Haley Sweetland Edwards has a good article on the southern problems in the LATimes, much better and more fact-based than my rambling post below.
There is war talk along the southern Yemen coast and the flag of rebellion is painted on the stocks of guns. The separatists call this land South Arabia, and villagers say it's only a matter of time before insurgency erupts.
"We are ready to fight. All of us. Men, women and children," said Zahra Saleh Abdullah, a separatist leader, sitting in a living room with a dozen would-be rebels in Yafa, a restive tribal territory in the south. "Yemen is not our country. South Arabia is our country."
In economic news, the World Bank has released a report about the upturn and potential in Yemen's economy. As I tend to fall into a deep and restful sleep reading economic reports, I am grateful for its summary. The report is surprisingly optimistic, basing itself on an uptick in oil prices and the LNG pipeline. This is good news, although I tend to think it is misleadingly rosy- prices went up again this year after correcting themselves last year, and it is a fools game to predict these things or to think they will remain stable. Yemen's oil economy might be able to stay afloat, but it is clearly unsustainable and unsteady. Perhaps Yemen-philes can keep their fingers crossed for more catastrophic spills in the Gulf of Mexico. Here's hoping!
In completely unrelated news, the Sox game today opened with Juan Pierre taking a walk and then Omar Vizquel getting a hit. This is as close to a near-zero chance occurring, not just in baseball, but in the entire known universe.
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