Ta'izz
idlewords.com
idlewords.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sana%27a_International_Airport
Shit there is terrifying. If you have money, please donate. You can say what you want, but there are so many people who were struggling before that privileged asshole friends who live in the GCC, and I like to tell "Yemen stories" I hear from these dudes to ground the shit out of them.
And imagine your tribe repelling the army, the Houthis, and Al Qaeda in Yemen at the same time. Most of these dudes run their own villages, and no outside influence is welcome. The Yemenis are the ultimate libertarians, so help em out.
(Watch me roast for that joke; oh well, I tried.)
> Ta’izz also has a healthy distrust of the northern hill tribes who periodically descend from the north of the country and cause chaos (as they’re doing now, a year after my trip)
To be more specific, from personal anecdotes, it is far more than regional. Neighboring tribes will kill somebody and blood feud can and often does go on for decades. Guys I know, when they go to Sana'a to their village, they must drive at night, you know, because snipers.
Steve Martin's LA traffic scene has nothing on Yemenis!
(And thanks for catching the obvious, did not finish an article like that in 5 minutes.)
In 2012 my cousin was shot in the head at a roadblock and died a few months later. My grandfather has fallen into a deep depression and the rest of my family has experienced a diaspora the likes of which we haven't felt since the 50s.
I'm not a religious person, but I thank probability every day that my family has Canadian citizenship and green cards and that I have an amazing job as a programmer. Even if I can't do anything about the place of my heritage, I've been able to buy a house in the US for my grandparents and have been able to donate to the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS Foundation) on a regular basis.
I have so many photos and journal entries from that time. I really need to get them online to show what Syria was like before all the shit hit the fan. Thank you so much for these writings. I hope they shed light on a humanity that gets robbed by conflict.
Thanks, for the tip about SAMS. I assume this is them.
http://sams-usa.net/foundation/
I am trying to pool people together with some people I know here and the MENA region to do fundraising for the Jesuit relief fund (I know, I know, but they are very cool and have no religious stake; I have met Iraqi Lebanese and Syrian employees from all backgrounds and their dedication to crisis assistance, religion is not even on the radar) and want to tap the Syrian-American community to help fundraise.
Email address is in my profile. I would love to get people like yourself involved.
If after reading these streams you find the conflict incredibly confusing and complicated, that's a good sign! You have a better grasp on things than 99% of the Western media.
It's also in the interests of the United States and other Western powers to sustain the impression of an international terrorist conspiracy potentially capable of harming people in the West. The branding has switched to Isis now that al-Qaeda has kind of fallen apart. I don't know to what extent this is a cynical ploy, and to what extent it's a natural dynamic where we kind of manufacture our own enemies by showing how scared we are of them.
All politics in Yemen is grassroots and local and foreign governments forget this at their peril. There's a tendency to assume the various Yemeni factions are puppets being controlled by Iran, the Saudis, the US and so on, but in practice the local factions are very adept at manipulating their various sponsors. The important divisions in Yemen are regional (north, south, and Aden) and tribal, and the tragedy of the country is that it is trying to stitch together very dissimilar regions while outside powers work hard to destabilize it.
With regard to al-Qaeda specifically, the Yemeni branch has always been quite distinct. Bin Laden has deep ties to Yemen, which ironically has made AQAP even more of a tribal, regional force, since unlike Afghanistan it's a bunch of locals.
I think it's good to remember that southern Yemen used to be a highly ideological, Marxist state(!). The fact that all these Marxists have vanished without a trace suggests how hard it is for any transnational ideology to gain a foothold in this deeply conservative, tenacious country.
So, not to put too fine a point on it: I have more of a problem with military attacks on 2015 Yemeni AQAP than I do with attacks in, say, Waziristan. It seems like attacking Yemeni AQAP implies attacking whole tribes.
In my mind, the worst thing about American military attacks in Yemen is that the government refuses to reveal what our policy even is. Everything about them is being kept secret, removing any hope of democratic accountability.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/frontline-fight-for-...
The Frontline Yemen episode was one of the more depressing Frontlines I've ever seen.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32776430
We've lost a lot of history over the last few months.
