Note from Bhutan's Chancellor

On behalf of the King and peoples of Bhutan I wish to express our concern and worry for the corruption and human rights abuses in the USA. It is our sincere hope that you hold a national dialogue between the government and the opposition. I also regret to inform you that Americans trying to flee will be turned back at the Bhutan border. 

I also wish to inform you that King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the 5th Druk Gyalpo. has agreed to visit the USA and attend, together with your President Trump, a cricket game between the USA and Bhutan national teams, to establish closer ties between the two countries. 

King Jigme and Queen Jetsun Pema 

Queen Jetsun Pema and young Prince Jigme will visit the USA at the same time, with Disney World, Universal Studios, and a Las Vegas circus show being the highlights of their visit to top US cultural attractions. 

The King has expressed his wish to avoid interfering in internal US politics, and prefers to see all dissidents kept away from their Highnesses’s presence. However, he has agreed to a private audience with opposition leader Scarlett Johanson.

Note: Bhutan is a key importer of USA coal, used clothes, and empty shipping containers. It is interested in increasing exports to the USA of Bhutanese products to reduce the current trade deficit between the two nations. Should this trend fail to be reversed his highness is considering a 20 % import tax on all USA products.

Further Reading: Diary of a Time Traveling Antiwar Protestor

2001 speech by a Palestinian woman

Adnan Hashrawi gave this speech at a Human Rights conference in Durban, South Africa, in late August of 2001.  I consider this one of the best political speeches ever given by a woman. 

Map of Israel and whatever is Palestine 

Given the abuses of Palestinian rights we continue to see, and as small measure to balance the damage caused by Trump's ugly behavior, I've decided to post it here. Speech follows:

Sisters and Brothers,

From Jerusalem, from the heart of Palestine, a land besieged, and repeatedly violated by a most brutal Israeli military occupation, I have come to join you today.  From the midst of the people of Palestine, a tortured nation, guilty only of an unwavering commitment to freedom, dignity, and independence, I have come to join you today. From the depths of unredeemed history, I have come to join you today.  I represent a narrative of exclusion, denial, racism, and national victimization, but I also come with a message of hope, redemption, and historical vindication embodied in the spirit and the will of a people that has refused to succumb to all forces of oppression, violence, cruelty, and injustice.

In convening this conference, you are the authentic embodiment of courage in withstanding the forces of domination, subjugation, and enslavement.  We stand together today to launch a truly global mission of  empowerment and solidarity, to give voice to the silenced, to give a reality to the invisible, to give recognition to the denied, and to give credence to the victimized.

In times of adversity, and during the darkest nights of the soul, we look to you for affirmation and action as an antidote to the failure of established power systems, including governments  a failure characterized by self- interest, power politics, absence of will, and impotence.  I take this opportunity to recognize before you those valiant men and women who had left the comfort of their homes in Europe and the US and joined us in Palestine to provide popular protection, a human shield in the face of Israeli abuses, violence, and violations against the Palestinian people.

I come to you today with a heavy heart leaving behind a nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing Nakba [catastrophe], as the most intricate and pervasive expression of persistent colonialism, apartheid, racism, and victimization.

More than half a century ago [53 years], the Palestinians as a people were slated for national obliteration, cast outside the course of history, their identity denied, and their very human cultural and historical reality suppressed.  We became victims of the myth of a land without a people for people without a land whereby the West sought to assuage its guilt over its horrendous anti-Semitism by the total victimization of a whole nation.  Zionism sought to implement its agenda of exclusivity by usurping not only the lands and rights of the Palestinians, but also by confiscating their utterance

Venezuela's Currency and its new Syrian Vicepresident

Nicolás just fired his Central Bank President, Nelson Merentes, because the guy botched the issuance of new larger denomination bills. Inflation is so high the largest bill will be the 20 thousand bolivar note. The largest note has been the 100 bolivar, now worth 2 1/2 cents. 

Merentes wasn't blamed for the 800-1000% inflation rate, because Maduro was told inflation is caused by a webpage run by an old Venezuelan who works at Home Depot in Atlanta, Georgia (this is for real, it's not a joke).

The guy Maduro blames for causing Venezuela's hyperinflation   

When the government came up with their plan to switch notes they also created regulations to force people to use electronic banking. But poor people don't have bank accounts, Internet, etc. I remember reading articles by economic gurus a couple of months ago that Maduro's plan was based on the success of what Modi was doing in India. 

The ex-central bank president, Merentes, will now retire to his beachside fiefdom at Naiguatá, where he has been keeping a stable of teenage girls who have had plastic surgery to enhance their goodies. 

Also in the news, the Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled the Constitution was wrong, and that Syrian citizen and executive Vice President, Tarek el Aisami, is eligible to be president.  

Meanwhile I hear Mr Bernie Sanders is still praising the Castros and the Bolivarian revolution, and the Pope keeps asking for world leaders to stop global warming. 

Trump versus Chavez

The Venezuelan political system was never as strong as the USA system. Comparing the two is like comparing a chicken to a rhinoceros. I also sense that, behind his populist language, Trump has a very sophisticated perception of the world. Maybe this perception doesn’t jibe with the western ruling elite’s, but it makes sense to me.

The point where I’m really disconnected from Trumpism is the proposal to move the USA embassy to Jerusalem. But I really like his proposal to ratchet down tension with Russia, that’s a key move the USA needs to make before it can move forcefully to deal with the mess Bush and Obama created in the Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan.