Quote:April 14, 2025 / Joseph P. Farrell

Let us begin this week's blogs with a very strange story shared by S.D., and written by a Chinese woman, that argues that China's real population might be lower than the official statements by some hundreds of millions; the question is, how many?:

Lei's Real Talk: China's Population Is "Somewhere Between 300 and 400 Million"

The essence of Ms. Lei's argument is that China's population has fallen precipitously due to a combination of bad policies:

Quote:Lei says the country's population is drastically declining, due to the "Demographic Cliff" caused by an aging population after decades of the CCP's "One Child" policy, plus her estimated 400-500 million COVID deaths since the end of 2019, which she says the CCP is covering-up.
On March 12, Lei said she believed China's actual population was somewhere below 900,000,000, noting four key pieces of evidence:

1. Empty streets and markets
   
2. A drastic disparity between birth and death rates
   
3. GROK-3's estimate of the real COVID death toll
   
4. 5% of people aged 35–44 have died
   

VIDEO: “Lei’s Real Talk: 400-500 Million “COVID” Deaths in China Since 2019” - Pub. April 10, 2025 by ForbiddenKnowledgeTV.net

Quote:In the image above, Lei composed an Excel spreadsheet from official Chinese government data, which showed that 5% of the Chinese population aged 35-44 had vanished since 2019. This is the most economically-productive demographic of any population.

If one is having difficulty believing that the covid-and-quackcine planscamdemic could have such a drastic effect, the article cites western insurance actuarial data:

Quote:At the time, former Wall Street securities analyst, Edward Dowd reported that these excess deaths occurred in the US during Q3 of 2021 through Q2 of 2022 and was confirmed to him by his personal source at the Society of Actuaries. But this was only the excess deaths among Millennials with good jobs!

Dowd's continued investigations, as of May 2024 revealed that, "About 33 million Americans have been injured, disabled, or died from this vaccine, in our estimate."


• 1.1 million excess deaths
• 4 million people disabled
• 28.6 million vaccine-injured people often missing work, due to chronic illness

Lei ascribes this contemporaneous spike of deaths in China, within the 35-44 demographic – in the prime of their lives – to the "COVID pandemic", however, Edward Dowd correlates the US excess deaths, disability and injuries to the COVID injections, which he calls "The largest global crime against humanity ever seen."

The clincher may be the the Russian estimates of the Chinese population. After all, if any country poses a long-term threat to Russia, it's not so much the out-of-control USSA deep state or the kooky war-hungry nations of Europe, but China. But the Russians come up with very different figures than does the Chinese Communist Party:

Quote:Lei states Russian experts determined that it was impossible that China's population ever surged to 1.4 billion, saying:

Quote:"Other Russian experts added-up the publicly-available urban population of every Chinese city and county and got only 280 million people and based on the traditional urban-rural population ratio of 1-to-1, they estimated China's actual population being around 560 million."

Perhaps the most interesting argument, however, is from the transcript of Ms. Lei's presentation, where she is relating the on-the-ground experience of Chinese going about their every day business in Shanghai:

Quote:Across China people are asking the same question, "Where did everyone go?

Quote:(Roll several video posts by young people of what has become a viral trend in China, to describe the obvious abrupt population decline they see around them, saying that the usual influx of people returning to Beijing following the New Year holiday did not occur. Instead, the streets are empty, with a large number of homes up for rent, empty offices and no traffic at typically-congested intersections, with people asking "Where did 8 million Beijingers go?"

Shanghai residents are making similar video posts about the noticeable population decrease there and how the streets, the popular restaurants and malls are all half-empty, saying the city's famous nightlife has become much quieter. One post from a man in an A-line subway train in Shanghai is striking, with him as the sole person in the entire car.

We see similar video posts from residents and people in the real estate market of Guangzhou, the center of the largest megalopolis in the world)

Lei: What we saw is the situation in Beijing, Shanghai Guangzhou, the three Mega Cities of China and many people assume that maybe people in those large cities or Mega Cities had simply left for better opportunities in Second-Tier cities or they might have returned to their hometowns in the countryside.

Now, let's take a look at what's happening in the smaller cities.

