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“The kidnap of Maduro, the rush of Western powers to accept it, and the inability of the rest of the world to do anything about it, have underlined that international law is simply dead.”

-- Craig Murray

News and Opinion

The US Empire Needs Men Like Trump

If you were wondering why the US establishment was so much more chill about Trump becoming president this term than they were the first time around, you’re watching the reason now. The powers that be were assured that he’d carry out longstanding imperial agendas like kidnapping Maduro, bombing Iran and overseeing a final solution to the Palestinian problem, and they trusted him to carry out those plans.

The MAGA narrative that the establishment hates Trump because he’s fighting the Deep State has never been true; there were certain factions within the US imperial power structure which disliked Trump, but that was only because he was not a proven commodity like Hillary Clinton and they didn’t trust him to be a reliable steward of the empire. Trump proved that he could be trusted with his advancement of longtime swamp monster agendas throughout his first term, and he plainly did enough during his time out of office to assure his fellow empire managers that he would do even more if re-elected.

The empire needs its skillful orators and apologists like Obama, but it also needs its iron-fisted overt tyrants like Trump. It needs good cop presidents to manufacture global consensus and expand US soft power, and it also needs bad cop presidents to inflict the hard power abuses the good cops can’t get away with. Both are essential components to the operation of the imperial machine.

Marco Rubio:

If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I would be concerned — at least a little bit. pic.twitter.com/6ZBmwykfH1

— Clash Report (@clashreport) January 3, 2026

Cuba for example has been a socialist island nation off the coast of the United States for generations, because the US hasn’t been able topple its government by its usual means. All the standard CIA assassination ops, proxy warfare and economic blockades were unsuccessful, and there’s been no national or international support for sending US boots on the ground to regime change a small country that poses no military threat. But a last-term bad cop president like Trump has options at his disposal that would be off the table for good cop presidents.

US empire managers are discussing this openly.

“If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned, at least a little bit,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio after Maduro’s capture.

“Cuba is ready to fall,” Trump told the press on Sunday next to a delighted Lindsey Graham. “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall. I don’t know if they’re going to hold out. But Cuba now has no income. They got all of their income from their Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil. They’re not getting any of it. And Cuba is literally ready to fall.”

This is OUR Hemisphere, and President Trump will not allow our security to be threatened. pic.twitter.com/SXvI868d4Z

— Department of State (@StateDept) January 5, 2026

“You just wait for Cuba,” Graham added. “Cuba is a Communist dictatorship that’s killed priests and nuns, they preyed on their own people. Their days are numbered. We’re gonna wake up one day, I hope in ’26, in our backyard we’re gonna have allies in these countries doing business with America, not narcoterrorist dictators killing Americans.”

“Donald Trump will have done something that’s eluded America since the fifties: deal with the Communist dictatorship 90 miles off the coast of Florida,” Graham said on Fox News. “I can’t wait till that day comes. To our Cuban friends in Florida and throughout America, the liberation of your homeland is close.”

The Beltway swamp was saying this well before Trump’s Venezuela assault. In October, Senator Rick Scott told 60 Minutes that if Maduro is removed “it’ll be the end of Cuba,” saying “America is gonna take care of the southern hemisphere and make sure there’s freedom and democracy.”

Trump’s blatant smash-and-grab violation of international law in Venezuela wouldn’t have worked for a president who’s trying to put a nice guy face on the US empire, but for a wealthy reality TV star who’s comfortable playing the WWE heel, it’s opened up potential power grabs that have been eluding the imperialists for decades.

JUST IN - Lindsey Graham and Trump pose together with a "Make Iran Great Again" hat, signed by Trump. pic.twitter.com/656ctZp52M

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 5, 2026

When the news broke that Trump had attacked Caracas I was working on an article about his warmongering with Iran which I had to abandon to focus on the new development. The president had announced on Truth Social that if any of the people protesting in Iran are killed, “the United States of America will come to their rescue,” adding, “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

Prior to that Trump had confirmed to the press that the US would attack Iran if it tried to rebuild its missile program, saying in a joint news conference with Benjamin Netanyahu that “I hope they’re not trying to build up again because if they are, we’re going have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that buildup.”

To be clear, the president is not talking about attacking Iran if it tries to rebuild its nuclear facilities or construct a nuclear weapon. He’s talking about Iran’s conventional ballistic missile program. The United States is saying that Iran simply is not allowed to defend itself in any way, shape or form, and that if it tries to rebuild its ability to do so it will be attacked again.

