My mother, born in Texas in 1916, never had a birth certificate. She had a driver's license, issued in Oklahoma in 1932, but didn't need a birth certificate to get it. Her name was misread by the typist who filled out my birth certificate. My parents were divorced and she remarried a young soldier in 1940. He recorded the marriage with the military but reversed the order of her first and middle names.
When I entered school in 1943, I used my stepfather's name, but I wasn't adopted until 1946. The school didn't care. Their job was education.
When I married, my wife took my adopted name but always went by her middle name rather than her first name. That was never a problem, through my thirty year naval career. She eventually started going by her middle name as her first name and her maiden name as her middle name. That worked just fine for a very long time. Then government bureaucrats started getting all hinckey about names and decided to start using driver's licenses as the equivalent of an internal passport ("carte d'identite) like other national governments issue.
My sister (first name Elizabeth) got caught up in the naming hysteria when the IRS complained that her pay checks, W-2's, etc. were made out to "Betty."
Every one of these perfectly innocent circumstances can lead to problems under the "real identity" laws.
Now Department of Motor Vehicles insist that every document give exactly the same version of the name. I might point out that this has absolutely no connection with whether the holder of a driver's license can safely operate a motor vehicle.
This is a frequent problem for women. Here is a recent article in the New York Times summarizing the problems for a woman who kept her unmarried name for professional purposes and uses her married name for private and family purposes.
This set of issues has now been brought into the artificial hysteria of voter ID. Republicans, who want to destroy the credibility of elections (when the "wrong" people win) levy charges of major discrepancies in voter registration - it must be fraud. These charges are usually based on computer matching programs, and on close (and expensive) investigation by boards of election, it turns out there is no fraud at all.
North Carolina Governor Pat McRory recently asserted that we need all these changes to voting procedures to "close loopholes that allow a voter to vote two or three times." There are no such loopholes.
In 2008 in North Carolina, more citizens cast votes than ever before - more than four million. North Carolina has an extensive set of safeguards and has its own computer matching system to uncover double voting. In 2008, the State Board of Elections uncovered 18 cases of double voting. On investigation, only one was found to be intentional and that case was prosecuted.
In a more recent case, a voter cast his ballot at one of his county's one-stop sites. Subsequently he realized he had not completed the reverse side of the ballot. So on election day, he went to his normal precinct and cast a ballot only on the reverse side. He was caught and prosecuted.
Since passage of the National Voter Registration Act in 1993, registration records in all states have vastly improved. North Carolina's records are among the nation's best.
Don't be hoodwinked. There is no election day voter fraud in North Carolina.
I'll have more to say later.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Syria, Ypres And Chemical Warfare
April 22, 1915, 5:00 pm northeast of Ypres in Belgium:
German troops had hauled nearly 6,000 cylinders of chlorine gas weighing 90 pounds each to the front lines and uncapped the cylinders by hand. Some German troops died from the gas, but some 6,000 French and colonial troops perished within ten minutes of the attack. The rest fled along a four mile front, leaving the way open for Germans to advance. They did so gingerly, because the Germans themselves lacked effective protection against the gas and German officers had not assigned enough reserves to the line to exploit a breakthrough.
Near midnight, Canadian troops formed up and attacked the Germans, driving them back and halting the German advance.
This was the first effective use of gas in warfare. Three months earlier on the Russian front, Germany had used gas-filled artillery shells, but it was so cold the poisonous gas froze and did not vaporize.
For the remainder of World War I, both sides continued to develop new and deadlier gases, new methods of delivery and better defense methods.
The US chemical warfare program began just prior to American entry into the war in 1917. The program was directed out of offices and laboratories at American University in Washington, DC. Just a few years ago, gas warfare shells were found buried in a residential neighborhood near American University.
In 1948, when my family lived in a rural area east of Oklahoma City, our next door neighbor was a man who had been gassed in Europe during World War I. Thirty years later, he was still suffering the effects of that attack.
Outside Ypres, large tracts of former agricultural land remain unusable because of the effects of persistent chemical warfare agents.
Since that time, on only a few occasions have nations used lethal chemical warfare agents: Italy in Ethiopia in 1935, Japan in China, Saddam Hussein against Kurds and against Iran. Most uses have been against insurgents or unprotected civilians (like the alleged Syrian attack), though even that is rare.
