Codepink Stink

Here's what kills me about CodePink: If they were truly against the
Iraq war and easing the suffering of all the victims involved (troops
or Iraqis), they wouldn't bother with targets like these. There are
numerous antiwar, pro-peace, humanitarian groups out there that are
doing the "right thing". Spotlight-seeking protestors often do more
to hurt the causes they support by driving away the fair-minded people
who actually have pull with their Congressman. Instead, they attract
old men with more political buttons on their jean jackets than teeth
in their head, young idealistic kids with energy than education,
amalcontents who pray for anarchy but never prepare, and other fringe
ruffians. Not the kind of people you want to associate with the
anti-war movement.

I think I hear the 60s calling: COINTELPRO wants their tactics back.

Your article is very biased. You make those demented, militant Cuban refugees look like heros while you put down a very good organization like Code Pink. The reception that Code Pink received outside Versailles Restaurant is much worse than that Cuban dissidents recently received in Havana on Human Rights Day. These exile militants claim they came here seeking freedom from Communism but all they do is show intolerance to anyone who disagrees with them. Viva Medea Benjamin and Code Pink! Someone has to tell the ignorant or misinformed that Posada-Carrilles is a dangerous terrorist who belongs behind bars until he croaks!

I'm surprised that the editor of the New Times would write something so anti-protest. It isn't easy for an anti-war protest to get media attention. You know how many earnest, well-meaning people are NOT written about in your pages or covered on the local tv stations. The Code Pink group has figured out a way to get their message out. If there weren't any newsmakers, you wouldn't have a job. Yes, any type of street demonstration requires police protection... but believe it or not, there are other cities where semi-kooky, but peaceful, protesters do not incite violence. The reaction here is sad. The fact that a police officer was buried is a whole other issue, which is that the leadership of this city has absolutely failed in creating a safe environment. There are larger American cities with much fewer police fatalities. This place is unsafe and poorly run. Maybe if the alternative weekly newspaper didn't spend their ink ridiculing peaceful protesters...

I read that he was already tried in Venezuela and acquitted, but that Venezuela does not have any double jeopardy protection and now that Hugo Chavez is in power and he has taken away the independence of the judiciary there is a push to have him extradited. However, Chavez said he didn't need a trial and that everyone knows he is guilty. So, from what I have read, the US cannot lawfully extradite him under those circumstances.

Code Pink doesn't tell you the above details because they WANT YOU TO BELIEVE what Code Pink wants to give you in the way of information. Let me clue you in, if Code Pink is involved there is always either DECEPTION or MEDIA MANIPULATION IN THE FORM OF PROPAGANDA.

All Code Pink wants is to take any opportunity to make the US look bad and it relies on an ill informed public to do it. These are the same people, including Medea Benjamin, who went to Venezuela and embraced Hugo Chavez. When Cindy Sheehan came back she told an MSNBC interviewer that she would rather live under Chavez than Bush. Moreover, on 5/29/07 Benjamin herself was defending the closure of RCTV by Chavez. The transcript is online if you search for it. Carlson told her she would be embarrassed regarding RCTV at her statements someday.

Code Pink's leaders are master media manipulators. Did you see the footage of Tight Barry on the news where he lectured the policeman in the Miami PD lot? He knew the Medea was filming him and he instantly started lecturing this policeman who probably was not even at the protest and told him that the counter-protesters had 10 foot pointed poles and that their permits didn't allow them to carry those poles. The poles were flags! The policeman in the footage was merely a prop for Code Pink's propaganda because the knew the policeman could not talk for the department so they could have said that the police killed John F. Kennedy. They wanted the policeman's silence to look like he was agreeing with what Barry was saying.

Just a piece of advice for you. Don't get into camera footage with someone from Code Pink because they will USE YOU as a prop if you are dumb enough to allow it. Check out the website targetofopportunity.com for info on Code Pink.

This is what you should know in terms of background!

Mark Falcoff: Code Pink lends a hand to Hugo Chavez

Mark Falcoff is resident scholar emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute. Today he writes to provide some background on a story involving Code Pink at work in Miami:

One of today's more bizarre news stories has to do with a demonstration which the Code Pink ladies tried to stage in Miami's Little Havana, protesting the presence in the United States of Luis Posada Carriles. The locals, mostly Cubans who have fled Castro's island prison, became a bit angry and began to chase the ladies out of the area with some choice comments.

Code Pink is, as everyone who reads the blogs knows, an organization of "peace ladies" led by Medea Benjamin, a far-Left activist who once described Castro's gulag as a "socialist paradise."

The choice of little Havana and Posada Carriles seems bizarre at first. After all, what's that got to do with the Iraq war, the principal target of Code Pink protests? The answer sheds a lot of light on the role of the media and the way that left-wing agitators are endlessly creative in their efforts to stay in the headlines.

For those who haven't followed the story, here is the background. Luis Posada Carriles is one of those soldiers of fortune who worked with the CIA cowboys in Central America during the Cold War. (Exactly what he did is not known with any degree of precision.) After Castro's takeover in Cuba he had taken refuge in Venezuela and acquired Venezuelan citizenship. Sometime in the late 1970s he was accused of having planted a bomb on a jetliner which was carrying members of a Cuban sports team. Everybody on the plane--Cubans and non-Cubans--perished.

Posada Carriles was subsequently tried in Venezuelan courts and found innocent of all charges. However, Venezuelan law does allow a person to be tried for the same crime more than once.

Thus when Chavez came to power in 1998, Posada Carriles -- knowing of Hugo's close relationship to Fidel -- thought it the better part of valor to flee the country. He entered the United States illegally through the Texas-Mexican border.

Normally the correct procedure would be to extradite him to Venezuela and allow him to face trial again. However, Chavez has already declared that "he doesn't need a trial; we already know he's guilty." This of course puts the United States in the impossible position being unable to extradite Posada Carriles at all.

As for Chavez, his comments weren't just spur of the moment observations; the ugly truth is he doesn't want Posada Carriles back in his country. He's worth far more to the Venezuelan strongman and his Cuban friends living here -- even in confinement or under house arrest--where he can be pointed out repeatedly as living proof that the US harbors and condones terrorists as long as they are "on our side."

Meanwhile, while the US can't extradite him, it can -- and has--charged him with illegal entry. That's pretty small beer compared to the crimes of which he has been charged, but there isn't much else that we can do.

The Code Pink ladies understand that these complexities are not generally known by the public -- and certainly the MSM has done nothing to enlighten it -- so they decided to make a big fuss in Miami knowing perfectly well the kind of hot reception they would get. Their purpose was not to convince the Cuban emigre community that Posada Carriles is a criminal. They did this to make sure the "Posada Carriles/plane bomb/terrorist/US complicity" meme landed once again on the front pages of our papers -- and not just our papers, but the Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde, etc.. Time will tell whether they have succeeded.

JOHN adds: The photo below shows a group of anti-Communist Cuban-Americans waiting for the Code Pinkers to show up:

CODE PINK IS ALSO A SYNONYM FOR FREEDOM OF OPINION & FREE SPEECH. ANYBODY WHO TRIES TO STOP THEM PHYSICALLY IS A COMMUNIST. YOU ARE ALLOWED TO DISAGREE WITH THEM, BUT IT STOPS THERE. IF ANYBODY DISAGREES WITH ME ON THIS POINT SHOULD LEAVE THIS COUNTRY NOW.

Awesome! I love it when dolts like Codepink get a taste of their own medicine! If I was a police officer, I would be 'looking the other way' when the Cuban protesters come down the road. Tear all of the Pinkos a new one, leave them curled up on the ground in the fetal position.