So they’re clearly just making up excuses to bomb Iran and waiting for something to stick.

Senator Graham recently tweeted a photo of himself grinning with the president, who was holding a hat which said “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN”. You can pretty much determine how warlike the US empire is from day to day by looking at the expression on Lindsey Graham’s face, and lately he’s been looking positively ecstatic.

Trump used to slam warmongers like Graham, building a huge part of his presidential 2016 campaign around contrasting himself with their disastrous foreign policy platforms. Now that he doesn’t have a re-election to posture for they’re best friends, with Graham proclaiming that “Trump is my favorite president” because “we’re killing all the right people and lowering your taxes”.

January 2029 is still a long way off, and we’re seeing every indication that Trump is going to be making Lindsey Graham smile for years to come.

Gangster Imperialism: After Kidnapping Maduro, Trump Threatens Cuba, Colombia, Mexico

US foes and allies denounce Trump’s ‘crime of aggression’ in Venezuela at UN meeting

The US has faced widespread condemnation for a “crime of aggression” in Venezuela at an emergency meeting of the United Nations security council. Brazil, China, Colombia, Cuba, Eritrea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and Spain were among countries that on Monday denounced Donald Trump’s decision to launch deadly strikes on Venezuela and snatch its leader, Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, to stand trial in the US.

“The bombings on Venezuelan territory and the capture of its president cross an unacceptable line,” Sérgio França Danese, the Brazilian ambassador to the UN, told the meeting. “These acts constitute a very serious affront to the sovereignty of Venezuela and set an extremely dangerous precedent for the entire international community.”

Trump’s UN ambassador, Mike Waltz, defended the attack as a legitimate “law enforcement” action to execute long-standing criminal indictments against an “illegitimate” leader, not an act of war.

António Guterres, the UN secretary general, warned that the capture of Maduro risked intensifying instability in Venezuela and across the region. He questioned whether the operation respected the rules of international law. “I am deeply concerned about the possible intensification of instability in the country, the potential impact on the region, and the precedent it may set for how relations between and among states are conducted,” Guterres said in a statement delivered to the council by UN political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo.

The meeting had been requested by Colombia, which delivered a carefully calibrated rebuke of Washington. The country’s ambassador, Leonor Zalabata Torres, condemned the US action as a violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty, political independence and territorial integrity. “Democracy cannot be defended or promoted through violence and coercion, and it cannot be superseded, either, by economic interests,” she said. “There is no justification whatsoever, under any circumstances, for the unilateral use of force to commit an act of aggression.” She added that the raid was reminiscent of “the worst interference in our area in the past”.

The Plot Against Maduro: Venezuela on the Edge

Deposed Maduro pleads not guilty after capture in shock US attack on Venezuela

The deposed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro pleaded not guilty to drugs, weapons and narco-terrorism charges on Monday, two days after his capture by US special forces in an operation ordered by Donald Trump that sent shockwaves around the world.

The brevity and formality of the arraignment hearing in federal court in Manhattan – barely 30 minutes during which Maduro was asked to confirm his name and that he understood the four charges against him – belied the far-reaching consequences of the US action.

As Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores addressed the court in lower Manhattan, the UN security council held an emergency meeting just a few miles to the north, where a dozen countries condemned the US “crime of aggression” and secretary general António Guterres suggested the operation constituted a breach of international law.

Maduro, 63, insisted to federal judge Alvin Hellerstein that he was “still president of my country”, had been illegally “captured” at his Caracas home, and was “a prisoner of war”.

Trump DOJ ADMITS Maduro Cartel Is FAKE

Trump suggests US taxpayers could reimburse oil companies for repairing Venezuelan infrastructure

In an interview with NBC News on Monday, Donald Trump suggested that US taxpayers could fund the rebuilding of Venezuela’s infrastructure for extracting and shipping oil.

Trump acknowledged that “a lot of money” will need to be spent to increase oil production in Venezuela, but suggested the US government could pay American oil companies to do the work.

“A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue”, the president said.

Can U.S. Oil Companies Really Take Over Venezuela's Industry?

US energy stocks rise as Trump vows to unlock Venezuela’s oil

US energy stocks rose on Monday, briefly hitting an all-time high, after Donald Trump promised to unlock Venezuela’s vast crude oil reserves following the US capture of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.

