I’m a month or so into the project, and I’m not convinced that I’m going to keep it. I’ve been introduced to the joys of grooming as opposed to shaving it all off, what a pain! I almost said the hell with it yesterday, I had the razor in my hand, but I held off. Later that night Tami (a newish American student) told me that I needed to keep with it. She asked me how else was I going to get my “terrorist beard?” Hmmm, I’ll see how it goes, gotta blend in, right:-)
Isaac
There has been some new information brought to light on the Yemen nuclear situation in a recent news article. You can read the original here. The company that wants to do the work for Yemen is based in Houston, Texas. It is called the Powered Corporation. It is owned by two guys, one American and one Yemeni. It looks like the Yemeni partner and the Yemeni electricity minister were classmates in college in the US. That’s not necessarily a big deal, but in the big picture it sounds bad… The Yemeni partner used to work for a power utility and was fired for falsifying his credentials. He was also charged with fraud against the shareholders. He is also accused of stealing a lot of money from another company based in the middle east. It also turns out that the Powered corporation has never completed a project and was only registered two months ago! Folks, this contract is worth 15 billion dollars and it reeks of corruption and/or of scam artists. Anyone who is familiar with the way the government works here will instantly assume that there is something fishy going on. I really, really, really hope that both the Yemeni, and especially the US law enforcement people look into this. In the US, this deal would be killed immediately after PR like this, I’m not so sure about it here in Yemen…
It seems as though every issue of the local papers have a story on corruption. It is a problem, there’s no doubt about that. The reporters always end their piece with a lament that the government is not doing enough to combat corruption. They clamor for new laws to break the back of the corruption here. Maybe new laws need to be passed, but not the ones that they are thinking of.
The result of too many laws being passed to “protect us” can be seen in the US. Many people (myself included) do not like the amount of influence that large corporations, people with money, and special interest groups have with lawmakers and the resulting laws that favor them. But what to do? Many people want laws aimed at corporations and special interest groups in order to prevent this from happening. The problem with that approach is that as long as lawmakers are going to make laws that affect special interest groups, the groups will have the incentive to influence the lawmakers. This isn’t always a money thing either, often times it is votes that the highly motivated groups promise the politician and lawmakers will always respond to that.
The underlying assumption is that these problems come up because there are evil, greedy people in the government. I do think that’s part of it, but it is not the driving force. People need to understand that government is a human institution and it is naive to think that it will work in the way that we think it should or that it will always do what is in the public’s best interest. Humans respond to incentives, and politicians have a set of incentives that are similar to everyone else’s in some ways, but very different in others. One set of incentives that they have is to be reelected. This causes them to do many things that cause problems for many many people. Things like farm subsidies, price controls, “anti-rich” regulations, and maybe most noticeably deficit spending are examples of them doing what they need to do to get reelected at everyone’s expense. It is the incentive structure that we have now that makes lawmakers so responsive to special interests and very few lawmakers are able to resist those temptations. Term limits are an ideal way to try to combat this, if they are not worried about being reelected, they have a much better chance of not responding to those incentives to be reelected.
Corruption has a similar cause. It is the incentives to be corrupt that are the main problems. Evil people will be evil most of the time, but if regular people are tempted to be evil, only a certain number will be able to resist. There are many possible incentives to be corrupt (it may be the easiest way to get money, it may be the only stable way to live comfortably, it may be the only way to succeed in that country) and those are what need to be addressed if you want to make a dent in the corruption problem. In a country like this, there is also the additional problem that the ability to be corrupt is a strong incentive to join the government! If new laws are going to be passed in order to combat these problems, they will inevitably need to be ones that limit the power of government. The trick is to create the incentives to get those laws passed. Political economy is dicy, and it has the pronounced effect of making one very cynical about the political process in general…
Thinking a little more about this, I think I’ve come up with some possible motivations for Yemen’s pursuing nuclear power. I’ve talked about this before here and here. There’s no question that Yemen needs more power but I wondered why they didn’t go for the much more affordable (to build) natural gas power plants. I think the answer comes from their goals of installing desalinization plants. Yemen is facing a sever water crisis, mostly caused by the wasteful agriculture methods (see here). Desalinization takes quite a bit of power, and power costs money. Nuclear is, I believe, one of the most cost effective methods of power production, the government here always takes great pains to make sure that people understand that the nuclear power will be cheaper than the current production methods. I think that they are trying to kill two birds with one stone.
