“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

Old memories keep peculating up while observing the current happenings on the world stage. My early years I was surrounded by animals. Every home my folks took me to had at least a dog and a cat living inside. Some had a domestic animal menagerie rivaling the one my parents created on our acreage. Every day skills were developed two way communication with cattle, horses, ponies, bunnies, feral cats, pigs, geese, ducks and chickens.

Carefully watch a small child talking to an animal and the two way interaction is apparent.
Effort is usually being made by both participants in the conversation to understand messages being conveyed with different communication styles of body movements and sounds.

Odd pairing happen sometimes. The duck (Daffey) and rooster (Charlie) hatched in the first grade class incubator became good friends and spent the their lives at our farm with the chicken flock. Daffey would take a daily swim in the pond and Charlie would wade out into about 4 inches of water calling at him to come back and to return to doing "normal" activities.

Myths and stories using animals as the main characters is a common method in various cultures to teach life lessons. In grade school the librarian assigned me the book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH to read. It seriously disrupted my trust in government authority and persons who wore lab coats. MINH was an abbreviation for National Institute of Mental Health. My childhood memories and various study guides of lessons to be learned are quit different. It was basically about lab rats who escaped, live their own life and NIMH does not want evidence of their experiments to be discovered. Extermination of the test subjects was NIMH's answer. The story had a somewhat happy ending, most lived and escaped to a new area to live, but the official never gave up the hunt.

US Resumes Construction of Biolabs in Ukraine, Russian MoD Says Sputnik April 7, 2023

The US has resumed the program for the construction of biological laboratories in Ukraine and is expanding the format to train Ukrainian biologists, Igor Kirillov, head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian Armed Forces, said on Friday.

"Despite the forced pause pertaining to the Russian special military operation [in Ukraine], [the US’] activities under the program have now been resumed. The main tasks at this stage are to continue the construction of biological laboratories in Ukraine, as well as expand the format for training Ukrainian biologists," Kirillov told reporters.

This conclusion is based on the analysis of the minutes of the meeting of the working group of US and Ukrainian specialists under the leadership of representatives of the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) dated October 20, 2022 on the plans for the implementation of the "Biological Threat Reduction Program" in Ukraine, the Russian official explained.
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"The plans of the Pentagon to continue dual-use research at Ukrainian bio-objects and in other countries of the world with a change in the name of the program is the result of a vague reaction of the world community due to the fear of a number of countries to confront the US authorities," he underscored.
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Separately, Kirillov said that each new strain of the coronavirus had improved military-biological properties, which may indicate an artificial increase in its pathogenicity.
Experts still have a number of questions related to "strange for most viruses" variability and geographical origin of COVID-19 variants, the official said, adding that "at the same time, each new variant had improved properties in terms of their military-biological application, causing more and more economic damage."

"It seems that someone is taking targeted actions to enhance the pathogenic properties of the virus, and the pandemic is artificially fueled by the introduction of new, 'improved' variants. So far, these questions remain unanswered," he noted.

This comes after Kirillov told reporters last month that Washington failed to deactivate biolabs in Ukraine before the launch of Russia's special military operation despite claims by US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

A hard truth to accept is the longstanding practice of biologicals and pharmaceuticals weapons testing on United States citizens is a long standing practice. No one is ever prosecuted or punished for the destruction of human lives, their families and communities. Secrecy agreements and privacy laws are used to hide the acts. Those agreements seem to have great legal weight to silence individuals.

Many of us probably know or suspect people who were negatively effected by these practices. An uncomfortable read, but an issue necessary to understand some of the quirks of US culture. Many people and those around them spend the rest of their lives simply trying to put the pieces back together to live a "normal" life.

The US Government Declares War on America
Blue Moon of Shanghai Larry Romanoff, March 31, 2023

Covert nuclear, biological and chemical experiments on the American public are not new. The US government and military have a history of nearly 100 years of performing illegal, unethical and immoral experiments on live subjects at home.[1][2][3] Countless millions of US civilians have been exposed to astonishing procedures and pathogens. According to a US Congressional investigation, by the late 1970s “at least 500,000 people were used as subjects in radiation, biological and chemical experiments sponsored by the US Federal Government on its own citizens”. However, as with all US Congressional Investigations, the content was severely whitewashed, with the actual count of victimised Americans being almost certainly in the tens of millions.

