Shule taabani Yafaulisha Wanafunzi Wote

Wanafunzi wa shule ya msingi Machala wakiwa darasani.

Katika hali isiyo ya kawaida, shule moja wilayani Bagamoyo imekutwa ikiwa na mwalimu mmoja tu anayefundisha wanafunzi kuanzia chekechea hadi darasa la saba, wote wakifundishwa katika chumba kimoja kwa kutumia ubao mmoja. 

Hata hivyo, katika matokeo ya Darasa la Saba Mwaka huu, wanafunzi wote  12 walifaulu kuingia kidato cha kwanza.

Shule hiyo ya msingi  Machala, iliyokuwa na idadi ya wanafunzi 198 na imejengwa kwa majani kuanzia chini hadi kwenye paa.

Mwandishi wa habari hizi aliyetembelea shule hiyo, alimkuta mwalimu huyo akiwafundisha wanafunzi hao wa madarasa tofauti wakiwa kwenye chumba kimoja, huku ubao wa kufundishia ukiwa umechorwa mistari mitatu kutenganisha masomo ya chekechea hadi darasa la pili, mstari mwingine darasa la tatu hadi la tano na mwingine darasa la sita hadi la saba.

Mwalimu huyo,  Christopher Rukutu, aliliambia NIPASHE Jumamosi kuwa shule hiyo hutumia kivuli cha mti  kama ofisi.

Shule hiyo iliyopo katika kijiji cha Mihunga Kata ya Miono, Wilaya ya Bagamoyo Mkoa wa Pwani, ilianzishwa na serikali tangu mwaka 2007 ikiwa na wanafunzi 12 ambao wamemaliza darasa la saba, mwaka huu na kubahatika kufaulu wote.

Kwa mujibu wa mwalimu Rukutu, wanafunzi wote waliofaulu walipata alama za A na B isipokuwa mmoja aliyepata alama C.

Pamoja na kuwa katika mazingira magumu,  shule hiyo kiwilaya ilishika nafasi ya sita na kimkoa nafasi ya 20.

Alisema shule hiyo haina vitabu vya kiada wala vya kufundishia na amekuwa akiazima kutoka shule za jirani.

“Ninafundisha kwa akili za kuzaliwa sina kitabu cha mtaala wa elimu, nguvu zangu zote nilimalizia kwa darasa la saba ili wajue kusoma, kuandika na kuhesabu.

Kwa mwaka mzima sijafundisha darasa la nne nina wasiwasi matokeo yao hayatakuwa mazuri kwa sababu  niko peke yangu," alisema kwa masikitiko.

Alifafanua kuwa tangu shule hiyo ianzishwe, serikali ilikuwa imewapanga walimu wawili tu, ambao kutokana na mazingira kuwa magumu waliripoti bila kuingia darasani na kuaga baada ya kuonyesha vyeti vya hospitali vinavyonyesha kuwa afya zao haziwezi kustahimili mazingira magumu.

Aliilalamikia serikali kuanzia ngazi ya kata hadi wilaya kwa kuisahau shule hiyo bila kuipa msaada wowote.

Mbali na kukosa msaada, shule hiyo pia inatumia tundu moja tu la choo kwa wanafunzi wa kike na kiume na kusababisha wengi wao kujisaidia vichakani.Alisema kutokana na hali hiyo, wanafunzi wengi hushambuliwa na ugonjwa wa kichocho.

Aliiomba Wizara ya Elimu na Mafunzo ya Ufundi, kuwapangia wanafunzi wake 12 waliofaulu katika shule yake ya Machari kwenye shule za sekondari zenye mahitaji muhimu ili kuwapunguzia mateso wanafunzi hao.

Alisema wanafunzi wake hawajawahi kuona vitabu vya kujisomea na huduma muhimu za kiafya.
 

CHANZO: NIPASHE

Top 10 Most Famous People

FlameHorse March 22, 2013

Check out our new companion site: http://knowledgenuts.com

What does it mean to be famous? Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, III, made it to second place on Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2009, and all for the single act of crash landing a plane without killing anyone. If you’re American, chances are you still remember his name. He made global headlines, so there’s a good chance people abroad from the US remember him. But he didn’t make the Google “top ten most searched for people of 2009.” Michael Jackson did. He still generates 11 million+ monthly searches. But compared to the following entries, Jackson doesn’t come close in terms of number of books written about him. He hasn’t had enough time. Here are the 10 most famous (or infamous), well known people in human history, ranked according to Google searches and approximate number of books written about them. If you travel to Bouvet Island, the most remote land mass in the whole world, how likely is the first person you meet going to know of the following 10 people?

10: Sir Isaac Newton

1642–1727

Google searches: 1 million+ per month

Number of books written about this person: c. 400,000

The discoverer of the calculus just edged out Albert Einstein for the 10th spot. Google searches alone would have netted Einstein a place on the list, at 6.1 million searches per month, but many more books have been written about Newton. Einstein is on track to break his record in far fewer than 286 years, but even then, Einstein would have had no foundation on which to base his theories of Relativity had Newton not existed. 95% of all classical mechanics is built on Isaac Newton alone.

He generalized the binomial theorem, invented the reflecting telescope, coined the word “gravity” and gave the Roman Catholic Church’s self-important hegemony over geocentrism its final knockout blow. Copernicus and Galileo had to face inquisitions, but no one ever attempted to reproach Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Perhaps arguing against someone else’s observations is inane enough, but arguing against math itself was in Newton’s case, impossible. He proved the former two’s theories on heliocentrism, and explained why and how every single macroscopic object in the entire Universe moves as it does. He did all this by himself and still had time to investigate elements and principles of optics, and invent the pet door, although he was too busy ever to have sex. He died a virgin at 84.

