Author: VD

Air Supremacy Established

But not in the Middle East, in the Gulf, or in Iran. In Ukraine:

Numerous reports are coming in from several different geographic areas of Ukraine claiming “Ukraine has no more air defenses.” Those reports go on to say that Russian missiles and drones “are not being intercepted AT ALL.”

Last night in Kiev, Russia targeted the capital with 4 Zircon/Oniks missiles, 24 Iskander-M/S-400 missiles, and 115 strike UAVs including Shahed (mostly jet-powered), Gerbera, and Italmas types, as well as “Parodiya” decoy drones (98 shot down). The Ukrainian Air Force reported that air defense forces failed to shoot down any Russian missiles overnight.

This morning, Russian Combat Aircraft had complete freedom over the war zone, carrying Fuel-Air-Bombs (FABs) directly to the front lines to blow up Ukraine positions, without being fired upon even once by surface to air defenses. Russia now has absolute air superiority at the front, Russian bombers are flying for the first time since 2023 right up to the front lines again – which makes it far easier to drop heavy bombs.

With this new development, the last Ukrainian fortress belt in the Donbass will fall in the autumn.

The boots on the ground are still necessary to take the ground and win the war. But the key component has now been established.

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The Daily Machiavelli

Having finished with their collective read of THE GUNS OF MARS, the subscribers of Castalia Library voted on the next Library work to be excerpted daily. The vote went as follows:

  • 16% Pensées
  • 23% History of Florence
  • 23% History of Freedom of Thought
  • 12% De Bello Gallico
  • 27% Discourses on Livy

And so we have begun the daily excerpting of Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius by Niccolò Machiavelli. Today features the introduction, so it’s not too late to join in and read along:

Although the envious nature of men, so prompt to blame and so slow to praise, makes the discovery and introduction of any new principles and systems as dangerous almost as the exploration of unknown seas and continents, yet, animated by that desire which impels me to do what may prove for the common benefit of all, I have resolved to open a new route, which has not yet been followed by any one, and may prove difficult and troublesome, but may also bring me some reward in the approbation of those who will kindly appreciate my efforts.

And if my poor talents, my little experience of the present and insufficient study of the past, should make the result of my labors defective and of little utility, I shall at least have shown the way to others, who will carry out my views with greater ability, eloquence, and judgment, so that if I do not merit praise, I ought at least not to incur censure.

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It’s Not Happening

Now George RR Martin can’t even write blog posts without help because he’s depressed.

George RR Martin has opened up about experiencing depression during a “stressful” and “overwhelming” year, as readers continue to await the long-delayed sixth instalment of his A Song of Ice and Fire series.

The 77-year-old American author, whose fantasy novels shaped and inspired the hit HBO television series Game of Thrones, wrote candidly about his recent difficulties in his first personal blog post for almost six months.

“This year has been … stressful, to say the least,” he wrote in a post titled Better Late Than Never. “So much has been happening, it’s been overwhelming. Some great things, exciting things. Dreams coming true. But there have been nightmares too. I have lost friends. Battled sadness and depression. The worst may be yet to come.”

He explained that posts published on his website since February had been written by his assistants because he had continued to fall behind despite their help.

Martin, who turns 78 in September, also reflected on ageing; “getting old is no fun”, he wrote, although he added that the year had contained “amazing times” alongside its difficulties.

“I suppose that’s just life. Of course, I knew that. If you’ve read my stories, you know that.”

Among the year’s highlights, Martin noted that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel based on his Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, had received nine Emmy nominations, including for outstanding drama series.

His comments come amid continued speculation about The Winds of Winter, the planned sixth and penultimate novel in A Song of Ice and Fire. The book has been in progress since the publication of the fifth instalment, A Dance with Dragons, in 2011, and has become one of the most eagerly awaited novels in modern publishing. No publication date has been announced.

Yet another sound reason to support the Byron AI…

Because once he’s gone, there is no way whomever turns out to be his literary heir doesn’t sell off the rights to a corporation that will finish it.

