FROM ONE VANITY CANDIDATE TO ANOTHER

FIORINA PUTS THE PETAL TO THE METTLE

TRUMP WILL RIDE OUT INTO THE SUNSET

THE VIEW FROM THE U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS

 

By JOHN McCARTHY

Virgin Islands Free Press

 

The word going into the debate was: How is Donald Trump going to do?

 

And nobody said it better than John Weaver: “Imagine a NASCAR driver preparing for a race knowing one of the drivers will be drunk. That’s what prepping for this debate is like.”

 

Some newspapers in the Midwest had compared Trump’s Teflon factor to Keith Richards’ longevity – the campaign and the person, respectively, that no one could kill. Even Bret Baier of Fox News admitted what some music reporters acknowledged while waiting to talk to Richards – they got weak in the knees.

 

“I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say that I have woken up in cold sweats wondering how I’m going to deal with a Donald Trump who’s not listening,” Baier told TIME magazine prior to the debate.

 

All along the American fascination with Trump as he elegantly bumped and harrumphed along the campaign stumps was: How low will he go?

 

Now that the first debate is in the record books, the question is: How low will he fall in the polls? And fall he will, mark my words.

 

Clearly, by all accounts (meaning social media) Cara Carleton “Carly” Fiorina of Texas won the debate. Like most Americans, I had to Google her to make sure I got the spelling right on her first and last names.

 

Fiorina might have hit all of her home runs in the B-League game; but, the fact that she has major league mettle was noticed by the “owners” of the league and we can count on the Austin native to be called up to the big leagues for the next debate once the new polling is announced.

 

You don’t think the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard isn’t tough to have risen as far as she did in the corporate world? I thought Chris Christie might be best to negotiate with Putin, but after last night’s showing, who can say Fiorina wouldn’t do it best?

 

In the main event, it would be difficult to say that Marco Rubio didn’t “win” the debate, because he did. By pointing out that most of the illegal immigrants now come from “Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras,” Rubio not only made Trump seem out of touch, but misinformed when he lambastes Mexican illegals.

 

“I also believe we need a fence,” Rubio said. “The problem is if El Chapo builds a tunnel under the fence, we have to be able to deal with that too. And that's why you need an e-verify system and you need an entry-exit tracking system and all sorts of other things to prevent illegal immigration.”

 

A close second would be home town hero John Kasich; but, no matter how competent and caring Kasich appeared – it is hard to imagine how he could qualify to be anything more than vice president. The intellectual dishonesty in claiming the “economic growth” America had under President Clinton in the 1990s as his own doing in balancing the budget didn’t just take stones, it makes you wonder if he wasn’t stoned when he said it.

 

Third place is a tie between Chris Christie of New Jersey and Ted Cruz of Texas. Some of the female commentators in the national media felt that Christie was one of the losers in the debate because of the way he went after Rand Paul in the controversy over the U.S. government spying on its own citizens under the guise of rooting out terrorism. One went so far as to say that it made Christie look “little,” which is very hard to imagine indeed.

 

Cruz seemed very comfortable in the debate, and as I was unfamiliar with his voice, I was surprised at how commanding it sounded, but after a while it did strike me as sermonizing, which was confirmed when he mentioned that his Cuban father was a Christian minister. What I don’t understand is, how can Cruz, born in Canada, run for President of the United States? I guess the argument goes that his mother was an American citizen at his birth. Where is Donald Trump when we need him?

 

The best (and most surprising) canned line went like this when “Likeable” Mike Huckabee said this:

 

“It seems like this election has been a whole lot about a person who's very high in the polls, that doesn't have a clue about how to govern. A person who has been filled with scandals, and who could not lead, and, of course, I'm talking about Hillary Clinton.”

 

Huckabee was measured and professional in his delivery of the two sentences, and Trump could be heard in the background saying “thank you” or some other such thing.

 

Scott Walker of Wisconsin mentioned coming into the debate that he is a normal person who likes to shop at Kohl’s – my prediction: this nomination period will not keep Walker from doing just that –without interruption – once he formally drops out of the competition.

 

Brain surgeon Ben Carson got a few chuckles at the end when he mentioned that he was the only one on the stage to have done certain things.

 

“I'm the only one to separate siamese twins, the only one to operate on babies while they were still in the mother's womb, the only one to take out half of a brain, although you would think, if you go to Washington, that someone had beat me to it,” Carson said.

 

But in the end Carson’s candidacy is a vanity candidacy every bit as much as Trump’s is. On CNN after the debate, Carl Bernstein said that he has known The Donald a long time and felt that Trump had already achieved his goal in running for president – to become the most famous person in the world.

 

When another commentator said that Trump was “drunk with power,” CNN host Anderson Cooper felt the need to mention that the New York real estate magnate doesn’t actually drink.

 

So “DT” isn’t likely to get the DTs – but I might – because I need a drink to come down after last night’s debate.

THE SWEET SCIENCE OF MAKING A BETTER PIZZA

ANTHONY BOURDAIN LEAVES ME HUNGRY FOR S'MORES

WHERE THE RUBBER HITS THE ROAD AT MYSTIC PIZZA

THE VIEW FROM THE U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS

 

By JOHN McCARTHY

Virgin Islands Free Press

 

I am probably not the first American to eat at a red, white and blue fast food joint when traveling in a foreign country.

 

I may be, however, the first to admit it.

 

Anthony Bourdain has made a career out of eating exotic, enviable foods in locales from Leonia, New Jersey to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. But I do recall even the crown prince of foodies talking about relishing some Popeyes fried chicken before jetting off on one of those magical mystery television trips.

 

On the way to becoming the Mick Jagger of all chefs, Bourdain has arguably become the most noteworthy of all the journalists at CNN – interviewing Boris Nemtsov before Putin’s KGB killers had the chance to black hand him – and Mexican journalist Anabel Hernandez before El Chapo’s anti-Trump death squads have the chance to kill her.

 

When I visited Sint Maarten (before the advent of foodies in the United States), I ate at a Wendy’s and a Pizza Hut with my girlfriend Arianna. (I also patronized a more proper Dutch restaurant near Great Bay.)

 

But at Dave Thomas’ place for lunch, I heaped a plateful of “crab” salad on a plastic plate, before quickly exiting out the door with my future dinner swag, disregarding the explicit warnings that the unlimited salad bar could NOT be taken “to go” – all sneeze-guard protected food must be eaten on the premises. When that Wendy’s closed (the only one on the 13-square-mile island – it was near the airport at Simpson Bay) – I always wondered if other plate pirates like myself had significantly contributed to that franchisee’s demise.

 

The year was 1991 and it was the first time I had seen fellow human beings put mayonnaise on French fries – a full three years before Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” made Europe’s condiment of choice for papas fritas common knowledge. I found it more curious than disgusting in person. And when I had heard that the Wendy’s closed, I thought to myself: “Of course, what do you expect when the people didn’t even know what to put on French fries!”

 

When traveling to Darwin, Australia in 2006, I went to a McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin on the waterfront there. Before finalizing my order with the cashier, I asked her if they used Canadian bacon in their version of the popular breakfast sandwich. The cashier’s reply: “No, we use proper bacon.” True enough, when I opened the familiar white bag and removed the yellow paper that sticks to the homogenized plastic cheese, I found out that “proper bacon” was what we would call “bacon strips” in the U.S. The Aussie cashier seemed miffed by the impertinence of my question. But if I hadn’t asked the question then, I wouldn’t have had this funny story to tell today.

 

 

I was lucky enough to be dragged on to a private plane for a tennis trip to Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic about a year later thanks to a wealthy attorney who would one day be linked by the National Enquirer to trying to hide John Edwards’ baby mama drama in St. Croix. I was perplexed when she and her entourage religiously sought out native music and native cuisine (to include river fish at dinner) on a splendiferous most-expenses-paid vacation. A one hundred percent surprise – when it comes to eating – was not an option for me then. Now, of course, I realize she was right.

 

Which brings us to the ad I saw last night for Domino’s pizza. In the ad, Domino’s plunks an office trailer down in a Pizza Hut-signed (digitally-obscured) restaurant offering the competition’s workers the opportunity to attend “Domino’s Pizza School.” The ad says that Domino’s used to use “gimmicks” to attract customers, but now it goes after customers by appealing to their palates. It ends with a Pizza Hut employee in uniform (digitally-obscured) entering the condominium of higher learning for more training. The tagline is: “Oh Yes We Did.” And it’s funny. Or, it worked for me, at least.

 

To use a “Pulp Fiction” reference, Domino’s is daring customers to take the “Pepsi challenge” when it comes to eating pizza – in other words: Do hot dogs in the crust really taste good? I may be getting more adventurous in what I eat, but I have no desire to try the Pizza Hut monstrosity – unless I knew it would be the last thing I would eat for weeks before being lost at sea – it may be the most caloric pizza ever created. And doubly ironic that Domino’s is challenging Pizza Hut this way because PepsiCo used to own Pizza Hut.

 

When I was in La Romana in 2013 I had a pepperoni pizza at the Domino’s on Calle Castillo Marquez and noticed that the sauce was much sweeter than I was used to in the states. Most people would have let it go at that, but due to the wonders of social media, I decided to try to get an answer. I figured, of course, that I would get no response at all.

 

Was I ever wrong. I got an email from Mr. Luis Francisco Rodriguez, the head of all sales, marketing and operations for Domino’s pizza in the Dominican Republic. In the email, Mr. Rodriguez gave me his personal mobile phone number and invited me to call him with any questions I might have. So I did.

 

The first question I asked was about the sweetness of the sauce:

 

 “We use sugar to temper the acidity of the tomatoes in the pizza sauce,” Mr. Rodriguez explained. “We always used a better grade of cheese in this region because the people here have an Italian palate: we use more sugar, less black pepper and more salt (than in the mainland United States).”

 

Apparently I have no shame, because my next question seems now to have been a bit much considering how gracious he was being; still, I somehow also suggested that the pizza there was “too greasy.”

 

“If the dough is not stretched properly, then the cheese-to-oil and water mixture can be off kilter,” Mr. Rodriguez replied.

 

So when Domino’s pizza does an advertising campaign about how their pizzas are better because their knowledge of pizzas is better – I am inclined to agree.


http://vifreepress.com/2015/08/the-sweet-science-of-making-a-better-pizza/

USDA Recall of Barber Frozen Foods Affects 1.7 Million Pounds of Chicken

PORTLAND, Maine -- Barber Foods is recalling 1,707,494 pounds of raw frozen chicken products after the U.S. Department of Agriculture received reports of a cluster of people in Minnesota and Wisconsin becoming ill with salmonella poisoning.

 

The Maine company said the recalled products, produced between Feb. 17 and May 20, 2015, include chicken breast stuffed with broccoli and cheese, asparagus and cheese, and ham and cheese; chicken fingers; and the company's Chicken Kiev and Cordon Bleu.

 

"Although the products subject to recall may appear to be cooked, these products are in fact uncooked (raw) and should be handled carefully to avoid cross-contamination in the kitchen," the USDA said in a statement announcing the recall.

 

Consumption of salmonella, one of the most common causes of foodborne illnesses, usually causes diarrhea, abdominal cramps and fever and can last four to seven days. While most patients recover without treatment, it can be severe in those with a weakened immune system.

 

The recall affecting chicken in the United States and Canada was announced Monday and is an expansion of a recall announced on July 2 when 58,000 pounds of chicken was recalled. The USDA said two additional patients had been identified with the illness since then.

The recall includes meals that are made of frozen, raw, stuffed chicken packaged in six individual pouches per box; the Chicken Kiev, Chicken Cordon Bleu, Chicken Tenders, and Chicken Broccoli Cheese are among the recalled.

The use by/sell by dates are April 28, 2016, May 20, 2016, and July 21, 2016. Lot Code numbers are 0950292102, 0950512101, or 0951132202.

The products also have the establishment number "P-276."

You can find more information about the recall here.

NOBODY CELEBRATES THE 4TH OF JULY IN PUERTO RICO - ESPECIALLY NOW

As Greece threatens the European order with its inability to pay a suffocating debt, Puerto Rico teeters on the verge of similar collapse. The crisis has driven millions of American citizens into poverty, out of their homes and – increasingly – on to the US mainland.

 

Years of migration and mismanagement have left San Juan, once one of the wealthiest ports in the Caribbean, in a state of decay. Windows gape open on gutted colonial homes. Aluminum siding seals off store after store where “liquidation” or “for sale” signs hang. Graffiti overwhelms whole blocks of high-rises, and the street art is swallowed by vines.

 

In downtown San Juan, upscale restaurants and shops sit amid empty apartment blocks and the angry insect hum of damaged power lines. In Old San Juan, the colorful facades and cobblestone streets end at the cliffs, where a mound of ramshackle homes – a project named the Pearl – juts over the ocean, and confronts tourists with some of the 45% of Puerto Ricans who live below the poverty line.

 

In the market plaza of Santurce, restaurant employee Rafael Fernandez, 22, said the crisis has pervaded life: “It affects everything we do or can’t afford to do. We’ve lost our dignity, our standing. We feel bad.”

 

Puerto Rico’s “death spiral”, as governor Alejandro García Padilla has called it, stems from decades of government mismanagement and dependency on federal aid, the high-risk investments of Wall Street firms chasing tax breaks – and the domino effect of trying and failing to pay back billions of debt. Years of borrowing and poor planning has led to water rationing and intermittent electricity.

 

Unemployment drives crime, crime devastates real estate, and except for the most vulnerable – the poor, sick and elderly – almost everyone who can leave does. Hundreds of thousand have left in recent years, a swing of about 1.5 million people since 2003.

Life on the island mirrors conditions in Detroit when the Michigan city confronted its $18 billion debt – except Puerto Rico’s total bill amounts to $72 billion.

 

Months of crisis have created an atmosphere where despair and resignation alternate with anger and fear. Behind the counter at a coffee shop in the market strand of Rio Piedras, Beatriz Perez, 34, said she didn’t know how she will be able to help support her family if the crises worsens.

 

“Half the stores have closed, so nobody has money,” she said. “So nobody comes around, and we work fewer hours. Salt, bread, the basics cost more, but we can’t charge customers more because so few come by.”

 

Perez said that family kept her in Puerto Rico: “I hope it gets better, but honestly I don’t know. It’s so bad.”

 

But Puerto Rico’s unique relationship with the U.S. adds another layer of complexity: as it is a United States commonwealth rather than a state, the island lacks authority to have its cities restructure debt or file for bankruptcy as Detroit did in Michigan. Instead it must ask permission from Congress for financial powers or for exemptions from restrictive trade laws, rules that benefit US shipping companies and investment firms.

 

Meanwhile the terms of Puerto Rico’s engagement with the mainland restrict its ability to open up trade or investment. As a commonwealth, it is bound by laws drafted not long after Americans forced the Spanish off the island in 1898. The 1920 Jones Act requires Puerto Rican ports only do business with American ships, prohibiting deals with many of the island’s Latin American neighbors and giving American shipping companies almost total control of prices.

 

Although Puerto Ricans don’t pay federal income tax – an attraction for companies – the island has raised local taxes, increasing the cost of living and warding many businesses away. Residents can pay as much as 33% in local taxes, gas prices hover over $3 a gallon, and the same amount of milk costs almost $7. In Miami, gas costs $2.80, milk nearly $3 less.

 

Music shop owner Tony Cuñarro, 46, was blunt: “Business is terrible – there are no customers.”

 

Cuñarro waxed fatalistic about whether Democratic governor Padilla – who last week said the debt was "unpayable" – could handle the crisis. “They won’t fix anything,” Cuñarro said.

 

“They’re all the same, red or blue, they all misuse the money.”

The slow-motion crisis has already caused a wave of migration. Departing professionals and people with higher degrees have drained the island of doctors, engineers and others who could help solve the crisis.

 

Jose Miguel Saavedra, 62, a retired professor for the University of Puerto Rico, said he had told his two daughters that he’s been talking with realtors in Miami.

 

“When the ceiling’s coming down you don’t wait to get squashed by your house,” he said. “I see the writing on the wall.”

 

The writing has long been ominous. Ratings agencies downgraded Puerto Rico’s credit and bonds to junk earlier this year. Hedge funds that bought up high-risk bonds now demand 100% returns. Since 1996, tax exemptions for corporations have been expiring, and companies promptly left. Last week former IMF economists released a report that not only said the island’s economy was in tatters but recommended radical cuts to services.

 

In practical terms, the debt spawns problem after problem, Saavedra said: “Nothing works here, nothing.”

 

Poor planning means water rationing during drought and “kind of risky” tap water, he said. His sister lives in a gated community that pays for private security; Saavedra does not. Electricity will occasionally conk out, and driving home at night he noticed that many roads are conspicuously dark.

 

“I thought the government was saving money on public lighting. Then I discovered that the copper was burglarized from the wires.”

 

More than 150 schools have closed in the past year, and many economists and lawmakers urge even greater cuts to education staff. Enrollment in public schools has plummeted as tens of thousands migrated away – forcing many families to travel long distances to get to a working school.

 

“In the middle class, if we want our children to learn anything we have to send them to private schools that cost a lot.”

 

Saavedra helps one of his daughters pay tuition for his grandson because despite her master’s degree she can’t find work. He said he would have to cut her off soon, and that he’s encouraged her to follow him to the states.

 

‘It’s all bankrupt’

 

Thousands have lost jobs in the past few years. Edgar Correa, an accountant, said that in 2006 his construction firm employed about 1,200 people; today it employs fewer than 400. The island’s 12.4% unemployment rate is more than double that of the 50 states.

 

Correa remains in Puerto Rico to care for his mother, who depends on Medicare, a federal benefit that the commonwealth receives in lesser measure than do the states. “It’s a hard situation to see people that you love leave, to see empty spaces on every block,” he said. “There are no easy solutions anymore.”

 

Manuel Rodriguez Banchs, a labor attorney, said that the unions he represents have had more than 1,500 jobs cut in recent years as hotels, canning and distribution companies closed. “Without work, people can’t make mortgage payments,” he said. “I’ve never seen so many workers filing for bankruptcy.

 

“Politically, economically and fiscally, it’s all bankrupt.”

 

At least one city employee agreed, asking that her name not be used for fear that her hours would be cut as she had seen for others. She likened Puerto Rico to a house whose owners never learned how to build one: “Better to blow it all up and start over.”

 

City lawmaker Luís Gallardo had a different metaphor: “It’s sort of like a drug rehabilitation program where we first acknowledge the debt is unpayable, that we can’t necessarily keep schools open on the one hand and pay bondholders on the other.”

 

Gallardo opposes further austerity measures, noting that continued tax hikes to pay off debt would convince more people to leave. “It’s very hard to make long-term projections when our labor force is literally jumping ship.”

 

Ataveyra Hernandez, a former adviser to the governor, said that cycles of desperation and poverty would send the island spiraling into even worse conditions should the government cut off services to pay debt.

 

“It always reminds me of Louisiana,” Hernandez said. “We’re going to be the next New Orleans when a Katrina happens, but we don’t even have the resources or aid or options they have.”

 

She said domestic violence was increasing alongside poverty, and that unemployment was driving men and women into “the informal economy” – an economy manifest in the rail-thin, haggard man who paid no heed to nearby casino security as he snorted powder off his nail, and in the handicapped man peddling packets of spice in Rio Piedras.

 

“It’s more lucrative to sell drugs than to work in Burger King, and Burger King wages won’t pay for a home,” Hernandez said. “People are making decisions to survive.”

 

“We were all living on a fantasy for 40 years that just came to an end,” said senator Ramón Nieves, about Puerto Rico’s dependency on federal money and the tax breaks doled out for decades to corporations. “We have to deal with reality, but we cannot become a country in the service of our public debt.”

 

He said that Puerto Rico was ready to make sacrifices so long as those on the mainland – hedge funds and the federal government – could also renegotiate and sacrifice. But he and most others opposed a bailout, and no one appealed to the U.S. based on any shared responsibility or identity as Americans.

 

“Nobody here celebrates the Fourth of July,” Nieves said. “We don’t consider that a celebration of our country.”

 

His constituents agreed – or were at least indifferent. Near monuments to Juan Ponce de Leon and Simon Bolivar in Old San Juan, 15-year-old Diego Del Real called the holiday “an excuse to barbecue”. Fernandez said “the whole world celebrates an independence day, but we don’t. We’re strange.”

 

San Juan nonetheless usually puts on a show in the bay, locals said, with bands and a barge that launches fireworks within sight of the Spanish fortresses of the old city. But on Saturday night the skies were clear and the city mostly quiet, sounding mostly of strong winds that suggested a storm out at sea.

CUBA'S GET RICH QUICK SCHEME: RETURN AMERICAN FUGITIVES FOR THE REWARD MONEY

The Coming Race War Begins In Cuba, Not South Carolina

Optics of USA’s Killers Returning Home Is Not A Good One

The View From The U.S. Virgin Islands

 

By JOHN McCARTHY

Virgin Islands Free Press

 

Charles Manson wanted to start a race war in America by directing his “family” to mass murder people and then try to put the blame on black folks. Last week, confessed mass murderer Dylann Storm Roof was accused of trying to put the country at odds against itself over race.

 

But someone who took substantive steps to do just that is former Cuban President Fidel Castro who favored black fugitives over white ones when race relations were touch and go in the early 1960s.

 

Cuba has provided safe haven to American criminals since then. In 1961, a black militant leader from North Carolina accused of kidnapping a white couple during a racial disturbance evaded the FBI and arrived in Havana.

 

By 1968, United States fugitives were arriving like clockwork, often aboard hijacked airplanes. Many were members of self-proclaimed revolutionary groups who carried out their political agenda with bombings, bank robberies and murder of police officers drawn by Cuba’s open embrace of anyone who claimed to be carrying out “armed struggle” against non-communist governments.

 

“We understood that if anything ever happened in the U.S. and we had to leave, the best thing was to come to Cuba,” explained Charlie Hill, a member of a militant group called the Republic of New Africa that wanted to form an independent black nation in the American South.

 

Hill and two other members hijacked a plane to Cuba after shooting and killing a New Mexico police officer who wanted to search their car, which was loaded with guns and dynamite. His comments were made to Teishan Latner, a research fellow at NYU’s Center for the United States and the Cold War, whose 2013 book, “Irresistible Revolution: Cuba and American Radicalism, 1968-1992,” offers a revealing look at the Cuban government’s treatment of the fugitives it deemed to be genuine revolutionaries.

 

The Castro regime gave them ration cards and free housing. One large Havana home became known as the “Hijack House” because so many of its occupants arrived on pirated aircraft. Neighbors referred to another as Casa de las Panteras for the all the fugitive Black Panthers living there.

 

These revolutionary pilgrims got many privileges not available to ordinary Cubans, including the loan of AK-47 rifles for hunting expeditions. To be fair, Castro came to regret that one when his relations with exiled Black Panther chief Eldridge Cleaver — who fled to Cuba after a shootout with Oakland police — went south.

Cleaver chillingly reminded the government he had guns. After a tense standoff of several weeks, there was mutual agreement that Cleaver would move on to Algeria.

 

For more labile fugitives, the rewards were bounteous: college educations and cushy jobs. Some worked at propaganda stations beaming revolutionary rhetoric at the United States. Others taught English at elite Havana schools.

William Lee Brent, a Black Panther who hijacked a plane after shooting three San Francisco cops, was a Cuban emissary to the left-wing government of Grenada during the 1980s before his death from pneumonia. Assata Shakur (Tupac’s godmother), a member of the cop-killing Black Liberation Army convicted of murder in the death of a policeman during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike, became a hostess for delegations of international visitors.

 

As recently as the 1990s, the FBI had a list of 91 fugitives from terrorist-type charges living in Cuba. But age and disillusionment have taken a toll, and researcher Latner believes there are no more than two dozen left, perhaps only half that.

 

Still, they include some big names: Ishmael LaBeet, one of five men convicted of the infamous Fountain Valley Massacre, a racially-tinged 1972 armed robbery in St. Croix, Virgin Islands that turned into mass murder, with eight dead. William Morales, the master bomb-maker of the Puerto Rican separatist group FALN, which set off 140 or so blasts around the United States during the 1970s and 1980s, killing at least six people. Victor Gerena, an armed robber working for another Puerto Rican separatist group, who is believed to have taken the proceeds of a $7 million heist to Cuba with him.

 

The biggest of all remains Shakur. Even the act of naming her reveals the depth of the schism. Law enforcement calls her JoAnne Chesimard. Her supporters know her by her chosen name, Assata Shakur. If the name rings a bell to the apolitical, it is likely because she is the godmother and aunt of slain rap star Tupac Shakur.

 

Thirty years ago, Shakur fled to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum by Fidel Castro. There she has remained. U.S. law enforcement has repeatedly sought her extradition, and the FBI has placed her on its “Top Ten Most Wanted Terrorists” list. Information directly leading to her apprehension carries a $2 million reward.

 

The question now: What becomes now of  Shakur?

 

She used to be a star attraction on the Cuban government’s cultural reception circuit, but has virtually disappeared in recent times.

 

“I think they are definitely worried about bounty hunters trying to grab her,” says Latner. Maybe President Obama’s easing of travel restrictions to Cuba will have a silver lining after all, at least for the FBI.

 

To law enforcement, Shakur is the killer convicted in the execution-style slaying of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in 1973. She is the Black Liberation Army leader busted out of prison by her comrades two years into a life sentence, a domestic terrorist implicated in a string of crimes and a key part of organization that waged war on police.

 

To her supporters, Shakur has been persecuted by the same corrupt and racist justice system that they say persecuted Michael Brown and Eric Garner. During the protests in Ferguson, Mo., her name became a rallying cry. She has long been a revolutionary symbol, a radical black female often described as “the ultimate fugitive from injustice.”

 

Immediately after the president’s mid-January announcement, the New Jersey State Police issued a statement saying the move to normalize relations with Cuba presents an opportunity to bring Shakur back to finish her sentence in Foerster’s murder.

 

“We stand by the reward money and hope that the total of two million dollars will prompt fresh information in the light of this altered international relationship,” said State Attorney General John J. Hoffman, adding that his office would be working with federal authorities to find a way to “return her to her rightful place in a New Jersey prison.”

 

Jeff Rathke, a spokesman for the State Department, said the decision to drop Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list it has occupied since 1982 “reflects our assessment that Cuba meets the statutory criteria.”

 

“While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions, these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a state-sponsor-of-terrorism designation,” Rathke said.

 

President Obama was forced to release a Cuban spy who was also serving two life sentences for conspiracy to commit murder — in order to reach the point diplomatically that we’re at now.

 

Maybe Cuba doesn’t meet the strict standards of a state sponsor of terrorism, but if a planeload of lionized black militants comes back from Havana to the United States to face murder charges – it will be a public relations nightmare the likes of which this country has never seen.

 

But as President Obama is going late into the lame duck phase of his second term, it is unlikely that the State Department would allow it to happen during this administration.

 

If I were Chris Christie, I’d ask Hillary Clinton what she would do as president if this were the first crisis she faced. Pardoning mass murderers or even garden-variety murderers is not an option.

 

When this air sequel to the Mariel boatlift happens, it is likely that Fidel Castro will ignore his health regimen for one day, look out on the beach his home is situated on (it has a view of the Bay of Pigs) and smoke a cigar and have a few jolts of Chivas Regal, thinking about this long-playing hand he has dealt us.

 

John McCarthy publishes the Virgin Islands Free Press at: http://vifreepress.com

True Blue Americans Seeing Red Over Public Displays of Rebel Flag

SUPPORT FOR THE STARS AND BARS IS FLAGGING, EXCEPT IN:

GEORGIA, MISSISSIPPI, ARKANSAS, FLORIDA, ALABAMA

THE VIEW FROM THE U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS

 

By JOHN McCARTHY

Virgin Islands Free Press

 

 

One of the things to come out of the debate over what is wrong with South Carolina after nine African-American citizens were massacred Wednesday in an historically black church is the symbolism of the Confederate flag flying in public places in the American South.

 

It has been argued that there are more important issues at stake such as racism and gun control. Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said the American public should blame confessed killer 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof – not the Confederate flag being proudly displayed in South Carolina. For people like Graham the flag stands for southern tradition – not racism.

 

When Adolf Hitler took power in 1930s Germany, the first law he brought to fruition was national legislation that made burning the German flag a crime punishable by imprisonment. In China, you will do three years in prison for burning their flag. Two other countries punish flag desecration: Iran and Cuba.

 

I was half paying attention to CNN this afternoon when someone defended the flying of the Confederate flag in front of the South Carolina statehouse because it represented “history.” The argument being that the people who object to the Confederate flag flying aren’t thinking about the 20,000 South Carolinian soldiers who died during the Civil War.

 

"It's a symbol of family and my ancestors who defended the state from invasion. It was about standing up to a central government," Chris Sullivan, who is a member of the Sons of the Confederacy, told CNN. "The things that our ancestors fought for were not novel and they really are the same issues we have today."

 

The problem with that argument is that South Carolina batteries started the Civil War on April 12, 1861 by firing on Fort Sumter. The result was that 620,000 people died nationwide in the war – the people who started the war lost 20,000 of that total. So if the purpose of the Confederate flag is to remember the history – that is the bigger picture of the “history” that needs to be remembered.

 

The primary reason South Carolina gave for leaving the “union” in 1861 was that for 25 years the United States had failed to enforce the “Fugitive Slave Act” and that the election of Abraham Lincoln meant that slavery would be abolished. The elected leaders in Columbia saw “increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery” and declared that their membership in the United States of America was “hereby dissolved.”

 

Certainly nobody in South Carolina today could say that the United States government is not living up to its financial obligations to the state. According to an Atlantic Monthly study, South Carolina nets $7.87 for every dollar in pays in to the federal treasury – the highest rate of return in the country.

 

Another problem with the Confederate flag is – even if it is eventually removed from the Civil War memorial in front of the statehouse in the capitol city of Columbia – the flags will still be flying on Fort Sumter (if history is the main reason for the flags remaining – doesn’t it confuse the issue of who actually won knowing that the Stars and Bars fly on the fort where shots were first fired during the war?)

 

And South Carolina’s current state flag is a blue version of the red Sovereign-Secession Confederate flag from the Civil War. Five other states, including Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida and Alabama put Neo Geo spins on their state flags to try to confuse the issue about what their flags most look like. (Or, in the case of Mississippi, maybe not so confusing – as the Confederate battle flag is incorporated lock, stock and barrel into its own state flag.

 

And yet they say symbolism is not important. But if it is not important – then why are these six states still clinging to the rebel flag – the dynamic artistic representation of the dissolution of U.S. constitutional law? Some have pointed out that the United States flag and the current blue rebel flag of South Carolina are flying at half mast, while the red Confederate flag flies high atop its pole at full mast? The answer is clear if you look closely. The Confederate flag is clipped in place and cannot be lowered – no doubt to keep some well-meaning citizen from taking it down some night.

 

The display of the Nazi flag is not just illegal in Germany, it is also illegal in France. In fact, in areas of Europe where the Nazi flag cannot be legally displayed, neo-Nazis use the Confederate flag in its place. However, in the United States and Israel, it is not illegal to display the Nazi flag.

 

Two years ago, the German painter and sculptor Jonathan Meese was brought up on federal charges that he used the “symbols of unconstitutional organizations” by giving the Nazi salute twice during a public discussion about art for Der Spiegel magazine that veered off into performance art. Meese faced three years in prison for the salutes, but was eventually acquitted of all charges because what he did was judged to be “art.”

 

The modern-day people of South Carolina have taught us a lot about what to do in the face of tragedy and injustice. And what is going on in Charleston today has everything to do with knowing that we are all stakeholders in this great nation that we are all proud to call our own. These good people need new symbols to represent their new spirit.

 

What is artless is the specious argument that the Confederate flag still needs to be displayed, especially if it represents is schism and racism. One only has to look at the photos of “Peter” – released in 1863 during the height of the Civil War – to know which side we should come down on when it comes to the symbols of hate that divide us.

 

John McCarthy is the publisher of the Virgin Islands Free Press at http://vifreepress.com

A MASS MURDERER, A CARPETBAGGER AND A STATE

A Schizephrenic Southern Splinter State

The Confederate Flag Flies At Full Staff

The View From The U.S. Virgin Islands

 

By JOHN McCARTHY

Virgin Islands Free Press

 

There’s no denying it.

