“All Is Well” St. Julian
of Norwich

Today at a neighborhood meeting a neighbor said I was ‘negative’ because I opposed the city’s plan to narrow the street in front of our house from 50 ft. to 38 ft. The city engineers and alderman claim that stop signs, of which we none in this residential stretch leading up to on and off ramps of two expressway, do not slow cars down but a narrower street will. After the meeting the city worker who claims, without evidence that Stop Signs do not slow down traffic said “I do not listen” when again I asked him for evidence since other residential streets in the city have stop signs about every other block. (I am glad names and stereotypes do not hurt my bones.)

I was negative and deserve a little bit of the stereotype that I do not listen but being against something and being marginalized does not make something right or wrong. I am against killing and feel strongly about it. Does that make me right or wrong?

In the news tonight it mentioned that the ugly and cruel video of burning alive a Jordanian air force pilot showed at the beginning a plan bombing and destroying a house with fire. Bombing and exploring targets on ground, military or civilian, does not justify burning a pilot alive. However, today when Jordan and the USA carried out more bombing raids killing people in fire it, in my opinion was not justified by the ISIS action.

We call killing someone directly ‘terrorism’, but when a “killer drone” or plane drops a bomb on a target and killing men, woman and children we say it was justified and self-defense, although it was in the country of people killed. Before 9//11 I remember reading about how the ‘terrorist’ kidnapping people in Lebanon were mostly men who had suffering deaths in the family by the USA/Israeli bombing in Lebanon. The kidnappers were called ‘terrorist’ and the bombing was call ‘self-defense.’

After the 9//11 tragedy we seem to have forgotten any lesson we learned about terrorism. For example, the frequent bombing and drone attacks on people of Yemen are a direct cause of Yemen, a county we were not at war with, being a hot bed of terrorist. We all know from history and from experience that killing of people of a country leads to more killing of those who do the killing, be they ‘terrorist’ or acting in self defense. There are many more ‘terrorist’ today posing danger for our country and others than there was before the “War on Terror.”

Now the above does not excuse me being ‘negative’. It is easier to find the negative in the negative. I have no excuses but say it is hard to find the positive in the negative.

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