DeProgram with John Kiriakou and Ted Rall - DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Sanctions Are WMDs. Interview with Francisco Rodríguez”

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

On the “DeProgram show” with political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, we interview Francisco Rodríguez, a distinguished economist and senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Rodríguez, a Venezuelan opposition economist and Rice Family Professor at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School, brings unparalleled expertise from his roles as head of the Venezuelan National Assembly’s economic advisory (2000–2004), chief Andean economist at Bank of America (2011–2016), and research team leader for UN Human Development Reports (2008–2011). His frequent contributions to outlets like the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and The New York Times cement his authority on global economic policy. We dive into Rodríguez’s groundbreaking Financial Times op-ed, coauthored with CEPR’s Mark Weisbrot, based on their Lancet Global Health study estimating that U.S.-led sanctions cause 564,000 excess deaths annually, particularly among children under five, with an 8% mortality spike in affected nations. Rodríguez calls these sanctions an “economic weapon of mass destruction,” a view echoed by Rep. Ilhan Omar’s fiery denouncement at the Pan American Congress in Mexico City last week, where she condemned their humanitarian toll. Weisbrot’s Los Angeles Times op-ed underscores the “invisible” devastation, arguing sanctions’ political unsustainability once exposed. Also: • No U.S. Troops to Ukraine: Trump assures Fox News that U.S. troops won’t join an Ukraine peacekeeping force, saying Europeans will take point. Trump wants Zelensky to meet Putin summit, and is offering to mediate. Zelensky seeks U.S. weapons and intelligence. • Will Israel Step Up?: Israel faces a Friday deadline for a Hamas-accepted ceasefire, which would release all 20 remaining hostages for 150 Palestinian prisoners in a 60-day truce. Starvation is getting even worse under Israel’s aid blockade, as protests and international pressure mount. Qatar and Egypt broker demilitarization talks. • Eric Lendrum’s “Hate Speech”: Trump DHS aide Eric Lendrum’s 2023 X posts and podcast endorse the “great replacement” theory and anti-LGBTQ+ slurs, comparing conservatives to enslaved people and Holocaust victims. His call for violence against Gaza protesters draws condemnation. • Andrew Cuomo Asks Trump For Help: At a Hamptons fundraiser, a shameless Cuomo courts Trump’s support to defeat democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, asking the prez to sideline the GOP’s Curtis Sliwa. Mamdani’s campaign accuses Cuomo of election-rigging. Eric Adams slams Cuomo’s tactics, citing his primary loss. • New Zealand Soldier Convicted of Espionage: A New Zealand soldier, convicted for offering military secrets and possessing Christchurch mosque shooting material, faces sentencing. Linked to extremist groups, he was caught by an undercover officer. The case marks New Zealand’s first spying conviction.

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Ted Rall. That's me and CIA whistleblower John Kiroaku. That's him. John, nice to see you. Good to see you, Ted. Yes, indeed. We're going to get it. We have a guest coming on in about 30 minutes. We'll be talking to Francisco Rodriguez, who's a distinguished economist and senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, if that sounds dry, consider this. He has a study. He's a co-author of a study that finds that U.S.-led sanctions kill over half a million people a year every single year, and most of them are kids under the age of five. We'll be talking to him about all of that in just about half an hour.

John, you messaged me shortly before the show saying we've got to talk about U.S. troops not going to Ukraine, that according to President Trump, Hamas has accepted a ceasefire that would release all of the remaining hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinian hostages. That's what I call them, not prisoners. The question is Israel has to figure out by Friday how they're going to weasel out of trying to have a ceasefire. There's a DHS aid over in, and I have no idea what you're going to say about this.

I don't even know if I have an idea what I'm going to say about this, Eric Lendrum has been accused. of hate speech, we'll get into that. Andrew Cuomo, the most shameless politicians in America after the guy he's running against Eric Adams, is asking Trump to make him mayor of New York. And finally, this is a story I had to talk to you about. For the first time ever, a New Zealander has been convicted of espionage. So down in the antipodes, this is what's going on.

And, of course, there's lots of other stuff. Please like, follow, and share the show. If you are on Rumble or on YouTube, please chime in with the chat. We've figured out some text up. We resolved that problem on the Rumble feed where the YouTube ad was talking over us. That shouldn't happen anymore. And we've also resolved the comments section. If you remember yesterday, we weren't able to post the comments on the screen.

We're going to be able to do that. Now, so, John, what do you want to do first? What should we deprogram everyone for? I'm having trouble. Yeah, I'm having trouble hearing you, Ted. It's like we're both having some kind of tech issues. But I feel like I. Are you having an echo or something, a feedback?

No, you just, you froze for a little while. But yeah, let's talk about a couple different things. I mentioned to you just before we started, there was a push notification from the New York. Times saying that Donald Trump had had suspended or revoked the security clearances of 37 CIA and NSC officials, all of whom had something to do, whether as authors or coordinators, on the original 2016 National Intelligence Estimate that came out of the CIA saying that the Russians were interfering in the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. That was untrue, of course.

It was the document that John Brennan allegedly pushed to be published and distributed to the entire intelligence community. Donald Trump is getting his revenge. It's coming in bits and pieces, fits and starts. We know that there is a grand jury seated in Washington that's investigating both, well, not both, but Brennan, Comey, and Clapper on a variety of potential charges. This is a part of that, number one. Number two, I was fascinated by this story that you just mentioned from New Zealand.

This is a New Zealand soldier. We don't know his name. We don't know the country that he allegedly was trying to spy for. But this is the first time any New Zealander has ever been convicted of espionage, ever in the country's history. Ever. Amazing to me. It's been reported by the Associated Press. It says that military court documents, and this was a military court, not a civilian one, say that the man believed that he was speaking with a foreign agent.

