One Man's Opinion

Time was when American manufacturing was the wonder of the world. But, greed and the emphasis on quantity over quality slowly cheapened its products into non-existence. Decades have gone by, and a host of things are no longer "Made in the USA" because no one buys them. They are made elsewhere much better. Even things that are made in the U.S. aren't really American, in the sense that they belong to foreign companies and the technology and quality control reflect another country's way of doing things. Take the automobiles that are made in the U.S. By the latest count, neither Ford nor Chrysler qualify as "American-made" because not enough parts are manufactured in the U.S. or their assembly is mostly done elsewhere. The fact that the two "most American" of cars are Toyotas says it all. The American empire ain't what it used to be.

Speaking one's mind has its consequences, as we all know. My mother-in-law was fond of saying that when one says what one wants, one will hear what one does not want. Donald Trump is finding it out the hard way. People -- especially, corporate people -- are running away from him, for his outrageous remarks about Mexican immigrants. First, it was Univisión, the Spanish-language network. Now, it's NBC. Pretty soon, he won't be able to "get arrested." He simply went too far. People like him think that, because of their wealth and influence, they can get away with saying anything. They're wrong.

True to its rebellious nature and tradition, the South is up in arms about the same-sex-marriage decision in the U.S. The Bible Belt has begun to refuse to obey the "law of the land", as handed down by that Yankee court in Washington, D.C.  Governors, judges and other government officials are openly defiant of the ruling. Some are going so far as to not issuing any marriage license , even to heterosexual couples, as a form of protest. Before this is over, there will be blood.

Here's an interesting and very revealing statistic. The chief medical officer for the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Hospitals in the U.S. has said that they receive around 20,000 complaints about hospitals and other health-care institutions every year. "We substantiate about 67%  of the complaints through this process. That's a very high substantiation rate", she stated. Very high, indeed. Remember that the next time someone says that the U.S. has the best health care in the world, or some nonsense like that.

I hate to agree with someone like Marine Le Pen, but she's right: "The French need to realize that the United States - and by that I mean the U.S. government, not the American people - is not an allied country nor a friend." Jean-Jacques Urvoas is even more right: "Once again, we rediscover that the United States does not have allies, it merely has targets or vassals." That's right. As an empire, the U.S. does not see anyone else as its equal, deserving of or entitled to consideration and respect. Others only exist to do what the Americans want. There is no room for honest disagreement and the right to do what they think is in their best interest. The Americans pretend to have allies or friends, while distrusting everyone, seen as an enemy or potential enemy. They think that everybody is out to get them. That paranoia has produced the spying on foreign leaders, including the last three French presidents, that we keep finding out about. Although they apol...

Well-informed Puerto Ricans -- not too many of us, I'm afraid -- have known for years that the U.S. government has used us as guinea pigs for all sorts of experiments. From syphilis to agent orange, we have been exposed to all kinds of substances, so that, mainly, American armed forces are able to study their effects on humans. Now, we add mustard gas used on Puerto Rican soldiers, along with blacks and those of Japanese descent , in the jungles of Panama during WWII. Some 60,000 soldiers were exposed to mustard gas and other chemicals. Remember this the next time you hear the U.S. condemning another country for the use of chemical weapons.

In the wake of the Charleston church massacre, some people in the U.S. South are scrambling to pull down the Confederate flag, a symbol of the slavery era that has survived as part of a tradition of defiance and racism. Now that images of the shooter with the flag have surfaced, these Southerners want to distance themselves from the environment in which racial hatred has flourished all these years. So, it took this horrendous crime for them to realize what the flag stood for? This is just a hypocritical move on the part of all those who either supported the flag or were indifferent to it, knowing full well what it meant for black people in their communities.