Tag Archives ⇒ white house

Painting for Worship

March 16, 2018
· Martin Kelley

I did­n’t know of Adri­an Mar­tinez before I was intro­duced to him in this Quak­er­S­peak video. He seems like quite a char­ac­ter (“art attack!”) but I’m intrigued at how his paint­ings have brought pri­mal Quak­er val­ues into unex­pect­ed spaces like the White House (not the occu­pant you might guess!) and cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca. His sto­ry of a very specif­i­cal­ly Quak­er pic­ture being bought for a board­room hints at mes­sages Friends might still have for the world:

The paint­ing I did, Meet­ing for Wor­ship, I just knew was not some­thing that was going to get sold. It was not an eco­nom­ic deci­sion. It was a neces­si­ty to do, nonethe­less. When I did it, I had this big show and it was imme­di­ate­ly pur­chased. First one. And it’s inter­est­ing: where it went went was the board­room of an insur­ance agency. The man that owned the com­pa­ny bought the paint­ing because he said, “The rea­son I need this paint­ing, and I need it in the board­room, is because we need more of that in our business.”

Paint­ing for Worship

Michelle Alexander on the black vote, the Clinton brand — and of course, mass incarceration

February 10, 2016
· Martin Kelley

Michelle Alexan­der on the black vote, the Clin­ton brand — and of course, mass incar­cer­a­tion.

Alexan­der is one of the lead­ing voic­es on the rise of a lev­el of mass incar­cer­a­tion in this coun­try in the last 25 years. It’s hard to over­state just how dev­as­tat­ing our prison-industrial com­plex has become. The huge num­bers of African Amer­i­can men in jails for non­vi­o­lent crimes begs com­par­i­son to the dark­est days of slav­ery. Bill Clin­ton esca­lat­ed mass incar­cer­a­tion and the “War on Drugs” as a way to prove his polit­i­cal toughness.

The love affair between black folks and the Clin­tons has been going on for a long time. It began back in 1992, when Bill Clin­ton was run­ning for pres­i­dent. He threw on some shades and played the sax­o­phone on The Arse­nio Hall Show. It seems sil­ly in ret­ro­spect, but many of us fell for that. At a time when a pop­u­lar slo­gan was “It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t under­stand,” Bill Clin­ton seemed to get us. When Toni Mor­ri­son dubbed him our first black pres­i­dent, we nod­ded our heads. We had our boy in the White House. Or at least we thought we did.

We tend to remem­ber the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion through rose-colored glass­es but there were a lot of WTF moments we’ve for­got­ten – three strikes, the sanc­tions against Iraqi civil­ians, the way cruise mis­sile strikes seemed to mag­i­cal­ly coin­cide with admin­is­tra­tion scan­dals, Bil­l’s ser­i­al phi­lan­der­ing and Hillary’s slut-shaming respons­es. On paper, HRC is the most qual­i­fied can­di­date to ever run for the pres­i­den­cy. But if she’s run­ning on the Clin­ton brand, she needs to explain how her polit­i­cal choic­es dif­fer from her hus­band’s 20 years ago.

