[2banana]

What kept Constantinople safe for 1,000 years after civilization fell in the West were not just the natural defenses of the long channel of the Hellespont and narrows at the Bosporus but also the city’s great walled network—the largest investment in labor and capital in the ancient world. It wasn’t breached until the Ottomans unleashed their huge, European-made artillery upon it.

And about 1/3 of their forces were Christians. Fools then and fools now...

[Mr. Silverback]

Bump for later.

[junta]

I’m gonna buy some mine resistant troop carriers and offer tours of Detroit. I’ll supply the local “youths” with 9mm handguns and all the ammo they can shoot (I choose 9mm so no one gets hurt)and I’ll staff the troop carriers with Special Forces types that will impress the hell out of the Japanese photo tourists. I love Obama.

[Jacquerie]

Yet by the 1990s, . . . helped New York recover and prosper in a way that, say, dysfunctional Detroit probably will not.

A few weeks ago I called the C-Span morning show, Washington Journal. They were interviewing a new congressman from Detroit. He was spouting the usual Leftist nonsense on how to restore Detroit.

I told this clown that if anyone wished to view the endpoint of democrat party and labor union government, they should take a holiday in Detroit. For some reason, my phone line went dead.

Want to see where rats and labor unions will deliver the United States? Visit Detroit, where civilization is in reverse gear.

[oh8eleven]

The Destiny of Cities
If you're talking about "chocolate" cities here in America, I can tell you they're all doomed.
That is, what's left of them.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

This gentleman is usually worth reading.

[Carry_Okie]

The key to survival of cities is individual relationships with the rural population, both settled and nomadic.

That system is laid out in Leviticus, with the key in Exodus 23:11. It was an amazing system of true civil defense, never attempted, or even fully articulated, until now.

[mad puppy]

“When the oil runs out, or the world evolves beyond an oil-based economy, many of the Gulf capitals will probably resemble not Las Vegas but Bodie, California—a former desert boomtown that dried up when its mines closed and the capital fled.”

I hope I live long enough to see the M.E. thrown back 150 years through time in the span of a single generation. That will stop most of the terrorism and the cult of Islam as well.

Excellent article.

[AFreeBird]

B4L8r

[metesky]

Nice. VDH bump.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

The problem with cities is that they become unmanageable due to the numbers they attract. Yes, it’s that simple. When bees get too numerous they start a new colony rather than sticking with the old and letting things get ugly.
People have parameters for population, too.

[eleni121]

“Where the Ottoman city now stands, there was once Roman Constantinople—itself built atop Greek Byzantium”

---

A point of clarification Prof Hanson:

“Roman” Constantinople was in all respects essentially Greek culturally and spiritually. Greek was the language of all aspects of life and the traditions, customs, history, learning of Ancient Greece enjoyed a full continuation in Christian life.

That is until the West sacked it in the 4th Crusade in 1204...followed by the Muslim savagery in 1453.