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Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

Link-baity title, but warranted, I'd say.

The story is that the government is launching a spy satellite with a logo on it featuring a "mascot" -- a giant Kraken-like octopus taking over the planet. Whoever created it could only have been thinking of their bureau's unchecked ability to do what it wanted and not the public's perception of it because the creature, especially its eye, looks menacing, ominous, foreboding, malicious, malevolent, and borderline evil. It implies the agency is insular, unaccountable, and has an aggressive, secret agenda it cares about more than anything else, certainly more than your privacy or the consequences of its actions.

The kicker is a comment that juxtaposes the logo with a warning illustration saying "Know your communist enemy" with a nearly-identical logo, presumably implying an evil enemy from the Cold War, which we have become.

The government octopus looks like the Kraken on the top of the wikipedia page -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken -- except the government one is planet-sized and its eyes seem to have more evil intent, to me, at least.

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This reminds me of a relevant Mitchell ans Webb clip, "Are we the baddies?". As an American, I'm having trouble deciding if if we are at this point.

Edited to add clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv2XGQBcvxQ

That skit is hilarious.

That said, it also just goes and forgets pretty much anything about what happens when you tell a bunch of men to live together so that they can go kill other men.

It also skims over the history of that particular emblem. The death's head has been used by 'elite' Prussian and Germany military units back to the 19th century. Obviously the point is to incite a little fear, and obviously the point is that they're breaking taboos. That's the whole point is being in an army.

And finally, in this particular case, humour stripped of its context always has the possibility to offend. While you're typically expected to take that into account while making your jokes ("political correctness" / "minimize backlash"), there is definitely a tradition of ignoring such considerations. Typically in military combat arms, but often extending to related situations (this might extend to the black humour of paramedics for example).

So the point is that "Are we the baddies" is hilarious, but its not very useful to think of life in that context - well, at least the just 'evaluating your badness by your symbols' part.

Heh, I am just picturing a fabulous army prancing around with the charter to "break taboos"

I've been wondering the same thing. We used to use this image to portray our enemies...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ba42Z0lCMAAfkzM.jpg

http://iranpoliticsclub.net/politics/IRI-problem/images/Iran...

http://streetsofsalem.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/octopus-ge...

http://streetsofsalem.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/octopus-ma...

http://www.picturehistory.com/product/id/4453

Yes. We are the baddies. Have been for a while.

yep, still are, and looking at that mascot, that will not change anytime soon :P

Wow, only one person I can agree with at the bottom. Must still be too comfortable at the top of the heap.

I don't think we're baddies so much as the logical outcome of relatively unchallenged power. But the internet has created, in a sense, an entire new world to figure out how to control. Hence the governments incredible efforts to monitor it, even to go so far as to create fake WoW accounts. The satellite is a real world manifestation of their far larger virtual world activities.

> It implies the agency is insular, unaccountable, and has an aggressive, secret agenda

You're giving these people way too much credit. Military and intelligence patches are all about bravado and "USA #1" not some sophisticated and cryptic critique of their employer. I've had a long time interest in this stuff and let me tell you, its all tasteless and dumb, with the occasional touch of humor. The patch critical of the USG simply wouldn't be approved. There's no big anti-US message here. Its exactly as it seems.

It's certainly not a critique.

To me it shows that the people in the agency are oblivious to the rest of the world outside of the agency.

There have been a bunch of embarrassing revelations about domestic and foreign spying, but instead of being embarrassed or ashamed like they should be, they're as gung-ho and bold as ever.

It's no wonder there have been so many slip ups when they're so clueless about public perception. It doesn't take a secret spy agency to realize this logo would not go over well.

> To me it shows that the people in the agency are oblivious to the rest of the world outside of the agency.

It's fairly well-established that this is by design.

I'm not even that deeply interested in military/intelligence, and I share your stance. It takes only a cursory survey of their patches, particularly air units, to see the logos are not created with any kind of serious purpose- no more serious than when my casual hockey team decided to call themselves the Honey Badgers.

