Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 05.05.06

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R    05.05.06

1. Mini-Guantanamo     5.05 5pm
2. NOW: healthcare     5.05 time?

3. Melpomene run/walk  5.06 8am
4. Teach foreign film  5.06 9am
5. NAFTA/migration     5.06 10am
6. Living green expo   5.06/07 10am
7. Election action     5.06 10am
8. GreenParty StPaul   5.06 12noon
9. AmInd/Migizi        5.06 12noon
10. AmInd/pow wow      5.06 1pm
11. Labor stories      5.06 2pm
12. RadFest beachbash  5.06 6pm Washburn WI

13. IRV petitions      5.07 10am
14. MayDay parade/fest 5.07 12noon
15. MayDay/CO info     5.07 1pm
16. Peak oil workshop  5.07 2pm
17. Luxton art show    5.07 2pm
18. Mpls antiSemitism  5.07 2pm
19. KFAI's Indian      5.07 4pm
20. Cavlan/CTV         5.07 10pm

21. Chalmers Johnson - Exporting the American model: markets and democracy
22. ed               - Baby Boomers

--------1 of 22--------

From: Gabe Ormsby <gabeo [at] bitstream.net>
Subject: Mini-Guantanamo 5.05 5pm

Volunteers Welcome for Guantanamo Event, May 5 & 6, Minneapolis

Crisis Point Theater, in collaboration with local Amnesty International
activists, will be conducting a unique event in Peavey Plaza, downtown
Minneapolis, on May 5th and 6th. The event seeks to remind citizens about
the situation faced by detainees at the U.S.  facilities in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, where hundreds have been detained for years without legal due
process.

We are seeking volunteers to attend the event for an hour or two to
distribute literature to the public. The materials will outline Amnesty's
concerns about the human rights issues related to the Guantanamo
detentions and provide avenues for action to those inspired by the
installation.

If you would be interested in taking some time to help out at the event
(and enjoy a casual spring day downtown), please contact Gabe at
gabeo [at] bitstream.net or 651/216-0055. Since it doesn't hurt to have more
than one person there at a time, consider all time slots available. Our
most needed coverage, however, is at the following times, so please
consider these time slots first:

Friday evening, between 5 and 10 p.m. Saturday morning, between 8 and 10
a.m. Saturday afternoon, between Noon and 4 p.m. Saturday evening, between
6 and10 p.m.

The installation will run from noon on Friday through the night and all
day Saturday, closing down at midnight Saturday.

Special Announcement: Public Theater Event to Focus on Guantanamo Bay
Detentions

What would it be like to be arrested and taken from your home to a prison
in a foreign country, detained without any legal status and without any
charges brought before you?

This is the situation that hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have
lived with for nearly 5 years. In an event sponsored by local student,
arts, and community groups, Local artist Laura Winton will enter a cell at
Peavey Plaza in downtown Minneapolis on Friday, May 5th at approximately
12:30 p.m., where she will remain until 10 p.m.  on Saturday, May 6th.

The impetus for the piece is two-fold:  to offer a visual reminder of
people who have been largely forgotten, and to experience detainment for
herself. Ms. Winton is a graduate student in theater at the University of
Minnesota.  She will be joined at the performance by students from theater
and other disciplines as well as local activists who will be disseminating
information and will be available to talk with passersby.

The event is sponsored by Crisis Point: Theatre of Danger and Opportunity
and the Arts Quarter, World Can't Wait and AIUSA Group 37, a local chapter
of the global human rights organization Amnesty International. Ms. Winton
will be available for live interviews before and after her detainment
(i.e. at 12:30 p.m. on Friday and 10:00 p.m. on Saturday.)  Leafletters
and guards will be available throughout the event.


--------2 of 22--------

From: Elizabeth Dickinson <eadickinson [at] mindspring.com>
From: "NOW-Update" <NOW-Update [at] thirteen.org>
Subject: NOW: healthcare 5.05 time?

NOW
Friday, May 5, 2006 on PBS
Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html

This Week on NOW:
* "Payment Due"
Healthcare headaches for working families and small business owners. Will a
new bill solve the problem, or make things worse for all of us?
* Vijay Vaitheeswaran
David Brancaccio talks to Vijay Vaitheeswaran of The Economist about the
price of gasoline and what he considers oil industry myths.

--
"Payment Due"
Approximately 45 million Americans have no health insurance, even though
most of them are working. In desperation, many fall prey to cheaper
insurance plans that end up increasing misery instead of relieving it. On
May 5 at 8:30 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), NOW looks at families
who coped with both catastrophic illness as well as shockingly inadequate
insurance. One insurance company, MEGA Life and Health Insurance, settled
with a patient's widow for 1.7 million dollars, but offered more if she
would sign a confidentiality agreement, which she refused. NOW brings you
her story.

In addition, the show will also examine a Congressional bill that, if
passed, would represent the biggest reorganization of health insurance in
a decade. But some consumer advocates say it's a mistake that will strip
patients of basic protections. Who's got the right idea? Your health may
hang in the balance.

Interview: Vijay Vaitheeswaran
David Brancaccio talks to Vijay Vaitheeswaran of The Economist.
Vaitheeswaran is on a mission to debunk what he considers widespread myths
about the oil industry. Last month, Vaitheeswaran wrote a special on the
oil industry, "Steady as She Goes: Why the World is Not About to Run Out
of Oil."