But he's really a fantastic travel writer. Or writer. One of the best ever.
Thanks for the kind words :-)
I'd like to travel with you some time.
Great article by the way.
I presume they're the Italians working on Al-Ashrafiya mosque restoration.
Tell me about it, bro!
It was a hellish day indeed and it went from bad to worse ever since.
I live in a predominantly Muslim country and Islam seems to have an insecurity & inferiority complex so large that it needs ear deafening audio signals broadcast at dawn time to notify the population of its suffocating and heavy presence in their daily lives.
So sad and inexcusable what is happening there right now - everyone playing for their own shallow political interests, doing enormous harm and grossly disregarding international law while pretending to help.
As others mentioned, all mainstream media reporting of the current events in Yemen is horribly biased, misleading and just ignorant. Twitter is a much better place to get a more objective feel of events as they unfold. My favourite source is @omeisy
One of the funniest things I've read this month :)
Goodness, you're gifted.
I feel like this is the theme in every Arab and Asian country. How stuff keeps getting done and how people get to their destinations safely is indeed a wonder. It is a surprise, and often a testament of God's care, that the world still turns in these regions.
> My hopes have riding on the jerry cans tied to our roof
Still haven't fixed the missing inter-page in your "Internet with a Human Face" article. I really wish you would.
#ads and #conclusion, FWIW.
http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm#ads
http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm#conclusion
Also, put your name and datelines on stuff.
I also have it on good authority from a some-time NPR anchor that the spider image specifically turned them off the page. I know, but a point to consider.
From my perspective, catching flak for picayune errors is a powerful motivation-sapping force. I realize nobody likes typos, but in revising these things for publication I generally go over them N-1 times, where N is the number that would make me delete everything and replace it with a 410 Gone page.
The fact that some NPR person is afraid of spiders makes me happy that I used that image.
Finally, you should have written "turned them off", not "turned them of". See? Not so easy.
But: I consider writing as a communication done, generally, for the reader's benefit. Not a novel viewpoint. HN featured a bit from Vonnegut on that point yesterday. Among his points:
Pity the readers: They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately
http://peterstekel.com/PDF-HTML/Kurt%20Vonnegut%20advice%20t...
I guess I belong to the school which says that a thing worth doing is worth doing well. I try to fix bugs in my code, I try to write clearly, I try to be accurate in what I say and acknowledge errors.
And yeah, sometimes I get really annoyed at nitpickers who seem to have lost the thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9567882
Does this mean you've got to do the same?
No.
But it's a very small point frequently, one that can make the difference between a good (or even really good) piece, and one that's truly epic. Which on a site such as HN which focuses in large part on executing both technical and conceptual brilliance, seems a good candidate for a general community value.
And yes, editing (especially for professional publication) is a sort of penny-ante death. I've been watching authors Charlie Stross and Ksenia Anske grouse about it lately on Ello. It's a bit of a pain for my own stuff. But obvious glaring shit? I'll fix it if possible.
Sure, there's the Zen ideal of imperfection as its own perfection. And there can be other reasons for errors and faults to creep in or be unfixable (HN locks comemnts from further editing, something that leaves me cringing frequently).
I find it just plain sloppy myself.
you seem to be arguing for perfection though. I noticed typos too, but still ate up every word.
No. I'm not.
Sometimes we have things to say about sites that are relevant to lots of people. But these notes not so much.
I'm probably not great about this either and would be happy if someone took the time to call me out for it.
I thought I'd make one more attempt online now when the opportunity presented itself.
And while I try not to flagrantly call out errors on people's stuff, if I see them I'll note them as quietly as possible. On platforms that support it (e.g., G+) that includes a "delete this comment" note, frequently.
I really like Maciej's work. I'd posted a link to "Human Face" just yesterday:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9574540
I find the self-defeating attitude discouraging. Thought really, that's his call.
I've tried. He's made his views clear. So it goes.
Idlewords is such a good moniker.
No intention of detracting from your efforts. :)
Anyway, terrific writing, as always.