And it might work, IF getting the Uranium here isn’t a problem, IF the price of Uranium doesn’t start to go up like other fuels have and IF the public and opposition political parties can wait that long. It is expected that the first power plant will come online in 2012. If my calculations are correct, that will make up for the power deficit that they currently have. They will then have to build more power plants to provide for the desalinization plants. And of course they will have to build the desalinization plants… That timeline will not head off the water crisis that is expected to hit here very soon. It is estimated that Sana’a will run out of water by 2015, and other cities and rural areas will probably run out sooner. Ta’izz is already experiencing water problems… People are agitating for change right now. I actually think the government is doing what it can, but nothing will be immediate. If real elections are held and the current ruling party is thrown out (I’m not holding my breath), I’m not sure that whoever comes in will have such a long term view. Investing in infrastructure is always a long term project, but it is made more difficult in third world countries by impatience inspired by the current conditions.
A while back, my cousin asked me if I observed Lent, and if not, why not. I don’t. The reason I don’t is that I simply do not have the background needed for it to make any sense to me. The same thing goes for Ramadan. I don’t fast. The muslims are supposed to go from sunrise to sunset without any food or water, sex, tobacco, or any other luxury. I could do the food part, but I really can’t imagine doing without water in place that is so dry. People that are sick, women that have their period, young children, and “travellers” are exempt from the fasting as I understand it. I think the women are supposed to make up the lost fasting time afterwards. I also believe that the traveling exemption was made in a time when people travelled by camel if they were lucky, and more often they travelled on foot. I don’t really think airplanes count. As with every religious observance, some adhere to the strict letter (as they interpret it) and some go more by the spirit of the law. They cheat a little IMO, they change their eating habits significantly, they eat “breakfast” at 3 or 4 AM, have their first big meal after the evening call to prayer, and usually eat late as well. I have noticed that the English language papers use the word breakfast literally, when they talk about breakfast during Ramadan, they mean break fast, it’s the meal right after the sun sets, not their first one of the day.
I fasted by accident yesterday. I did drink water, but I didn’t have anything to eat until 7PM or so. I had expected to have a nice, big bowl of cereal when I woke up. It turns out that the milk that I thought I bought the other day was actually buttermilk… YECHH! That was a bit of a surprise. When people ask me if I’m fasting, I reply, “La, anna mahseehee meskeen fahkat.” Which translates to “No, I am only an (unfortunate) Christian…” That usually will make people grin and avoid the ensuing “why” conversation. I’m still a little fuzzy on the actual “why” of Ramadan for muslims. I have heard that it is to make people experience what it is like to be poor, but that doesn’t really seem like a good fit, they gorge themselves at night. I assume that it is like the Christian fasting, it is used to hone one’s vision of oneself and to keep God in mind. I’ve only heard one muslim tell me this, and she’s not even in this country anymore. I’ll ask around some more here, but as usual, I don’t know if I’ll find an answer that makes a lot of sense here.
OK, I have read that the nuclear power plants that will be built here will be run by Americans with Yemeni forces securing them. That makes me feel better, but I’m still not convinced that it is the best idea. If the same crews, or at least the same quality of crews that run plants in the US run the ones here, I really won’t worry too much about a Chernobyl type of incident. On the other hand, political instability is still an issue, as is the ability of Yemen’s forces to secure these places. It is common knowledge that bribes can be made to get just about whatever you want here. It seem probable that a wealthy backer could get access to the plants with some well placed money, either to steal stuff, or just do some damage. In any case, I feel a little better, but we should still be cautious.