The non-use of chemical warfare in Europe during World War II is something of a puzzle. One possibility is that the agents are effective only under very specific weather conditions. It is difficult to find such conditions at the right time, especially with a dynamic battlefield. Then there is this:
Stanley P. Lovell, Deputy Director for Research and Development of the Office of Strategic Services, submitted the queston "Why was nerve gas not used in Normandy?" to be asked of Hermann Goering during his interrogation. Goering answered that the reason gas was not used had to do with horses. The Wehrmacht was dependent upon horse-drawn transport to move supplies to their combat units, and had never been able to devise a gas mask horses could tolerate; the versions they developed would not pass enough pure air to allow the horses to pull a cart. Thus, gas was of no use to the German Army under most conditions.
The green cloud that rolled down the shallow incline from the German lines was chlorine gas. Chlorine is heavier than air, and it pours like water, seeking lower ground - like protective trenches and fox holes.Dusk was falling when from the German trenches in front of the French line rose that strange green cloud of death. The light north-easterly breeze wafted it toward them, and in a moment death had them by the throat. One cannot blame them that they broke and fled. In the gathering dark of that awful night they fought with the terror, running blindly in the gas-cloud, and dropping with breasts heaving in agony and the slow poison of suffocation mantling their dark faces. Hundreds of them fell and died; others lay helpless, froth upon their agonized lips and their racked bodies powerfully sick, with tearing nausea at short intervals. They too would die later – a slow and lingering death of agony unspeakable. The whole air was tainted with the acrid smell of chlorine that caught at the back of men's throats and filled their mouths with its metallic taste.—Captain Hugh Pollard, The Memoirs of a VC (1932)
German troops had hauled nearly 6,000 cylinders of chlorine gas weighing 90 pounds each to the front lines and uncapped the cylinders by hand. Some German troops died from the gas, but some 6,000 French and colonial troops perished within ten minutes of the attack. The rest fled along a four mile front, leaving the way open for Germans to advance. They did so gingerly, because the Germans themselves lacked effective protection against the gas and German officers had not assigned enough reserves to the line to exploit a breakthrough.
Near midnight, Canadian troops formed up and attacked the Germans, driving them back and halting the German advance.
This was the first effective use of gas in warfare. Three months earlier on the Russian front, Germany had used gas-filled artillery shells, but it was so cold the poisonous gas froze and did not vaporize.
For the remainder of World War I, both sides continued to develop new and deadlier gases, new methods of delivery and better defense methods.
The US chemical warfare program began just prior to American entry into the war in 1917. The program was directed out of offices and laboratories at American University in Washington, DC. Just a few years ago, gas warfare shells were found buried in a residential neighborhood near American University.
In 1948, when my family lived in a rural area east of Oklahoma City, our next door neighbor was a man who had been gassed in Europe during World War I. Thirty years later, he was still suffering the effects of that attack.
Outside Ypres, large tracts of former agricultural land remain unusable because of the effects of persistent chemical warfare agents.
Since that time, on only a few occasions have nations used lethal chemical warfare agents: Italy in Ethiopia in 1935, Japan in China, Saddam Hussein against Kurds and against Iran. Most uses have been against insurgents or unprotected civilians (like the alleged Syrian attack), though even that is rare.
The non-use of chemical warfare in Europe during World War II is something of a puzzle. One possibility is that the agents are effective only under very specific weather conditions. It is difficult to find such conditions at the right time, especially with a dynamic battlefield. Then there is this:
Stanley P. Lovell, Deputy Director for Research and Development of the Office of Strategic Services, submitted the queston "Why was nerve gas not used in Normandy?" to be asked of Hermann Goering during his interrogation. Goering answered that the reason gas was not used had to do with horses. The Wehrmacht was dependent upon horse-drawn transport to move supplies to their combat units, and had never been able to devise a gas mask horses could tolerate; the versions they developed would not pass enough pure air to allow the horses to pull a cart. Thus, gas was of no use to the German Army under most conditions.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
What About Syria?
The subject of Syria keeps coming up at The Bean. "What do I think?"
I shy away from the subject. The truth is, I know a lot about warfare (it's my profession), but I don't know much about Syria.
I also know a lot about diplomacy, international law and strategic planning. But what I know of these subjects leads me to be cautious. Especially when the action under review is to become involved in someone else's civil war. Danger!
I also don't think much of the idea that we can just bomb a country into submission without some form of "boots on the ground." Or at least the threat of "boots on the ground." * And be sceptical of "regime change" as a goal. We're still suffering the aftereffects of our ill-considered "successful" operation of sixty years ago, where we caused the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected, progressive prime minister of Iran.
We saved Iranian oil for British Petroleum, but at what cost?
Worth thinking about.
*The only case that comes to mind of a successful military campaign won almost entirely by bombing is that of Kosovo in 1999.
