There’s a piece in the Guardian (via Blog on the Run) that features an interview with a 107-year old veteran of WWI.  You can read the whole thing here, but here’s an excerpt:

We got as far as their
second line and four Germans stood up. They didn’t get up to run away,
they got up to fight. One of them came running towards me. He couldn’t
have had any ammunition or he would have shot me, but he came towards
me with his bayonet pointing at my chest. I fired and hit him in the
shoulder. He dropped his rifle, but still came stumbling on. I can only
suppose that he wanted to kick our Lewis gun into the mud, which would
have made it useless. I had three live rounds left in my revolver and
could have killed him with the first. What should I do? I had seconds
to make my mind up. I gave him his life. I didn’t kill him. I shot him
above the ankle and above the knee and brought him down. I knew he
would be picked up, passed back to a PoW camp, and at the end of the
war he would rejoin his family.

Six
weeks later, a countryman of his killed my three mates. If that had
happened before I met that German, I would have damn well killed him.
But we never fired to kill. My Number One, Bob, used to keep the gun
low and wound them in the legs – bring them down. Never fired to kill
them. As far as I know he never killed a German. I never did either.
Always kept it low…

On September 21, the
night I was wounded, the battalion had been relieved at 10 o’clock and
we were going back over open ground to the support line. The shell that
got us was what we called a whizz-bang, which burst amongst us. The
force of it threw me to the floor, but I didn’t realise I’d been hit
for a few minutes. The burning hot metal knocks the pain out of you at
first but I soon saw blood, so I put a field dressing on it. Then the
pain started.

I
didn’t know what had happened to the others at first, but I was told
later that I had lost three of my mates. That shell killed Numbers
Three, Four and Five. We were a little team together, and those men who
were carrying the ammunition were blown to pieces. I reacted very
badly. It was like losing a part of my life. It upset me more than
anything. We had only been together four months, but with hell going on
around us, it seemed like a lifetime.

I’d
got this piece of shrapnel right in the groin. It was about two inches
long, half an inch thick, with a jagged edge. I was taken to a dressing
station and I lay there all that night and the next day, until the
evening. The wound had been cleaned and they had smeared it with
something to keep the lice away. When the doctor came to see me, he
could actually see the shrapnel.

"Would
you like me to take that out of your leg?" he asked, but added quickly,
"Before you answer ‘Yes’, there’s no anaesthetic in the camp. None
whatever. It’s been used on people more badly wounded than you are.
Yours is only a scratch." So I thought for a minute or two, and said,
"How long will you be?" He said, "A couple of minutes." So I said,
"Carry on." Four fellows grabbed me – one on each arm and one on each
leg – and I can feel that bloody knife even now, cutting out that
shrapnel. When he pulled it out, the doctor asked me if I wanted to
keep the shrapnel as a souvenir. Officer or not, I swore at him, "I’ve
had the bloody thing too long already. Throw it away!"…

Last year I went back
to Ypres, where I met one of the last surviving German veterans of the
war, Charles Kuentz, who was 107. It was very emotional. We had both
been on the same battlefield at Pilckem Ridge. For a while I hadn’t
wanted to meet him, but I got a letter from him in Germany and he
seemed like a nice man and I decided I would meet him. He was a nice
man and we talked, then we both sat in silence, staring out at the
landscape. Both of us remembering the stench, the noise, the gas, the
mud crusted with blood, the cries of the fallen comrades. We had both
fought because we were told to. Sadly, he died a year after I met him.

Why
should the British government call me up and take me out to a
battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn’t
speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table.

Now
what is the sense in that? It’s just an argument between two
governments. Neither Charles nor I ever want any other young man ever
to go through what we did again, but still we send our lads to war. In
Iraq, our young men are being killed and told to kill.

I
don’t think it is possible to truly explain the bond that is forged
between a soldier in the trenches and his fellow soldiers. There you
all are, no matter what your life in civvy street, covered in lice,
desperately hungry, eking out the small treats – the ounce of tobacco,
the biscuit. You relied on him and he on you, never really thinking
that it was just the same for the enemy. But it was. It was every bit
as bad.

There’s an interview with Karl "Mailman" Malone, ex-NBA great where he talks about his efforts to help with Hurricane Katrina cleanup in Pascagoula, Mississippi.  You can hear it here. Highlights:

• He took a bunch of his own company’s equipment down there from his home in Louisiana and when he arrived he was told he couldn’t help because he didn’t have a contract or a Federal ID number.
• He called "BS" and started working anyway.
• He and his guys cleared 115 houses.
• He says that the people don’t need money right now, they need heavy machinery and manpower to clear lots so they can get FEMA trailers or new houses built.
• Contractors are gouging (I’m shocked).

If what he says is true then I think we really need to look at how our country engages volunteers during responses to disasters.  I know there are a lot of things that the authorities need to consider, and I’m sure words like "liability" and "responsibility" are invoked a lot during conversations about how to coordinate relief, but there has to be a way that they can utilize all of the volunteers that show up to help in these situations.

This isn’t the first story of volunteer help being turned away during the Katrina response.  Back in September several stories came out about people showing up to help in various ways only to be turned away by officials on the ground.  Some people were turned away because the authorities couldn’t guarantee their safety.  Well, why not give the volunteers a waiver to sign saying they understand the risks and then let them do their thing?  And in the future why not make plans for the likelihood that these volunteers will appear and figure out how to integrate them into the process?

Add this to the "truth is stranger than fiction" category:  an 18 year old high school senior has been elected mayor of Hillsdale, MI.  (Full story here and here). Hillsdale has about 9,000 residents and is home to a small college. 

