For those tourists and business travelers lucky enough to arrive after 6 PM at our well-organized international airport where everybody is friendly and speaks English, our innovative authorities have a special attraction to further enhance the Bananama experience.

Say, you get here and rent a car. After having gone through endless security checks, passport control, X-ray machines and what not at the various airports, you get to be received by a welcome committee of our National Police! Between the airport and the highway to town this institution, headed by a wannabe Kojak whose only experience vaguely related to police work is that he knows everything about drawing a line of coke, sets up a checkpoint every single night to check your drivers license. Or maybe that other genius in our government, tourism minister Ruben Blades whose only experience in tourism is having been a tourist, thought this one up? Whichever it is, with some luck, you get to wait about 20 minutes before being greeted by one of those fearless police officers or - with even more luck - shaken down for a bribe. Isn't this just awesome? You were already tired of traveling, now you can get even more tired because of Bananama's proverbial hospitality. Panama, it will never leave you!

We knew it. Ruben Blades is a human rights violator and so are these tourists in their Hawaii shirts and baseball caps. Tourism projects (and other projects by friends of Torrijos et al such as mines and hydroelectric dams) mushrooming all over the country cause displacement of citizens and violate their right to a place to live. It also damages the environment, as we're seeing in Tonosi today. We don't make that up, it's in a new report published by the Panamanian Human Rights Network which unites about 32 civil organizations and groups. They made the report because the government doesn't comply with its obligation to file annual reports with the UN about Human Rights. We the People!

The report spans the period from 1992 to 2008 and lists numerous other creative ways the Bananama officials have developed to trample our rights. They don't protect refugees. There is discrimination against the handicapped. Children rights are violated. And of course the famous prisons system. The human rights situation in Panama is, in short, a big fucking mess and they haven't even listed everything. Does anyone in the government care? Ruben Blades has a new album out, did you know that?

Time for celebrity news. We thought that Blades was doing these shows because deep down he doesn't really like being a glorified tourist guide. Not true. He needs the money to pay his former friend and salsa partner Willie Colón.

The latter claims Blades owes him $115,000 related to his participation in a concert in Puerto Rico in 2003.

Blades denies that. But Colón says one shouldn't believe Blades because he never tells the truth. Given Blades' notorious secrecy and general bad manners and because he's unscrupulous, we simply believe Colón. Pay the man!

Could Ruben Blades be our next president? We don't think so, because the gifted Minister of Salsa Tourism is being smeared in the local press. A Canadian journalist, Patricia Alvarez, came all the way down here for an interview and was brushed off by the Blades people. "Hostile!" screams El Siglo. "Blades is rude to journalists!"

This is of course true; Blades is rude to anyone who wants to ask him questions or disagrees with him. Stardom, fame, above it all, you know. But, is Blades trying to unscrupulously damage our country? We wouldn't dare to harbor such thoughts, also because we know better: Ruben Blades is busy busy busy sending emails to promote his show (sponsored by Sennheiser) and sell T-shirts! It's all on his website which, we have to admit, looks a whole lot better than that crappy IPAT vehicle.

Most of us have seen the new TV ads from Ruben Blades' IPAT praising Panama as a cheap destination if you, say, go on vacation to buy a flatscreen TV. No, of course that makes no sense, but he doesn't listen. The Argentineans are much smarter and understand what the American tourist wants. Nada de cheap TV's, cheap coke is what makes them fly south!

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