China is moving away from the long practice of being polite and not mentioning the worst parts of the Untied States government actions. They are now using methods similar to public shaming and education.

This report was published last month by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China.
The State of Democracy in the United States: 2022
March 20, 2023

4. “Freedom of speech” in name only
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Capital and interest groups basically can get anything they want when it comes to public opinion. In the face of capital and interest groups, American media’s “freedom of speech” smacks of hypocrisy. Most American media firms are privately owned and serve the powerful and the rich. Whether it’s the owner of the media or the investment and advertisement income that the media depends on, all of them are related to capital and interest groups. In his book The Hypocritical Superpower, Micheal Lueders, a well-known German writer and media professional, elaborated in detail how the “filtering mechanism” of American media, under the influence of interest groups, chooses and distorts facts. In January 2023, Project Veritas, an American right-wing group, published a video about Pfizer that went viral. It recorded Jordon Trishton Walker, a senior executive at Pfizer, saying that Pfizer was exploring plans to “mutate” the coronavirus, that the coronavirus vaccine business was a “cash cow”, and that US regulators had vested interests in drug companies. To deal with the PR crisis, in addition to issuing a statement, Pfizer even had YouTube remove the video immediately on ground of “violating community guidelines”.
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The US uses social media to manipulate international public opinion. In December 2022, the independent investigation website “The Intercept” revealed that agencies affiliated to the US Department of Defense had long interfered in public opinion in Middle Eastern countries by manipulating topics and waging deceptive propaganda on social media such as Twitter
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In September 2022, the explosion of the “Nord Stream” natural gas pipeline shocked the world, and the international community was eager to know the identity and motive of the perpetrator. On 8 February 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article exposing the US government as the culprit of the incident. However, American and European mainstream media, known for their sensitivity to such scoops, stayed eerily quiet on this piece of explosive news.
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5. The judicial system blind to public opinion

As an institution undergirding the country’s Constitution, the US Supreme Court, like the American society, has become deeply divided. Judicial power is hijacked by public opinion, and partisan struggle has spread to the judicial system. Increasingly, Supreme Court decisions reflect the huge chasm between “two Americas”—the conservatives and liberals, and have been reduced to a tool of political warfare. The “separation of powers” is constantly being eroded. Partisanship has abandoned tradition and crossed the line.

Both parties pursue their agenda by changing the political orientation of the Supreme Court.
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II. The United States’ imposition of “democracy” has caused chaos around the world

In spite of all the problems facing its own democracy, the United States refuses to reflect on itself, but instead continues to export American democratic values to other countries, and use the pretext of democracy to oppress other countries and serve its own agenda. What the US has done is exacerbating division in the international community and bloc-based confrontation.

1. Foreign policy held hostage by political polarization

“Politics stops at the water’s edge” is a popular proverb in American political circles, which means that partisan struggle should be confined to domestic politics and that a united front should be formed when dealing with foreign affairs. However, with the intensification of political polarization, Democrats and Republicans are increasingly divided on major foreign affairs issues, and America’s foreign policy has become more and more “extreme”. “Politics crossing the water’s edge” has become the norm. It is not only harmful to many developing countries, but also poses a threat to America’s own allies.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the Trump administration and some extreme politicians have concocted all kinds of lies and rumors against China on coronavirus origins-tracing. The most typical is in 2021, when the US intelligence agency issued the so-called origins-tracing report, which, in total disregard of science, fabricated the “lab leak” story and claimed that China lacked transparency and obstructed international investigations. Tracing the origins of the coronavirus is a matter of science, but the true purpose of the US’ doing is to obscure the views of the public and manipulate the issue to shift the blame onto China and suppress and contain China. This fully exposes the hypocrisy of American democracy and the ill effects of political polarization.

