It can happen, and it can happen everywhere. I do not intend to nor can I say that it will happen...it is not very probable that all the factors that unleashed the Nazi madness will again occur simultaneously but precursory signs loom before us...It only awaits its new buffoon (there is no dearth of candidates) to organize it, legalize it, declare it necessary and mandatory, and so contaminate the world.
-Primo Levi Drowned, pp. 199-200
What is Levi's main point here about memory?
Eye on Politics & Law Lords: The Gray Zone: Wal-Mart's Telling 'Statement'
As you may know, Wal-Mart makes an exception to its anti-union stance in that bastion of freedom, China.
BBC story provides the basic facts. (The Chinese "union" is controlled by the government, and "represents" workers accordingly.) Then read Harold Myerson's Washington Post column (reg req) to understand the meaning of it all, which I summarize with this apt quote: When a company such as Wal-Mart is so plainly comfortable with authoritarianism abroad, it tells you something about that company's values at home.
• If in Rome ... [Gillmor; A former Mr Fixit who moved in a shadowy world between crooks, police and politicians, Fayez (Frank) Hakim has died aged 74. Hakim: Death of a one-time godfather ]
• · Young Australian adults want to have children but job and relationship insecurities are holding them back, says a major Federal Government-funded study of the country's low fertility rate. Only 8 per cent say they never want children
• · · A brief truce within the federal ALP broke down dramatically last night, with senior frontbenchers accusing one another of plotting to bring down deputy leader Jenny Macklin. ALP united - in the spirit of bickering
• · · · I grew up on tales from concentration camps. My parents remembered Gulags and Ukraine of Stalin. They remembered Holocaust of Hitler. Holocaust literature must be sampled, interspersed with other reading. If you dive into it for several months at a time, you wind up wanting to kill yourself Remembering the end of horror that was Auschwitz ; Survivors and their children and their children's children continue in their private and largely silent struggle None of it is over. I doubt the alphabet will ever end
• · · · · No more secrecy as Sydney investigates how open it has been Town Hall Lord Mayor, Clover Moore ; Orange Grove inquiry told of Trojan horse warning