--------3 of 22--------

From: Bonnie [at] mnwomen.org
Subject: Melpomene run/walk 5.06 8am

On Saturday May 6th, Melpomene sponsors The Run/Walk[/Crawl?] for Every
Body starting with the Co-Ed5K walk at 8AM and ending with the Men's 5K
Run at 10:15, all starting at the intersection of Summit Avenue and
Mississippi River Blvd in St. Paul. In between are the 3K Family Walk,
Kids under 12 events, Wheelchair race, and women's 5K run.

You can register online or download registration forms at
www.melpomene.org.


--------4 of 22--------

From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: Teach foreign film 5.06 9am

May 6 - The Art of Teaching Foreign Film and Culture.
9am-3pm.  Cost: $30, includes a continental breakfast,
lunch, CEU s, and personal copies of the seminar films.

Film is a rich medium capable of delivering complex layers of information,
message, and artistry.  With a few simple focusing exercises, students can
be lead to fully examine the topic that is placed before them in a film.

In this seminar, teachers will explore how to use foreign film as an
effective cultural teaching tool and experience hands-on practice in
setting goals for a viewing. We will view two feature length European
films to illustrate and teach vocabulary, apply technical terms to an
authentic classroom experience, learn to utilize the DAIJ critical process
(describe, analyze, interpret, judge), and examine how culture is both
actively and passively presented in the films. Participants will leave
with lesson ideas, skill practice, and personal copies of the two seminar
films to use in the classroom.

The seminar will be taught by Kevin Clark, who teaches English and German
at the Perpich Center for Arts Education/Arts High School in Golden
Valley. He earned a BA in German and Speech Communications/Drama from
Westmar College, and he then spent two years teaching English in
Francophone West Africa (Chad and Senegal) with the Peace Corps. Upon
completion of his foreign service, Kevin attended the University of North
Dakota, where he completed graduate coursework in German Literature with a
minor in French. Since joining the Center in 1990, Kevin has added a
second teaching certification in Communications Arts/Literature and has
created and taught a senior level English class entitled Analysis and
Criticism, which uses foreign films to teach formal analytical writing.

Most appropriate for teachers of 8-12 grade; all subject areas and other
levels of teacher are welcome. Registration available online at
http://igs.cla.umn.edu/outreach/outreach.htm or call Sarah Herzog at
612-624-7346 for more information. Location: University of Minnesota,
Carlson School of Management, room 1-127, Mpls MN 55455


--------5 of 22--------

From: humanrts [at] umn.edu
Subject: NAFTA/migration 5.06 10am

May 6 - Roots of Migration: NAFTA and Migration. 10-11:30am.
Nun Noemi Peregrino Gonzalez speaks on Roots of Migration and the
interaction of between NAFTA and migration.
Resource Center of the Americas, 3019 Minnehaha Ave., Minneapolis 55406
FFI: www.americas.org


--------6 of 22--------

From: Alliance for Sustainability <sean [at] allianceforsustainability.net>
Subject: Living green expo 5.06/07 10am

Living Green Expo?  Sample announcements
are at http://www.livinggreen.org/spreadword.html

Join us for the Living Green Expo, Minnesota's biggest environmental
event

Saturday & Sunday, May 6-7
10am-5pm
Minnesota State Fair Grounds, Grandstand Building
Admission is free!

The 2006 Living Green Expo features over 230 exhibitors showcasing all
things green and good. Come and connect with others, find resources, and
get in on the latest green technologies.

Learn from the experts in one of the 66 workshops on everything from how
to compost and reduce toxicity in your home to using the latest
energy-saving technology and cooking with organic, locally grown food.
This family-friendly event features art displays, and an exciting music
lineup, and the best in local and organic foods. New this year is a farm
petting zoo and expanded activities for kids.

Parking is free, secure bike storage is available, and the Expo is
accessible by bus.

Visit www.livinggreen.org for more information on exhibitors, workshops
and activities.


--------7 of 22--------

From: Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council <betsy [at] mplscluc.com>
Subject: Election action 5.06 10am

Had enough of the lies, greed, incompetence and scandals from the
conservative right wing? You're not alone.

The Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council is participating in our first
Election Action day on May 6. We are working with 29 other progressive
organizations representing 500,000 Minnesotans on this effort as part of
the America Votes Minnesota coalition.

As a member or friend of the Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council, we
need you to be part of an elite team of local leaders that will shape the
future of our state. As part of this elite team, you will get skills and
training to talk to Minnesotans about the progressive issues that matter
most to them.

Now is the time to do more than just yell at the T.V. when the news is on.
You can help create progressive change that will make Minnesota better for
you, your family, and your neighbors.

How do we get there? By taking action now - not just a few weeks in the
fall.

