"Progressive" Pundits:
B O W L I N G
I N
S L O V A K I A

[The writer of this review focuses on the lethal CAREERISM of the Neo-cons and Neo-liberals; but the craven careerist hacks embeded in some of the most influential "progressive" media are at least as dangerous to our democracy:
David Corn of The Nation magazine, for instance, is currently RUNNING AN AD on Air America Radio frantically urging us to leave off questioning the Bush regime's account of 9/11 (even though scientific polls clearly show that only SIXTEEN PERCENT of Americans accept that account!), and to banish impeachment from our thoughts!
Some of the others who are advancing their careers by helping the Neo-cons and the Neo-libs to squelch questioning and investigation of their crimes:

Alexander Cockburn of counterpunch@counterpunch.com , Ed Schultz of ed@edschultzshow.com , The Young Turks of theyounturk@yahoo.com .

Then there is the new "democratic" site http://www.buzzflash.net which with great fanfare advertises that its readers can vote on its articles for importance and relevance -- but anything having to do with 9/11 or anything the least bit critical of the Israeli government is instantly deleted from the site! Karl Rove could learn from these people.

And we must not forget to include in this list of treachery the grand old man of Manufacturing Consent himself: Noam Chomsky, diligently manufacturing cover-up for the most dangerous regime in US history!]

From: LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
Vol. 29 No. 1 dated 4 January 2007

Dragon-Slayers
by Corey Robin

"....Many people believe that great crimes come from terrible ideas: Marxism, racism and Islamic fundamentalism gave us the Gulag, Auschwitz and 9/11. It was the singular achievement of [Hannah Arendt's book] EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM, however, to remind us that the worst atrocities often arise from the simplest of vices. And few vices, in Arendt's mind, were more vicious than careerism. 'The East is a career,' Disraeli wrote. And so was the Holocaust, according to Arendt. 'What for Eichmann was a job, with its daily routine, its ups and downs, was for the Jews quite literally the end of the world.' Genocide, she insisted, is work. If it is to be done, people must be hired and paid; if it is to be done well, they must be supervised and promoted.

"Eichmann was a careerist of the first order. He had 'no motives at all', Arendt insisted, 'except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement'. He joined the Nazis because he saw in them an opportunity to 'start from scratch and still make a career', and 'what he fervently believed in up to the end was success.' Late in the war, as Nazi leaders brooded in Berlin over their impending fate and that of Germany, Eichmann was fretting over superiors' refusing to invite him to lunch. Years later, he had no memory of the Wannsee ['final solution'] Conference, but clearly remembered bowling with senior officials in Slovakia.

"....Most modern theorists, from Montesquieu to the American Framers to Hayek, have considered ambition and careerism to be checks against, rather than conduits of, oppression and tyranny....

"The main reason for the contemporary evasion of Arendt's critique of careerism, however, is that addressing it would force a confrontation with the dominant ethos of our time. In an era when capitalism is assumed to be not only efficient but also a source of freedom, the careerist seems like the agent of an easy-going tolerance and pluralism. Unlike the ideologue, whose great sin is to think too much and want too much from politics, the careerist is a genial caretaker of himself. He prefers the marketplace to the corridors of state power. He is realistic and pragmatic, not utopian or fanatic. That careerism may be as lethal as idealism, that ambition is an adjunct of barbarism, that some of the worst crimes are the result of ordinary vices rather than extraordinary ideas: these are the implications of EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM that neo-cons and neoliberals alike find too troubling to acknowledge."
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n01/print/robi02_.html

Esteemed Professor and Law Expert Warns Of Police State
Francis A Boyle says 9/11 was allowed to happen, war on terror is facilitating the downfall of The Republic, concentration camps are in place and US citizens are the targets

http://www.infowars.net/articles/december2006/191206Boyle.htm

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"THE PRAYER" an Excerpt from On a Note of Triumph, by Norman Corwin (first broadcast on CBS May 8, 1945)
Music: Preparation: a slow, quiet, reverent theme which builds, not too quickly or obviously, under the Petition:

NARRATOR. Lord God of trajectory and blast,
Whose terrible sword has laid open the serpent
So it withers in the sun for the just to see,
Sheathe now the swift avenging blade with the names of nations writ on it,
And assist in the preparation of the plowshare.
Lord God of fresh bread and tranquil mornings,
Who walks in the circuit of heaven among the worthy,
Deliver notice to the fallen young men
That tokens of orange juice and a whole egg appear now before the hungry children;
That night again falls cooling on the earth as quietly as when it leaves Your hand;
That freedom has withstood the tyrant like a Malta in a hostile sea,
And that the soul of man is surely a Sevastopol
Which goes down hard and leaps from ruin quickly.
Lord God of the topcoat and the living wage
Who has furred the fox against the time of winter
And stored provender of bees in summer's brightest places,
Do bring sweet influences to bear upon the assembly line:
Accept the smoke of the milltown among the accredited clouds of the sky:
Fend from the wind with a house and a hedge
Him who You made in Your image,
And permit him to pick of the tree and the flock,
That he may eat today without fear of tomorrow,
And clothe himself with dignity in December.
Lord God of test-tube and blueprint,
Who jointed molecules of dust and shook them till their name was Adam,
Who taught worms and stars how they could live together,
Appear now among the parliaments of conquerors
and give instruction to their schemes;
Measure out new liberties so none shall suffer for his father's color or the credo of his choice:
Post proofs that brotherhood is not so wild a dream
as those who profit by postponing it pretend:
Sit at the treaty table and convoy the hopes of little peoples through expected straits,
And press into the final seal a sign that peace will come for longer than posterities can see ahead,
That man unto his fellow man shall be a friend forever.

Music: up to a grand conclusion.
© 1945 Norman Corwin.

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