 that our volume is not working. Is that okay now? Let me check. I'm sorry, everybody. We just got a message that you can't hear us. And so I'm wondering if you can, can you hear us now? Okay. I think you can hear us now. I hope I apologize, everybody. We just got a message that our volume was not so good. Okay. So let me just give you a quick break. Again, give you some context just to what we're going to talk about tonight because we're principally going to introduce to you a new campaign that CodePaint is working on. So in the last days of the outgoing Trump administration then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added Cuba back onto the list of state sponsors of terrorism after it had been removed from the list in 2015 by the Obama Biden White House that had certified, oh, excuse me, White House has certified that one the government of Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six month period. And two, the government of Cuba has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future. Trump's redesignation of Cuba to the list was purely a political move to please conservative Cuban Americans. The excuse was that Cuban was purportedly providing safe haven for Colombian insurgents but those insurgents were in Cuba because of the island's role in facilitating the historic peace accounts, peace of core, excuse me, between the Colombian government and guerrilla groups. So this is really like a catch 22 for them. In certain activity years ago during Columbia civil strike does not fit the definition of international terrorism and the guerrilla representatives were in Cuba as part of an internationally recognized peace process. By being on this list, Cuba is subjected to a series of sanctions and international financial restrictions that limit the nation's ability to carry out critical financial transactions including those needed to advance its efforts to combat the pandemic and reboot its economy. So this is something really heavy for conversation tonight. That's what makes a terrorist and we would argue as our friend Vijay Prashant says that Cuba is not a state sponsored terrorism it's a state sponsored healthcare, international healthcare. So Medea, let's talk about this campaign. And some of you that are watching may have already received our email from Kathleen to sign on and that we will put the link into the YouTube chat and the Twitter chat for you. But let's talk about what makes presumably Cuba a terrorist state and why we at cocaine believe it's not. And nor do many Cubans believe it's not fun. Well, first let's start out by saying the US should not be having its own list of terrorism in a more objective sense the US would be on that list. And it really should be up to international bodies like the United Nations to determine that. It is purely political for the United States. And in the case of Cuba, Cuba was put on the political reasons, take it off the list during the Obama administration for political reasons, put back on the list by Trump to curry favor with right wing Cuban-Americans and try to get more votes in Florida. And then Biden came in. And we all thought that Biden was going to follow the path of Obama, which is normalize relations with Cuba. And which he can't be done. Absolutely. Among Cuban-Americans. Yes, and it was very popular when Obama did it. It was popular among all sectors of the population, including the business sector that wants to trade more with Cuba. And so Biden came in and we thought, oh, you know, within the first week, he's just going to lift this because this is something you do by executive order, not a vote in Congress at all. It is up to the person. So Biden didn't do it. Month went by, another month went by, a year goes, still hasn't done it. Now, recently he took some very tiny baby steps to ease some of the problems in Cuba and Cuba-US relations, but they were very baby steps, saying that US airlines could go to more places than just Havana. Just think about that, Terry, that the US is telling US airlines what cities in Cuba they should be able to fly to. It's absolutely insane. I don't know if I'm telling you what we're going to do, but we can't go to the beach. We don't think we're booked. Right, we still are. He made it a little easier to go to Cuba by reinstating what's called people-to-people ties, but you still can't go to Cuba as a tourist. If you go and lie on the beach and swim in the beautiful Caribbean ocean, you are violating the law. The US law. The US law. Yes, you make that very clear. You make that very clear. Not kill the law. Not the sovereign law of the city of Cuba. White people are doing, US citizens are doing every single day because we realize how ridiculous it is. And the Biden administration is not going to go knock on your door and say, somebody saw you swimming in the Caribbean. But nevertheless, it's on the books and it scares people away. And that's a lot of the reason for doing it. He said that Cuban Americans living in the US no longer have a cap on the amount of money they can send to their relatives, but they still haven't reopened Western Union. The US has still kept those restrictions. So there's really no easy way to send remittances. And you know, in all over the world, people in poor countries migrate to richer countries to work to send money back to their families all over the place. And sending money back to Cuba is a very difficult thing to do. And it's part of this idea of just strangling the Cuban economy, which the US