Suicide By Capital Punishment

KANSAS CITY KILLER KILLS 3 IN KKK PLAY

YET ANOTHER POINTED VICTORY FOR THE NRA

THE VIEW FROM THE VIRGIN ISLANDS

By JOHN McCARTHY

THE MODERATE VOICE  

    I used to be a competitive tennis player.

     The thing about tennis – being an individual sport – is that you are not only battling your opponent – but your own head – meaning your own desire to succeed.      I found that if you let up – even for just one point – a snowball effect of losing points was often the result – making the Sisyphean task of rolling the boulder up the mountain almost impossible.

     Which brings us quite naturally to the hate crime in Kansas City.

     My sense is that America has just given up when it comes to gun violence. Yet we haven’t tanked just one point – but the whole game, set and match. Before we even step onto the court – we have already lost.

     The First Amendment allows all United States citizens to hate whomever they wish. That Frazier Glen Cross spent the first 73 years of his life hating people he considered different than him – then woke up one Sunday and decided to shoot three people in the upscale suburb of Overland Park – is almost incomprehensible.

     As a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Cross professed to hate Jews and miscegenists, but after he allegedly killed one 14-year-old boy, one 53-year-old woman and one 69-year-old man outside a Kansas Jewish community center – it was later learned that none of the three murdered were Jewish.

     In what might qualify as the first case of suicide by capital punishment, Cross had a right to bear arms and a grudge – law enforcement and the Southern Poverty Law Center had been keeping tabs on “aka Glenn Miller” but were hamstrung by the fact that he had never acted upon his racist rants.

     In America it is easier to pull out a gun – than a cigarette. The Second Amendment was created by our Founding Fathers for a young nation that did not yet have a police force or an army – the right to bear arms was an insurance policy against tyranny – in the form of the British crown.

     The real tragedy – besides the three innocent people whose lives were extinguished for no reason – is that the national discussion will not naturally shift to the 33 gun-related deaths that happen every day in the United States. If 2016 Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin could accuse President Obama of trying to “exploit” the tragedy of Sandy Hook to promote gun control – then the mini-massacre in Kansas is not likely to take her attention away from “Duck Dynasty.”

“Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.” So said British novelist Martin Amis who finds it strange that America was founded by Europeans, but when it established itself as an independent country it didn’t understand that one of the rules of nationhood is: the police and the military get the guns: not the people.

     Even the Yakuza in Tokyo – the Japanese organized crime syndicate – don’t dare use a gun in that island nation of 127 million people. About as many people die from gun-related violence in Japan – on a yearly basis – as the number of people who die on a daily basis from gun violence in the United States.

     Since 1968, more Americans have died from gun violence than all those who have died in our country’s wars. There have been 1.4 million firearm deaths compared to 1.2 million in war. (The number of gun-related deaths includes suicides.)

     In football they used to tell us: “no pain, no gain.” In the Virgin Islands, they have a saying: “Who knows it feels it.” When it comes to gun violence in America – the question then becomes who is feeling the pain?

     Certainly not the gun manufacters who rack up $11.7 billion yearly ($993 million in profits) or the gun lobbies like the NRA that fight to ensure those manufacturers’ rights to make that big money. Make no mistake: the NRA is about the money.

     Perhaps another British writer, William Shakespeare, said it best when he said: “Why so large a cost, having so short a lease, does thou upon your fading mansion spend?”      We only have one life to live – and with non-peace officers carrying death in their hands in the form of pistols, rifles and machine guns – the life we have to live may be shorter than we had planned.

     You can foot fault in tennis and live to serve again – but a hand fault in illegitimate gun violence often brings a reckoning few bounce back from.

     The question is: when did we stop playing points in favor of making points?  

     Thanks to the NRA, guns may always rule the roost in America – but it is a hollow-point victory. 

 

 © 2014 John Francis McCarthy/Secret Goldfish Publishing House, LLC

 John McCarthy is an investigative reporter, artist and photojournalist based in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Please send questions and comments to: johnfmccarthy807@msn.com

 

The More Things Change

OLD SCHOOL IS THE NEW SCHOOL IN TV:

AN UNBLINKERED LOOK AT THE FUTURE:

THE VIEW FROM THE VIRGIN ISLANDS

 

By JOHN McCARTHY

MODERATE VOICE COLUMNIST 

 

    In the movie “Truth or Dare” we got a glimpse into the future of TV.

     Only we didn’t realize it when we were watching it in real time.

     “There’s nothing to say off camera,” Warren Beatty complains in the 1991 film. “Why would you say something if it’s off camera? What point is there existing?”

     Beatty’s irony seemed spot on then – but although he’s a gifted writer, director and actor – he couldn’t predict the future of television any more than he could figure out whether or not he should take the lead in a Quentin Tarantino flick (Kill Bill) – (he may have been right on that, though.)

     It seemed outrageous at the time to think that a celebrity – in this case Madonna  – would choose to exist only when the cameras are rolling. In a way it was contrived –

 but in another it was cinema verite – the good, the bad and the ugly of her on and off-stage life would be revealed for what it was.

     So as we are “Keeping Up With The Kardashians,” we realize that 23 years later – the Material Girl had a crystal ball into the boob tube – just like the Wicked Witch in “Wizard of Oz” trying to pick up Dorothy on early GPS.

     Andy Warhol is given credit for saying that: “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” But in 1968 who could predict the future? Not Bobby Kennedy.

     Just a year after “Truth or Dare,” reality TV was born as major network television tried to stay one step ahead of the writer’s strike. We have all been survivors of the launch of Paris Hilton’s career (not the one on videotape) – and the resuscitation of a rock star who by all counts should have died before Keith Richards – Ozzy Osbourne.

     I would not have know that the Kardashians’ show even existed were it not for a stay at my sister’s house a couple years ago. Eye candy might be the answer to the question why so many of us are fascinated by the ersatz dramas dreamed up by Kim, Kourtney, Khloe, Kendall and Kylie.