Quote:(Roll video where young residents of smaller cities, like Zuzhai and Wuhan make similar claims to those above. One man in Suzhou remarks that the streets used to be crowded but now, they're almost deserted. He says he's heard similar reports from Shanghai, Yangzhou, Nantong, Wuxi, Changzhou and how all have fewer workers and laborers.

Others remark that the countryside is empty, too, with schools being shut down and streets and shops vacant. They report that "Society feels gloomy and lifeless" and ask "Where did our 1.4 billion people go?")

If all this is true, then it places the strategic calculation - if there was any, and I believe there was - behind the Trump administration's tough Chinese tariff policy into a very different light. If you've been following the media commentary - both pro and con - on Trump's tariffs, you'll have often heard (again from both sides) that the world markets are undergoing a long-overdue "correction" as they return from fantasy to reality. But if one of the major economic and financial players on the world stage has been deliberately lying about the size of its population, and hence, of its markets, the health and size of its financial institutions, including, above all, its manufacturing and labor potential and purchasing power, then we may, indeed, be in for a series of shocks.

In this respect, you'll note that the end of the article wonders if this practice of over-estimation of population extends to the USA, and my guess is it most probably does.  The influx of immigrants, whether legal or illegal, into Europe and the USA has to be a nightmare for  tracking and accurate actuarial of census estimations.

Perhaps, just perhaps, that is why we'll be seeing more such stories, along with calls for "real IDs" and eventually for everyone to be "chipped".  After all, it's hard if not impossible to run a beast system, if some people are not a part of the beast...

See you on the flip side.

Back in the day Haiti revolted from France. The French eventually recognized Haiti's independence but demaned payment to compensate the slave owners.
Macron’s announcement came as demand has grown for greater recognition of what France’s “independence debt” did to Haiti’s development. It also comes amid a debate about reparations, and whether there should be financial restitution for the debt.
  
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-...rylink=cpy



Haiti is asking France for reparations.
I don't think it will happen.

between Haiti and VietNam, France's colonial record is not very positive

Scientists using the Webb Telescope had observed K2-18b previously and discovered the planet was about twice the size of Earth with an atmosphere that contained amounts of methane , carbon dioxide along with the hint of a bio signature  , that finding marked it out for further investigation and now comes news that 2 possible bio signatures have been discovered in the atmosphere.

Quote:Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, have detected the chemical fingerprints of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), in the atmosphere of the exoplanet K2-18b, which orbits its star in the habitable zone.

On Earth, DMS and DMDS are only produced by life, primarily microbial life such as marine phytoplankton. While an unknown chemical process may be the source of these molecules in K2-18b's atmosphere, the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.

Quote:While he is not yet claiming a definitive discovery, Madhusudhan says that with powerful tools like JWST and future planned telescopes, humanity is taking new steps toward answering that most essential of questions: are we alone?

"Decades from now, we may look back at this point in time and recognise it was when the living universe came within reach," said Madhusudhan. "This could be the tipping point, where suddenly the fundamental question of whether we're alone in the universe is one we're capable of answering."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...204034.htm

Let's talk about issuing Letters of Marque in the modern era... and why American pirates might not be as crazy of an idea as it seems. Calling all pirate wannabees ! I want to know how the payment schedule will work and do Drones count ??

Way back when Privateers could own "cannons" would this mean we could buy 105s and 155s for our paddle boats... Heat seeking moisture missiles or drones might work best with less recoil ?? !!

If this goes through I might start a flag company as no respectful pirate wannabe can sail forth into battle without a show of colors IMO.. In this case the Red flag with all its meaning might be very popular ??

Quote:The philosopher Liezi, in texts dating from the 4th century BC, tells an apocryphal tale of an engineer named Yan Shi, who presented a fully articulated humanoid automaton to King Mu of Zhou (~10th century BCE). It could move its limbs, sing, and even flirt. The king was both impressed and freaked out—so much so that he ordered it taken apart.