The first election Action Day will be:
Saturday, May 6
10am-2pm
Johnson Senior High School 1349 Arcade Street St. Paul

At this Election Action Day, rain or shine, you will:
-Hear from St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman
-Get briefed on our Action Plan
-Obtain skills training
-Start talking to urban and suburban Minnesotans

To sign up for this Election Action Day, go to:
http://www.americavotes.org/states.cfm?ave_state=MN&ave_id=1903
or send an email to: Sarahburt [at] americavotes.org
or call: 612-360-4112


--------8 of 22--------

From: ed
Subject: GreenParty StPaul 5.06 12noon

All people interested in finding out more about the Green Party of St. Paul
are invited to:

Our monthly meeting
First Saturday of every month
Mississippi Market, 2nd floor
Corner of Selby/Dale in St. Paul
noon until 2 pm


--------9 of 22--------

From: Chris Spotted Eagle <chris [at] spottedeagle.org>
Subject: AmInd/Migizi 5.06 12noon

Saturday, May 6 12noon-3pm.  Migizišs 11th Annual Indian Month
Celebration, Migizi Communications, Inc., 3123 E. Lake Street,
Minneapolis, MN, Celebration to include: programmatic information, health
and wellness tables, demonstrations, youth activities, cultural
performances, great food, door prizes, Free and open to the public, FMI
contact Graham Hartley (612) 721-6631, ext. 208 or info [at] migizi.org or
visit www.migizi.org <http://www.migizi.org/> .


--------10 of 22--------

From: Chris Spotted Eagle <chris [at] spottedeagle.org>
Subject: AmInd/pow wow 5.06 1pm

Saturday, May 6 1-9pm.  Clyde H. Bellecourt Spirit of Education
Scholarship Award Pow Wow at the Minneapolis Convention Center, 1301 2nd
Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN.

Heart of the Earth, Inc., is hosting this one-day traditional pow wow free
to everyone ­ dancers, singers and the public , Six award recipients and
their families will be honored with songs, dancing and prayers as they
undertake their respective educational journeys, American Indian food
available, plus a variety of snacks, sandwiches and beverages, FMI call
(612) 251-5836 or visit:
www.clydehbellecourtscholarshipfund.org/pow-wow.html
<http://www.clydehbellecourtscholarshipfund.org/pow-wow.html>


--------11 of 22--------

From: Lydia Howell <lhowell [at] visi.com>
Subject: Labor stories 5.06 2pm

SAT MAY 6, 2pm. How do we reclaim the stories of working-class people
whose lives seem lost to history?  How is work woven into the fabric of
everyday life?  Senior exhibit developer Benjamin Filene discusses these
issues as he gives the back story behind the creation of the Minnesota
History Center's newest exhibit, "Open House: If These Walls Could Talk,"
on Saturday, May 6 at 2pm, at the Minnesota History Center, 345 West
Kellogg Boulevard, Saint Paul.

In "Open House," visitors explore the lives of the families that have
lived in one ordinary house on Saint Paul's East Side since 1888, where
each room is an interactive journey through time.  Pre-registration is
required.  Please call The Friends at 651/222-3242 to register Part of the
annual UNTOLD STORIES labor series from the St Paul Public Library. More
info (651)222-3242 www.thefriends.org


--------12 of 22--------

From: Mike Miles and Barb Kass <anathoth [at] lakeland.ws>
Subject: RadFest beachbash 5.06 6pm Washburn WI

Saturday, May 6 --Washburn, WI
Rad Fest Beach Party: 6pm on Sioux Beach north of Washburn, WI, join Youth
for Socialist Action for a bonfire, picnic and skit about the struggle for
immigrant rights.  Email<mailto:sackc01 [at] northland.edu>
sackc01 [at] northland.edu for more info.


--------13 of 22--------

From: Charles Underwood <charleyunderwood [at] hotmail.com>
Subject: IRV petitions 5.07 10am

Sunday, 5/7, 10 am, 100 volunteers needed to collect Instant Runoff Voting
Petitions at May Day Parade.  Meet at Rebakah Smith's house, 3113 - 14th Ave
S, #2, Mpls. 612-850-6897 or info [at] betterballotcampaign.org


--------14 of 22--------

From: wamm <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: MayDay parade/fest 5.07 12noon

MayDay Parade and Festival: March with WAMM

Sunday, May 7, 12noon. Join fellow members, volunteers, interns, and
staff, and walk with WAMM in the annual MayDay Parade. Gather at Cedar
Field, 18th Avenue and 25th Street, Minneapolis (look for the yellow WAMM
signs-available at the WAMM office if you don't have one).

The parade will begin at 1pm and end approximately two hours later at
Powderhorn Park, 15th Avenue and 35th Street, Minneapolis, where a short
ceremony will follow. Stop by the WAMM information booth at Powderhorn
Park from 1 to 8pm. Sponsored by: In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and
Mask Theatre.


--------15 of 22--------

From: wamm <wamm [at] mtn.org>
Subject: MayDay/CO info 5.07 1pm

MayDay Festival: Conscientious Objection Information

Sunday, May 7, 1-8pm Powderhorn Park, 15th Avenue and 35th Street,
Minneapolis (look for the blue and white CO signs).

Stop by the Conscientious Objection (CO) booth at the MayDay Festival and
speak with experienced CO counselors, who will be available to answer
questions and hand out literature. Find out how to start a CO file on the
spot. Sponsored by: Veterans for Peace, Chapter 27, WAMM, and Every Church
a Peace Church.