This article has examples of other patches, as you mention: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/why-the-us-launched-a-spy-r...

Indeed. As the article points out, it's all very super-villainy. They're not even trying to pretend they're the good guys anymore.

You've never played an MMO, have you? There is a huge, huge overlap between the people who like being villains and the people who like being good guys.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoodIsNotNice?fro...

It does look menacing and ominous, but it's only supposed to be used against them. Whether you agree with it or not, it's the premise widely shared by Americans and those in the intelligence agencies and in the military. It renders your following implication inaccurate: "It implies the agency is insular, unaccountable, and has an aggressive, secret agenda it cares about more than anything else, certainly more than your privacy or the consequences of its actions."

No, what it implies is that those who intend to do evil against America cannot hide anywhere in the world. It's consistent with Roosevelt's Big Stick, which is something Americans have always embraced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Stick_ideology. The idea is that we're free at home, but militarily unchallengable on the world stage.

> The kicker is a comment that juxtaposes the logo with a warning illustration saying "Know your communist enemy" with a nearly-identical logo, presumably implying an evil enemy from the Cold War, which we have become.

Could we declare a moratorium on false equivalency for like just a week? Last time I checked, we still have elections and aren't sending political prisoners to siberia. Not to mention that we haven't killed tens of millions of our own people. There is that too.

The false equivalencies are probably more of a "there but for the grace of Columbia go we," type of thing. The disease that is Empire never has exactly the same symptoms.

Last time I checked, the elections did not significantly change policy, despite a change in the balance of power between parties. The US has the highest per-capita rate of incarceration in the world, mostly over Prohibition. And the millions we have killed are mostly in other countries that do not respeck our authoritah.

On top of that, the US has the clanking cojones to demand that banks everywhere in the world comply with its tax regime, and that every single packet of communication on the planet be subject to its spying.

At what point do we look down and notice that we're dressed entirely in black armor, while holding a red lightsaber in one hand, and twirling the well-waxed end of our luxurious handlebar moustache with the other? Not only have we become the bad guys, but we have become a Hollywood caricature of badguyness.

Hence the giant octopus. A normal bad guy hides his nefarious deeds behind a banal logo and seal. An over-the-top, booed-by-the-audience bad guy makes his logo into a tentacled beast devouring the entire world.

> Last time I checked, the elections did not significantly change policy

What makes you think that people want a change in policy, in some substantive sort of way? There is a reason that third parties in the U.S. are ridiculed: most people don't agree with any of their positions. Few people are far enough to the right that they want to get rid of the Department of Education like the libertarians, or far enough to the left that they want to revive the power of the labor unions, like the greens. People who opposed Iraq turned around and exerted the President to get into Syria.

> The US has the highest per-capita rate of incarceration in the world, mostly over Prohibition.

An interesting aspect of the original Prohibition was that it was, at the time, perceived as a triumph of Democracy. It was deeply intertwined with the women's suffrage movement, and succeeded despite the enormous power, money, and influence of the alcohol manufacturers. It succeeded despite the fact that at the time, the federal government derived 1/3 of its revenue from liquor taxes.

The drug war is bad, sure, but it's a sign of a misguided democracy not an authoritarian regime. I grew up in the suburbs in the early 1990's, surrounded by soccer moms shrieking "just say no!" This year was the first time since 1969 that a majority of Americans supported decriminalizing marijuana: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/marijuana-legalization.... Not ending the drug war, just decriminalizing the most harmless of the drugs. And not "likely voters" but a group including lots of young people who won't vote to effectuate that policy. You can't look at the drug war and call it some sort of failure of democracy, a slide into Stalinist despotism.

> And the millions we have killed are mostly in other countries that do not respeck our authority.

There is a big difference between killing people in other countries and killing people in our own country.

> to demand that banks everywhere in the world comply with its tax regime

Doesn't seem unreasonable, considering that banks everywhere transact with or through the United States.

> No, what it implies is that those who intend to do evil against America cannot hide anywhere in the world.

