I got rid of my useless home page and went ahead and put the blog front and center. It will eliminate one page load that doesn’t do anything. I hear that it also comes up faster on google’s searches if the home page is updated more often. Anyway, I keep tweaking this site, I hope to be able to stop messing with it soon…
I may survive this place yet, I went to a thoroughly western coffee place today. I don’t drink coffee, but they do have cheesecake (actually it’s very good!), brownies, etc. I enjoy the Arabic sweets I’ve been eating, but it’s nice to have some comfort food sometimes. I’ll probably go there whenever I end up on Hada street looking for dessert. I also got a tip on a place way down on Hada that sells bacon, ham, and some other pork stuff. This is just hearsay at this point, but I am really excited. Decent pizza, cheesecake, and now possibly pork, life here is looking up!
The last time I went to the Indian place, they brought the check (Al heesab) on top of a bed of what I believe were anise seeds. I asked him what they were and he indicated that they were for counteracting my onion, garlic, curry breath. I chewed on several and they tasted like licorice, that’s anise, right? I happen to enjoy licorice, so I thought that they were rather tasty. They did a remarkable job of neutralizing my breath as well. I expected them to be stronger, maybe they were only weak as compared to my recently consumed curry:-) I’ll have to pick up some of those seeds…
There is a flurry of activity going on after the first “Invest in Yemen” extravaganza. Some of the things sound quite good and I’m impressed by what has been proposed. One of the best things is the elimination of an entire division of the government. I don’t remember the exact names of the departments, but there are currently two different departments that foreign investors have to go through to get the required permissions. The president has make it clear that he wants what he calls a “Single window” approach. I think that that is his goal, to be able to go to one department (and perhaps one person) and take care of everything that relates to opening a business here. To start, he has ordered (not really sure how this works and who has jurisdiction over what) the elimination of one of the departments so that there is only one that is responsible for these sorts of things. That is going to be huge, making things simpler is much more attractive. It also removes a potential layer of corruption. In an ideal world, those positions in the old department would just be done away with and the government shrunk a little. My cynical view is that those people will probably just be reassigned to other parts of the government.
They are also going to lower tax rates (although they want to impose a sales tax), have generous land privileges (they will just give you the land if the capital investment is over $10 million), and try to get the weapons thing under control (see earlier post). One of the more refreshing things has been the admission of the amount of corruption and the toll it has taken on the economy and the investment world. Admitting there is a problem is a first step… only 11 more steps to go, LOL. A recent article in the paper talks about how the military police will start to crack down on traffic incidents involving military vehicles. It has become a bit of a problem, more than a few military people flout the laws, cause accidents, or otherwise just bully traffic. The police have also admitted that a lot of the vehicles that have the blue police license plates aren’t police vehicles at all, they only have them so that they can get through customs check points. Once again, they didn’t give any details on how they hope to combat this problem, but it is refreshing to hear them admit some of their problems. Here’s hoping that it is the start of a real reform that will move this place forward. Yemen, I’m giving you a break for a while, but don’t regress!:-)
I went back to the Indian place tonight. Had a ton of food, and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. I have also found a new, cheap way of getting there. I can also get to Luchiano’s place that way. This is extremely cool because it takes my round trip from 1000 riyals to 40. I win!
I read yet another editorial going on and on about the American/Zionist hegemony, the failure of Iraq, and the danger that the US presents to the region. Look, I’ll be the first one to say that Bush and his buddies should be brought up on charges for this whole mess. We shouldn’t have gone in, if we were bound to go in we should have had a plan, and we have helped out iran considerably in the power balance scene. But for God’s sake, there isn’t any proof of us wanting to annex the place, and while we may be guilty of letting the genie out of the bottle, we are certainly not “responsible” for the Iraqis blowing each other up. The editorial claims that this has been one of the worst catastrophes of human history and that Bush and his neo-con buddies are just as bad as the nazis. First off, the author doesn’t seem to have a very good grasp of history. Even my history challenged self could probably come up with 50 worse things that have happened, someone that is into history could probably come up with a list of a 100 pretty easily. Yes, a lot of people have died, yes, the US killed many civilians during the initial wave. That’s what happens in wars, it’s the prime reason not to engage in them. But that number surely doesn’t compare with the carnage that Iraqis have inflicted on themselves. Say what you want, but the US does not target pilgrims, we do not target holy sites, we do not intentionally stir up sunni/shia emotions. As for the Nazi comparison, that’s not really fair to either side. Bush is no Hitler, I do not like him, but he has no “final solution” in mind, he (or the rest of the US) is not interested in annexing countries or expanding the borders of the US. On the flip side, the Nazis were organized, had a plan, and while they made tactical mistakes, they rarely made strategic ones.
Yes, Bush screwed up and dragged us all down with him. He has done incalculable damage to our foreign policy and wasted trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. But for the last time, that’s about all he did. There is no Zionist conspiracy (Israel’s most likely sneaky wish? They would have it so people would stop bugging them.), there was never a desire or a plan to “own” Iraq, and for God’s sake, we have nothing against Muslims (although you guys are really trying to make us that way.). The US now has a very well deserved bad reputation as a bully and meddler. The reaction of Iraqis blowing each other up and then blaming it on the US has solidified many American’s view that everyone over here is out of their freaking minds. That includes Israel incidentally. At this point, I think the people in the middle east will get their wish, I am sure that it will be a long time before America sticks its nose into this part of the world again. I am also sure that the US will then be blamed for whatever bad things happen over here because we weren’t here.
Sheesh, rant over.
Yes, that has always been an oxymoron, but the government is going to attempt to limit and control weapon ownership soon. The idea is that so called medium and heavy weapons will be banned altogether whereas “personal” weapons will be allowed with a permit. Pistols and kalashnikovs are considered personal, so I guess medium weapons would be higher caliber guns and heavy would be tanks and things that can take out tanks and airplanes.
This is going to be difficult. Tribal traditions place a lot of importance on weapons. Some Sheiks have their own armies and are at least as well equipped as the government’s army. I’m pretty sure they are the real targets of the new laws. I can’t imagine trying to disarm the Bedouins, that just wouldn’t happen…
We’ll see how much political conflict there will be over this. These laws are a pretty straightforward defanging operation, and people have every reason to be nervous about this government subjugating them. Here’s the thing, Yemen really needs to get the weapon thing under control. It isn’t as though there’s a lot of gun violence, but government control is vital to allowing the country to grow. People have to be under the same justice system, the same laws, and be on the same page if they are to improve economically. Right now, the “justice” system consists primarily of scattered tribes and their customs. Sheiks have their own jails, and revenge is an accepted way of settling conflicts. I think that Somalia has made this government a little nervous. Yemen is in much better shape than their neighbor across the horn, but one can imagine things getting bad over the years. I’m not usually a fan of a stronger government, but this is a case where the government’s weakness is holding back the development of the country. I wish them luck…
I got my Chinese visa today and my brain has immediately checked out on vacation. That’s not good because I still have a couple of weeks to go. No problems at the embassy today, they were even open early(!?), there was no line, things went very smoothly. I guess practice makes perfect:-).
I’ve changed a few things about the workings of the blog, I think the RSS feed is a different one. Those of you who were using RSS, you might want to check into that…