--------16 of 22--------

From: Brian Merchant <mnpostcarbon [at] gmail.com>
Subject: Peak oil workshop 5.07 2pm

"Preparing for Peak Oil" workshop at Living Green Expo, Minnesota State
Fairgrounds, Grandstand Building.
Admission is free.
Sunday, May 7, 2pm

In an April interview with The Times (UK), Christophe de Margerie, head of
exploration for French energy multinational Total, said the world lacks
the means to produce enough oil to meet rising expectations for fuel over
the next decade.

In his testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
last November, James Schlesinger said:

In the decades ahead, we do not know precisely when, we shall reach a
point, a plateau or peak, beyond which we shall be unable further to
increase production of conventional oil worldwide.  We need to understand
that problem and to begin to prepare for that transition.

James Schlesinger served as Director of the CIA, Secretary of Defense (for
President Nixon), and the first Secretary of the Department of Energy (for
President Carter) during the energy crisis of the 1970's.

Peak oil brings energy scarcity which, in turn, brings sustainability by
necessity and transition to a new energy economy: using less energy,
meeting local needs locally, and supporting the evolution of alternatives.
As Richard Heinberg said, "True individual and family security will come
only with community solidarity and interdependence." [*The Party's Over:
Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies*].

Brian Merchant attended the First U.S. Conference on Peak Oil & Community
Solutions in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in November 2004.  Since then he has
made presentations on peak oil at Living Green Expo, the Minnesota Green
Party Membership Conference, First Unitarian Society, Hennepin Avenue
United Methodist Church, the Critical Thinking Club of St. Paul, and the
Environmental Sustainability Program of the Higher Education Consortium
for Urban Affairs.  Brian arranged for two public appearances in the Twin
Cities by Richard Heinberg, author of *The Party's Over* and *Powerdown*,
in June 2005.  He can be reached in St. Paul, Minnesota, at
*MnPostCarbon [at] gmail.com*<MnPostCarbon [at] gmail.com> .


--------17 of 22--------

From: Jan McGee <jmcgee [at] mn.rr.com>
Subject: Luxton art show 5.07 2pm

[The art show to end all art shows. Works there by the editors's
paint-spangled sisters, Jan and Mary, commonly known as "Dave's creative
sisters." People often say, "Why can't he be more like them?", and, "Hard
to imagine they came from the same planet." I am often compared,
unfavorably, to early childhood drawings they made of me, where they
detected my three eyes, lopsided floppy ears, cat whiskers, and hands like
beaver paws. I can only imagine how they will see you. Drop by and say
hello. -ed]

Sunday, May 7, from 2-5pm!

It's time again for another Luxton Painter's Art Show, for the 46th time!
(about #4 for me....and still in the learning mode). We meet every Friday
morning and take turns sharing our ideas and experise. Our "Grand Dame"
who started the group, is 92, drives there every Friday and is actively
selling her works. As usual, we'll have a variety of artwork displayed and
some of it for sale: oils, acrylic, watercolor, monoprints, greeting
cards, jewelry and snacks to munch on while enjoying the displays.

Directions:

Luxton Park is located in Prospect Park, not far from the "witches hat"
water tower where I grew up. It's not far off 94 - just watch for the
street signs. It's almost to the U campus near U Garden Restaurant

>From the South: 94 to Huron Blvd exit (235B). Right on University Ave
(only a few blocks) Right on SE St. Mary's Ave., passing through Glendale
Townhomes, to Luxton Park House, a one story long grey building.

>From the North: 94 to University Ave exit and left on University. Left on
SE St. Mary's and proceed as above.

Any questions, call me or try mapquest: 112 St. Mary's Ave S.E.


--------18 of 22--------

From: Stephen Feinstein <feins001 [at] umn.edu>
Subject: Mpls antiSemitism 5.07 2pm

Was Minneapolis the capital of anti-Semitism in the United States? Hear
the debate at the JHSUM Spring Program, May 7, 2pm at the Minnesota
History Center Visit www.jhsum.org <http://www.jhsum.org> for details


--------19 of 22--------

From: Chris Spotted Eagle <chris [at] spottedeagle.org>
Subject: KFAI's Indian 5.07 4pm

KFAI's Indian Uprising for May 7, 2006

INDIGENOUS POWER: INDIGENOUS RIGHTS GO GLOBAL by John Mohawk (Seneca) for
Yes! Journal, Spring 2006 Issue published by Positive Futures Network.
Indigenous peoples are asserting their moral right to live as distinct
communities and reminding us of the power of cooperation with nature.

Beginning in the early 1950s, some indigenous peoples began urging the
international community to recognize their inherent rights to continue to
exist as distinct peoples.

The idea was given a significant boost in 1977 when the non-governmental
organizations of the United Nations organized a meeting in Geneva to
discuss the creation of indigenous rights under international law. In
1982, indigenous representatives were invited to Geneva to witness the
development of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations.

This was an important step because, until that time, indigenous peoples
had been relegated to the most extreme margins of international affairs.

At first, the nation-states were cautious and occasionally hostile to the
idea of indigenous rights and to the movement representing it. As recently
as 1999 the Organization of American States (OAS) was essentially closed
to indigenous peoples, but the OAS was presented with a mandate from the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and indigenous peoples insisted
on a presence in those proceedings. Today, indigenous representatives
attend the annual meetings of the 34 member states of the OAS. They are
greeted with dignity, and their issues are extended respectful attention.