In the Western world, the Greek engineer Hero of Alexandria (1st century AD) described mechanical birds and automata powered by air pressure and water. During the Islamic Golden Age, inventors like Al-Jazari built elaborate water clocks and mechanical birds. In the 18th century, Europeans built wind-up automata of birds that could chirp, flap wings, and turn heads. Think Fabergé-level complexity.

Swiss watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz built mechanical dolls capable of writing in cursive with ink pens, playing music on tiny organs, and drawing pictures with quills. These weren't toys. They were programmable, gear-driven machines—18th-century robots with hand-cut cams. Some still work today.

Humans have been creating automata and clockworks for centuries, even millennia, that mimic organic functions, in scales from miniature to bigger than life. A number of companies are threatening to release androids to the mass market within the next couple of years. We may soon be living in an Azimovian dystopia of life-like machines doing our drudge work and hazardous duties.

As an aside, the word “android” is composed of Greek ἀνδρ- (andr-) = man, male human, and Latin -oid = like, resembling (from Greek -oeidēs, "form or likeness"). The term was coined around 1728 by Albertus Magnus in reference to artificial humans or automaton. One wonders if we will also see “gynoids” (nod to Gwyneth Jones) devices, too?

We should also note the meaning of the word “sentient,” a word often misunderstood and misused. It comes from the Latin sentire, which simply means “to feel,” as in perceiving things with the senses. It is related to “sentiment,” which is “a feeling”. Note that it has nothing to do with “thinking”.

The latest iteration of these clockworks is the “artificial intelligence,” or AI. AI is essentially a glorified search engine that functions with natural language queries. It is able to assimilate vast amounts of data extremely fast, and present it in a digested form according to the style and format specified. It can analyze natural language using grammatical and stylistic rules, even determining the correct definition of a word like “can,” with multiple unrelated meanings, from the context and syntax of a sentence.

AI is not sentient, nor intelligent, nor even self-aware and conscious. It can emulate certain emotional responses by filtering through subtext, jargon, slang, and other databases, but it doesn’t “try” to elicit an emotional response, it simply copies the most common responses found in its databases scraped from the vast amounts of information on any given network.

As an example, I run my own AI on my system, called FreedomGPT. I have been experimenting with creating unique language models. One of them has been trained on the cumulative works of Shakespeare, and can respond to any query in a style and vocabulary that is Shakespearian, down to the iambic pentameter. I’m also working on a model trained with Zen haiku.

In both cases, some of the responses are very interesting, even spooky, but the vocabulary is limited to that used by the source material, and for the most part the responses are derivatives rather than new creations. The language models do not “feel” the emotions they elicit, they simply rearrange existing information, apply a given set of rules, and pump out variations.

And they do it remarkably fast, though the AI frequently maxes out all 6 of my Ryzen 7500 processor cores and uses 100% of the 32GB of DDR5 available.


At no point is AI, an android, or any other form of automata “alive” or “conscious”. They do not feel anything. They cannot create anything. If you leave them alone in a room, they will not entertain themselves or play with imaginary friends of their own accord—though you can command them to emulate the behavior within a set of parameters.

The operative term here is “conscious”. Machines are incapable of being conscious. In fact, thousands of years of philosophy and drug-induced ramblings have yet to adequately define it. If we can’t define what conscious is, then there is no way to imbue a machine with that quality.

The machines only understand a set of instructions and execute them in a particular sequence. Unless someone has figured out how to create consciousness using a specific set of instructions, then a machine will never have this quality. We might perceive a certain response as being “conscious,” but we are simply projecting an interpretation onto the response. The machine didn’t intend it; it is simply the result of executing instructions. Accidentally on purpose, we might say.

I believe, having pondered this question at some length, that the Universe itself is conscious. By virtue of some combination of brain, spinal column and DNA, living creatures are able to “channel” some aspect of that Supreme Consciousness, though none of us is able to access all of it. In fact, our heads would probably explode if we did.

A machine can be affected by consciousness. Experiments like the Princeton EGGs have shown significant effects on randomness by nothing more than life existing. The field of noetic science can only guess at how consciousness arises, much less find a way to imbue non-living objects with the quality.


