In this, the Soviet propagandists were great fools ignorant of foreign cultures. In Western Europe and North America, the sickle is a symbol of mass death.
For faster reloads of magazine fed weapons, tape the mags together so that the feed sides face away from each other. When you need to reload, just hit the mag release, pull it out enough to flip it over, and reinsert it. It saves precious seconds over fumbling for a new mag from your pouch.
I give Hollywood credit for trying to teach Americans world history via America's most famous fictional soldier. In Tanzania, where I lived for a few years, rambo is slang for a plastic bag, because most had his picture on it and they are tough like Stallone.
Makmende is East Africa's version of Rambo and Chuck Norris. His name is joke on the Clint Eastwood phrase "make my day".
I try to keep things family friendly here. Sometimes that is not possible. People often shit and piss themselves when they die, so various warrior cultures developed a tradition of fasting before battle. This has obvious downsides.
Cannibalism of slain enemies was common across Polynesia. If there was nothing left to eat, stealing shit from the guts of a dead warrior was proof you were in the battle.
During WW2 in the Pacific, US troops sometimes took ears, teeth, and other body parts from dead Japanese soldiers as grisly souvenirs.
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In the May 22, 1944 issue of LIFE magazine, a striking and controversial image was featured as the “Picture of the Week.” It showed 20-year-old Natalie Nickerson of Phoenix, Arizona, gazing at a human skull — reportedly of a Japanese soldier — that she had received from her boyfriend, a Navy lieutenant serving in the Pacific
The Ear Mound, or Mimizuka, in Kyoto is a memorial burial mound for the severed noses of Korean and Chinese victims killed during Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasions of Korea in the late 16th century.
A plaque, which was later removed, stood in front of the Ear Mound in the 1960s with the passage, "One cannot say that cutting off noses was so atrocious by the standard of the time." Most guidebooks do not mention the Ear Mound, and only a few Japanese or foreign tourists visit the site.[10] The majority of visiting tourists are Korean—Korean tour buses are often seen parked near the Ear Mound.[citation needed]
In 1982, not a single Japanese school textbook mentioned the Ear Mound.
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But sure, let's all get extra pissed off about Confederate monuments...
They took down the flag as a sign of surrender to keep the Taliban from looting it and humiliating the US even more.
So I wonder how well my country, the US, will fare against Iran. Below is a clue.
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Mohammad Hossein Fahmideh (Persian: محمد حسین فهمیده;[1] 6 May 1967 – 30 October 1980) was an Iranian child soldier and an icon of the Iran–Iraq War. During the First Battle of Khorramshahr in 1980, he served with the Basij and fought invading Iraqi forces in and around the city of Khorramshahr. Fahmideh is credited with having halted the advance of an Iraqi tank column after he jumped underneath an Iraqi tank and detonated a full grenade belt, killing himself in the process. He is celebrated as a war hero in Iran.
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It will be a cold day in hell when Americans recruit, deploy, and celebrate the suicide combat deaths of child soldiers.
Iran lost about 2% of their population during their 10-year war with Iraq. That's a similar percent to what the US lost during its civil war. To this day, there are hundreds of monuments to that war in the US, even though the war ended over 160 years ago. And even today, the war inspires strong feelings.
They have a cemetery in Tehran with a "blood" fountain to honor their dead from the war with Iraq.
Sacrifice and martyrdom are powerful themes in Islam and especially Shia Islam, the main religion of Iran.
During WW2, Germany lost about 10% of its population and Japan about 5% of its population. That is what is required for unconditional surrender. Iran has 90 million people today. Are US leader willing to kill 5 or 9 million Iranians to compel their unconditional surrender? I think not.
Also, if the US does kill 5 million Iranians, doesn't that make them just as bad as the Iranian hardliners who want to wipe Israel off the map?
My advice to American leaders is to declare victory and stop bombing Iran. Otherwise, Iran will drag out this war to make us look like even bigger idiots than we have been already.
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At a March 2026 Christian worship service at the Pentagon — the first since the U.S. and Israel began military operations in Iran — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked Pentagon officials to pray for “overwhelming violence” against enemies in Iran and elsewhere, invoking the “mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ”
Hegseth recited a prayer he says was given by a chaplain to troops ahead of the U.S. raid on Venezuela and the kidnapping of then-President Nicolás Maduro in January. The prayer, drawn from passages in Psalm 18:37–42 and other biblical texts, includes verses such as:
“I pursued my enemies and overtook them. I did not turn back till they were consumed. I thrust them through so that they were not able to rise. They fell under my feet… And those who hated me, I destroyed. They cried for help, but there was none to save” .
