Last night, I had not one, but two friends tell me they wanted to go back to Yemen... right now. As crazy as that sounds, I do understand where they are coming from. Despite the tribalism that is starting to rip Yemen apart, there is something special about the place that makes so many westerners want to go back. As I remember, those two friends were more than a little crazy and ready to get the hell out of Yemen the last time I saw them. Another friend came and saw me three times in Yemen, each time he said it would be his last. He has been back since. An Australian came to Sana'a as part of her sweep up Eastern Africa expecting to stay 3 weeks. She was there 6 months. I was more than a little crazy by the time I left too, but I miss it.


I hope that whatever has been kept under wraps for 30 years can be sorted out somewhat quickly. I am dead set against any American involvement in whatever is to come in Yemen. Some say that Al Queda is too dangerous to allow them to get a foothold in Yemen. I'll point to their fearsome success of blowing up a guys underwear and the shipping ink cartridge "bombs." Their attempts in Yemen were pretty pathetic, the running joke was that none of their plans were coming to fruition because none of them wanted to give up their cell phone to act as a detonator. Yes, they attempted to bomb the American embassy, but they didn't get close and only managed to kill some Yemeni troops and a single, unlucky American. Their crowning moment happened in 2000 with the attack on the Cole. Yes, Americans were killed, but the damage could have been minimized if even basic security procedures were followed. When a missile cruiser is damaged at all and deaths occur from an attack from an inflatable boat, someone fell down on the job. The Unabomber was a far more effective terrorist and yet we didn't need a single Tomahawk missile or special ops group to get him. All of the same things that are being said about Yemen were also said about Somalia. As it turns out, a chaotic situation is not conducive to world-wide terror plots. Too much energy and time is spent on maintaining local power and influence. The crazier it is in Yemen, the less likely Queda will be able to mount any attacks at all. Even if they did, their attempts in recent memory have been laughable. 
More than any of that though, I don't want us doing anything that gives Yemenis reason to hate us. It''s bad enough that we supported Salah all these years. We have to let them figure things out on their own and find their own balance. Raining missiles down on them or attacking them will not make us the good guys. Don't give Queda recruiting fodder. I would like to go back one day, please don't make the US the enemy.

Sometimes I think that if more Christians and muslims got together to discuss religion, the better off we'd be. Think about this, every muslim I have ever talked to is unable to comprehend the trinity. They have been taught from a very early age that the trinity is equivalent to three distinct gods. Many muslims have told me that God can only be one thing, not three. I've always found this silly, after all God can be whatever He wants to be. If He chooses to present Himself in three ways, what's to stop Him? What I also found interesting was that even though they were adamant in their view of God being one thing only, they regularly think of Him in many different ways.

Curiously enough, many Christians do claim that God is only one thing. I don't know how many times I've heard "God is love." For the record, I think that anytime someone says that God is "x," you can follow it up with "Yes, but..." Anyway, whereas many Christians say that they have a single, tripartite God that is one thing (love), muslims have a single, monotonic god that is at least 99 things!

In Islamic tradition, there are 99 names of God. Yes, "the Lover" is included in there along with "the Majestic," "the Vast," "the Truth," and more. Interestingly enough, there are also names like "the Avenger," "the Destroyer," and "the Bringer of Death." I really do think that muslims have a broader view of God than most Christians do. They have both the nice and frightening aspects of Him in mind.

In the Christian world, there is a split. Typically, the evangelicals and more conservative Protestant groups concentrate in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation. This shows God as wrathful, jealous, judgmental, and lots of other scary things. On the other hand, the more moderate and liberal churches tend to concentrate on the Gospels only. That shows God as a forgiving, loving one. I find it rare to meet a Christian that can keep both views in mind at the same time.

That's really just a long winded way of saying that people are funny when it comes to how they think about God. We swear that He is one thing, and then proceed to break HIm into three or think about Him in 99 ways. In truth, there are an endless number of attributes to God. It would be nice if we could all talk together and appreciate how the other "side" thinks.

I'm sad to say that the crash of the Yemenia flight outside of Comoros doesn't really surprise me. I have heard various horror stories about how that airline is run and some of the things that have gone on from people on flights. Planes hitting things on the runway as they took off and passengers being seated in the cockpit being some of the more egregious examples. If this kind of thing goes on in sight of everyone, I can't imagine what goes on (or doesn't go on as the case may be) behind the scenes.