In 2019, when he tried to pass New Zealand military intelligence, including things like the telephone book for his base, maps, assessments of security weaknesses, a photocopy of his ID card, log in details for a military network. They said that the information was likely to prejudice the security of New Zealand. And we don't know anything else. That's just about it. I look to see what the sentence could potentially be. We don't even know, but he was found guilty of three charges. He was originally charged with 17. They were combined.

Each of the three charges carries a maximum term of seven to 10 years. So I'm assuming that means 21 to 30 years, if they run consecutively. And he is going to be sentenced. It just says within days. I'm fascinated by this. Fascinated. And what country is it that the New Zealanders are afraid of? It's the same as the Australians.

They're afraid of China. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say, I think this guy probably thought he was dealing with the Chinese. Really? You don't think, I mean, because we're talking about. like a Christchurch mosque shooting material that was found on his. So, I mean, you think it's China. You don't think it's a Islamic, Islamist terrorist group that he thought he was dealing with. The charging document said a foreign power.

That's the only reason I leapt to the Chinese in my own mind. And like I say, the, the, the, the Australians are, are obsessed with the Chinese. they're it's like they're petrified of the Chinese so I don't know I'm just making a guess so you know why I mean why is I mean I guess the question is is this entrapment you know I mean is this one of those stories like the Gretchen Witt kidnapping plot that never would have occurred if someone hadn't said you know John don't you really want to kidnap the governor of Wisconsin not really I'm busy no come on come on let's go let's go get some beers let's go do that oh yeah yeah yeah exactly like those idiots I talk about

all the time in Cleveland over the Route 82 bridge plot. They're just sitting in a bar drinking. And this other idiot comes in and says, hey, guys, you know, we should do. We should blow up the Route 82 bridge. And they said, oh, yeah, that sounds great. We should do that. Let's have a couple more drinks first.

And then, of course, it's the FBI that gave them the inert dynamite and the plunger, like in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. And they all get wrapped up. And then they get 20, 25, and 30 years in prison. It wasn't even their idea. It was the FBI's idea. Total entrapment. John, are we the only country, or are you, I mean, I've never served in the military.

Are we the only a country that has a separate military, separate justice system for the military than civilians? Or is that like standard? Yeah, that's a standard thing. And in fact, well, I mean, we read about ours more often because we have things like Guantanamo and we have courts martial and stuff like that. But the Chinese use theirs a lot. And the Chinese military court system carries out executions. Ours could, but it doesn't. It does in times of war, but that's about it.

Tariq, I wanted to just ask you to clarify. Tariq wants to know if we can talk later about the multilateral and European virtue signaling. Let us know. I don't really know what you're talking about there. So if you can just let us know, then we'll try to answer your question. Okay. Got it. Okay.

I'll check that out as well. Okay, so I'm getting used to the new interface here. So, okay, so I don't know if there's much more to talk about there. We'll just keep an eye on that New Zealand story. John, let's focus a little bit on the security clearances. So this isn't the former, the 51 former intelligence officials. This is going all the way back to Err-Russia Gate from 2016, Hillary, who may or may not have been the author, of this whole thing or a parche or a co-author um is that so i mean i guess there's there's a bunch

of questions here for people always want to know first of all why does anybody who no longer works uh in and in the for the government still have a security clearance except yeah that's a good question it's just to have them so that they can like you know mouth off on as talking heads on cable tv is that basically it's like a retirement plan or it's a that's one of the little yeah it's a privilege. That's one of the side benefits. A lot of people, if you transition from your CIA position into, let's say, one of the defense contractors or one of the think tanks that does classified research, if that organization that you transfer into is able to, what is called hold a security clearance, meaning they have a skiff on site, they have secure safes on site,

you can just transfer your clearance. Now, the conventional wisdom in town is that a security clearance just in and of itself is worth $150,000 in salary. So even if you don't do anything else at all, just by virtue of the fact that you have a security clearance, that's your first $150,000 of annual salary. So everybody wants to keep his security clearance. When I went to Deloitte and Touche, I kept mine for a year and then I just wanted to be done with the agency and I voluntarily gave it up.

But a lot of these people, are still inside the CIA, right? So let's say in 2016, 2016 was a long time ago. That's nine years ago. So let's say you were a junior analyst or a journeyman analyst, G.S.12 or 13, and nine years have passed. And maybe you've gotten promoted, let's say, twice you're a GS-14. You're probably around 40 years old, 35 or 40 years old. And the president of the United States has just suspended your security clearance.

you're done you can't work right you're out yes 20 is the highest yeah yeah you can't work yeah that right so that's just sorry ted i i'm having such trouble hearing you oh my god so am i just too soft you keep uh you're i keep losing your picture um but anyway yeah you can't work and not only can you not work you can't now go to a defense contractor because the clearance itself is gone so you know there's always job Work at the post office, as they said in that Hollywood movie, the Richard Townsend movie. So, yeah, that's, so how do you think that's too, do you think, I mean, I want to be fair, is it possible that these officials really believed what they were saying at the time

and that they just were mistaken? I mean, you know, in the intelligence business, people make assessments. Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're wrong. I feel bad because I literally cannot hear a single word that Ted is saying all it is just little bits and bites and pieces. If you guys can chime in and ask, tell me if you can see me. Can you hear me? Can you hear John. Can't see him. But at least Ted on my screen, what's frozen is a picture of you smiling. So at least very nice. I have a feeling that's on John's end.

I'm not sure. And can you hear me, Ted? Okay, so Robbie, yeah, I hear you totally. I'll tell you what. I'm going to get out and come back in and see if that works. Okay, John. That sounds good. Okay, so if, okay, so Robbie is, producer Robbie says he hears and sees me fine.

I'm wondering if maybe the problem is on John's end, but he can, just log on and get back on. I'm going to put on Robbie. Robbie, I hope you're wearing clothes. I am. Okay, that's the first time for everything. Could you hear me? Could you hear you hear you?

I hear you fine. How about John? I hear him, okay. So I think whatever's going on, wherever latency is, it's on his side. Listen, everybody knows the Washington, D.C. Internet is inferior to Montana Internet. It's just a fucking loud. Hey, John, are you there?

Yeah, my friend, Billy is telling me that it's on my end. I think so, too. I agree. Yeah. Sorry about that, guys. But it's nice and clear now. I hope we can keep it.

Okay, we'll see. All right. So what I was asking is, do we want to be fair to these 37 CIA and NSC guys who just lost the security clearance? I imagine few of them are gals too. Is it like, you know, sometimes, you know, you're making assessments, you know, you make a right assessment, you make a wrong assessment. are they unfairly being punished for like in good faith making a bad assessment or were they

lying sacks of shit at the time no i think that see there's a problem at the cia with group think right you get all these people who all think they're so smart the smartest people in town and they all get in the same room and they all end up agreeing with each other because nobody wants to stick out and risk being wrong right if or if if you're wrong you want everybody to be wrong And so a lot of these people are just, you know, they're completely apolitical. They're just trying to do what's best for the job. And they got caught up in the ire of Donald Trump. I think that's what this is.

Yeah. And, you know, I mean, it's one of those things where, once again, we've talked about this before. And I've said it before, and I'll say it again, this is very political. And it's retribution. doesn't mean it's wrong yeah that's right and the thing is you know when you want to play in the big leagues it gets rough and when you jump in on the side of the likes of john brennan to take down a democratically elected president yeah then there there's a cost that comes along with that and all the it's like you know this is like such a such a den of vipers in the political scene these

days. They're all trying to off each other in the most repugnant ways. I mean, God, when you just think about like what Biden did and what they did for Biden, when you think about what Hillary tried to do, when you think about January 6th, what Trump tried to do, it's unbelievable. These people are unbelievable, really. It is. All of them. All of them. Both sides. Oh, yeah. I've told you, I told you in the past, Ted, that when I was first at the agency, it was absolutely apolitical. You never had any idea the political leanings of the people that you worked with day in and day out. It just never, ever came up. And then in 1996, I sat a few cubicles down from a woman who got in trouble and was reported to HR because she had a Bob Dole for

president bumper sticker taped up in her cubicle. somebody ratted her out and they put a letter in her file and everything it was like you know it was such a violation of the norm I think I mean I think they were right but they should have probably just you know just shit cut it out yeah take it down yeah yeah well I understand people just don't like to talk anymore they like to have a paper trail um let's talk about Trump um he's saying that there's going to probably be a some kind of peacekeeping force uh in Ukraine. I'm not really sure what that would look like. Well, I think he's not sure what it would look like. So I'm not sure it's a good idea, right? I mean, it's kind of like, so these are the Europeans

who've been, you know, had a total hard on for Russia all along. So the Europeans, basically the way this currently looks is the Europeans go in and what? They are part of a DMZ. They monitor the Russian lines or whatever the line of control is called, the cessation of hostilities. And if something goes wrong, then if the Europeans can't handle it, then Trump promises to provide some kind of logistical support, maybe weapons, but not U.S. troops under any circumstance. But, I mean, it's already World War III if you have an armed clash between any European nation and Russia, isn't it? Yes, it is.

See, now this is going to cause some fancy footwork to take. place around the NATO charter. Because if, if NATO troops are attacked, remember, an attack on one is an attack on all. So if there are going to be NATO troops stationed in Ukraine, even though Ukraine would not be a member of NATO, and those troops are attacked, NATO would have to respond. And if NATO responds, of course, the Russians are going to respond. And then we have World War III. So Donald Trump is talking about this peacekeeping force, and I think even he doesn't understand what that is going to entail. It just hasn't been worked out yet.

He's also talking about a, oh, what are they calling it, an error guarantees or security guarantees by error or something like that. I don't think anybody really knows what that means either. So we're going to have to work out something in Iraq 20 years ago, 30 years ago, after the first Gulf War, the peacekeeping forces were made up almost entirely of soldiers from Fiji. Oh, right. It's a major, you know, moneymaker for the Fijian government. They just send troops everywhere, Northern Ireland and the Fijians are everywhere. Yeah, they're rent-a-cops for the United Nations Peacekeeping Services.

I don't think that's what we're talking about here. I think we're talking about Westerners, NATO countries. I don't see how that works. I mean, I'm not sure you really need peacekeepers here. I think a DMZ makes more sense. The DMZ makes much more sense. And then you fortify it on both sides. Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, it's not the most populous part of Ukraine anyway, so why not do it there? Also, Trump is trying to get Putin to meet Zelensky, maybe with Trump not even there. It's like, you crazy kids work it out. I think Trump has to be there, right? Agreed. Trump has to be there. Yes. And that could take place as early as Friday.

He's demanding action. Yeah, no, I like that. So we have a question about Sarah Adams. Oh, sure. She continues to scream about a homeland. terrorist attack. Does this have any weight or is it complete nonsense? Also, is Hamza bin Laden alive? Lurchings Swing 63 wants to know. Well, a couple of our viewers have emailed me about Sarah. What's her name? McAdams. McAdams or Adams? Adams. Yeah. So Sarah Adams, she was an analyst in what is now called

open source.gov, used to be called the federal broadcast information service, FBIS or Fibbis. She did not have access to the classified intelligence. Her job was to consume foreign press reports and then to take the translations of those reports and do analyses on what foreign newspapers and broadcast outlets were publishing and disseminating. She left the CIA. And like I say, it wasn't really CIA. It was a CIA sister agency.