     But Honey Boo Boo and “Duck Dynasty” prove that you don’t have to be beautiful or rich to be successful in the modern-day ratings wars – but with a parallax view of the future have we reached the saturation point of reality TV? The good people among us hope so.

     If reality TV began when Madonna was at her apex, the real good stuff came about ten years after we were introduced to “Big Brother” and MTV’s “Real World” –

maybe as a reaction to what we are already feeling today – that as more and more desperate housewives get ready for their close-ups – hopefully more and more well-written series like “Lost,” “The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” “Deadwood,” “House, M.D.” and “Nurse Jackie” are in the works.

     In the entertainment business, it used to be the ultimate put-down to say that a film was shot “in real time.” They were the kind of movies that made you regret spending two hours of your life stuck in a movie theater.

     Let’s hope that we have reached the point of no return when it comes to America idolizing shows that allow you to vicariously dance with the stars or show that you have talent – even though when the show’s over the majority of the contestants are still poor and not famous. Anybody can upload to YouTube a bear falling out of a tree onto a trampoline – but how many times do you want to “just press play” and watch that?

     Madonna, at the height of her career following “Truth or Dare” released a coffee table book of herself with other women in various states of undress in “Erotica” – an electric, vibrant and sometimes shocking personality reduced to an age-old still life just didn’t fly with the public – and her career stalled. Warhol, at the apogee of his fine art career turned to films and showed us where the future really lies with reality TV.

     The eight hours of a moving pictures of a static building in “Empire” demonstrates where this is all going. Do you have the patience to wait several hours for the lights to go on at the Empire State Building in New York City? (Andy also said that his movies are better talked about than actually seen.)

     As we sit riveted to our iPhones and tablets while pretending to watch what’s on TV, maybe that’s all we are doing – keeping one eye out – or an ear, so that when someone asks us about it at the office the next day we can say: “Yeah, I saw that. It was cool.” When we all know it wasn’t.

   Everyone remembers where they were when Tony Soprano blinked off on the TV screen. Our JFK moments can now happen in riveting television dramas. But they have to be good ones, not collages of sound bites that are cobbled together by editors in a production booth.

     Warhol’s artworks covered up the warts and moles of the celebrities we all know and love. His pancake makeup silkscreens told us that Leo Castelli had good bone structure – and Liza Minelli, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn were still relevant. But his “screen tests” revealed when Dennis Hopper got nervous or Bob Dylan was bored. Dan Rather said “the camera never blinks.”

     As we get closer and closer to a type of TV that Andy invented, where the filmmaker simply turns on the camera and walks away – what will that reveal about us as human beings?

     Don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

     Just like The Sopranos ending.

 

 

© 2014 John Francis McCarthy/Secret Goldfish Publishing House, LLC

 

John McCarthy is an investigative reporter, artist and photojournalist based in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Please send questions and comments to: johnfmccarthy807@msn.com

 

 

 

The Boy Who Would Be Lama: Beijing Bans Buddhism’s Heir Apparent

IN CHINA “DL” STANDS FOR MORE THAN “DISABLED LIST”:

AMBER ALERT IS 20 YEARS OLD ON THE PANCHEN LAMA:

THE VIEW FROM THE VIRGIN ISLANDS

 

By JOHN McCARTHY

MODERATE VOICE COLUMNIST

 

     Ever wonder why you see those “Free Tibet” bumper stickers on peoples’ cars?

     We have a few of them here – in St. Croix, the U.S. Virgin Islands – where I live.

     For Liberals it used to be “End Apartheid” – a bumper sticker that you can still see on Danny Glover’s fridge in the movie “Lethal Weapon.”

     But in the year of Nelson Mandela’s death – Apartheid is dead but the reason to “Free Tibet” is not.

     One reason Tibet deserves to be a free and independent nation – free and apart from a China that controls it – is that it is the historical home of the Dalai Lama. A Dalai Lama who currently is forced to live in exile in northern India – and who has chosen his rightful successor – but now HE can’t be found – he was disppeared from Tibet nearly twenty years ago – and was last seen in the hands of the Chinese.

     How could that possibly be? You might ask.

     Well, six Nobel Laureates and four hundred celebrities can’t be wrong.

     Or can they be?

     A little background might help. The Dalai Lama is: the Buddhist spiritual leader from Tibet. More specifically – to about 20 million Buddhists – he is the “Pope” of their religion. They believe that he is the living reincarnation of the first Buddha, born Siddhartha Gautama.

     Great Wall of China. So where’s the problem?

     The problem is: The Dalai Lama (which means “High Priest” or literally “ocean guru” in Mongolian) chose his legitimate successor – and, uh, well – the Chinese government “vanished” him three days later.

     Unbelievable you say.

     Well, that was 1995 – when the once and future Dalai was just six years old – nineteen years later nothing has changed. Or nearly nothing. At least as far as we know.

     Because when it comes to “transparency,” the Chinese government is always on high smog toxic alert.

     What do you mean by “nothing?” Well, you might say: “nothing” if you feel that the 376 million people worldwide who practice Buddhism don’t add up. It is only about one-third the size of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. And the number of Buddhists who follow Tenzin Gyatso, the 14^th Dalai Lama – could fit inside the New York City metropolitan area.

     So we’re NOT talking about a lot of religious people here – only about 20 million – give or take a few.

     But what if, prior to Pope Francis of Argentina succeeding Pope Benedict of Germany, the government of Italy decided to kidnap Jorge Mario Bergoglio from St. Peter’s Basilica inside Vatican City – and not only kidnap him and make him disappear – but also Jorge and all of his immediate Bergoglio family members?

     Sounds like something out of “The Sopranos.” Or “The Gotti Files.” And that’s exactly the scenario the 79-year-old Dalai Lama (born Tenzin Gyatso) finds himself in today.

