Yemen and Kuwait: Oh that’s just tooo funny
Update from the Arab Times: Claiming the Kuwaiti Public Investment Authority has been paying $137,000 to President of Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh, he said “Saleh usually spends this money to buy qatt, which he chews. As he has recently quit chewing qatt under doctors’ instructions Saleh has started using this money to buy alcohol.”
Original Post: The irony, the absurdity, the double standard: The Yemeni governmental media and associated attack rags are dedicated to insulting, villifying and threatening critics, intellectuals and oppositionists in the most outragous terms imaginable. Now the wegimes paw widdle feewings are hurt by insulting writers in Kuwait, awwww, paw widdle wegime.
They seem to have the impression that free and unfettered speech about Yemen is allowed no where on the planet, not in Kuwait, not in the US and certainly not in Yemen.
Yemen officially protested to the Kuwaiti government on Saturday over what it called ‘frequent insults’ towards Yemeni political leaders by prominent Kuwaiti figures, Yemen’s state news agency Saba reported.
Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu-Bakr al-Qerbi, in a meeting with Kuwait’s Ambassador to Sana’a Abdul-Rahman al-Utaibi, informed him of his government’s ‘discomfort over the frequent insults to the leadership, government and people of Yemen by some Kuwaiti figures,’ the agency said.
Saba gave no details about the nature of the insults or the people involved. But the Yemeni government has voiced its anger in recent years over public criticism of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh by Kuwaiti journalists and opposition members of parliament.
Yemen has yet to restore its once warm ties with Kuwait that were damaged by Yemen’s opposition to the international military action against Iraq after it invaded the oil-rich Gulf state in 1990.
‘Such insults aim at damaging the distinguished ties between Yemen and Kuwait,’ the agency quoted al-Qerbi as saying at the meeting with the Kuwaiti diplomat.
The Yemeni minister also asked the Kuwaiti government to ‘confront any act that could harm the interests of the two countries’ and to ‘take legal actions … to avoid any escalation that is intended to cause damage to the brotherly relationship,’ between the two countries.
The Yemeni government has “discomfort” so Kuwait should take legal action against the writers? Not satisfied with attacking their own journalists, the regime now wants journalists abroad arrested. How wimpy. They can dish it out but they can’t take it.
