June, 13 2017, 03:45pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Medea Benjamin, 415-235-6517, medea@codepink.org
Jodie Evans, 310-621-5635, heartofj@gmail.com
CODEPINK Response to Resolution 42 Vote on Saudi Weapons
Today, shamefully, the US Senate voted 53 to 47 to approve the Trump administration's plan to sell precision-guided munitions to the Saudi regime, munitions that will be used to bomb innocent civilians in neighboring Yemen, as the Saudis have been doing for over two years now.
WASHINGTON
Today, shamefully, the US Senate voted 53 to 47 to approve the Trump administration's plan to sell precision-guided munitions to the Saudi regime, munitions that will be used to bomb innocent civilians in neighboring Yemen, as the Saudis have been doing for over two years now.
"Continuing to arm the regime most responsible for the spread of extremism and the regime that is wreaking such devastation on the Yemeni people is unconscionable," said Medea Benjamin, author of the book Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the US-Saudi Connection. "The vote is a mind-bending example of the utter subservience of our elected officials to the military-industrial complex and the lobbyists of the reprehensible Saudi regime."
CODEPINK thanks Senators Murphy, Rand and Franken for sponsoring Resolution 42 and for speaking out forcefully against the weapons sale. We also thank the other Senators who voted for the Resolution, although we had hoped more of them would have come out publicly before the vote, which would have given more momentum for passing the Resolution and allowed us to better target our efforts.
We also thank the many thousands of Americans who emailed, called and visited their Senators urging them to vote yes. It is thanks to their efforts that we achieved this unprecedented level of opposition in the Senate, which will certainly send an important message to the Saudis.
While we are heartened that so many Senators voted against the sale, it is not enough. Every single member of the Senate should have voted for the Resolution. It should have passed by consensus. "For those Senators who voted for the sale, we say: You have the blood of the Yemeni people on your hands," said diplomat and retired Army Colonel Ann Wright. "These weapons will just add to the death, destruction, hunger and cholera that the poor Yemeni people are suffering."
"Voting for the weapons sale, these Senators showed that they value the war profiteers more than lives of Yemenis and more than US national security," said CODEPINK cofounder Jodie Evans. "If they truly cared about national security, would they vote to arm the regime most responsible for the spread of the Wahhabist ideology that forms the underpinnings of terrorist groups from Al Qaeda to ISIS? Would they vote to arm the regime that has funded and supported these terrorist groups?"
CODEPINK will now focus on trying to pass the companion House Resolution 102.
CODEPINK is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs.
(818) 275-7232LATEST NEWS
Florida's Near-Total Ban Shows Real-Life Version of Trump Abortion Policy
"There is one person responsible for this nightmare: Donald Trump," said President Joe Biden. "This November, voters are going to teach him a valuable lesson: Don't mess with the women of America."
May 01, 2024
As former Republican U.S. President Donald Trump campaigns on his contribution to reversing
Roe v. Wade and endorses letting states track pregnancies and prosecute those who violate local restrictions on reproductive care, Florida's six-week abortion ban took effect on Wednesday.
Abortion rights have dominated this year's contest between Trump, a Florida resident, and Democratic President Joe Biden—who blamed the presumptive GOP candidate for the new ban, which prohibits care before many patients know they are pregnant.
"There is one person responsible for this nightmare: Donald Trump," Biden said in a campaign statement. "Trump brags about overturning Roe v. Wade, making extreme bans like Florida's possible, saying his plan is working 'brilliantly.' He thinks it's brilliant that more than 4 million women in Florida, and more than 1 in 3 women in America, can't get access to the care they need."
"Trump brags about overturning Roe v. Wade, making extreme bans like Florida's possible."
"Now, he wants to go even further, making it clear he would sign a national abortion ban if elected. Just yesterday, he once again endorsed punishing women for getting the care they need," Biden continued. "Trump is worried the voters will hold him accountable for the cruelty and chaos he created. He's right. Trump ripped away the rights and freedom of women in America. This November, voters are going to teach him a valuable lesson: Don't mess with the women of America."
Florida's six-week ban—signed last spring by a failed Trump primary challenger, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis—was allowed to go into effect because of a state Supreme Court ruling last month. The same day, the high court approved a ballot initiative—known as Amendment 4—that would outlaw pre-viability abortion bans in Florida. The measure is expected to appear on the November ballot.
Dr. Chelsea Daniels of the Yes on 4 campaign, which is working the pass the ballot measure, said Wednesday that "the women of Florida are in trouble. Today, we awoke to a new world. A world where the state, and not individuals, is in control of our bodies, our lives, and our futures. A world where treatable complications in pregnancies will become life-threatening, not because we don't know how to treat them, but because we won't be allowed."
