No Taboo questions brings ACCESS; that brings SCOOPS; that bring EXPOSURE; that brings CELEBRITY; that brings EXPANDED ACCESS (as long as Taboo questions not posed)
One cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God! the British journalist.
But seeing what the man will do,
Unbribed, there’s no occasion to.
(Humbert Wolfe)
Mr. President:
1. Both Aristotle (inductively) and Plato (deductively) asserted as “axiomatic” that “The only stable state is one in which all “men”[sic] are equal before the law.” Plato noted also: “Those who seek power are invariably the least fit to hold and wield it.”
They also noted that there is no durable intermediate ground between Rule of Law and Rule of the Ruthless.; ultimately it is one or the other. How then can any stable and prosperous society or global order, be built with some nations, persons, groups, social classes or strata self-declaring/anointing/appointing themselves as “exceptional”, “in-God’s Grace”, “leaders” (with no mandate or contact with those they purport to lead), “advanced”, “developed”, “inspirational”, “civilized”, “Preordained”, etc and thus immune from, or only selectively bound and accountable to, law–as defined only by, these self-asserted/anointed “exceptional” themselves?
2. You have in your administration at very high levels, members of Secret Societies like Skull and Bones, Bilderberg, Bohemian Grove, Masons, and others that require their members to take secret oaths of allegiance and fealty, never to disclose any of the secrets or membership of the group, any internal discussions of the group, any secret agenda of the group, any hierarchies and networks of connections of the group, and never to expose or work against a member of the group.
Why should any of these types of people hold high level or any security clearances when their oaths of their respective secret societies would prohibit their participating in, or demand they even obstruct, certain types of national security investigations–against one of their cult-mates for example? What if the core agenda of that secret society was an anti-democratic, elite-run, theo-fascist Plutocratic “Order” with “barbarians” (non-members) to be ruled by these “Knights” of the “New Order”?
And what does it say about supposed “meritocracy” and free/fair/open competition in government hiring, staffing and promotions (mandated by law and “best practices”) when members of these secret societies have always been networked into and over-represented in, the highest and most sensitive positions in government: media, education, research institutes, other secret societies, intelligence agencies–relative to their very small numbers [in 2004 you had two members of Skull and Bones (Kerry v Bush) running “against” each other from a cult that has produced a total of only 15 members per year since 1832]? And what about the “values” and “intentions” of some of those societies? If someone were running for president and were covertly a member of say the KKK, would that be an issue and would the voters have a right to know that fact along with what that organization stands for and against?
3. Your administration uses a lot of body language and theatrics to dismiss (with no counter argument) the notion that the removal of Yanukovych and his government was an “Unconstitutional Coup”. If it was not, what is your argument? Was Yanukovych not elected and accepted as elected in 2010? Does the Ukrainian Constitution not provide processes and procedures for orderly presentations of charges, trials of charges, findings of and actions from findings to include removal from office according to law? Does this same Constitution not call for removal of a president by referendum? Have/had these processes and procedures been invoked? Why not? Why not an impeachment with all the evidence presented as mandated by the Ukrainian Constitution with any punishments to follow not precede conviction from Constitutionally-mandated judicial and legislative processes? What about Yanukovych’s denial of ordering snipers and new evidence that people on both sides were shot by the same rounds by false-flag snipers? What about Yanukovych’s claim that he bought his mansion with his own money from his own independent wealth? Is there hard evidence this is not true? Who were his accomplices? From what accounts were the funds allegedly embezzled?
Whenever and wherever, under any rational democratic regime professing rule of law and due process, are allegations, no matter by whom against whom, no matter how loud and threatening, no matter how often repeated, no matter how apparently damning, and no matter from how many people, do all of these unproved allegations, THUS, under Law, or basic logic constitute established FACTS or form any basis to lead automatically, a-priori,, without concrete and judicially-tested evidence, to be taken as “proved facts” requiring no investigations, no trials–just summary and immediate action and removal from office and dissolution of a whole government? What kind of due process is that? What kind of “New Order” is that?