     If you have seen the brilliant documentary “10 Questions for The Dalai Lama,” then you have a better understanding of what happened to six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima – a person human rights experts used to call “the world’s youngest political prisoner” – only the movie suggests that neither he – nor his relatives – are still with us.

     So they ended up like that guy who accidentally bumped his car into John Gotti’s school-age son in Howard Beach, Queens – and then disappeared in a van four months later – never to be heard from – or seen – again.

     If you ask the Chinese government, as the United Nations Council on Human Rights did in 2007 – Beijing said that the then 12-year-old Panchen Lama –as the successor to the Dalai Lama is known – was a healthy and growing boy.

     “Gedhun Choekyi Nyima is a perfectly ordinary Tibetan boy, in an excellent state of health, leading a normal, happy life and receiving a good education and cultural upbringing. He is currently in upper secondary school, he measures 165 cm in height and is easy-going by nature. He studies hard and his school results are very good. He likes Chinese traditional culture and has recently taken up calligraphy. His parents are both State employees, and his brothers and sisters are either already working or at university. The allegation that he disappeared together with his parents and that his whereabouts remain unknown is simply not true.”

     The part about his brothers and sisters “EITHER WORKING OR AT UNIVERSITY” must be one of those lost in translation bits – because it reads ominously today as if what we suspect to be true – is true.

     Seven years later – when “the boy” should be at least twenty-five years old – if he is still alive at all imprisoned somewhere – there is simply no credible report! Imagine if Italy had done the same thing with Pope Francis – as loveable and cuddly as the 77-year-old Pontiff is now – can you imagine the uproar? It might have caused even Mussolini to turn over in his grave – and most certainly would have triggered a brief World War III – with Rome bearing the brunt of a few Tomahawk missles.

     Instead, because it is China – where the record on Human Rights – is, shall we say “compromised” at best – no one says nothin’ at all – and gets away with it! In fact, everyone right now is talking about the Olympics in Russia, another place that is a total stranger to the Rule of Law.

     To make matters worse, the Chinese government, citing Emporer Qing from 1735 (when a Dalai Lama was once chosen by a lottery drawing the names written on barley leaves from a golden urn) installed their own Panchen Lama six months after they made the legitimate one disappear from Tibet – and his name is Gyaincain Norbu.

     Some magic trick. So as it officially stands – who will be the next Dalai Lama is officially in “dispute.” Like what happened in Tiananmen Square that the Chinese people can’t read about because the government has whited out most of the Internet there.

     This “dispute” was executed by the Chinese government in lands they control near the Himalaya Mountains – where they allegedly kidhapped Gedhum Choekyi Nyima from Tibet – along with him and every living immediate family member.

     Now Buddhists are known to be “Zen” in the face of difficult times – and the Dalai Lama himself  – who is 78 years old – has said that there might not ever be another Ocean Guru of Buddhism – and if there is – it might even be a woman this time – but it will definitely not be someone “reborn” in a country controlled by the Chinese, he insists.

     That means Tibet – the homeland of the current Dalai Lama and every “enlightened one” since Buddhism began (except the 3^rd Dalai Lama who was born in Mongolia) – is out. Places inside the Tibetan cultural beltway; however – India, Nepal and Bhutan – are in. That is – unless we can “free Tibet” – which seems unlikely at this point.

     So the next time you see a “Free Tibet” bumper sticker on a car in front of you, don’t allow your karma to run over my dogma.

     Or something like that – just remember that China has re-written the book on Human Rights when it comes to the Dalai Lama and Tibet.

     Now and Zen, you’ll be right.

 

© 2014 Copyright John McCarthy/Secret Goldfish Publishing House, LLC/Kindle @ Amazon

 

Are The Fumes From The Worm’s Vodka Worse Than The Nuclear Radiation Leaking in Pyongyang?

THE OFFENSIVE DMZ OF DENNIS RODMAN’S MIND:

MINING THE AMERICAN DREAM IN NORTH KOREA:

THE VIEW FROM THE VIRGIN ISLANDS

By John F. McCarthy

Moderate Voice Columnist

 

Now that we know Dennis Rodman is NOT a traitor (even though Mike Tyson said he was) – and is willing to take Kenneth Bao’s place in a North Korean jail cell … 

Still, there are the niggling matters of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) signed by President Obama in 2010 as Executive Order 13551 and United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1718 of 2006 and 2094 of 2013, but …

Mr. Rodman can always claim that he was blind-sided when the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) knocks at his door in rehab in New Jersey.

Because “The Worm” had a life experience similar to that of the NFL’s Michael Oher of the movie “The Blind Side.”

Oher was born the year Dennis Keith Rodman was drafted into the NBA – 1986. And though you are more familiar with Oher’s touching rags to riches story – where an upper-class white family – “raised” an adult black professional athlete prospect while he goes to college – you still don’t know Michael Oher’s name – but you do know Dennis Rodman’s.

So how “The Worm” got the Tiannamen Square Sawed Off Shotgun Tip-Off Tour of North Korea – while Mr. Oher got the Tinsel Town Major Motion Picture Deal – with Sandra Bullock – might be a question better put to Mr. Rodman’s agent.

Because the story arc of Dennis the Menace’s life was far more precipitous – he was sweeping out Dallas Fort Worth International Airport for a living, when he had a tremendous Alien-like growth spurt – growing fully thirteen inches in one – his nineteenth – summer.

His two sisters were All-American college basketball players – so when the Rodman family genes finally kicked in with their male progeny – going from 5’6” to 6’7” – it didn’t take long for he and his folks to realize that this was his Jed Clampett moment. Their son was now nearly as tall as an oil derrick – he was the “bubbling crude” that Jed found at the end of a gun – and they seized the day and enlisted him in the Beverly Hills of community colleges in Texas – Cooke County.

