“China’s birth rates sunk to a record low in 2025, despite the government rolling out a spate of incentives to boost it, as the country’s population fell for the fourth straight year. Government data on Monday showed that the country’s birth rate fell to 5.63 per 1,000 people – a record low since the Communist Party took power in 1949 – while its death rate rose to 8.04 per 1,000 people, the highest since 1968. Its population fell 3.39 million to reach 1.4 billion by the end of 2025, marking a quicker decline than the previous year. Faced with an ageing population and sluggish economy, Beijing has been trying hard to encourage more young people to marry and have children.” (01/19/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Speaking together at the Israeli-American Council Summit on Saturday, billionaire Zionist megadonors Miriam Adelson and Haim Saban strongly implied that they are engaged in some extremely shady activities to manipulate the US government in advancement of Israeli interests. There’s a guy I follow on Twitter named Chris Menahan who’s always posting clips from Zionist events which might otherwise go unnoticed, frequently turning up jarring admissions from pro-Israel operatives who tend to loosen their lips a bit when addressing an audience of like-minded individuals. I recently cited a clip he spotted featuring former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz decrying the way social media has allowed the public to view evidence of Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Menahan has spotlighted some very revealing moments from Adelson and Saban, both of whom are dual US-Israeli citizens, and both of whom have provided funding to the Israeli-American Council (IAC).” (01/19/25)
Source: Common Dreams
by Jeffrey D Sachs & Sybil Fares
“The question is not if the US and Israel will attack Iran, but when. In the nuclear age, the US refrains from all-out war, since it can easily lead to nuclear escalation. Instead, the US and Israel are waging war against Iran through a combination of crushing economic sanctions, targeted military strikes, cyberwarfare, stoking unrest, and unrelenting misinformation campaigns. This combination strategy is called ‘hybrid warfare.’ … for more than a quarter century, the US and Israeli militaries and intelligence agencies have laid waste to a region of hundreds of millions of people, blocked economic development, created terror and mass refugee movements, and have nothing to show for it beyond the chaos itself.” (01/19/25)
“They say when you’re born, you come into life with no instruction manual. If we’re lucky, we inherit a good set of parents, who set us up with good habits and sound thinking. We might pursue a religious practice, embrace an education, and learn to think for ourselves. Others might not be so lucky. Anxious and unsure, we turn to other things to make sense of reality: drugs, alcohol, sex or easy money. Without a set of instructions, we rely on what we think is our operating system: the ego. And we protect it with all our might. … I came across Scott Adams accidentally, but it couldn’t have come at a better time for me.” (01/19/25)
“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words from his ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech still ring true: ‘When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people,’ he warned, ‘the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.’ Those words, delivered in 1967, still summarize today’s political moment. Instead of putting the lives of working Americans first, our leaders in Congress and the White House have prioritized advancing corporate profits and wealth concentration, slashing government programs meant to advance upward mobility, and deploying military forces across the country, increasing distrust and tension. This historic regression corresponds with a recessionary environment for Black America in particular. That’s what my organization, the Joint Center, found in our report, State of the Dream 2026: From Regression to Signs of a Black Recession.” (01/19/25)
“It’s hard to believe we’re a year into the second Trump administration, but here we are. A year of virtually no illegal [sic] immigration, a year of fewer deaths from fentanyl, a year of declining violent crime in major cities like Memphis and Washington D.C., a year of Biden-era inflation finally beginning to come down, a year of putting America first in our dealings with foreign nations, a year of conservative policies making countless American lives better. It hasn’t been perfect, but hell, it’s been pretty damned good and infinitely better than the alternative. But there’s another, more ominous countdown that lies at the back of all our minds. Less than one year from now, another Congress will be seated, one that could be run, at least in the House, by Democrats.” (01/19/25)
“Don Lemon admitted he was embedded with anti-ICE agitators in Minneapolis and knew of their plans before they burst into a St. Paul church during Sunday services — despite claiming he was there as a journalist and had no advance knowledge of what was going down. Speaking on camera from a snowy parking lot in the Twin Cities, Lemon said he had done some ‘reconnaissance’ with activist groups ahead of the storming of Cities Church. ‘These are resistance protesters, they’re planning an operation we’re going to follow them on. I can’t tell you exactly what they’re doing, but it’s called Operation Pull-Up,’ he said in the livestream. ‘It’s Nekima Armstrong, she’s been doing this since George Floyd, Daunte Wright and others, where they surprise people, catch them off-guard and hold them to account,’ the former CNN host added, dropping the name of a prominent local activist.” (01/19/25)
“For the past year, it felt like we were a long way from the moment in Congress when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) lamented that big banks ‘own the place’. As the Trump administration took power, a pitched battle emerged between the financial industry and Silicon Valley on a range of issues, and the tech oligarchs, with better connections to MAGA-world and more ability to enrich the Trump organization directly, seemed well positioned to win. The power center seemed to be shifting away from its traditional roots. But Wall Street didn’t become Wall Street by losing its ability to capture the government. A scuttled markup on a bill with major implications for cryptocurrencies shows that reports of the demise of big banks are greatly exaggerated.” (01/19/25)
“Ismail Selim Elbarasse, an accountant by training, seemed to be living a quiet life in Annandale, Virginia. But in 2004, when police officers noticed him driving with his wife across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and filming its critical structural elements, they decided to act, then detained him and notified federal agents. He was already a suspect in a scheme to provide funding to Islamist terrorist groups, and now agents were searching through his home for further evidence of his possible involvement. They discovered far more than a terrorism funding scheme. Buried among the stacks of paperwork in his home was a document written in Arabic titled ‘An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America’, written by a US-based Islamist leader from the Muslim Brotherhood. The strategic goals memo specifically addressed the ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ for using migration as a weapon of subversion.” (01/19/25)
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by Whitney Eulich
“It’s a phone call no editor wants to receive: a late night jolt from a reporter facing trouble. I have worked with journalists in challenging environments – writing on gang violence and public protests, or from rural, hard-to-reach areas of Latin America and the Caribbean. But it took 15 years before I got my first call from a colleague facing an arrest warrant for his work. Nelson Rauda Zablah, our freelance correspondent in El Salvador, has documented his country’s democratic backsliding since President Nayib Bukele took office in 2019. … When I learned that he was facing the risk of arrest, I felt concerned. I informed Monitor management, offered an advance on his next story payment, and urged him to stay in close touch.” (01/16/25)