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5GW Meets 3GW

The militaries of the West are not even remotely ready to fight WWIII:

A top military official has claimed that Nato is more than a decade behind Russia’s military capabilities, months after a British brigade was wiped out by a Ukrainian unit in war games. Last year, the UK took part in a war simulation in Estonia involving more than 16,000 troops from 12 Nato countries but were ‘destroyed’ by Ukrainian troops in a ‘horrible’ defeat.

The embarrassing loss came only months before Ukraine’s former commander-in-chief warned that it will take more than a decade for Nato to catch up to half of Russia’s military capabilities. Valerii Zaluzhny, considered to be one of the most trusted public figures in Ukraine, has said Nato was still behaving as if future conflicts would be similar to the Second World War.

Kyiv’s ambassador to Britain reportedly said: ‘Most likely, Nato will remain in the same form as it is, and will spend 12 years, like Ukraine, transitioning to standards that need to be achieved in order to reach at least half of the level of the Russian Federation.’ The former general added that Ukrainian forces were superior to armies in Nato, who were still working to ‘doctrines’ set up in the 1940s, according to The Times.

It’s not possible. The Western fake democracies have degenerated under six decades of liberalism, feminism, and immigration, so their capacity to even make the necessary decisions to begin catching up is nonexistent.

It’s not an exaggeration to contemplate the possibility that 5GW marks the effective end of the West’s centuries of dominance.

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The Next Step

The first two Veriphysics works have been very well received and reviewed. However, a comprehensive philosophical system for the 21st Century requires more than a critique of the flaws of the dominant current philosophy, it requires a Metaphysics, an Ethics, and perhaps even a Politics if it is to provide a coherent system by which men can live their lives. After all, now that we have the key to the door that Kant locked, we still need to know what to do with that access to the Real.

I’ve been working on a structure of the metaphysics of Veriphysics for a few months, and have reached the point that I’m now beginning to lay out the skeleton. So if this sort of thing is of interest to you – and I am entirely aware that it will not be to most readers – you might want to start following the Veriphysics site that has lain fallow since June.

However, for love of all that is Good and Beautiful and True, do resist the temptation to try to demonstrate what a Smart Boy you are by proving that you’ve read a little Plato, or Spinoza, or Augustine and are familiar with their various definitions of seemingly relevant concepts. That sort of triviality doesn’t even get you past the bar for entry to the discussion here.

Just to be perfectly clear, I think anyone who is retarded enough to opine without having first read the relevant books and papers in their entirety, and preferably at least twice, should be sterilized on sight.

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A Negative Indicator

Trucking companies are starting to go under.

Ten freight and freight-dependent businesses filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the same two-week window. The most alarming is Eagle Logistics, a large carrier with 151 trucks and over 240 drivers, which operated a dedicated U.S. Postal Service route. Eagle listed assets of less than $50,000 and liabilities of up to $10 million. That’s a catastrophic insolvency. Also on the list are intermodal drayage carriers, livestock haulers, and warehousing providers. The crisis is national: California, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Jersey—the map of distress is spreading.

These bankruptcies tell us that companies can no longer pass on the cost of fuel to their customers, and they can no longer absorb the losses themselves. They are simply shutting their doors.

It’s always a concern when the economic pipelines start seizing up. Playing more financial games isn’t going to prop the faltering real economy up much longer.

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TRANSLATION: Cádiz

The eighth volume of the Episodios Nacionales, the great historical novel cycle of Spain, Cádiz carries Gabriel Araceli into the besieged island city where Spain’s first constitution is being born, and where a drawing-room intrigue will end in blood on the sand.

