Grandiose Terorist Plans Admitted

            Mohammad Taheri-Azar had  grandiose terrorist plans long before he ran down and injured nine Carolina students here last spring. This is revealed in a bizarre flood of letters to The Daily Tar Heel earlier this month.

            The student newspaper recently published excerpts from 20 letters to the editor that the Iranian native sent while languishing in the state penitentiary in Raleigh, awaiting trial for his March 3 auto assaults here.  Interestingly, the 23-year-old Carolina 2005 psychology graduate says he attended a Baptist church with his family in  Charlotte, and also went to a Catholic High School there for a year.

           In the letters he said his ideal goal was to become an Air Force fighter pilot so he could drop a nuclear bomb on
Washington.  All of his criminal acts were without remorse and purely in obedience to Allah, he wrote. Because of that he expects to plead not guilty pursuant to his superior court appearance June 20.

              According to these letters, he initially planned to shoot his victims, but changed his attack to a rented SUV because he was worried his pistol might jam.

            The law of averages is bound to produce a nut case occasionally. We should hope that this one satisfies the inevitable odds for quite a while.

Prisoners-of-War in Chapel Hill

       Who else in Chapel Hill recalls anything about the German Prisoner-of-War camp that was located here during World War II?       

There's no question about this fact. Though I was away in the
US Army during that period, I remember the bare bones of that history, but nobody else seems to recall even this much. I read about it in the old Chapel Hill Weekly, but that source is not indexed for the approximately four-year period that this facility existed here.         

 The POW camp was located on the University’s Mason Farm property in former wooden CCC camp barracks hard by the banks of Morgan Creek. In my memory the 30 prisoners housed there were captured in the North African combat with US troops. 

          They were assigned to work in Lenoir Hall, which served meals to the  US Navy Pre-Flight cadets stationed here. I understood that because the POWs had a not unpleasant experience here that some returned to settle in NC after their post-war release.

          The University Archivist has been unable to find any record of this matter, and my inquiries to other old-timers has resulted in no other information.

          Does anybody out in cyberspace have any additional information to contribute to this little known facet of local history during World War II?

Paging Emily Ponst on Cell Phones

For Cell Phone Etiquette 

            Emily Post as the accepted arbiter for so many things in our contemporary society needs to make a code of conduct for cell phone use.           

           I may be the last mortal alive who doesn’t have a cell phone (though I may succumb to this scourge some day). –I really don’t need one because everybody else has one, and is willing to lend it to me.           

          Violation of common courtesy in cell phone use is one of the most prevalent annoyances of every day life today – not to mention this as a danger to basic safety (but that’s for another blog).           

          I am reminded of this by the timely and articulate weekly newspaper column that my good friend and UNC journalism teacher Jock Lauterer wrote on the subject recently. “I’ve had it with cell phones,” he said, and  cited his rule that any student whose cell phone rings during a class must leave the room and receive a zero grade for the day.  

          Emily Post should add to her rules a prohibition on any cell phone conversation that can be heard by anybody nearby – especially in restaurants, or on planes or buses. A second and more salient safety rule should bar people from talking on cell phones while driving. I’d add to these a requirement that the ringer on these phones be turned off in public places.                         

          Acceptance and practice of these common courtesies would certainly enhance contemporary life.             

 

Signs Sadly Supplant the Handshake

          What a blessing that the candidates’ stick-mounted cardboard signs that cluttered the highway and street landscape over the past two months are gone. At least, what a blessing it will be when they ARE gone.           The mark of a thoughtful candidate is that of  one who promptly removes his personal litter after the ballots are counted. It’s as visually offensive to be confronted with the victors’ signs as those of the losers.          Although government will likely take up those signs that aren’t removed within a few days, their forlorn post-mortem appearance does the office-seekers no credit.          These signs are an increasingly sad phenomena on the stage of what should be a Great American Festival – the electioneering process. In earlier days the most effective campaigning method for a candidate was by personal contact.          Sad to say, there’s little of this nowadays. Media is the big impersonal thing.           And if the scant turnout at the polls is an indicator, the media (including highway signs) are increasingly ineffective. Proof of this is that the candidates mass their signs so close together you can hardly read one by itself – if you wanted to do so. The individual eye contact is passé as the candidates bunch up their signs like lemmings heading seaward.          What’s happened to the good old handshake?