So she left the intelligence community, went out on her own, and she screams from the rooftops about this imminent, massive terrorist attack that's coming. She's just making it up. She doesn't have access to any intelligence that anybody else, you know, doesn't have access to. She's just making it up. And this was actually quite a common thing at the CIA. I worked with a guy who for 20 years predicted the collapse of the Saudi royal family and just kept getting promoted year after year after year after year with the idea being if it eventually collapses he's going to be a superstar and if it's not going to collapse well he retires to a fat pension and everybody just forgets about him she's doing the same thing trying to make a living by being more outrageous than anybody else

to try to build up a following of her own on YouTube or on the speaking circuit or what have you. Don't pay any attention to her. She's not a serious person. Hamza bin Laden. The last I heard about Hamza bin Laden was that he was under house arrest in southern Iran, in Balochistan. He has caused the Iranians nothing but trouble. I mean, they can't let him go because he's asked for protection. and Muslim culture is such that they have to offer him protection.

But then at the same time, it opens them up to criticism from the United States that they're harboring the son and not just the son, but the most violent living son of Osama bin Laden. So he's kind of stuck there. How old was that guy now? He must be getting out in years. Yeah, he's got to be in his 40s by now. Yeah, which out there is early 40s.

Kind of on the old side. Yeah. So let's see, this is a, I'll answer this question, but I think we both should. Do you think if China ever moves on Taiwan, Russia will attack NATO? Well, first of all, I don't think China will ever move on Taiwan, but certainly, no. What do you think, John? No, no. You know, I've said, I'm not a China expert, but historically, the Chinese have not been expansionist or interventionist.

Yeah, we can have a talk about. about Tibet. But other than that, they just don't invade other countries like the United States does. There have been border skirmishes with the Indians, with the Vietnamese, but they just are not expansionist. No, they're not. And they haven't been for many, many, many years. I mean, I guess the thing is that the case for invading Taiwan would be that historically it's been part of China, many times whenever the empire is strong, Taiwan is part of China, empire is weak. Right.

It retracts and then it loses outlying areas like Tibet and China, I mean, and Taiwan. Taiwan's always been a backwater kind of in the Chinese, I think, culture, in the political culture. It's kind of like we want, it's ours. It's like, it's like Guam or Alaska for us. Yeah. Like, you know. Yeah, right.

It's ours. We don't necessarily want to do anything about it. But yeah, it's ours. It's like Puerto Rico. Yeah, although the Japanese kind of thought. at Pearl Harbor. They really thought that they were just going to punch us on the nose in a place that we didn't care that much about. And they didn't realize how pissed we'd get. It wasn't even a state. No, it was a territory. I don't really blame them for thinking that. It's just a reminder in a few

minutes. We're going to have our guest joining us. This is going to be Francisco Rodriguez, going to talk about sanctions. He's from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. I'll let you know when we see them pipe on. Okay, so Hamas ceasefire. Hamas has agreed to release all of the remaining hostages. 20 alive plus 30 corpses. I guess the corpses will be released too. In exchange, they want back 150 hostages that are Palestinian who are being held by Israel.

It seems to me like Israel really doesn't want a ceasefire, right? So they're going to pretty much come up with some excuse to not have one. But how are they going to explain that to their own public when it's the only thing that their public seems to care about right now? Domestically, the Israeli people are up in arms over this. And, you know, one of the ugly little secrets that hasn't gotten much play is that it was the Israelis that killed most of these hostages. Yes, it was.

These hostages were dead when Hamas took them down into the tunnels. Right. When I was in Athens back in whenever it was, March, I guess, I was talking to a journalist, a really great journalist who went to Gaza on October the 8th. And he went into Gaza with an IDF escort, and he said that there was a line of cars that just stretched for a mile going. from the Israeli side of the line into Gaza, and he said almost all of them had enormous holes like in the roofs of the car. He said they were clearly from rockets or from 50 caliber machine

guns. And he asked, and there were still dead bodies in a lot of them. And he asked his escort, you know, what's up with that and was told, yeah, don't worry about those people. But they were, they were killed by the Israeli military as part of the, what is it, the Hannibal. The Hannibal directive, right, that it's better to kill the Israelis before they're taken than have to worry about trying to liberate living hostages. And I mean, and I still like to point out, like, that response time, John, I mean, what do you, I mean, what do you think, right? I mean, the earliest response time was eight hours to the first kibbutz.

Eight hours. You can drive from one side of Israel to the other in five. Eight hours. That's the quick one. Yeah. The slowest was 20 and a half. Can you imagine? Don't even bother to show up, please.

Can you imagine the conversation that took place in Benjamin Netanyahu's office? Like as soon as Hamas attacks, Netanyahu probably said, finally, what took them so long? Okay, let's all grab a sandwich and then, yeah. Yeah. And then we'll regroup in eight hours. Right. We'll start to maybe guys, you know, go over there. But, you know, take your time. Yep. No rush. We've got a good question here, Ted, from Pedro Luis Taff. What do we think about the tear for going on between the U.S. and Brazil?

This judge, I don't know this Brazilian judge at all other than what I've read about him over the last week or two, but this guy has some brass balls. And I have to say, I'm really impressed at the way he's standing up to U.S. pressure or more specifically to Trump pressure and saying, look, we're going to let this case run its course. And we don't care if the judge is going to be banned from the U.S. or his make-believe checking account is going to be frozen, a checking account that he doesn't have. But the justice system is going to just run its normal course. and they're not afraid of what Marco Rubio or Donald Trump have to say about him. I'm impressed. It is, it is impressive. And I guess, what was, there was something other here.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Houdini had a question here. What's our thoughts about designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization? You know, I've actually written op-eds about this. The Muslim Brotherhood hates everything about the United States. And I mean everything from our politics to jazz music. They've actually written treatises about how jazz music is demonically, you know, influenced. But they have never, ever acted as a terrorist group, ever, least of all against the United States.

So we can hate their politics. We can hate their position. We can say that they're fundamentalists or that their ideas are dangerous, but they're not a terrorist group. Who was it, was it Al-Qaeda that carried out the Luxor, Egypt terrorist attack? Yes, it was Al-Qaeda as they were in the process of merging with Egyptian Islamic jihad. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, no, so Muslim Brotherhood has, I mean, certainly people have graduated from Muslim Brotherhood into other extremist organizations. Sure. But basically, yeah, they're a very self-disciplined political party, really.

