Congress if the sale is large enough, like I said. So Congress will get notified of the sale. Then Congress has 15 to 30 days to introduce a joint resolution of disapproval to block the export license from being issued by the State Department. So 15 days for Congress to do anything is kind of a very short window of time if you've ever had to work with Congress on anything. It seems like a very short amount of time, but it's 15 days for NATO countries and Israel close allies, 30 days for other countries like Saudi Arabia's 30 days. Then if a joint resolution of disapproval is not passed, the State Department can issue the export license. But important to emphasize delivery weapons can take years. Have they been manufactured yet? If they haven't, they have to be manufactured. It takes a long time. So up until delivery, Congress can block a sale at any point. So it's not just a joint resolution of disapproval, but that's usually when organizations like Code Pink kind of hop on Congress to take action within those first 15 to 30 days. So a little bit more about the joint resolution of disapproval. It can be introduced in the House or Senate. For example, one passed under Trump through both Houses through the House and Senate for an arm sale to the United Arab Emirates, Trump vetoed it, but Congress didn't have enough votes to override the veto. The joint resolution of disapproval has been not useful really in blocking sales, good at raising moral outrage, I kind of think. Most recent example actually is very, very recent, only a few days ago, Senator Rand Paul introduced a joint resolution of disapproval to block a missile sale to Saudi Arabia, and it didn't pass the Senate. So a huge bummer. But other mechanisms, like I said, an arm sale can be blocked at any point until delivery. That can take years. So other legislation can be introduced in Congress. It wouldn't be a JRD. It would be something different. It would be a law like directing the sale to not go through. The State Department could revoke the export license technically if they should if they could revoke it, and then a president can stop an arm sale at any point. He could just be like, nope, we're not doing it anymore. Okay, now I'm going to talk about end-use monitoring. And this is a very detailed slide, but so that, like I said, the Arms Export Control Act requires the government to do end-use monitoring, which is exactly what it sounds like, monitoring the end-use of a weapon that we sell to a different place. And it's not great. It's not very effective, because, like, for example, I mean, John might get into this a little bit more. Let's say we sell a batch of weapons to another country. And the form that they have to fill out at the beginning says, you know, who are we selling it to? It could be filled out as the military of Saudi Arabia. We don't know what unit it's going to, which makes it hard to monitor the end-use of a weapon that we sell somewhere else. So it's not great. It's not very accurate. It definitely needs to be improved if we're actually serious about fulfilling our human rights obligations to the rest of the world. Okay, now this is where I turn it over, and this is where I'll wrap up. More recently, arms sales of small arms, so things like semi-automatic rifles and that kind of thing, have been taken from the State Department and moved to the Department of Commerce, which, like I mentioned when I was talking about the Arms Export Control Act, and when it requires the State Department to notify Congress of sales, this thing doesn't really exist for the Department of Commerce. There are other rules around arms sales in the Department of Commerce. So it's less transparency, which is problematic. So kind of a huge issue. And President Biden has promised to move some of these sales back to the State Department, so there's more transparency there, but that hasn't happened yet. So that's why we're having this event today. And with that, I will let John talk to you all more about this issue in the Department of Commerce. Thank you very much, Danica, for the happy reminder that human rights mean nothing to Washington, especially when war is so profitable. Now, I am happy and honored to introduce John Lizzie Lindsey Poland, who coordinates the Stop U.S. Arms to Mexico project of Global Exchange and works for police demilitarization with the California Healing Justice Program of the American Friends Service Committee in Oakland, California. He has written about research and advocated for human rights demilitarization of U.S. policy for more than 35 years. His research has focused on U.S. foreign military assistance and military bases and respect for human rights. And he produced a documentary and companion report, Where the Guns Go, U.S. Policy and Human Rights in Mexico. From 1989 to 2014, he served the Fellowship of Reconciliation as Latin America Program Coordinator, Research Director and Founder of his Columbia Peace Team. He studied as an undergraduate at Harvard University. He is author of both Emperors in the Jungle, The Hidden History of the U.S. in Panama and Planned Columbia, U.S. Ally Atrocities and Community Activism. Take it away, John. Thank you so much, Aidan. And it's so great to be here. I really am so thankful for this space and I'm sure I will be coming back. So one thing, a couple of things I want to say at the outset, I'm going to show you some slides as well. One is that I think a lot of times in arms exports, people focus on the big things, focus on the expensive things, things that cost hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. And of course, some of the Middle Eastern clients of the arms companies are purchasing that much. But firearms actually cause most of the harm in armed conflict and other types of violence around the world. And they don't cost as much per unit or on the whole. They are much less expensive than these enormous systems that so much attention is put on. Typically by Congress, but often by activists as well. The other thing I want to mention is that a lot of times this conversation happens in a space like this where people are talking about international issues. But as you know, within the United