Define "evil" and "America"? Seeing how war profiteers sending off your young into wars, and making everyone else pay for toys that are just as mind boggingly expensive as they are mind boggingly useless for anything but murder and control, doesn't seem to either count as "evil" or as perpetrating it against "America".

> we still have elections

Oh yeah. "Hope And Change! Now That I Got This Fuck You". Rinse, repeat.

> aren't sending political prisoners to siberia

No, you send them to Gitmo or black sites. Snowden is stuck in Russia. Manning got tortured right at home.

> we haven't killed tens of millions of our own people

Well, the private prison industry is more profitable, is it not? http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/blog/%E2%80%9Clockup-quot...

Indeed, why kill people when you can milk them? Murdering millions of people is very low tech, and unless, you use very expensive weaponry others pay for, just not profitable. From a capitalistic viewpoint it's plain dumb. I think that explains more than any "values" you might think are present at higher echolons of power.

> Oh yeah. "Hope And Change! Now That I Got This Fuck You". Rinse, repeat.

Those liberals who opposed the war in Iraq and voted for Obama turned right around and cheered for intervention in Syria. It's not some failure of democracy when people get what they want.

> No, you send them to Gitmo or black sites. Snowden is stuck in Russia. Manning got tortured right at home.

One U.S. citizen was ever held in Guantanamo, and he was caught fighting against the U.S. in Afghanistan. He was transferred out. Snowden is stuck in Russia because he doesn't want to face charges for crimes he committed. Manning submitted to military justice by joining the military.

> Well, the private prison industry is more profitable, is it not? http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/blog/%E2%80%9Clockup-quot....

I very strongly oppose private prisons, but it's utterly ridiculous to compare them to the Stalinist regime. 8% of Americas prisoners are in private prisons. The number became substantially more than 0% only in this decade, while we've been imprisoning poor minorities in huge numbers since the 1980's and 1990's. In other words, they're a response to incarceration rates, not something driving those incarceration rates.

It's not really a compelling argument to point to a random list of bad things about America then say "it's just like Stalinist Russia." There's no thought or reason in your argument, just vituperative handwaving.

Being manipulated into wars for profit is a functioning democracy for you? Guess what, democracy doesn't just mean "citizens making decisions, period", it means "citizens making informed decisions" at the very least. I wonder if any country in the whole world is a "real" democracy in that sense, but the US sure as fuck isn't. It's not even running.

> It's not really a compelling argument to point to a random list of bad things about America then say "it's just like Stalinist Russia."

Then point to where someone said that? Let me quote it:

An enemy. Not "just like Stalinist Russia". Nobody was even talking of Stalin... Yes, the Soviets were also an enemy to their own people, but I read the above as the US slowly but surely becoming an evil enemy to others. That your population even is for letting people rot in Gitmo (not because there is even a shred of evidence against them, but because they might "turn terrorist"), or don't terribly mind extrajudicial killings, by drone or otherwise, or aggressive wars doesn't even matter. That it's (in your eyes) a functioning democracy isn't relevant either: it's like the Nazis aren't excused by everybody voting for Hitler or screaming for total war. If murder of foreigners is somehow less wrong to some, then that doesn't make it less of murder, it makes it worse in my books. And while you could quibble about scale, I would respond that if a friend of yours killed 1 person, you would probably not want to be their friend anymore, at all - instead of saying "at least it wasn't 10, 100 or 1000". Also, the US is not stingy when it comes to scale or brutality, either.

You're right. We send them to Gitmo, or the Salt Pit, or Abu Ghraib. Does held indefinitely without trial or charges qualify as a political prisoner? It certainly fits my definition.

Poor treatment of prisoners of war is not equivalent to imprisonment of political dissenters. The only American citizen ever held in Guantanamo was captured in Afghanistan fighting against the U.S. and was transferred out.

> Poor treatment of prisoners of war

They are not prisoners of war. Treatment of POWs is covered by all sorts of international treaties. Guess what? Waterboarding is not exactly sanctioned by any of those.

