Author: VD

Round 4

It appears the Epstein Alliance has finished resupplying and reloading and is going to take its fourth crack at Iran since last summer. It will be interesting to discover which side has made more profitable use of the latest ceasefire.

The Trump administration is setting the stage to renew its attack on Iran. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Friday that the “Iranians reached out” and requested an “in-person meeting,” so President Trump “dispatched Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to go hear what they have to say.” This is a complete fabrication.

Iran wasted no time in destroying that claim. Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Ismael Baqaei, confirmed in a post on X late on the 24th that NO meeting — I repeat, NO meeting — is planned with US officials. Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi is in Islamabad to meet with high-level Pakistani officials in order to give them a written document with Iran’s views on recent developments, which will be delivered to Witkoff and Kushner.

I think that Trump is trying to create a narrative to justify renewing the US and Israeli attack on Iran. He is sending his Jewish emissaries to Islamabad ostensibly to meet with Iranian negotiators only to discover that Iran allegedly bailed out. Trump will claim this is an act of bad faith and is going to punish Iran accordingly.

If the following posts on Telegram are true, then the war will be back in its full fury by Sunday night:

  • China urges its citizens to leave Iran as soon as possible – Chinese Embassy in Tehran
  • India urges its citizens to leave Iran.

It also appears that Trump gave Bibi permission to trash the ceasefire with Hezbollah, according to another recent Telegram post: The Israeli Air Force resumed strikes on southern Lebanon, a moratorium on which was part of the ceasefire between the US and Iran.

I see absolutely no likelihood that the fourth round of attacks will be any more successful than the previous three rounds. And I am half-convinced that the main reason the Iranians haven’t seriously tried to sink the US carriers is because they wanted to get as many of them in the kill zone as possible before they target them.

The missile-attrition angle is objectively part of Iran’s strategic logic, whether Iran planned the current concentration or merely benefits from it. The cost-exchange ratio is brutal: Iranian ballistic missiles at ~$100K–$1M per unit against SM-3 Block IIA interceptors at ~$27M, with US production rates for the high-end interceptors in the low dozens per year. THAAD and SM-6 stocks have been drawn down hard across the 2024 Houthi engagements, the 2025 Twelve-Day War, and now six weeks of sustained interception. The US cannot replenish at engagement tempo. Every additional carrier group in theater is another defensive perimeter consuming from the same finite magazine, which inverts the usual logic of concentration — more carriers means each individual carrier’s defensive budget shrinks, not grows.

Hence the parallel to the Sicilian Expedition.

Athens projected decisive naval power into confined waters far from home. The initial campaign achieved tactical effects without strategic decision. Nicias’s letter warned that the fleet was degrading and Athens should either withdraw or massively reinforce — Athens chose reinforcement. Syracuse, backed by a major-power ally (Sparta, via Gylippus), had turned the Great Harbor into a kill box by the time Demosthenes arrived. The concentration created by reinforcement was precisely what made the trap work. The hegemon was effectively broken by one engagement in waters it could not leave gracefully.

Current situation: six-week campaign destroyed Iranian nuclear and leadership targets without producing strategic capitulation. Hormuz closed. Ford already past normal deployment length per CNN. Decision to reinforce with third carrier rather than withdraw. Russia and China providing ISR (satellite kill-chain support against mobile naval targets is the classic gap in Iran’s capabilities, and closing that gap is exactly what a major-power ally would provide). Hormuz is the Great Harbor.

Iranian strategic writing, drawing on both Islamic precedent and Sun Tzu-adjacent thinking via Chinese military exchange, explicitly privileges sabr and drawing the adversary onto defender-favorable terrain. Accepting the ceasefire while continuing Hormuz harassment fits patient-ambusher doctrine cleanly: conserve offensive munitions, probe defenses, keep the kill chain warm, let the hegemon commit further.

What would falsify it: Iran escalating to maximalist Hormuz action before the third carrier is fully in position, i.e. before the bait is fully set. What would confirm it: a period of continued attritional pressure — commercial shipping incidents, minelaying indicators, drone-boat probes — while the high-end anti-ship inventory (submarines, ASBM regiments, smart mines) remains conspicuously unused until the US force posture maximally exposes it.