4, Is credibility not a “strategic national security” asset? When the U.S. Government, or any entity fails to “walk its talk” over and over, through myriad covert, clandestine and false-flag (non-accountable) operations since 1948, that were/are acts of war under the UN Charter and International Law (caused intended mayhem, losses of life and property, assassinations, sabotage and regime change) even if conducted to be “plausibly deniable” (or non-accountable and bald-face lies to follow not provable) does this Imperial Hubris and self-anointed “Exceptionalism”, “God’s Chosen” or “City-on-the-Hill-ism”, coupled with vigilante drone attacks and JSOC kill-or- capture teams, not undermine rather than enhance, U.S. and Global Security?; does all this not create 5 or 10 new terrorist recruits for every suspected terrorist but who is innocent or innocents next to a targeted person?
5. What if Bill Clinton had not only been impeached but convicted in the Senate? Would that mean that his whole administration should go as well? What about continuity in government and government institutions beyond individuals within and running them?Why has a whole new “interim government” installed with the extra-judicial and extra-constitutional removal of Yanukovych?; is that not the definition of a coup d’etat–the forcible extra-judicial, extra-constitutional removal of an elected leader and his or her government”?
6. Why has China been the only nuclear power to announce doctrine of no first-use of nuclear weapons? What possible scenario could justify first-use of nuclear weapons especially against nation states without nuclear or retaliatory capabilities; especially in the cases of Korea, Vietnam, Suez and other historical cases of threats to use nuclear weapons?
Why is the U.S. demanding some nations halt or never attain nuclear weapons, while those same states are expanding and refining their own arsenals? Does the use of nuclear weapons not threaten spread effects on many peoples who have no part in any wars using nuclear weapons and even threaten the whole of humanity itself? Then why should any nation-state have, use or threaten to use any WMDs that have all sorts of unforeseen and unforeseeable but likely disastrous consequences on the whole planet?
Why does the existence of any nation-state with nuclear weapons and other WMDS not give precedent and license to any other nation-state to possess the same? Why does the demand for any nation-state to eliminate its nuclear arsenal and WMDS not give precedent and license to any other nation-state to demand the same of other nation-states in any kind of international order based on rule of law not rule of the exceptional or the ruthless?
7. How is democracy possibly enhanced by money seen not as only an instrument of speech but speech itself.? Does the correctness of an idea depend upon how loud, frequent and overpowering the megaphone? With only some time-slots open for political ads, is not the “free-speech-justified” domination of large blocs of air time by concentrated wealth, shutting out the voices without access to the megaphones and large blocs of air-time, , really anti-democratic in nature, intentions and effects? What happens when the loudest and most well-financed and thus most heard voices are wrong or dangerous to the Republic while the silent and silenced voices are correct?
8. We have heard that “the failures of the CIA are well known; what will never be known are the successes.” Another mantra for failure is “How do you connect the dots when the page is black”? Yet when we read the memoirs of ex-CIA officers at very high levels, and not the Agees or Snowdens or Stockwells or McGoverns, but the-still-true believers like Crumpton, Helms, Casey, Phillips, and Dulles, you find evidence of blowback after blowback even from those operations like the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 or Arbenz in 1954, or Allende in 1973 all said to have been “successful” at the time and even later and yet shortly after, still turned-out with major blowbacks over unanticipated time periods. When do the American public get a real accounting of actual results, real costs and on whom relative to claimed benefits from the massive sums advanced? Why are so many appearing to leave the CIA and not trying for a career there?
9. Is the U.S. Government’s definition of a “free election” not really one that can be rigged, influenced with outside money and subversion, shaped with the menu of “choice” allowing who can and cannot run for office, allowing the “social engineering” of pro-US outcomes and policies? How else to explain the US refusal to recognize the electoral results of many elections that were inspected and found to be more free, fair and open than any US elections only because the US did not like the outcomes (Hamas, Allende, Hisbollah)?