I’m getting sick and tired of all of this saber rattling from the US. The president of Iran (I’m not going to attempt to spell his name) recently spoke at Columbia University. The guy’s a jerk, and he has some views that are indefensible. Be that as it may, Columbia did invite him to speak, so I find the remarks of Columbia’s president to be way out of line. He called Iran’s president a “petty dictator” which really showed his ignorance of Iran and it’s political situation. Iran elected him, and as much as he might want to be a dictator, everyone knows that the real power is with the clerics. Any problems you might have with Iran (and there is plenty to be upset about) can be laid at the clerics feet.
What is really frosting me is the fact that the US has never, and probably will never admit to any of the reasons why the Iranian government does not like the US. The US had an instrumental role in overthrowing the elected leader of Iran and installing the Shah in 1953. By all accounts, the Shah was an awful ruler, but he wasn’t a communist! That’s all the US cared about. In 1978, the Iranians deposed the Shah, took over our embassy, and held the embassy workers hostage for over a year. Now that’s pretty bad, but I still gotta say that overthrowing their government and installing a dictator was probably a worse thing… Later on we backed Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran. As far as I can tell, we did this mostly out of spite, still stinging from the whole embassy thing. The Iranians know what a monster Saddam was, he used chemical weapons against the Iranians while we were backing him. That war was the equivalent of WWI for Iran, they lost an entire generation, the number of casualties was awful. The US is currently backing an organization called the MKO. They have been responsible for numerous bombings in both Iran and Iraq. By any other measure they would be considered a terrorist organization, but we refuse to allow the Iranians to strike their base of operations that is inside Iraq.
What’s pretty clear to me is that the US has systematically screwed around with the Iranians for decades, and for what? For the Iranian’s retaliatory storming of our embassy and holding our people hostage? Is that enough of a reason to continue to hound and badger them? What danger do they pose to us? What danger have they posed to us? It seems to me that we could go a long ways towards a peaceful middle east (that is the goal, right?) if we simply recognized our belligerence and apologized for our meddling throughout the years. We don’t have to forgive them for whatever “terrorist” activities they have been supporting, but just putting our past sins on the table will allow us to get past the whole, “You are evil!” method of diplomacy. It would also help get rid of some of the smell of hypocrisy surrounding the US actions over here. In my mind, the Iranians have every reason not to trust us, and they have done very little to us to deserve the scorn and judgement that we heap on them…
Well, I think I was right about the corn subsidies screwing things up. The latest copy of the Yemen Observer has a representative of some trade group defending the rise in wheat prices. He mentions that the EU, Russia, and Australia had lower than expected harvests, but he says that the corn subsidies caused a decline in the US production of wheat. I know this isn’t “proof,” but I think that it shows corroboration of my theory. The representative expects the market to correct itself early next year, but until then, we’re going to have to live with higher wheat prices…
Our downstairs neighbor invited us to dinner the other night. They are a muslim couple from South Africa and have rented out the entire bottom floor so that she doesn’t have to be covered up all the time. After he got back from the mosque, we broke the fast with him. It was quite good, biyarini, some juice, and some other little finger foods. Here’s the thing, we all knew that his wife was the one who prepared all of this, but we never saw her. We expected this, the men and women simply do not mix, if I go to someone’s house I not only do not talk to any women, but I never see them. I’m almost (almost) used to this. The thing I still have problems with is that it is impolite to even mention the wife. I cannot compliment his wife’s cooking, cannot inquire about her health, and I especially can’t ask what her name is. I have to pretend that she doesn’t exist.
I mentioned to Diana (a fellow American student) that I am still uncomfortable with this sort of arrangement but that I figured that I would have to get used to it. She said no, I should never get used to it. I think she’s right. It’s one thing to be accommodating to a culture, it’s quite another to go against your beliefs. I’m not going to piss anyone off, but I will still think of the wives, even when I’m not supposed to…