A few links in the morning

Didn't get a chance to blog yesterday- I was helping a friend move.  You'd like to think that when you get to this side of 30 you're probably not going to be helping people move anymore, but then you remember that some of your friends are musicians.  Then you remember that you are a freelance writer and will be pushing them for the same thing when you're 40, so everything is cool.

Anyway.

Oliver Holmes has an interesting, well-written piece in Asia Times, largely dealing with how Salih is going to spend the money we send to him.   He quotes a dashing, if somewhat creaky and sore, blogger,  which is a sure way to get a link that will be clicked on by the literally tens of readers we have here.  The thrust of the article is the tension between what we want with the money and Salih's internal machinations.  I think they kind of dovetail here, at least more than we generally think they do.  Salih may be somewhat like Musharraf, but he also knows he is not dealing with George Bush anymore, and I think is more willing to adapt in order to keep the money coming in and save his rule.  Holmes' article also quotes Jane Novak, who thinks Salih is basically a smaller-mustachioed Stalin. 

I have an article in the Atlantic Community, a really interesting site.   I am talking about how we need to not force a centralized unification, as that will only increase the tensions that are tearing the country apart.  This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately, and hopefully will continue to flesh out. 

Finally, sadly, many were killed in a dynamite explosion in southern Yemen.  It happened in a housing complex which also housed a dynamite-storage facility used mostly for roads.  This is a horrifying and sobering reminder that not everything in Yemen is politics- most people, like people everywhere, are just trying to live their lives, and that far removed from our security-obsessed mindset, can be victims of a freaky and often absurd universe.