Yeah, it's a political party. They've been around for 105 years and have never, they have never initiated an attack on the United States in 105 years. So why poke the Hornets Nest by designating them as a terrorist group? Makes no sense to me. All right. Let's go ahead and bring in our guest. I see him backstage. Thanks so much for joining us.

Very happy to have with us, Francisco Rodriguez. He's a Venezuelan opposition economist and Rice family professor at the University of Denver's Joseph Corbel School. He's a distinguished economist and senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He brings unparalleled expertise from his roles as head of the Venezuelan National Assembly's Economic Advisory Team between 2000 and 2004. The chief Andean economist at the Bank of America, I've heard of that place, 2011 and 2016, and research team leader for the UN Human Development Reports between 08 and 11, is frequent contributions to outlets like the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and the New York Times cements his authority on global economic policy. He wrote a groundbreaking Financial Times op-ed

co-authored with CEPR's Mark Wisebrot, based on their Lancet Global Health Study, estimating that sanctions imposed by the United States cause 564,000 excess deaths annually, particularly among children under five, with an 8% mortality spike in affected nations. Francisco, thank you so much for joining us here on D-Program. Good afternoon, Ted, I'm John. Thank you for having me on the show. It's a real pleasure. Francisco, could you tell us a little bit about your study here, your methodology, and what

excess deads mean? Sure. So what we did is that we used the data set of 50 years of sanctions imposed by the U.S., by the European Union, by the United Nations. And we looked not just at the correlation, but actually the causality going from sanctions to changes in age-specific mortality rates. And what that means is that we measured mortality

in each of these affected countries for seven different age categories, neonatal zero to one, under five, child, adolescent, adult, and older, persons. And we use different methods that have been designed in econometrics to identify causal effects. So to make sure that when you find a correlation between two variables, it's not just a correlation. It indicates causality going from sanctions to mortality. Because part of the

criticism, and ours is not the first study, but there have been previous studies, and part of the criticism that have been leveled at them is the possibility that these correlations are not causal that, for example, and this often comes up in the policy debate where policymakers in the countries imposing sanctions will say, well, what happens is that, you know, regimes like that led by Nicolas Maduro or Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, they mismanage their economies, they mismanage their countries, and that's the cost of the mortality. It's not the sanctions. So we applied four different methods established in the literature, what are known as quasi-experimental methods, which effectively transform and use this data so that it can give you answers that

approximate the reliability of those that you would have if you were able to conduct experiments, which, of course, you can't conduct with policy data. And we found very consistent answers across the four methods, and particularly they find a strong causal effect, which is strongest, particularly in the under five segments. So children under five are those that are most affected, also older people between 60 and 80 years of age. We find increases which range as high as 8% increase in mortality in the affected countries, again, in that segment of under five. And we also quantify the effect on deaths of all sanctions imposed by the UN. the U.S. and the EU, and particularly the estimate that is our central estimate, also we have

several different models in the paper, but the one that we present as a central estimate is the effect of unilateral sanctions imposed either by the U.S. or the EU over the course of the past decade, we estimate that they have caused 564,000 deaths annually, which is comparable to the death toll from armed conflict during that same period. wow I mean I would have expected some big numbers did those numbers surprise you

well partly yes I mean because the numbers are striking in and of themselves I mean when you when you stop to think about and you step outside of the data and you think every year there are hundreds of thousands of persons

who are dying and many of them children as a result of these policies and particularly the comparison with armed conflict, I must say I didn't expect, I expected a large number, but I didn't expect that they would turn out to be as important as wars. And in fact, actually, if you look at that number in detail, the people who actually die in combat-related casualties around 100,000 a year. So it's only when you put in civilian casualties that the number of people who die from wars reaches that range of, 500 to 700,000, which is similar to the one found in our study. So what that tells us is that the deaths that are being caused by sanctions are

about five times as large as those soldiers who are actually dying in the battlefield every year. So yes, I mean, that number was striking. But really, when you think about it more carefully, at least when you look at it in the context of the data, you see, what happens is that around a third of the world is at this moment, impacted by sanctions. There's been a huge growth in the use. A third of the world. Do you mean a third of the world's nations or a third of the world's population?

Well, it's actually kind of similar numbers depending on how you calculate it. I mean, you can calculate a number of nations. It's about 80 nations. You can calculate it as a share of world GDP. It works out to be about a third. There, of course, China is a very important part of that percentage. and this number of people. So it really, I mean, the number is between 25 and 35% in those three measures.

So, yeah, I mean, it's so, so when you understand how large the number of affected countries are, then it's actually not that surprising that you get a large number. And one might even think that the number is actually quite low because the number is just about, 4% of the people who actually die in these sanctioned countries. But that's because it's an average across many different sanctions cases. And it's actually quite interesting. We have one method which zeroes in on the sanctions that are imposed, particularly against countries that deviate from the U.S. foreign policy positions. And the way that we measure them is by UN General Assembly voting records. So the countries that are farthest from

the U.S. in terms of their general assembly voting record have a much higher probability of being sanctioned. The numbers are actually quite striking. And our model basically tells us that, you know, if a country like, say, Haiti adopted the same foreign policy position of the U.S., it would have near zero probability of being sanctioned. Whereas if it adopted the foreign policy position of China, it would have more than 90% probability of being sanctioned. So the fact is that when we look at that type of sanctions, the sanctions that are motivated by being, by dissenting from the U.S. or from the EU, we get even much, much larger effects. What does that mean? What that means is that, yes, I mean, there are some cases in which it might be, you know, three or two or one percent

