Notes and tidbits posted on FB and Twitter. Part 117

William M. Thompson’s wrote in 1870 about Lebanon:

“Lebanon has about 400,000 inhabitants, gathered into more than 600 towns, villages and hamlets…The various religions and sects live together, and practice their conflicting superstitions in close proximity, but the people do not coalesce into one homogeneous community, nor do they regard each other with fraternal feelings.

The Sunnites excommunicate the Shiites – both hate the Druse, and all three detest the Nusairiyeh (currently the Alawit sect of Bashar al Assad).

The Maronites have no particular love for anybody and, in turn, are disliked by all.

The Greek Orthodox cannot endure the Greek Catholics. And all despise the Jews. …

Saudi Kingdom reshuffle: Minister of Economy and Planning Adel al-Faqieh was replaced by Mohammed al-Tuwaijri, SPA said, quoting a royal decree. Commander of the Saudi Navy, Abdullah al-Sultan, was replaced with Fahad al-Ghafli. Minister of Economy and Planning Adel Fakeih replaced with Mohammad Al Tuwaijri, his deputy

The heads of the main 3 Saudi owned TV networks were arrested, Alwalid Bin Talal (Rotana), Walid Al Brahim (MBC), Saleh Kamel (ART)

In 1931, the Palestinian undertook a civil disobedience campaign (Intifada) against the British mandated power for denying them democratic elections, even municipality elections in their towns and cities.  The excuse was Jews were a minority, no more than 20%. This first Intifada lasted 3 years and England had to dispatch 100,000 troops to quell this mass uprising.

Nazi Germany learned and documented the horror torture techniques and methods adopted on Palestinians by the British forces between 1936-38 during the second Intifada.

Unpracticed women tend to confuse seduction with intercourse. Women are much better in seduction, but lousy foreplay teachers.

Foreplay is always a quality time, regardless of genders.

“Maximized” means that more demands and more inputs lead to degradation, lower output and eventual system failure. Adopt minimization goal in your equations for output to save the environment

You cannot reconstruct the history based solely on the perpetrated massive crimes, through merely the acknowledgement of the engaged and active minority and State institution personnel in the civil war and State atrocities.

William Thompson wrote about Lebanon social structure in 1870: No other country in the world has such a multiplicity of antagonistic religions; and herein lies the greatest obstacle to any general and permanent amelioration and improvement of their condition, character, and prospects.

No genocide or mass crimes against humanity have been committed without prior preparation of the planners of the Majority of the population to accept the concept.

You better learn to discriminate among the causes, the delayed cold catalysts and instant hot catalysts for changes in order to comprehend the status of any society when upheavals emerge.

Though Lebanon social structure is pretty unstable, No foreign occupation forces, small or big, managed to sustain its presence on Lebanese soil for over 3 decades: They all withdrew unilaterally, as if the devil was constantly after their tails.

Realize that the most urgent work is the work of dancing with our fear: fear is the real reason the work isn’t getting done.

Optimization is opposite of maximization: One definition of maximization is: A short-term output level of high stress, where parts degrade but short-term performance is high.

Capitalism more often than Not seeks competitive maximization immediacy. Who cares if you burn out, I’ll just replace the part…