9: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

1452–1519

Google searches: 4 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 600,000

Google searches can be inaccurate, which is why they are only half the criteria for judgment. If you search “leonardo,” you’ll get a lot of pages about ninja turtles and people who drowned on Titanic. But if you type da Vinci’s full name, you’ll quickly see why he is world renowned. He could do anything. He has possibly the greatest resume in history. Imagine if you could put the following on yours and then make good on all of it at an interview:

Engineer, inventor, anatomist, architect, mathematician, geologist, musician, cartographer, botanist, writer, sculptor. You name it, da Vinci was into it. He invented the sniper rifle, although it was not rifled: he just bolted one of his refracting telescopes onto a wheellock musket and shot people from 1,000 yards. He probably invented the wheellock musket, too. He invented the parachute about 300 years before Louis-Sebastien Lenormand claimed the honor in the late 1700s. Da Vinci’s design is not known to have been tested until 2000. It worked perfectly. he invented the hang glider about 400 years before it really took off. His design was based on a bird’s wings. He gave the helicopter quite the college try, but couldn’t figure out a sufficiently powerful method for getting it airborne. He was the first to understand the concept of spinning helical blades tilted at just the right angle pulling an object up into the air.

He invented the tank, which was propelled via men turning a crankshaft inside and fired cannon in all directions. He invented the mitrailleuse about 400 years before the French. It is a precursor to what we consider a machine gun, with multiple barrels firing all at once. Da Vinci invented the pivoting scissors by bolting two knives together for shearing cloth.

His sculptures are not as well known as those of Michelangelo, but da Vinci envisioned a gigantic horse sculpted out of poured bronze, which was impossible to make with the technology of his day (the sculpture would have broken apart under its own weight). But it was completed in 1998 and there are three models of it around the world, one in Milan, Italy, one in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, and one based in Florence, Italy that is shipped around the world for display. They are 24 feet high and the largest horse statues ever constructed.

Da Vinci was also a pretty good painter.

8: William Shakespeare

1564–1616

Google searches: 7.4 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 1 million

The man with the lion’s share of the percentage of votes for greatest writer in English or any language in human history is sure to be the source for quite a few words and phrases now common in his native language. A good 50% of common English phrases come from the King James Bible, and possibly 30% of the rest come from the Bard. If you’ve ever said, “It’s all Greek to me;” “food for the gods;” “all that glitters is not gold;” “a sorry sight;” “dead as a doornail;” “come what may;” “with one fell swoop;” or “all’s well that ends well;” then “by Jove” you’re quoting Shakespeare.

Egil Aarvik, of the Committee for the Nobel Prize, once said that Shakespeare would have been the only person in history to win more than one prize for his literature. There is no rule against this, and had he lived into the 20th Century, his plays would have certainly deserved one, but his sonnets alone are worth the bodies of work for which other laureates have been honored. What is the most famous quote in all of English literature? Probably “to be or not to be.”

What’s most impressive about his fame is that we know very little at all about Shakespeare himself, the man and his life. He only had a grammar school education and worked as an actor before becoming a playwright. What makes Shakespeare so great is his seamless blend of the finest poetry, profound, multifaceted philosophy, and a lively wit. Do it one time and you’ll win quite a few awards and be thought a great writer. Shakespeare did it 37 times, and that doesn’t account for his 154 sonnets, the bulk of the English repertory. Hamlet and King Lear are universally acclaimed masterpieces, benchmarks against which all other drama, before and after, is judged.

7: Adolf Hitler

1889–1945

Google searches: 6.1 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 175,000

We have covered Hitler many times on Listverse, but rarely from a somewhat historiometric perspective. We all know that he remains the primary cause of WWII. He instigated it to suit two profound desires: to become the most powerful person on Earth, preferably in history, if not to rule the whole world; and, for his own enjoyment, to cause as much pain as possible against all those he deemed responsible for Germany’s humiliating and miserable defeat in WWI, and its squalid poverty between the wars. Germany was forced to pay every other nation’s wartime expenses after the First World War, and this utterly destroyed Germany’s economy. The Deutschmark became so worthless that children burned millions of them at once to keep warm in the streets.

The Jews, meanwhile, largely kept their money in gold and jewelry, safe in international banks. Gold and diamonds do not depreciate, and Hitler seized on his own hatred of the Jews’ prosperity in the Interbellum to sway as many people to his side as possible. Add to this a supreme mastery of oratory, and history is about to suffer a severe catastrophe. WWII resulted in more deaths than any other war, up to 71 million, and Hitler is the most to blame. He knew and was not ashamed. He was despised and happy about it.

He is routinely listed alongside the following names on lists of the most evil people, real or fictitious, in history, especially those of public polls: “the Devil;” “Satan;” “Lucifer;” “Stalin.” The current US President (whoever it is) is usually next, although recently elected popes can unseat him. It can be argued that Hitler shaped the 20th Century more than any other person, except possibly Einstein, and Hitler is the only person of the 20th or 21st Century on this list. Quite an impressive ranking to have been dead for only 68 years.

6:  Paul the Apostle of Tarsus

c. 5–c. A.D. 67

Google searches: 3.35 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 7 million

Paul is quite possibly more responsible for the dissemination of Christianity, its ideals, theology, and principles, than anyone else. He is venerated in all branches, as a saint in many, or at least as a profoundly respected teacher, preacher, and the chief Christian apologist. And he did all this via 13 letters to various churches and people throughout Asia Minor.