But our Mr. Rodman had trouble coping with the stresses of college life – and flunked out after only one semester because he couldn’t make the grade. A lesser man might have quit there, but “The Worm” didn’t. When the Byrnes – a white family in Southeastern Oklahoma “adopted” Rodman – it was the turning point that allowed him to metamorphose out of his shy introverted cocoon – he had no piercings or “ink” then.

By the time the Detroit Pistons drafted him out of his second college stint – they already had a superstar (Isiah Thomas) – a nickname “The Bad Boys” – and a winning tradition. But new coach Chuck Daley saw the potential in this gangly, goofy-looking, wide-eyed kid from New Jersey. He himself had never coached before in the pro game – but he was a legend in Pennsylvania high school basketball circles – and stifling defense was his secret weapon.

Dennis could do nothing other than defend (maybe rebound a little) – he couldn’t shoot an orange round ball into an metal rim and white net to save his life – but he was joining a team that was already almost bigger than his ego would grow to – with guys like: Bill Laimbeer, Rick Mahorn, Vinny “The Microwave” Johnson, Adrian Dantley, John Salley and Joe Dumars. They were more sharp elbows – and black and blue hard knocks – and hardly-seen socks – than had ever been seen before in the NBA – but those were welcome sights to the people who had been weaned on Gordie Howe’s style in Hockeytown.

To score against those Detroit Pistons – you had to pay a physical price – Daley was big on D-fense – and the frisky “Worm” was about to glow in his “new” strategy. After all, Dennis Rodman was not a worm at all; he had long arms (what they call “wingspan” in the NBA – and quick feet – perfect for this new “ball-denial” style of pro defense. But one inchworm step forward, two Amazon steps backward …. In his first NBA year, our Dennis allowed the Boston Celtics to win a crucial Eastern Conference championship elimination game in the final seconds – because he began celebrating too early – abandoning his vigilant defensive stance prematurely. Even then he was kind of flighty – and high strung.

It took years for the “Bad Boys” to finally unseat Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Danny Ainge and Dennis Johnson as Eastern Conference Champions in the NBA. When they finally did – it was an heroic accomplishment – one worthy of someone who went from $2 an hour to $2 million a year.

The Worm’s Detroit Pistons won back-to-back NBA Championships – earned by holding off yet another upstart (also cut from his high school basketball team) named Michael Jordan – who played for the Chicago Bulls and seriously challenged Detroit’s basketball ascendency – nearly keeping them from getting airborne. “The Jordan Rules” were a complicated set of trap defenses – designed by Daley to keep Michael Jordan from dominating the game – and ruining the Pistons’ chances – but all “The Jordan Rules” ever were – was to simply put Dennis Rodman on Michael Jordan – guarding arguably the greatest player who ever played the game.

After the Championships, Success, and maybe other elegizing substances besides euphoria, informed “The Worm” that maybe it would be a good idea to bring a loaded shotgun to “work” at the Pontiac Silverdome one day – where the Pistons used to play and practice. Oh our Dennis was different – even then.

When Michael finally overcame “The Jordan Rules,” and started winning championships on his own – Rodman figured, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em – and soon “The Worm” turned good for MJ, Scottie Pippen and the Chicago Bulls – helping them eventually amass three of their six NBA Championships (after first helping Detroit win two). From sweeping out airport lobbies for minimum wage – to NBA superstardom – is a stretch maybe only Dennis Rodman himself has ever accomplished in modern-day America.

He was on five NBA Championship teams – Jordan was on six. Dennis got to date Madonna and marry Carmen Electra; he got to wear a white wedding dress – but he was a success in the NBA despite his modest offensive abilities – because HE TRIED REAL DAMN HARD – he had an intense work ethic on the court – perhaps second to none. It was that superhuman work ethic that “turned” him from DFW airport broom meister, to student athlete and NAIA All-American to NBA Defensive Player of The Year (twice) – and maybe – just maybe – one of the (G)reatest NBA defensive Players (O)f (A)ll (T)ime. (Or G.O.A.T.’s, as Jerry Rice likes to put it).

Which makes me wonder, what was Kim Jong-il’s work ethic like? And how would one know if it were a particularly good year for the “Supreme Leader” of North Korea? Did he kill more rivals one year as opposed to others? Build more concentration camps with slave labor? Separate more families in gulag-prisons? Stuffed more imported Maine lobster down his gullet one year while his beloved people starved to death?

Kim Jong-un, the son, has inherited his dictator father’s love of the game of NBA Basketball and probably other Jong-il Family trusted pastimes (like over-eating) and “taking out the garbage” (with the sudden, but not unexpected death of trusted advisor Gen. Jang Song-thaek last year.)

As U2’s Bono once musically asked about old age pensioners getting blown to bits during military parades in terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland – steadying the course to an end of Sinn Fein and “The Troubles” there: “Where’s the glory in that?”

Now that Dennis Rodman has gone on Offense – bringing Kenny Anderson, Cliff Robertson, Vin Baker, Craig Hodges, Doug Christie and Charles D. Smith and what wire service reports called “four street ballers” on a goodwill games tour of Pyongyang City last week – we can see that it is not his strong suit.

Dennis got drunk, sang “Happy Birthday To You” to Baby Kim – in a kind of Their Satanic Majesties Request-Cinderella parallel universe transvestite transgender upside down cake version of Marilyn Monroe & JFK, and a tipsy Worm later had a meltdown when a CNN anchor asked him about an American missionary who has been held captive by North Korea for fourteen months.

I guess Mr. Rodman got paid handsomely for HIS troubles? (Which might say more about the State of the American Dream than it does about Dennis.) But can “The Worm” ever get drunk enough to forget that Pyongyang Train, running up and down North Korea with just one chain-smoking NBA fan on board – death staring him square in the face – the soon-to-be late fearless leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – gorging himself on champagne and caviar – trying to fill an existential hollowness that comes with making Hitlerian decisions regarding human beings in forced labor camps?

