REVIEW

TELL FREEDOM

I read this book because it inspired me and i didn't want to let a great opportunity of experience of life away. It actually based on a

autobiography of a South African poet, who rejected the horrors his country offered his people- the Coloreds- this has beauty and the marked poignance of a hopeless struggle against overwhelming odds. For at his thirty-seven years of age Peter Abrahams looks back on a life that ran the gamut of trials-physical, emotional and intellectual to the point that he could no longer recognize a real place for himself in Africa, even among the whites who were trying to further the causes of tolerance and freedom. His biography is conversational and grippingly sensitive in style. Beginning with early childhood, he takes us with him- into his own small poverty- stricken house in Johannesburg, into his friendship with a Zulu boy, into his first encounter with white youths who stoned him and whose father later blamed the Coloreds for the incident. With his teens came both a ray of hope and a sad romance- for when he is given the opportunity to go to a diocesan college, his girl's family moves away without leaving word. At college there is the hope of a new social order, but as it comes, in the form of Marxism, it is disillusioning to Abrahams who later feels, though he knows the communists are not the only forces at work against ""apartheid"", that he must escape to Europe in order to write and thus do his best for his country. A book that combines the emotional appeal of a Paton story with vivid, frank actuality, and sheds important light on Africa. To those who remember his Path of Thunder and Wild Conquest (both Harper books- 1948-50), with keen delight, this will have special significance. I really liked this book it taught me a lot of stuff i didn't have any idea.

NEWS-3

Letter from africa: Ghana opens doors to other Africans

Ghana's new visa-on-arrival policy for citizens of African Union (AU) member states, to be introduced from July, only came to light after an announcement from the pan-African body.

Nationals from African countries complain loudly about the humiliations they go through to get visas for Europe and the United States but the process for African visas is often just as frustrating.

Anyone who has tried to cross borders on the African continent will have experienced the difficulties with travelling in Africa.

Air fares cost more than anywhere else and few roads or railways connect the countries to each other.

The immigration and police check points turn the journeys into veritable obstacle courses.

We no longer have to go through Europe to fly to each other's countries, but flight connections are so few and so random, you are tempted to resort to the old routes through Europe to go to the country next door.

However, this is nothing compared to the hassle one has to go through to get visas for another African country.

Business people trading in the continent felt frustrated in the past at spending weeks trying to get visas for each country.

They pointed out that once armed with a European Schengen visa, they could travel through many European countries and conduct business without hassle.

African unity was taken very seriously here in Ghana. It was our first President, Kwame Nkrumah, who was the driving force behind the establishment of the OAU back in 1963.

President Kwame Nkrumah was a firm believer in African unity

              

During the struggle for independence, Ghana provided a place of refuge for many freedom fighters, especially from South Africa with many being given Ghanaian passports.

As countries gained independence, Ghanaians were dismayed to discover they were not particularly welcome in these countries.

In the early years of Ghana's independence, and before the establishment of Ecowas, there were visa exemptions for "persons of African descent" born in the neighbouring west African countries, and members of the Casablanca group, which consisted of Guinea, Tunisia, Mali, United Arab Republic, Morocco and Algeria.

But these arrangements were scrapped after the overthrow of President Nkrumah.

With the new visa policy, Ghanaians will be watching to see if the number of non-Ecowas African nationals coming to Ghana will rise.

We in Ghana have a reputation for restless feet and are always trying to find new destinations to get to.

Obtaining visas for travel is often the greatest obstacle to travel and any country that makes it easier for us to enter becomes very attractive.

Whilst many here will be feeling that Ghana is taking a lead in implementing an AU directive, there will be greater interest in knowing how many other African countries will be allowing Ghanaians to enter their countries on a visa-on arrival policy.

NEWS-2

Spain Erasmus student bus crash 'kills 13'

Most of the 57 people on board the bus were students on the Erasmus programme who were returning to Barcelona after a trip to a fireworks festival.

The accident occurred near Freginals, 150km (93 miles) south of Barcelona.

All of those who died were female, officials say.

Their nationalities have not been made public while the process of identification continues.

Those on board the bus included students from the UK, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, Italy, Peru, Bulgaria, Poland, Ireland, the Palestinian territories, Japan and Ukraine, local Spanish officials said.

Of the 43 people injured, 28 were taken to hospital.

Jordi Jane, Catalonia's regional interior minister, said the driver of the coach had "hit the railing on the right and swerved to the left so violently that the bus veered onto the other side of the highway".

The bus then hit a vehicle coming in the opposite direction, injuring two people inside.

The location is a known accident blackspot.

"There were students on board, many of them foreign students studying in Catalonia and in Barcelona, who had travelled to Valencia for the Fallas and were returning," Mr Jane added.

British student Tallulah Lyons was taken to hospital in Tarragona with fractured vertebrae.

"I just remember waking up and people were on the floor," she told the BBC.

"I was trying to crawl out with friends - and that's when we realised some people were trapped. It took about two hours to get everyone out."

The driver of the bus survived the collision and has been taken to a local police station.

He has tested negative for alcohol or drugs and, according to sources close to the investigation quoted by Spain's Efe news agency, had worked for the bus company for 17 years without incident. 