He was the first person to write anything that was later canonized into what we call the New Testament. He probably wrote his first epistle, to the churches in Galatia, in about A.D. 50, give or take 5 years. Mark wrote his Gospel 5 to 10 years later. Paul’s theological thesis throughout his 13 or so Epistles is a more detailed statement of Jesus’s philosophy of ethics and salvation given in the Gospels. Paul’s central point is that all you have to do is believe that Jesus is the Son of God, Savior of the world, rose again from the dead and ascended into Heaven, and you will not die. Your transition may be painful, but you’ll go to Heaven.

If that’s all you have to do, as most people have accepted his teaching, it’s obvious why Paul’s brand of evangelism caught on so quickly, firmly, and widely. He is far more immediately known than any of the Twelve Apostles, only rivaled, through the fame of the popes, by Peter. By his death, he permanently cemented his legacy for the ages: he was arrested in Rome for inciting political discord and beheaded south of the city center, at what is now San Paolo alle Tre Fontane, or the basilica of Saint Paul at the Three Fountains.

5: Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha)

c. 563–c. 483 B.C.

Google searches: 4 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 7 million

You might be surprised to know that most of the people who google Buddha are not Buddhists. In the Western Hemisphere and throughout Europe, Buddhism is not as well understood as the three major monotheisms. A few clarifications:

Gautama was probably born in Kapilavastu or Lumbini, Nepal in about 563 B.C., about 24 years after Babylon sacked Jerusalem. Gautama was a mortal man who attained Nirvana, or spiritual awakening and peace of mind, at the age of 35, while seated under a Pipal tree, now referred to as the Bodhi tree, in Bodh Gaya, India. The tree growing there now was planted in 288 B.C. from a seed of the original. Buddha sat in meditation for 49 days until he attained the knowledge of how to thoroughly end suffering for all people on Earth. The people do have to follow his teaching in order to free themselves from the various griefs of life.

This is called the Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right intention, right concentration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, and right mindfulness. If you hold to all these, you will be able to put away all worries and you will be truly happy and unaffected by anything. Buddha rejected the notion of any literature being infallible, and argued that truth must be experienced to be known.

Gautama, the Supreme Buddha, is worshipped in Hinduism as well, as one of the ten representations of Vishnu, who is the god above all others. Baha’i also venerates Gautama as a mortal manifestation of God, who descended to teach mankind to love one another and how to be happy. Gautama is traditionally said to have died in about 411 B.C., at the age of 150 or so. Modern scholars place his death at about 483, at the age of 80.

4:  Moses

c. 1300–c. 1180 B.C.

Google searches: 2.7 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 8 million

Moses is revered but not worshipped by all three major monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as Baha’i. He is regarded as the greatest prophet of the Old Testament; the liberator of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt; their leader into Canaan, the Promised Land; and their lawgiver, who relayed God’s commandments to the Jews, and founded much of Jewish life and tradition.

The Pharaoh’s daughter, usually named Bithiah, found the infant Moses in a basket floating in the Nile and took him as her own son. She named him after the Hebrew verb “to draw,” since she drew him out of the river. No information is given on Moses’s life, except that he was raised in the Egyptian noble household, and that one day he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave and saved the Hebrew by killing the Egyptian. He then hid in the wilderness, and met Jethro, who was a follower of the precursor faith to Islam.

Jethro gave him Zipporah, his daughter, to be his wife, and Moses met God for the first time, who showed himself in the form of a burning bush. Moses then bravely returned to Egypt and, with God’s help, forced the Pharaoh to let his people go. Moses was about 80 years old when this Exodus began. They wandered the desert wilds for 40 more years, received God’s law through Moses, built an ark into which the law was placed, and finally reached a land flowing with milk and honey, which God promised them. Moses, however, had acted arrogantly when he struck the stone from which water sprang for the Israelites, and so God refused to allow him entrance into Canaan. Moses died at 120 years and God buried him in the Moab valley opposite Mount Nebo. There is a memorial to him there today.

3: Abraham

c. 1812–c. 1637 B.C.

Google searches: 9.1 million+ per month

Number of books: c. 2 million

The google searches for Abraham the Old Testament prophet are not as reliable as those for Moses or Adolf Hitler, since quite a few famous historical or fictitious people have been named Abraham. The top three most famous are Abraham of the Bible, Abraham Lincoln, and Abraham van Helsing. But if you were to go, say, the Philippines, and ask the first passerby who Abraham Lincoln was, they might actually not know. Among well over 99% of the world’s cultures and societies, you will not have that problem when asking about the prophet called Abraham.

He is revered by all three monotheisms, as well as Baha’i, as a prophet, and one of the first, if not the first, persons of the Middle East to believe in a single God. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are referred to as “the Abrahamic religions.” In the Bible, God makes a covenant with Abraham because of his devout, unswerving faith in God, while everyone around him follows the newest god to take everyone’s fancy. This covenant is marked by circumcision. God then tests the conviction of Abraham’s faith in him by demanding that he kill his firstborn son, Isaac, to glorify God. Abraham does not hesitate, but takes Isaac up to the top of a mountain and is about to kill him when an angel arrives and tells him to stop. God is immensely impressed and blesses Abraham with fruitfulness: he will be the father of many nations.