Under the Biden administration, the US ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan with a hasty withdrawal of troops. It just walked away, after shattering a whole country and destroying the future of several generations.
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2. Inciting confrontation and conflict in the name of democracy

Democracy is a common value of humanity and must not be used as a tool to advance geopolitical agenda or counter human development and progress. However, in order to maintain its hegemony, the US has long been monopolizing the definition of “democracy”, instigating division and confrontation in the name of democracy, and undermining the UN-centered international system and the international order underpinned by international law.
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3. Doubling down on unilateral sanctions

Under the pretext of human rights and democracy, the US has long been using unilateral sanctions and “long-arm jurisdiction” against other countries based on its domestic laws and its own values. In the past decades, the US imposed unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction on Cuba, Belarus, Syria, Zimbabwe and other countries, placed maximum pressure on countries including the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, and unilaterally froze US$130 million in military aid to Egypt under the excuse of the country’s lack of progress in human rights. Such actions have seriously damaged the economic development and people’s livelihood in the countries concerned, and jeopardized the right to life, the right to self-determination and the right to development, constituting a continual, systematic and massive violation of human rights in other countries. In recent years, US unilateral sanctions have been increasing and its “long arm” has been extending further. In order to preserve its hegemony, the US has wilfully harmed the interests of other countries, especially the legitimate and lawful interests of developing countries, in disregard of international law and the basic norms of international relations.
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5. Foisting a trumped-up narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism” 
Harboring the Cold War mentality, a hegemonic logic and a preference for bloc politics, the US administration has framed a narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism”, and labeled countries as “autocracies”, with a view to using ideology and values as a tool to suppress other countries and advance its own geostrategy under the disguise of democracy.

In 2021, the US held the first “Summit for Democracy”, attempting to divide the international community into so-called “democratic and undemocratic camps” by openly drawing an ideological line. The move drew questions extensively, including from within the US. Both Foreign Affairs and The Diplomat carried articles criticizing the summit as chasing the wrong goal, not only failing to achieve unity among democratic countries, but also drawing criticism for the representation issue. The US has long lacked a set goal in its promotion of democracy around the world, and has been slow in following up its rhetoric. When democracy in the US is in such a mess, holding a democracy summit cannot boost democracy around the world, but more likely create a greater geopolitical crisis. Hitoshi Tanaka, Chairman of the Institute for International Strategy of Japan, pointed out that the US has been imposing “democracy” on other countries, advancing the “democracy versus authoritarianism” campaign, and expanding global division.

IV. Conclusion

Democracy is humanity’s common value; however, there is no single model of political system that is applicable to all countries in the world. Human civilization, if compared to a garden, should be a diverse place in which democracy in different countries blooms like a hundred flowers. The US has American-style democracy, China has Chinese-style democracy, and other countries have their own unique models of democracy that suit their respective national conditions. It should be up to the people of a country to judge whether the country is democratic or not and how to better promote democracy in their country. The few self-righteous countries have no right to point fingers.

Those who have many flaws themselves have little credibility to lecture others. Attempts to undermine others for one’s own profit and destabilize the world must be unanimously opposed. A black-and-white division of countries as democratic or authoritarian is both anachronistic and arbitrary. What our world needs today is not to stoke division in the name of democracy and pursue de facto supremacy-oriented unilateralism, but to strengthen solidarity and cooperation and uphold true multilateralism on the basis of the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. What our world needs today is not to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs under the guise of democracy, but to advocate genuine democracy, reject pseudo-democracy and jointly promote greater democracy in international relations. What our world needs today is not a “Summit for Democracy” that hypes up confrontation and contributes nothing to the collective response to global challenges, but a conference of solidarity that focuses on taking real actions to solve prominent global challenges.

Freedom, democracy and human rights are the common pursuit of humanity, and values that the Communist Party of China (CPC) always pursues. China commits to and advances whole-process people’s democracy, and puts into action the principle of people running the country in the CPC’s exercise of national governance in specific and concrete ways. China stands ready to strengthen exchanges and mutual learning with other countries on the issue of democracy, advocate humanity’s common values of peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, promote greater democracy in international relations, and make new and greater contributions to human progress.

I still need to read the article. Pepe Escobar at The Cradle.
Iran and Saudi Arabia: a Chinese win-win

The single Iranian-Saudi handshake buried trillions of dollars of western divide-and-rule investments across West Asia, and has global leaders rushing to Beijing for global solutions.

The most current videos at this link.
Judge Napolitano channel ongoing discussions regarding current Ukraine/Russia conflict from different perspectives. Also a bit regarding China and Biden administration.

What is on your mind today?