I shy away from the subject. The truth is, I know a lot about warfare (it's my profession), but I don't know much about Syria.
I also know a lot about diplomacy, international law and strategic planning. But what I know of these subjects leads me to be cautious. Especially when the action under review is to become involved in someone else's civil war. Danger!
I also don't think much of the idea that we can just bomb a country into submission without some form of "boots on the ground." Or at least the threat of "boots on the ground." * And be sceptical of "regime change" as a goal. We're still suffering the aftereffects of our ill-considered "successful" operation of sixty years ago, where we caused the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected, progressive prime minister of Iran.
We saved Iranian oil for British Petroleum, but at what cost?
Worth thinking about.
*The only case that comes to mind of a successful military campaign won almost entirely by bombing is that of Kosovo in 1999.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Medgar Evers, Non-Violence And The March On Washington
The March on Washington is one of those events that people use to mark time and transformation. "Did you go?," people ask. "Where were you on that day?"
I was serving my country, stationed on Adak in the Aleutian Islands. Defending democracy.
We had no newspaper and no live television, but still I followed events in Mississippi and in the nation's capitol.
I knew of the entry of James Meredith into my alma mater, the University of Mississippi. Many college administrators and professors I knew were involved in the court battles. The University was under attack by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and the White Citizens' Council.
I followed the violent assault on federal marshals when Meredith was enrolled. Some lost their lives at that time.
I knew of the assassination of Medgar Evers on June 12, a little more than two months before the March on Washington.
The hallmark of response to white violence in those formative years of the Civil Rights Movement, whether in Montgomery, Birmingham, Oxford, or during the voter registration drives, was non-violence.
For anyone familiar with the violence by white supremacists against blacks in the south, the non-violent response, even in the face of massive efforts to provoke violence, was impressive. The level of organization, the discipline and restraint during large demonstrations, were unprecedented. (Well, there was the precedent of the Women's Suffrage Movement).
The power of non-violence to transform the political situation was certainly Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s greatest insight. He had read the writings of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi, a small brown man wearing only a loincloth and carrying a walking stick, had ended the power of the world's greatest empire in India.
What power!
Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized that power and used it.
We are all the better for it.
I was serving my country, stationed on Adak in the Aleutian Islands. Defending democracy.
We had no newspaper and no live television, but still I followed events in Mississippi and in the nation's capitol.
I knew of the entry of James Meredith into my alma mater, the University of Mississippi. Many college administrators and professors I knew were involved in the court battles. The University was under attack by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and the White Citizens' Council.
I followed the violent assault on federal marshals when Meredith was enrolled. Some lost their lives at that time.
I knew of the assassination of Medgar Evers on June 12, a little more than two months before the March on Washington.
The hallmark of response to white violence in those formative years of the Civil Rights Movement, whether in Montgomery, Birmingham, Oxford, or during the voter registration drives, was non-violence.
For anyone familiar with the violence by white supremacists against blacks in the south, the non-violent response, even in the face of massive efforts to provoke violence, was impressive. The level of organization, the discipline and restraint during large demonstrations, were unprecedented. (Well, there was the precedent of the Women's Suffrage Movement).
The power of non-violence to transform the political situation was certainly Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s greatest insight. He had read the writings of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi, a small brown man wearing only a loincloth and carrying a walking stick, had ended the power of the world's greatest empire in India.
What power!
Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized that power and used it.
We are all the better for it.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Seventy Years Ago In The Pacific: August 27, 1943 At Nukufetau
Marines (2d Airdrome Battalion) and Seabees (16th Construction
Battalion) occupy the atoll at Nukufetau. The purpose is to set up an air base to support offensive operations later in the year against the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. Army troops
(RCT 172 of 43d Infantry Division) land on Arundel Island,
Solomons, for the same purpose.
Nukufetau (178.375E
8.064S) is an atoll in the Ellice
Islands group northwest of Funafuti.
It
is nine miles (14 km km) long
and five miles (8 km) wide. Its reef-enclosed
lagoon
has
just two passes on the northwest, of which the larger is Teafua
Pass. Deafatule Pass to its north is narrow and tortuous. The
lagoon is too shallow for large ships. Supplies, therefore, had to be brought in by landing craft from Funafuti.
The largest islet, Motolalo, was swampy
and heavily vegetated.
Within a month after marines and Seabees came ashore, they had built a 3500' fighter runway (ready 9
October), and later in the month completed a 6100' bomber
runway was completed later in the month.
Things Are Hopping In Oriental The Last Few Days - Walmart is coming! Or Maybe Not
A large and growing group has formed to oppose Walmart's plan to open a Walmart Express just outside Oriental's Town Limit.