Nope, our government has defined them as "unlawful enemy combatants," whatever the fuck those are. Basically, it means that we can hold them without trial until the "Global War on Terror" is over. I will ask again, how are these not political prisoners?

No, we say they aren't prisoners of war and are thus exempt from the protections given to prisoners of war, but they are. That's part of the mistreatment of POWs. But the fact hat we're trying to get around the treaties protecting POWs doesn't make these people "political prisoners." They're not being held because they're political dissenters. They're held because they were captured in theaters of war.

Whether or not somebody is a terrorist is largely a matter of perception. Consider the case of Shaker Aamer.

"The Northern Alliance took him into custody in Jalalabad on 24 November 2001, and passed him to the Americans. The US routinely paid ransom for Arabs handed over to them."

"Status: Cleared for release in 2007. Still held at Guantanamo."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaker_Aamer

I will grant you, if you want to narrowly define political prisoner to someone who is exclusively a political dissident, you are right. How do you classify people held for over a decade without charges? The political prisoner label is expedient because it implies that the reasons for holding that person are that they are simply undesirable, and that they should not be allowed to be a part of a society; not because they are guilty of some specific act. Hell, even political prisoners get their day in kangaroo court. We have not even put up show trials for these men.

> Hell, even political prisoners get their day in kangaroo court. We have not even put up show trials for these men.

That understates the case. "Cleared for release" means that the process has already determined that they do not need to be held. Its, arguably, worse than not giving him a chance to prove that he shouldn't be held -- we've already determined that he shouldn't be held and are holding him anyway.

(And Aamer's case is particularly bad, even among Guatanamo cases, because, unlike the cases of detainees where no country is willing to accept them on release, Aamer has legal status as a non-citizen resident of the UK and the UK has repeatedly requested his release by the US.)

Here's the thing. I don't even disagree that the U.S. has badly handled the situation with the Guantanamo detainees. It's valid to detain prisoners during a war, but they should be repatriated after hostilities cease. You have to acknowledge that the U.S. is in a rough spot, because 30% of detainees returned to Afghanistan started fighting again against the U.S., and for many of the detainees, the home countries didn't want them back. And the U.S. states were totally unwilling to even host trials for the detainees on their soil, particularly Virginia where many of those trials would have been held. But there were probably better ways to handle the detainees.

However, this has nothing to do with the comparison between the U.S. and Stalinist Russia. The latter detained Russian citizens because of their political opposition to the regime. Those are political prisoners. Or, for other examples, people like Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for political opposition to the South African government.

There is an enormous difference between a country's internal political institutions and its shortcomings in the conduct of war on foreign soil with respect to foreigners. You can't just pretend these are the same thing. This is a distinction that American law takes very seriously: John Walker Lindh was recognized as an American, despite being captured with Afghan fighters in Afghanistan, was never held in Guantanamo, and was given a criminal trial in the U.S.

Trials and due process are protections that Americans are entitled to when they are accused of crimes. Foreigners suspected of making war against the U.S. and captured on foreign soil are simply not entitled to these things. It's not a "crime" to wage war against the U.S., it's not something that falls within the jurisdiction of criminal courts. It's something that falls within the sovereign right of a nation to defend itself against foreign attackers. The rules and standards of conduct are totally different.

> Trials and due process are protections that Americans are entitled to when they are accused of crimes.

Trials and due process are protections that everyone, regardless of citizenship status, are afforded in this country. If you disagree, check out how many illegal immigrants are currently incarcerated.

I fundamentally disagree with your assessment. Terrorism is in fact a crime, with plenty of statutes covering exactly what it is. Declaring a war on terror is like declaring a war on communism, when does it end? Where do the battles take place?

I am honestly trying to wrap my mind around your position here. Are you saying that you think we should be able to lock people up -- potentially forever -- on the word of people who were compensated financially for turning over "terrorists?" How can you reconcile that with anything the US supposedly stands for?

Poor treatment of prisoners of war is not equivalent to imprisonment of political dissenters.