Today, Abraham is precisely that. Muslims believe that it was not Isaac, but Ishmael, his other son, whom God told Abraham to sacrifice, and Muslims believe that Ishmael’s lineage led to the next entry. The site of the near sacrifice is traditionally deemed to be where the Dome of the Rock sits today. This shrine is sacred to all three Abrahamic religions.

2:  Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh

c. A.D. 570–632

Google searches: 13.6 million+ per month

Number of books: incalculable

To non-Muslims, Muhammad founded Islam. To Muslims, he did not found anything, because the religion, called Islam, was already there, and had to be restored to its proper maintenance. Muslims believe that Muhammad restored the religion and unified it under the philosophies God imparted to him in revelations he wrote down. These became the Q’uran. Islam is the Arabic noun for “a surrendering,” or “a yielding,” in this case to the will of Allah. Muhammad was born about A.D. 570 in Makkah (Mecca), Saudi Arabia. He had 13 wives, which is acceptable and encouraged in Muslim cultures.

Muhammad’s status as second most famous person in history is especially remarkable given that it is illegal according to Islamic law to depict Muhammad in any way (which is why you don’t see him in the above picture). That law dictates that Muhammad is the last prophet to have been sent by God to teach mankind the ways of peace and righteousness, and that he is too holy to be viewed by our sinful eyes. For this reason, very few films have been made about him. The most notable was The Message (1977), the premiere of which incited suicide bombings throughout the Middle East and protests around the world, until everyone realized that Muhammad is not actually depicted; rather, the camera’s point of view represents him: the film is seen through his eyes.

If you’d like to know, there is nothing in the Q’uran that states, “To kill Americans, both civil and military, is the duty of every Muslim who is able.” That nonsense was concocted by various Middle Eastern leaders over the years, mostly in the last half of the 20th Century and beyond. These leaders know full well that knowledge is power and have done their level best to hoard literacy education from the public. The literacy rate in Yemen is currently about 70%, which is terrible compared to “more civilized” countries like the USA, England, Germany, and Japan. And because the Middle Eastern Muslim public largely cannot read the Q’uran, the governments disseminate anti-American, anti-Western lies to indoctrinate them into hatred.

Muhammad died on 8 June A.D. 632 in Medina, Saudi Arabia, having united the whole of the Middle East under a single God, whose name is Allah. There are many spellings of Muhammad, including Mohammed, Moammar, Mehmet, Mahomet, and others. Because of him, Muhammad is the most common given name in the world, with about 200 million carriers. “Muhammad” means “praised.”

If you anticipated Muhammad, you probably anticipated the next entry.

1:  Jesus of Nazareth

c. 5 B.C.–c. A.D. 28

Google searches: 24.9 million+ per month

Number of books: incalculable

There’s really no need to explain just what the four Gospels say Jesus did to become famous, but in the interest of fairness, here are the claims: he was born to a virgin, died at about the age of 33 sometime around the year A.D. 33 (plus or minus 5), the most famous victim of crucifixion, and rose from the dead on his own power 3 days later, ascended into Heaven and now sits at the right hand of God the Father as a manifestation of that God’s only offspring. You can look up the various miracles attributed to him. There are just over 7 billion people on Earth as of this list, and just about one-third precisely, 33.32%, of them, worship Jesus as “the Christ of God.” We may fairly say that these 2.33 billion people know very well who he was/is, and specifics about his life.

It is also indisputable that those followers of Islam and Judaism both know perfectly well who he was. There are some 1.75 billion Muslims on Earth today, or 25% of the global population, and since Jesus is venerated as a very important prophet of their religion, to whom they say Muhammad spoke when he sprang to Heaven on a horse, Jesus is certainly not unknown to them. There are about 1.3 billion atheists the world over, and at least 98% of those people certainly know all about Jesus. It is highly possible that the only people on Earth who have no idea who he was, or anything about him, are those people who belong to the 100 or so primitive, uncontacted tribes remaining around the world, the most well known across the Internet of which are the Envira people of the Brazilian-Peruvian border area, deep in the Amazon Jungle. They have been photographed from helicopter. It is doubtful they know of Jesus, or Muhammad, or anyone else on this list, as they are 100% isolated from the rest of the world’s societies.

Google claims that 129,864,880 books have been written and bound throughout human history and which still survive in book form in some library in the world. That is not as high a number as you might have expected, but we are speaking of different volumes, so only one of the 25 million copies of the Bible printed every single year counts toward this total. Out of these c. 130 million books, it is estimated that 40% are about Jesus. This percentage includes books about Christianity in general, whether evangelical (or anti-evangelical) or historical. Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion focuses on God in general, but pays special attention to Christianity, as any atheist apology must, since Christianity is the most popular religion, and thus Dawkins’s book counts as 1 book about Jesus, as it counts as 1 book about Muhammad. So there are some 52 million different books circulating the world right now that are in some way concerned with Jesus, the man who may have lived, who may have walked on water, and risen from the dead. The Gospel of John, one of the 52 million books written about Jesus, ends with this passage: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”

Just missed the cut (many): Confucius, Napoleon Bonaparte, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, Jack the Ripper, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, and more.

Source: http://listverse.com/2013/03/22/top-10-most-famous-people/

 

Meno ya Mwenzako ndo Utafunie kokoto?

Inakera, inaumiza pia inasikitisha kwamba kuna watu wakiona meno ni ya kuazima basi huamua kutafunia mawe, eti kwa kuwa si yake. Hapana kwa kuwa meno ni ya kuazima basi yaheshimu na yatunze yakufae tena. Na hili ni kwa tabia zifananazo na hii.