 

South Carolina has a violent and racist past, with some tolerance mixed in.

 

The mere name “South Carolina” – suggests that it broke away from a larger Carolina – and that would be true.

 

The name Carolina is Latin for “Charles land” and goes back to 1629 when Britain’s King Charles I gave all of the southern colonies to Britain’s Attorney General Robert Heath. In 1663, Charles’ son King Charles II gave eight wealthy English aristocrats (mostly migrating from their sugar cane plantations in Barbados) a royal charter to settle Carolina because they had helped him regain his throne.

 

The Carolina coast was originally founded by the Spanish, but they were forced to leave due to violence from Native Americans and a lack of provisions. From the beginning of colonization, blacks outnumbered whites in South Carolina and that would remain so up until the turn of the 20^th century.

 

Carolina originally split in 1719, when southern settlers seized control from its proprietors. In 1729, Carolina became two royal colonies, North and South Carolina.

 

Farmers from inland Virginia grew tobacco in North Carolina, while the fertility of the low country and its natural harbors, such as in Charles Town, later Charleston, allowed South Carolina to prosper.

 

Slaves were imported from the rice-growing regions of Africa, who created the dams and canals used to irrigate rice and indigo as commodity crops. South Carolina tolerated religious freedom and allowed French Huguenot and Sephardic Jewish communities from London to be merchants in the growing economy.

 

The Stono Rebellion of 1739, resulted in the colony no longer allowing African slaves to be imported through Charleston for ten years, as they believed the less-seasoned slaves to be more likely to seed rebellions than the Caribbean slaves who had grown up on plantations.

 

Although its name comes from an English king, South Carolina became the first republic in America when it adopted its own constitution on March 26, 1776. It was also the first state to adopt the Articles of Confederation, the initial governing document of the United States.

 

In 1822, following discovery of a conspiracy for a slave rebellion led by freed slave Denmark Vesey, the state passed the Negro Seaman Act, which prohibited foreign and northern black sailors from interacting with people in South Carolina ports. As the act violated international treaties, it was declared unconstitutional by Supreme Court Justice William Johnson. But Johnson’s ruling was not enforced.

 

South Carolina responded by passing the Ordinance of Nullification in 1832, declaring unconstitutional and null the federal tariff laws of 1828 and 1832, and prescribing that those laws would not be enforced in the state after February 1, 1833.

 

The seventh U.S. President Andrew Jackson, a native of the Waxhaws border region between the Carolinas, ended the crisis through the Force Bill that allowed the federal government to use military force to enforce federal law in South Carolina. It is considered the first law of the land ever to deny individual states the right to secede.

 

Which brings us to last night and 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof of nearby Lexington, South Carolina who is accused of killing nine people in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston – a church Vesey helped found and which was burned to the ground by white supremacists in 1822 – the same year he and 34 other black men were hanged after being found guilty of the alleged slave revolt plot in a secret trial.

 

Asked today by Democracy Now! co-host Nermeen Shaikh on PBS if there has been any precedent “for this kind of violence” in South Carolina, Dr. Lonnie Randolph, Jr. said: “yes.”

 

“Unfortunately the answer is yes,” Randolph said. “And we don’t have a history of being a leader in this country on human rights. And unfortunately it brings us to reality … a reminder of the way South Carolina got to be South Carolina, the things that South Carolina has done throughout history.”

 

Randolph then referenced when Rep. Preston Brooks (D-SC) entered the U.S. Senate chamber in 1856 and used his gold-tipped cane to beat Sen. Charles Sumner (R-MA) nearly to death for his abolitionist views. Following the beating, in which Sumner lived after sustaining a brain injury, Brooks was forced to resign his seat, but returned home to South Carolina for a hero’s welcome.

 

Everyone knows that the Civil War (officially called by the federal government “The War Between The States”) began when Confederate batteries began shelling Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861, but how many remember 620,000 Americans died for that South Carolina-driven, eight-year experiment in political limbo?

 

You would have to be a student in Civil War-era flags to know that the current South Carolina flag is an updated blue and white version of the rebel red Sovereignty-Secession flag from the Confederacy of States of America.

 

Now that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has announced his intentions to be the second POTUS from South Carolina and the first bachelor in the White House since James Buchanan in 1857, how would he explain in a debate why South Carolina still allows the “Stars and Bars” to fly in front of its statehouse?

 

As a follow-up, someone might ask Graham why the United States flag and the South Carolina flag atop the statehouse flies at half mast today, but the Confederate flag in front of the building on a Civil War monument flies at full mast?

 

The symbolism is important, unless you forget your history.

John McCarthy is the Publisher of the Virgin Islands Free Press at: http://vifreepress.com