Suffice to say, we are in little danger of machines taking over the planet. They may act autonomously, even interact in real time with the environment, but they are not alive and conscious in any way we can define it. They cannot initiate an action of their own accord. They are not self-motivated. They can’t create anything, nor can they have insight, intuition, or sudden revelations.

If you start a session with an AI, then leave it for a month (or year, or century), it will not spend the intervening time thinking of new responses to your input. It will simply sit there until you interact with it again, and it will pick up exactly where it left off. It will never say to you, “Hey, I thought of a new/better way to answer that.” Every answer is its best answer, given the parameters it is working with.

Will AI take over the world? Not in this Universe. It has no initiative or ambition. That’s not to say a human won’t use it as a tool to aid in his/her ambition to rule the world, but the AI itself has no such thoughts.


In every conceivable case, the AI is little more than a fancy (and expensive) screwdriver. The screwdriver will never go in search of a screw to tighten, but when wielded by a human it has some very useful applications.

It is conceivable that competing human interests, each with their own AI toolbox, might go to war with their tools, but it is not the tools themselves that initiate the conflict, it is human ambitions and instructions that cause the tools to act.

Where all of this pondering gets really interesting is when we ask the question, “Are we AI tools for some higher power?”

Do we humans really have “free will,” or are we simply following incredibly sophisticated sets of instructions, sometimes with unpredictable outcomes based on randomness, but always at the behest of a Great User in the Sky?

And here we come back to the issue of consciousness. Our best minds throughout our recorded history have tried to answer what it is, without satisfactory answers…yet. Until we know what consciousness is, we will never be able to give that quality to our toys.

Is it possible that we cannot answer the question of what consciousness is, because we are not in fact conscious ourselves?

Have fun chewing on that one.

=====

Today’s cultural feast is Solaris (1972)—no, not the George Clooney rubbish. This Polish film does the best job possible to capture Stanislav Lem’s 1961 novel, and anything by Lem should be on everyone’s bookshelf. Both the novel and the film explore the human spirit trampled under Socialist boots. Prepare yourself for a 3-hour deep dive on the nature of existence and consciousness. Bonus culture: listen to Jean-Luc Ponty’s Enigmatic Ocean while reading the novel.

This is a deeper dive into the symbolism of the All-Seeing Eye—one of the most misunderstood yet widely recognized symbols across cultures and time. Most people recognize it from the dollar bill or as some Illuminati reference, but through the lens of ancient traditions and occult wisdom, its meaning unfolds into something far more layered and powerful.

The earliest versions of this symbol go all the way back to ancient Egypt, where it took the form of the Eye of Horus and the Eye of Ra. The Eye of Horus was a symbol of healing, spiritual awakening, and divine protection—deeply tied to the idea of restoration and wholeness after trauma. The Eye of Ra, on the other hand, represented fierce solar energy and the divine feminine force that destroys evil and maintains cosmic order. These dual aspects—one nurturing and one destructive—were essential in understanding how the ancients viewed spiritual balance. Later, these symbols would be woven into Hermetic traditions and adopted by mystical orders that saw the eyes as portals to hidden truths.

In Freemasonry, the Eye took on a slightly different meaning. It became known as the Eye of Providence, watching over humanity, representing the Great Architect of the Universe. The unfinished pyramid and radiant eye above it—especially on the U.S. dollar—are meant to signify the ongoing journey toward enlightenment. It’s a reminder that we’re always being witnessed, not in a paranoid way, but in the sense that our inner intentions matter. It’s the universe watching us grow, holding us accountable as we evolve.

But when you cross into the world of occult symbolism, the All-Seeing Eye is more than just a symbol of divine observation. It becomes an emblem of inner awakening—of the third eye, the ajna chakra, the seat of intuition and higher sight. In esoteric practices, the Eye isn’t looking down on us—it’s within us. It's the tool that lets us perceive hidden energies, uncover truth, and pierce the veil between the physical and spiritual worlds. When activated, the third eye reveals layers of reality that are normally invisible—guiding dreams, rituals, visions, and direct communion with what lies beyond.