DALADALA ZA KENYA ZAJA NA UBUNIFU MPYA

Ukiwa kwenye jiji la Nairobi na ukaona magari yamechorwa rangi tofauti na graffiti, basi hizo ni daladala zao jijini Nairobi maarufu kama Matatu ambapo sasa hivi wamiliki wake wamekuja na ubunifu mpya ambao unawasaidia katika kufanya biashara zaidi na kuvutia wateja wengi sana.
Mtu wangu wa nguvu najua internet ni moja kati ya huduma unazotumia kila  siku na imekuwa inatumika kama kivutio cha biashara pia kwenye sehemu kadhaa ya biashara kama kwenye migahawa, Bar au Night club kwenye nchi zilizoendelea utakutana na internet ya bure kupitia WiFi. Basi wenzetu wa 254 Kenya wameanza kupiga hatua mbele kwenye kitu hiki baada ya matatu zao kuanza kutoa free internet kwa kutumia WiFi. fikiria na foleni hizi zilizopo Dar kama daladala zingekua na internet ya bure ndani yake watu wasingeuona ukali wa foleni kabisa… bila kusahau uhakika wa kufanya biashara ungeongezeka kwa sababu watu wengine wangechagua daladala zenye internet yenye speed. ukiwa katika jiji la Nairobi na simu yako ikiwa ina support WiFi, ukipanda matatu ni kama upo nyumbani au kazini. abiri wengi hivi sasa hutumia muda wa asubuhi kuelekea ofisini huku wakiangalia habari mbalimbali kwenye simu zao na kupitia mitandao ya kijamii..

Hivi sasa makonda wa matatuu wanaita abiria kwa kuongezea kionjo cha internet ya bure ipo, kwa mfano hata Dar kungekua na hiyo huduma ungemsikia konda tu anasema “Kariakoo Sokoni hiyoo mia nne na internet yenye kasi bureee”

Chanzo; http://feisaljumapinto.blogspot.com/2013/07/daladala-za-kenya-zaja-na-ubunifu-mpya.html

Aishi kwenye handaki kwa miaka minne

Chacha Makenge akitoka kwenye handaki lake. Picha na Florence Majani. 

Na Florence Majani, Mwananchi

• Aliwahi kulazwa wodi ya wagonjwa wa akili Muhimbili

Tunaposikia handaki, fikra zinatupeleka moja kwa moja kwenye vita kwani aghalabu, mahandaki hutumiwa na watu kujificha wakati wa vita.

Hata hivyo, ugumu wa maisha umesababisha baadhi ya watu kuyageuza mahandaki kama makazi ya kuishi.

 Ni katika Barabara ya Sam Nujoma, natoka Ubungo kuelekea Mwenge, nashuka mita chache kabla ya kufika Mlimani City, naingia katika pori lililo nyuma ya Ukumbi wa Mlimani City.

 Hakuna njia maalumu ya kuingia katika pori hili. Hatua kwa hatua napita katikati ya vichaka na nyasi ndefu, hatimaye nafika katika eneo tofauti. Ni kama bustani iliyotengenezwa na mbunifu wa hali ya juu.

 Miti imefyekwa kwa utalaamu wa hali ya juu, baadhi ya vichaka vimepunguzwa  kwa umahiri na kutengeneza umbile zuri mfano wa maua yaliyotengenezwa. Lakini, mwisho kabisa wa mandhari hii kuna mianzi imelazwa chini na  pembeni kuna shimo.

 Shimo hilo ndilo handaki analoishi Chacha Makenge, kijana mwenye umri wa miaka 36, mzaliwa wa Mugumu Wilaya Serengeti Mkoa wa Mara kwa muda wa miaka minne sasa.

Hata hivyo, Makamu Mkuu wa Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam, Profesa Makenya Maboko anasema kuwa hana taarifa zozote kuhusu Makenge kuishi katika eneo hilo.

“Sina taarifa, wewe ni mtu  wa kwanza unanipa habari hizi, ngoja nilifanyie kazi,” anasema Profesa Maboko.

Jirani na handaki hilo namkuta Makenge akifyeka majani kwenye bustani yake. Ananikaribisha na tunaingia katika handaki hilo. Ni shimo refu, kwani tunatakiwa kushuka  ngazi tatu kubwa kwenda chini. Ndani kuna kitanda cha kamba na miti kilichofunikwa kwa magunia na shuka kadhaa.

 Ukuta ambao ni udongo, umechongwa mithili ya meza ndogo ambayo Makenge ameweka kioo, kitana, boksi lenye dawa mbalimbali na mswaki.

 Upande wa kulia wa handaki hili kuna  misumari iliyopigiliwa katika ukuta huo ambapo Makenge ametundika makoti na suruali, ambazo bila shaka ni zake.

Upande wa kushoto, Makenge kwa kutumia ukuta huo huo, ametengeneza meza nyingine ambayo imewekwa  chupa za plasitiki za maji  ya kunywa.
soma zaidi kwa kubofya hapa http://www.mwananchi.co.tz/habari/Kitaifa/Aishi-kwenye-handaki-kwa-miaka-minne/-/1597296/2120902/-/11ifsp3z/-/index.html

Nafasi ya Tanzania imeonekana msiba wa Mandela

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Na Kelvin Matandiko, Mwananchi

Posted  Jumatano,Decemba18  2013  saa 13:10 PM

Kwa ufupi

• Fursa iliyoipata Tanzania ya kuhutubia na aina ya hotuba iliyotolewa na Rais Kikwete kwenye mazishi ya Mandela imeipaisha nchi kidiplomasia na kufanya historia yake ijulikane dunia nzima. 
  
