RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/05/08/heres-what-the-75th-anniversary-of-ve-day-looks-like-during-coronavirus/#38e2527f5d43

Friday marked the 75th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender to the Allied forces and the end of World War II in Europe, but the coronavirus pandemic cast a shadow over memorials as the virus rendered large-scale celebrations too dangerous—especially for the war’s surviving veterans, now mostly in their 90s.

On Friday in Britain, Prince Charles led the country in a moment of silence, and military jets were flown over the U.K.’s four capital cities—and while residents are largely still housebound under the nationwide stay-at-home order, many families held tea parties, 40s-style, to mark the date.

In Paris, President Emmanuel Macron laid a wreath at the Arc de Triomphe at a sparse memorial service—the nearby Avenue des Champs-Élysées, usually bustling with shoppers and tourists, was nearly empty.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Chancellor Angela Merkel and other government leaders kept their distance as they laid wreaths at Berlin’s Neue Wache, Germany’s memorial to victims of war.

President Donald Trump was joined by eight World War II veterans for a wreath-laying ceremony in Washington, D.C., but observed social distancing measures—with the youngest veteran in attendance clocking in at age 96, the group is particularly at risk for coronavirus complications.

https://apnews.com/a86aa84df7a2ae97adcc91cb52975f11

YAKUTSK, Russia (AP) — On the 75th anniversary of the allied victory in the World War II, The Associated Press spoke to veterans in ex-Soviet countries and discovered that lessons they learned during the war are helping them cope with a new major challenge — the coronavirus pandemic. As they recalled the horrors of the war, they also talked about how strength and tenacity were key to survival both then and now. Here is some of their testimony.

For Russian World War II veteran Valentina Efremova, the coronavirus pandemic is like going through the war all over again.

After the war, the 96-year-old said, “our lives were improving, year after year. And suddenly there’s this pandemic, which is like another war … this time, a biological one.”

But Efremova knows better than to panic and believes the outbreak — just like the Nazis back in the 1940s — will be defeated in the end. “Giving in to panic is like surrendering to the enemy,” she said.

https://nypost.com/2020/05/08/queen-elizabeth-delivers-ve-day-75th-anniversary-address/

“Never give up, never despair,” Queen Elizabeth II said in a poignant VE Day address Friday night — marking the 75th anniversary of the World War II victory in Europe.

“Today it may seem hard that we cannot mark this special anniversary as we would wish,” the 94-year-old queen said in the televised address.

“Instead, we remember from our homes and our doorsteps. But our streets are not empty: they are filled with the love and care that we have for each other,” she said.

“And, when I look at our country today, and see what we are willing to do to protect and support one another, I say with pride that we are still a nation those brave soldiers, sailors and airmen would recognize and admire.”

The Queen’s words fell on a national holiday usually marked by parades and other celebrations, a day instead subdued by the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/08/chinas-electrifying-rags-to-riches-ascent-at-americas-expense/

A friend of mine who traveled China from the 1970s until recently described what the country was like 30 years ago:

Its cities were sprawling, impoverished places with dirt roads and low-rise structures. With few automobiles in the country back then, the Chinese people got around mostly by rickshaws and bicycles. The country had only a few tall buildings and just two sizable airports, in Beijing, its capital, and Shanghai, its financial center. China had no modern highways, bridges or high-speed rails, and the only trains that traversed the country were pulled by antiquated steam engines.

To get an idea of how much things have changed, please watch this 40-second clip of the Chinese city where COVID-19 originated. As the video shows, Wuhan bears no resemblance to the backward, desperately poor place it was just three decades ago. The same is true of cities throughout China.

Over the past 30 years, China has undergone a stupendous, caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation that has created some of the world’s most eye-popping roadways, bridges and architecture. Now within sight of overtaking the United States as the world’s dominant economy, China has also built a massively lethal military that poses a serious threat to America’s long-standing combat superiority—as reported by the Washington Times, China’s military is forcing the Pentagon to confront the end of U.S. battlefield dominance.

How Did This Happen?

From where did the money come that funded China’s dramatic makeover from a Third World backwater to an economic and military superpower? Trillions of dollars used to finance its spectacular ascendancy was handed willingly over by its greatest patron: the United States of America.

Since the late 1980s, China has been allowed—allowed—to extract trillions of dollars from the U.S. economy in the form of massive trade surpluses. As a result, the communist nation now has glistening cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Wuhan, while America is saddled with fading cities like Baltimore, Detroit, and Atlanta, once-thriving metropolises now marred by urban blight, rampant crime, sorry schools, generational poverty and other canaries in the coal mine of a nation in decline.

And to rub salt in America’s self-inflicted wounds, Chinese nationals who were allowed—allowed—to attend our top research universities and work at our most sensitive high-tech companies robbed America blind, surreptitiously sending many of our nation’s most vital technological and national defense secrets to our communist adversary hell-bent on chopping America off at the knees.