Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 20:42:07 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: pgreen <polytarp@m-net.arbornet.org> Cc: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>, Alexey Dokuchaev <danfe@regency.nsu.ru>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Dual language (was: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha clock.c) Message-ID: <3CF2FC8F.317C0AE2@mindspring.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0205271716330.87693-100000@m-net.arbornet.org>
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pgreen wrote: > East Timor is the newest, and greatest, country in the world. No power, no water, and 85% of all buildings, public and private, burnt down by departing Indonesian troops in 1999. Most teaching positions filled by agenda swinging missionaries. Large aggressive neighbor with a fresh chip on its shoulder, and every reason to pull a "Monroe" to take attention off the problems at home. Indonesia actively blocking medical supplies, and 50-100 people dying daily from curable diseases (according to "unbiased" Noam Chomsky). Only 50% literacy for men and 34% for women. Current issues include: implementing IMF-mandated reforms of the banking sector, effecting a transition to a popularly elected government after four decades of authoritarianism, addressing charges of cronyism and corruption, holding the military accountable for human rights violations (source: CIA). Dropping of Indonesian (spoken by 63%) as the official language, and adopting _both_ Portuguese (spoken by 5%) and Tetum (spoken by 91%, the most populous of the 15 indiginous spoken languages). Tetum needing both grammatical and vocabulary developement before it's expressive enough to be a national language (source: International Herlad Tribune); most likely this will come in the form of imports from Portuguese. Over 20% unemployment. Am I forgetting anything? Maybe Sun Microsystems will send them something, given that they named a computer language after Indonesia's largest island... I guess as a new nation, they could always sell domain names in their country suffix... Just what we need... more technocratic "one true plan" nation building which has been so successful everywhere else it's been tried. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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