Not only was Michael Sessions elected, but he was elected as a write-in and he beat an incumbent. Since he still lives at home I wonder how things will work with his parents?  Will they call him Mr. Mayor?  Will they make him pay rent?  And how about school?  What will his teachers call him?

I’m trying to remember what I was doing my senior year of high school, and though I don’t remember much I can say with certainty that it wasn’t very productive.  In fact if it didn’t involve sports or girls I don’t think I was interested.

Speaking of girls just think about what this is going to do for Mayor Sessions’ social situation.  Poor kid.

It was election today here in the metropolis of Lewisville, NC.  This little town just west of Winston-Salem is a great place to live and is usually quite civil.  Apparently not during local elections.

Now what passes for rancorous debate here would barely be noticed in my old stomping grounds of Northern Virginia, but as with everything else in life it’s a matter of perspective.  Lewisville’s electoral conflagration began when mayoral candidate Bob Dalton used an open mic at the last town council meeting to complain that town officials had hindered his development projects.  A week or two later Dalton then mailed a letter with several allegations/accusations about the performance of his opponent, Tom Lawson, while on the town’s council.  Lawson then sent out an email refuting Dalton’s statements, and asked for people’s help in spreading the "truth." There’s a synopsis of the whole thing in this Winston-Salem Journal article.

The money quote is Dalton’s, when in response to Lawson claiming that the assertions in the letter are false he says, "He can say anything he wants, as can I. If he wants to cry, let him cry."  Well, free speech protection doesn’t cover misrepresentation of a public official’s stated positions, which is what it sounds like he’s doing.  And how about that last sentence?  What are we, in fifth grade?

Actually it’s kind of like a Mayberry version of Chicago.  In fact we might even have dead rigged voting, just like in the city of big shoulders and dead voters. I say that because when I went to vote today I presented my drivers license without being asked since I’ve always been asked for it whenever I’ve voted in the past.  Well, the guy behind me forgot his license but the pollsters said no problem they’d just look up his name.  I wasn’t sure if that was against the rules or not (to be fair I think everyone in the room knew each other except for me) so I checked out the voter guide when I got home and it looks like there’s no requirement for ID. I remembered always having to use my ID in Virginia so I checked out their rules.  It ends up that you can still vote if you don’t have your ID, but you have to fill out an "Affirmation of Identity" form.  Here in Lewisville you simply have to sign your name on the ballot, with or without ID.

It seems to me that this system opens up a whole range of juicy possibilities.  I mean if I wanted to I could go in and vote as my neighbor or just about anyone in town that I know if I can be sure they won’t be voting themselves.  I could also verify they’re registered to vote by checking them out on the NC database of registered voters. With that information in hand I could go to a couple of different polling places and vote multiple times for my favored candidate.

How would a poll worker know whether or not my signature is legit? And even if the race is close and they did a recount how would they identify a vote that might be suspect?  At least with the Virginia "Affirmation of Identity" process they know which votes might be suspect by that designation.

In a local election where the total vote count will probably be in the hundreds, a couple of people rooking the system like this could make a big difference.  Only about 10% of registered voters are expected to actually vote locally, so in Lewisville that means we might have 1,000 people vote.  If I were to vote three times that means my impact goes from .1% to .3% of the vote, and if I recruited four friends to do the same we’d go from .5% of the vote to 1.5% of the vote.  Say we have a 51%-49% vote, that would give the leader a 510 to 490, or 20-vote margin.  That means my friends and I could increase or decrease the margin by about 75%. That would put us in the "elite" company of Chicago’s original Mayor Dailey, or even Louisiana’s "King Fish" Huey Long.

**Update: According to the Forsyth County Board of Elections there are 8,163 registered voters in Lewisville (see here) and preliminary results show that there were about 1,637 votes cast for mayor (see here).  That means that there was a 20% turnout at the polls, which ain’t bad considering that there were no state or federal level elections going on.  Also, per the comments you’ll see that there is a three vote spread for the last seat on the town council.  All council seats are "at-large" so the top six vote getters on the slate win a seat, which makes every vote quite valuable.**

Want to know how it’s going in Iraq?  All you have to do is read the inspector general’s 114 page report here (PDF).

Via Blog on the Run.

Okay I found this piece via Blog on the Run.  Basically the author claims that he found a piece of hardware that logs keystrokes on his brand new laptop (there are pictures of the item included in the piece).  The hardware is set up so that it can keep a log of his keystrokes in a flash memory chip then send the log file to someone as soon as he connects to the internet, all without his knowledge.

So the guy contacts the police (installing this kind of hardware without the users knowledge is illegal) and they refer him to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  DHS tells him to submit a FOIA request which it then denies, so the guy freaks.  He infers that all new computers are being manufactured with the new hardware at the behest of the government, which is definitely a stretch.  But who’s to say whether or not something like this is happening?

To be honest, what concerns me more is the amount of snooping the government could do with just some decent software.  I mean there’s a reason they call some software "spyware" and if a scumbag spammer in Florida can infiltrate the average internet surfer’s computer so easily imagine what the NSA could do.

Oh my god, I’m becoming a conspiracy theorist!

America’s favorite crack-smoking mayor is back in the legal limelight.  Marion Barry, former mayor and current city council member of Washington, D.C., has been charged with failure to file his income tax returns.  It’s a misdemeanor charge that could bring 1 1/2 years in jail.

Conviction won’t mean Barry loses his job as a city council member since by law he would only lose it if he gets felony jail time.  Even better, at the end of his current term in 2008 Barry will be qualify for pension benefits and a lifetime income.  So that’s what happens when you help run a city into the ground for over 30 years.  Sheesh.