Smoking gun: the oil companies did write America’s energy policy

November 16, 2005
· Martin Kelley

Short­ly after the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion took office, Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney held a series of secret meet­ings in the White House that have guid­ed Amer­i­ca’s ener­gy pol­i­cy over the last four years. The White House has refused repeat­ed requests for a list of par­tic­i­pants at the “task force” meet­ings. All we’ve known for sure is who was­n’t invit­ed: eniron­men­tal­ists and any­one else who might bring a per­spec­tive crit­i­cal of Amer­i­ca’s depen­dence on fos­sil fuels.
We’ve long sus­pect­ed that Cheney’s spe­cial guests were top oil com­pa­ny exec­u­tives and that these con­sul­tants large­ly wrote the ener­gy guide­lines that came out of the meet­ing. The pol­i­cy strong favor the eco­nom­ic inter­ests of “Big Oil” over envi­ron­men­tal or nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns. The oil com­pa­nies have repeat­ed­ly denied being at the meet­ings: Just last week, oil indus­try offi­cials from Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Cono­coPhillips tes­ti­fied at a joint hear­ing of the Sen­ate Ener­gy and Com­merce com­mit­tees that their employ­ees had been part of Cheney’s ener­gy task force.
Liar liar, pants on fire.
The Wash­ing­ton Post has obtained a White House doc­u­ment that exec­u­tives from Big Oil did indeed meet with the ener­gy task force in 2001. Inves­ti­ga­tions are in order. Sen­a­tor Frank Laut­en­berg of New Jer­sey said “The White House went to great lengths to keep these meet­ings secret, and now oil exec­u­tives may be lying to Con­gress about their role in the Cheney task force.” This issue is impor­tant not only to Wash­ing­ton Belt­way insid­ers but to all of us. Dis­as­ters like Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na and the ongo­ing quag­mire in iraq are fueled by Amer­i­can ener­gy needs. As long as we have Big Oil dic­tat­ing our ener­gy pol­i­cy we will con­tin­ue to have these wars and cli­mate tragedies. Peo­ple will die, lives will be ruined and we will all be taxed for our oil misadventures.

The Left Wing Conspiracy Revealed by Non​vi​o​lence​.org

December 10, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Non​vi​o​lence​.org read­ers may not be aware that my per­son­al site has been the talk of the polit­i­cal inter­net for the last few days. Since post­ing an “account of get­ting a phone call from a CBS News pub­li­cist”, I’ve been linked to by a Who’s Who of blog­ging glit­er­at­ti: Won­kette, Instapun­dit, The Volokh Con­spir­a­cy, Lit­tle Green Foot­balls, Rather­Biased, etc. For a short time yes­ter­day, the sto­ry was a part of the second-ranked arti­cle on Tech­no­rati’s Pol­i­tics Atten­tion index.

A hack from CBS News called me to say they were doing a pro­gram on an issue that’s cen­tral to Nonviolence.org’s man­date: con­sci­en­tious resis­tance to mil­i­tary ser­vice. After look­ing over the mate­r­i­al, I thought the inter­views of resisters who have fled to Cana­da would be inter­est­ing to my read­ers and so wrote a short entry on it. Think­ing it all a lit­tle fun­ny that a pub­li­cist would care about Non​vi​o​lence​.org, I men­tioned the inci­dent in the “Sto­ries of Non​vi​o​lence​.org” sec­tion of my per­son­al site. One by one the lead­ing polit­i­cal sites of the blo­gos­phere have run the sto­ry as fur­ther proof of the vast left-wing main­stream media con­spir­a­cy. It’s rather fun­ny actually.

I have to won­der is who’s kid­ding who with all this feigned out­rage? For those miss­ing the irony gene: the Non​vi​o​lence​.org Pay­Pal account cur­rent­ly has a bal­ance $6.18, the bulk of which comes from the last dona­tion – $5.00 back on Novem­ber 20th. My cor­ner of the left wing con­spir­a­cy is fund­ed by the vast per­son­al wealth I accu­mu­late as a book­store clerk.

Won­ket­te’s pages adver­tise “spon­sor­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties,” she’s a recent cov­er girl on New York Times Mag­a­zine, her hus­band is an edi­tor at New York mag­a­zine and in Octo­ber she cashed out her blog­ging fame for a $275,000 advance for her first nov­el (“It’s not Brid­get Jones does Wash­ing­ton, it’s Nick Horn­by does pol­i­tics”: good grief). Eugene Volokh has clerked on the U.S. Supreme Court (for San­dra Day O’Con­nor), teach­es law at UCLA and just had a big op-ed in the Times. Instapun­dit’s Glenn Reynolds teach­es law at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee, has served on White House advi­so­ry pan­els, and is a paid cor­re­spon­dent for MSNBC. Yet he, like the oth­ers, calls a two minute phone call “recruit­ing”?

I’m begin­ning to think the real inter­est comes from the fact that this top tier of blog­gers is total­ly in bed (lit­er­al­ly) with the MSM. Their income comes from their con­nec­tions with media and polit­i­cal pow­er. Their carefully-crafted fas­cade of snark­ish inde­pen­dence would crum­ble if their phone logs were made pub­lic. They’re not real­ly blog­ging in their paja­mas, folks.

