Just added it here...
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=16952"The Octopus" is the patch of one of many Top Secret programs within the national security state. Given the sprawl, the many departments, competing interests and stubborn persistence of legacy programs within the U.S. military industrial complex, the technology deployed will not necessarily fit into a coherent central policy, seamless system of surveillance, or an overall "defense strategy." Most of these programs are funded out of platform policies allowing agencies to develop, on their own, varieties of surveillance, intel and weapons systems.
The fundamental drive is to make money for corporate contractors and to justify the enormous budgets devoted to warmaking in the name of "defense." The people in charge are contractors and military bureaucrats. Most of bureaucrats will be employed by the contractors after retirement from service. Dozens of such programs have implanted themselves within the larger ecology of "Top Secret America," creating often redundant or irrelevant systems to get a portion of the tens of billions available in MIC funding that is completely unaccountable to public scrutiny and nearly untouched by Congressional "oversight." This black budget constitutes a realm of secret military dictatorship within even the increasingly hollow constitutional state.
While it's true that the ultimate tendency (and increasing reality) is toward a seamless total global surveillance state accessible to the power elite and its bureaucrats and contractors for self-service of their own needs, as well as in the implementation of general tyranny, this is inherent in the logics of empire, state power and capitalism. There is no need of a central plan, and the central planning that happens effectively moves downhill toward this logical-seeming future path of empire, state power and capitalism, with the main incentive for individuals being to make a lot of money along the way.
Hunter » Sun Dec 08, 2013 8:46 am wrote:Serious question do you think the people who design shit like this have a sense of humor and sit back and say "oh this will get the conspiratard panties in a wad..."?
No!
"We," in the sense of those who dislike the permanent warfare state or unaccountable concentrations of power, are definitely not the intended recipients of this patch. They don't give a shit about "us," or the "conspiracy community" (ugh). We are completely irrelevant.
This patch, I would guess, is a memento for the members of the program and a boast to their own larger community within Top Secret America. It may also be meant as a challenge to "them," as in: the Russkies and Chinese and Terrrrrsts other supposed enemies and antagonists of America. They probably like to think their logo is intimidating. There's definitely a bit of "yeah, that's right, we rule the fucking world, fuck you if you don't like it."
Are they serious about this shit and trying to tell us something. And what is it they are trying to tell us, that they are commies and they are taking over and there isn't a fucking thing we can do about it?
Here as with most of the patches in the other thread, an insular tribal grouping produces a coat of arms celebrating their wished-for power over the world, albeit with an inescapable irony. The choice of imagery aggrandizes their macho, their egos.
One thing "they" definitely are not is commies. Who do you think "they" is? Some John Birch plot where the real-existing capitalist ruling class, or, in this case, a group of self-service operators inside Top Secret America, can be remotely mythologized as "communist"?!
They are not "taking over." They are within the groups that already are in charge by virtue of control over part of the state and ownership of well-deployed capital. They are using the power they already have to make money and aggrandize themselves, and build ever-more all-encompassing systems of power and domination.
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by Hunter » Sun Dec 08, 2013 9:11 am 
