RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15984/coronavirus-swedish-model

“For a long time, Sörmlands Media has tried to get information from all the county’s municipalities on how the spread of infection in elderly care looks, how extensive it is and where it is located. The municipalities have replied that they lack knowledge about the extent of the spread of infection and have said that it is also not possible to find out. — Maria Lapenkova, Svt nyheter, May 2, 2020.

Sörmland Media’s review, however, shows that the information is not correct and that the municipalities actively concealed the information… Some municipalities have also failed to report the number of infected persons to the National Board of Health and Welfare’s national reporting tool for orders for protective clothing. — Svt nyheter, May 2, 2020.

As of May 6, Sweden, which has a population of 10.18 million people, had 2,854 deaths, which corresponds to 280.27 deaths per million people. In comparison, the other countries of the Nordic region, Denmark, Norway and Finland, which all went on lockdown, had 503, 215 and 246 deaths respectively, corresponding to 86.76, 40.46 and 44.58 deaths per 1 million people, respectively.

“I think it’s a risky business and we don’t know anything about herd immunity. The only thing we know is that a lot of people have died. These are human beings, not just figures. And if we would have chosen another approach, this number would have been much smaller…You cannot take risks with people’s lives if you don’t know what risks you are taking”. — Dr. Stefan Hanson, a Swedish infectious disease expert, The Globe and Mail, Canada, April 30-May 1, 2020.

WHO — and the media — might wish to reconsider using Sweden as a model.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently described Sweden as a “model” for battling the coronavirus. “I think if we are to reach a new normal, I think in many ways Sweden represents a future model of — if we wish to get back to a society in which we don’t have lockdowns,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Emergencies Program, said. “They’ve been doing the testing, they’ve ramped up their capacity to do intensive care quite significantly,” he added.

“And their health system has always remained within its capacity to respond to the number of cases that they’ve been experiencing… Sweden has put in place a very strong public policy around social distancing, around caring and protecting for people in long term care facilities and many other things,”.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/05/08/mexican-nightmare-coronavirus-deaths-far-higher-than-government-admitted-n389313

If any Americans want to see a “failed response” to the coronavirus pandemic, they don’t have far to look.

Health officials in Mexico City have been begging the government for weeks to reveal the true toll the coronavirus is taking on the city. But government officials refuse to acknowledge the massive extent of the crisis, as the “Mexican Dr. Fauci” — the “public face” of the crisis — assures the people that everything is fine. “We have flattened the curve,” said Hugo Lopez-Gatell, the health ministry official used as a frontman by the government. He’s apparently become something of a celebrity on TV.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on the true nature of the nightmare that is gripping the country.

Only 0.4 of every 1,000 people in Mexico are tested for the virus — by far the lowest of the dozens of nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which average about 23 tests for every 1,000 people.

The government says Mexico has been faring better than many of the world’s largest countries, and on Monday its COVID-19 czar estimated that the final death toll would be around 6,000 people.

With so few tests being done, it’s impossible to get a handle on the scope of the problem.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/reconsidering-decades-of-western-outreach-to-china/

Western institutions have long assumed that cross-cultural exposure would loosen the Chinese regime’s grip. But the risks of such exposure are just as great.

Twenty years ago, as a lowly adjunct professor, I taught crisis management for Harvard in China. My memories, and some qualms about doing so, have flooded back as the world ponders whether China’s political system enabled the virus’s spread by discouraging local officials from reporting bad news. During those “executive education” programs at Tsinghua University in Beijing, I hoped that my colleagues and I might help nudge the Chinese system toward greater openness. But even back then — at a time when China was “ascending” to the WTO and optimism reigned among us globalists — our experiences of the country left me with doubts.

How to handle crisis was part of the curriculum when the Harvard Kennedy School struck a deal with the Beijing government to provide public-management education for local officials from across China. I have no idea whether the mayor of Wuhan was in the group I helped teach, but it’s quite possible. Our goal was to expose local and regional officials to Kennedy School-style techniques, which combine technocratic policy analysis with political leadership. It didn’t take long to see that the school’s dedication to fostering “freer” societies was going to be tested in the weeks a group of faculty spent at Tsinghua, thanks to what I understood to be the cooperation of the opaquely named Organization Department of the Central Committee.

It was above my pay grade to question whether the school should have entered into such a relationship in the first place. As I reflect, it’s possible that we planted some seeds for a freer society — but it’s just as likely that we helped provide legitimacy for a totalitarian government.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15979/apartheid-coronavirus-lebanon

Many Arabs and Palestinians took to social media to remind everyone that the only apartheid in the Middle East exists in an Arab country [Lebanon].

The latest Lebanese measure did not surprise those who are familiar with this Arab country’s long-standing discriminatory policies of apartheid towards Palestinians.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), “Palestinians in Lebanon cannot work in as many as 39 professions and cannot own property [real estate].”

The Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Samidoun… revealed that Palestinian refugees are “barred from 72 regulated professions, including medicine, public transit, farming and fishery.”

It now remains to be seen whether “pro-Palestinian” groups and individuals in the West will denounce Lebanon for its continued racism and discrimination against Palestinians.

Is Lebanon using the coronavirus pandemic to carry out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians?

A directive issued on May 1 by the Lebanese General Security, an agency responsible for immigration in Lebanon, bars, until further notice, the return of “foreign maids” and Palestinian refugees, even if their families have lived in Lebanon for generations. In the eyes of the Lebanese, there is apparently no difference between a “foreign maid” and a Palestinian Arab.

A Palestinian born and raised in an Arab country, in other words, is still considered by that Arab country to be a foreigner.

The May 1 directive, signed by Brigadier General Walid Oun, director of general security at the Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut, says, “accompanying maids and people of Palestinian descent” may not board Lebanese expatriate evacuation flights. These are Palestinians from Lebanon who left the country to search for work and are now seeking to return home.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/is_iran_going_home.html

Aside from the devastation of the Wuhan virus, Iraq closed its 1,000-mile southern border with Iran for “security reasons” after months of Iraqi protests against Iranian interference in its domestic affairs.  Oil prices flirted with zero in the wake of the Russia-Saudi oil war, and demand dropped owing to the virus, further gutting the treasury.  Iran harassed U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, but according to Navy sources, the action was clearly for domestic consumption and posed no actual threat (although a mistake on either side could have had major repercussions, making President Trump’s warning more than reasonable).  Germany, Tehran’s strongest defender in Europe, pulled the plug on Iran’s proxy army Hezb’allah.  More than 390 members of the U.S. House of Representatives — including Ilhan Omar, not normally an opponent of the Iranian government — called for extending the international arms embargo against Iran, set to expire in October.

Iran’s Quds Day celebration has been canceled.  The rallies and marches, an annual celebration of anti-Semitic glee, with their slogans and speeches and the “death to Israel” chant, will not take place in 2020, although the Iranian public has been assured that the supreme leader will make a speech.

And in Syria, things are blowing up.