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UK Jets Attack Russian Targets

This reported attack by UK jets on Russian drones over Ukraine appears to be such a spectacularly stupid thing to do that the UK Ministry of Defence is denying that it took place:

The Ministry of Defence has denied the Romanian military’s claim that RAF jets on a NATO patrol shot down Russian drones over Ukrainian territory for the first time.

Two Royal Air Force Eurofighters were scrambled from Borcea Air Base in the early hours of Saturday 25 April, as Putin’s forces attacked ports on the River Danube in Ukraine.

It is understood both aircraft returned to base and did not engage any Russian assets, nor did they enter Ukrainian airspace.

It comes after the Romanian Ministry of National Defence claimed crew engaged and downed the Russian drones.

The strike over Ukraine aimed at protecting NATO state Romania represents a new development in the four-year war, it claimed.

‘On the morning of Saturday, April 25, Russian forces resumed drone attacks on civilian and infrastructure targets in Ukraine, near the river border with Romania, in Tulcea County,‘ said the Bucharest statement.

‘MApN radars detected drones flying near Romanian airspace. Two Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft of the British Air Force from the Reinforced Air Police combat service took off at 02:00 from the 86th Air Base in Fetești. The National Military Command Centre notified IGSU [General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations] regarding the establishment of measures to alert the population in the localities of Grindu and Isaccea, in Tulcea County, and at 02:14, a RO-ALERT message was transmitted. The Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft had radar contact with a target located 1.5 km [1 mile] from Reni, above Ukrainian territory. The pilots had authorisation to engage the drones.’

If the Russians ever decide to start bombing the UK, the morons in the Labor and Conservative parties will only have themselves to blame. They helped start the war, and they’re unnecessarily involving British military forces in it. A Russo-British conflict in 2026 would make the charge of the Light Brigade look brilliant.

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Confirmed Oncogenic

The Covid vaxx has been scientifically confirmed, beyond any shadow of doubt, to be oncogenic. The spike protein levels in the vaxxed are, on average, 13x higher than in the unvaxxed, and spike proteins are now being regularly found in the tumors of cancer patients.

This also explains why anomalous cancers are being found in much younger individuals than has historically been the case. In every example, these younger-than-average victims turn out to have been vaxxed.

While vaxx-shedding is real, this second-hand exposure it doesn’t even begin to compare to the problem of having a spike protein factory chugging away in your body.

Keep this in mind for the next pandemic, the next psychological operation, and the next mass deception. Never, ever, give into the government lies, the media narrative, the fake science, or the social pressure.

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Nothing Left for Taiwan

The US military has exhausted itself trying to defend Israel from Iran:

The U.S. has burned through so many munitions in Iran that some administration officials increasingly assess that America couldn’t fully execute contingency plans to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion if it occurred in the near term, U.S. officials said.

The U.S. has fired more than 1,000 long-range Tomahawk missiles since the war with Iran began on Feb. 28, as well as 1,500 to 2,000 critical air-defense missiles, including Thaad, Patriot and Standard Missile interceptors, according to U.S. officials who declined to give exact figures.

Wholly replacing those stockpiles could take up to six years, officials said, kicking off discussions in the administration about adjusting operational plans in preparation for any potential presidential order for the military to defend Taiwan.

And now, with three carrier groups in the Middle East, the US military appears to be beautifully set up for a potential Syracuse Expedition. While three carrier groups and more than 200 warplanes pack a serious offensive punch, they don’t necessarily have enough ability to defend themselves from a serious attempt at sinking them. The destruction of the dozens of US bases in the reason should suffice to demonstrate the Iranian capabilities in that regard.

I was wondering why the Iranians didn’t make any serious and concerted attempts on the one carrier that was in range during the first month of the war. It may be because the Iranian strategists actually wanted to encourage more US forces to enter the region, as that’s the only place they can be successfully attacked and potentially destroyed.

Regardless, what we’ve witnessed here is confirmation of the end of the sole global superpower era.

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Can’t Hide the Cancers

At the beginning of the Covid vaccination programs, I pointed out that they wouldn’t be able to hide the dead bodies. As it happens, they’re not able to hide the increased incidence of cancer either:

Overall cancers in those under 50 JUMPED 6.4% from 2021 to 2023 during mass mRNA uptake.

