There is a downturn. Most people agree that Lord of Chaos was the last good book until Brandon Sanderson took over. I like to thrown in book 7 as well but RJ really did waste a whole lot of books on Ajah politics

Well I guess anytime the Internet has a problem these days, we are either going to delete the problem or boycott it into oblivion. If you look deeply into any giant Corp or business serving millions of people you’re going to find faults and deficiencies like this every time. Follow the production Chain of Apple, Google, Tesla etc etc you’re going to find someone at the deep end bearing the entire cost of their success.

So what happens now ? Assuming everyone boycotted Amazon and the unlikely event occurred and it shut down. What next? Tens of thousands of those works go home to what? Does the editor then start another campaign to employ all the people laid off? Think they’d be working there if they had a lot more options?

How about trying to fix the problem or at least fix as much as humanly possible? How about putting pressure on your reps to draw up some regulations? How about the government? Isn’t that what they’re there for? Do we have to resort to Social justice for everything now ? Because it obviously doesn’t work with these corporations. See Equifax, See Facebook ?

> How about putting pressure on your reps to draw up some regulations?

I think the idea is to convince the company directly rather than relying on politicians.

> Because it obviously doesn’t work with these corporations.

There are some pretty glaring examples where it has worked. Nike sweatshops probably being the most visible. Boycotts and lawsuits hit the bottom line, which is what they ultimately care about.

> I think the idea is to convince the company directly rather than relying on politicians.

Relying on politicians is hard in the short term, but regulatory policy fixes the problem more or less permanently in an accountable, democratic, and globally applicable (in a national context) way. If we as a society believe what Amazon is doing is fundamentally wrong, why not prohibit legally rather than rely on an ad-hoc solution that will probably be circumvented once attention fades away?

Did Nike stop employing child labor for real? I thought people just stopped talking about it.

Amazon wouldn't shut down if successfully botcotted: they'd mucg more likely fix their employment practices.

Generally, the goal of a boycott isn't to force a company to shut down, it's to force them to change their ways to end the boycott.

> This is a very ambitious project.

I’m quite certain the word you’re looking for “Ambiguous”. The entire landing page was confusion personified, with loads of promises and assembly-language-like marketing that only a few exceptional people with limitless amount of time will dedicate themselves to be trapped by

I didn't want to comment about this, but this post was extremely hard to read. Kumasi is the heart of what remains of the old Ashanti empire that once ruled West Africa. If you had spoken about some village in the Ashanti Region, i'd believe you outright but this is the second most important city in Ghana, and even 10 years ago wasn't this bad.

* The Electricity problem isn't a part of life and definitely doesn't affect Kumasi as much as it affected other parts in the past. The country is powered by a couple of hydroelectric dams(and even supply power to a few other west African countries). The water levels were low due to low rainful and that's why these blackout began 10 years ago but it didn't really get bad till 2012...The Ashanti are a proud people, the infrastructure situatuion is not as dire as you state it.

* Air quality? Kumasi dusty? The entire city was tarred even as of 10 years ago. I'd still like to believe you spent your time in a village in the Ashanti Region but not Kumasi itself

* Literacy? Ha you based that on your two week trip to one school?

* Poverty is subjective i believe. 10 years ago, the Ghanaian cedi was pegged evenly with the dollar, and $1 usd was more than enough to feed an entire family. Food was cheap(Still largely is) and the Ashanti Region produces a massive amount of food crops. Your understanding of poverty is flawed if you're going to base it off economic theory. Most people in Africa are able to provide for their families and don't see the need past that. A lot of people are just comfortable staying in mud huts in villages, farming and going about their daily businesses. They don't really care about foreign healthcare because there's a thriving alternative medicine industry in Ghana(herbal) and most people just generally don't care. It's more about the culture, not the ignorance

* Internet 10 years ago? C'mon I'm ashamed to admit it but Ghana was on full blast for internet fraud 10 years ago. This is where the Nigerian princes picked up their skills from. Till today, Ghana is still blocked from using paypal. There was internet all over ten years ago and very cheap. We had large communities of MMO players, especially runescape and kids just go home or to an internet cafe after school to play.