of the debt's in that country, but there are some other cases where it's 10, 20, 40, 50 percent. Francisco, let me ask you a question, pass on a question from a viewer. Marcel wants to know, are most of the deads caused by malnutrition and lack of access to medicine or something else? Well, that's a very important question. And let me first say something about our method and what our method can help us identify and what it can. our method looks at the effects it quantifies the effects uh so uh it's like it's like looking at uh at this sanctions phenomenon uh with a very broad telescope that allows us to look i mean we're looking at 150 countries over a 50 year period these are very heterogeneous cases

and therefore what we can do is uh is zero in on on the on the aggregates on the aggregate effects across all of these countries um the mechanisms which might be very different and country from country and how they're operating are much more difficult to identify with our data with our method is not so much designed to do that although there is a lot of literature on particular case studies that looks at these effects and looks at the channel through which they operate which tend to be very economy specific so i just published a book earlier this year with university of notre dame called the collapse of venezuela which looks at the Venezuelan case in particular and what were the effects, how these effects operated there.

And you basically get three different channels. And one of them is that sanctions typically tend to hurt the country's capacity to generate foreign exchange revenue. And for most developing countries, that's extremely important because that's with what they buy, the things that they don't produce from the rest of the world. And a lot of the times, these can be kind of medicines or they can be essential agricultural products,

agricultural inputs or they can be food itself. So when you have a restriction, and, you know, the case of Venezuela, but also the case of Iran, the case of Iraq in the 1990s, the case of Libya, even the case of Russia, these are oil-producing economies. So when you target the production of oil, you're targeting the amount of money that they have with which they can buy things from the rest of the world. So what we find is that when you do that, basically, you deprive the country of foreign exchange, what you end up having is a devaluation in those countries. That is, foreign exchange becomes a lot more expensive because they just have less dollars. And that makes all of these imported goods more expensive.

It drives up inflation, drives the cost of imported goods so people can't afford them. So people can afford medicines. Medicines become scarce. The food becomes scarce, becomes more expensive. Then you have another effect, which is through the public sector itself. So since these sanctions are aiming to deprive, the governments of these countries, of the resources necessary to govern, to carry out their functions as governments. Well, governments are those that provide public health services. So that

means that there's less funding for public health. There's less funding for nutritional programs, and those tend to decline. Then you get a third effect, which is the effect that is sometimes called overcompliance, but I think probably a more appropriate term for it, is a chilling effect. And it has to do with the fact that when a country is hit with sanctions, even if the sanctions don't explicitly forbid trade with that country or forbid trade in certain goods, and you'll see, for example, U.S. officials pointing to this a lot. They'll say, oh, but there's a humanitarian exception for the sanctions to Syria.

Well, the reality is that even though that exception exists on paper, when a country is hit by sanctions, all of the private sector actors and very importantly financial institutions banks don't want to have anything to do with that country. So they completely restrict trade and they start closing down accounts, for example, of anybody associated with that country, if anybody with who is based or has the nationality in that country. And I mean, we have very prominent cases, for example, GoFundMe in 2023, actually suspending the accounts of anybody who tried to collect funds.

for Syria earthquake relief because they thought that they were going to be to be struck with a non-compliance action by the U.S. Treasury Department to be found to be in violation of Syria's actions. So therefore, humanitarian operations also tend to close down in these countries. Francisco, may I ask you, when I was at the CIA during the Iraq war and sanctions against Iraq were obviously killing thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, medicines, foods, things that the U.N., which really meant the U.S. considered to be dual use, the Iraqis were getting practically nothing.

And those deaths were just dismissed outright by Secretary of State Madeline Albright. That turned out to have been false, that people were dying as a result of these sanctions. Has the attitude among senior U.S. government officials changed at all? do they care more about the effective sanctions on civilian populations or is this a fight that we're going to have to keep fighting um well i mean obviously uh if any government is very heterogeneous and there are different public officials that go through these positions there are different administrations uh and and it's very difficult to generalize but but i would say that uh something that is striking about the U.S. is how little attention it has paid to the economic and humanitarian

consequences of sanctions. I mean, let me put it another way. What we would expect that, we would expect that given, and by the way, ours is not the first study to identify the economic and humanitarian effects. I mean, we do it in ways which we consider are innovative and we use modern econometric techniques to get at this causality question. But there are numerous studies, actually, in a survey that I published a couple of years ago, identified 31 quantitative studies. And by quantitative, I mean studies that actually put a number to the effect of sanctions. And all of them were essentially in the same direction.

I mean, in terms not just of mortality, life expectancy, but just the economic crises, the countries sit by sanctions. as a result of sanctions tend to undergo economic contractions, which are typically of an order of magnitude similar to that of the Great Depression in the US. So you would imagine that given this array of evidence, what the US government that is imposing sanctions on these countries should be doing,

should be monitoring, assessing, trying to understand to quantify the effect of sanctions on these countries, but they haven't they don't do that actually let me put in a small caveat which is that two years ago the U.S. actually finally created an office to assess the economic effect of sanctions non-targeted countries and it hired two economists to work in it so and and by the way I'm I'm actually not sure whether it was closed by Doge but but the fact is that you know the effort to quantify and to take seriously this issue has been minimal and the type of response that you tend to get from US public officials when they are asked about the evidence on the effective

sanctions is to essentially shift the blame on the affected regimes. I mean, typically, and that's why we thought it was so important to get at the issue of causality, because the typical narrative that comes out of the U.S. State Department on this issue is, no, what's happening in these countries, it's wrong to blame sanctions. It's the responsibility of the regimes that are in power. And I agree that in many of these cases, these are... And they blame the people for not overthrowing those regimes often. Oh, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yes. A bunch of questions. I really, I want to throw them all at you, and you can sort of sort through any ones that you want or don't want to. Star Lion wants to know, how does sanctions promote

