An Austrian fund to compensate victims of Nazi persecution is shutting down after paying out $210 million for just a fraction of its recognized claims.
The FSB's invisible presence continued; the agency became an intangible part of my Moscow life – sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly, with someone in a back room clearly turning the volume of minor persecution up and down.
It's the old utopian dream of creating a world obedient to our will, a world where "all countries move steadily toward democratic free markets," where "zealots, on the road to some mass persecution, fall down blind and rise ecumenical," where "criminals come across life-changing novels in prison," where "each day ends in some illustrative sunset, shattering or subtle".
The poster case for government persecution of the down-and-out would have to be Edwina Nowlin, a homeless Michigan woman who was jailed in 2009 for failing to pay $104 a month to cover the room-and-board charges for her 16-year-old son's incarceration.
She was also floridly delusional, her self-exculpatory monologues devolving into crazed persecution fantasies: "They track me down from every side.
In death, as in life, he suffered persecution: officials in Shanghai turned down a request to hold his funeral at the city's cathedral and would only permit a small service at a funeral home.
A few speakers made oblique references to Jackson's troubles – his trial on child molestation charges, his dubious coterie of advisers and doctors, his Wacko Jacko reputation – only to knock them down as the "persecution" and "misunderstandings" of ungrateful people.
On his Web site, Mr. Cohen says: "This persecution is designed to wear me down, to destroy my practice, to punish my clients, and ultimately to silence me.
He said the Scottish government's effort to tackle persecution was a factor in bringing down the number of cases.
For Mr. Reich-Ranicki, the memoir played down the persecution of the Jews; for Mr. Walser, it was a painful confrontation with the past.