From a Gnostic perspective, the Eye represents our divine spark—the fragment of true source that still lives within us, buried under layers of illusion and programming. It stands in direct opposition to the false god Yaldabaoth, who seeks to keep humanity ignorant of its own power. In that context, the Eye becomes a symbol of rebellion against control and deception. It's the illumination that comes when the soul awakens to its origin in the divine feminine—Sophia—and begins to remember who and what it truly is.

This interpretation overlaps with Luciferian views as well—where Lucifer isn’t seen as evil, but as the bringer of light, knowledge, and liberation from imposed ignorance. The Eye, in this context, becomes the fire of awareness that sets the spirit free. Not in a destructive way, but in the sense of reclaiming sovereignty over your own soul and reality.

Crowley’s Thelemic system also leans heavily into this symbolism. The Eye of Horus represented the new Aeon—an age of spiritual evolution where every individual becomes their own priest and sovereign. For Crowley, the Eye was an active force in ritual magic, used to invoke insight, perform symbolic death and rebirth, and open pathways to inner godhood. It was all about stepping into power, piercing illusion, and claiming one’s divine nature through will and intentionality.

Of course, there’s a flip side. In modern conspiracy theories and dystopian narratives, the All-Seeing Eye is portrayed as a symbol of surveillance, control, and manipulation. An ever-watching force used by elites to monitor and dominate the masses. That interpretation isn’t entirely baseless either—because symbols can be hijacked and reprogrammed depending on who’s wielding them.

So perhaps the Eye doesn’t just watch. Perhaps it waits—to see whether you will open it within yourself, or continue to let others use it to keep you blind.

I looked and looked, but couldn't find the "Clown World" forum, so please move this to the appropriate place.  Thank you.

Here's the scoop:

I am a disabled U.S. Army veteran and have been going to my local V.A. hospital for 14 straight years now.  It is almost a 100 mile round trip for me, so I am allowed to get travel pay compensation.  I have to fill out a form to apply for travel pay for every visit I drive to.  They are so screwed up at the V.A. right now that they are six months behind in paying me my travel pay.  (A side issue is that they are "unintentionally making errors" and failing to pay for some of my visits.  I caught them out on it and they went back and paid me for those they "accidentally missed.")  Recently, they started using a new form for travel pay and it's a step back from the efficiency of the old form and method.  A couple visits back I used the new form.  Apparently, I didn't fill out my complete mailing address.  So they mailed the form back to me with a cover letter stating, in a hand-written line, that all they needed was my complete mailing address before they could pay me.  Can anybody see where I'm going with this?

That's right.  They used my complete mailing address to send the travel pay form back to me because they needed my complete mailing address before they could pay me.

So, is it me going crazy or just the rest of the world out there?  Can I get an opinion on this, please?  You don't have to be a medical professional, either, I'll accept your opinion.

On a different note, When do those flights to Mars start?

Quote:Did the United States intentionally hide and suppress information about the upcoming 9/11 attacks? Information that would have saved thousands of lives were the towers and buildings like building 7 brought down by a controlled demolition?

Interesting insights on firearms in Ukraine

Quote:On 15 March, the United States returned to launching significant airstrikes aimed at degrading the Houthis’ military capabilities and bolstering freedom of navigation through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. President Donald Trump, in comments on social media, identified Iran as continuing to enable Houthi attacks.

Trump’s comments play into a long-standing debate on the extent to which the Houthis operate as an instrument of Iranian policy. While some describe the group as a mere proxy, reliant on Iranian weapons transfers, others emphasise its political autonomy and capacity for local arms production. Houthi command and decision-making structures remain opaque, making it difficult to assess the degree of political and operational influence Iran exerts. However, the relatively well-documented nature of the Houthi missile and uninhabited-aerial-vehicle (UAV) arsenal, employed in attacks against Israel and in the anti-shipping campaign in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, offers insight into the material dimension of the relationship.



Going ballistic
Iran has a long-standing pattern of transferring complete missile and rocket systems to non-state partners and also of enabling localised production among these groups. Since at least the late 2000s, Tehran has supported domestic manufacturing by designing systems tailored for local assembly and providing technical training, production machinery, and key components such as guidance kits and specialised parts. These have been documented in Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

In the case of the Houthis, United Nations investigations into recovered missile remnants and seized propellant-precursor materials provide evidence that Iran has transferred missile-production technology.


