[Peace-discuss] Being and nothingness among American murderers

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Obamans.  Rather sexist and ungrammatical don't you think?  Obamen, 
Obawomen, Obapersons. 

I usually say "Obots" but although Qiao advises against the use of this 
term in public discourse, it seems to fit well
with being enamoured with the notion of central control, (or being 
controlled by the notion of a central enamourment?).

*
While we are on the subject of self referential paradoxes of course, 
there's always "Existential Terror".
The threat of torture which seems to be the ultimate expression of the 
implicit power of the state,
without which the whole matter seems to collapse, and indeed if one has 
conquered that terror,
real freedom to act or not to act seems to be available. 

E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> "Our hands are tied..."
>
> (if only they were...)
>
>
> C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>> Actually, there is at least one Sartrean notion that's appropriate to 
>> the Obamans.  Jean-Paul spoke of what he called "bourgeois bad 
>> faith": "a paradoxical internal duality of consciousness in which 
>> consciousness thinks of itself as a thing at the same time that it 
>> gives covert recognition to its freedom." Le fond de l'affaire is 
>> that claims that one is not free to act are usually bogus.  "We were 
>> never freer than under the Occupation," he wrote, scandalously.
>>
>> Try that on those defenders of Obama who keep saying their man would 
>> like to do the right thing, but just can't.
>>
>> Sartre, in an interview with the NYRB when he was 70, said, 
>> "Naturally, in the course of my life I have made lots of mistakes, 
>> large and small, for one reason or another, but at the heart of it 
>> all, every time I made a mistake it was because I was not radical 
>> enough."  Seems right.  --CGE
>>
>>
>> E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
>>> under-score.
>>>
>>> The cognitive dissonance does certainly threaten to wash the victims 
>>> over the
>>> cliff of existential despair... a likely fitting end point to 
>>> relativism...
>>>
>>> I think they Were All Bozos on that Bus.  How many empty seats?
>>>
>>> "The Naked Lunch" might be out of print or out of vogue or 
>>> something. Or
>>> maybe they are fighting back by dropping pirated and bootleg copies of
>>> "Nausea:"
>>>
>>> C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>> As the administration rapidly expands its illegal war in Pakistan, 
>>>> its propaganda cover slips like a bad toupee.
>>>>
>>>> The US has to pretend we're killing "terrorists" in AfPak (there's 
>>>> no Congressional authorization for anything else) when in fact 
>>>> we're fighting
>>>> the resistance to US control of the entire Middle East.
>>>>
>>>> The word this week was "existential." Tangling her syntax in a way 
>>>> that
>>>> might interest a psychoanalyst, SecState Clinton told a House 
>>>> committee, "I
>>>> think that we can not underscore [underestimate?] the seriousness 
>>>> of the
>>>> existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan." (Maybe she meant
>>>> "underscore enough.")
>>>>
>>>> "Existential threat" is a term of art from Israeli propaganda: the 
>>>> nuclear-armed Israeli government insists that its existence is 
>>>> constantly
>>>> threatened by non-nuclear states and of course Gazan schoolchildren 
>>>> (and in
>>>> a sense it is).
>>>>
>>>> But the memo on "existential" has clearly gone around in the Obama 
>>>> administration: "US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has warned 
>>>> Pakistan that
>>>> the Taleban poses an 'existential threat to the democratic 
>>>> government of
>>>> the country'" [BBC]; "Gen. David Petraeus warned Congress Friday 
>>>> that the
>>>> United States faces a 'tough road" ahead ... what has been missing 
>>>> still is
>>>> “the kind of whole-of-government approach that would result from a 
>>>> complete
>>>> commitment by the Pakistani senior leaders ... that will be 
>>>> necessary to
>>>> face up what is again an existential threat to Pakistan” [Politico].
>>>>
>>>> But perhaps the American officials simply mean that the sneaky 
>>>> Taliban are
>>>> about to distribute the works of J.-P. Sartre to unsuspecting 
>>>> Pakistanis.
>>>> That would make more sense than what they're actually saying.  
>>>> --CGE _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss 
>>>> mailing list Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
>>>> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss 
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>>
>>
>
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