90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

Russia has Forgotten the Hard Lessons it Learned Invading Finland

Russia learned some hard lessons when it invaded Finland in November 1939. Today in Ukraine, it’s become clear that those lessons didn’t “stick,” at least not among Russia’s decision-makers.

In the winter of 1939, Russia – having just conquered half of Poland after Germany had already knocked that country out of the war – decided that war was good business. So they invaded Finland. In Poland, the Soviets re-took land that had been under the control of Czarist Russia for two centuries before it was divided away from Russia at the treaty of Versailles. Repeating that strategy, on November 30, 1939, Russia attacked Finland, intending to recover land that had also been part of Czarist Russia before Versailles.

Like Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, Finland was a Baltic state that had existed for centuries, before becoming a Czarist vassal state. But unlike Poland, Finland had a strong army that had not been defeated in battle. In the Kremlin, the Soviets decided the time was right to take that territory back, thinking it would be another piece of cake as Poland had been two months earlier.

Indeed, this invasion should have been a cakewalk for the Soviets. After all, the Soviets had more soldiers in their army – 1.8 million – than Finland had males of all ages – 1.75 million – in its entire country in 1939. However, after two serious but little-known border wars earlier in 1939 with Japan along the Manchurian-Mongolian border, many of the Red Army’s best troops were still stationed along that battle line. On November 30th, the Soviet force – 450,000 men in 21 army divisions – crossed the border. Known as the Winter War, this invasion focused on the Karelian Isthmus, a strip of land that separated the Baltic Sea from Lake Ladoga. Karelia seemed to offer a “highway” between Leningrad and the Finnish capital, Helsinki. Most of the invading army – 250,000 Soviet troops – attacked along that narrow strip of land. Facing them on all fronts were just 130,000 Finnish soldiers.

However, the Red Army committed two cardinal sins – both of which they are now repeating in Ukraine. They sent in an army largely made up of newly conscripted men, virtually just out of training and ill-equipped for a long war along the Arctic Circle. Then they divided their forces, sending nearly half their army – around 200,000 men – to invade central and northern Finland, territory with no strategic value to the Soviet Union. Their divided forces were then defeated in detail.

While some of these Red Army troops had invaded Poland in September, there was a decided – and decisive – difference between Poland and the attack on Finland. First, the Polish Army had already been defeated by the German Army, which invaded 17 days earlier. What the Russians did was less of an armed invasion and more of a peaceful occupation of undefended territory. While they experienced the invasion, none of those soldiers had experienced real combat.

Against Finland, most of the Soviet soldiers – even veterans of the Polish occupation – were relatively recent conscripts, drafted into the Soviet Army and given little training before being thrust into combat. Worse, they were not prepared for...

Huskey ALWAYS Tells the Truth.

Now you're standing there tongue tied

You'd better learn your lesson well

Hide what you have to hide

And tell what you have to tell

You'll see your problems multiplied

If you continually decide

To faithfully pursue

The policy of truth

Nets Panic Over Climate Change: 'World Needs to Act Fast'!

If They Really Believed This They'd Talk About How China Is Building A New Coal Plant Every Single Day.

On Monday night, all three evening newscasts hyperventilated over a report from the United Nations (U.N.) that allegedly claims the world will suffer grave environmental consequences if nothing is done about "climate change".

Instead of reporting on the breaking news that Hunter Biden's former business partner was just convicted of defrauding an impoverished Native American tribe, the networks decided to needlessly frighten their viewers about the climate.

On ABC's World News Tonight, anchor David Muir -- while sitting in front of a screen that says "alarming climate change report" -- glumly reported the window to solve climate change is "rapidly closing to avoid its deadly consequences." Muir panicked that according to the U.N., "half the world's population [is] living in the so-called danger zone now." He then ended the brief segment with this fearmongering:

The report finding that even if warming is limited to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, which has been a global goal, still, up to fourteen percent of species will face a very high risk of extinction. And in some regions of the world, food and water will become increasingly scarce.

During a segment on CBS's Evening News, anchor Norah O'Donnell led off by telling the audience about the "important but grim U.N. report" that says "nearly half of the Earth's population live in areas highly vulnerable to climate change. With coastlines, farms, and cities especially at risk." O'Donnell urged that "scientists say there’s still hope that some of the worst can be prevented but the world needs to act fast."

Over on NBC Nightly News Lester Holt announced that the U.N. report says "time is running out to avoid the worst-case scenarios", but then outsourced the climate fearmongering to correspondent Tom Costello:

The U.N.'s latest, most in-depth scientific report on climate change warns the dangers are immediate and growing more acute with millions of people worldwide potentially losing access to clean water, facing starvation and disease. So far, humanity has taken incremental, often superficial steps to mitigate climate change.

Continuing to needlessly frighten viewers Costello said that "global temperatures have already risen two degrees Fahrenheit in just over one hundred years. The U.N. report warns if temps rise by another 2.7 degrees, vast stretches of coral reef will die off. More species will go extinct. Rising sea levels will threaten cities. And fish, livestock, and crop yields will drop, threatening millions in vulnerable countries and sending food prices...

Visage à trois #86

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

La petite mort bonus video:

This Is Why Voting Matters Folks.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is pursuing a multipronged strategy to dismantle climate change regulations and hold down energy costs, his press secretary told The Daily Signal.

Government records indicate that Youngkin will rely on a mix of executive action, budget changes, and legislation to withdraw from the 11-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Some environmental activists and lawyers question the new Republican governor’s authority to exit the pact exclusively through executive action.

But Youngkin press secretary Macaulay Porter said the governor is committed to ending Virginia’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a “cap and trade” agreement to limit carbon dioxide emissions that is widely known as RGGI.