John C. Mohawk, Ph.D., columnist for Indian Country Today, is an author
and professor at the Center for the Americas at the State University of
New York at Buffalo. For complete article see:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1404

LONNA STEVENS (Alaskan Tlingit and Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota woman) to
receive the Sheilla Wellstone Gold Watch Award.  She is the Minnesota
Coalition for Battered Women's Public Policy and Legislative Coordinator.
See attached.

President Bush has proposed the elimination of the Urban Indian Health
Program [$33 million] within the Indian Health Service.  Urban Indian
health programs report that such a cut would result in bankruptcies, lease
defaults, elimination of services to tens of thousands of Indians who may
not seek care elsewhere, an increase in the health care disparity for
American Indians and Alaska Natives and the near annihilation of a body of
medical and cultural knowledge addressing the unique cultural and medical
needs of the urban Indian population held almost exclusively by these
programs.  According to the 2000 Census, nearly 70% of Americans
identifying themselves as of American Indian or Alaska Native heritage
live in urban areas.  Notably, the Urban Indian Health Program receives
only 1% of IHS funding, stretching those dollars to achieve extraordinary
results.

Oppose the President's FY 2007 Budget Request to eliminate the Urban
Indian Health Program. Contact the National Council of Urban Indian Health
(NCUIH) attorney, Greg A. Smith, The Smith Law Firm, 2099 Pennsylvania
Avenue, NW, Suite 850, Washington, DC 20006, Fax: 202-265-4901,
gsmith [at] johnstondc.com. And contact your representatives for the state
http://www.leg.state.mn.us/ and federal
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/, to complain.

[Instead, let's eliminate Bush. Impeach him, try him, and jail him for
life for war crimes. -ed]

* * * *
Indian Uprising is a one-half hour Public & Cultural Affairs radio program
for, by, and about Indigenous people & all their relations, broadcast each
Sunday at 4:00 p.m. over KFAI 90.3 FM Minneapolis and 106.7 FM St. Paul.
Current programs are archived online after broadcast at www.kfai.org, for
two weeks.  Click Program Archives and scroll to Indian Uprising.


--------20 of 22---------

From: DoriJJ [at] aol.com

There will be several opportunities to see and hear Michael Cavlan on  public
television in the near future.

Sun.,May 7,10:00 p.m.,ch.16
Fri.,May  12, 5:00 p.m.,ch.17
Sun.,May 21,6:00 p.m.,ch.17

This is an interview by Suzanne Litton done in January of this year on  White
Bear Community TV.  I hope you watch and enjoy.

--Dori Ullman Campaign Manager The Committee to Elect Michael Cavlan to
the US Senate 2006


--------21 of 22--------

Exporting the American Model: Markets and Democracy
By Chalmers Johnson
TomDispatch.com
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/0506M.shtml
Tuesday 02 May 2006

There is something absurd and inherently false about one country trying to
impose its system of government or its economic institutions on another.
Such an enterprise amounts to a dictionary definition of imperialism. When
what's at issue is "democracy," you have the fallacy of using the end to
justify the mean? (making war on those to be democratized), and in the
process the leaders of the missionary country are invariably infected with
the sins of hubris, racism, and arrogance.

We Americans have long been guilty of these crimes. On the eve of our
entry into World War I, William Jennings Bryan, President Woodrow Wilson's
first secretary of state, described the United States as "the supreme
moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the
world's disputes." If there is one historical generalization that the
passage of time has validated, it is that the world could not help being
better off if the American president had not believed such nonsense and if
the United States had minded its own business in the war between the
British and German empires. We might well have avoided Nazism, the
Bolshevik Revolution, and another thirty to forty years of the
exploitation of India, Indonesia, Indochina, Algeria, Korea, the
Philippines, Malaya, and virtually all of Africa by European, American,
and Japanese imperialists.

We Americans have never outgrown the narcissistic notion that the rest of
the world wants (or should want) to emulate us. In Iraq, bringing
democracy became the default excuse for our warmongers - it would be
perfectly plausible to call them "crusaders," if Osama bin Laden had not
already appropriated the term - once the Bush lies about Iraq's alleged
nuclear, chemical, and biological threats and its support for al Qaeda
melted away. Bush and his neocon supporters have prattled on endlessly
about how "the world is hearing the voice of freedom from the center of
the Middle East," but the reality is much closer to what Noam Chomsky
dubbed "deterring democracy" in a notable 1992 book of that name. We have
done everything in our power to see that the Iraqis did not get a "free
and fair election," one in which the Shia majority could come to power and
ally Iraq with Iran. As Noah Feldman, the Coalition Provisional
Authority's law advisor, put it in November 2003, "If you move too fast
the wrong people could get elected."

In the election of January 30, 2005, the U.S. military tried to engineer
the outcome it wanted ("Operation Founding Fathers"), but the Shiites won
anyway. Nearly a year later in the December 15, 2005 elections for the
national assembly, the Shiites won again, but Sunni, Kurdish, and American
pressure has delayed the formation of a government to this moment. After a
compromise candidate for prime minister was finally selected, two of the
most ominous condottiere of the Bush administration, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, flew into
Baghdad to tell him what he had to do for "democracy" - leaving the
unmistakable impression that the new prime minister is a puppet of the
United States.