Many people at Guantanamo Bay were not captured on any battlefield. Unless of course you define the whole world as a battlefield (as the White House does). That has the unfortunate consequence of transforming citizens into terrorists suspects too and suspending their rights.

fun tin foil time: I know that you are generally very well informed and keep a sound perspective on things, but I personally think that you, and the Americans who "widely" hold the view that the military and intel community is fully delineating between the "us"==US citizenry and a "them"==Our 'Enemies' is now proven to be both outdated and naive.

I believe there was a rather long coup of the US by the CIA starting with the Kennedy assassination where we saw the cabal surrounding GHW Bush, largely starting in the 70s, with Bush, Rumsfeld Cheney and many others in their circle which have been in unquestionable power for nearly 40 years now. The NSA, CIA, NRO are tools of this group, where there is effectively an "inner circle" of the intelligence community which has far more insidious motives and methods for maintaining their position of control, which allows them to direct world wide warfare and economic matters for the benefit of themselves.

The "military" is an exceptionally well manipulated tool for this end.

I am posting from my phone so I'd like to go more I detail when I get to a machine.

Cheney is largely the architect of the current government/military/contractor system where he worked from the position of sec. Of defense under Bush to change how the military was structured to make it a larger profit center for a small number of connected contracting companies.

The Clinton's are CIA assets controlled through their Mena Ar drug running activities and as such was "allowed" to run as the democratic figure head because the back end wasn't going to change.

So, if you think that there is not a nefarious group at the center of the current architecture of the military industrial complex striving to control everything, then you may have not been paying close enough attention to the action of these groups, and individuals, and been listening too much to the programming of your "news" sources.

This is not to say that the US military is all "bad" but you'd be completely nave to see it as anything more than a tool used by a very specific interest. Just look at the false "intelligence" lies that they tried to use to profit from attacking Syria. And the "punishment" they exacted by shutting down the government when they were stood up to.

The question remains, who is them?

Someone once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," but I don't know who.

On of my favorite ship names in the culture series of novels was "I Said, I've Got A Big Stick" which of course was always written in very small type.

Of course this should be used in our world by an AC 130 gunship.

"Obama is a world-devouring octopus" featuring a logo of this creature with Obama's face would be "link-bait".

Sadly, this title isn't provocative at all, since "nothing beyond our reach" is world-devouring! Poor octopus :'(

>especially its eye, looks menacing, ominous, foreboding, malicious, malevolent, and borderline evil. It implies the agency is insular, unaccountable, and has an aggressive, secret agenda

Thanks, that gave me a good chuckle. I never realized the power of a cartoon eye.

Non-link-baity titles don't get as much love:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6866472

How is the title link-baity?

It doesn't say "logo". Literally interpreted, it means that there is a giant octopus on the satellite. That provokes one to click the link to find out more.

Oh, good grief. That was the original article's title.

We don't have to use the original title here. I too thought it meant a real octopus.

Really? You read 'world-devouring octopus' and thought that not only have US scientists discovered Cthulhu, but they've decided to launch him into space to ride on a satellite? You really believed that? Life for you must be much more alarming than it is for most of us!

Isn't that what is happening, though? I have yet to RTFA, but I for one welcome our world-devouring octopus overlords.

Well, I didn't think that but I was very confused about what the article could be about.

No, the mods strictly and remorselessly enforce the "use the original title at any cost" rule, even when it is misleading and/or linkbait. Any attempt to provide essential context in the title is met with condemnation.

Welcome to Hacker News, where the rules are made up and the points don't matter!

...the points don't matter!

Holy crap! I wish someone had told me...

Literally interpreted, it means that there is a giant octopus on the satellite.

And how do you know that there isn't?

Besides, the use of the word "features" to mean "has a picture of on it" is pretty well established. The US coat of arms features an eagle, but that doesn't mean there is an actual eagle sitting on it.

They could have used Marvel' logo for HYDRA. There's already a DARPA project for SHIELD.

https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=eac39969d68f...

So.. an accurate depiction then?

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