wants to do. What's the intention of making life so bad for Cuban citizens that they presumably would want to change? What's the definition of insanity, right? That you keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results. Well, that's what the US has been doing. And of course now they think, get Cuba while it's down. And Cuba is down. I mean, let's face it, COVID hit Cuba very, very hard because they shut down the country to tourism. And tourism was a very important part of their income. And add that into all the other things that are happening around the world, the inflation affecting Cuba terribly. The fact that Venezuela used to provide Cuba with oil and now it's more difficult to do that. And all of the sanctions of the Trump administration imposed on Cuba have made life very difficult. And so when there was a... For me and her sanctions on top of the sanctions on top of the laws that already existed, yeah. And then when people came out on the streets last year on July 11 to protest the lack of food and medicines, the outages of electricity in certain provinces, that was greeted by Cuban-Americans and conservatives in the US of saying, now, yes, we're gonna see the uprising. We're gonna see this overthrow after 60 years. And it didn't happen. Now they say it's because Cuba cracked down so hard on the protesters. But there's another reason, Terri, that people have to realize, which is I was in Cuba at the time and in November when there was supposed to be a new uprising. And what I realized is that Cuban people are much more concerned about getting by and helping their neighbors get by because there's a real sense of community than they were about rising up against the government and saying, what would happen then? Who would take over? The Cuban right wing would come and start buying up everything here and we would even lose our homes or there would be a civil war in Cuba. And yeah, they didn't like the Cuban government. They said, no, no, no, we don't wanna go there. We wanna improve things in Cuba. And the government to its credit since last year has been opening up and trying to find more ways that Cubans can get involved and participate in the most important aspects of their lives from the economy to social issues, to a family code that's being talked about all over the island. So this is a very difficult time for the Cubans and the measures that Biden took don't go nearly far enough to help ease the economic situation. And it's so bad that there is a new wave of migration. People trying to come into the United States. We're saying that here through Mexico. Right, and they're coming through Mexico and this is something that worries the US. I mean, the US leaders don't care about the wellbeing of the Cuban people but they do care about immigration that is affecting Biden and his popularity in elections. It's causing, they're causing it, absolutely. So that's why there were discussions with Cuban officials for the first time in the Biden administration just last month because of the immigration issues. And of course the Cubans are saying, we know a lot of ways that you can help us. And that's lifting the embargo. So as part of lifting the embargo, we would like Biden to overturn the 243 sanctions that Trump imposed to normalize relations, to really treat Cuba as a... A sovereign nation. A sovereign nation, exactly. A sovereign nation with people that are capable of making millions. But unfortunately it's a political issue with Menendez, the Senator from New Jersey being so key to Biden trying to get things passed in the Senate. They still don't get passed anyway. Florida being a key state, elections coming up. So they still are catering to these right-wing Cuban-American sector instead of doing what's better for Cubans and the U.S. No, that's right. When Cuban business, the best demographic Cuban in Florida, generationally, and also just, I mean, we have you, particularly as we have friends that have came that we have specifically with Carlos Russell. I mean, you're looking at people who are more concerned or I shouldn't say more concerned. Their concern is for their friends, their families, their homes, their people. Absolutely, absolutely. When you said Carlos, Carlos Laszlowski from Puentes-Van Mord who we are working with very closely who is building a huge community of Cuban-Americans who are saying exactly what you said, Teri, which is we wanna send money to our family back home. We wanna help our family. We want reunification of the families. We want people to be able to go back and forth. We want things that are good for our relatives. And so, yes, there is a broad sector of the Cuban-American community that does want better relations, but unfortunately that is not who Biden is listening to. And that's why we need to launch his campaign and make it big. And the reason we chose this issue of being a state-sponsored terrorism is because this is such a key issue to Cuba being able to trade with any country, not just the US, but anywhere. So I think we should do more maybe to explain to people why being on that list. So what exactly, how many countries are in the, so this is a list designated by the United States. So it's created by the United States and the country's honor. Are killed by the United States. And it's always Syria, North Korea, and Iran. And Cuba. Yeah, and now Cuba. So what, what gets somebody on that list? What gets a country on that list? Well, it's pure arbitrary, it's US. It's absolutely arbitrary