Shares in Chevron, which already operates in Venezuela under a special licence provided by the Trump administration, were up 5% on Wall Street. Exxon Mobil was up 2.2%, while Halliburton, which provides products and services to the oil and gas sector, jumped 7.8%. The gains helped push the Dow Jones index above 49,000 for the first time. It ended the day just short of its new record.

Oil prices were also up on Monday, after recovering from a brief drop. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rose 1.5% to $61.76 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate was up 1.4% at $58.32.

Venezuela produces only about 1% of global oil output, after years of underinvestment, US trade sanctions and a naval blockade. However, the country holds about 17% of global crude oil reserves, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Trump’s intervention could deepen a supply glut in the market, as he has promised US oil companies would “go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country”.

So far none of the biggest US oil companies have spoken about the president’s claim they are prepared to spend billions to rebuild the Venezuelan oil industry. However, a former top Chevron executive, Ali Moshiri, said he was raising $2bn (£1.49bn) for Venezuelan oil projects.

Max Blumenthal : Trump and Rubio’s Buddies to Pillage Venezuela

SENATE MINORITY LEADER Chuck Schumer said the congressional briefing on Venezuela “posed far more questions than it answered,” warning that efforts at regime change historically end "up hurting the United States.” pic.twitter.com/7JzjWREpy9

— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 6, 2026

Trump’s Venezuela invasion sets a perilous precedent

No matter how you slice it, Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela is an act of naked aggression. It is blatantly illegal and sets a disturbing precedent of indifference to national sovereignty that tyrants worldwide will be eager to exploit. The ostensible reason for the US president’s military incursion was to arrest Nicolás Maduro on criminal charges for drug trafficking. But that does not justify invading Venezuela to seize him.

Under the United Nations charter, military force can be used against a sovereign nation in only two circumstances – with the authorization of a UN security council resolution, or in self-defense from an actual or imminent armed attack. But there is no security council resolution, and Venezuela posed no such military threat to the United States. ...

Maduro’s real offense seems to have been that he had befriended the wrong leaders (Russia, China, Iran) while sitting atop the world’s largest reserves of oil – a resource that Trump covets. But by that rationale, Rwanda is justified in invading eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo because of its mineral riches, the United Arab Emirates is justified in supporting the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary in Sudan to maintain access to gold, and China could invade Taiwan to seize its semiconductor factories.

That world of “might makes right” may seem acceptable to an American president who believes in power above all else, but as global economic capacity shifts, and with it the ability to sustain a military in a protracted armed conflict, the US government should be loathe to abandon the rules-based alliances that it has led for decades. It is an act of naive hubris to believe that Washington will always be the alpha male for whom rules are made to broken, not followed.

Matt Hoh : Trump and Military Adventurism

Trump’s coup in Venezuela didn’t just break the rules – it showed there aren’t any

I never thought it possible that you could look back on the Iraq war, and the foreign invasions of the “war on terror” in general, and feel some measure of nostalgia. For a time when there were at least concerted attempts to justify unilateral interventions and illegal wars in the name of global security, and even a moral duty to liberate the women of Afghanistan or “free the Iraqi people”. Now, as the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, is in essence abducted and Venezuela taken over by the US, there is barely any effort to situate the coup in any reasoning other than the US’s interests. Nor are there any attempts to solicit consent from domestic or international law-making bodies and allies, let alone the public. The days of the US trying to convince the world that Saddam Hussein did in fact have weapons of mass destruction despite secretly having no reliable intelligence were, in fact, the good old days.

Maduro “effed around and found out”, said the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth. “America can project our will anywhere, any time.” The US will now “run Venezuela” said the president, Donald Trump. “We are going to have a presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil.” There is little to no effort to make reasonings for the takeover cohere. It is claimed that Maduro is guilty of “narco-terrorism” and other charges including “Conspiracy to Possess Machineguns [sic] and Destructive Devices against the United States” – charges that not only fail to clear the bar required for invasion and abduction, but also apparently are not even taken that seriously by Trump himself. Others charged with drug offences have been pardoned. Among them are Honduras’s former president Juan Orlando Hernández and Ross Ulbricht and Larry Hoover, both released from life sentences for convictions including drug trafficking.