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I like Psalm 18:37 too, but that's John Wick stuff, not strategy.
Maybe Hegseth is unfamiliar with the "blessed are the peacemakers" and "turn the other cheek" - some of the most powerful words Jesus ever spoke.
Jesus was not a warrior and never killed anyone. Aside from that freakout at the temple with the blasphemous moneychangers, he never did violence of any sort.
And what kind of warrior turns himself over to his enemies to be tortured and humiliated? I don't believe Jesus rose from the dead. I do believe there was a real man named Jesus who said and did most of things described in the New Testament. Like Socrates, Jesus wanted to make statement with his death.
His most interesting revelation is that the KGB spent very little time, money, and manpower on James Bond stuff. Instead, it worked on the slow, easy, and inexpensive process of destroying a country through things like propaganda and education. The KGB wanted influence the young people who would grow up to be politicians, bureaucrats, etc. If it could do that, they would defeat that country without fighting.
There are a number of trends that overlap with low fertility in the industrialized world.
In China, Japan, and South Korea, children are pushed very hard in school, often to the point that they have very little time to socialize. This contributes to increased suicide and makes it harder for young people to form relationships.
In China, it is a common practice to hook kids up to IV drips so they can spend more time doing homework.
In Europe and North America, declining church attendance means young people are less likely to form relationships with peers who share their values. This increases loneliness and means fewer marriages and friendships.
Also in Europe and North America, fewer people are getting married to people they meet at work. Work used to be one of the main places people found their spouses. The other two places were school and church.
Any civilization that doesn't reproduce enough is a just few generations from extinction. Family formation is the key to the long-term survival of groups.
In India, Africa, and the Islamic world, arranged marriages are common, and so the fertility rate remains high. Matchmakers are also prevalent in Asia and the Islamic world.
Of the 30 countries with the highest fertility, 28 are in Africa and the other two are Yemen and Afghanistan. What do these countries have in common? Well, they are poor, are very religious (Christianity or Islam), and the women there often get married young. Chad, which has the world's highest birthrate, is about evenly split between Christians and Muslims.
In North America, the white groups with the highest fertility are the Amish and the Mormons (LDS). They are both patriarchal and highly religious.
Feminism, birth control, pornography, prostitution, and abortion are much more common in the industrialized world. They are linked by the idea of sexual permissiveness.
So what conclusions can we draw and what solutions can be implemented? I see it this way:
1. Most people, but especially women, should stop going to school after the 8th grade.
2. Enough cheap housing needs to be built. This point bears repeating.
3. Traditional and patriarchal views should be tolerated rather than suppressed.
4. More teachers should be men. They are better at instilling discipline and learning.
5. Abortion should be limited to cases of rape, incest, and life of the mother. Currently, about 85% of abortions are for other reasons.
Since I'm an American, I'm mostly thinking about what my country needs to do to get back on the right path. In 1960, the median age at first marriage was 23 for men and 20 for women. The fertility rate in the same year was 3.65, which is about the same as Guinea-Bissau today.
The US has slight population growth only because of very high rates of immigration, which is not sustainable. America's cultures and institutions won't survive if the racial and ethnic composition changes too much from what it was in 1960. The current composition is acceptable, but a larger white majority would be better.
America has a long history of trying to integrate various groups with the white majority, and the results have been mixed at best. The main groups have been the people of the various native tribes, blacks, and Mexicans. History shows America does best when it has a large white majority, such as during the Roaring Twenties and the postwar Baby Boom era.
Jared Taylor gave a good speech on the ongoing failure of multiculturalism in America since 1607. It was banned in Paris.
America's freedom and success come from individualism. America is an individualistic country because whites on average are more individualistic than other races. It's hard to herd cats, but amazing things happen when you do. Note the race of the people in the following video:
1969 was the peak of space travel and aerospace technology. Back then, the country was 88% white and 11% black. The median age at first marriage the same year was 20 for women and 22 for men. The fertility rate was 2.43.