BRAIN TUMORS: +19.5%
COLON/RECTAL CANCER: +19.4%
SMALL INTESTINE CANCER: +15.5%
OVARIAN CANCER: +12.8%
STOMACH CANCER: +7.3%
BREAST CANCER: +3.6%

Those are the under-50 numbers. The total numbers are even worse. And this doesn’t include the fact that mRNA-enhanced cancers tend to be more dangerous turbocancers, so the percentage increases in cancer deaths are likely even higher.

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Colorblind Morality

The Dark Herald observes something about Netflix that I observed more than a decade ago:

The Flattened Moral Landscape

Earned moral weight has been exchanged for default moral ambiguity.

You can ask deeper questions in a fantasy. I know this act is evil, so can the result of this action ever truly be good? Am I doing what is necessary — Or am I simply justifying sin?

It’s legitimate to ask questions like that – BUT NOT IN TOLKIEN! No, Sauron is no way shape or form a Walter White character unless you are going to literally the beginning of time. He is not a morally complex and tragic figure, he is absolute corruption that can not be negotiated with, only destroyed. It’s that clarity that gives the Lord of the Rings moral weight.

Everything in all ways forever being shades of grey is a modern infection. And in fantasy’s case patient zero is Game of Thrones. Its massive (early) success spawned lazy imitations. In fairness to Martin he built a world that earns its moral ambiguity. Loyalties that conflict colliding with political realities that create consequences that felt grounded and irreversible.

The Netflix Formula will always sand everything down all the time. So naturally, morality is flattened too. If Evil loses its teeth, and Good loses its meaning then Choice loses its consequence.

As naturally as a duck swims, Hollywood looked at “Build a world where moral complexity emerges” and truncated it into, “Make everything morally gray.” When you have no moral conflict, you only have moral fog. So difficult choices become interchangeable decisions.

More simply, if nothing can matter, then nothing will be remembered.

The truths are eternal. Consider how his observations reflect my own about creators who cannot create:

It is rather remarkable, when you think about it. Abrams is no different than Brooks is no different than Scalzi. They are not only “creators” who cannot create, they are parasites who, regardless of their technical skills, cannot even successfully execute a paint-by-the-numbers imitation. Like a colorblind painter, their moral blindness renders them fundamentally incapable of utilizing a full moral palette.

DISCUSS ON SG

Baen’s End

Fandom Pulse observes that Baen Books appears to be entering its death spiral:

Baen Books built its name by doing what the rest of traditional publishing refused to do: publish military science fiction, hard sci-fi, and unapologetically entertaining genre fiction without a political litmus test. For over four decades, authors like David Weber, John Ringo, and Larry Correia found a home there that didn’t exist anywhere else in New York publishing. Readers showed up in massive numbers. The imprint meant something.

That era is ending.

The more difficult the economy, the more failures of weak, structurally-, and strategically-flawed organizations we’re going to see. Baen Books is not going to be the first publisher to close its doors post-2025, nor will it be the last. In fact, I think there are going to be a number of major shakeups in the publishing industry before 2030.

And the publishers that survive the hard times are going to be the 21st century giants. I don’t think too many people will be surprised when Castalia turns out to be one of them; unlike Baen, we were born in the darkness.

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SPACE FLEET ACADEMY Year 3

The deadliest lessons aren’t taught in class.

Third-year cadets don’t just take classes at Space Fleet Academy. They lead them.

Constantine Ramsey and his cohort are assigned to lead a first-year survival course in Earth’s most unforgiving wilderness, the first full-immersion program of its kind. No simulations. No instructors watching from a safe distance. Real terrain, real consequences, and a generation of raw recruits who don’t yet understand the difference between a mistake and a casualty.

Constantine knows the difference. He learned it the hard way.

But something is wrong in the backcountry. Equipment fails in ways it shouldn’t. First-years go missing on routes that should be clean. And when the threat stops looking like an accident, Constantine has to lead cadets who still trust authority against something that has already beaten the people who were supposed to protect them.

Year Three was supposed to be about preparation to become an officer. It turned into a test that no one expected.

The Mandate built the Academy to create leaders who make hard choices. In his third year as a cadet, Constantine is beginning to wonder if the hardest choice is deciding who the real enemy is.

Space Fleet Academy: Year Three is the fourth book in the BIOSTELLAR series and continues the military SF series perfect for fans of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, and The Expanse. The training wheels are gone. Now find out what these cadets are actually made of.

Available for Kindle, KU and audiobook.

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