bereft survivors

"These men and women weren’t settler-colonizer overseers of a master race; they were the spat out, spat upon, vilified, starved victims of Imperial Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and of Nazi Germany a generation later, the survivors of an unprecedented industrial slaughter in which 6 million had been murdered. Many of them—when they arrived in Palestine, often bringing with them utopian, universalist, socialist beliefs—were emaciated and destitute. They were the bereft survivors of unspeakable horrors."

Sachsenhausen in 1942

"Both Uncle Ilyas and his son Paul died in Sachsenhausen in 1942. The cause of Uncle Ilyas's death is not recorded but from the memoir of an inmate who survived, it is known that the son of the black singer who voluntarily entered the camp to be with his father was shot trying to escape.

"So what we can know for sure, Ilyas told his parents, is that someone loved Uncle Ilyas enough to follow him to certain death in a concentration camp in order to keep him company."

~~ from Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah

The Chinaman

"'That other store, that belongs to the Chinaman.' [Khalifa] pointed to the other detached property. 'He keeps dried shark fin and sea cucumber and vipusa in there — you know, rhino horn — and those other things they like in China. He keeps them in there and then every few months, when he has enough, he loads it all on to a ship and sends it off to Hong Kong. I don't think it's legal but he knows how to stay out of trouble and how to keep the Customs boys happy. They like those things in China, to make their zub hard. He never rests, that Chinaman, nor does he let any of his family rest. Have you seen his house? There are trays of noodles drying in the backyard, flocks of ducks waddling about in the mud in front, his grocery kiosk is open from dawn until late at night . . . and all the time he is dressed in shorts and a singlet like a labourer, working every hour of the day and night. Have you heard him speak? He sounds just like you and me . . . none of that fong fong fong you expect from a Chinaman. And all his children are the same. If you listen to them speak with your eyes closed, you'd never guess that you were listening to a Chinaman. Have you heard them speak?'"

~~ from Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah

the askari

"They made slow progress despite the officers' shouting and their canes. There was little respite from the under-officers' blows, as the ombasha and the shaush seem to have lost their minds too, goaded into worse ferocity by the Feldwebel. After a while the march settled into a reluctant shuffle despite the best efforts of the tiring under-officers. They stopped often, to rest or to adjust loads, and at every stop there were grumbles and scowling looks. They were not spared the usual perils of the march — the bites and the heat — the intermittent heavy rain, the aching feet from walking in worn-out boots, the exhaustion. All these were even more intolerable to the askari than usual now that they were forced to do menial work. When they finally stopped to make camp in the late afternoon, there was a tense expectation of trouble."

~~ from Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah

Berlin Wall, II

The link leads to more photos of the Berlin Wall, then and now.

austerity triplex (conforming loans only, please)

And here's the "real news" from Germany where a political leader, representing the more marginalized citizens, states, and pardon my possible paraphrase, that "austerity is the ideology of the ruling class." As you might imagine, it's the poor who go with less or without under such policies, and the video considers how German businesses are also hurt when citizens in Greece and Spain have little to no spending power beyond that which will go to the most basic necessities.

Back home, a recent year's worth of Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs-growth reporting was revised upward by almost 400,000, and although that is but a small dent in the supposed 23 million without work, or without as much work as they'd like, it is somewhat ironic that the "year" reported on seems almost entirely contained within the period where there was intense gridlock and a blocked jobs bill in Congress. Here's an excerpt from the Forbes article:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is out with its annual update to benchmark unemployment numbers (for the more cynical among you, the BLS does this every fall so this is not a number being ‘timed’ for the election), and the numbers reveal that 386,000 more non-farm jobs were actually created between March, 2011 and April 2012 than what had been originally reported.

The figures represent a variance from the previous data of 0.3 which sits right at the norm for annual benchmark adjustments which are typically up or down by 0.3 percent.

As a result of the revision, the Obama administration can now claim a net job increase of 125,000 rather than what had previously been believed to be a net loss of 261,000 jobs.

Of course, it remains a muddle, but it still feels like things are bad and not improving, or not improving fast enough, for millions and millions of workers throughout Europe and America. And, in some countries and counties, of course, they seem to be getting worse.