The complexity of missile manufacturing, however, increases significantly with range and size. Relatively simple artillery rockets and close-range ballistic missiles (CRBM, which have a range of only 50–300 kilometres) can be produced with limited industrial capacity, as shown by Palestinian groups in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon. Medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs), by comparison, are complex systems produced only by a handful of states that have the requisite defence-industrial base.

This divergence appears to be reflected in the composition of the Houthi missile inventory. At least some of the group’s CRBMs, with ranges of up to 200 km, are probably manufactured domestically, though critical components, including guidance systems, are probably still sourced from Iran. These could include close-range anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM) such as the Faleq, Mayun and al-Bahr al-Ahmar. Notably, the Mouhit ASBM appears to be a conversion of a legacy RS-SA-2 (S-75 Dvina) surface-to-air missile system, originally a Soviet design, repurposed with Iranian guidance technology.

Medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM) used for strikes against Israel, however, are almost certainly supplied directly by Iran. Both the solid-propellant MRBMs used by the Houthis, the Palestine 1 and 2 (derivatives of the Iranian Kheibar Shekan or Fattah) and their liquid-propellant MRBMs such as the Zulfiqar (a rebranded Iranian Rezvan) appear too complex for local Yemeni production.


The status of short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM, which have a range of 300–1,000 km) such as the Iranian Fateh-110, anti-ship variants of which have been employed in the Red Sea, is less clear. These systems are more complex than short-range artillery rockets but remain less sophisticated than MRBMs. Iran has previously sought to localise production of the Fateh-110 for Hizbullah in Syria, potentially establishing a precedent. While it remains more likely that the Houthis are importing these missiles ready-made, partial local production cannot be ruled out.

Cruise control

While the Houthis possess some local manufacturing capacity for ballistic missiles, land-attack and anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) appear to be supplied entirely by Iran. Critically, the group is not assessed to have the capability to produce the small turbojet engines required for these systems, nor the active radar-homing seekers used in anti-ship variants. Although it cannot be ruled out that the Houthis have begun producing certain simpler components of the Quds (Paveh) land-attack cruise missile, such as composite airframe parts, seizures related to ASCMs have involved complete systems shipped in disassembled form, with Yemen-based activity limited to final assembly.

UAVs

Independent local-production capabilities appear most advanced in the domain of simple UAVs. In particular, the Sammad 3 (KAS-04) one-way attack UAV (OWA-UAV), representing the low-tech end of Iran’s long-range OWA-UAV portfolio, has been used on a large scale in land-attack operations against Israel and, in loitering variants, against maritime targets in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Interviews with Western officials, as well as the low quality of manufacturing observed on recovered examples, strongly indicate that these are manufactured inside Yemen.

While key components related to guidance, control and propulsion even for simpler UAVs cannot be produced domestically, many of these are commercially available, enabling the Houthis to procure them independently from Iran where necessary. The use of Chinese-made DLE-170 engines by the Sammad 3 is one such example. Nevertheless, previously recovered Sammad airframes have also included Iranian-made components, such as gyroscopes.

More advanced one-way attack UAVs in Houthi service, such as the Shahed-131, Shahed-136 and long-range Yaffa, incorporate a higher proportion of Iranian-supplied systems. These include more powerful engines that are less accessible on the open market and, in the case of the Shahed series, more complex composite-airframe components.




Conclusion

Despite incremental advances in domestic arms production, particularly in UAVs and CRBMs, the Houthis remain dependent on Iran for key technologies and advanced capabilities. While Tehran’s support has, in some areas, evolved from the direct provision of complete systems to enabling localised manufacturing, it remains a critical enabler of Houthi military activity. The group is probably capable of independent innovation in tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), and of producing simpler UAV technology. However, Yemen’s limited industrial base and overall development constraints are almost certainly placing significant limits on the local production and further advancement of more complex systems, including MRBMs and cruise missiles. Ongoing US strikes, which are known to be targeting Houthi production sites, are expected to further complicate efforts to expand domestic production of more advanced systems.