The point, as demonstrated by triumphalist posts on social media that include hip-hop-soundtracked montages and Trump as a sort of gangster in chief, is in the very rebuke of the notion that US actions are subject to due process. The Venezuela coup is not an exhibition of the long arm of the law, but the fact that the US is the law and is not subject to any higher one, able to wield its extraordinary power and lethality in the dead of night, kill dozens of innocents and face no consequences, let alone censure. And the response so far has proven this to be correct.

With Global Attention on Venezuela, Israel Intensifies Assault on Gaza, Lebanon

With the world captivated by and concerned over the Trump administration’s weekend abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Israel bombed the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, continuing its devastating US-backed response to the Hamas-led October 2023 attack.

In Gaza, where Israel faces widespread accusations of genocide, an Israeli strike on Monday “hit a tent housing displaced people, killing a 5-year-old girl and her uncle and wounding two other children,” the Associated Press reported, citing officials at Nasser Hospital. “Family members wept over the bodies as they were brought to the hospital.”

The Israel Defense Forces used one of its common claims for when it kills civilians. According to the AP, the IDF said that it struck a Hamas militant who planned an imminent attack on Israeli troops in Gaza, the strike complied with the ceasefire agreement, and it was conducted in a targeted way to limit civilian harm.

The tent strike in the Muwasi area northwest of Khan Younis came a day after Israeli forces shot and killed at least three Palestinians in that city on Sunday. According to Reuters, “Medics reported that the dead included a 15‑year‑old boy, a fisherman killed outside areas still occupied by Israel in the enclave, and a third man who was shot and killed east of the city in areas under Israeli control.”

Gutting the most basic norms of #InternationalLaw to facilitate a genocide in #Gaza has made possible the kidnapping of a sitting head of state & the commandeering of a sovereign state & describing it as “self-defense”The atrocities committed in Gaza cannot b contained #Venezuela

— Noura Erakat (@4noura) January 3, 2026

Israel has killed at least 422 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 1,189 since reaching the ceasefire deal with Hamas three months ago. The overall death toll in the strip has climbed to at least 71,388, with another 171,269 people injured, according to local health officials. Global experts warn the true counts are likely far higher.

Meanwhile, according to Al Jazeera, journalists on the ground in the illegally occupied Palestinian territory observed that the IDF “has spent the past 24 hours expanding the so-called ‘yellow line’ in eastern Gaza,” or the boundary behind which Israeli forces officially withdrew as part of the October deal.

Al Jazeera‘s Hani Mahmoud reported from Gaza City:

The ongoing Israeli attacks on the ground, the expansion of the “yellow line,” are meant to eat up more of the territory across the eastern part, really shrinking the total area where people are sheltering.

Everyone is cramped here. The population here not just doubled but tripled in many of the neighborhoods, given the fact that none of these people is able to go back to their neighborhoods. We’re talking about Zeitoun, Shujayea, as well as Tuffah.

It was not until the past few minutes that the sounds of hums, the drones buzzing, faded away, but it had been going on for the past night and all of yesterday. Ongoing explosions that could be heard clearly from here.

Mahmoud also reported that “there’s nothing on the ground other than the headlines we’ve been reading over the past couple of days, the expectation now that within days the Rafah crossing is going to open and allow for movement in and out of Gaza. So far, we know the Israeli military is pushing for Rafah to be just a one-way exit.”

Throughout the Israeli assault, far-right officials in Israel have ramped up calls to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Palestinian population and recolonize the territory. There has also been a surge in violence from Israeli settlers and soldiers against Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank over the past two years, as well as renewed settlement-building efforts there.

Laila Al-Arian, an American journalist and executive producer for Al Jazeera‘s documentary series “Fault Lines,” said on social media Sunday, “With eyes on Venezuela, Israel is bombing Gaza and escalating its assault on the West Bank.”

In November 2024, nearly a year before the ceasefire agreement in Hamas, Israel struck a deal with the Lebanese political and paramilitary group Hezbollah—and, since then, as with Gaza, has repeatedly violated it.

Israel launched strikes on eastern and southern Lebanon on Monday after an IDF spokesperson said the military would target alleged Hezbollah sites in Kfar Hatta and Ain el-Tineh, and Hamas sites in Annan and al-Manara.

Al Jazeera reported that “Lebanon’s Health Ministry said a drone strike on a car in the southern village of Braikeh earlier Monday wounded two people. The Israeli military said the strike targeted two Hezbollah members.”

Stanford students face trial over felony charges stemming from pro-Palestinian protest

Five Stanford University students are facing trial beginning on Monday over felony charges stemming from a pro-Palestinian protest on campus – the most severe criminal case brought against some of the thousands of students who staged nationwide protests and encampments against Israel’s war in Gaza.

