Word: rationalizations
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Thus began one of the nation's worst inland oil spills ever. Within 24 hours, 23,000 people in the Pittsburgh area found themselves without tap water. An additional 750,000 were forced to ration their drinking water, 1,200 families were temporarily evacuated, dozens of factories had to shut down, schools were closed and commercial traffic on the river was halted. The oil entered the Ohio River at Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle, and by week's end the scene had been replayed downriver as far as Steubenville, Ohio, where an ice jam slowed the oil's progress. Wheeling...
Most of what passed for life in the Lagers took place in what Levi calls the "gray zone," an area of collaboration with the persecutors that, adds the author, "contains within itself enough to confuse our need to judge." Some jobs brought a prisoner an added ration of soup, perhaps the difference between starvation and survival. Levi absolves the sweepers, kettle washers, night watchmen, lice checkers and bed smoothers, those "who exploited to their minuscule advantage the German fixation about bunks made up flat and square." Mercy is more strained for the Kapos, who were in charge of barracks...
Before the families receive their ration of food, the children are examined by health workers. Their eyes are peered at; their skin is checked. The aides take measurements of each child. If he or she is too small, it can be a sign of chronic malnourishment. Danish Nutritionist Birthe Pedersen, who works for the International Committee of the Red Cross, is measuring an eight-year-old boy. The upper part of his sticklike arm is 9.8 cm around; a normal child's arm is about 15 cm. After the boy walks away, Pedersen looks grim. "He will not live very...
...those awaiting food donations outside Wukro quietly sit on their haunches. One man, Gebre Yohanes Haile, 50, has brought along his chief resource: his ox. His family is sick with hunger, and so only he and the animal made the journey. Thus he will receive just one ration: twelve kilos of wheat, two of beans and two of oil. He will sell his ox for $200, and then pay $150 for 100 kilos of grain, twice the usual cost. "We have food for today," Gebre says. "I don't know about tomorrow...
...believe in the slogans see their faith tested daily. By every economic measure imaginable, the country has become considerably poorer since 1979. The purchasing power of the average person with a job has declined to less than 20% of what it was in 1980. Food and fuel are tightly rationed. A few weeks ago the gas allowance, obtained with coupons bearing a portrait of Che Guevara, was cut from 20 to 17 gal. a month. Earlier this year, the government-subsidized rice ration was reduced to 1 lb. a person a month, down from 5 lbs. three years...