migration away from the sanctions country to the U.S., including the U.S. and other countries, even Israel, aka brain drain. Iran and Russia have been affected by this. Also, do you rely on debt number, do you count death certificates in order to calculate excess deaths? If so, could that result in an undercount for countries that have weak governments or like even failed states, people more disconnected from society. And sorry to throw all this at you. Marcel wants to know, are the situations in which you think sanctions might be justified? Yeah. So that's that certificates. Well, yes. I mean, our data relies on, and these are mortality estimates which are produced at the country level. And they're essentially based on

vital registration statistics, which for the case of that's, of course, means that certificates. The reality is that for most countries in the world, actually, the undercounting of the total number of deaths does not tend to be a problem. I mean, the reality is that, you know, typically when somebody dies, there is a body and that person is identified as dead. in the statistics. And that regularly happens around the world. What has been more problematic actually has been with attribution. So for example, with COVID, the measurement of excess mortality became really important because when governments actually had to to quantify how many people are dying because of COVID, then they would attribute those deaths to other reasons. But we're not

counting on an attribution that's made at the government level. We're counting on the identification of patterns in the data of 50 countries or over 50 years to associate the effect of sanctions on mortality. So we're effectively measuring the excess mortality, which is in the same way in which COVID, the good measures of COVID effects are excess mortality measures. Right. You're comparing what the mortality rates would have been without the sanctions. Correct. Correct. Versus what they are with the sanctions. Exactly. So migration, yes, I mean, there's strong evidence that sanctions lead to increases in immigration. And in fact, a very prominent case is precisely that of Venezuela, where we see in an exodus of nearly a third

of the population. And that has occurred and intensified, particularly during the period of imposition of sanctions. And there's very clear evidence there linking that migration, which it was primarily initially to the rest of Latin America. And then in recent years, it started being directed at the U.S. And many of those migrants started coming into the U.S. So there was, oh, yes, and then the question about whether there are cases in which sanctions are justified. Well, you know, it's interesting. And this is, an issue for debate, even between the authors of the paper. We don't necessarily on this. I mean, the paper is concentrated on assessing the evidence. But when you get to the issue of,

you know, where should we go in terms of sanctions policy reform? Does it make sense to reform sanctions to try to reform them? Or should we just try to ban the use of sanctions? My personal view on this is, you know, there's obviously some sanctions which are going to exist and which it would be very hard to argue against. I mean, it would be very hard to argue against sanctions on bin Latin, for example. But the problem... But he doesn't, but he's not a nation state. Well, right, but well, here's what's interesting. Well, here's what's interesting. Most sanctions that are imposed today by the U.S. or the EU or the UN are not sanctions on countries. They're sanctions on individuals or their sanctions on particular entities.

But however, they are used as sanctions on countries because when you sanction all the leaders of a government, or when you sanction a country central bank, for example, well, central bank is fundamental to the functioning of the economy. When you sanction the state-owned oil company in a country where 96% of exports come out of the oil sector. So you see, in the 1990s, actually, after the Iraq sanctions, a lot of people started thinking about, performing sanctions and came up with the idea of, well, let's make sanctions smarter. Let's make them more targeted. Let's ensure these sanctions actually affect the wrongdoers that we want to punish and not the countries as a whole. But the reality is that even though some of those attempts might have been well-intentioned, in practice, what we've had is the same, the use of those

presumably smart, targeted sanctions to replicate the effect of economy-wide sanctions. So, I would say, yes, I mean, I would like to think of a world in which we can effectively have sanctions that are only directed against wrongdoers, but in practice, that's not what we have right now. What we have are sanctions that are targeted against countries as a whole, regardless of what they're called. Okay. Francisco, thank you so much for joining us.

I should say Professor Rodriguez, thank you so much for joining us. I'd love to have you back. A fascinating discussion. You know, I had no, I mean, I knew sanctions were bad. I'll never forget going to a hospital in Afghanistan in 2000 where they hadn't seen a Band-Aid in years due to Clinton's sanctions against the Taliban. And I never, I never forgot it. It's disgusting.

Anyway, thank you so much. Much appreciated. That is Francisco Rodriguez. He's a distinguished economist and senior research fellow at the Senate. for Economic and Policy Research, and he is the co-author of a study for Lancet Global Health that estimates that U.S.-led sanctions kill 564,000 more people than need to die every single year, more, most of them children, more than even die in armed conflict. Thanks, Professor. Thank you very much.

Thank you. That was a very important talk. People don't, people don't, people don't realize the cost, the human cost of sanctions. Even people in a position to understand the human cost of sanctions don't. So listen, I understand that sometimes this kind of information may seem dry or academic, but my God, it's important. I mean, that's, yeah, that's a lot more people than die in armed conflict. Exactly. What did you say? Four or five times more than die in armed That's a bloodbath. It's nuts. It is.

It's a crime against humanity. It's like quite literally the definition of a crime against humanity. Absolutely disgusting. All right, we've got a quick ad. Let me see if I can do this without screwing it up because this is like the first time. Here we go. The countdown is over. The rivalries are real.

And the road to the championship begins on August 23rd, Westwood One Sports brings you every electrifying moment of NCAA football from the first snap to the final whistle. Top teams, big plays, unforgettable Saturdays, don't miss a second of the action. Listen to NCAA football on rumble.com, the Westwood One sports app on Westwoodonesports.com via Westwood One station streams or by asking Alexa to open Westwood One sports. If it's sports, it's on Westward One. Okay. So, good.