NEWS-1

Smallest monkeys in the world

What’s smaller than the smallest monkey on earth? Its baby. of course!

Introducing these two new adorable and absolutely tiny baby pygmy marmosets and Sydney's Symbio Wildlife Park's latest additions. Weighing in at just 15 grams and smaller than a human thumb, the little monkeys may be tiny to us, but they were the equivalent of a human giving birth to a ten-year-old child. That's certainly no monkey business!

Their proud parents Gomez and IT were introduced to each other last year, when IT arrived at the zoo's endangered species captive breeding program. And it was love at first sight! After years of bachelorhood for Gomez, he didn't monkey around and now they can call these precious little babies their own.

As well as being really, really ridiculously cute-looking, their birth is necessary for the ongoing survival of the endangered species. Being the world's smallest monkey, with adults weighing in at around the same weight as an average apple, at just 100 grams, the species is vulnerable to extinction, because of deforestation and illegal pet trade.

But there's no denying they're so adorable, it's bananas!

Difficult words: adorable (lovable, cute, sweet), tiny (very small), addition (somebody new), pygmy marmosets (a kind of small monkey), monkey business idiom (doing something silly), endangered species (an animal kind which may die out soon), captive (held behind a fence, not free), breeding (reproduction), bachelorhood (living as a bachelor – unmarried/single man), precious (amazing), vulnerable (not protected), extinction (dying out), deforestation (destroying forests), it’s bananas (it’s crazy).

My Say

MAN VS NATURE

Man Vs Nature is looked at in many ways, and is often not completely understood before it's commented on. Many authors give their low opinion of man as they comment on man's destructive nature, and explain how man is trying to conquer nature and control it. But the nature of the world, and man himself, is far too powerful and unpredictable to be controlled. And man is far from being close to be able to destroy it, and therefore having control of it.

Nature also tames man quite a bit. Natural things like the mountains, the weather, and the rivers. Those are the things that man builds around. Yet...we can't move mountains, and we can't live on rivers. The weather also affects the nature of man quite a lot. However the weather is, man changes his activity accordingly. When it rains, we have accidents on the road...When it floods, so do our houses. Nature in often times is the destructor and not man. Sometimes man conquers nature, or thinks he has, but then he also knows nature is much more powerful than him, and it's that balance of trying to control nature as much as possible. Man tries to control nature as much as he can. He makes houses to protect himself from the wind; he makes dams and sewers to stop flooding from the rain, and takes other various precautions to protect himself from the harsh elements of nature. It's always nature that rules in the end. Nature is simply stronger than man and technology. Man will always try to dominate nature with technology and computers, but man will never be able to dictate the direction the world is to take. The great magnitude of nature overpowers man significantly. Man may be able to predict earthquakes to an extent, but he is not able to stop Mother Nature's destruction. Men have no control over nature...he can alter the course, but cannot dictate the end.

My Say

What is the Use of Philosophy?

TO ASK WHAT THE USE OF PHILOSOPHY IS is like asking what the use of understanding is. One answer is that understanding is something that we very often seek for its own sake. As Aristotle said long ago: “All human beings by nature desire to understand.” We are curious if nothing else, and it is one of the more admirable traits of human beings. We like to know what is going on and why. After we have fed ourselves and put a roof over our heads, and attended to other basic needs, the question arises what we are to do with our time. One suggestion is that we should raise our heads a bit and look around us and try to understand ourselves and things around us. This turns out to be interesting. It is the genesis of both science and philosophy, with science taking the more empirical road to understanding and philosophy the more conceptual. These are complementary enterprises and there have always been important connections between them which continue despite the growth of institutional science and its increasing splintering into more and more highly specialized sub-disciplines.

There are universities only because human beings are by their nature curious. Universities are centers of curiosity. They are repositories and preservers of the accumulated knowledge and understanding of humankind as well as the primary centers in the modern of world of the pursuit of pure inquiry, that is, inquiry for sake of slaking our thirst for understanding. Why is this valuable? Well, why is anything valuable? It is a 

MY Say

Equality of Women. Trending now.

I love turning to the younger generation to see what their perspective is.Young Person:    Polygamy now legal?   So what?  The Mormon Church won't even speak to that.  Remember, it was done to "raise up a royal people"......it served its purpose.  End of story.
Young Person:      Well, this is not a trending issue and won't become one.  Who cares?  No man wants more that one wife, not even Mormon men.  One is more than enough.

The big issue on social media trending now is Ordain Women....actually Ordain Women is bogged down into how women are treated in the Mormon Church.  Period.  "Ordain" is the lynchpin for huge conversations but the real trending issue is the lower status of females in the Mormon Church.  Not allowing equality in multiple ways. Real issues on old men criticizing young women and telling women how to behave and still trying to make women responsible for the sexual behavior of men.

These are trending issues for women and their daughters.

Me:   In other words, Ordain is light years further up the ladder from the rung of women's place being set forth and maintained by men?Young Person:       Well, I can just tell you what Mormon women are posting about on social media.  Most are quite unhappy and they are also unhappy with the Mormon women who support the church position like female robots.   Here, read these comments.

These are progressive issues that are not going to go away.

Me:  Well, sounds like the women don't want to be ordained to a priesthood that puts them down.Young Person:  Women expect to be invited to the table, every table.