Can Farming in the City Feed Us?

I live in Philadelphia. The urban gardening movement is strong here. Just like London. I am inundated with Roma Plum Tomatoes from one plant grown in my tiny backyard. I am giving them to neighbors.

In other news, City Farmer News has received another award for their coverage of sustainable and urban agriculture and related urban planning. Greenys interested must go there for good information about the subject. And try this site too. 

The Christian Science Monitor has an excellent article about urban agriculture helping the working urbanite to fresh food self sufficiency. And the photo below is part of an excellent slide show that helps us understand the vastness of our food chain. Do you know that 60% of the apple juice sold in the US comes from China?

Could city farming be a solution for Bangkok’s urban poor?

A group of nutritional experts say the trend could be harnessed to improve access to food for Thailand’s growing numbers of urban poor. 

By Flora Bagenal, Correspondent / August 10, 2013

The garden was set up in 2003 by a group of janitors who decided to use empty space on the building’s roof to grow food to take home to their families. In the 10 years since, it has blossomed into a fully functioning urban horticulture center, complete with trellises crisscrossed with vines and rows of potted herbs and spices. It covers an area roughly 4,000 sq. meters (about 4,300 sq. feet), that otherwise would be an expanse of unused concrete.

The guerrilla garden is one of several small city farms dotted around Bangkok. And now, a group of nutritional experts say the trend could be harnessed to improve access to food for Thailand’s growing numbers of urban poor. 

Political Sign of the Month - August - You choose from a surfeit of riches.

These signs come from the USA and around the world.

From Egberto Willies

"In Mozambique, women face a similar challenge. The current penal code, a remnant of colonial rule, prohibits the provision of abortion services regardless of circumstances. In the 1980s the Mozambican Ministry of Health passed a decree stating abortions could be performed in central-level hospitals to save the mother’s life, but did not revise the old penal code to reflect this. These conflicting regulations, similar to those in Ireland, mean women and their providers are often unclear about when abortion services are permitted, and where they can be received. 

Political Sign of the Month - May - Tea Party

May seems like a most political month of the year given all the Cinco de Mayo celebrations. I had a hard time deciding which sign to choose for this month because so many seemed appropriate.  

Then I saw  this article about the modern Tea Party resurgence and my  decision seemed inevitable and unavoidable. Have fun with THIS LINK. I sure did.

IRS Targeting Scandal Fuels Tea Party Resurgence

Is the tea party getting its groove back? Shouts of vindication from around the country suggest the movement's leaders certainly think so.

Note:  Definition of teabagging from The Urban Dictonary:

teabagging

1) Repeated insertion of ones testicles in another's mouth.
2) Continiously crouching on a dead body in a video game.\

1: Dude, I don't think teabagging is a good prank, man.
2: dude stop teabagging, it's bad sportsmanship
by Verdigris June 25, 2016

Dirty Deeds

Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.
Benito Mussolini

Corporations privatize profit and socialize waste and damage. The public is left with the cleanup and the cancer. My Nonno left Italy to get away from the Fascists in 1900s. And yet here the MoFos are again.

Do you think I am being too harsh? Go to the links and read about this shit for yourself. Let me know what you think in the comments. Do you think maybe there is a secret oil pipeline under your house the EPA in your state and your legislatures did not tell you about?

Arkansas Residents Sick From Exxon Oil Spill Are on Their Own

Friday marks one week since an ExxonMobil pipeline burst in the town of Mayflower, Arkansas, spilling thousands of barrels of toxic tar sands. Town residents say they are being kept in the dark over compensation and the cleanup by Exxon.

The Rule of Law - Updated

Update: 
Texas -  it is the new Bangladesh. Unless you vote and vote intelligently, this atrocity will be coming to a town near you. Owners of the building in Bangladesh are being held criminally liable -- how about the owners of the Texas fertilizer plant? Rick Perry said this cartoon is "disgusting." I think it is right on time. Hit the link in the photo caption to go to the Bee.

A Jack Ohman cartoon from the Sacramento Bee

Okay, the event I expected has come. A corporation has committed depraved indifference homicide. Corporations are people says SCOTUS. Who is going to jail for years? The CEO, the Board, the owners/shareholders? Who is going to pay for this crime? The taxpayers? Only the victims?