The northern California students are part of a group of 12 who were charged with felony conspiracy to trespass and felony vandalism in connection to an hour-long, June 2024 occupation during which the group barricaded themselves inside the university president’s office to demand Stanford consider a student resolution to divest from Israel, among other requests. ...

The university suspended the students immediately after their arrest and banned them from campus for two terms, until the conclusion of an internal disciplinary process which found they had violated university policy, but allowed them back on campus that fall. Then in April 2025, nearly a year after the protest and amid a wave of elite US universities faced funding cuts from the Trump administration over allegations of not cracking down on antisemitism on campus, Jeff Rosen, the Santa Clara county district attorney, announced criminal charges against the group.

At a press conference, Rosen declared “dissent is American, vandalism is criminal”, adding: “What the defendants chanted as they went about those plans is legally irrelevant … Pouring invective on to social media is not against the law; pouring fake blood all over someone else’s workplace is.” ...

“It is ridiculous for me or for any of us co-defendants to be accused of property damage,” said German Gonzalez, who was a sophomore at Stanford at the time of the protest. “This is all just a distraction from the very real property destruction and crimes that are occurring in Gaza every day because of Stanford University’s investments and actions.” ... He called the continued prosecution, and the harshness of it, politically motivated and “cruel”, and questioned Rosen’s motives, pointing to a September 2023 visit to the Bay Area by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, during which Rosen greeted him on the airport tarmac. “It’s meant as a deterrent for future protesters,” Gonzalez said of the prosecution.

U.S. Just PRINTED $74.6 Billion – Brace For Impact As Money Reset Begins

New tool allows Californians to request data brokers delete personal details

Californians can now use a government website to request that certain companies stop selling their personal information online. The Drop website, which stands for Delete Request and Opt-Out Platform, launched on New Year’s Day as part of a state law aimed at enhancing data privacy.

The Drop tool sends a mass deletion request to 500 data brokers, the term for companies which collect and sell personal information gleaned from public records, phone data, online web browsing and a host of other activities. The information, which can be highly detailed and can be taken without user consent, is widely available for purchase on data brokers’ sites.

California’s Drop program aims to reduce the typically time-consuming and expensive process of individually identifying and contacting data brokers to seek out deletion. Although some private companies offer services to mass delete personal data, California’s government claims that the platform is the first of its kind in the world.

While Drop is now open to all 40 million residents of California, data brokers do not have to start processing the requests until 1 August. The state touts that the eventual result will be that Californians have greater control over their personal data and fewer messages forced upon them by companies and individuals that purchase their contact information. “When your data stops getting sold, you’ll have less unwanted texts, calls, or emails,” the site states.

Drop emerged from a 2023 privacy law called the Delete Act which called for creating a single mechanism for residents to seek removal of their data. Californians must verify they live in the state to use the tool, then create a profile and submit a request to the 500 data brokers that are registered in the state.

Pete Hegseth issues formal censure to Democratic senator Mark Kelly

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth said on Monday that he had issued a formal censure to Democratic senator Mark Kelly and initiated proceedings that could strip the Arizona lawmaker of his retired military rank and cut his pension, escalating a dispute that began when Kelly urged service members to resist unlawful orders.

Just days after a covert mission to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and strike the capital city, Hegseth announced that Kelly faces retirement grade determination proceedings, a rare administrative action that could see the former astronaut and navy captain demoted in his retired rank. Hegseth accused Kelly of making “seditious statements” that undermined military discipline.

After learning of the censure, Kelly called Hegseth “the most unqualified secretary of defense in our country’s history” and vowed to “fight this with everything I’ve got”.

“Pete Hegseth wants to send the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn’t like, they will come after them the same way,” Kelly said in a statement. “It’s outrageous and it is wrong. There is nothing more un-American than that.”

‘Our minerals could be used to annex us’: why Canada doesn’t want US mining

The Outaouais region on the western edge of Quebec is home to thousands of lakes, vast forests and extensive wetlands. It is also the setting of a swathe of wooded land known as La Petite-Nation, which, although not far from the cities of Montreal and Ottawa, remains relatively untouched. That, however, is to change with the arrival of a controversial graphite mine with financing from the Pentagon.

