Sunday Links -- Sundry Stories and Breaking News from Yemen

By John Ballard

My caregiving assignement since April has me reporting at 7AM, Monday through Friday, which seriously impacts the morning hours when I blog best. Sunday morning is becoming a recreational release which is why my Sunday Links are often a mixed bag. That said, here is what I've come across today.

?Dogs jumping rope, a world record

 

?How 72 bags of cocaine fit in a drug smuggler�s belly
Make a mental note for the next time you read something about the TSA challenge of keeping suicide bombers off airplanes. Just saying...

The 20-year-old Irish man was arrested earlier Monday at a Brazil airport with 72 bags filled with nearly a kilogram of cocaine.

While it may look like the little bags are floating all through the man�s torso, they�re actually contained in the digestive tract,...The ones that look like they are in the chest are most likely in the stomach, which is just below the esophagus,...The digestive tract is built to expand... �If you�ve seen nature videos of snakes swallowing animals whole, you get the picture,...Peristalsis in the GI tract keeps moves things along.�

~~~~~~~~~~~

Most likely the bags seen in the images were swallowed one after another, said Dr. Adam Slivka, a professor of medicine and associate chief of the division of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

�They usually put the cocaine in condoms, believe it or not,� Slivka added. �You can carry an awful lot in your gastrointestinal tract -� as much as 10 pounds. The stomach has tremendous capacitance. When it�s empty it�s the size of your fist. When it�s full it can get to the size of a football.�

Between the stomach and the intestines you can hold a lot of little bags, Esrailan said. �That�s why these pictures look so dramatic.�

Another trick smugglers sometimes depend on is gaming the speed of the digestive tract by stocking up on a few over-the-counter medications.

�You can take antidiarrheal medications and slow things way down and you can get constipation medications that move things along very rapidly,� he explained. �I guess if these guys time it right, they can pack an awful lot of stuff in there and then poop it out when they get through security.�

 

?Glimpses of the Next Great Famine by Nick Kristof
I'm a big fan of Kristof.
He was one of the first journalists I followed after getting a Twitter account. He was on the ground in Bahrain when protests were organized at the Pearl Roundabout and his Teitter messages became a living descriptive column. A few months later I got a chance to hear and see him in person at a local university, having caught a notice from an Egyptian news feed of all places! (In metro Atlanta a visiting journalist at a local university would have created a note in the school's activity schedule but little else.)

Kristof is passionate about human rights generally, but specifically the rights of women and children. He and his wife are dedicated to improving conditions of women both at home and in the developing world. Their book, Half the Sky outlines their vision and goals.

Today he reports from one of the most wretched places on earth, a refugee camp in Kenya where nearly half a million people are assembled, mostly refugees from nearby Somalia where after several years of desparation the word famine is finally being used.and vast numbers of people are starving to death. (Authorities are reluctant to use the word officially because it ocan trigger counterproductive results. Aside from officials who object, knowing that the word reflects poorly on their capacity to lead, food vendors often raise prices as well, which axacerbates an already bad problem.)

WHAT�S most heartbreaking about starving children isn�t the patches of hair that fall out, the mottled skin and painful sores, the bones poking through taut skin. No, it�s the emptiness in their faces.

These children are conscious and their eyes follow you � but lethargically, devoid of expression, without tears or screams or even frowns. A starving child shuts off emotions, directing every calorie to keep vital organs functioning.

The United Nations warns that the famine in the Horn of Africa could kill 750,000 people in the coming months, and tens of thousands have already died. In a German aid hospital here in Dadaab, Dr. Daniel Muchiri showed four wards full of children suffering from severe malnutrition. Even among the rare children who reach this well-equipped hospital, one dies each day on average � and Malyun Muhammad may soon become one of them.

Malyun, 2 years old and weighing just 14 pounds, was lying listlessly on a bed, her eyes following me but utterly blank.

�I wouldn�t say she has a great chance of making it, because she came so late,� Dr. Muchiri said.

?Drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in U.S., data show
Perhaps I'm not paying attention, but I have heard nothing from any of the aspiring presidential candidates about this problem. And I'm having a hard time connecting the dots when I hear arguments against government intrusion and regulations. If we follow the logic those same people should also oppose police and fire protection.

While most major causes of preventable death are declining, drugs are an exception. The death toll has doubled in the last decade, now claiming a life every 14 minutes. By contrast, traffic accidents have been dropping for decades because of huge investments in auto safety.

Public health experts have used the comparison to draw attention to the nation's growing prescription drug problem, which they characterize as an epidemic. This is the first time that drugs have accounted for more fatalities than traffic accidents since the government started tracking drug-induced deaths in 1979.