  

Matukio mbalimbali yaliyotokea Jumapili kwenye mazishi ya Rais wa kwanza mzalendo wa Afrika Kusini, Nelson Mandela yamenikumbusha yaliyotokea katika sherehe za miaka 50 tangu kuanzishwa OAU, sasa Umoja wa Afrika (AU).

Katika maadhimisho hayo, Tanzania ilimwagiwa sifa kedekede kutoka kwa wakuu wa nchi mbalimbali walioshiriki, wakiwamo Rais wa Senegal, Mark Sall, Waziri Mkuu wa Ethiopia, Hailemariam Dessalegne na Rais Jacob Zuma wa Afrika Kusini.

Rais Zuma alitoa hisia zake kwa Tanzania, akisema wazi kuwa wananchi wa nchi Afrika Kusini hawatausahau mchango wa Tanzania katika kuwakomboa na kuwafikisha walipo sasa. “Tulisaidiwa na nchi nyingi, lakini Tanzania ilitusaidia kwa namna ya kipekee.”

Sifa hizo ziliwekewa uzito katika hotuba ya Rais Jakaya Kikwete kwenye mazishi, alipoamua kueleza kwa uwazi historia ya Tanzania katika ukombozi wa Afrika Kusini na Afrika kwa jumla.

Awali, ilipofanyika ibada ya kumbukumbu ya Mandela ambapo viongozi mbalimbali zaidi ya 100 kutoka maeneo mbalimbali duniani walishiriki, Watanzania hawakuelewa kuona mchango wa Tanzania hauelezwi wazi katika tukio hilo muhimu wala kupewa fursa ya kuhutubia, lakini bila shaka nyoyo zao zilisuuzika baadaye Jumapili, fursa hiyo ilipopatikana siku ya mazishi.

Kauli ya Prof Mpangala

Miongoni mwa walioweka wazi dukuduku lao ni Profesa Gaudence Mpangala wa Kitengo cha Sayansi ya Jamii, Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam (UDSM), akisema Tanzania ilitakiwa kupewa nafasi ya kuzungumza lolote kutokana na ukaribu wa nchi hizo.

Anasema Tanzania ni moja ya nchi duniani zenye historia kubwa na ujenzi wa taifa la Afrika Kusini.

“Na baada ya kutoka gerezani mwaka 1990, Tanzania ilikuwa nchi ya kwanza Mandela kuitembelea kwa lengo la kutoa shukrani zake, tukampatia na heshima ya jina lake kuitwa barabara muhimu, Mandela Road,” anasema Profesa Mpangala na kuongeza;

Sasa sijui ni utaratibu gani uliotumika kuangalia vigezo vya kuhutubia, kwa sababu siku zote rafiki yako wa karibu ndiye anayestahili nafasi ya kuzungumza siku ya msiba wako,” anasema.

Mkurugenzi Mtendaji wa Mtandao wa Jinsia Tanzania (TGNP) Usu Mallya anasema kutokana na mazingira hayo, kuna kila sababu ya Watanzania kujiuliza kwa sasa, iwapo thamani iliyokuwapo katika harakati za ukombozi bado inatambuliwa.

Anaongeza kuwa ni muhimu kukumbuka kwamba Tanzania ilikuwa kitovu cha harakati za ukombozi na kituo cha kuandaa fikra mbadala kwa ajili ya kutumika katika harakati za kuleta mabadiliko kwa ndani na nchi nyingine za Afrika.
Kusoma zaidi bofya hapa http://www.mwananchi.co.tz/Makala/Nafasi-ya-Tanzania-imeonekana-msiba-wa-Mandela/-/1597592/2117016/-/cnsj5cz/-/index.html

Watoto wa mitaani wanavyobakwa Sumbawanga

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Baadhi ya watoto wa mitaani wakiwa wamelala nje kutokana na kukosa sehemu za kulala.Baadhi yao kwa kutaka sehemu nzuri za kulala na chakula kizuri huwa tayari kufanyiwa vitendo vibaya. Picha na Mkataba 

Na Mussa Mwangoka, Mwananchi

Posted  Jumatano,Decemba18  2013  saa 15:7 PM

Kwa ufupi

• Baadhi ya watoto wa mitaani wanakiri kufanyiwa unyama huo na watu mbalimbali.Vitendo hivyo hufanywa kwa siri kubwa, kutokana na ukweli kwamba watoto hao katika hali ya kujilinda wameaanzisha mkakati maalum kupambana na watu wanaolawiti na kuwabaka watoto.

Watoto kulawitiwa ili wapate hifadhi ya kulala au kupewa chakula kizuri ni sehemu ya maisha ya baadhi ya watoto waishio mitaani mjini Sumbawanga mkoani Rukwa.

Hii ni siri kubwa ambayo imejificha miongoni mwao, ili uweze kupata siri hii inakulazimu lazima ujenge uhusiano wa karibu na wa muda mrefu na watoto hao.

Watuhumiwa wakubwa wa kuwaingilia kinyume na maumbile watoto hao ni baadhi ya walinzi wanaolinda katika maduka ya biashara na vijana waliowazidi umri; vitendo hivyo vinaonekana  kushika kasi.