Somebody better go to jail. Or We the People might just as well rob our local bank, because being law abiding will not be and cannot be a sane strategy in the USA anymore. Form yourself into a corporation or business entity and you can commit any crime with impunity evidently. Go to the link for stunning coverage of this event. Texas is asking for aid from the Feds, even though they voted against Sandy aid, of course. Somebody needs to piss on their cowboy boots. 

Fertilizer Plant Explodes in Texas: 'This Town Is Hurt Really Bad'

A raging fire, followed by a massive explosion at a fertilizer plant in North Texas has devastated a small community. The plant is located in West, Texas, a small town of about 2,800 people, 18 miles north of Waco. As many as 60 homes and local businesses, including a nearby nursing home, were "severely damaged," with some residents killed or tapped inside. The explosion is also believed to have claimed the lives of several firefighters, EMTs, and other first responders who were on the scene to battle the initial blaze. The current estimate of casualties is pegged at 170 wounded and 5-15 people killed, although those numbers could rise dramatically. The federal Chemical Safety Board will look into the cause of the explosion, despite recent revelations that  it's still tied up looking at the BP oil spill.

Asshats on Parade - Evil Women Edition - Charles Van Zant, Grand Marshal

Women Legislators walked out of a debate on a new anti abortion bill in Florida.

"A debate in Florida's House of Representatives over a Republican-sponsored ban on race- and sex-selective abortions became extremely heated Thursday, causing several black women lawmakers to walk out in protest. 

House Bill 845, sponsored by Rep. Charles Van Zant (R-Keystone Heights), would make it a third-degree felony in Florida to perform an abortion based on the race or gender of the fetus. Van Zant accused Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers of intentionally targeting black people. "The fact is, 80 percent of abortion clinics nationwide are located in minority neighborhoods where 43 percent of all black babies are aborted," Van Zant said, according to the Tampa Bay Times." - Laura Bassett, Huffpo

Van Zant

I gave Van Zant the AssHat Award for this sentence alone. Van Zant stated "In America alone, without the Naxi holocaust, without the Ku Klux Klan, Planned Parenthood and other abortionists have reduced our black population by more than 25 percent since 1973. This is called discriminatory targeting."

The premises Van Zant is arguing here are:

Evil women have abortions for evil reasons at the request of evil organizations. Everybody knows that. A black woman is a potential Shoah just standing there in her shoes and must be specially controlled by House Bill 845.

One citizen of Dumbfuckistan cannot imagine why the b
Black women Legislators walked out and chimed in "How is it racism if they don't want black babies to be singled out for abortions?"

I got questions for the DumbFuck and AssHat Van Zant.

Is all this sheet* going to come down on black women who abort black babies only? What if a black woman is having a white baby? Does she get to have her abortion then? And what if a white woman is having a black baby? Or a red or yellow baby? Womb as Color TV. You got special probes for that? 

How will this law be enforced? What are you willing to do to women, Van Zant, to enforce this law? I sent this to Van Zant. Think I will get an answer? AssHat. 

* Yes, this is a pun and I intentionally committed it. 

This comment is from Prion at JoeMyGod - S/He Speaks to My Condition

Prion • 8 hours ago

-We can't stop giving tax dollars to insanely profitable oil companies.

-We can't effectively regulate Wall Street or indict any of those responsible for the 2008 economic collapse.

-We can't stop corporations from off-shoring profits to avoid taxes.

-We can't do anything to correct our horrific income and wealth inequality (but we're pretty good at making it worse).

- We can't effectively regulate the monopoly-based telecom industry which continues to rip off millions of Americans every day.

-We can't do anything to significantly reign in our huge military spending.

-We can't hold accountable any of the politicians who lied us into an illegal, unnecessary, bloody and costly war with Iraq.

-We can't hold accountable anyone responsible for violating US and International laws against the use of torture.

--- We can't possibly be a democratic republic.

The illustration is the cover of an excellent book Revolutionary Mothers - Women in the Struggle for America's Independence by Carol Berkin. I am in a Revolutionary FemiNazi state of mind. 

Political Sign of the Month - April 2013

Advertising is the greatest artform of the 20th century. - Marshall McLuhan. 

I had a difficult time selecting the best Political Sign for April. I found the fabulous Political Loudmouth political sign website. You can go there and select your favorite. This one is my favorite because it is fiery. I am thinking it needs to be a Tshirt. 

The word sign has a number of meanings. The Oxford Dictionary says that a sign is

An object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else.

Given that definition, I am going to propose that this House is really a Sign. I am not April Fooling. "The medium is the massage/message." -  Marshall McLuhan.