*Typing skills... I don't even get this one

I know the conditions are not as bright as i've seen while travelling the globe, but this was too much like the regular "Africa is a poster child for poverty" theme that it hurt to read it

Disclaimer: I was born and bred in Ghana, and live in several cities for several years.

To be honest, you could be totally right. I went back to look at my records of the trip and my memories of the trip before writing my comment. I also spent a bunch of time looking at a map trying to remember. I definitely spent time in Kumasi but the majority of my time was likely in an Ashanti region village. Sorry if you feel that I’ve misrepresented Kumasi.

I wouldn't term it scott free in this case. That girl is forever going to be haunted by this and society will probably never forget to remind her every once in a while

Assuming she's not a psychopath, excuse me, I mean someone suffering from antisocial personality disorder.

Oh they're already pulling strings on this one with Eating disorders and depressions and what nots

She'll only be haunted by the fact that she got caught.

You called it

I'm sure dang will around shortly to delete this for your own safety

Free? For Free? I'd totally pay to use an app like this.

I've been using Kobo for several years and this is the only major feature they've lacked IMO. Thank you, Thank you

Well that's an awesome comment for us to read! Thanks for the feedback. We're offering our five launch titles for free right now to our earliest users, but we do plan on selling content in the near future :)

Flag and all, i wouldn't call it a "Fake US Embassy". With the high rate of Visa denials in countries like Nigeria,(and some other francophone West African countries) Ghana is a go to haven for all your visa issues. I'm quite sure most of these "victims" knew the kind of documentation they were going to get, just as long as it gets you through immigration. Scam might not be the word here, more like illegal travel facilitation.

Well, something is only valuable if you know how to sell it. The cash is easier to convert into local currency (if it isn't already) than the passport.

Yep! Here is a slightly edited account of my memory of what happened (this was written a few weeks later):

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I’m recreating this trip from an unimpressive map of Ghana and with little knowledge of the exact route we took, but I believe we were about 40km out of Tamale, near the small village of Kusawgu, when two men dressed in jungle fatigues appeared from the bush on the right side of the road and fired a few rounds from automatic weapons. I can’t recall where exactly they were aiming but I do feel like the guns were pointed pretty directly at the front of the bus. The driver yelled “Oh shit!” or something similar in French as he sank back into his seat and pulled the bus out of gear. From somewhere behind me I heard a woman yell “Il faut continuer!” (“Keep going!”) as the driver slowed and turned the bus to the shoulder of the road. As we slowed down a small tro-tro (taxi van) sped up quickly and managed to use our bus as sort of a shield to get by the gunmen (who did take a few shots in vain at the little bugger).

There were a few more shots and a loud noise outside the bus as one of the gunmen shot out the front right tire. He then came on the bus and tossed the bus worker who was sitting in front of the door out of the bus. The driver was yelling at us to get off and apparently this made the gunmen a little angry so he smacked him over the head a few times (nothing serious). For my part, I put my head down and had no intention of moving until someone with a gun told me too. Next, the gunmen who got on the bus turned to face the passengers, said something incomprehensible and fired a round inside the bus. The gunmen was standing right next to me so the shot gave my left ear quite a ringing and we later saw where the bullet landed, just over the seats where two people from our group were sitting. He then grabbed my shoulder and heaved me a little towards the door, which I took to mean that he wanted me to get off the bus.

When I got outside I saw the bus worker lying face down on the ground with his arms and legs spread. I felt this position looked a little awkward so for a moment I just kind of stood there. Then another volunteer from our group came out and got down on his knees and covered his head next to me so I followed his cue. A small aside here, as part of our safety and security training with Peace Corps we have been well informed of the general anatomy of a situation like this and something similar did in fact happen to a volunteer in Burkina a few months ago. Basically these men are highway robbers looking for money, they are not out to hurt anyone and the general rules for the persons being robbed are to do as they say and do not look them in the face.

