Osama Bin Laden Lived Next Door – Who’s Your Neighbor
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dkchristi
dtpollard
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dtpollard Four Star Member
Number of posts : 636 Registration date : 2008-06-08
Subject: Osama Bin Laden Lived Next Door – Who’s Your Neighbor Tue May 03, 2011 9:40 pm
Osama Bin Laden lived in a quiet suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan, Abbottabad, for years and his neighbors never knew he was there. Do you know who your neighbors are?
dkchristi Five Star Member
Number of posts : 8594 Registration date : 2008-12-29 Location : Florida
Subject: Re: Osama Bin Laden Lived Next Door – Who’s Your Neighbor Wed May 04, 2011 12:53 am
You are right to pose the question. Once I had neighbors across the street who knew everyone on the street. Thus, I felt I did too. They watched out a bit for everyone as sort of their retirement mission. Then they moved. In the last six years many houses were foreclosed; others sold. I only know the neighbor on one side. Period. There are about four houses at the end of the street, hidden in the mangroves that are nearly estates and located on the river. Their occupants are a complete mystery except they are on a cul de sac so their vehicles do travel our one block street.
alice Five Star Member
Number of posts : 15672 Registration date : 2008-10-22 Age : 76 Location : Redmond, WA
Subject: Re: Osama Bin Laden Lived Next Door – Who’s Your Neighbor Wed May 04, 2011 7:39 am
We know who our neighbors are. I can't help but think Osama's knew too. Very convenient to say they didn't know.
Helen Wisocki Four Star Member
Number of posts : 870 Registration date : 2008-03-21 Location : Massachusetts
Subject: Re: Osama Bin Laden Lived Next Door – Who’s Your Neighbor Wed May 04, 2011 7:46 am
I know my neighbors, too. If anyone in my neighborhood built a compound with 18-foot walls, larger than any other place on the block, I'd be a little . . . no, a lot . . . suspicious. If I was a government, I think I'd be able to find out who lived there easily. I'm not buying it that they didn't know who lived there.
alj Five Star Member
Number of posts : 9633 Registration date : 2008-12-05 Age : 80 Location : San Antonio
Subject: Re: Osama Bin Laden Lived Next Door – Who’s Your Neighbor Wed May 04, 2011 7:48 am
My parents married in 1938, and after a year of doodlebugging, moved back to Orange - my dad's home town, and he went to work for his father at the local shipyard. Their neighbors were Japanese. The couple was very cordial, and they were popular members of the community. They belonged to the country club, where they met and befriended the community leaders. The husband was a camera nut. He always had one with him, and took pictures everywhere they went, which included the local port facitities, my grandfather's shipyard, and other local industries and businesses, always as guests of the owners and managers. On the morning of December 7, 1941, several people went to their house, only to find that they and all their possessions had disappeared during the night.
Ann
dkchristi Five Star Member
Number of posts : 8594 Registration date : 2008-12-29 Location : Florida
Subject: Re: Osama Bin Laden Lived Next Door – Who’s Your Neighbor Wed May 04, 2011 2:11 pm
If my neighbors on the river built a compound each, I would never know. They are totally secluded.
I also know our friends who lived in Mexico as ex-patriots had eight foot fences around their estate. It had broken glass in the mortar and barbed wire on the top. I'll be their neighbors didn't know them very well either.
Betty Fasig Five Star Member
Number of posts : 4334 Registration date : 2008-06-12 Age : 81 Location : Duette, Florida
Subject: Re: Osama Bin Laden Lived Next Door – Who’s Your Neighbor Wed May 04, 2011 2:22 pm
Dear Ann, If I were Japanese American in the days of Pearl Harbor, I would have left, too.
In Florence, Arizona there is a prison that housed the Japanese Americans for no other reason than that they were of Japanese decent. All their property was confiscated and people were dire afraid of them, no matter if they were born here or not, and even as the poor child I was, I was warned against them as if they were the very boogie man himself. I hope that this nation has evolved a bit since then and that the Pakisani man who runs the little store down the road is not wrapped up in the national hysteria that could happen.
I know the saying " no man is an island" and yet, when it comes to racial hatred, if you are the hated, you are an island in a vast ocean of generalization.
Love, Betty
alj Five Star Member
Number of posts : 9633 Registration date : 2008-12-05 Age : 80 Location : San Antonio
Subject: Re: Osama Bin Laden Lived Next Door – Who’s Your Neighbor Wed May 04, 2011 2:40 pm
I know, Betty. One of those camps was in Vidor, in the same county I lived in. Some of the families who were sent there ended up staying after the war. I went to school with their children. They were good and interesting people, as have been most of the Japanese people I have known over the years.
The thing that people realized about this particular couple was that, not only had they been getting a lot of information, they left immediately before the bombing of PH. They clearly knew something was going to happen. They were just one couple, and the US was not entirely innocent where the causes of that war were concerned. I was not making a comment about race. I was merely saying we do not always know our neighbors as well as we think we might.
During the 1970's the shipyard invited a group of Japanese engineers to the little city as part of a technological exchange. It was interesting to listen to the men from both countries chatting lightly about who had the best fighter planes, and who built the best ships during the war. I would say that we had evolved - on both sides.
Ann
Betty Fasig Five Star Member
Number of posts : 4334 Registration date : 2008-06-12 Age : 81 Location : Duette, Florida
Subject: Re: Osama Bin Laden Lived Next Door – Who’s Your Neighbor Wed May 04, 2011 3:11 pm
Dear Ann, I know you are not concered with race.
My step son is half Japanese. He told me about the shadows burnt into the walls of Hiroshima. We discussed it. He said that his life in Japan was one of discrimination. Being half American, the teachers in the school treated him with condesention and his whole life he was an out castand had no friends. When he came here, he looked around and said to me, "I look like everyone else". He was glad of that.
He served 6 years in the US Marine Corps, got his engineering degrees, has four children and a nice Puerto Rican wife. He Is Happy at Last.
Love, Betty
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Osama Bin Laden Lived Next Door – Who’s Your Neighbor