U.S. sanctions, totaling more than 8,000 measures, impact one-third of humanity in more than 40 countries. They are a crime against humanity used, like military intervention, to topple popular governments and movements and provide economic and military support to pro-U.S., right-wing forces.

The U.S. economic dominance and its 800+ military bases worldwide demand all other countries participate in acts of economic strangulation. They must end all normal trade relations, otherwise they risk having Wall Street’s guns pointed at them.

The banks and financial institutions, who are responsible for the devastation of our communities at home, drive the plunder of countries abroad.

As our book is titled, “Sanctions are a Wrecking Ball in a Global Economy.”

The intention is to smash all normal economic life.

Venezuela is the fifth most sanctioned country in the world, and it has cost the country dearly: 946 sanctions! Some 40,000 to 100,000 people in Venezuela are estimated to have died from lack of food, medicines, clean drinking water and other basic necessities as of 2019, imposed since the Barack Obama administration. (Center for Economic and Policy Research, April 25, 2019) The Joe Biden administration has now imposed new, harsher sanctions on Venezuela for the crime of carrying out free and fair elections.

The sanctions on Gaza, since the population dared to overwhelmingly elect the Hamas slate, the Movement of Islamic Resistance, in 2006, operate consciously with Israel to strangle the whole population. This is collective punishment.

Sanctions, combined with a torrent of U.S. provided weapons, have reached a level of genocidal violence against civilians in Gaza that outrages the whole world. U.S. sanctions against Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen brutally impact all the economies of West Asia. They stretch to Afghanistan, blocking all development after decades of U.S. wars.

Sanctions stretch to Myanmar, Laos and the country with the oldest sanctions: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, since 1950.

Cuba, in this hemisphere, has been strangled for over 60 years. Now Nicaragua is in the crosshairs. Impoverished Haiti remains under sanctions.

The largest number of sanctioned countries is in Africa, countries although resource rich, are already strangled by centuries of colonial looting. From Libya, the Central African Republic, Congo – DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Sudan and South Sudan, Somalia, Tunisia, Uganda and Zimbabwe, sanctions block the Right to Develop.

They harm the most vulnerable citizens: children, the sick, the elderly and the poor.