Dear Friends,

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS WEEK’S PODCAST AND RADIO SHOW

(01:38) Building arks – LISTEN
(25:10) Stop the steal! – LISTEN
(39:20) FCC threatens broadcast licenses – LISTEN
(53:07) Local food sustainability committee off and running, with Kathy Byrnes — LISTEN

BUILDING ARKS
Mary Reynolds is a renowned Irish landscape designer, author, and nature activist. She advocates for re-wilding gardens, encouraging biodiversity, and returning land to its native state. She calls these places arks — nooks and crannies where life can continue to flourish despite the tumult in the world around us.

Here’s a beautiful and inspiring clip from Reynolds work that I share on this week’s program.

With so much damage being done to local ecosystems and the planet itself, Reynolds argues that creating safe spaces for plants and animals is crucial.

Kathy and I try to do that at Birds & Bees Urban Farm. We raise half the food we eat, yet leave plenty of room for wildlife to flourish in and around our space. Sure, we don’t want insects, birds, and small mammals gobbling up everything we grow. But we don’t mind sharing a bit of our chemical-free bounty with other creatures.

Here’s a pic of today’s dinner: lettuce and spinach, beets, dried beans, and squash all grown in our home garden plots. The salad dressing and cheese are from our neighborhood grocery store, Gateway Market and Cafe.OLIVER CROMWELL – ONE OF HISTORY’S MOST VILE VILLAINS
Anytime someone tells me our situation is hopeless, I remind them of the nearly 800 years Ireland suffered under British domination. The most heinous figure in that lengthy oppression was Oliver Cromwell, who in the 1600s orchestrated the murder of between 200,000 and 600,000 Irish men, women, and children.

How could one man justify killing so many people? “I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches,” said Cromwell.

Fast forward to today. Christian Zionists like US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee justify US and Israeli attacks on Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Iran as a necessary step to bring about the rapture. Huckabee and his ilk say essentially, “destroy the world so I can get into heaven.”

If there’s a more demented perspective on foreign policy than that, I’m not sure what it would be.

Of course, President Trump isn’t driven by religious zeal. Trump’s god is himself. His narcissism and lust for domination have replaced his former commitment to non-interventionism. Trump has blown through, “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes” and “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars.” He now claims the right to invade or “take” Greenland, Venezuela, and Iran.

Next up: Cuba. Given the nature of narcissism, is there any doubt Trump won’t continue to throw around America’s military bluster elsewhere across the world? The Christian Zionists will be thrilled.

Vlad the Impaler. Attila the Hun. Adolf Hitler. Josef Stalin. Though tens of millions died, humanity as a whole survived those monsters. And the Earth survived them, too.

Granted, this time is different. Climate change. Weapons of mass destruction — not just nuclear, but chemical and biological . Artificial Intelligence. The threats are more all-encompassing. But we can’t give up hope. None of us know how this will play out.

So stay grounded. Live counter-culturally. Build arks. Push back against authoritarianism and despair. And:

STOP THE STEAL!
Trump’s narcissist rage isn’t just directed at foreign peoples and governments. He’s got his share of domestic targets, too. Since Trump appears constitutionally incapable of recognizing that he could ever lose, his sights are set on doing everything possible to corrupt the fall election.

But people are fighting to protect the vote. One example is from Stateline: “Bills in more than half a dozen states would prohibit ICE agents at the polls, which is already illegal under federal law.”

Good. I hope all states, whether Republicans or Democrats control the statehouse, would agree with the federal law that bans sending the military or other “armed men” to polling places.

DETENTION CENTERS ARE CONCENTRATION CAMPS
Tim Dickinson writes in “The Contrarian”: “Donald Trump’s brutal ICE detention facilities have been blasted as ‘concentration camps.’ … [E]xperts in the field have no hesitation in using these words to describe the network of facilities that the federal government is using to literally warehouse tens of thousands of immigrants — men, women, and even children.”

Dickinson points out that these concentration camps are not the same as the “extermination centers” used by Adolf Hitler to kill millions of Jews in WWII.

Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps says: “A concentration camp is a mass detention of civilians on the basis of identity — something you are, rather than what you’ve done. It is generally used without due process. And it is done to entrench and expand political power for an authoritarian-style government. … You have masked secret police that don’t identify themselves on the streets, kidnapping people and taking them quickly from a local detention to a transit camp — so attorneys can’t find them to give them legal rights.”

FCC THREATENS BROADCAST LICENSES
There’s no precedent for a US president or his administration threatening to revoke broadcast licenses because of unfavorable coverage. Yet that’s exactly what Trump, Pete Hegseth, and Brendan Carr want to do over “unfavorable” coverage of the war in Iran.

If successful, Trump would have something else in common with fellow despots Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping: complete suppression of the free press. It is encouraging that some Republican leaders are also speaking out again this historic power grab.

DES MOINES IS MAKING PROGRESS ON SUSTAINABLE FOOD INITIATIVES
Last week, Kathy and I attended a meeting of the newly formed City of Des Moines Food Sustainability Advisory Committee (FSAC). The committee is a step up from the Food Security Task Force that Kathy and I helped establish six years ago.

The FSAC is a permanent structure that will work with City staff to find ways to increase food production in Des Moines. One of the goals is to: Enhance food sustainability work within City limits — facilitating a food system that is local, provides sustenance, and brings economic value — without harming individuals or the planet. Elements the Committee will consider to enhance food sustainability include food access, production, preservation, cultural value, and community/economic development.”

This is a big step forward. Des Moines is already ahead of the curve in terms of ordinances and practices that support urban food production. If we keep building on our success — including planting more strawberries for ground cover and community fruit orchards — Des Moines could claim the honor of Local Food Capital of the US.

Thanks for reading, listening, and taking action.

Ed Fallon

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