By men­tion­ing the exis­tance of blog pub­li­cists, I’ve threat­ened to blow their cov­er. Pay no atten­tion to the men behind the cur­tains: my social gaffe was in pub­licly admit­ting that the main­stream media courts polit­i­cal blogs. Kudos to jour­nal­ist Derek Rose on admit­ting the practice:

But why should­n’t a news orga­ni­za­tion’s pub­lic­i­ty depart­ment court blog­gers? As a MSM mem­ber, I get emails from TV flacks all the time pro­mot­ing their scoops. From ABC, for exam­ple, I’ve received emails regard­ing a tape they got of the Belt­way sniper’s call to the Rockville police; Bar­bara Wal­ters’ Hillary Clin­ton inter­view; and their ‘Azzam the Amer­i­can’ video … as well as a Rush Lim­baugh drug laun­der­ing sto­ry that nev­er panned out. I even got atten­tion from pub­li­cists when I was work­ing for a news­pa­per that did­n’t have a 20th of the cir­cu­la­tion of Instapundit…

Rose aside, there’s incred­i­ble dis­tor­tion in the “report­ing,” a term I have to use very loose­ly. Won­kette says “Kel­ley claims that a CBS min­ion put the screws to him to post some­thing about a ’60 Min­utes’ pack­age on con­sci­en­tious objec­tors” yet all read­ers have to do is fol­low the link to see I nev­er said any­thing like that. Why do the cream of blog­gers feel like a posse of self-absorbed sev­enth graders? When I start­ed Non​vi​o​lence​.org back in 1995, I thought the brave new polit­i­cal world of the inter­net might be All the Pres­i­den­t’s Men. Boy was I wrong: it turns it’s just Heathers. God help us.

Torture Apologist Nominated as Attorney General?

November 10, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Pres­i­dent Four More Years, George W. him­self, thinks the best pick for the nation’s top law-enforcement offi­cial should be a lawyer who advo­cat­ed throw­ing away the Gene­va Con­ven­tion. The U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al nom­i­nee, Alber­to Gon­za­les, work­ing as a senior White House lawyer said in Jan­u­ary of 2002 that the war against terrorism:
bq. “in my judg­ment ren­ders obso­lete Geneva’s strict lim­i­ta­tions on ques­tion­ing of ene­my prisoners.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/politics/10cnd-ashc.html
The man who would enforce U.S. laws thinks that the most impor­tant inter­na­tion­al law in human his­to­ry should be chucked. In argu­ing that the law against tor­ture of ene­my sol­diers was now irrel­e­vant, Gon­za­les helped set the stage for the “Abu Ghraib prison atrocities”:http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact. Instead of being tried in inter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal courts as a war crim­i­nal, Gon­za­les is being pro­mot­ed to a senior Unit­ed States cab­i­net posi­tion. When lib­er­ty for all fails, destroy their cities: watch Fal­lu­ja burn. When jus­tice for all fails, tor­ture the bas­tards: away with the Gene­va Convention.
What? For­got­ten what tor­ture looks like? The folks at anti​war​.com have a “col­lec­tion of Abu Ghraib images”:http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444

Watergate Web-Style

January 29, 2004
· Martin Kelley

In the papers, a sto­ry of “exten­sive Repub­li­can spy­ing on Democrats”:www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/22/infiltration_of_files_seen_as_extensive made pos­si­ble by a com­put­er glitch that allowed them to access restrict­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions with­out a pass­word. Infor­ma­tion from the mem­os was passed to con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist Robert Novak, who was the con­duit for White House dirty tricks last sum­mer – he was the one who revealed clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion meant to hurt a promi­nent “WMD scan­dal whistle­blow­er Joseph Wilson”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000168.php. The plot thickens.

