Tidbits and notes posted on FB and Twitter. Part 243
Note: I take notes of books I read and comment on events and edit sentences that fit my style. I pay attention to researched documentaries and serious links I receive. The page of backlog opinions and events is long and growing like crazy, and the sections I post contains a month-old events that are worth refreshing your memory
Do I master my mother tongue? Do I have one? I was born in a French colony in Africa (Rep. of Mali) and lived there to the age of 6 when I fell ill with a deadly disease and barely managed to survive. Consequently, I must have learned to speak and write in French first, and most probably I was conversant in the Bambara dialect, since I was surrounded by Malian helpers and my closest “guardian angel” was a mute young man: Thus, I might have learned sign language too.
Bambara is an oral language that was spoken by animist tribes in the current State of Mali with Capital Bamako.
The main barrier for formal Arabic language to become international is that the words have religious undertone and you can barely find significant words that you can claim to be religiously neutral and expresses your opinions: Usually, expressions relate to tribal, and nomadic traditional life-style.
It is difficult to freely express your honest opinion in formal Arabic, simply because the words are coined in Islamic culture and connote religious meaning, whether you like it or not. The slang in every “Arabic” countries are filling the void and expressing the spirit and traditions of the Land
Amadou Hampate Ba (1900-1991) had said: “In the oral civilization of Africa, once an old wise man dies it is an entire library that closes.”
Trump: Prophet Mohammad crucified Jesus.
Chain working conditions? Serbian workers in a multinational electronic company in Slovakia: Up at 4:30, waiting in line to enter the factory, Not allowed to look right or left or even stoop, swollen hands, no sensation in the legs, relentlessly waiting for the next TV to be assemble for hours. Waiting in line to take showers, to eat, to drink, to going to WC, boarding the buses, all the time counting bolts, parts, counting the hours, the days… Line, chain work, sweat-shop factories
Wars, pre-emptive wars: Uncanny direct connections to Sovereign public debts of militarily weaker nations
Drop-shipping? For men of a certain demographic, the ads (which can also follow you around the internet, and occasionally sell counterfeit goods) might be peddling hipster watches;
For women, perhaps it’s classy lingerie. In many cases they’re the result of a peculiar e-commerce phenomenon of the moment. No physical middlemen or retailers, but nebulous on-line support scams pros.
Shopify is the 20,000-pound gorilla of the drop-shipping world, integrated with apps like Oberlo that enable sellers to offer up goods directly from AliExpress
The US Postal Service gets no more than $1.50—cheaper for Chinese merchants to ship a package up to 4.4 lbs from Shenzhen to Des Moines than it costs to ship from, say, Seattle.
USPS calls it “ePacket,” and it’s the reason it’s so outrageously cheap to buy goods on AliExpress, the giant e-commerce portal owned by Alibaba, and ship them to the US—a favorite route of many drop-shippers. The US website Wish utilizes the same shipping method. Amazon is great at it.
Perfect vicious circle. Saad Hariri PM was asked why the highway from Beirut to Jounieh is always congested. He replied because we have no public transport, because the plans for alternative routes are Not carried out, because… But who is supposed to plan and execute all the projects?
Shou? Lebanon has $3bn in loans that was Not put to use in the last 2 years and still paying interest on that sovereign debt. And Lebanon is going to Paris to borrow more debts?
Our Lebanese Prime Minister said that the foreign loans expected to receive in Paris 4 will put to work 900,000 people in the coming 10 years. Does he means to include too all the refugees residing in Lebanon? We Barely have that many available people to work.
Adonis Diaries 