I keep reminding myself – as a fan of the National Basketball Association – that there’s a lot of glory in Dennis Rodman.

But “The Worm” has turned now – and I’m left with one nagging question: “Where’s the glory in that?”

 

© Copyright 2014 Secret Goldfish Publishing House/John Francis McCarthy  

Now Is The Time 4 All Good Men 2 Jump 2 Conclusions

LOST IN THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE – RATHER THAN BERMUDA.

THE CASE IS MADE FOR PROFILING PILOTS OVERSEAS.

THE VIEW FROM THE VIRGIN ISLANDS.

 

By John McCarthy

Moderate Voice Columnist

 

     It’s surreal enough to be the plot of a major TV series.

     In fact it already was – “Lost” on ABC – except even scarier than giant polar bears and smoke monsters – are pilots with extreme views bent on total destruction.

     The flight in the TV series was scheduled for 17 hours – Sydney to LA; the flying time of Malaysian Airlines’ Flight 370 was scheduled for about half that – going from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

     What happened along the way of that aborted flight path has been the subject of much speculation about terrorism and suicide since the ill-fated Asia-based jetliner went missing nine days ago.

     CBS News and The Times of India call “pilot suicide” a taboo subject – but it is one that is likely to be more talked about in the coming days, weeks and months as the vanished Boeing 777 continues to dominate the 24-hour news cycle.

     “You cannot quite yet rule out everything because we don’t have the physical evidence we need to come to that conclusion,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) on CBS’ Face The Nation, meaning that he felt no indication means the airplane is “at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.”

     If a “preponderance of evidence” could lead to criminal charges filed against a sitting American president – it only makes sense that a complete lack of evidence could also lead someone to reach a foregone conclusion in a case such as this.

     However, I feel quite the opposite. If Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is right and “the plane was last seen heading towards Pakistan.” And if we grant that the disappeared flight was commandeered with the intentions of terrorism, then what is the worst possible scenario?

     That the plane – with 239 hostages aboard needing food and drink for nine days – has safely landed in an obscure South Pacific outpost – to be used “later” as a “flying bomb” just as the two planes that knocked out the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers were used.

     No one is writing about it online yet, but the Petronas Twin Towers – featured in the movie “Entrapment” with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones – is an obvious target for someone looking to make their bones via terrorism. Its 88 floors are the centerpiece of Malaysia’s futuristic Kuala Lumpur skyline – at 1,483 feet, it used to be one of the tallest structures in the world.

     As Slate online reported, there are 634 such landing sites within the flying range of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 – including some in the middle of the Indian Ocean such as: The Cocos Islands (runway length 8,009 feet); Diego Garcia Naval Support Facility (runway length 12,003 feet); Gan International Airport (runway length 8,694 feet) and the appropriately named “Mal” (meaning “bad” in French) International Airport (runway length 10,499 feet).

     If Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was heading west, it could have stopped off at any one of these remote atolls to refuel for use at a later time while hiding at a remote island airstrip that would have to be at least 5,000 feet long – but wouldn’t necessarily have to be paved (it could be hard-packed dirt) – experts say it could have even landed on a freeway. If it was heading northwest towards Pakistan, as Rep. King stated then it would have had to have cleared heavily-monitored airspace near U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan.

     And if Rep. Rogers is correct, and Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was on a suicide mission with 53-year-old Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and 27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid as the masters of disaster – then there is a corollary with the crashes of Egypt Air Flight 990 (LA to Cairo) on October 31, 1999 and SilkAir Flight 185 (Jakarta to Singapore) on December 19, 1997.

    The common denominator on all of these doomed flights – if Captain Shah (who is seen on Facebook wearing a “Democracy Is Dead” t-shirt and has links to the Malaysian terrorist group that bombed a Bali bar popular with Australians in 2002) – is likely to add fuel to the fire for Islamophobes everywhere – and lead to talk about mandatory psychological profiling of pilots.

    The Co-Pilot Hamid was known as a “Cockpit Romeo” for allegedly inviting two ladies in the past to join him in that restricted area for the duration of an entire flight – all of which begs the question: if the pilots do not own the airplanes – how is it that they can manually turn off transponders and other safety technology – when the reasons not to give them such leeway are obvious now?

     The news 10 days in was that the hijacked plane was flown to the Taliban – if it was – it is unlikely that the coddled, confused Malaysian government officials will be ready for their returning missal if and when it does come back.

     The good news is that the number of mechanically-caused commercial airline disasters have virtually been engineered out of existence.

     Now the commercial airline industry has to devise a way to make the friendly skies freer of pilot errors – including suicide.

     It may be too late to save the people aboard the missing airplane on its departure..

     But it is not too late to prevent a future disaster caused  by the same plane as an arrival.

 

© 2014 John Francis McCarthy/Secret Goldfish Publishing House, LLC

 

John McCarthy is an investigative reporter, artist and photojournalist based in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Please send questions and comments to: johnfmccarthy807@msn.com

 

 

A War Of Words Doesn’t Have To Involve Fighting

A Global Crossing of Wildly Popular World Leaders.

The Rock Star Pope Greets The Superman President.

The View From The Virgin Islands

By John McCarthy

Moderate Voice Columnist

 

     President Obama met with Pope Francis a few days before April Fool’s Day in Rome. 

     That’s when I learned that the phrase “conscientious objection” no longer means what we thought it means.

      The President sought to characterize the meeting as one between common allies, but the Vatican stressed the little differences, including what it called every person’s right to “religious freedom, life and conscientious objection.” 

     To be fair, there was innuendo on each side because Mr. Obama said there was no talk of “social schisms” in the 52-minute meeting in Vatican City – schism being a word that has been used historically to describe breakaway sects of all Protestant denominations from the Roman Catholic Church. 

