Has Metropolis Come Full-Circle? ---Urban Farming To Restore Cities

   While urban planners scratch their heads about how to restore decaying central cities, a growing movement is proving that, maybe, history goes in cycles, after all.

    The big trend, in older--especially "rust-belt" cities--is to go back to the soil--to cultivate urban gardens--especially in blighted and often deserted stretches that used to be vibrant neighborhoods near downtown.

   Urban Homesteading is playing a dual role:  Filling the growing demand for healthy, organic, locally grown produce; and in the scarcity of ideas how to bring back depressed core neighborhoods, is becoming a quaint form of urban development.

  It's kind of ironic: We started off as hunter-gatherers, then learned to cultivate the land and became farmers.  The feudal age fostered an agrarian economy, protected by territorial castles. Division of labor helped foster arts and crafts, which led to the guilds [unions of sorts] and the growth of towns, more division of labor and time to think and innovate.

   This helped foster the coming Industrial Age and the explosive growth of cities, luring tens of thousands into teeming urban centers.

   With added inventions and innovations--especially the automobile-- squeezed populations began to look outward again toward a patch of greenery outside of the city--which in many cases had become a stifling megalopolis.

  After World War II suburban growth exploded and a unique and attractive phenomenon appeared--the Suburban Mall, together with the Industrial Park, which lured people and industry out of the heart of cities.

   What remained were decaying urban centers with people whose jobs had left town, and where those who could leave, left. Various social ills took over and "doctors" of every stripe--political, social, economic, civic--prescribed solutions from afar, but very few of them made "house calls" to see if the solutions were realistic. (But, that's another story.)

   There are hopeful signs that central cities are starting to "come back"--not least of which has to be the realization that if we keep outrunning urban decay by leapfrogging further into exurbia, we'll end up in the outskirts of the big city next to us, whose people are leapfrogging our way.

   Farmers are complaining  nationwide that suburban (now exurban) growth is chewing up farmland. Where alfalfa grew now stands a 5,000 square foot manor house with acreage for grass cutting.

   That's why it is a delicious irony--that one of the prominent solutions to curbing urban blight is the establishment of farms in central cities, where entire blocks are abandoned.  This is good and healthy for urban residents--with the trend toward organic, healthful, local produce--and  for the new urban farmer, as entrepreneur.

   And, who knows, maybe that new farmer, will become the "go to" guy or gal when farmland in farm country becomes more and more scarce. Why? Because the Chinese, Saudi Arabians, and other countries are buying up thousands of acres of American farmland to grow grain for their own export--bypassing purchases from American farmers.
 
   So, the Urban Garden, may help the re-birth of the central city  in more ways than one. Vast tracts of blighted, empty city scapes, may become our new breadbaskets, and those tending them, our new moguls-- rivaling millionaire techno geeks.

  What goes around, comes around.

   

 