Uchunguzi wa kina uliofanywa na Mwandishi wa makala haya kwa miezi kadhaa, umebaini kuwa vitendo vichafu vimesababisha baadhi yao kuathirika kisaikolojia hivyo kujikuta wakiona jambo hilo ni la kawaida na hulifurahia.

Watoto hao hufanyiwa vitendo hivyo hasa kipindi cha masika ambapo mvua huwa zinanyesha, maeneo ambayo hupendelea kulala nyakati hizo kwenye majumba ambayo ujenzi wake haujamalizika (Mapagala) huwa yanavuja maji ya mvua hivyo hulazimika kuyazikimbia kujisalimisha popote.

Watoto wa mitaani

Baadhi ya watoto wa mitaani waliozungumza na mwandishi walikiri kwamba ni kweli kuna tabia hiyo lakini ni kwa usiri mkubwa kwani iwapo itabainika mtu anamlawiti mtoto mwenzao huwa wanapambana naye.

“Unajua sisi tunawasaidia walinzi katika malindo yao nyakati za usiku, tulishakubaliana kama kuna mwenzetu analawitiwa na anakubali tutamtenga.

Wapo watoto wawili tayari tumewatenga katika kundi letu kwa tabia ya kupenda kulawitiwa, sasa kama wapo wengine tukiwafahamu nao tunawatenga hata wakipata matatizo hatuwezi kuwasaidia” mtoto mmoja aliyejitambulisha kwa jina la Jose (siyo jina lake halisi).

Naye mtoto aitwaye Juma anasema kuwa kinachowaponza watoto wengine ni tamaa na sio hifadhi ya kulala pekee kwani wapo watoto ambao wamezitoroka familia zao kwa kisingizio cha ugumu wa maisha na kukimbilia mitaani kufanya kazi ya kuombaomba ambapo wamekuwa wakidanganyika kwa vyakula kama Chips na pombe katika baa za usiku.

“Sisi wengine tupo huku mitaani kwa sababu mbalimbali zikiwemo za kipato duni cha familia zetu, malezi mabaya kama vile kulelewa na kina mama wa kambo ambao ni chanzo matatizo kwa sehemu kubwa lakini sio sababu ya kukubali kulawitiwa.

Ila wapo wale wanaopenda pombe na chips ndio wanajikuta wakishawishiwa na sio tu na walinzi lakini pia hata baadhi ya watu ambao hutumia kisingizio cha ulevi wa pombe ili kufanya vitendo hivyo,” anasema mtoto Maiko (siyo jina lake halisi).
Bofya hapa kwa habari zaidi http://www.mwananchi.co.tz/habari/habari-ya-ndani/Watoto-wa-mitaani-wanavyobakwa-Sumbawanga/-/1724700/2117114/-/s0l8dj/-/index.html

Zitto ‘awalipua’ Dk Slaa, Mbowe

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Mbunge wa Kigoma kaskazini, Zitto Kabwe akihutubia Wakazi wa Kijiji cha Bitale alipokuwa katika ziara ya kutembelea baadhi ya Vijiji.Picha na Anthony Kayanda 

Na Fredy Azzah, Mwananchi

Posted  Jumatano,Decemba25  2013  saa 9:21 AM

Kwa ufupi

Awataka waache kusambaza maneno ya uongo dhidi yake

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Kigoma.Mbunge wa Kigoma Kaskazini,Zitto Kabwe, amejibu mashambulizi kwa viongozi wa Chadema, kutokana na kile alichosema wanazunguka na kusema maneno yasiyo ya ukweli.

Akihutubia maelfu ya wananchi waliokusanyika katika Uwanja wa Mwanga Centre, Kigoma mjini, alisema alichukua kadi ya uanachama wa Chadema mwaka 1993 wakati huo, Katibu Mkuu wa chama hicho, Dk Wilbrod Slaa akiwa bado yuko CCM.

“Wakati hao wenye midomo mikubwa wanaoongea sasa, walipokuwa wamekumbatia watawala, nyinyi mlikuwa mnapigwa mabomu kutaka mageuzi, eti leo wao wapinzani zaidi kuliko sisi na ndiyo maana hatuwezi kuwaachia.

Hatuwezi kukubali, hatutoki, demokrasia ni mchakato na mwenzenu nimekuwa kwenye mchakato huu. Kadi yangu ya Chadema nimeichukulia kwenye uwanja huu, tarehe moja mwezi wa nne mwaka 1993, nikiwa na miaka 16, wakati nachukua kadi yangu, Katibu Mkuu wa chama changu alikuwa yuko CCM.

Akizungumza kile alichosema ni uongo unaosambazwa na viongozi wa juu wa chama hicho, Katibu Mkuu Dk Slaa na Mwenyekiti wake Mbowe waligawana maeneo Mbowe akaenda Kanda ya Ziwa na Dk Slaa Kanda ya Magharibi.

Alisema kwenye mikutano hiyo, Mbowe anasema kuwa endapo mbunge huyo atarudi yeye Mbowe atajiuzulu, suala alilosema linaonyesha kuwa tayari ameshafukuzwa bila hata utetezi wake kusikilizwa.

Alisema baada ya viongozi hao kuzungumza na kusema mambo hayo na yeye aliamua kurudi nyumbani Kigoma na baada ya kuona hilo Dk Slaa akahoji mbunge huyo anafanya vikao hivyo kama nani.