because the US decides and then changes its mind when there's somebody else in the White House. So obviously there is not some real criteria. They say they do a study and determine whether a country is supporting terrorism overseas. The fact that the Obama administration took Cuba off the list and certified that Cuba is not a state sponsored terrorism, tells you that it's all political. And so when a country gets put on that, it has all sorts of ramifications. And the biggest one is that the banking system, the international finance, the trade companies, they're all very afraid of working with Cuba because they are afraid of being sanctioned by the US. And so it's, you know, we just had lunch with somebody from the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. And he said, let me just give you a little example. He said he ordered some books from Amazon and wanted to have them delivered to the Cuban embassy where it works. And he got a call and they said, we can't deliver them to the embassy because you're on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. So could you meet us on the corner so we can give you the books? Well, because the embassy is Cuban sovereign land. All embassies are on. But even so they couldn't go and deliver it. So that's one tiny example, but it's, you know, it's big. So absolutely, you know, it's ludicrous, but it hurts. And it hurts the economy terribly. It means that you can't take out loans from banks. It means that you can't do normal financial transactions. You can't use credit cards that you are blocked from the international financial system. And you have to find all kinds of ways. You can't find it, and you can't, you can't really go to them and find out that you know how. Absolutely. And so you have to find all kinds of other ways that cost a lot more money. So all of the transactions that Cuba does, a country that is extremely poor is costing them even more. And making life, you know, very difficult for the Cuban people. Now you said, Terry, you used to phrase that our friend Vijay Prashad recently used saying that Cuba is a state-sponsored healthcare, not terrorism. And that's something we want to use in this campaign as we build a campaign. And we want this campaign to be not only all of you should go onto the CodePink.org website and sign the new petition saying Cuba's estates is not a state-sponsored terrorism, but we want to get all kinds of organizations, healthcare groups, doctors associations, nurses, unions. We want to get legal associations. We want to get economists, pharmacists, local pharmacy and we want to make it an international campaign because Cuba has sent healthcare brigades to about 160 countries. That's almost all countries in the world. We want to get those countries to join us to say Cuba is not a state-sponsor of terrorism. We want leaders like the leader of Mexico here has said, right? What has he said? Well, Guini has, you know, some of you may remember last summer when he did that fabulous discourse on the 238th anniversary of San Juan Blvd Berkley. He talked about Cuba that regardless of how you feel politically, politics aside, that the people of Cuba have endured 60 years of U.S. oppression and that they deserve United Nations award, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he is really humanitarian award. Yeah. I mean, and they really, they really do what they have endured as a people, yeah. Yeah. He believes in living the blockade fully and incorporating them fully into the Americas but he believes in more than just Cuba being fully incorporated too. Well, and the fact that he refused to go to the summit of the Americas because Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela weren't invited, I think gives us the opening for this campaign. This is the moment to do it. When Latin America is changing and moving much more to the left when we have leaders like Amlo, the president of Mexico who was so clearly saying that the blockade must be lifted. And when you have changing demographics inside the Cuban American community in the United States, I think we won't get this until after the elections in November, but we have to build the base for that. And that's what we're trying to do right now. So we need your ideas, we need your help. We wanna create a whole campaign with volunteers that'll work with us on this. And there's so much that we can do because it's so absurd and mean-spirited and inhumane to have Cuba on this list. The only country in the world, despite its tiny size and how poor it is, that sends medical missions around the world to help with earthquakes, tsunamis, Ebola, COVID, you name it, the Cubans are the first ones there to save lives, not to take lives. And so Cuba really needs our support right now. You know, maybe we could draw a couple of parallels for, it's very minor what's affecting the US population right now. I mean, compared to what has been inflicted on Cuba the last six years, but you look at our own country, our own friends and family who are, you know, we're all kind of screaming that because of the sanctions on Russia or gas prices are going up, domestic prices inside the United States. And people are really upset about that and the inflation that is causing. Now imagine living with that for 60 years and just having it continually by external forces and external decisions compounded year after year after year. Yeah, you're right. Exactly. It's a little bit, and you realize how up in arms people aren't here about the