Hold the Economic Advice

After Latin America, East Asia is the area of the world longest under
America's imperialist tutelage. If you want to know something about the
U.S. record in exporting its economic and political institutions, it's a
good place to look. But first, some definitions.

The political philosopher Hannah Arendt once argued that democracy is such
an abused concept we should dismiss as a charlatan anyone who uses it in
serious discourse without first clarifying what he or she means by it.
Therefore, let me indicate what I mean by democracy. First, the acceptance
within a society of the principle that public opinion matters. If it
doesn't, as for example in Stalin's Russia, or present-day Saudi Arabia,
or the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa under American military domination,
then it hardly matters what rituals of American democracy, such as
elections, may be practiced.

Second, there must be some internal balance of power or separation of
powers, so that it is impossible for an individual leader to become a
dictator. If power is concentrated in a single position and its occupant
claims to be beyond legal restraints, as is true today with our president,
then democracy becomes attenuated or only pro forma. In particular, I look
for the existence and practice of administrative law - in other words, an
independent, constitutional court with powers to declare null and void
laws that contravene democratic safeguards.

Third, there must be some agreed-upon procedure for getting rid of
unsatisfactory leaders. Periodic elections, parliamentary votes of no
confidence, term limits, and impeachment are various well-known ways to do
this, but the emphasis should be on shared institutions.

With that in mind, let's consider the export of the American economic, and
then democratic "model" to Asia. The countries stretching from Japan to
Indonesia, with the exception of the former American colony of the
Philippines, make up one of the richest regions on Earth today. They
include the second most productive country in the world, Japan, with a per
capita income well in excess of that of the United States, as well as the
world's fastest growing large economy, China's, which has been expanding
at a rate of over 9.5% per annum for the past two decades. These countries
achieved their economic well-being by ignoring virtually every item of
wisdom preached in American economics departments and business schools or
propounded by various American administrations.

Japan established the regional model for East Asia. In no case did the
other high-growth Asian economies follow Japan's path precisely, but they
have all been inspired by the overarching characteristic of the Japanese
economic system - namely, the combining of the private ownership of
property as a genuine right, defensible in law and inheritable, with state
control of economic goals, markets, and outcomes. I am referring to what
the Japanese call "industrial policy"  (sangyo seisaku). In American
economic theory (if not in practice), industrial policy is anathema. It
contradicts the idea of an unconstrained market guided by laissez faire.
Nonetheless, the American military-industrial complex and our elaborate
system of "military Keynesianism" rely on a Pentagon-run industrial policy
- even as American theory denies that either the military-industrial
complex or economic dependence on arms manufacturing are significant
factors in our economic life. We continue to underestimate the high-growth
economies of East Asia because of the power of our ideological blinders.

One particular form of American economic influence did greatly affect East
Asian economic practice - namely, protectionism and the control of
competition through high tariffs and other forms of state discrimination
against foreign imports. This was the primary economic policy of the
United States from its founding until 1940. Without it, American economic
wealth of the sort to which we have become accustomed would have been
inconceivable. The East Asian countries have emulated the U.S. in this
respect. They are interested in what the U.S. does, not what it preaches.
That is one of the ways they all got rich. China is today pursuing a
variant of the basic Japanese development strategy, even though it does
not, of course, acknowledge this.

Marketing Democracy

The gap between preaching and self-deception in the way we promote
democracy abroad is even greater than in selling our economic ideology.
Our record is one of continuous (sometimes unintended) failure, although
most establishment pundits try to camouflage this fact.

The Federation of American Scientists has compiled a list of over 201
overseas military operations from the end of World War II until September
11, 2001 in which we were involved and normally struck the first blow.
(The list is reprinted by Gore Vidal in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace:
How We Got To Be So Hated, pp. 22-41.) The current wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq are not included. In no instance did democratic governments come
about as a direct result of any of these military activities.

The United States holds the unenviable record of having helped install and
then supported such dictators as the Shah of Iran, General Suharto in
Indonesia, Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua,
Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and Sese Seko Mobutu in Congo-Zaire, not to
mention a series of American-backed militarists in Vietnam and Cambodia
until we were finally expelled from Indochina. In addition, we ran among
the most extensive international terrorist operations in history against
Cuba and Nicaragua because their struggles for national independence
produced outcomes that we did not like.

On the other hand, democracy did develop in some important cases as a
result of opposition to our interference - for example, after the collapse
of the CIA-installed Greek colonels in 1974; in both Portugal in 1974 and
Spain in 1975 after the end of the U.S.-supported fascist dictatorships;
after the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in 1986;
following the ouster of General Chun Doo Hwan in South Korea in 1987; and
following the ending of thirty-eight years of martial law on the island of
Taiwan in the same year.

One might well ask, however: What about the case of Japan?  President Bush
has repeatedly cited our allegedly successful installation of democracy
there after World War II as evidence of our skill in this kind of
activity. What this experience proved, he contended, was that we would
have little difficulty implanting democracy in Iraq. As it happens though,
General Douglas MacArthur, who headed the American occupation of defeated
Japan from 1945 to 1951, was himself essentially a dictator, primarily
concerned with blocking genuine democracy from below in favor of
hand-picked puppets and collaborators from the prewar Japanese
establishment.