It is 1810, and Cádiz is the last free city in Spain. While French cannon fire arcs across the bay and the newly convened Cortes debates sovereignty, freedom of the press, and the abolition of feudal lordships, Gabriel finds himself entangled in a world of tertulias and domestic politics more dangerous than any battlefield. The condesa Amaranta needs his help to recover her secret daughter, Inés, from the household of the formidable doña María de Rumblar, a Catholic absolutist matriarch who has imprisoned the girl behind the walls of a household so rigidly governed it resembles a convent. To reach Inés, Gabriel must navigate a social minefield: the effusive doña Flora, whose speeches are torrents of self-interruption and genuine warmth; the feckless young Count Don Diego, who is supposed to marry Inés for family advantage; and the absurd Don Pedro del Congosto, commander of a militia so magnificently incompetent that its members are named after parrots and peacocks.

At the centre of everything is Lord Gray, a brilliant, melancholic Englishman who delivers dazzling speeches against his own country, joins the beggars at the Carmen convent for the philosophical experience, and quotes Byron while systematically destroying the people around him. Gabriel believes Lord Gray is pursuing Inés. He is wrong. The truth, when it comes, is worse than anything Gabriel has imagined.

The Episodios Nacionales is a cycle of forty-six historical novels tracing the history of Spain from the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 through the Restoration of the 1870s. Written between 1872 and 1912, the cycle is one of the supreme achievements of European fiction — a work that stands with Balzac’s Comédie Humaine and Trollope’s Palliser and Barchester novels as a panoramic portrait of an entire nation across a century of upheaval. This is the first complete English translation of the eighth volume.

CÁDIZ by Benito Pérez Galdós is this week’s new translation. It is the eighth of the first series of the Episodios Nacionales and was translated from the original Spanish by Vox Day. The ebooks have already gone out to the subscribers. It’s now available on Amazon for Kindle, KU, and audiobook. An excerpt is available at Castalia Library.

An Apology

Stephen A. Smith publicly apologized to Kyrie Irving yesterday.

“When it comes to Kyrie Irving, I can’t apologize strongly enough,” Smith said.

The ESPN star admitted he didn’t want to take the vaccine either but did because his job and livelihood could have been threatened. Athletes like Irving, Aaron Rodgers, and Novak Djokovic were ridiculed for refusing.

“I looked at it as being selfish,” Smith said on his show. “And I watched Dr. Fauci on Capitol Hill yesterday. And the person I thought about most was Kyrie Irving.”

Irving refused vaccination at the time and missed 53 games as a member of the Brooklyn Nets under New York City’s vaccine mandate. The Nets banned him for 35 home games before eventually allowing Irving to play on the road. Since Irving missed so many games, the Nets revoked an extension offer valued at over $100 million. Reports suggest that Irving missed out on $300k per game he sat out.

Smith then brought up his own battle with COVID-19 and shared that the virus nearly killed him. The ESPN personality was in the emergency room before New Year’s 2022 with double pneumonia. Smith not only flipped his opinion on Irving but also called him brave for his stance.

“It didn’t make him stubborn or selfish,” Smith said. “It made him brave. “It turns out that no matter what the truth is behind all of this, Kyrie Irving did nobody wrong. We did him wrong. I did him wrong. And for that, I’m sincerely sorry.”

There are a lot of people who are owed apologies. Not me, because I was fortunate in that my immediate family was 100 percent in accord with my absolute rejection of the vaxx and even my friends who got vaxxed were entirely respectful of my

But for all of you who suffered for your refusal to submit to the global psyop, go ahead and take a private mental victory lap. You have been vindicated. You were right all along. You did the right thing. And never again will you feel the same sort of social pressure on you, even when Clown World tries something similar again, because now you know that you not only can stand against it, but you must do so in order to show others that they can too.

And full credit to Stephen A. Smith for being brave enough to do what very, very few public figures are willing to do, and admit in front of everyone that he was wrong.

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The Aerial Blockade of Odessa

I’ve always thought Odessa is Russia’s primary objective. And now they’re using 5GW to enforce an aerial blockade of Ukraine’s most important ports, including Odessa:

I just returned from Odesa, where an unprecedented Russian aerial offensive has completely blocked Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, threatening an economic disaster that, at the moment, appears underestimated by international media. In the city, one witnesses paradoxical scenes, with Russian drones and missiles flying over beaches full of swimmers, or being shot down off the coast, in view of thousands of smartphones pointed at the sky.