Kill or Capture Osama bin Laden? No Need to Anguish--There is Precedent

   The execution by American commandos of Osama bin Laden, the mass-murdering mastermind of El Quaida, is a direct parallel to the American ambush of Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto, the mastermind of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor--which triggered WWII in the Pacific.
   Bin Laden publicly declared war on the United States in August of 1996 on behalf of the "people of  Islam" in a long tract entitled "Declaring War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places." He and his followers acted upon that Declaration and killed thousands of innocent people in years since then...including the devastating attack upon America on September 11, 2001, which, alone took the lives of  nearly 3,000 innocent people.
   That state of war still exists, even though neither bin Laden, nor any of his followers, were leaders of countries--(or were they?)...hmmm, President Bush did say El Quaida and Iraq's Saddam Hussein were in cahoots; the Taliban ruled Afghanistan and even though they went into hiding, no one called a cease fire or truce as they shut the door behind them in Kabul and went into the mountains to fight from cover. And, lately, many people suspect leadership circles in Pakistan were sympathetic to and maybe even hiding bin Laden for the past 10 years.
   Admiral Yamamoto  prepared and executed the plans for the attack on Pearl Harbor which took the lives of more than 3,000 innocent people---until that surprise attack, it was peacetime in the Pacific. He remained the mastermind of Japanese war strategy afterwards.
   In April of 1943 U.S. code-breakers learned that Yamamoto was making an inspection tour of some Japanese-held Pacific islands near Bougainville in the Solomons.
   President Franklin Roosevelt was informed and told his Secretary of the Navy: "Get Yamamoto!" The Navy dispatched a squadron of P-38 Lightning fighters to intercept and shoot down his plane. It was a very risky operation with the U.S. planes flying more than 430 miles one-way with drop-tanks for extra range. They flew most of the way between 10 and 50 feet above the waves to avoid detection by the Japanese. The Americans intercepted Yamamoto's flight, dispatched 6 escorting Japanese Zero fighter planes and shot down both bombers in the formation, one of which held Yamamoto. [one P-38 was lost.]
   The ambush was a major blow to Japanese morale--news of his death was held back in Japan for more than a month.
  The war against El Quaida was still in full gear when U.S. Intelligence finally located Osama bin Laden. Not in the same words, as Roosevelt, but President Barack Obama gave the go-ahead to: "Get bin Laden!"
   Since 9/11 Osama bin Laden had declared publicly through his followers that he wished to be "martyred" and would not be taken alive. Reports floated that he had several circles of protectors around him (...read, Pakistanis, maybe?) Supposedly, he had given orders for his own personal guards, including among them several sons, to shoot him before he would fall into American hands.
   There is no question, that he considered himself to be in a warlike situation and that the end would be in a warlike confrontation.
   The death of Osama bin Laden is a major blow to his followers and sympathizers, just as Yamamoto's was to Japan. The comparison is a little out of kilter, only because in the new age of warfare the field of battle is not clearly defined. But the strategy and tactics of destroying the enemy remain the same.
   Osama bin Laden was killed in a war of his own choosing and a casualty of the tactics he had, himself, chosen: stealth, surprise, and fatality coming from the shadows.

Possible Meaning of "Team Six"

  We heard of the mysterious commando group called "Team Six" that executed the  mass-murderer Osama bin Laden. Officially, that Navy SEAL team is not even supposed to exist. But officials do not deny it either. (We should also give credit on this operation to U.S. Army helicopter pilots who flew "Team Six" in and out of Pakistan--no small feat in and of itself.
 Why call it "Team Six"? It sounds so...well, so simple. But, it's probably an innocuous, innocent name for a deadly official hit squad.
  To "Deep Six" something is to destroy it. The roots are in old navy parlance: to "Deep Six" something or to send someone to "Davy Jones' Locker."
  It's very likely that "'Team Six" are commandos specially trained to "Deep Six" targets in this new age of warfare.
   News reports stated that it was also members of "Team Six" who saved the U.S. captain of a container ship many months ago. Somali pirates had him in a boat drifting far behind the vessel when a "Team Six" commando shot a pirate at far range at night in a boat bobbing in high swells.
  The two times "Team Six" was mentioned in the news involved a precision "hit".  
  Based on what's reported thus far, "Team Six" sounds like a very logical designation. Maybe it will even revert to slang: "The candidate was 'Team Sixed'."  "Chicago 'Team Sixed' the Miami Heat in the playoffs." [just sayin']
   As for Osama bin Laden and "Davy Jones' Locker".......

 



  

China's Looking for Trouble

   The Chinese government, effective immediately according to the BBC, has forbidden broadcast of any TV programs until July.  In their place are officially produced programs extolling the virtues of Communism in celebration of the Communist Party's 90th Anniversary.
   Are they asking for it, or what?....Imagine close to a billion people being cut off from a diet of detective programs, dramas, sports, and--most of all--soap operas.
   This could be the delayed revolution that was spawned in Tienanmen Square in 1988.