When a country loses a war as crushingly as Japan did the war in the
Pacific, it can expect a domestic revolution against its wartime leaders.
In accordance with the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, which Japan
accepted in surrendering, the State Department instructed MacArthur not to
stand in the way of a popular revolution, but when it began to materialize
he did so anyway. He chose to keep Hirohito, the wartime emperor, on the
throne (where he remained until his death in 1989) and helped bring
officials from the industrial and militarist classes that ruled wartime
Japan back to power. Except for a few months in 1993 and 1994, those
conservatives and their successors have ruled Japan continuously since
1949. Japan and China are today among the longest-lived single-party
regimes on Earth, both parties - the nucleus of the Liberal Democratic
Party and the Chinese Communist Party - having come to power in the same
year.

Equally important in the Japanese case, General MacArthur's headquarters
actually wrote the quite democratic Constitution of 1947 and bestowed it
on the Japanese people under circumstances in which they had no
alternative but to accept it. In her 1963 book On Revolution, Hannah
Arendt stresses "the enormous difference in power and authority between a
constitution imposed by a government upon a people and the constitution by
which a people constitutes its own government." She notes that, in
post-World War I Europe, virtually every case of an imposed constitution
led to dictatorship or to a lack of power, authority, and stability.

Although public opinion certainly matters in Japan, its democratic
institutions have never been fully tested. The Japanese public knows that
its constitution was bestowed by its conqueror, not generated from below
by popular action. Japan's stability depends greatly on the ubiquitous
presence of the United States, which supplies the national defense - and
so, implicitly, the fairly evenly distributed wealth - that gives the
public a stake in the regime. But the Japanese people, as well as those of
the rest of East Asia, remain fearful of Japan's ever again being on its
own in the world.

While more benign than the norm, Japan's government is typical of the U.S.
record abroad in one major respect. Successive American administrations
have consistently favored oligarchies that stand in the way of broad
popular aspirations - or movements toward nationalist independence from
American control. In Asia, in the post-World War II period, we pursued
such anti-democratic policies in South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand,
Indochina (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam), and Japan. In Japan, in order to
prevent the Socialist Party from coming to power through the polls, which
seemed likely during the 1950s, we secretly supplied funds to the
representatives of the old order in the Liberal Democratic Party. We
helped bring wartime Minister of Munitions Nobusuke Kishi to power as
prime minister in 1957; split the Socialist Party by promoting and
financing a rival Democratic Socialist Party;  and, in 1960, backed the
conservatives in a period of vast popular demonstrations against the
renewal of the Japanese-American Security Treaty. Rather than developing
as an independent democracy, Japan became a docile Cold War satellite of
the United States - and one with an extremely inflexible political system
at that.

The Korean Case

In South Korea, the United States resorted to far sterner measures.  From
the outset, we favored those who had collaborated with Japan, whereas
North Korea built its regime on the foundation of former guerrilla
fighters against Japanese rule. During the 1950s, we backed the aged exile
Syngman Rhee as our puppet dictator. (He had actually been a student of
Woodrow Wilson's at Princeton early in the century.)  When, in 1960, a
student movement overthrew Rhee's corrupt regime and attempted to
introduce democracy, we instead supported the seizure of power by General
Park Chung Hee.

Educated at the Japanese military academy in Manchuria during the colonial
period, Park had been an officer in the Japanese army of occupation until
1945. He ruled Korea from 1961 until October 16, 1979, when the chief of
the Korean Central Intelligence Agency shot him to death over dinner. The
South Korean public believed that the KCIA chief, known to be "close" to
the Americans, had assassinated Park on U.S.  orders because he was
attempting to develop a nuclear-weapons program which the U.S. opposed.
(Does this sound familiar?) After Park's death, Major General Chun Doo
Hwan seized power and instituted yet another military dictatorship that
lasted until 1987.

In 1980, a year after the Park assassination, Chun smashed a popular
movement for democracy that broke out in the southwestern city of Kwangju
and among students in the capital, Seoul. Backing Chun's policies, the U.
S. ambassador argued that "firm anti-riot measures were necessary." The
American military then released to Chun's control Korean troops assigned
to the U.N. Command to defend the country against a North Korean attack,
and he used them to crush the movement in Kwangju.  Thousands of
pro-democracy demonstrators were killed. In 1981, Chun Doo Hwan would be
the first foreign visitor welcomed to the White House by the newly elected
Ronald Reagan.

After more than thirty postwar years, democracy finally began to come to
South Korea in 1987 via a popular revolution from below. Chun Doo Hwan
made a strategic mistake by winning the right to hold the Olympic Games in
Seoul in 1988. In the lead-up to the games, students from the many
universities in Seoul, now openly backed by an increasingly prosperous
middle class, began to protest American-backed military rule. Chun would
normally have used his army to arrest, imprison, and probably shoot such
demonstrators as he had done in Kwangju seven years earlier; but he was
held back by the knowledge that, if he did so, the International Olympic
Committee would move the games to some other country. In order to avoid
such a national humiliation, Chun turned over power to his co-conspirator
of 1979-80, General Roh Tae Woo. In order to allow the Olympics to go
ahead, Roh instituted a measure of democratic reform, which led in 1993 to
the holding of national elections and the victory of a civilian president,
Kim Young Sam.

