Posada protestors clash with exile supporters

Source: Miami Herald

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"A San Francisco-based group that descended on Little Havana Saturday to protest against Luis Posada Carriles ran into a roadblock of hundreds of local supporters of the Miami exile community, some of whom tried to rip down a two-sided billboard rigged atop the out-of-town activists' van.

The sign featured a mug shot of Posada and read: "Wanted by the FBI: Luis Posada for terrorism."

The group, CodePink, is calling for Posada, a former CIA operative, to be imprisoned. The protesters seemed taken aback by the backlash from the Miami counter-protesters, despite the fact that its well-known that Posada is a hero to some here.

"It was completely ridiculous and the Miami Police did nothing to stop it," Medea Benjamin, the spokesperson for CodePink, said following the incident."



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_news/story/376973.html

I understand why code pink wants to villify this guy, but why does this guy have supporters?

What is CODEPINK’s Most Wanted Campaign about?

We discovered that in 2008, the FBI is launching a new 20-city billboard ad campaign targeting the Most Wanted Criminals and Terrorists. The FBI will place billboards in strategic locations where they can be seen by millions driving by each day, asking the public to call the FBI with any tips or leads. We have looked at the FBI’s Most Wanted List, and it fails to include many people we think should be on that list. So we’ve started our own Most Wanted Campaign.

Who is Luis Posada Carriles and why is he on your Most Wanted List?

In the FBI’s campaign, Miami was chosen as one of the 20 cities. Yet when we looked on their list of Most Wanted, we discovered that an important name was missing—that of Luis Posada Carriles.

Luis Posada Carriles is known worldwide as a ruthless terrorist. He masterminded the destruction of Cubana Airline Flight 455 on October 6, 1976. The plane blew up just after taking off from Barbados, killing all 73 men, women and children aboard, including the entire teenage Cuban Olympic fencing team. Within 24 hours, according to a declassified FBI cable dated the next day, an intelligence source "all but admitted that Posada had engineered the bombing of the airplane." He was arrested and jailed for nine years in Venezuela until 1985, when he bribed his way out of prison.

In 1997, Mr. Posada orchestrated a series of hotel bombings in Havana intended to deter the growing tourism trade in Cuba. In one bombing incident, an Italian tourist was killed and 11 people wounded. In a taped interview with New York Times reporter Ann Louise Bardach, Mr. Posada proudly assumed responsibility and suggested such acts of terror would continue. "It is sad that someone is dead," he said, "but we can't stop."

Then in November 2000, Mr. Posada was arrested in Panama, charged and convicted as the ringleader of a conspiracy to assassinate Fidel Castro during a state visit - a plot that involved detonating a carload of plastic C-4 explosives that could have killed dozens of innocent bystanders.

But instead of spending the rest of his life behind bars, Posada Carriles lives freely in Miami! The Bush administration’s failure to detain or extradite this dangerous man makes a mockery of the U.S. war on terror.

more


Some of the Cubans here in Miami consider Posada a hero.

strickly because he was labeled a terrorist and now walks around america free? what a great way to pick heros

brings to mind the way they acted with the Elian crap....

I lived in Miami in 1974. The Cubans were going to barricade a movie theater showing a Canadian Broadcasting Company documentary about the Cuban health care system. FIU caved in and canceled the showing. Cubans are pure thrash. No respect for the constitution.

just like not all americans are batshit crazy right wingers cristofascists, though, that is the voice which is being heard on the american t.v. and radio stations, in the mainstream media, and in the print media.

i will agree that those who acted out in some stupid reactionary way to medea benjamin's protest ... those were/are batshit crazy cubans.

(and by the way ... batshit crazy cubans include the diaz-balart brothers and the ros-lehtinen woman.)

When you get right down to it, most people approve of terrorism, just so long as it is against their enemies rather than their friends.

But yes, a highly vocal group of exiles are batshit crazy hypocrites. While many other exiles are like many Americans just being busy chasing the American Dream of shopping to they drop.

me but thanks anyways.

Let Castro take care of them. Even the congress people in Florida that are exiles should be deported as well.
They are not Americans and never will be. They spit on our constitution and commit terror against anyone that doesn't agree with them.
And also,those fucking nazi bastards killed JFK!!!
Fuck all those Batista loving bastards! Even you Gloria Estefan! Your dad was in the Batista regime, you have no place being in this country.

Calle Ocho should be bulldozed and turned into a parking lot.

And you coming off of some pretty stiff competition.

Congratulations.

who want all Mexicans and central americans be deported because many of them do not agree with the R party ideology.

Orlando Bosch lives in Miami, now, just like Posada Carriles. The Miami City Commissioners even named a day of the year after him, as well as a street.

_{George W. Bush's} collegue and apparent friend, the former President of Panama, Mireya Moscoso, pardoned Posada Carriles and his "exile" co-conspirators in the bombing plot (to bomb an auditorium full of college students listening to Fidel Castro in Panama) one day before she resigned, and moved to Miami, herself.

All the right-wing scum of the Western Hemisphere staggers directly to Miami. It's exactly as if Latin America has vomited them all up upon Florida's shore.

In the weeks before _Bush invaded Iraq, when the whole world knew he was going to do it, and as people globally poured into the streets to protest the coming war, one Saturday, when Americans were in their big cities protesting, as were people in their countries all over the world, in Miami the right-wing rabid Cuban "exiles" threw a parade together with the Venezuelan right-wing expatriots protesting Hugo Chavez, with two of the Venezuelan coup plotters and oil management strike leaders there as their special guests of honor.

This is a photo of Cuban right-wing demon, Miguel Saavedra (who, as rent-a-riot Vigilia Mambisa's leader, led the Miami "exile" mob to assist the Republicans in surrounding and harrassing the Miami-Dade vote counting, and helped shut it all down, to the great loss of all Democrats in 2000) as he chased a Venezuelan student down the street away from a demonstration, as he heaves his filthy megaphone at the kid's head.



When they made it to their car, the "exile" a-holes surrounded the car and kicked it good. Dolts. Scums. POS's.

The intransigent segment of of Miami's exile population are fighting against Cuba's accused repression of free speech by repressing free speech here, in Miami.

Go figure!



I mean.. REALLY.. look at one of the insulting Code Pink signs they tore down..


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That really makes sense, doesn't it?

Not that they haven't felt exactly this way about free speech from the beginning. A good example would be the bombing of Cuban "exile" radio personality Emilio Milián's car, which blew away his legs after he had made statements on his radio show condemning the violence these cretins were using against their political enemies in Miami.

He called for peace, he got his legs in pieces. Only the fine work of his doctors saved his life itself.

Maybe Code Pink should be glad nothing far worse happened to them! After all, the FBI designated Miami as "Terror Capital of the United States!"






Alberto Milian, Director of Political Affairs and Staff Counsel for the Miami-Dade County Police Benevolent Association, stands beside a portrait of his father, Emilio Milian, who lost his legs in a Miami car bombing in 1976.

Interested readers might like to scan this short article containing only a partial list of the violent crimes committed by this group up until 2000, when the article was written:

The Burden of a Violent History
By Jim Mullin
Published: April 20, 2000

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2000-04-20/news/mullin/full

Article about the man's son:

MIAMI -- Alberto Milian had just come home from football practice when someone called to say there had been an accident.
It was 1976, and Miami's Cuban community was on edge about attacks on moderate voices by hardline exile extremists.

Milian's father, WQBA radio host Emilio Milian, was one of those voices. His voice was effectively silenced that day by a car bomb. Milian's father barely survived, but only after both his legs were amputated.

The younger Milian, who was 16 at the time, says he isn't bitter about what happened to his father, who died last year. He's too busy making sense of it.

"The bombing of my father was a watershed moment in Miami," he said while being interviewed at the Miami offices of the Police Benevolent Association, where Milian is legal counsel and director of political affairs. "It cut his voice and at the same time it allowed other, more intolerant, voices to seize the microphone in Miami."

More:
http://www.sptimes.com/2002/12/05/Floridian/His_father_s_voice.shtml

Jan 13, 2008 7:47 am US/Eastern
Protestors Clash With Activists Over Militant

LITTLE HAVANA (CBS4) ―
A political protest in the streets of Miami boiled over on Saturday when several hundred people from Miami's Cuban-American community clashed with a group of out of town activists.

Members of the San Francisco-based group CodePink antiwar group had planned to protest peacefully at Versailles restaurant in Little Havana. Little did they know they would be greeted by some 500 angry Cuban-American protesters.

"The U.S government is harboring a terrorist and George Bush has said any country that harbors a terrorist is guilty of terrorism,' said Medea Benjamin, one of CodePink's. Benjamin is referring to Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-Castro Cuban militant charged with entering the U.S illegally last year. He was released on bond in April 2007 and is under house arrest awaiting trial in Miami.

CodePink wants the FBI to add Posada Carilles to their list of most wanted. He is also accused by Venezuela and Cuba of allegedly downing a Cuban jet liner in 1976, killing 73 passengers.

"He's been declared by the U.S government as an alien terrorist," Bejamin said. "Why an alien terrorist would be walking freely down the streets of United States."

More:
http://cbs4.com/local/political.protest.cuban.2.628601.html

Perhaps that's what OBL ought to do, dance the salsa and call for restoration of the Old Guard in Cuba.

:kick:

Luis Posada Carriles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMDABQHYGN0

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Local Miami TV news report on Code Pink being attacked..

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mwlMX5Agdi0

About This Video

Peace activists in pink dresses and tiaras demanded the arrest of anti-communist militant Luis Posada Carriles Saturday, but aborted plans for a demonstration in Little Havana after Carriles supporters rushed their vehicle.

The six activists, of the Codepink anti-war group, had planned to speak to reporters outside the landmark Versailles restaurant to publicize their campaign against Carriles-- a former CIA operative wanted in Venezuela in connection with the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner.

However they were met by some 200 irate Cuban-Americans who consider Carriles a champion of freedom. Some ran at the activists' truck as they arrived, tearing off its pink fringe, while others shouted sexist slurs.

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