Bottom line? Don't fly Yemenia.

Another blog recently linked to me, they mistook me for a native Yemeni, LOL. I guess they didn't read very far into it. In any case, I was going to drop them a line and comment about his article, but I can't find a single way to get a hold of the person writing the blog. I can't even leave a comment unless I'm logged into a wordpress account. Not a good way to go about that, it severely limits interaction on the blog. If you are a the owner of tjyemen, drop me a line, I'd love to chat a bit...

This came from the website of the Yemen Observer, one of the English language newspapers in Yemen.



Her name is Boushra Almutawakel and she is a photographer in Yemen. Needless to say, a female photographer in Yemen is a rather unusual thing. You can read the article via the link above to read more about her. I want to say a few things about this picture.

There's no way to know what she meant by it but I find it quite powerful. Many people in the US and Europe see the hijab as a repressive aspect of Arab culture. Of course those people have probably never asked one of those women why they cover up. Part of it is simply dressing appropriately in that culture. A woman here in the US might have a reason to go topless in the US, but she would have to think about it long and hard before she did so. It just isn't done for the most part.

A more important part of the hijab is its religious importance for those women. By wearing the hijab, they reaffirm what they believe. Here in the US and in Europe, it is also a marker of her faith. Women who wear hijab here know that they are in some senses representing Islam so they better act accordingly. I wish more people that wore a cross would remember that as well.

The hijab is very powerful symbolism when taken in context of faith. Women are quite literally taking refuge under it and by extension Islam. That is why, in my opinion, wearing the American flag as hijab is so powerful. It is not just a religious statement, it is a political.

Of course, it is the kind of politics that I like. She is free to do this, the US constitution guarantees her freedom to not only make this statement but to be a Muslim as well. It is everything that makes this nation great.

She may have been making an "in your face" statement to Americans with it. She might have targeted those people that conflate Christianity and being American or it may have been some sort of statement about the so called War on Terror. I have no idea, but that's one of the great things about art, the artist does their thing and we are left to makes sense of it. What I love about it is going to piss some others off. How an American acts will probably be different than someone living in the middle east. The many different responses that can come from this is what makes it a great work in my opinion.

You go girl!

Technorati Tags:
freedom, gitmo, islam, middle east, politics, religious freedom, yemen, art

Wow, the Israel/Palistine conflict never ceases to amaze me. I like to think that most Americans think the say way I do about this, namely that both sides are a bit crazy. The Palestinian authority, Hamas, Arabs, and Muslims in general seem to react with shock and dismay when Israel attacks Gaza after rockets launched from Gaza had been raining down on Israel. Israelis and their supporters don't understand what all of the anger is about after they kill far more civilians than combatants... The cycle never seems to end, part of me wonders if they want it to end...

I was reading through some of the reactions from official spokesperson types and feeling even more angst about the situation. Predictably, there was a lot of empty talk about how Hamas needs to stop attacking Israel and how Israel needs to stop being so heavy handed. Of course, there was also the blanket condemnation of Israel (without acknowledging any of the mitigating circumstances) from the usual suspects.

The best reaction, IMO, was from the Vatican. "Hamas is a prisoner to a logic of hate, Israel to a logic of faith in force as the best response to hate.
"One must continue to search for a different way out, even if that may seem impossible."

It does indeed seem impossible...

I get the occasional email asking me about studying in Yemen and it occurs to me that I have not put up a post with that info in one place, so here goes...

Yemen is a great place to study Arabic. Everyone speaks it (after a fashion), the people are really nice, and it is cheap. For us western types, it is also an amazing cultural immersion.

The majority of Arabic language schools are in Sana'a, that's where I stayed. I went to CALES in the old city. They are right in the center of the old city, so there is plenty of "atmosphere." I took private lessons because that is the best way to learn and being in Yemen, I could afford them. When I started out, I didn't know any Arabic at all. I was paired up with a teacher that knew English well enough to explain the basic stuff. Some people prefer having a teacher that speaks Arabic only. I dunno, I think I would have been too intimidated at first with all Arabic, but I do think it was useful later on. In any case, you can have it either way, you choose. All of my teachers were very good, but I had to keep some of them on point. I got the feeling that I was teaching him more about the US than I was learning Arabic, so I changed teachers. All of the teachers there were very knowledgeable about Arabic, I never felt that they didn't know what they were talking about. I think they all have degrees in the teaching of Arabic...

There are other schools there as well. I have heard good things about SIAL and a couple of the others, but I don't really know much about them. My gut feeling is that you can get good instruction in any of them. A lot of people also get private lessons (outside of an institute) once they make some contacts. That will cost less and be more flexible, but at the cost of not having any sort of document about your attainment level like CALES has...

Living in Yemen is part of the appeal of going there. All of the schools offer accommodations. If you're there for a short while, it's probably best to use them. CALES has two main buildings. The big one, and where most of the students live, is right next to the school right downtown. I lived in another building out towards the Sileah. EIther are fine...

If you're going to stay longer than a few months, it pays to find your own place. Often times, there will be other students looking for housemates, just ask around. Foreigners tend to pay more than the locals do for housing, but it is still a much better deal than living at the school. I was paying $200 a month at both the school and the apartment. Of course I got my own apartment for that as compared to a single (large) room and a shared bathroom and kitchen...

Living in the old city makes it easy to get to class, that's the main reason I lived there. I knew that if it was difficult to get to class, I wouldn't go sometimes. There are some big issues with living in the old city though... The buildings tend to be quite old, and things like plumbing, electrical stuff, etc. can be a bit hit or miss. There is also the noise. The school buildings tend to be quite noisy, there is a lot of noise coming off of the street. Buildings in the old city tend to be very close to one another with very narrow streets, so it can sound like people are in the room with you. The trick is to live a little higher, if you can get up three stories or more, the noise level drops off quite a bit. I got lucky with my apartment, it had a walled courtyard that separated me from a lot of the noise.

If I were to this again, I would probably live in the newer part of the city. No, it isn't as beautiful, but it is much easier to fine open restaurants, grocery stores, and anything else. If you want something to eat at 4 O'clock in the old city, all you're going to find is french fries for the most part. It'll take you upwards of half an hour to get to someplace that's open in the new city... The apartments in the new city tend to have better plumbing and easier access to "high speed" internet.

The other potential advantage to living in the newer part of the city is that if you work, it will be easier to get to your job. Most native English speakers can find a job teaching English. You should be able to find a place offering $10 an hour with a little looking around. That doesn't sound like much, but that's doing pretty well in Yemen...

Anyway, I encourage anyone that wants to learn Arabic to check out Yemen. It is cheaper than many other places, and the instruction is top notch. If you feel that it isn't right for you, it's really easy to hop a plane to Syria, Egypt, etc. Drop me a line if you have any other questions!

Here's the Daily show's take on the Mumbai mess (at the end, don't know why there's so much space...)I think that's hilarious, I really do. John basically summed up my feelings when I was watching that on the news, I was yelling along too. There's only one little problem, this violence was not about establishing a world wide caliphate. This was about Kashmir.

Usually, when something big like this happens, there are political motives rather than religious ones at play. The Kashmir issue is a political one although the parties involved are split along religious lines. The same could be true of the day to day demands and goals of Al-Queda. They want foreigners to leave the Saudi peninsula, they want the US to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. Those are all political issues. They use religion to attract and recruit people for political ends. We shouldn't fall into the same trap.

There is indeed religious violence in the world. Men killing woman because they aren't wearing hijab, wackos blowing up abortion clinics, etc. are all examples. Perhaps the attackers in Mumbai were indeed personally motivated by religious extremism, but the aim of the operation was to try to cause a conflict in Kashmir.

Here's my bet. I bet that if these people were referred to as Kashmiri separatists instead of Islamic extremists, we in the US would not have heard nearly as much about it. We're more willing to stomach political violence than religious violence. That's why Hitler is so universally reviled while Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-il and Mao are not thought about in the slightest.

Whenever we hear the media trumpet religious violence, we should take a step back and ask ourselves if the aim of that violence is actually political in nature. Violence should always be decried of course, but let's blame the right problems, shall we?

I learned to love pomegranates when I was over in Yemen. I bought a few, but they were kind of a pain to eat. I ate them over the sink by cutting them in half and then just spreading the seeds out and gobbling them down. The problem was that method was messy and they stain like crazy. I ended up getting the fresh juice at the juice stands and loving it. I also combined it with fresh orange juice for an especially wonderful beverage...

When I went to someone's house to eat, they had pomegranates out of the fruit and we ate them with spoon. Much more civilized, and a hell of a lot easier...

So how do you eat pomegranates? Well, you could try the sink method above, but I don't recommend it unless you're wearing dark clothes... Here's a good way to do it. Quarter them in a sink. There's a lot of juice, and it stains, so the sink is your friend... Then, you can spread open the quarters underwater and simply brush the fruit off of the pith with your fingers. The fruit sinks to the bottom of the bowl and the peel and pith floats! After you have done that, you can drain the water and munch away! You can also add them to salads, ice cream, or even put them in the blender for a great juice... I eat the seeds. They're good fiber and I honestly don't taste them really, they have a very weak nut/seed taste that is totally overwhelmed by the juice.

The fruit inside should be anywhere from a pink to a deep red and be sweet. There is a significant amount of tannin in there, so sometimes you may not be up to eating an entire pomegranate. I keep my fruit in an old cool whip container. I got about 10 oz. from two fruits! Eat them while they're here! Enjoy!

I heard a clip of this speech the other day on the radio and I realized that I had never heard the entire thing. I made the effort and I'm glad I did. It's quite the history lesson. It's also good to hear the man himself instead of relying on fuzzy memories and modern critics. Listen to it here:



The first 30 seconds or so is a blurb about who is hosting the file, the speech begins after that. This wasn't that long ago, a little over 20 years, but my how things have changed! Some of the more interesting bits IMO:

1) "The Soviet Union is pointing nuclear weapons at all of the capitals of Europe..." Wow, doesn't that take you back? We were worried about nuclear war, and for good reason. Reagan has the reputation of being a war monger, but listen and you'll hear a man that felt that he was doing what had to be done. he certainly didn't seem to relish the arms race...

2) SDI. Yes, I can hear all of you groan from here. The "Star Wars" project was an infamous government waste of money. It was a waste insofar as it didn't actually produce any sort of defense anything and cost an amazing amount of money. Believe it or not, there are more than a few historians that credit the SDI with the beginning of the end of the arms race. How? As early as 1968, Reagan had written that the best way to make the Soviet Union collapse was to make them spend a lot of money. His reading of Hayek made him realize that the Soviet system was inherently inefficient (despite all sorts of people, including a fair number of economists thinking otherwise). The American system could absorb many more losses and still function fairly well. History has born out both Hayek's and Regan's vision. SDI didn't have to work, in fact I'm sure that Regan knew it wouldn't work. All he had to do was convince the Soviets that there was a way to make it work given enough money. The Soviets couldn't start that kind of research and keep up the ongoing arms race. It was the first crack in their armor, SDI is what made it clear that the US could afford much more than the Soviets, and they started to change...

3) Freedom. I know that use of "freedom" in a political speech is out of favor these days due to dub-ya's mistakes in the name of it. But really, what Reagan said and what W has promised isn't all that different, so why is Reagn's speech moving and W sounds like a buffoon? I think that it was primarily what was causing the lack of freedom. Socialism was an organized, powerful, directed movement against liberty. The USSR was an easy target, and they were genuinely repressing people that wanted things to be different. Today is much different. Except for a few sad holdouts (N. Korea, Cuba), socialism is dead. There are still governments that repress their citizens of course, but none of them are large enough to pose a world-wide threat. They are also not large enough, or powerful enough to consistently fire up Americans... The freedom that W talked about was freedom at the point of a gun. Yes, Saddam was a monster, but that entire area seems to be disposed to autocratic rulers. My time in Yemen made it clear to me that they were not convinced a democracy like the US's was in their best interests. Most of them preferred having a king...

In other words, the lack of freedom in the middle east was not so much dependent on governments (although there are more than a few repressive ones over there) as it was ingrained in their culture. If you ask them, they will of course claim to desire freedom, but that word has very different connotations to them than to people in the US usually. So the thing that limits freedom is not a monolithic, militarily powerful entity in that part of the world. It is instead diffuse, ingrained, and largely beneath the surface. How do you fight that? Trick question, you can't "fight" that, you have to cultivate freedom.

So in short, I think that a lot of what caused W problems was the fact that there wasn't a single thing that he could fight and "win" against. Today's problems with freedom are quite a bit more complex than in years past. This last administration has been an absolute disaster in that regard. I really hope that Obama can get a feel for the real obstacles to freedom and act accordingly.