prices they're paying at the gas pump. Well, I can say here in Mexico, people are driving across the border from California in Texas. I mean, you're in a situation here too and they're not happy about that either. It's really happening all over the world, but you're right. Cuba's been dealing with 60 years for 60 years, but you know, Terry, we were in Cuba during the Obama time when they lifted those, many of those sanctions. And there was just a spirit of optimism that was so beautiful. And it was a win-win situation. There were businesses in the US that were flocking to Cuba and making deals with Cuba. There were people from Hollywood going to Cuba and shooting films there. There were lots of tourists going and they love, look, I've never met a tourist who hasn't adored Cuba. They love Cuba. And so it was a real sense of things are going to improve, our lives are getting better. Well, I think it was a little human response. Exactly. It was a heart-to-heart relationship. Yeah. Because all countries in the hemisphere of the Americas were like, regardless, again, of their diplomatic relations and politics, everyone was like, we're all included. Well, that's very important. You bring that up because when Biden now has done such a bad job at the summit of the Americas with all of these different leaders boycotting it, and he sees the move to the left in Latin America and he wants to have some influence in Latin America. He's going to Columbia soon. He's going to be getting an earful like he just probably did from the Mexican president saying, you have to change your position on Cuba that everybody around the continent is saying that. People in the Caribbean are saying that. And so that's why I think that after November, we're going to have the possibility of really forcing Biden's hand on this. And the lifting of the state-sponsored terrorism is exactly the perfect campaign to do right now. And so if people want to get in touch with us, they can write to us at info at CokePink.org and say that you'd like to work with us on this campaign or you've got some ideas that you want to plan for us. Some people you think would be excited about working on this. This is really going to be a fun campaign. We're going to get. It's so positive. Yeah, it's really positive. And it's a simple message. And it's a simple message. It's a strong message. And it's a very simple thing for the president to do. Does not need an act of Congress. Is there something that can happen tomorrow morning on the president's desk? It can happen that quickly and should in art. But yeah, it's a great project and an easy project. And we just want to motivate and mobilize as many of you as possible. It's a really, really simple, straightforward thing to support. And then let's all get it here. Yes. And those people will be having a trip in October and another one in November. So stay in touch with us. And yes, let's go to Cuba. And let's get Cuba off that ridiculous list that it should never have been put on. So what else should we say before we close? And I mentioned real one quick thing because I think what we talked about tonight kind of ties in one specific couple of other countries in the hemisphere. But specifically, when we talked about putting Cuba on the state sponsor of terrorists, what that allows, thank you, financial institutions to do, what sort of sanctions and blockading that allows to happen. This is why in March of 2015, President Obama declared Venezuela an extraordinary threat to US security. Because once he declared that, then the whole sanctions regime was allowed to start. So this is how it's done. For Cuba, it's been 60 years. 60 years it's survived it. But those are the tools. This is what the government, the US government does except the stage to implement sanctions regime. So what else should we mention? Well, I think that's it. I think we wanna get people involved and we wanna get this campaign to be like the campaign we had to get the Nobel Peace Prize for the Cuban medical missions, which we got people from all over the world signing up for that. And it was really a beautiful global effort that inspired the Cuban doctors and nurses themselves. And it made people learn more about it and appreciate these international missions. And that's why I think on this campaign, it is very important to show that Cuba is a state sponsor of healthcare and not of terrorism. So yes, I think we just wanna get people enthused and have them work with us. So come work with us up with us and come to Cuba with us. We're due both. So okay, everyone, thank you for joining us this week. I wanna remind you, you've been watching what the F is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean. Code Kings Weekly YouTube program will hot news out of the region. You can catch us at 7.30 p.m. Eastern on Code Pink YouTube Live every Wednesday. We can also be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Telegram and RadIndyMedia.com. And be sure to catch Code Pink Radio every Thursday morning, 11 a.m. Eastern on WVAI out of New York City and WPFW out of Washington, DC. And again, you can catch Code Pink Radio also on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. So if you missed the live broadcasting, there's always a place to hear it. And we'll see you all next week. And please be sure to join us in this campaign. We look forward to working with all of you going forward. Thank you so much, Tim. Thank you, everyone. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye.