Posted on 04/01/2008 7:42:27 PM PDT by kristinn
BERKELEY _ CodePink should be turning red. That seems to be the consensus of many who were on the receiving end of a bogus announcement Tuesday by the radical anti-war group that the embattled U.S. Marine Corps recruiting center in Berkeley was caving to the pressure of weekly protests and leaving town.
``If you want to be taken seriously as an organization of serious protest, then you don't play jokes _ even on April Fools' Day,'' said Robin Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written about the politics of language.
CodePink and other anti-war groups have been protesting the U.S. Marine recruiting center in downtown Berkeley for months, hoping to force the recruiters to leave town.
A CodePink official defended the hoax Tuesday.
``In CodePink we tend to have a sense of humor,'' said CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin. ``We tend to joke about a lot of things. It keeps us going where other anti-war groups have gone by the wayside.''
Gunnery Sgt. Pauline Franklin with the Marine Corps Recruiting Command in Washington, D.C., verified Tuesday that there are no plans to relocate the Berkeley office, which is conducting business as usual.
The April Fools' hoax _ certainly not the first from CodePink _ started Monday evening when the group posted a news release on its Web site, at www.codepink4peace.org, boldly announcing ``Marine Recruiting Center Leaving Berkeley: Agreement Reached with Landlord, City, and Protesters.''
The release said Sasha Shamszad, the owner and landlord of the Marine recruiting center, ``has reached an amicable agreement with the Marines to redeploy from Berkeley'' and that further details would be given at noon news conference Tuesday.
The release included false quotes attributed to Shamszad.
``The situation was becoming untenable,'' the false quote said. ``The presence of the Marines sparking daily protests have had a negative impact on local businesses. The city has been forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in police overtime. And some groups have been calling for a national boycott of our city. So I sat down with representatives of the Marines and we worked out a solution.''
Reached by telephone Tuesday, Shamszad said, ``Someone is in la la land here. There's a lease involved here. We live in a society where contracts are a big deal. These people are my tenants and I'm a professional. Once they have a lease, unless they break the rules, you can't get them out.''
The center's lease runs through December 2009, subject to termination if the government cannot provide funding, a Franklin said.
CodePink also invented quotes from a civilian Marine Corps employee named Michael Applegate, the director of the Marine Manpower Plans and Policy Division. The release quoted Applegate as saying the downtown Berkeley office is not a good use of taxpayer money. Applegate was not available for comment Tuesday, but Franklin said officials aren't angry about the hoax.
``It's a protest group that has very strong feelings, just as all protest groups do, and this is just one thing that they've done,'' Franklin said.
Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said the publicity stunt had people calling his office and others in the city. Although Bates initially supported giving CodePink a permit fee waiver and a free parking space at the Marine center for their weekly protests, he criticized their prank.
``I think they have hurt their credibility with this farce,'' he said.
But Benjamin disagreed.
``We do believe in putting out some positive ideas of what we want to see and what better way to do it than April Fools Day,'' she said.
Benjamin said she hopes the hoax will move people to action.
``We've got a topsy turvy world and if more people got out and joined us this wouldn't be an April Fools' joke. (It) would be reality,'' she said. ``The Marines would be gone from Berkeley, the war would be over, there would be impeachment of Bush and Cheney and we'd be upholding our constitution.''
What's more, Benjamin said, ``We do these types of things every April 1.''
And on other days as well.
In October, CodePink distributed a phony news release saying Blackwater USA, a private military contractor, was creating a new ``Department of Corporate Integrity'' that would put the mercy back in mercenary, according to published reports.
CBS News, the Associated Press and other news organizations ran with the story, according to published reports about the hoax.
Also Tuesday, CodePink distributed an invented letter from John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, that said he had decided to start impeachment proceedings against President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The letter ended with ``April Fools!''
At least one Bay Area television station _ KTVU Channel 2 _ ran a short segment about the Berkeley Marine center's false departure on the 6 p.m. news Monday. KTVU reported that the building at 64 Shattuck Square was up for rent. By the 10 p.m. newscast, the Oakland-based TV station warned of the ``hoax'' by CodePink.
Despite criticism early Tuesday, CodePink went ahead with a ``mock'' news conference at noon Tuesday where a ``pink Marine'' announced the Marines were moving out.
A real Marine in uniform, who declined to give his name, was outside the recruiting center Tuesday afternoon because he had heard reports that the Marines were leaving Berkeley.
He held a sign that read, ``I thought Berkeley wouldn't judge me.''
I’m guessing Code Pink’s official perfume is Obsession.
This clearly reveals the childish mentality of these fools.
Scum. Absolute whale shiite on the bottom of the ocean.
These Code Pink puss bags are deranged small time operators. What they need is an old fashioned ass-kicking to straighten out their screwed up heads.
Some sort of eau de colon, that's for certain.
Ping
Every day is fools’ day for Code Pink
Never underestimate Medea Benjamin. She is a hardcore red and anti-American (her ties to Cuba would be worth a good congressional investigation except the investigator himself is a good red - Conyers).
Most Code Pinkos are old marxist hags who smell that way. The younger ones are just plain dumb as hogcrap. I’ve met them and they aren’t much above lichens in intelligence so Benjamin and Evans are the real string pullers, like the good little marxist puppeteers they are.
Seriously, they are obsessed with helping the terrorists to defeat America. The Berkeley campaign is a propaganda boon to our enemies and a morale buster for our side.
Code Pink must be defeated in Berkeley.
Yeah, these people strike me as having a great sense of humor. Whenever I see pictures of them, I immediately think, “They must be a lot of fun. I wish I could spend time with them.”
Spot on.
Bates needs to do something nice for the country, like drop dead. He’s a nasty old man who has been screwing the people of Berkeley for years while supporting nearly every communist group that has come down the pike.
If you find any old issues of “BCU”, you will find out a lot about him. (A Berkeley citizens group publication).
"CODEPINK has a name for its pain, and the name is zomblog."
Since Feb. 12, the city has spent $210,814 from the general fund as part of overtime costs to provide additional support and safety for the protests, said city spokesperson Mary Kay Clunies-Ross. The controversy stems from a Jan. 29 decision by the City Council to call Marine Corps recruiters in Downtown Berkeley “uninvited and unwelcome” intruders. When the council met on Feb. 12 to reconsider their decision, more than 2,000 protesters had gathered outside the City Council chambers.
Approximately $93,000 of the $210,814 went towards providing enforcement that day, Clunies-Ross said. The council voted to rescind the language calling the recruiters “intruders,” but did not apologize for their vote.
Since then, protests from both pro-military and anti-war groups have continued in front of the center.
Overtime costs for police who must monitor the protests have cost the city $205,924. The remaining $4,890 went towards food for the officers, Clunies-Ross said.
Since the $200,000 is taken from overtime costs as part of the general fund, more anticipated spending for routine things are cut, said Lisa Caronna, deputy city manager.
“Two hundred thousand dollars is a huge chunk of money for any unforeseen circumstance,” she said. “The overtime we budget for is what we need in a normal course of life.”
Caronna said the costs impact the general fund because the budget is limited and the unexpected cost of $200,000 could have been spent elsewhere.
“Generally, here is $200,000 we could have spent on something else, but we spent it now on ... the protests and Marine center ...,” she said. “We don’t like to spend frivolously, and there’s a shopping list of things that we want to see happen, a million things that $200,000 won’t pay for.”
Some council members say Berkeley taxpayers may be impacted because the general fund comes from various taxes.
“It’s too bad, and it may affect how people feel about tax measures this fall when we vote,” said Councilmember Betty Olds. “It’s our extra money, and there isn’t too much of it.”
Councilmember Gordon Wozniak also expressed concern over how taxpayers would be affected.
“I don’t think it’s fair to have this thing going for (long)... It’d be a huge burden for Berkeley taxpayers to cover,” Wozniak said. “You can make your point without being there every day or every week.”
http://www.dailycal.org/article/101079
Pathetic. It is, actually, pretty funny, but not in the way Medea thinks it is. Self-parody is the cruelest parody of all.
Brought to you by “MeMeMe Benjamin”
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