States, there is a vigorous, shall we say, conversation about firearms in general within the United States. That conversation usually doesn't include how US firearms are being used in other countries. And yet, just taking Mexico, let's just take the example of Mexico by itself. The number of gun homicides in Mexico with US sourced firearms is probably greater than the number of gun homicides in all of the United States. So when we're looking at the US gun market, the impact overseas or just in other nations and other communities outside of the United States is at least as great as it is here. And here we have this principle of background checks. It's not universal. It's very, very poorly implemented in many parts of the United States. But the principle is this. If someone, an end user has committed a violent crime, they've beat their spouse, they have committed some other kind of violent crime, they are not eligible, legally eligible to purchase a firearm in this country. And yet that principle is not being applied when we look at exports of firearms to other nations, particularly police and military units. So I'm going to show you a few slides for a moment. And one of the things I want to know is that the markets, the export markets for US firearms have been growing dramatically. So this one, and my thing is blocked here, this is showing you in the last 15 years, the number of semi-automatic pistols that have been exported by the United States. And you can see that there's been steady growth. Now, the other thing I want you to notice is that 2020 was a banner year, the regulatory change that Danica talked about in which pistols are now, the export of pistols are now being regulated by the Commerce Department, which wants to sell things. Instead of the State Department, that regulation came into force in March of 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning. And you'll see, of course, that the number of semi-automatic pistols exported in 2020 and actually particularly in the second six months of 2020 was a record high. But I also want you to notice that this is not just because of this rule change. This is a result of an ongoing loosening of the rules and a practice in export of these weapons around the world. The same applies if we look at military firearms. So this is military long guns, rifles and shotguns exported over the last 18-year period. And again, 2020 was a record year. Now, I do want to note that in the first 10 months of 2021 for both military long guns and for pistols, the numbers have gone down there. They're still at relatively historic highs, but it has not continued to grow after that first enormous growth in the last year. So what does this look like in a particular country like Mexico? This is legal exports, which is just part of the overall flow of firearms from the United States into Mexico. We know there's an enormous, enormous flow of guns illegally trafficked from purchases within the United States over the border into Mexico. 70% of all firearms recovered in Mexico are sourced to the United States. But what we see here, and Medea asked this thing in the chat about leji law, which applies to assistance. And most people are paying attention when they look at military relationships with other countries. They're usually looking at assistance. But this is just a graph of sales. And we can see that when the formal US-Mexico drug war began in 2007, the so-called Merida initiative, we had an enormous growth in the sales of firearms to Mexico. And even after assistance went down in 2011 and 2012, the number of firearms and the dollar value of those firearms has continued to be extraordinarily high. And we've also seen that the number of gun homicides in Mexico has continued to increase over that time period. In the last three years, it's plateaued at historically high levels that have never been seen in that country before the drug war was declared or before the flood of US firearms into the country, both through exports and illegal means. And Mexico is not the only neighbor that is being impacted by these exports. So Honduras, which is in a severe crisis, has been for a long time, but is even more so. We'll see what happens with gun exports under the new government. But the armed forces there are also being armed with exported weapons. Now, how does this actually occur? I think Danica, it was great how you laid out the mechanisms of this, how this occurs. One other thing I want to mention is when we talk about migration, and we talk about the people who are fleeing Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti, other nations, Mexico, and they're seeking safety, they're seeking asylum. And they typically, if they're going to get into the United States, they have to cross through Mexico, particularly if they're poor. And in crossing Mexico, they have to go through these areas that are either controlled by criminal organizations or controlled by state forces that are going to deport them. And frequently, those state forces and criminal organizations are working together. And migrants have been particularly targeted for violence within Mexico. So the ways in which migration policy and gun policy and practice by the United States are reinforcing the toxic and violence, toxicity and violence that people who are migrating and others are experiencing is especially heinous. So there are two pieces that I want to say about what can be done here. One is that Senator Leahy, who after whom the Leahy law was named, has inserted a provision in the coming years foreign aid bill known as the state and foreign operations bill that would begin to identify who are the end users at least in Mexico and Central America of U.S. exported firearms. Because right now, the State Department doesn't even have the information about who are the police and military units that are going to be the end users. They don't even have the capacity right now to apply that kind of principle, the Leahy law principle that says, okay, if a foreign military or police unit has committed a gross human rights abuse, if there's just credible information leading us to believe that, then they can't get U.S. assistance by law. It's broken a lot