In December 1995, in one of the clearest signs of South Korea's maturing
democracy, the government arrested generals Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo
and charged them with having shaken down Korean big business for bribes -
Chun Doo Hwan allegedly took $1.2 billion and Roh Tae Woo $630 million.
President Kim then made a very popular decision, letting them be indicted
for their military seizure of power in 1979 and for the Kwangju massacre
as well. In August 1996, a South Korean court found both Chun and Roh
guilty of sedition. Chun was sentenced to death and Roh to
twenty-two-and-a-half years in prison. In April 1997, the Korean Supreme
Court upheld slightly less severe sentences, something that would have
been simply unimaginable for the pro forma Japanese Supreme Court. In
December 1997, after peace activist Kim Dae Jung was elected president, he
pardoned them both despite the fact that Chun had repeatedly tried to have
Kim killed.

The United States was always deeply involved in these events. In 1989,
when the Korean National Assembly sought to investigate what happened at
Kwangju on its own, the U.S. government refused to cooperate and
prohibited the former American ambassador to Seoul and the former general
in command of U.S. Forces Korea from testifying. The American press
avoided reporting on these events (while focusing on the suppression of
pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing in June 1989), and most Americans
knew next to nothing about them. This cover-up of the costs of military
rule and the suppression of democracy in South Korea, in turn, has
contributed to the present growing hostility of South Koreans toward the
United States.

Unlike American-installed or supported "democracies" elsewhere, South
Korea has developed into a genuine democracy. Public opinion is a vital
force in the society. A separation of powers has been institutionalized
and is honored. Electoral competition for all political offices is
intense, with high levels of participation by voters. These achievements
came from below, from the Korean people themselves, who liberated their
country from American-backed military dictatorship. Perhaps most
important, the Korean National Assembly - the parliament - is a genuine
forum for democratic debate. I have visited it often and find the contrast
with the scripted and empty procedures encountered in the Japanese Diet or
the Chinese National People's Congress striking indeed. Perhaps its only
rival in terms of democratic vitality in East Asia is the Taiwanese
Legislative Yuan. On some occasions, the Korean National Assembly is
rowdy; fist fights are not uncommon. It is, however, a true school of
democracy, one that came into being despite the resistance of the United
States.

The Democracy Peddlers

Given this history, why should we be surprised that in Baghdad, such
figures as former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority L.  Paul
Bremer III, former Ambassador John Negroponte, and present Ambassador
Zalmay Khalilzad, as well as a continuously changing cohort of American
major-generals fresh from power-point lectures at the American Enterprise
Institute, should have produced chaos and probable civil war? None of them
has any qualifications at all for trying to "introduce democracy" or
American-style capitalism in a highly nationalistic Muslim nation, and
even if they did, they could not escape the onus of having terrorized the
country through the use of unrestricted military force.

Bremer is a former assistant and employee of Henry Kissinger and General
Alexander Haig. Negroponte was American ambassador to Honduras, 1981-85,
when it had the world's largest CIA station and actively participated in
the dirty war to suppress Nicaraguan democracy.  Khalilzad, the most
prominent official of Afghan ancestry in the Bush administration, is a
member of the Project for a New American Century, the neocon pressure
group that lobbied for a war of aggression against Iraq. The role of the
mAmerican military in our war there has been an unmitigated disaster on
every front, including the deployment of undisciplined, brutal troops at
places like the Abu Ghraib prison. All the United States has achieved is
to guarantee that Iraqis will hate us for years to come. The situation in
Iraq today is worse than it was in Japan or Korea and comparable to our
tenure in Vietnam. Perhaps it is worth reconsidering what exactly we are
so intent on exporting to the world.

-Chalmers Johnson is, most recently, the author of The Sorrows of Empire:
Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, as well as of MITI and
the Japanese Miracle (1982) and Japan: Who Governs? (1995)  among other
works. This piece originated as "remarks" presented at the East Asia panel
of a workshop on "Transplanting Institutions" sponsored by the Department
of Sociology of the University of California, San Diego, held on April 21,
2006. The chairman of the workshop was Professor Richard Madsen.


--------22 of 22--------

Baby Boomers

Q: Mr president, what is your opinion of Baby Boomers?

A: The Baby Boomer is our newest weapon against world-wide terrorism. It
is a very small but deadly-accurate missile that seeks and finds the
foreign terrorist baby's mouth, throat, and stomach. Once there it goes
Boom! and that's the end of one more terrorist baby. A pre-emptive strike.
Everyone knows you can't trust any of those foreigners, especially if they
don't look the way God intended people to look, which is like us. I and my
men see this as a "final solution" to inferior races. Why use up resources
on them? Waste 'em from the word go. And you should see how demoralizing
it is to their terrorist foreign parents, to have their babies spattered
all over the walls. The Baby Boomer will bring our American Brand of
Democracy to the world, soon, praise God, real soon.

Q; Thank you, Mr president. We're praying for you.


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   - David Shove             shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu
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