Fueling the surge in deaths are prescription pain and anxiety drugs that are potent, highly addictive and especially dangerous when combined with one another or with other drugs or alcohol. Among the most commonly abused are OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax and Soma. One relative newcomer to the scene is Fentanyl, a painkiller that comes in the form of patches and lollipops and is 100 times more powerful than morphine.

Such drugs now cause more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined.

?Military Expenditure and Economic Growth in The Middle East by Dr. Latif Wahid
Here is a second-hand book report in thumbnail form, caught from my Twitter timeline.
Marwa gets crfedit for picking it up in the library in Cairo, and I'm taking credit for grabbing her messages, but the writer, on faculty at a university in the UK, gets the most credit for tabulating a few bullet points that seem obvious but lost in the opaque world of what Americans worship as the Defense Industry and all it stands for.

The book argues, signing Camp David made #Egypt safe from external treats. Only security threat source is internal mainly "militant Islam"

• No external threats & internal threats minimal . does the country really require very strong, large expensive army any more"
  


• Book says; #Egypt enlarged its army personals form 450k in 1989 to 610k in 1995. political decision to absorb rising unemployment
  


• Egypt's military expenditure increased by the beginning of the millennium from 2.238 bn $$$ to 2.64 bn $$$
  


• Some Army political economy facts are not bad to read #SCAF behavior towards the #25Jan revolt & explain many future mysteries
  


• the take is we are 6th ranked arms importer yet many feel army is embarrassment. the q is where the money really goes ?


• Mubarak & his top generals acquired many of their wealth thru lucrative army brokerage business.More arms army has the more money they have

Regarding the second point, increasing the size of the army more as a response to unemployment than any real security need, I have always included the US involvement in both Iraq and Afghanistan as more important for employment of Americans than any puported benefits of our being there. All the talk about nation-building, hearts and minds, leadership development and the rest is okay, but the results have been marginal at best, especially when the cost of lost lives, displaced populations and economic instability is part of the metric. (And don't overlook the fact that Afghanistan remains the world's leading producer of Opium. Hello.)

As misdirected as the Egyptian defense money has been (lucrative army brokerage business.More arms army has the more money they have) the situation there is miniscule compared with the US equivalent of brokering, outsourcing, contracting and shipping spinning off the adventures, in Iraq, Afghanistan. and Pakistan.

Makes me angry even to write about it.

?Breaking -- Massacre in Yemen, Tom Finn Reporting
Tom Finn is a freelance journalist whom I follow, working in Yemen. I tried to assemble a Chirpstory from his timeline, but there was too much traffic. Apparently I was not the only one as you can see at the link....

 This, from his website, will serve as an introduction. 

After an extended break I�ve returned to Yemen with a fresh mind and a new camera.

The combination of recent events in Libya & Syria, an absentee president and a lack of foreign journalists has meant that Yemen, which just a few months back was being touted as the next favourite to fall (after Tunisia and Egypt), has instead slipped off the radar and back into the shadows. Yemen�s revolt seemed to have reached a crescendo on 3 June when President Saleh was airlifted to Riyadh to be treated for shrapnel wounds after a booby-trap explosion ripped through the mosque of his fortified compound. But the story was far from over. Instead of stepping down Saleh clung to power from his hospital bed, opting to rule the country by proxy through his pariah-like family until he was well enough to return.

Yemen�s protesters meanwhile, dismayed by their President�s stalwart defiance, have stuck to the streets, refusing to budge until their original demand (the fall of the regime) is met. Their iconic slogan (heard across large parts of the Arab World this year) �Al Sha�ab yureed eskaat al nazam!� [The people want the regime to fall!] has now been adapted to �Al Sha�ab yureed bina� Yemen jadid!� [The people want to build a new Yemen!]. Meanwhile the showdown in Libya seems to have blown new life into Change Square, the sprawling shanty town by Sana�a University whose tent-filled streets stretch for miles into the capital. It�s inhabitants have recently vowed to march every Sunday, Tuesday and Friday to help �get their revolution back on track.� As scheduled, tens of thousands marched the streets of Sana�a this Tuesday. I filmed them. Here�s what it looked like.

[This is a particularly good piece of video work. It is not only well-edited, in it he captures a spirit of excitement often not caught in a short You Tube video, all of which makes the events reported today even more poignant. I noticed no women or girls in this video. I was moved by the long, disciplined prayer time at the end. And puzzled by what appeared to be a young man leaving the area.]

 

?Breaking -- A Massacre is Underway in Yemen
This collection of Twitter messages stands in sharp contrast to the images in this video. 

Caution:  Links to images are very graphic. No need to link except to satisfy morbid curiosity.