     So there was the subtlety of diplomatic word play at work, and even the New York Times was left asking whether the Pope’s scribes meant for “conscientious objection” to refer to “an allusion to the contraception provision” of the Affordable Care Act?

      And although I don’t have a direct line to Italy as a non-excommunicated Catholic, indeed they did mean it to mean that – trust me. I thought it was a very clever use of the phrase “conscientious objection” which is a term that has been in use since World War I to describe people who wish to opt out of combat service on moral grounds.

      The United Nations Commission on Human Rights says “conscientious objectors” are “persons performing military service [who have] the right to have conscientious objections to military service.”

      Muhammad Ali is one of the most famous American conscientious objectors from the Vietnam War era. I remember driving in a car to St. Michael’s Catholic School on Monday, March 8, 1971 and my cousin Delmar asking me who I thought would win “The Fight of The Century.” I said: “Muhammad Ali.” He said: “But he was a draft dodger.” 

     So even in a discussion about boxing, questions and answers can quickly turn political – leaving us all to wonder if legitimate discourse is dead – we certainly hope not. 

     For to equate “conscientious objection” – a phrase that has been used internationally for nearly 100 years to refer to people who choose not to fight in wars – with people who seek to impose their religious dogma on all of us – strikes me as richly disingenuous.

   It is a fair question to ask whether or not those who do not believe in allowing people to have access to contraception – have the right to impose that will on others – and also whether it is ethical to couch that issue as one of simply “opting out.” 

     I say it is not merely an issue of a hospital being able to “opt out” of supplying contraception to patients, because if administrations were able pick and choose what they will offer – it would set up a two-tier system of “believers” and “non-believers” in parochial medical facilities nationwide. Who do you think would get the best service under such a system? What tier would you want to be in? 

     What I thought was lacking from the rock star Pope – whom I like and admire as much as everyone from Rolling Stone to the Jerusalem Post seems to for his outreach to the poor – was a sense of the Holy Father wanting to bring everyone on board. I couldn’t help but wonder how someone who is infallible on church matters could make such an obvious team spirit faux pas? I read that he was a bouncer; maybe he never played team sports? 

     Although President Obama said kind things about Ronald Reagan in his stump speeches in 2008 and 2012, it is obvious from his political agenda that he understands that “trickle-down theory” and “voodoo economics” are the same thing – and it doesn’t work no matter what you call it or how many failed Republican presidential candidates say that it will work. But when the Pope said the same thing he was branded a “Marxist” by Rush Limbaugh. 

     To me, Barack Hussein Obama and Jorge Mario Bergoglio are world-beloved spiritual soul mates and I wish that the Pope had tried to cozy up a little more with the Leader of the Free World in their desk-side chat. A full-on, like-minded bromance would have been nice – since each is already spoken for when it comes to the possibility of a same sex wedding. I’m left cold with the belief that the church must no longer be crusading for new membership. 

     Maybe there’s still time for their courtship to blossom – or have the bean counters at the Vatican steriley calculated that Mr. Obama will see eye to eye with them when a camel passes through eye of a needle? I still say that it never hurts to have one more enthusiastic supporter in your camp. 

     Since that is not an issue of church doctrine, Pope Francis can be wrong. 

     And I can be right.

Copyright 2014 Secret Goldfish Publishing House, LCC/Kindle @ Amazon

 

Modern Media Is A Game Of Duck-Duck-Goose

WHEN YOU DIVIDE 30 ROCK BY 15 MINUTES OF FAME – WHAT DO YOU GET? (THE CALL OF THE WILD IS AN AD REVENUE SHELL GAME OF DUCK, DUCK GOOSE) THE VIEW FROM THE VIRGIN ISLANDS

By John F. McCarthy Moderate Voice Columist

All the world’s a stage, but the modern American media business is but a shill game. So Tina Dupuy is right to make a distinction between Free Speech and Free Enterprise. The two things aren’t related as it turns out (not even kissin’ cousins if you’re watching “Duck Dynasty” or “Honey Boo Boo.”) The reason no one defends Alec Baldwin, Martin Bashir and Phil Robertson on Free Speech is because the Free Market sorts all that out on its own. Advertising agencies pay big bucks for demographic studies of television audiences that let them know whether someone who is watching “The Martin Bashir Show” is more likely to gargle with Scope or Listerine. Demographic studies allow companies to make more efficient use of their precious advertising dollars by scientifically pairing a product with a select “target” audience. The idea: to maximize the chances that someone watching the show will actually go out and buy their product once the show is over. Statistics like age, sex, marital status and household income provide ad agencies’ media buyers with the information they need to more accurately predict which shows companies should “bet on” to sell more products. If you make squawking duck whistles in Louisiana – and aren’t fond of shaving implements – have we ever got a show fer you – yee ha! Get ‘er done! The usual suspects: Alec, Martin and Phil were thrilled when MSNBC and A&E respectively – asked them to host shows on their networks. At that time, with apologies to Sally Field and The Academy, the networks “really, really liked them!” Or so they thought. (It is what their agents told them then.) But really, really, truth be told, what the networks really wanted from that fearsome threesome was ratings – because the higher the ratings – the more the networks can charge for the shows (A)lec, (M)artin and (P)hil were/are on. Only, sometimes these hosts, well, ur – get a little full of themselves – and go on homophobic gay bashing jaunts (as in the cases of Alec and Phil) – or attempt to give 2016 Republican Presidential candidates lessons in historic slave punishments – as in the case of Martin. And that’s not what they were hired to do. What they were hired to do was to get increasingly more audience share for their respective time slots. Nothing more.