“The governor pledged to withdraw Virginia from RGGI because of the unfair burden it places on Virginia ratepayers,” Porter said in an interview. “On Day One, he issued an executive order to do just that.”

“The executive action initiated the regulatory process to withdraw,” Porter added, “but he’s also supporting legislative action to make sure future governors cannot unilaterally put Virginia back into this failed and expensive program.”

Youngkin’s executive order set in motion a series of actions that will result in what it calls “a full report reevaluating the costs and benefits of participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative,” while notifying RGGI officials that the governor intends to withdraw either by legislative or regulatory action.

The Daily Signal has requested a copy of that report, which was due within 30 days of Youngkin’s Jan. 15 order.
‘Change Not for Better’

The governor’s order provides for an “emergency regulation” enabling Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Board to consider repealing climate change regulations. Youngkin also backs a budget amendment that would start the process of withdrawing from RGGI.

Besides Virginia, the climate change agreement includes 10 other states in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, as The Daily Signal previously has reported: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

In these states, government regulators impose an upper limit or “cap” on the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that power plants are permitted to...

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #266

Biden's SCOTUS nominee once argued judicial system is 'unfair' to sexual predators

No Wonder Democrats And Elites Love Her.

Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson once authored an unsigned "Note" in the Harvard Law Review arguing that America's judicial system is "unfair" to sexual predators, according to findings discovered by an American Accountability Foundation investigation.

Jackson argued the unconstitutionality of certain preventative measures adopted as common practices by state governments and applied to confirmed sex offenders.

Per the Harvard Law Review article "Prevention Versus Punishment: Toward a Principled Distinction in the Restraint of Released Sex Offenders," she argued that America's judicial approaches might be unfair to sex offenders.

"This Note critiques current judicial approaches to characterizing sex offender statutes and suggests a more principled framework for making the distinction between prevention and punishment," Jackson wrote in the piece.

Jackson maintained that "even in the face of understandable public outrage over repeat sexual predators, a principled prevention/punishment analysis evaluates the effect of the challenged legislation in a manner that reinforces constitutional safeguards against unfair and unnecessarily burdensome legislative action."

State laws across the United States widely use preventative measures like offender registration with local law enforcement, DNA identification, requirements to notify neighbors and surrounding community, and others to reduce the likelihood of a second offense. These, Brown argued, aren't only preventative—they're punitive. In other words, they're used as a punishment that goes beyond a court's verdict for their specific crime; it's a "punishment" applied more generally to all sex offenders.

And that, Jackson argued, might not be constitutional.

"Although many courts and commentators herald these laws as valid regulatory measures, others reject them as punitive enactments that violate the rights of individuals who already have been sanctioned for their crimes," Jackson wrote.

"Under existing doctrine, the constitutionality of sex offender statutes depends upon their characterization as essentially 'preventive' rather than 'punitive,' yet courts have been unable to devise a consistent, coherent, and principled means of making this determination," Jackson penned.

However, her reasoning isn't one of legal precedent however—state governments have been using these practices for decades. She argued from a position that looks to protect offenders from what she described as a cultural atmosphere of hate.

"In the current climate of fear, hatred, and revenge associated with the release of convicted sex criminals, courts must be especially attentive to legislative enactments that use public health and safety rhetoric to justify procedures that are, in essence, punishment and detention," Jackson wrote.

Jackson acknowledged authorship of the note to a Senate Judiciary Committee, included in a list of authored works, while the senate considered her nomination to become a District Judge for the District of Columbia back in 2012.

Her written work was also confirmed by Intelligencer in a feature profiling Jackson, who the outlet says has "shown a deep interest in trying to ensure fair processes for often unpopular clients," according to the glowing Feb. 25 article.

"Once again, Joe Biden's White House has failed in the vetting process by nominating a radical Leftist like Judge Brown Jackson to the highest court in the land," AAF Founder Tom Jones said. "Americans want our judicial system to protect children and citizens from...

A course titled “Global Whiteness” taught at the University of North Carolina blames the West and the United States for the war against Japan during World War II.

Among the topics discussed by students in Professor Mark Driscoll’s class are Donald Trump’s racism and “interracial hookups on campus.”

According to the syllabus obtained by Campus Reform, the course covers the concept of race since the 19th century, but it also provides revisionist narratives of American history, particularly the second world war.

It describes WWII’s Pacific theater fight as “the first global attack on white Anglo-American hegemony” and “Japan’s attempt to roll back Euro-American colonialism.”

One of the course’s required text is Theodore Allen’s “The Invention of the White Race, vol. 2: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America.”

Driscoll, an adjunct instructor in Global Studies, says in the syllabus’s “Methods” section that he cannot “emphasize enough” the “partial and incomplete nature of professorial knowledge,” and that students have a “right and duty” to seek out “alternate truths.”.

“Alternate Truths?” I would have thought “Alternate Viewpoints” might be what a college should be teaching.

There will also be readings from Ibram X. Kendi in Introduction to Racial Science, “Enlightenment or Enwhitenment?”, “Criminalization of Blackness” and “Whiteness Dispossessed (Whiteness After Obama).”

According to a syllabus previously reviewed by Campus Reform, an earlier version of the course, taught in 2019, included a class session titled “Nasty, Angry White People.”

Students in the course will be required to give a presentation based on any one of 32 listed topics.

And topics on which students can do presentations include:

— “How is Trump racist?”

— “Black/white hooking up at UNC”

— “White/Asian hooking up at UNC.”

— “White Trash”

— “Whites in Hip-hop”

— “Should white people pay reparations for slavery?”

— “War on Terror (and racialization of Muslims)”

— “Killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri”

— “1619 Project”

In his faculty page, Driscoll notes he “explores colonially influenced transformations in political and economic organization, philosophy, psychology, and literature, with a focus on...