Lomiko Metals, a company based in British Columbia, is planning to build an open-air graphite mine in La Petite-Nation. Once operational, the mine will produce 100,000 tonnes of graphite per year for 15 years. Since the mine was first announced eight years ago, many residents have opposed the project over environmental concerns and fears it will threaten the growing eco-tourism economy. Open-air graphite mines produce dust emissions that can pollute the air and water. The opposition only became more pronounced once the United States became involved.

“At first, the project was sold to us as a green one, for energy transition,” said Louis St-Hilaire, the president of the La Petite-Nation Lakes Protection Group, a coalition of 10 lake protection associations in the region that oppose the mine. While there was apprehension towards the project, residents also understood the importance of needing graphite to produce lithium-ion batteries. Then, in 2024, the Pentagon announced it would invest $8.3m in the project through the Defense Production Act investment programme, which aims to ensure the availability of resources needed for national defence.

That came alongside a $20m grant to build a cobalt refinery in Ontario – the first large investment since the second world war – and $6.4m to build a bismuth and cobalt project in the Northwest Territories. “Suddenly, the main big investor is the American army, who need a lot of graphite,” said St-Hilaire. “People want that even less.” In August 2025, a referendum showed that 95% of the people in the communities surrounding the mine opposed the project.

The relationship between Canada and the United States, however, has become more fraught than it was when the funding was first announced by the Biden administration. Canadians have not forgotten about Donald Trump’s threats to turn the country into the 51st state. To Jean-François Desmarais, who leads one of the groups opposing the mine, allowing the American military to exploit Canadian resources feels ironic. “They’re coming in to get minerals to put in their weapons, to annex us?”

Monarch butterflies could disappear. Butterfly Town USA is scrambling to save them

In the tiny seaside village of Pacific Grove, California, there’s no escaping the monarch butterfly. Here, butterfly murals abound: one splashes across the side of a hotel, another adorns a school. As for local businesses, there’s the Monarch Pub, the Butterfly Grove Inn, even Monarch Knitting (a local yarn shop). And every fall, the small city hosts a butterfly parade, where local elementary school children dress up in butterfly costumes. The city’s municipal code even declares it an unlawful act to “molest or interfere” with monarchs in any way, with a possible fine of $1,000.

After all, Pacific Grove is better known by its other, self-given nickname: “Butterfly Town, U.S.A.” But Butterfly Town, and the rest of California, has a problem. The species behind the fanfare is disappearing at an alarming rate, amid rampant pesticide use, habitat loss, extreme weather and the climate crisis. The stakes are dire; monarch populations in the western US have plummeted by more than 99% since the 1980s.

If nothing changes, experts fear the western monarchs have a nearly 100% chance of extinction by 2080. Pacific Grove has long been an official “overwintering” resting site for monarch butterflies, which flock from the Pacific north-west down to the California coast every late fall and winter on their annual migration route. In years past, tens of thousands of monarchs have taken shelter in the town’s designated monarch sanctuary, amassing around the branches of trees in huge clumps and bursting through the air in giant orange clouds.

One week in December 2022, volunteers counted nearly 16,000 butterflies sheltering within Pacific Grove’s sanctuary. But this year, on a similar December week, the butterfly count there was 107. For many biologists, monarchs serve as a canary in the coal mine for environmental impacts to come, especially for other pollinators.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Craig Murray: Venezuela & Truth

Keep Your Eyes On The Long Game of Imperial Collapse

Did Venezuela VP Hand Over Maduro in Deal With the US?

Trump Is Making US Imperial Decline the Whole World’s Problem

Economist Explains ‘$100-$150 Billion Per Year’ Reason Trump Kidnapped Maduro

Meet Paul Singer, the Billionaire Trump Megadonor Set to Make a Killing on Venezuela Oil

Trump kidnaps Venezuela’s president to steal the country's oil

Trump Abducted Maduro But Did Gain Nothing

Ben Jennings on Trump and Venezuela – cartoon

Col. Jacques Baud: The World Is Entering a Lawless Era

A Little Night Music

Roy Smeck - Frettin' Blues

Roy Smeck - His Pastimes

Roy Smeck - Little Grass Shack

Roy Smeck - 12th Street Rag

Roy Smeck and his Aloha Islanders - Farewell Blues

Roy Smeck - Bye, Bye Blues

Roy Smeck And His Serenaders - Limehouse Blues

Roy Smeck And His Serenaders - Red Sails in the Sunset

Roy Smeck - Steel Guitar Rag