“Mimi nimekata rufaa, wajumbe wa baraza kuu wa Mtwara, Ruvuma wanaandika barua wanataka mkutano mkuu, Katibu Mkuu akiwa Igunga anasema hiyo ni haramu na hao wafuasi wa Zitto watafanya Zitto afukuzwe, si __wamwamesha nifukuza? takachokuja kunijadili, hivyo si wameshanifukuza ?\
Chanzo'; mwananchi,co.tz

HISTORY OF CHRISTMASS

The History of Christmas



  Click here for audio version of this

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I.     When was Jesus born?

A.     Popular myth puts his birth on December 25^th in the year 1 C.E.

B.     The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’ birth.  The earliest gospel – St. Mark’s, written about 65 CE – begins with the baptism of an adult Jesus.  This suggests that the earliest Christians lacked interest in or knowledge of Jesus’ birthdate.

C.     The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian monk, “abbot of a Roman monastery.  His calculation went as follows:

a.       In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from ab urbe condita (“the founding of the City” [Rome]).  Thus 1 AUC signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5^th year of Rome’s reign, etc.

b.     Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor Augustus reigned 43 years, and was followed by the emperor Tiberius.

c.       Luke 3:1,23 indicates that when Jesus turned 30 years old, it was the 15^th year of Tiberius reign.

d.      If Jesus was 30 years old in Tiberius’ reign, then he lived 15 years under Augustus (placing Jesus birth in Augustus’ 28^th year of reign).

e.       Augustus took power in 727 AUC.  Therefore, Dionysius put Jesus birth in 754 AUC.

f.        However, Luke 1:5 places Jesus’ birth in the days of Herod, and Herod died in 750 AUC – four years before the year in which Dionysius places Jesus birth.

D.     Joseph A. Fitzmyer – Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of America, member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and former president of the Catholic Biblical Association – writing in the Catholic Church’s official commentary on the New Testament[1], writes about the date of Jesus’ birth, “Though the year [of Jesus birth is not reckoned with certainty, the birth did not occur in AD 1.  The Christian era, supposed to have its starting point in the year of Jesus birth, is based on a miscalculation introduced ca. 533 by Dionysius Exiguus.”

E.      The DePascha Computus, an anonymous document believed to have been written in North Africa around 243 CE, placed Jesus birth on March 28.  Clement, a bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 CE), thought Jesus was born on November 18.  Based on historical records, Fitzmyer guesses that Jesus birth occurred on September 11, 3 BCE.

 

II.     How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December 25?

A.    Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25.  During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration.  The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.”  Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week.  At the festival’s conclusion, December 25^th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

B.    The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time.  In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

C.    In the 4^th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it.  Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]

D.    The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25^th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

E.      Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia.  As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.”  The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

F.      The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “the early Christians who  first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”[3]  Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.[4]  However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

G.    Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city.  An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators.  They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”[5]

H.     As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make any innovation.”[6]  On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country.  In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped.  Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.

 

III.     The Origins of Christmas Customs

A.     The Origin of Christmas Tree
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were recruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Trees”.[7]  Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer by the Church.

B.     The Origin of Mistletoe
Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna.  Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim.[8]  The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.[9]

C.     The Origin of Christmas Presents
In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January).  Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace.  The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (see below).[10]

D.     The Origin of Santa Claus

a.       Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra.  He died in 345 CE on December 6^th.  He was only named a saint in the 19^th century.

b.      Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament.  The text they produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil”[11] who sentenced Jesus to death.

c.       In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy.  There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts.  The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult.  Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.

d.      The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans.  These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw.  Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn.  When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.

e.       In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25^th instead of December 6^th.

f.        In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History.  The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.

g.       Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.  The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…”  Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.

h.       The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus.  From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’s Weekly.  Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock.  Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world.  All Santa was missing was his red outfit.

i.         In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa.  Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face.  The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red.  And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.

 

IV.     The Christmas Challenge

·        Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated carelessly.  For millennia, pagans, Christians, and even Jews have been swept away in the season’s festivities, and very few people ever pause to consider the celebration’s intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.

·       Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescue mankind from the “curse of the Torah.”  It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism is no longer valid.

·        Christmas is a lie.  There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on December 25^th.

·        December 25 is a day on which Jews have been shamed, tortured, and murdered.

·        Many of the most popular Christmas customs – including Christmas trees, mistletoe, Christmas presents, and Santa Claus – are modern incarnations of the most depraved pagan rituals ever practiced on earth.

Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmas celebrations would prefer not knowing about the holiday’s real significance.  If they do know the history, they often object that their celebration has nothing to do with the holiday’s monstrous history and meaning.  “We are just having fun.”

Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday.  Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices.  Imagine that on that day, Jews were historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that this continued for centuries.

Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildren were about to celebrate Hitlerday.  April 20^th arrived. They had long forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen.  They had never heard of gas chambers or death marches.  They had purchased champagne and caviar, and were about to begin the party, when someone reminded them of the day’s real history and their ancestors’ agony.  Imagine that they initially objected, “We aren’t celebrating the Holocaust; we’re just having a little Hitlerday party.”  If you could travel forward in time and meet them; if you could say a few words to them, what would you advise them to do on Hitlerday?

On December 25, 1941, Julius Streicher, one of the most vicious of Hitler’s assistants, celebrated Christmas by penning the following editorial in his rabidly Antisemitic newspaper, Der Stuermer:

If one really wants to put an end to the continued prospering of this curse from heaven that is the Jewish blood, there is only one way to do it: to eradicate this people, this Satan’s son, root and branch.

It was an appropriate thought for the day.  This Christmas, how will we celebrate?

AUTHOR: LAWRENCE KELEMEN

Source: http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Christmas_TheRealStory.htm