10. How does an accused terrorist surrender to a drone rather than die? How does the drone operator know who is with the target (“collateral damage”) at time of launch? Of the kill or capture raids by JSOC, how many resulted in captures and how many were kills? How do the tensions and contradictions between COIN forces (SF) and CT forces (SEALS, DELTA, Rangers), tensions that go back to Vietnam, play out? Do CT operations focusing on killing or capturing hearts and minds (targets and their families) not winning them over, not seriously contradict/undermine SF missions of COIN winning over hearts and minds?
11. In Vietnam there was a last-minute “surge” of U.S. carpet bombing in 1971, a push for “Vietnamization” (said to be only “changing the color of the corpses”) before the exits of U.S. Forces that made it clear who won and who lost–no saving face possible. Is this not also what was done in Korea, Iraq and no Afghanistan? Theatrical “surges” to “save face” and claim “Mission Accomplished”, retreat and loss of another war passed off as an “orderly and planned change of command and government”, and now it is their war?
12. You had two diplomats discussing who would be and not be in the new Ukrainian government and why or why not, showing up to and vocally participating in what turned into violent demonstrations, showing contempt for the EU with comments like “Fuck the EU” and just generally acting like arrogant elitists. Why are they still employed?
13. What would the U.S. Government say if say high-level officials from the Governments of China or Russia came to the US to publicly speak and carry signs with the sentiments expressed at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations? What if they were to call for Obama’s impeachment, trial for war crimes at the ICC, formation of an interim government with its composition already picked by China and Russia?
14. What kind of person, group or social system or the government of a whole nation-state openly proclaims as its “strategic doctrine” “Full Spectrum “Dominance”? By “Full Spectrum Dominance” (not parity, or security or sufficiency but dominance) the U.S. Government means dominance over: arenas of battle (land, sea, air, space, cyberspace, cognitive space); forms of warfare (psychological; conventional; irregular; special ops, propaganda, psyops, nuclear, electronic, cyber, social systems engineering, embargoes and quarantines) as well as in weapons (nuclear, conventional, irregular, high-tech, stand-off, “smart”, chemical and biological etc)?
15. Why is China on a nuclear-strike target list? Why would the government and social system of China be seen as an “existential threat” to the U.S. system when without China’s trade and finance, the social system of the U.S. would be in even worse trouble, even as China suffers some embargoes today from the U.S. and even as China has recognized the imperative for and has expanded the role of capitalism in the socialist social formation of China? When has China committed even one act of aggression against the U.S. since 1949 whereas China has been subject to global isolation, a renegade part of China declared and sitting in the UN as a representative of all of China and numerous covert CIA-sponsored sabotage and terrorism? Do the Chinese have a case to regard the U.S. system and ideology of imperialism and global “full spectrum dominance” an existential threat?
15. Both your administration and your opponents propose “free-market” solutions to hiring. Why then not the strength of your convictions and those in Congress and pass a law that all public employment, including the staffs of all public officials elected or not, be staffed through free, fair and open competition according to your own economic theory: no patronage, no cronyism, no nepotism, or other “barriers to entry” or “anti-Competitive” practices; near perfect information on both the supply and demand sides of labor-power markets; no buyer or seller large enough to affect market wages and salaries; perfect factor mobility with suppliers and demanders free to relocate; and relatively homogeneous forms of labor-power?
16. Does former General Petraeus still have his security clearances and access to the national security state? In SAC, adultery is grounds for immediate loss of clearance and under UCMJ adultery is a crime. It is also a crime to use military resources to transport one’s mistress all over the place, to expose her to all sorts of classified personnel and documents without need-to-know and proper clearance level, and to in essence subsidize her sycophantic book on the General even if at the time she was not yet a mistress but only a groupie and “biographer”. What is being done to ascertain if his adultery began while still in the military and thus subject to the UCMJ that is being applied right now to other officers including a brigadier general?
17. Why are all new immigrants applying for green cards asked if they have ever been a member of any communist organization but are not asked if they have ever been members of a fascist organization? Why has the U.S. Government historically supported fascism under the banner of anti-Communism even when communists were the most determined and disciplined partisans and allies against fascism during WWII and saved many thousands of American and allied lives with their sacrifices way beyond those of the allies?