Frozen in time: Shelters reveal WWII nightmare

Okay, I know the headline is scary, but the story is actually fascinating, and in an odd way hopeful. Really excellent article from the AP on these small caves in which 1/3 of the city of Caen hid out, for weeks, during the allied assault on Normandy. Many of the caves were just rediscovered, 100% in tact, just a they were left 60 years ago. Creepy.

The memories are 64 years old but retold with the clarity of yesterday: a young boy lowered by rope into a deep dark cave, watching the sky above shrink to a small and distant patch of blue.

That hole was home for a month for Gerard Mangnan, his family and dozens of others. And it likely saved their lives. While they huddled underground, Allied and Nazi troops above were waging one of the toughest battles of the D-Day invasion.

Now, generations later, the story of how caves and quarries became bomb shelters during the 1944 battle for the Normandy city of Caen is being brought alive by an amateur archaeologist, his photographer colleague, and the memories of survivors like Mangnan.

Most remarkably, the cave enthusiasts — Laurent Dujardin and Damien Butaeye — have rediscovered quarries that had lain largely undisturbed since the war, mysterious and eerie worlds frozen in time.

A shoe. A rusty bike. A child's coloring book. Jewelry. Cough mixture bottles. A box of Ridgways Finest Darjeeling Tea ("Grown at the altitude of 3,000 feet," says the still visible lettering)....

Butaeye and Dujardin guided AP journalists through one cave where several hundred people sheltered. It sent shivers down the spine, and not just because of the cold and damp. In a site so well preserved it was easy to imagine the hacking coughs of people packed together, children wailing, and old men groaning, the stink and discomfort, everyone wondering whether the relentless Allied bombing would bring down the caverns and bury them alive....

Roughly one-third of Caen's 60,000 inhabitants took refuge in about a dozen quarries, the biggest sheltering 8,000-10,000 people, said Simonnet. Some stayed a few days, others longer. Some emerged at day and sheltered at night. Mangnan, then 7, stayed underground for weeks without coming up.

The cave that the AP toured burrowed dozens of yards into a hill and its entrance, behind a house, was barely shoulder-wide — a narrow slippery crack in the rock that led down to larger caverns.

There, refugees slept on mattresses, straw or piles of wood shavings. Families marked out their space by piling stones into little walls. They are still visible....

His elder brother Roger, then 18, was killed falling down the hole on June 23, 1944, he said. Venturing outside, the brother had stolen some machine gun ammunition from the Germans. They chased him back, shooting. He leaped for the rope, but let go as he slid down.

"Shots were crackling around the hole," said Mangnan. "He fell at my feet, behind me."

Here lay a rusty fork and spoon, there, an ink bottle still screwed shut with ink inside.

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Lucy makes wine

Apropos of absolutely nothing.

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It always goes back to the Romans

Even the credit crisis. But besides that, what have they ever done for us?

Politicians searching for historical precedents for the current financial turmoil should start looking a bit further back after an Oxford University historian discovered what he believes is the world's first credit crunch in 88BC.

The good news is that Philip Kay knows how the Romans got themselves into financial bother. The bad news is no one knows how they got themselves out of it.

"The essential similarity between what happened 21 centuries ago and what is happening in today's UK economy is that a massive increase in monetary liquidity culminated with problems in another country causing a credit crisis at home. In both cases distance and over-optimism obscured the risk," said Kay, a supernumerary fellow at Wolfson College.

And here's a classic from the Monty Python crew: Read the rest of this post...

Science, common sense returning to Washington

The Bush administration brought extremist business and extremist religious views to Washington and the results have been similar across the board. The Bush EPA has consistently been more concerned about what polluters need to help reduce costs as opposed to what is good for the environment where Americans live and work. The Interior Department sides with wealthy cattle ranchers and posh hunting resorts instead of bothering to protect endangered wildlife. Changing organizations that have been stocked full of GOP fringe ideologues is going to take time and money but it has to happen. Whether the GOP likes it or not, science needs to be the key factor in decision making and not religious theory.

The agencies have different mandates -- the EPA holds sway over air and water pollution, while Interior administers the nation's vast federal land holdings as well as the Endangered Species Act -- but both deal with some of the country's most pressing environmental concerns, such as climate change. And over the past eight years, many career employees and rank-and-file scientists have clashed with Bush appointees over a number of those of issues, including whether the federal government should allow California to regulate tailpipe emissions from automobiles and how best to prevent imperiled species from disappearing altogether.

In June 2007, Obama told reporters in Reno, Nev., that he would not hesitate to reverse many of the environmental policies Bush has enacted by executive order.

"I think the slow chipping away against clean air and clean water has been deeply disturbing," Obama added. "Much of it hasn't gone through Congress. It was done by fiat. That is something that can be changed by an administration, in part by reinvigorating the EPA, which has been demoralized."

Global warming policies are expected to mark one of the sharpest breaks between the Obama and the Bush administrations.

