FRIDAY! FRIDAY! FRIDAY!

Or so says Al Giordano...

NOT JUST A SLIP OF THE TONGUE

"Kramer" profiled...and, as for GE/ NBC, I'd like to require them to air a commercial using the slogan "GE: We Bring Good Things To Death," while showing film of the detonation of an atomic bomb in the background...

NOW HERE'S A FUN POLL

Do you believe President Bush misled the nation in order to go to war with Iraq?

BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE

Alternet does it once again, by posting this amusing piece... as Kathy Dobie pointed out in an article in Harper's, desertion has become the "only option" for many soldiers who want out. As Dobie points out:

Soldiers who go AWOL have either panicked and see no other way out of their difficulties or are well-informed and know that deserting is sometimes the quickest, surest route out of the military. A soldier may not be eligible for a hardship or medical discharge, for instance, but he knows he wants out. He may not even be aware of the discharges available to him. Young, raw recruits, in particular, know only what their drill sergeants tell them. Counselors at the G.I. Rights hot line describe cases in which a recruit will ask about applying for a discharge and be told flatly by his drill sergeant, “Forget about it. Don’t even think of applying. You’re not getting out.” Conscientious-objector applications have more than tripled since operations began in Iraq, but they take on average a year and a half to process, and then, quite often, are denied.

Thus we are talking about a matter of effectiveness here. Applying for conscientious obejctor status is indeed noble, and it moreover communicates a noble sentiment. But does it do what needs to be done?

Objections to Swanson's line of reasoning, eg "fsquared"'s plea:

If, as some have argued, the Iraq war is illegal and unconstitutional, let us private citizens work to end it. But do not advocate a second and far more grave threat to the constitution by encouraging mutiny and thereby leaving it unprotected.

fail on practical grounds. Whether it "defends the Constitution" to have those who know that they fight unconstitutional wars continue to do so is a rather debatable point. The Constitution lies, undefended; laws such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 ensure that the Constitution will continue to be undefended. But on a practical level, moreover, the elites who command the US government at the top levels, being beneficiaries of the blank check called dollar hegmeony, can simply print more money to corral the desperate into service. The US Armed Forces already have, according to one estimate, 29,800 illegal immigrants in their ranks; I'm sure that those who couldn't make it over the proposed border wall will surely enlist for a chance at "defending the Constitution" rather than face the provisions of the Sensenbrenner bill, whatever its final form. Is this enormous apparatus, violative of the Constitution in its actions, really "defending the Constitution" in any way that can be considered real? How should those who "take an oath to the Constitution" then best follow their principles?

AND NOW ECUADOR

Rafael Correa appears to have won Ecuador's election: Counterpunch's Nikolas Kozloff offers analysis; Bloomberg panics; the BBC calls him a "populist." The Kozloff article is the most useful; Correa faces the general opposition between capital and nature.

Even though Correa may distribute some of the benefits of capitalism to Ecuador's indigenous population (the group that doubtless elected him), his power within the capitalist system will depend upon the ability of Ecuador's oil to satisfy the capitalist system's 85-million-barrels-a-day thirst. This could pose problems for the Ecuadorian ecology.

It must be remembered, then, that the main reason to support the "Chavista" revolt against neoliberalism in South America is that, within "Chavista" countries, empowering movements can take place that may eventually develop ecosocialist tendencies. Even in South America, the revolt against neoliberalism is still in the stage that Gramsci called the "war of position," the struggle against cultural hegemony within capitalism.

CALLS FOR CALM AS CROWD STONES IRAQ PM

Read here... now, this follows the general rule: apostates are worse than infidels. But this, and this, should tell any reader where the "government of Iraq" stands with its people. Let me suggest some obvious calls here. If US troops leave, there will be a general slaughter of anyone remotely associated with the US or its puppet government. At some point, then, we should expect an entire class of Iraqi officialdom to request asylum in the US.