11/10/2022

My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,

            Did you see the nice things that Jennifer Rubin wrote about your “new lease on life”? She noted that your remarks at the press conference yesterday were “remarkably humble” & made the observation that you are “uniquely able to tune out the noise, ignore the Twitter claptrap and deliver results that (your) party can show to the voters.”

            Are you ready for your trip? I’ve never been to any of the places that you will be visiting. I hope you get a couple of minutes to go to the beach in Sharm El-Sheikh. It’s too bad that you’ll be too busy talking to President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi about jailed activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah to go snorkeling.

            As you participate in COP 27, I encourage you to consider contributing to the “loss and damage” fund to compensate developing countries for climate impacts. We should also make sure we live up to prior commitments. Nigel Topping, of the UN, noted that we have not delivered our fair share of climate finance. He doesn’t want to hear you complaining about election cycles, explaining that is “insulting to every other country. Everybody’s politics is difficult.”

            Please give a call to Daw Zin Mar Aung, the foreign minister of the NUG. She’s the Burmese leader who didn’t get a chance to share her message of unity & peace because the UN kicked her out of their Town Hall event last week. Her speech was printed in the Irrawaddy & included lots of hopeful comments including, “in response to the military coup we have found common purpose across the many different ethnicities and religions of Myanmar. We have found that what unites us is in fact more important than the histories that divide us…. This is a unity built not on fear and the gun but on a firm belief in the ability of all the ethnicities of our country to build a new nation grounded in justice, equity, and peace.”

            BYBS,

            RCA