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Worker dies in Wal-Mart Black Friday stampede

The worker's family should sue the hell out of Wal-Mart. It seems to me that these stores WANT a mass of people pounding at the door so that the moment they open they'll have great video for the evening news of people just swarming into the store. They know people get trampled, we see videos every year of people getting trampled. But they continue to do these cute stunts. This guy didn't have a chance. And while it's initially tempting, I don't necessarily blame the people in line. Anyone who has ever been in a hideously packed line knows what it's like when people behind you start pushing, you can push back against one person but you can't really push back against 25 or 50 or 500 people - it's a bit like trying to stop a river. Seems to me that Wal-Mart, and every other store, knows the potential for trampling. I'd like to know what they did to prevent this from happening.

From the NY Daily News:

A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.

The 34-year-old employee, a temporary maintenance worker, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too...I literally had to fight people off my back."

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Krugman on the power of ideas

I've been reading a lot of Paul Krugman of late, trying to see what sense I can make of the economic crisis. I took a few economic courses in grad school, and did well in them and found them rather fascinating, but economics, it seems to me, is a bad spectator sport. It's not an easy thing to understand, period - but especially if you, like me, are gleaning your economics knowledge from the occasional newspaper article (or 60 second story on ABC News). That's why I'm really liking Krugman.

His blog can be a bit challenging at times (we haven't been challenged in 8 years), but his articles are great even for people like me. To wit, his latest on what needs to be done for the economic recover. It's long, read it all:

As readers may have gathered, I believe not only that we're living in a new era of depression economics, but also that John Maynard Keynes—the economist who made sense of the Great Depression—is now more relevant than ever. Keynes concluded his masterwork, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, with a famous disquisition on the importance of economic ideas: "Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."

We can argue about whether that's always true, but in times like these, it definitely is. The quintessential economic sentence is supposed to be "There is no free lunch"; it says that there are limited resources, that to have more of one thing you must accept less of another, that there is no gain without pain. Depression economics, however, is the study of situations where there is a free lunch, if we can only figure out how to get our hands on it, because there are unemployed resources that could be put to work. The true scarcity in Keynes's world—and ours—was therefore not of resources, or even of virtue, but of understanding.

We will not achieve the understanding we need, however, unless we are willing to think clearly about our problems and to follow those thoughts wherever they lead. Some people say that our economic problems are structural, with no quick cure available; but I believe that the only important structural obstacles to world prosperity are the obsolete doctrines that clutter the minds of men.

PS Krugman also taught me a new word today, "disquisition":

A formal discourse on a subject, often in writing.

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Payback is a bitch

Reader Shano sent me this vid. I'd heard about it, but never knew there was actually video. It's Anita Bryant. And she's about to meet Mr. Pie.

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Rachel Maddow is thankful that George Bush and Dick Cheney are leaving

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Bush's last Christmas Gift to us: Toxic Toys

These people truly are incredible. It's as if none of them have children or grandchildren they care about it. From McJoan over at DKos:

Congress in August passed a landmark consumer safety law that raises standards for toys and virtually bans several hormone-like chemicals called phthalates in products for children under 12.

Lawmakers wanted toys with the controversial chemicals to be off the market when the law takes effect Feb. 10, according to a statement from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., co-author of the ban.

Last week, however, a staff attorney at the agency responsible for carrying out the new regulations — the Consumer Product Safety Commission — released a legal opinion stating that stores may continue to sell toys with phthalates, as long as those items were made before Feb. 10. That could allow toys with phthalates to remain on the shelves for years, with no way for parents to know which toys contain the chemicals, Feinstein says.

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Commercial real estate pointing towards crisis

How many more shoes are there still to drop? The commercial real estate market was quite similar to private real estate except the numbers are much larger and payment terms much shorter. Who wants to bet their bailout will be easier than the bailout for homeowners?

Hotels in Tucson, Ariz., and Hilton Head, S.C., also are about to default on their mortgages.

That pace is expected to quicken. The number of late payments and defaults will double, if not triple, by the end of next year, according to analysts from Fitch Ratings Ltd., which evaluates companies' credit.

"We're probably in the first inning of the commercial mortgage problem," said Scott Tross, a real estate lawyer with Herrick Feinstein in New Jersey.

That's bad news for more than just property owners. When businesses go dark, employees lose jobs. Towns lose tax revenue. School budgets and social services feel the pinch.

Companies have survived plenty of downturns, but economists see this one playing out like never before. In the past, when businesses hit rough patches, owners negotiated with banks or refinanced their loans.

But many banks no longer hold the loans they made. Over the past decade, banks have increasingly bundled mortgages and sold them to investors. Pension funds, insurance companies, and hedge funds bought the seemingly safe securities and are now bracing for losses that could ripple through the financial system.

"It's a toxic drug and nobody knows how bad it's going to be," said Paul Miller, an analyst with Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, who was among the first to sound alarm bells in the residential market.

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UBS to allow new investigation into business practices

UBS has been kicked rather hard due to its business practices, writing down billions and scrambling for a government bailout back home in Switzerland. While none of that is comes as much of a surprise for Phil Gramm's employer, the post-bubble actions most definitely are surprising. Executives are either declining or giving back bonuses - millions of dollars worth of bonuses - and the company is going to allow a review of its business. The fact that we have seen nothing like this on Wall Street is not only disappointing, it's infuriating as hell.