For about ten days now, Moscow has begun systematically targeting all vessels approaching the port, with no regard for nationality. Now, neither captains nor shipowners dare to approach the three major Ukrainian ports: Odessa, Chornomorsk, and Pivdenny.

For Ukrainian farmers, it risks being a disaster. With exports blocked at the peak of the harvest season, their warehouses are overflowing, and agricultural commodity prices in the country have collapsed. With the sunflower harvest starting in just a few days, the situation risks becoming critical.

After having been targeted by it for decades, Russia and Iran clearly understand how to wage economic war better than the West.

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The Revenge of Aaron Rodgers

Steelers’ fans have to love seeing this side of Aaron Rodgers come out on camera. The man hasn’t forgiven, he hasn’t forgotten, and he’s not afraid to take shots at Fauci aka “The Science”.

“Can you tell us about your mindset coming into your last season?” McAfee asked.

The ESPN personality couldn’t have guessed where the four-time NFL MVP was about to take this.

“I’m gonna plead the Fifth,” Rodgers said, as McAfee and the Steelers fans watching at training camp laughed in unison, “like that absolute coward Tony Fauci. Absolute coward. Are you kidding me? You get a pardon and you’re and you pleaded over 100 times at the White House? What are you scared of, Tony? I thought you were the science. ‘I am science,’ and you get up there and can’t answer a question? What are we doing?”

Rodgers is referencing an infamous remark by Fauci during a 2021 interview, where he defended his public health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying “I am the science.”

Fauci pled the Fifth 111 times during a Senate hearing, on the advice of his attorneys, to answer questions from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. He was questioned over his response to the pandemic and his policy decisions, where the former White House COVID advisor was accused of funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China.

Paul argued Fauci using the Fifth Amendment was unsupported because former President Joe Biden, whom Fauci advised during the pandemic, pardoned him. Paul said the committee will vote this week on a resolution to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress.

“Spending the entire time writing in his diary about how fun it is to be famous. You gotta be kidding me,” Rodgers’ diatribe continued. “What are you going to say about me now? Seriously, what are they going to say about me now? Now, you can’t talk about the COVID stuff because obviously it was made in a lab in China. That’s like not even questionable anymore. Tony Fauci is an absolute criminal. It’s been a great life and a great career, and it’s nice to be sitting on this side now especially after that coward pled the Fifth over 100 times. I thought you had a pardon there, Tony. Why couldn’t you answer one question the entire time?”

But Rodgers wasn’t just airing out his grievances with Fauci, which he’s had many since the days of the pandemic. He pointed the finger directly at the network he was being interviewed on. No matter how McAfee and his supporting cast tried to get the conversation back on track, Rodgers took aim at ESPN, the sports network giant which airs “The Pat McAfee Show” daily.

Rodgers was vilified for his own 2021 COVID saga, where his “immunized” remark in August, months prior to testing positive for COVID-19 in November of that season, led to immediate backlash in the media.

“How much time did the network spend on that? How much time did they spend on my responses every week? On my vaccination status? On Taylor’s [Swift] and Travis’ [Kelce] wedding? Did they do even a minute on Tony Fauci? No, I bet they didn’t,” Rodgers said on Monday.

Rodgers even brought up the Dianna Russini scandal and the lack of coverage from ESPN with it. Russini, who worked for ESPN before joining The Athletic, was entrenched in a scandal as an inappropriate relationship with New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel was exposed this offseason, ultimately leading to her exit from The Athletic and Vrabel leaving the Patriots during the NFL Draft to enter counseling.

There are a lot of people who would like to sweep their words and actions during the fake Covid crisis under the carpet. No one should permit them to do so. Rodgers clearly throws rhetorical bombs with the same degree of accuracy he throws the football.

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