Anyway, not long after I got off the bus I felt hands reach in to my back pockets to search for money (none was there). From here on out I can only really guess at what was happening because all I could see was the ground under me and a few people nearby. After a few minutes some more hands made their way in to my back pockets and once again came away empty. Finally, someone came around in front of me and lifted me up a little while something else poked me in the back of the neck (I assume a gun); I kept my eyes on the ground, took my wallet and passport from the front pocket of my shirt, handed it to him and went back into my covered position. He immediately threw the passport back down on the ground, took a few seconds to pull the cash out of my wallet (150,000cfa, about US$350) and then tossed the wallet with all its contents back at my hands. I was immediately rather relieved that he did not take my ID or passport as it saved me the trouble of replacing them.

Throughout this process there was some celebratory hooting and hollering (understandably, dudes were making bank with all of us nassara (foreigners)) and a few random gun shots here and there. At some point there were maybe 15 or 30 seconds of frenzied gun fire that were followed by single shots at close, seemingly equal intervals. I became a little worried thinking that maybe they were executing people, but I took the lack of any sort of other noise (screaming, body thud, etc) to indicate that this was not the case. I noticed the bus worker beside me start to sit up and look around a little and eventually turn on his back and sit down. I took this to mean the coast was clear so I slowly came up to look around and saw a Ghanaian police officer firing rounds in to the bush. I was quite relieved (and surprised) to see him there, I don’t think the whole ordeal lasted more than 10 minutes and that strikes me as a pretty good response time for the police. Taking the example of the volunteer that this happened to in Burkina, I believe he was held up for over half an hour (or more) and I don’t think the police came at all. [HN edit - I later spoke with this volunteer about his experience, he was in fact held up for a couple of hours and police never did come. In his case they took pretty much everything he had (he didn't have his passport at the time).]

Once everyone realized that the immediate danger was over people began looking around for their belongings while the police tried to get an idea of what happened and what was taken. At one point in this process an officer asked me how much was taken from me; after I told him, he added it to his list and remarked, and I quote, “Wow, they had a field day.” I found this pretty damn amusing. Anyway the first thing I found was my favorite dress shirt on the ground just outside the bus. I collected that and got back on the bus to look for my bag but found nothing near my seat. I then went back outside and found another small item of clothing (I think shorts) before I noticed my bag (the thermal bag that I love so dearly) crushed up against the windshield and empty. I was happy to find my bag but pretty bummed to think that everything inside had been taken (clothes, camera, ipod). To my surprise, however, I eventually found pretty much everything strewn about randomly in the first few rows of seats. Apparently the robbers were either completely uninterested in anything other than cash or simply didn’t have the time to get everything they wanted. Some other peoples’ bags remained untouched and for the most part everyone in our group still had some money (I was the only idiot who didn’t separate my money out in different places).

Within (impressively) five or 10 minutes there was an empty bus ready to take us all to the next large city on our trip south, Kintampo, while the driver and worker changed the shot-out tire on our bus. We got in to Kintampo pretty late in the evening so Peace Corps asked that we get a hotel there before continuing to the much larger city Kumasi (which has a Peace Corps “sub office”). We got rooms in a nice little hotel overlooking the bus station and this was where we got our first taste of the delicious “fried rice” dish that is a staple in Ghana. The dish includes, obviously, fried rice plus a little salad, a piece of fried chicken, some baked beans (!!) and occasionally a hard boiled egg. Needless to say we were all relieved to relax and have some good food after such a long day.

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As a Ghanaian, this is a pretty odd story for multiple reasons.

I don't find that surprising by any means. It's out of context and a near stream of consciousness memory rant of the only time in my life anyone has ever pointed a gun at me (:

what a sheltered life you must lead.