The fact that Phil kept his job (because his A&E show is highly rated) proves the point. Get ‘er done, as Larry, The Cable Guy, now The purple Prilesec OTC Guy, used to say. When A-M-P started yelling “fire” in a crowded movie theaters nationwide, network execs ran screaming for the exits. It might take “brass balls to sell real estate,” as Alec famously said in the movie “Glengarry Glen Ross,” but ShamWow! balls might have gotten her done just as efficiently for MSNBC. After all, it’s all about branding. Not all about them. The stars, that is. Only the stars’ egos don’t always inform them thus and so. So when the “Hunt for the Red October” star’s toxicity level soared after TMZ started videotaping Alec Argument gay bashing paparazzi nearly every night live on tape – Mr. Baldwin went the way of Mr. Bashir, before he did. Bye, bye Bashir. Bet you don’t cry for him now, Al-ec-ti-no. As Ms. Dupuy writes: “Corporations should not have to sponsor people who say things [that] will hurt their brand.” And so they don’t – but in fact – they never have. Case in point: Andy Warhol and the Campbell’s Soup Company. Arguably, nobody did more (in terms of free advertising) for a product (with as little effort and as much fanfare) as Drella did for the Campbell’s Soup Company with his then-shocking consumme can paintings in 1962. The complete set of 32 was ceded to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for a round $100 million – an individual Campbell’s Soup Can painting sold for $11.8 million in 2006. But three years after Warhol’s death, when the paintings were still reasonably-priced (by corporate-buying standards,) the Campbell’s Soup Company CEO was asked point blank if the company had ever broken down and bought one of the paintings to display in their Camden, New Jersey world headquarters. Campbell’s just said “no.” The company did not want to “officially” marry Warhol’s image with their own. So there you have it. “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” as Yogi Berra famously said. The game has never changed, whether it is soap powder and hair tonic advertised on “Truth or Consequences” – or Hot Pockets & camouflage gatling guns advertised on “Duck Dynasty” – it’s just a shill game. Under which “rock” is the celebrity hiding? Go ahead, pick one. Duck, duck, goose.

© Copyright 2014 Secret Goldfish Publishing House/John Francis McCarthy

OBAMA STATE OF THE UNION #4

OBAMA STATE OF THE UNION #4.

OBAMA STATE OF THE UNION #4

THE OBAMA-NATION REVISITED: THE BLAME DOG GAME OF WHOEVER SMELT IT, DEALT IT: THE VIEW FROM THE VIRGIN ISLANDS

By John F. McCarthy
Moderate Voice Columnist

The State of the Union is nigh upon us again – a time to reflect back on the year that was – and look forward to the year – and the future – that still is – possible.
But looking farther back, after the first such address – the administration had taken steps to counter “The Great Depression II (The Sequel)” and President Obama said that he was shocked, shocked that “they talk about me like [I’m] a dog.”
Still, no one actual person actually said that specific phrase on the record – and for attribution.
So at long last – and, by popular demand – just hours before the State of the Nation Address – President Obama gets his! I’m going to do him the service of formally calling him “a dog” in print – (easier to track if you’re the NSA spying on its own citizens – especially if the column itself originates in cyberspace).
And as a Liberal Democrat (with moderate tendencies) – it carries more Chris Christie weight – what F. Scott Fitzgerald liked to call “leverage.”
And I’m not going to say this was all a “dream” sequence at the end of it and that it was actually the Red Chinese calling us all Running Dogs of American Imperialism.
In other words, this ain’t no “Family Guy” episode – no animals living or cartoon – will be harmed in the writing of this column. Nor is it a party, a disco or a “fooling around” of any kind. And if I start dressing like a housewife, or a student, not only will I owe royalties to Eddie Izzard or David Byrne, but we’ll all know that that’s not allowed.
(Tapping phone lines – that was also not allowed at the time that Talking Heads song was popular – but that was all pre-Big Brother NSA.)

Now, first of all, the Vice President, Mr. Joe Biden, makes his Christmas and New Year’s vacations (like Martha Stewart does) in St. Croix. While Mr. Obama vacations in his native Hawaii (which is also part of the United States unless you are a birther named The Donald.) Trump this, you’re fired!
So right off the old bat (no offense Martha), we’ve got a bone to pick with the President.
President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary spent a Christmas or two in St. Thomas, all very cool and in the gang if you’re a Virgin Islander. Before them, former V-P Al Gore and his wife Tipper vacationed in Charlotte Amalie (the only major world city named after a female leader).
So naturally, we’d be a bit miffed, I mean we traded up when we went from Alipper to Billory – only to go from President to Vice President in 2009 (no offense Joe, you’re still welcome back this year! I’ve got a cold “Greenie” on ice waiting for you at the Sally’s Fancy Sportsman’s Club on the South Shore.)
Meanwhile, I won’t be the first Progressive to have called out the President, though. Oliver Stone called Mr. Obama “a snake” over the internecine tracking of phone calls by the NSA. Fellow writer David Mamet said he, too, was “no longer a brain-dead Liberal” (although he said it before the President was actually elected, so it would be difficult to ascertain his actual criticism of Mr. Obama.) Director Michael Moore took issue with Obamacare, saying it was an obamanation – good only if it led to a single-payer plan.