Daniels continued:
It should go without saying that doctors should not have to risk criminal prosecution to treat the patient in front of them.
But these bans have even more dangerous consequences for patients: a 10-year-old girl from Ohio who was raped had to travel to Indiana to get the abortion she needed, and in Texas, one woman who miscarried lost liters of blood and had to go on a breathing machine before doctors were legally able to intervene and help her. And in Louisiana, we've seen the OB-GYN shortage that anti-abortion bans have caused for the entire state.
"Don't believe the politicians who say there are meaningful exceptions in this law for rape and incest," the doctor added. "The so-called exceptions are a cruel deception designed to fail women and girls when they are most in need."
NBC Newsreported Tuesday that before Florida's new law took effect, abortion clinics in the state had full waiting rooms and "phones were ringing off the hook" as providers were "trying to see as many patients as possible" before Wednesday.
"Tomorrow is going to look very different," Kelly Flynn, CEO of A Woman's Choice of Jacksonville, told the outlet Tuesday. "A lot of patients will come in for the consult and be told that we can't see them."
Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida interim CEO Barbara Zdravecky similarly told the Orlando Sentinel that she expects the group's clinics will have to decline care.
"Planned Parenthood's motto has always been 'care no matter what.' And we don't turn patients away," she said. "So this is a very devastating and tragic situation for our staff, who have to say, 'We can't take care of you, we have to send you someplace else.'"
Zdravecky confirmed clinics will still provide follow-up exams to those who acquire abortion pills online, saying that "we want to be able to assist anyone with any type of care that we legally can do in order to make sure they have the care that they need to stay healthy."
The newspaper noted that "those who can find the funds will travel to other states. For most Floridians, and most of the southeast U.S., the closest state to get an abortion past six weeks will be North Carolina. The closest place to terminate a pregnancy past 12 weeks will be Virginia or Illinois."
"It is horrifying that extremist politicians have forced pregnant people and their healthcare providers into this nightmare. But it does not have to be this way."
Kara Gross, legislative director and senior policy counsel at the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement that "no one should be forced to travel thousands of miles across state lines in search of essential healthcare."
"It is horrifying that extremist politicians have forced pregnant people and their healthcare providers into this nightmare. But it does not have to be this way," Gross added. "Amendment 4, which limits government interference with abortion, will be on the ballot this November and we must all vote yes on 4 to ensure that the freedom to determine whether and when to grow our family remains with the people—not politicians."
Like the ACLU of Florida, Planned Parenthood is among the groups backing the ballot measure. So is Flynn, who founded the independent clinic in Jacksonville over two decades ago.
"I am optimistic that we will have the votes," she said. "In the meantime, we are really talking to patients and explaining to them how important this is to get out and vote."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Gaza Child Amputees Struggle to Recover Amid Israeli Destruction of Health System
Save the Children's Palestine director said that children wounded in Israeli attacks "are suffering unimaginable physical and mental harm."
May 01, 2024
Thousands of Palestinian children who have lost limbs and suffered other debilitating injuries to Israeli bombs and bullets are struggling to recover due to the destruction of Gaza's healthcare infrastructure and a lack of adequate treatment, medication, and equipment like wheelchairs, Save the Children said Tuesday.
The London-based international charity recently published an analysis concluding that "the rate of attacks on healthcare in Gaza has been higher than in any other recent conflict globally." The group cited figures from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which found that more than 1,000 Gazan children had one or both legs amputated during just the first month of Israel's 208-day assault on the besieged coastal enclave. Many more children—the exact number is unknown—have had limbs amputated since then in what UNICEF called "the world's most dangerous place to be a child."
"Our pediatric staff say they are seeing lots of children with injuries caused by explosive weapons who are suffering unimaginable physical and mental harm," Xavier Joubert, Save the Children's country director for Palestine, said in a statement Tuesday.
The father of one 10-year-old boy who was playing outside when he was struck in the leg by shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike described how his wounded son "was left on the floor for four hours lying in his own blood before there was a bed available for him" at a desperately overcrowded hospital.
"My son witnessed things that children should not see. Scenes of blood, his leg being broken, scenes of children being killed around him," the father told Save the Children. "Now he talks about what happened to him all the time. He talks about his dead cousin and his other friends who died. He's always talking about missiles. He even talks about it in his sleep. The scenes he has seen are terrible. One of the girls had her head split open. His cousin had a severe head injury and was in the ambulance with Ahmed."
Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a London-based plastic-and-reconstructive surgeon who specializes in pediatric trauma, recently toldThe New Yorker that "this is the biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history" and that he sometimes performs as many as six amputations per day in Gaza.
"Sometimes you have no other medical option," he explained. "The Israelis had surrounded the blood bank, so we couldn't do transfusions. If a limb was bleeding profusely, we had to amputate."
The story of 4-year-old Gazal Bakr, as told by The New Yorker's Eliza Griswold, is not atypical:
Gazal was wounded on November 10th, when, as her family fled Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital, shrapnel pierced her left calf. To stop the bleeding, a doctor, who had no access to antiseptic or anesthesia, heated the blade of a kitchen knife and cauterized the wound. Within days, the gash ran with pus and began to smell. By mid-December, when Gazal's family arrived at Nasser Medical Center—then Gaza's largest functioning healthcare facility—gangrene had set in, necessitating amputation at the hip. On December 17th, a projectile hit the children's ward of Nasser. Gazal and her mother watched it enter their room, decapitating Gazal's 12-year-old roommate and causing the ceiling to collapse... Gazal and her mother managed to crawl out of the rubble. The next day, their names were added to the list of evacuees who could cross the border into Egypt and then fly to Qatar for medical treatment. Gazal's mother was nine months pregnant; she gave birth to a baby girl while awaiting the airlift to Doha.
Other children have suffered worse fates. Dunia Abu Mohsen, 12, lost a leg in an October 27 Israeli airstrike on her family home in Khan Younis that killed six of her relatives, including her parents and two siblings. Undaunted, Abu Mohsen resolved to become a doctor so she could help other wounded children. She was recovering in the maternity ward of Nasser Hospital—site of recently discovered mass graves containing the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians—when a shell fired from an Israel tank came blasting into her room. It didn't explode but it hit Abu Mohsen in the head, killing her and wounding several other patients.
Israeli attacks on hospitals and other facilities have obliterated Gaza's healthcare infrastructure and medical workers' ability to adequately treat injured patients. According to the World Health Organization, Israeli forces carried out at least 435 attacks on health facilities or personnel during the first six months of the war on Gaza.
Only 11 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are at least partially functional, leaving around 350,000 Palestinians suffering from chronic illnesses unable to access essential medicines, supplies, and services.
In addition to the at least 34,568 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, more than 77,000 others have been wounded. Palestinian and international officials say the majority of casualties have been women and children. Overwhelmed and undersupplied hospitals have been forced to amputate arms, legs—and sometimes both—from children without anesthesia.
"We've recently seen an influx of children from other hospitals with wounds and lost limbs, often needing skin grafting and multiple operations, but even getting hold of simple things like strong pain relief is a major challenge," said Becky Platt, a nurse at Rafah field hospital.
"Children are psychologically destroyed by everything that's happened."
"When children have to undergo a procedure to save their limb and avoid infection, we are forced to do it with less pain relief than we'd normally use," she continued. "So, I brought bubbles and games on my phone to distract them, but the reality is that a lot of these procedures need strong pain relief. That is causing huge distress, and it will also add to long-term psychological damage."
"Children are psychologically destroyed by everything that's happened," Platt added.
Joubert said that "children who have suffered life-changing injuries don't have the sustained, specialist treatment they need—from effective pain relief to long-term rehabilitation—or even a safe home to go back to. They live in overcrowded displacement camps, sharing a tent with their whole family, and sanitation facilities with hundreds of people."
"After six months of unimaginable horror, the healthcare system in Gaza has been brought to its knees," he added. "Healthcare workers are risking their lives daily to give Palestinian children a chance at survival. The constant attacks on healthcare are simply unjustifiable and must stop."
On Tuesday, dozens of humanitarian organizations including Save the Children sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden urging his administration to "use all of its influence" to prevent an expected Israeli assault on Rafah, where more than 1.5 million people—most of them forcibly displaced from other parts of Gaza—are sheltering.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Are We in a Police State?' Progressives Demand End to Crackdown on Campus Protests
"I know from experience that these actions are traumatizing and dangerous; they do nothing to address the underlying issues and simply fuel more violence against non-violent protesters," said Rep. Cori Bush.
May 01, 2024
Progressive members of the U.S. Congress on Wednesday demanded an end to nationwide police attacks on pro-Palestinian campus protests following
violent raids and mass arrests at universities across the country, from Columbia in New York City to the University of South Florida in Tampa.
"The continued repression and violence against anti-war student activists and their allies by Columbia University, NYPD, and Mayor [Eric] Adams is abhorrent and barbarous," Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) wrote on social media. "The nationwide crackdown on protesters must end."
