courage and death in Yemen

I’ve been neglecting Yemen too much while focusing on the other countries. At least 30 protestors have been killed today with live ammunition.

We’ve already encountered this same sort of brutality everywhere in the region:

“Government supporters in plain clothes fired down on the demonstration from rooftops and windows almost immediately after the protesters rose from their noon prayers, conducted en masse in the street on Friday.”

But the Arab people have been reminding us of the meaning of courage for the past two months. Here’s what it looks like:

“But a crowd of mostly tribal men from the outskirts of the capital appeared to stand firm in the face of the chaotic attack by the government supporters. A man walked through the crowd with a microphone yelling, ‘Peaceful, peaceful! Don’t be afraid of the bullets!'”

And they size up their own situation against those of others in the region, and immediately seize upon the measuring stick of the worst:

“As the violence escalated, many people in central Sana took cover. ‘Today is the worst day; this is a new Qaddafi,’ said Khalil al-Zekry, who hunkered down in his video shop along the protest route.”