Wall Street continues to get a free ride when they ought to be jumping and asking "how high?" to the country. Somehow there continues to be a total lack of accountability in America these days but hats off to the Swiss for moving in the right direction.

UBS found itself in need of government support after taking close to $50 billion in write-downs on subprime debt and other risky assets. The deal includes a 6 billion franc capital injection and a plan to move up to $60 billion of remaining risky assets to a new fund.

In a concession to shareholders Kurer also said the bank will allow another investigation into its losses and the role of former executives, including whether it should take legal action against any individuals.

Earlier reports from both UBS and the Swiss Federal Banking Commission found no evidence of individual breaches of duty by any current or previous senior executives, Kurer added.

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The pro-family Obamas

Conservative writer Kathleen Parker isn't going to have any friends left soon:

Obama's example could have society-altering effects, especially in the African American community. By his example, he telegraphs the following messages: Being smart is good; education is good; being a good father is essential. Being an egghead is cool.

Conservatives insist, correctly, that culture matters. Many liberals think so, too, by the way. Why, some liberals even stay married their entire lives to the same person and raise children to do the same.

You want Ward Cleaver? Meet Barack Obama. Michelle is June Cleaver with a law degree. Family values don't get more traditional than those of the Obamas, who ooze marital bliss and whose adorable daughters make feminist cynics want to bake cookies and learn to smock.

Though we may perish of boredom, the Obamas may do more to elevate the American family than all the pro-marriage initiatives conceived by those who claim to speak for the deity.

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It's Black Friday

Shop shop shop shop shop shop shop...

I have to admit, as worried as I am about the economy, and whether any of us will see any income at all next year, all of those dream buys (mmm.... flat screen TV) are getting awfully tempting with all the falling prices. What are you guys doing? Are you truly cutting back? Are you going to skip a cut-rate deal on a luxury buy you've always wanted, because of concern about money? Is anyone really cutting back on Christmas spending?

More from the NYT.

“There’s no reason to suspect this will end,” said Dan de Grandpre, editor in chief of Dealnews.com, which has been tracking Black Friday deals for about a decade. “This kind of heavy discounting will continue until we see some retailers start to fail, until they start to go out of business.”

Indeed, the intense competition could erode profits at many chains. Some retailing analysts even fear it could condition consumers to shop only when merchandise is deeply discounted.

Still, stores plan to pull out all the stops on Friday and through the weekend. After all, November and December sales make up 25 to 40 percent of many retailers’ annual sales, according to the National Retail Federation, an industry group. (The day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday because it was, historically, the day that many retailers moved into the black, or became profitable for the year.)

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Friday morning open thread

Well, the pooch discovered YouTube last night and it was quite amusing. You see, Carmela has this thing where any time anyone is typing at the computer, she wants up on your lap so she can half stand on your lap and half stand on the keyboard, and if she really gets comfortable, she than lays down and sleeps in the 4 inch space between the keyboard and the end of the table. (Interestingly enough, Chris' cat Sushi does the exact same thing.)

Well, last night, after Carmela jumped up on the keyboard, again, my sis thought it might be fun to put find some barking dogs on YouTube and see how Carmela the interloper would react. It was quite interesting. She noticed the screen, but seemed a bit perplexed by it (see the first photo), but she really noticed the speakers. The thing is they clearly had her a bit confused, her head kept cocking back and forth, and she'd look at one speaker, then the other - all the time twitching her nose, seemingly trying to get a scent. Oh the fun :-) Read the rest of this post...

Japanese industrial production down, deeper and longer drop forecasted

The trend continues and it's not a pretty sight.

Japanese industrial production dropped sharply in October and manufacturers warned of even more dramatic falls in coming months, prompting warnings that Japan's recession will be even deeper and longer than previously thought.

The bleak industrial data, combined with sliding household spending and falling retail sales, will reinforce the Bank of Japan's focus on downside risks for the world's second-largest economy, but economists remain divided on whether it will cut its already low rates even further, even as the risk of deflation grows.

Japan is now firmly caught up in the financial crisis, with its big exporters such as Toyota and other car makers facing tumbling orders from key customers in the United States, Europe -- and increasingly Asia as well.

Exporters had been the main engine of growth for Japan's economy but Takumi Tsunoda, senior economist at Shinkin Central Bank Research, said their output could post its biggest ever quarterly fall in the fourth quarter.

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Indian military storms Jewish center, Mumbai standoff continues

The standoff continues but not many answers yet about the attackers. From CNN:

Authorities said the death toll from the coordinated attacks carried out on at least seven sites Wednesday was at 125, including at least six foreigners and 14 police officers. Some 327 people were wounded.

Soldiers and police have suffered a number of casualties while fighting the terrorists inside the Taj, Thamburaj said, declining to give more details because he believed the information could aid the attackers.

Members of India's premier counterterrorist force were also seeking to end standoffs at another luxury hotel, The Oberoi, and the Jewish center, known as the Nariman House.

Two dozen soldiers could be seen rappelling down ropes from military choppers onto the roof of the Nariman House early Friday.

For hours afterward, throngs of onlookers heard sounds of gunfire and at least 10 explosions coming from inside.

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