More than 300 demonstrators were arrested at Columbia and the nearby City College of New York late Tuesday alone, bringing the total number of arrests at dozens of universities across the U.S. to more than 1,000.
In a statement Tuesday, Bush said she was "appalled" by the police response to demonstrations at Washington University in St. Louis, which is in the Missouri Democrat's district.
"The police brutality, mass arrests, suspensions, evictions, and wholesale bans on access to the St. Louis campus are inappropriate, unacceptable, and outright shameful," said Bush. "Washington University administrators have joined the disgraceful nationwide trend of violent, aggressive responses by university administrators and local law enforcement aimed at curbing the rights to free speech and assembly by students, faculty, staff, and community members."
"Violently assaulting and injuring people who are courageously advocating for peace and justice for Palestinians and Israelis alike is unconscionable," she added. "I know from experience that these actions are traumatizing and dangerous; they do nothing to address the underlying issues and simply fuel more violence against non-violent protesters."
The continued repression and violence against anti-war student activists and their allies by Columbia University, NYPD, and Mayor Adams is abhorrent and barbarous.
The nationwide crackdown on protesters must end. https://t.co/UbImkexSzH
— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) May 1, 2024
Bush is part of a growing chorus of progressive lawmakers, advocacy organizations, and human rights experts condemning U.S. universities for siccing police officers on nonviolent demonstrators who are pushing their schools to divest from companies profiting off Israel's war on Gaza and criticizing the Biden administration's continued support for the Netanyahu government.
Like many on Capitol Hill and across corporate media, President Joe Biden has
attempted to cast the protests as "antisemitic," giving tacit support to efforts to disband them and prompting warnings that the White House is further alienating young voters.
"Summoning excessively armed, militarized police onto college campuses to violently arrest unarmed students engaged in non-violent protest—students surviving and matriculating through the mass shooting generation—is shameful, misguided, and inhumane," Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said late Tuesday. "Student protests against injustice are not new. From Birmingham to Kent to Soweto, we've seen the devastating results of excessive police force. History has sided with the students every time. Political and university 'leaders' should know better than to repeat condemned history."
Video footage and photographs that have gone viral in recent days show police officers assaulting students, professors, and journalists in an attempt to crush a campus protest movement that has spread across the nation over the past two weeks.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, said Wednesday that "the use of city police to dismantle peaceful protests on college campuses in the United States, coupled with
proposed legislation to punish Americans for criticizing Israel, is a dangerous assault on our democracy and a sign of the very creeping authoritarianism infecting so much of the world."
"The Biden administration has been a shameful accomplice in sacrificing American free speech and civil society at the altar of Israeli interests and demands," Whitson added.
"We must stand with our young people and demand justice and freedom for Palestinians and everyone in this world."
In a floor speech on Wednesday, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.)—a longtime educator and former school principal—said that in the past he's had guns pulled on him "multiple times by law enforcement simply for being a Black man in America."
"Now I see guns being drawn on peaceful protesters at Columbia University," said Bowman. "When I was 11 years old, I was a victim of police brutality simply for being Black in America. And now I see that brutality being inflicted on peaceful protesters at Columbia University. And for what? Simply for exercising their First Amendment rights to peacefully assemble as they protest the collective punishment and murder of civilians in Gaza."
"Are we in a police state, or is this a democracy?" the New York Democrat asked. "We must stand with our young people and demand justice and freedom for Palestinians and everyone in this world."
When I was 11, I was a victim of police brutality just for being Black in America. Now I see that brutality being inflicted on peaceful students at Columbia and across the country.
We must stand with our students to demand liberation for Palestinians and everyone in this world. pic.twitter.com/aCORt8uOwA
— Congressman Jamaal Bowman (@RepBowman) May 1, 2024
The outspoken progressive support for the student protesters comes as police crackdowns continued on campuses across the country, with dozens more students arrested Wednesday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Georgia, and other schools.
Responding to police repression at Florida universities, ACLU of Florida interim executive director Howard Simon said Wednesday that "cracking down on peaceful protestors is likely to escalate—not calm—the tensions on campus, as events of the past week have made abundantly clear."
"Threatening students with expulsion from their university or deportation from the country does not align with the obligations of public officials to respect First Amendment rights regardless of the point of view that is being expressed," said Simon. "Universities are meant to be havens for robust debate, discussion, and learning—not sites of censorship where administrators and politicians squash political discourse they don't approve of with threats, arrests, rubber bullets, and tear gas."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular