One Man's Opinion

Cynic, no; skeptic, definitely, yes. One has to be when you become aware of stories such as the one about the Cambodian woman who made up a story of abuse and sex-trafficking, and became an international celebrity fighting against the so-called "white slavery." From politicians to artists and the media itself; they were all taken in by her since 2005. Apparently, everybody took her at face value and no one bothered to check the account of her life. Until a reporter from Newsweek  took the time to go to Cambodia and ask around. Not only was it all false, but also, he found out that she had instructed other women to fabricate similar stories, in order to receive donations for a foundation established to help women who have been part of the sex-slave trade. Of course, none of this takes anything away from the real problem and the bona fide  efforts to deal with it. But, it's a lesson that must be learned. People's stories must be corroborated, before they are present

The positive electoral result in Spain of Podemos , a fledgling party, gives hope to all those who dream of a political force based on the real issues that concern the man on the street from his perspective, not that of the ruling class.The fundamental opposition to the so-called "austerity measures"is crucial in every society because that economic program is basically designed to impoverish the working class to the point where it will submit willingly to any condition of exploitation imposed by the employers. Only when the common man takes power, will these measures be rolled back. The Marxist cry proves to be right: "Workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains!"

Now, which is it? Venezuela is supposed to be a dictatorship, where there is no freedom, the opposition is mercilessly persecuted and elections are rigged by the government. Then, how is it that the wives of two mayors who are imprisoned for refusing to act to control street riots have won elections on their own by a landslide? Are these elections valid? Are elections valid only when the opposition wins? Which is it?

I mean, really; is it worth it to say anything about the latest massacre in the U.S? Hardly, since this is something that is part of the American way of life...and death. Americans are obviously content with their gun laws and culture, and they are willing to have these killings take place regularly, just to prove how committed they are to their individuality, freedom of choice and the "sacred" Second Amendment to the Constitution. This being the case, I wouldn't express my condolences to anyone who loses a relative in one of these shootings. This is the country that they want; this is the country that they have and feel so proud of. So, stay tuned for the next massacre...

Oh, boy! Obama's White House keeps falling apart on security issues, among other things. The President of Afghanistan -- that is to say, Barack Obama -- went on a surprise visit to his other country, to review the troops, some of them for the last time before they get killed, commit suicide or die waiting for medical care when they come back to the U.S. In announcing his visit, the White House, unwittingly, included the name of the CIA Station Chief in Afghanistan as one of the American officials who would greet the President. Get it? The White House revealed the identity of the chief American spy in Afghanistan! This is the same White House that has been calling for the prosecution of Assange, Snowden and Greenwald for revealing  information that could jeopardize the security of American field agents all around the world. Life has a funny way of humiliating those who are on the wrong side of things.

The Pope keeps hitting it right on target on a lot of issues. On his visit to the Holy Land, he has rightfully called on arms dealers to stop supplying weapons to those countries in conflict. Though he did not say it, the U.S. is first on that list. So, while pretending to be concerned for world peace, the Americans are the number one suppliers of arms in the world. To them, it's just business; big business  with huge profits. These things need to be said in all of its details, so that each country assumes its responsibility for war and violence around the world. In  an apropos way that the Pope would especially understand: " Al pan, pan, y al vino, vino."

By now, it's pretty obvious the Prince Charles will never be King, if his mother has anything to do with it. By the time the Queen dies, either Charles -- who's 65 -- will be dead or as good as dead. It now seems that there is another good reason for him not being crowned: he is his father's son. His remarks comparing Putin to Hitler are totally out of character for a member of a royal family, but to be expected from someone like Prince Philip, who has made a career of inappropriate comments of all sorts. One embarrassing old man is enough in any monarchy; even one as symbolic as the British one.

Being in the U.S. military is not just dangerous for all the obvious reasons -- like the endless wars and interventions everywhere in the world -- but for what happens if you make it back home. Given the fact that more and more soldiers return with some sort of major health problem, medical care for veterans is a big deal; one that has become increasingly difficult to handle properly by the U.S. government. It now seems that veterans are dying while they wait for procedures to be performed on them or some other kind of treatment. Congress and the President are alarmed by this, of course. But, no one considers the obvious: if the U.S. military wasn't so involved in invading and occupying other countries whose people, naturally, fight back, there wouldn't be so many soldiers hurt, both physically and mentally. Of course, that would go against U.S. imperial policy, and that is never on the table.

The U.S. accuses some members of the Chinese military of cyberspying and hacking. Yes, you have read correctly. I know it sounds like a joke, but it isn't. In the post-Assange, Snowden and Greenwald era, the Americans have the gall to come out publicly accusing another country of electronic eavesdropping or spying. This has to be one of the top cynical moves in modern history. Senator William Fulbright was so right when he called his own country out for "the arrogance of power."

I keep hearing or reading about Ronald Reagan's "amazing" or "remarkable" career, and about his "legacy." It's true. The fact that a third-rate actor became President of the United States is truly amazing. It's also remarkable that he "governed" while suffering from Alzheimer's disease or some other type of dementia for God knows how long. Which goes to show that anybody can be U.S. President, and stay so, even when out of his mind. This is the best proof that there is a permanent shadow government which is really in charge. Reagan just delivered his lines, more or less on cue, as he did in all those B movies he made in Hollywood.

A Federal judge has ordered,  temporarily , that a Guantánamo prisoner not be force-fed. But, before you sartt celebrating this legal triumph over a barbaric practice, consider the following: the man in question has been detained since 2002, has never been charged and was ordered released in 2009 . It's not the forced feeding that has to be ordered stopped. It's the whole Guantánamo detention center.

I haven't seen Grace of Monaco , so I can't really say if it's any good. What I can say, having seen its trailer, is that casting Tim Roth -- a fine actor, of course -- as Prince Rainier has to rank up there with the biggest casting mistakes of all time. There is absolutely no resemblance, a fact that, as a viewer, not only distracts me from the film, but also interferes in a major way with the "truth" that a film about real people must have, in order to work. I suppose that the producer and the director must have had their reasons for this decision, but, for the life of me, I can't understand such a faux pas.

Rape, of course, happens anywhere. But, in the U.S., there are two places where a woman is in greater danger of being raped. Worse still, of nothing effective done about it. One is the military; from the academies to the bases or camps. The other is the college campus, where there is a sort of "Rape-of- the-Month Club." It's gotten so bad that the Obama White House is trying to do something about it. By all accounts, alcohol seems to be the key issue in facilitating rape and other forms of non-consensual sex on campus. In most cases, both parties get drunk or, at least, have their judgment impaired by alcohol. Which poses a disturbing question: Why do so many young people drink alcohol to the point of passing out or not knowing what happened the night before? At bottom, it's the culture of excess that leads them to get into trouble, be it with a serial rapist or the casual one.

Another American company has been caught doing business illegally in a foreign country. In an obvious move to cut its losses and do some "damage control", Citigroup has fired 12 employees in Mexico, including some at the managerial level, for their involvement or "not doing enough" to stop a fraud connected to the oil industry there. Judging from the American business track record abroad, I suggest we wait a while longer to see how this develops...

Of course Oscar Pistorius is anxious. Wouldn't you be if you had killed your girlfriend and were being tried for it? His lawyers, though, are trying desperately to portray him as a victim since his unfortunate childhood, so that he can be somehow excused for having shot through a bathroom door, thinking that a burglar had had to, suddenly, answer the "call of nature." According to them, the guy has been a nervous wreck all his life. Funny thing is that this is the first time that this is brought up, two months into the trial. You would think that something like this, that would "explain" his behavior that fateful night would have been presented to the court from the beginning of the trial, not as an afterthought. I don't know about South Africa, but, in this part of the world, mental issues concerning the defendant have to be presented to the court at the outset, so that the State has a fair chance to address them properly. This is just another ruse by

Uruguayan President Mújica has done what other political leaders from across the world have failed to do: lecture the President of the United States of America, at home, of all places. He has chastised the U.S. for its still high smoking rates and not speaking enough Spanish in a part of the world where most of its neighbors speak that language, I might add. Knowing American attitudes, as I do, the entire country will stop smoking, before it deigns to learn Spanish.

The U.S. Secret Service keeps getting into trouble, even retroactively. Back in 2011, before the Colombian prostitution scandal that put it under a negative spotlight, the then-Director ordered a surveillance of a neighbor couple involved in a dispute with a woman aide, clearly a law-enforcement issue to be handled by local police. What makes the decision more questionable is the fact that the agents assigned were pulled off from duties around the White House. The Director eventually resigned over the Colombian affair. I'm waiting to see what the aide looks like. That could explain why the man took such an extraordinary measure. Clue: at the time, he was 57; she was 38. Maybe, before the Colombian affair, there was the Washington affair.

The Pope -- God bless his soul -- is doing his best to convince world leaders to do one of the hardest things there are: redistribute wealth from the haves to the have not in every society. The main problem is that selfishness is so ingrained in our consciousness, that it's very difficult to go against it. Take a country like the U.S., in which greed is, really, the national religion. Obama is having a hard time convincing his fellow Americans that something must be done to reduce the income gap. He will end his second term of office without accomplishing anything in this regard. When he recently proposed that the minimum wage be increased to $10.00, the reaction was overwhelmingly negative. The U.S. was founded on the principle of getting rich quick and keeping it for yourself. That's what, all platitudes aside, the "American dream" is really about. "Rugged individualism" and "self-reliance", touted as uniquely-American virtues, are really euphe

When I was a first-year law student, our professors warned us repeatedly about relying on what they used to call "newspaper jurisprudence", that is to say, press accounts of an incident, to form a professional opinion. Thus, we were instructed to gather the facts for ourselves, in order to proceed responsibly. Obviously, the CIA does not subscribe to this operating procedure, given the Benghazi fiasco. It has come to light that "the Company" relied on newspaper reports on the unrest there previously to the attack, and passed it on to the rest of the American government as good, solid intelligence. Except, in this case, the reporting was deeply flawed, and so was the CIA's assessment of the situation. Simply put, the Agency did not do its job of data-gathering and analysis, thereby misleading its government. By all accounts, this is not the first time that the CIA has done a poor job in this regard. There have been cases in which it has failed to read or has

I've never gone to fast-food restaurants on a regular basis; my blood sugar and cholesterol levels won't tolerate it at my age. Now that workers there globally have come out demanding decent wages, I'll think twice the next time I feel the urge for a burger or a chicken sandwich at one of those places. It's hard to swallow when you think that those poor workers are being exploited so outrageously by those big corporations who turn such huge profits. Plus, the food isn't that good nor is it that healthy, so it's best to opt for some home-style, slow food...

Okay, this is how it works. There are bad terrorists and there are good terrorists. The bad ones are the ones that hurt you, your friends and allies. The good ones -- usually called freedom fighters or some other positive term -- are those who plant bombs on people you don't like. Like Fidel Castro. Cuba has caught four of its exiles who live in the U.S. who went back to do some sort of mischief with, presumably, American backing. Cuban authorities have asked the U.S. to investigate. Fat chance! Of course, Cuba knows that the Americans will do nothing about this because (1) they are involved in it, and (2) even if they weren't, they are not going to stop anyone who wants to do Cuba harm on its own.

Israel and the Jews in general have a sort of "veto power" over what is appropriate with regard to them in public discourse. Granted that the Holocaust was a crime against humanity and that antisemitism is a threat to their security, but collective guilt about all that should not amount to them having the right to censor anything and everything that is said with regard to them. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is the latest "victim" of this state of affairs, having had to apologize for saying that, if the peace process in the Middle East fails, Israel could become an "apartheid state", which, quite frankly, is not that off the mark, I might add. This remark was made in a private meeting, mind you, but, the Israel lobby is too powerful and its contributions to both parties are too big, so Kerry has hurried to swear his undying love of Israel and the Jews. Which goes to show that the American political establishment does not dare criticize Israel in an

I don't mean to be facetious or to downplay the seriousness of the political turmoil in some parts of the world, but I have to wonder about it, given the fact that, lately, there's been a surge of readers from, say, Venezuela and Ukraine of this and the other two blogs -- both in Spanish -- that I maintain. Either the situation there is not as bad as the media reports, or I have seriously underestimated my rantings and ravings in all three blogs. Needless to say, I would like to believe that people in those countries and elsewhere run home from their daily protest, dodging bullets, just to read my blogs, but even I don't have that big an ego.

The U.S. has a funny way of promoting democracy around the world: it pays for it. Secretary of State John Kerry has just offered the Congo $30 million in "aid", if the current President agrees not to run again. Granted that the guy is a bit of a scoundrel, intent on staying in power --he's been in office since 2001 -- indefinitely, but buying him off is hardly a lesson in democratic values. But, it's the American way. When faced with a problem, throw money at it. Mostly away.

It must be terribly frustrating to be Tyson Gay. The American sprinter was banned from competing for a year, and ordered to give back money and prizes won since 2012,including his silver medal for the 4x100 relay at the London Olympics. So, he embarrassed himself for nothing, because he couldn't beat Usain Bolt and his fellow Jamaicans. Not even by cheating and disgracing himself. In short, there's nothing gay about Tyson these days.

If Donald Sterling's racist comments are certainly outrageous, so is the fact that the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) had honored him a few years back and planned to do so again. Apparently, the man has donated money to the organization, and it feels indebted to him on that account. Still, I find it hard to believe that he had managed to keep his racist feelings all to himself, so that the NAACP was unaware of them, prompting his recognition. I have the feeling that there's more here than meets the eye.