Thirty years later: Kissinger’s war crimes

December 7, 2003
· Martin Kelley

Newly-declassified doc­u­ments from the U.S. State Depart­ment show that for­mer U.S. Sec­re­tary of State “Hen­ry Kissinger sanc­tioned the dirty war in Argentina”:www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1101121,00.html in the 1970s in which up to 30,000 peo­ple were killed.
bq. “Look, our basic atti­tude is that we would like you to suc­ceed,” Mr Kissinger is report­ed as say­ing. “I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be sup­port­ed. What is not under­stood in the Unit­ed States is that you have a civ­il war. We read about human rights prob­lems, but not the con­text. The quick­er you suc­ceed the bet­ter … The human rights prob­lem is a grow­ing one … We want a sta­ble sit­u­a­tion. We won’t cause you unnec­es­sary dif­fi­cul­ties. If you can fin­ish before Con­gress gets back, the bet­ter. What­ev­er free­doms you could restore would help.”
For­giv­ing away human rights abus­es in Latin Amer­i­ca was stan­dard U.S. pol­i­cy in the 1970s. Wash­ing­ton favored strong mil­i­tary pow­er and con­trol over messy unpre­dictable democ­ra­cy (a for­mu­la­tion which could be a short­hand def­i­n­i­tion for post-Nazi _fascism_). After read­ing this week that the U.S. is wrap­ping entire iraqi vil­lages in barbed wire, it’s hard not to see us return­ing to this era. What will declas­si­fied doc­u­ments reveal about today’s White House occu­pants thir­ty years from now?

Scandal du Jour: Vice President leaking CIA Names

October 2, 2003
· Martin Kelley

In the last year scan­dals seem to fol­low a curi­ous pat­tern: they rise up, get a lot of talk in Wash­ing­ton but lit­tle else­where and then dis­ap­pear, only to come back three months lat­er as mas­sive pub­lic news.

Back in July, we post­ed a num­ber of entries about White House dirty tricks against a whistleblower’s wife. For those who missed the sto­ry, diplo­mat Joseph Wil­son had trav­eled to the African nation of Niger to inves­ti­gate the sto­ry that that Iraq had tried to buy ura­ni­um from it. Wil­son eas­i­ly deter­mined that the sto­ry was a hoax and report­ed this infor­ma­tion back to Wash­ing­ton. Despite the debunk­ing, Pres­i­dent Bush used the alle­ga­tion in his State of the Union address and Wil­son lat­er came out and told reporters the Pres­i­dent knew the infor­ma­tion was false. A short time lat­er some­one in the White House let a con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist know that Wil­son was mar­ried to an oper­a­tive for the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, expos­ing her name and endan­ger­ing both her mis­sion and the lives of those help­ing her.

We called this a trea­son­able offense but the news blew over and few peo­ple out­side Wash­ing­ton seemed to fol­low the sto­ry. Last week it blew up big again and it’s been cre­at­ing head­lines. Rumor has it that the White House leak came from very high up in the Vice President’s office and the ques­tions have mounted:

  • who leaked the information?
  • what did the Vice Pres­i­dent know?
  • what did the Pres­i­dent know?
  • did the Pres­i­dent and his advi­sors know the Niger sto­ry was false when he addressed the nation and use it to call for war in Iraq?

The in’s and out’s of the renewed scan­dal are being ably tal­lied by Joshua Michal Marshall’s Talk­ing Points Memo. He’s sit­u­at­ing the leak in the back­drop of an ongo­ing war between the Vice President’s office and the CIA. As we’ve been doc­u­ment­ing for a year now, the Vice Pres­i­dent has been pres­sur­ing the CIA to skew their find­ings to suit the polit­i­cal needs of Admin­is­tra­tion. Most of the pre-war reports from the CIA found no evi­dence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruc­tion, for exam­ple, which made Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney furi­ous and he was some­what sucess­ful in get­ting them to rewrite their sto­ry. Now of course we know the CIA was right, and that Sad­dam Hus­sein didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction.

We have inde­pen­dent intel­li­gence ser­vices pre­cise­ly so we will have the best infor­ma­tion pos­si­ble when mak­ing deci­sions of nation­al secu­ri­ty. To politi­cize these ser­vices to serve the agen­das of a pro-war Admin­is­tra­tion (who sali­vat­ed over an Iraq inva­sion long before the 9/11 bomb­ings) is wrong. It’s the kind of thing a banana repub­lic dic­ta­tor does. It’s not some­thing that the Amer­i­can peo­ple can afford.