One Man's Opinion

A few days ago, a headline caught the world's attention. U.S. Army labs had shipped live anthrax specimens to several labs in and outside that country. As usual, they played it down, claiming that no one had been hurt by the mishap. Assuming that to be true, it is still a major mistake in a very sensitive area. Furthermore, it is always worth noting when something like this happens in the U.S. because, invariably, when it occurs somewhere else, American smugness comes to the fore, quickly pointing out how their systems and procedures are the "best" or "safest" in the world and something like this could never happen there. Yeah, sure...

Former Israeli Prime Minister Olmert has been dodging the bullet of conviction for political corruption for the past few years, but justice, of sorts, has been made. His misdeeds have finally caught up with him, though not as they should have. Bribes by, at least, an American benefactor have landed him in jail for eight months...or will do so, if the sentence stands after the appeal. A previous case in which he was also convicted has also been appealed, so Olmert has not served any time in jail yet. By the looks of it, Israeli justice is just as flawed as the one of their American protectors.

The French have given the rest of the world a big lesson on solidarity with the poor, by banning supermarkets from throwing away surplus food. Either they give it away to charities or to farms to use as compost. Discarding perfectly good food while people go hungry is a sin and should be a crime everywhere. France has shown us the way to do something practical about it.

Violence in the U.S. continues to escalate. More and more people take to the streets to shoot it out in Old West fashion. Everyday lawlessness challenges the rule of law with increasing force. The biker incident in Texas shows how far this attitude has come. The American love of guns and its fantasy about a violent but heroic past dominates the present and, most likely, the future of that nation.

Who are these women who never knew they were pregnant, until they give birth at the unlikeliest places? Also, who are  their doctors, who fail to detect their pregnancies? The latest case happened aboard an Air Canada flight, with exactly that factual background. Once has to wonder, should a woman that dumb be a mother? Should a doctor that clueless be practicing medicine?

Chile, a land that suffers from frequent and deadly earthquakes, is undergoing a political one that has shaken it in an unprecedented fashion. Political corruption that reaches the very doorstep of the presidencial palace has forced President Bachelet to ask her entire 23-member cabinet to resign. More importantly, her own son has been implicated in a scandal of his own, and his mother has acted more as such than as the President of Chile. This is all very unfortunate because Bachelet was elected for the second time, with great expectations that she would restore some of Chile's standing as a democracy, as well as a model of economic progress. Now, with three years to go, she has lost much of her polítical capital definitively.

Can you imagine a business that loses $1.5 billion in just three months ? That is no business at all, wouldn't you say? Well, that is just the case with the U.S. Postal Service, which has been consistently losing tons of money for years, and the only reason it survives is because the U.S. Congress finds it hard to accept its failure as an American institution. See, that would be admitting that the U.S. does not have the best postal service in the world, and such a thing is a no-no for the American public image as the greatest country in the history of mankind, as John McCain boastfully proclaimed sometime ago. So, in a country that prides itself of its business acumen, this absurd situation drags on and on...