of times, yes, but there is a law that can be invoked. It can't be invoked for assistance, and it can also be invoked without the information about where the weapons are going. That principle of background checks for buyers of lethal weaponry also can't be applied if nobody in the system knows where they're going, except for the government's where they're coming. This provision, which has been passed through the Senate, would at least require the identification of those end users in Mexico and Central America in order to apply this principle of not allowing firearms to get to individuals or units implicated in serious crimes. That is now at the House. The House version did not have such a provision. Both of the foreign aid bills are going into conference between House and Senate. I'm going to put some of this information in the chat because a very particular thing, action that would be really helpful right now, is for the House appropriators to hear from people that this is an important provision. The one last thing I want to mention is something that Danica said. This is the promise that Joe Biden's made in late 2019, before the regulatory change around gun exports went into force. At that time, he said he will ensure that the authority for firearms exports stays with the State Department, and if needed, reverse a proposed rule. Now the administration is saying that if needed, well, maybe it's not needed even after it's happened, but this language came before the rule was actually promulgated, was put into effect. That if needed actually speaks to whether it's going to go into effect. Now the Biden administration is trying to back pedal and say, well, we don't really think it's needed. We do want folks to contact the Biden administration, and I believe there's information in the chat about how to do that. So I just want to conclude with thanks, and I know that Jeff Abramson and other people who know a lot about this issue are in this event, and so I invite you to also speak up in the chat, and here is where you all can get some more information. I'll put that in the chat as well. Thank you very much, John. Now I'm going to introduce the Q&A section of this Zoom call, so as has already been stated, if you could please post any questions into the chat, and then I believe my fellow co-host will then direct the questions to our two guests. Yes, Aiden Roussi. I wanted to ask a question. This is so scandalous. You think about the debate that we have in this country over firearms, and all the while nobody is talking, very few of us are talking about arming the entire world with some automatic weapons. There seems to be a total lack of awareness, so I'm really appreciative of the work that you're doing, John and Danica, to bring this to our attention. What do you think is Biden's motivation for going back on his word to move these small arms sales from back to the State Department in refusing to do so? Is it the money from the arms brokers? What's going on here? I don't like to speculate about motivation. I'm much more interested in people's actions. It could guide us maybe if we knew what was motivating the administration. I would say that the Obama administration under the Obama administration, the number of gun exports grew globally. There was rhetoric around stopping the flow of weapons into Mexico that was not matched with any kind of action. I just think that there's not a lot of political will there. I would also say that the gun lobby does have a big impact. Even in Congress, it's not just in the administration and the executive branch, but a provision in the NDAA that did not get through an amendment that did not get voted on or accepted from Noto Matores would have at least restored congressional notification for proposed firearms exports that did not get through. I think the political will in the Democratic Party in general on this issue is not very strong. They would like to see it happen, but it's not very strong. Thank you for that, John. Then we have a question from Gustavo in the chat. Who proposed the recent sale to Saudi Arabia? Was it a Congress member or the president? Danica, if you wanted to answer that. Yeah, it was the Biden administration. It was the State Department. It was President Biden. I don't know if there's room to elaborate that. I think it's a pretty straightforward answer. I'm sure the companies, the production companies had a hand in it as well. Yeah. Marcy, how much time do we have for questions? You're muted. We have a good 10 minutes. Okay. Yeah. So, are there any other questions? Yeah, so then Sharon asked, is Mexico suing U.S. arms manufacturers? So, yes. In August, the government of Mexico filed an unprecedented lawsuit against 11 U.S. gun companies in federal court in Massachusetts because of their negligent practices in promoting the illegal trafficking of guns across the U.S. border that are estimated to be 250,000 firearms a year illegally trafficked across the border. And the gun companies know this. It has to be part of their business model. It will be a challenge for those gun companies that have eluded any kind of legal liability for many aspects of gun violence within the United States. And I think it's also opened the conversation so that it's not just about the violence in Mexico is not about drug trafficking or even the drug war, but it puts the spotlight on the producers of these guns that are profiting so much from bloodshed in the U.S. and Mexico and in many other countries. Yeah. And then kind of related to that. So, Medea asked, can U.S. companies legally sell weapons to businesses in Mexico or Central America, for example, Walmart that used to sell guns? So, in Mexico, the only legal seller of firearms is the Mexican Army. So the Mexican Army imports firearms and then sells them, but mostly to police forces. It's very, you know, the United States is one of the most open markets in the world in terms of the ability to obtain a firearm. Mexico is much more strict, like many other countries. In Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador, the rules vary. There are some private sellers. Many of those private sellers have contacts with the national militaries. And