It used to be – when you graduated from college – and you went for a big interview, say with FoMoCo (Ford Motor Company for you non-native Detroiters) the smart HR execs used to ask: “If you had to describe yourself as an animal, which one would it be? And why?”
Oh, boy. One of my best friend’s wives (as opposed to “Best Friend’s Girlfriend” by The Cars) answered that question honestly, saying that if she had to choose an animal it would probably be a loving, protective, faithful dog like her dear pet, “Cujo” –
[Buzzer gong sound] Wrong answer! You’re fired again, Donald Trump! (Offense intended).
You see, what they wanted you to say in The Interview, is that you see yourself as a predatory jungle cat, ready to pounce on prey big and small – to make more money for FoMoCo. What they ask now – and what they want you to answer – I can only wonder.
In those days, you couldn’t just Google “questions they might ask in a job interview.”
And today, if you said in a job interview that you saw yourself as a dangerous lion or tiger on the hunt for fresh meat and blood – they’d probably put you on full Dahmer Alert, call security, strip search you twice, hose you down and frog march you out of the building with a Hannibal Lecter mask on. Not bad for a night in Las Vegas, but for a gentle lamb like yourself in a quiet, simple job interview, it would be nothing to keep silent about.
Which brings us back to Chris Christie and Donald Trump (no, not The Donald, he was fired) and what Americans want in a President. Honesty? Might be a good starting point. But, staying with this going-to-the-dogs theme – if Americans had to – I mean absolutely had to – (no choice) – choose a type of dog to be their President, what type of dog would it be?
My contention is that Americans would NOT choose a pit bull (no offense Pit Bull – the Miami-based rapper for you folks born before 1980) but rather a German shepherd. The only bad thing you can say about a German shepherd, is that one of them was Hitler’s dog, but that’s not really the dog’s fault. And if you saw the brilliant movie “Downfall,” you know even “Blondie” got executed. John Gotti had a mastiff, which are huge prehistoric-looking Great Dane-like animals – and old Adolf used Rottweilers to guard his “prison” camps, maybe as a conservative cost-cutting measure.
Sorry, I just saw a promo for Martin Bashir’s new show on a faux cable TV network. [WAS HE REALLY FOAMING AT THE MOUTH? Or was that like the Devil Baby FX (“Devil’s Due” movie trailer) on YouTube?]
Anyway, Americans want their Presidents to be more like German shepherds than pit bulls. They want them to catch security threats – but have the presence of mind to un-tooth them upon command – not bite down hard and release when euthanized.
Of course, H.W. took this to extremes with Saddam Hussein. Catch and release might be sporting news for fish, but with genocidal dictators it was a Schwarzkopf too far. Mr. Obama is the perfect German shepherd Président on paper, although he turned out to be judge, jury, executioner and mortician at sea. W. was: “What dog? I’ve been looking for eight years!” (And the dog ate my homework.) Clinton was: a pit bull in wolf’s clothing. Reagan was: Tear down this wall, because that dog can’t hunt! Carter was: well, Jimmy had a cat. Nixon was a pit bull. Chris Christie is a pit boss bully alley cat, because there is only one animal that toys with its prey after capturing it. So we can see which President he is setting up to most be like – let’s just hope he doesn’t griddle on the White House roof.
My two favorite Republicans, Chris Christie before Bridgegate and Mike Huckabee before Libido-Gate, have left me wondering if foot-in-mouth disease doesn’t have something to do with being bitten by a rabid dog? [Since you’re having fun with this, Sarah Palin has many canine qualities, (one is a five-letter word that begins with a “b” and ends with you scratching your head (because you have an “itch”) but she is officially classified scientifically as a “wild-eyed hyena” (genus slapus on the gluteus maximus) – and the Arkansas Governor-Preacher (M.H.) is a sloe-eyed sloth.]
So when you add it all up, what do we gain by name-calling? As the late Rodney King said: “Can’t we all just get along?” And in a way, he was right, because we should all strive to live in peace, harmony and happiness. But in another sense, he’s wrong. Because all’s we’ve been doing all along (the watchtower) is going along UNDER THE GUISE OF GETTING ALONG.
And now, just to mix in a whole slew of zoo allusions and mixed metaphors, the crows have come home to roost. It was wrong when Malcolm X said that about JFK’s assassination, and it felt wrong – even just looking at them – when Van Gogh painted them into one of his last paintings.
The point being, if we are going to reap what we sow, why not start planting good seeds today? The same old tired advice givers, putting bugs in the oversized ears (if you read political cartoons) of the Chief Executive, running the same old dog and pony show – it might be good enough to win Westminster Kennel Club honors in New York (in Sean Hannity’s old offices now that he’s moved to Florida over Governor Cuomo’s pro-choice comments) but it’s not good enough for us as loyal Americans.
So just when I thought it was getting better, it’s actually getting worse. While I was watching TV, writing this column, Mr. Bashir just had another Homer Simpson-like “Doh!” moment. Oh, no he di’n’t. Oh, yes he did. I’m trying to scribble down everything Martin is saying, but it appears he’s headed for another “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” just like the New Jersey Governor, because Bashir said that Christie, being a rather large man mesomorphically-speaking, “Houdini-like, made the smoking cone disappear somewhere on the Dark Side of the Moon.”
So it appears, then, that Martin Bashir will be fired all over again. Oh great, and over such a silly thing, really, because we all know Christie is a fan of Springsteen – not Pink Floyd.
But all in all, it’s just another brick in the Berlin wall.
Mr. Obama’s handlers trotted the President-to-be out in Germany in 2008 so that we could all be RE-inspired by John F. Kennedy’s “Ich Bin Berliner” speech – and we were all appropriately inspired. He said then we are “a world that stands as one.” He was right then and he is right now. And who (besides Rush Limbaugh) was not inspired by President Obama’s speech at Nelson Mandela’s funeral? Remember the loud roar of the crowd? Goose pimples. Right?
If America leads the world, why can’t President Obama lead from a world stage? If he is being jeered at home, why not take the show on the road where he is loved and adored by millions — and where he would be cheered? (My only advice would be not to stand too close to the guy who looks like he doesn’t know how to do sign language next time.)
We are facing exceptional challenges in this new century, America is fighting not to become Rome Redux. We have an exceptional new generation leader to lead us.
This is not a time for him to be playing follow the leader. It is a time for him to be giving commands and taking command. Will the tail wag the dog, or the dog wag the tail in the last half of Mr. Obama’s second term?
Never forget it is the Year of the Horse. Let not the Democratic donkey be called an ass.
After dog comes duck in the name-calling business – as in lame duck.
If you lead, we will follow.

© 2014 Secret Goldfish Publishing House/John Francis McCarthy