Life's Tenacity: Thriving in the Harshest Climates

Overview Fallschirmjäger (German airborne troops) combined vertical envelopment , elite light‑infantry doctrine , and high firepower density at the small‑unit level. Their effectiveness rested on surprise, aggression, Auftragstaktik (initiative‑driven command), and tight air‑ground coordination. Early war successes relied on airborne assault; after Crete (1941), catastrophic losses forced a shift toward elite ground‑infantry roles while retaining the same tactical ethos. Airborne Assault Tactics (1939–1941) Fallschirmjäger airborne doctrine aimed to seize key terrain —bridges, airfields, forts, command nodes—before enemy reaction, enabling Blitzkrieg penetration. Glider Assaults Gliders (DFS 230) enabled precision , silent approach , and combat‑ready arrival . Concentrated shock action on point targets Delivery of heavy/specialized equipment (shaped charges, flamethrowers) Ideal for neutralizing fortified positions Case Study: Fort Eben‑Emael (10 May 1940) A small force (~78–85 eng...

  In the chaotic Sengoku period of sixteenth-century Japan, political and military power was frequently entangled with religious authority. Buddhist monasteries maintained armies of warrior-monks, controlled vast estates, and intervened in the affairs of the imperial court and rival warlords. Central to their influence was the widespread belief that certain places, objects, and processions were inviolable because they housed or represented the divine. Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582), the first of Japan’s three great unifiers, systematically challenged this assumption. Nowhere was his rejection of superstition more dramatic than in the 1571 destruction of the Enryaku-ji temple complex on Mount Hiei. There, people had long relied on the protective power of a sacred mikoshi—a portable shrine comparable in cultural function to the Ark of the Covenant —believing that no one would dare attack under its aura. Nobunaga burned the towns at the mountain’s base, torched the temples, and slaughtered ...

I clearly remember one particular occasion. This is actually a subject I don't even really want to share with the public. I don't want to get into the business of convincing anybody that I experienced what I experienced. People will either believe me or they won't. Some people don't believe their own parents, and some don't even believe themselves. I'm not interested in debating anyone. And yet, for whatever reason, I have this feeling that I need to put some of this into the public arena. That's why I generally say: no debate. Where I can, I block replies and comments. I don't give a fuck. I'm not trying to convince anybody. What I've been thinking about this morning is something I remember from what I can only describe as a visit to another world, another dimension, or perhaps a parallel universe. I know how strange and "woo-woo" that sounds. I don't particularly care. I'm describing what I remember. On one occasion, I remembe...

Africa’s richest people are sitting on mountains of capital while African ideas starve. That is the scandal. Not poverty. Not colonialism. Not “lack of talent.” The scandal is that African wealth refuses to believe in African intelligence. Across the world, private fortunes behave like engines of discovery. Billionaires fund laboratories, deep‑tech ventures, space programmes, biomedical research, AI companies, climate technologies—projects with no guaranteed return, no immediate revenue, no collateral, no safety net. They fund possibility . African fortunes, by contrast, behave like vaults. They expand what already exists: commodities , telecoms , banking , construction, property, logistics. These sectors generate wealth, but they do not generate new intellectual property. They do not generate new industries. They do not generate the future. Africa has billionaires. Africa has scientists. Africa has engineers. Africa has inventors. Africa has founders. What Africa does not have is Afr...

Leopold initiated the Congo project with Loans from bankers, including the Rothschilds (he was millions of francs in the red with them by the mid‑1880s/early 1890s) The historical record is blunt: Leopold II did not conquer the Congo with royal wealth, national support, or personal savings. He built his empire on credit , on bankers , and on debt instruments that tied the Congo Free State to European finance from its first breath. Belgium refused to fund a colony; Leopold lacked the capital; the only way forward was to mortgage the future of an African territory he did not yet own. The Congo Free State was not a royal project — it was a leveraged financial operation disguised as humanitarian exploration. The Comité d’Études du Haut Congo and its successor, the Association Internationale du Congo, were founded with financing from an international group of bankers . This is not interpretation; it is documented fact. The legal shell through which Leopold acquired sovereignty was itself ...

Child abuse in Africa cannot be discussed only as a private family problem. It is also connected to a much larger culture of power, fear, humiliation, poverty and authoritarianism—one in which people who have very little control over their lives sometimes exercise extraordinary control over those beneath them. Consider the ordinary worker who has almost no authority in the workplace. He is intimidated, humiliated or ignored by his superiors throughout the day. Yet when he returns home, he may become an authoritarian in his own household, using his children or partner as emotional punching bags. The person who appears quiet, respectful and almost saintly before his boss can become frighteningly domineering at home. It is a kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde contradiction: civility upward, brutality downward. The same contradiction can exist at the level of national leadership. A government may present itself beautifully at the United Nations, the African Union, the European institutions, BRICS and...