they're also private security companies that obtain firearms. So it's a slightly more open system in those countries, but also more controlled by a small number of actors and also not very transparent at all. Yeah. And then another question, probably also for you, John, how are the lawsuits in the U.S. against the illegal gun trafficking by U.S. gun manufacturers fairing? So, they were filed in August. About a month ago, the gun companies gave their formal response. And then the government of Mexico will have its formal response by the end of January. Many groups and actors are being asked whether they want to file amicus briefs in support of the lawsuit. So I think that if people are interested and groups are interested, that's something that especially organizations will be able to sign on to. I think those will be circulating probably in the first part of January. And I think that the more support that can show, this is not just a legal action. And the legal outcome is not the only thing. It's also a political and narrative action. So I think there's opportunities for really building a movement in addition to the legal outcomes. Yeah. And then there's also a question for Jennifer. So I think this one can go to either of you. Could someone speak to small arms sales in South Sudan? I'm not actually familiar with the U.S. if we're selling weapons to small arms to South Sudan. Do you know, John? I don't know. But we could probably find out. So why don't we park that question and try and respond to it? Yeah. And then if anyone else has any other questions, we still have a couple minutes. I'll feel free to put them in the chat. I actually did have a question. Oh, okay. Go ahead. Did someone have a question? This is Marcy. I have a question. Do you think the members of Congress have any idea how these arms sales are conducted? Majority. I think most are not paying a lot of attention. But I do want to make one. So I think there's been some increased interest, like we've been working on arms gun sales to Mexico. And there was a letter from eight senators that was signed earlier this year sent to the Secretary of State Blinken, really calling for a suspension of gun sales to Mexico until these end-use controls are really effective. That's a new step. There have been letters about the illegal flows. There have been concerns about human rights in Mexico and in Central America. But senators calling for a suspension of that flow is new. And on the House side, there is a proposed license that is still under State Department oversight of fully automatic rifles from the gun company Six Sour, located in New Hampshire, of $5.5 million that would go to the Mexican Navy. The Mexican Navy is particularly implicated in torture and force disappearance in the context of the drug war. And Gregory Meeks, who is the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who we disagree with on many things, has held up that license because the State Department has not adequately responded to the question, how are you going to prevent these fully automatic rifles from going to human rights abusers in the Mexican Navy? The State Department can't answer that question. And so far, this license was proposed in July and I believe is still held up. So that point that Danica made earlier that it can be held up until delivery is key. And I do think that we need to support those actions when members of Congress take them and keep educating them because the staff person for Gregory Meeks was like, you have to tell me more about this because they have a million issues on their plates. And so getting their attention and educating the staffers and letting the members of Congress know that there's constituencies that are interested in this, that it's not just the NRA and the National Shooting Sports Foundation that are interested in this, I think is super important for moving the needle and reducing the harm. Very good. I see that Max had a question. Let's see about, or Sharon said, can you talk about arms sales to Israel? Certainly there are lots of human rights violations. Yeah. So I think our most recent big arm sale to Israel was from Boeing in, I believe, May of this year. Something like $700 million, I believe, in Boeing weapons. Of course, Israel's committing human rights violations against Palestinians. And kind of going, circling back to, I know there's about the Leahy Law in the chat. And we also, so we have the Leahy Law, we have 502B in the Foreign Assistance Act. We have great human rights safeguards in U.S. law, really, really great safeguards. It's whether we can like enact it. And are we asking those the right questions about it? So it's like, if this were to go to court, could we prove that Israel and Saudi Arabia, for example, are committing consistent human rights violations with U.S. weapons? So it's less about, do these law, do the safeguards work and more like how we're supposed to be using them? And how do we get members of Congress to raise questions about these kinds of things if so many of them are taking campaign contributions from the weapons companies that profit off of those very sales, right? Their campaigns are funded by the companies who profit off of selling weapons to Israel and Saudi Arabia. So it makes it a little mucky, a little complicated. Thank you, Shea, for linking call to disarm. We're working on stopping that, by the way. We just got Representative Ilhan Omar last week signed on to Code Pink's pledge to refuse money from weapons companies. She was, I believe, our 13th member of Congress to do so, where we're working on a bunch more campaigns across the country to get more reps and senators signed on as well. So. Great. I see there's one question. Maybe we can end with Max's question about arms sales to the Horn of Africa. Do we know anything about that? Okay. So Aiden and Rushi, maybe you can take us through the action. Yeah. So before Aiden leads us in the action, I just wanted to thank our guests, John and Danica. It was really good. If everyone wants to unmute and thank them as well, I'll let them know how great they were to do that. You were great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Excellent job. Thank you.