That was fun. Yeah. So we got a few more things to talk about before we wrap it up. So what do you think the Israelis are going to do in terms of? terms of weasling out of the ceasefire? Well, keep in mind that Benjamin Netanyahu has a very strong personal reason to keep this war going as long as he possibly can, because he has seven felony indictments for corruption hanging over his head. And so he needs for his country to be rallied around him as its prime minister to stay out of prison. And his wife's under

indictment, too. So I think that the Israelis are just going to pretend that they didn't hear of any Palestinian offered to accept a ceasefire. They're just going to pretend it hasn't happened, and they're going to continue to prosecute this war. La, la, la, la, la, I can't hear you. Exactly. And let's talk a little bit about the New York City mayoral campaign. Right. I'd love to hear your views on this, because it just gets a little bit more. more absurd every day. It's ridiculous. I mean, first of all, this is a, this is a lot of drama in an election that doesn't really

have any, you know, statistically or in the polls. There's been almost no movement in the polls whatsoever since the primary. You know, Zoran Mandani still leads overwhelmingly. He's going to be the next mayor of the city of New York. He's running against basically Andrew Cuomo, who's running in second place, but a distant second place. then following, there's Curtis Lewa, the Republican candidate, who is in the low double digits. And then there's Eric Adams, who is basically up there with a pond scum in terms of popularity.

And so now Cuomo was out in the Hamptons, a scrounging for money. And he's asking, like, Trump, of all people, hey, Trump, can you tell all the Republicans in New York City, all 11% of them, to please vote? So for me, of course, you know, Andrew Cuomo knows there's, knows arithmetic as well as I do. He's currently at 25. Um, Mimdani's at 37. So he's thinking, oh, I could be, you know, within, if I get those 11, and he's like, literally he's telling Trump, please tell your people not to vote for Curtis Sliwa. Yeah.

Trump has no fault in the New York City mayoral race at all, no, despite being a New Yorker. None. Zero. But any Republicans who are here are going to vote for Curtis Slewa. You know, and so I mean... I like Curtis Slewa. This race isn't going anywhere. Now, I kind of want to express my appreciation for Andrew Cuomo because he is helping to split the anti-Memdani vote.

You know, if really truly the oligarchs were serious about defeating Mamdani, they would have Adams drop out and maybe Slewa, but certainly Adams, and have him endorse Cuomo. Cuomo would be the best shot. It's not going to work. Yeah, exactly. But it would be. And it's also not going to happen. No. I just don't understand how it is these, these guys just can't get their act together

when they so clearly need to get their act together. But I agree with you, Ted. The numbers just are not there for anybody not named Zoran Mamdani. He's going to be the mayor. He's going to win. And I don't understand that. Like, you know, it's sort of like when you know you're going to lose, you know go out with dignity that's not the case at all no if i were quoma i wouldn't even

be i wouldn't even write well if i were adams i certainly would not be running no adams has no self-respect nobody you know nobody here curtis lewa comes out smelling the best he hasn't done anything wrong you know that's right that's right he hasn't he hasn't totally and and you know one thing about curtis lewa too Curtis Slewa loves New York. He loves it. He's a real New Yorker. Yeah.

Yeah. And I can vouch for that having spent time with him. No, for sure. I mean, he's a real New Yorker. I might not agree with him about everything. Plus, he's on Team Cat in a big way. He's got like 12 of them. Yeah.

They fill his apartment. I've seen pictures of him in his apartment. It's like a basement apartment. Yeah. He lives practically like a pop or he doesn't really make any money. And the place is. is full of cats. It's the craziest thing.

I love cats. I don't want that many of them around me, but I'm glad they're not on the street. And I guess last but not least, I wanted to know what you made of this Eric Lendrum story, which is very, very strange. So he's a DHS aide under Trump. And a couple of years ago,

he posted on X and went on a podcast, and he endorsed the Great Replacement Theory. We know what that is. I'm not going to define it in the few minutes we have less. And he said some stuff about LGBTQ plus people. He compared conservatives to like an oppressed minority, like enslaved people and even Holocaust victims. Of all of that, I thought maybe I'm excessively small L liberal.

I thought all of that was wrong and maybe tasteless, but not beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse. But this is being characterized. as hate speech and then he did call for beating up Gaza protesters calling for violence against them. So that's wrong. But is that other stuff hate speech or even as calling for beating up people? Is that hate speech per se? I guess I don't think it's hate speech really. You know, just a moment ago, I texted a friend of mine, Rudy Giuliani needs a punch in the nose. That's what I said, my exact words. Is that hate speech? Is it advocating?

violence, no. So, no, listen, I think, what is hate speech? I think hate speech is like when you say, you know, all black people are this or that, that's hate speech. Yes, yes, without a doubt. But we've got to be careful that we don't do what the Germans have done, where everything that that could possibly offend somebody is considered to be hate speech. I was debating somebody on Twitter, I don't know, a year ago, I guess. And I said, shame on Disney for making an animated series on Mustafa Kamal Ataturk. And I said, why would Disney honor a genocidal maniac like Ataturk?

And then like a month later, I get an email from the German federal police saying that they've decided not to pursue charges of hate speech against me. I'm like, fuck you. I haven't even been in Germany and how. how many years. And I'm allowed to say that Mustafa Kamala, Turk is a genocidal maniac. If I want to, he kept my people in bondage for 450 years. But it's a slippery slope from where we are now to where we could go, you know, to where the Germans are. I don't, I don't like this replacement theory. I think it's bogus. I think it's silly. And it's not true. And it's not true. Right. But is it hate speech? I don't

think it's hate speech. I mean, I guess the question. question is and this is a this is a valid argument on car says the issue is that he's prejudiced east and shouldn't have a government position no one whose prejudiced should be have a position in government I mean I mean I agree with that but I think the the halls of the holes of government are going to empty out pretty quick you can say that again you know yep yep agreed all right guess are we deprogram John? I think we are. I feel deprogrammed. I feel de-programmed, too. Just as a reminder, everyone,

we are here now five days a week, Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. Eastern time. We will let you know. Sometimes we'll need to take a day off, but that's the plan, Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. Eastern. Please share, subscribe, and follow the show. We really appreciate you coming in and checking us out. And we will, let's see, I need to, oh my God, I need to, like not do what I did yesterday. There we go. Just need to end it without my other show's outro. All right, everyone, take care.

Bye. Bye-bye.