Help: Define Yemen - A lesson for western media and journalists

[Yemenreform]

As ambassadors from this Yemeni forum* I would like your help on a simple project. These days negative journalism in western media has increased. I don’t think it is going to get better. I would like members of this respectable forum to help me define Yemen and dispel the myths and stereotypes of foreign Journalists in the western Media.

I will start with the following stereotype that is related to recent events:

Yemen is a bad* dangerous and out of control place where tourists are targeted and westerners or non-Muslims are kidnapped and killed. Yemenis hate* discriminates* and threatens non-Muslims.

Yemen has Al-Qaeda sympathizers that condone the killing of innocent people on airplanes and super markets.
Yemen is the source of terrorists in Iraq* Afghanistan* and Somalia. Yemenis in Gitmo make up the largest number of detainees* and they are hardcore dangerous people. Binladen’s family came from Yemen.

[Yemenreform]

I think people focus on small incidents and keep referring to them when they think of Yemen.
For example check the data from this site about tourism in yemen
http://www.yementourism.com/gov/stat...stics_2008.pdf
From about 404497 people that visited Yemen in 2008 how many of them were kidnapped.
lets say 10-50 which is 0.0124 percent that is less than 1 percent
They are more likely to get hit by a bus in their own country.
That is not the way it looks when you read western newspapers. If you avoid certain places in Yemen like Sada for example* your risk drops down to almost zero.
From the same file you see that Yemen received about 453 million dollars from these friendly visitors. Probably more than that* because I know tourists are very generous. Also 453 is a small number compared to what our country can get from tourism compared with our countries.
A lot of this money went directly to the Yemeni people like the cab driver* resturant owner* and street vendor. These people might have also seen business opportunities and attempted to connect with people from Yemen for import and export. There are too many benefits to list.
So you see that between these criminals that attack tourists and bias from foreign journalists* the average Yemeni person is at a loss here.