Walmart Express is a new concept, apparently targeted at small town grocery stores, pharmacies, convenience stores and gas stations. It is being tried in two states (Arkansas and North Carolina) and one large city (Chicago).
Walmart Express won't bring any new economic activity to Pamlico County or to Oriental. It will, at best, replace existing businesses, putting locally-owned stores out of business and taking the profits off to Arkansas or wherever the Walton family vault resides.
There have been some good letters to the editor posted in Town Dock: http://towndock.net/letters/letters-walmart-in-oriental
It's very difficult, but not impossible, to stand in the way of what Walmart wants.
Stand by for further developments.
Walmart Express is a new concept, apparently targeted at small town grocery stores, pharmacies, convenience stores and gas stations. It is being tried in two states (Arkansas and North Carolina) and one large city (Chicago).
Walmart Express won't bring any new economic activity to Pamlico County or to Oriental. It will, at best, replace existing businesses, putting locally-owned stores out of business and taking the profits off to Arkansas or wherever the Walton family vault resides.
There have been some good letters to the editor posted in Town Dock: http://towndock.net/letters/letters-walmart-in-oriental
It's very difficult, but not impossible, to stand in the way of what Walmart wants.
Stand by for further developments.
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Pamlico County Commissioners Go For Wind Generators
After several months worth of effort, On Monday night, Pamlico County's Board of Commissioners voted five to two to adopt the Pamlico County Wind Energy Ordinance developed by the County Planning Board. Because the vote was not unanimous, there will be another vote taken at the Board's next regular meeting.
I spoke in favor of adopting the ordinance even though I agree with Neil Jones of Kimley-Horn and Associates that the ordinance is more restrictive than necessary. That can be fixed.
Well done to the Planning Board and the County Commissioners!
I spoke in favor of adopting the ordinance even though I agree with Neil Jones of Kimley-Horn and Associates that the ordinance is more restrictive than necessary. That can be fixed.
Well done to the Planning Board and the County Commissioners!
Oriental Planning Board: Back To The Future
Last night's meeting of the Town's Planning Board considered a number of issues that, to long-time residents, would have seemed "old hat."
One such issue was a request by Town Manager Wyatt Cutler for the Planning Board to revisit the issue of the Growth Management Ordinance limitation on overall building footprint. Section 77 of the GMO contains a number of limits on lot coverage. What got Mr. Cutler's interest is the provision limiting the maximum footprint for a building to 5,000 square feet in zone R-2, 6,000 square feet in R-3, 6,000 square feet for residential buildings and 8,000 square feet for non-residential or mixed use buildings in MU and MU-1. Wyatt pointed out that, curiously, there is no footprint limit in our most restrictive residential area, R-1.
These numbers were hammered out about six years ago with great acrimony in a series of meetings involving many members of the public. Like every such agreement, the GMO represents a carefully-balanced set of compromises among residents with differing views.
The present Planning Board showed no great enthusiasm to take on the issue of amending this part of the GMO. In fact, when Wyatt repeated his observation that there is no limit in R-1, Board member David White suggested that maybe there should be one.
Another old issue was raised during public comment period when local resident Pat Herlands asked the Board if they were considering reexamining the desirability of conditional zoning. All five members responded that they were not planning to reconsider that.
Here is an earlier post of mine from three years ago on the conditional zoning issue.
One such issue was a request by Town Manager Wyatt Cutler for the Planning Board to revisit the issue of the Growth Management Ordinance limitation on overall building footprint. Section 77 of the GMO contains a number of limits on lot coverage. What got Mr. Cutler's interest is the provision limiting the maximum footprint for a building to 5,000 square feet in zone R-2, 6,000 square feet in R-3, 6,000 square feet for residential buildings and 8,000 square feet for non-residential or mixed use buildings in MU and MU-1. Wyatt pointed out that, curiously, there is no footprint limit in our most restrictive residential area, R-1.
These numbers were hammered out about six years ago with great acrimony in a series of meetings involving many members of the public. Like every such agreement, the GMO represents a carefully-balanced set of compromises among residents with differing views.
The present Planning Board showed no great enthusiasm to take on the issue of amending this part of the GMO. In fact, when Wyatt repeated his observation that there is no limit in R-1, Board member David White suggested that maybe there should be one.
Another old issue was raised during public comment period when local resident Pat Herlands asked the Board if they were considering reexamining the desirability of conditional zoning. All five members responded that they were not planning to reconsider that.
Here is an earlier post of mine from three years ago on the conditional zoning issue.
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