criminals. cretins. charlatans

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 13 2008 17:41 utc | 4

Yes, such a motto is disgusting.
And the words below, AIR – SPACE – CYBERSPACE have implications beyond what one normally thinks of from an “airforce”. These words do not relate to national borders. Very troubling.

Posted by: Rick | Mar 13 2008 18:24 utc | 6

The similarities seem inevitable: overtones of the Great Male Sky God cults that have plagued us since the invention of hierarchy and corvee labour; iconification of (poorly understood) charismatic predators (like hawks and eagles, wolves and tigers) as emblems of masculinist ego and righteous “natural” violence and domination; fantasies of “ultimate” power and control, of “superiority” and therefore a “right” to power and control, hence justifying the brutal violence needed to make the (always unsuccessful) bid for totalitarian control aka full-spectrum dominance. And always the fantasy of being the Chosen ones, the destined dominators, the Ultimate Empire at the end of history, Above All. Eagles, swords, clumsy phallic symbology, the whole boring nine yards.
It seems ultimately pathetic that this fantasy of Chosen-ness and Ultimate-ness, of being so totally special that it gives us the right to kill as many people as we want in order to force the world to acknowledge us as demigods and conquerors… is a fantasy so common (and sordid) — it flourishes and fails over and over again throughout human history, leaving piles of corpses, plagues and salted fields in its wake. We are so bloody Special and Exceptional, eh? so bloody exceptional that we replicate the same damn pathologies as every other global-imperial wannabe in recorded history. It’s almost Lake Wobegon stuff — “where all of our Empires are Above All.”
Dumb as yeast, that’s us.

Posted by: DeAnander | Mar 13 2008 19:20 utc | 8

De, I knew the above post was you as soon as I read the first few lines.
I’m not schooled enough in design to say much more except that the new logo kinda looks like a paper airplane, or corporal stripes (two stripes), or maybe like some kind of boy scout neckerchief with a hint of iron-cross-below-the-adam’s-apple.
Anyone else have any ideas?
“Dumb as yeast!”

Posted by: jonku | Mar 13 2008 19:59 utc | 10

citizen, you are right on about pilots. for them it is all about flying the airplane and hitting the target. they really don’t think about what happens once the 2000 lb bomb blows up in an appartment building. Some of them openly enjoy killing and others simply don’t care…as long as they still get to feel like brave knights riding their multimillion dollar horses into battle.
for the symbol, it is not new, been around since 2000 and is a stylized version of the orignal star with wings.
as for the motto, creepy is the only word I can think of to describe it. I suppose some will try to believe it simply means that the Air Force is above all in terms of capability and skill. I reckon still others will be quite content believing that their Air Force is the biggest and baddest in the world. after all, who admires losers?

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 13 2008 21:42 utc | 12

I grew up on USAF bases, even had an appointment to the Academy. Explains in part why I’ve been in Canada for the last 40 years.
They have allegiance and emotional attachment only to their big Tonka toys. They are medically doped up in order to fly very long missions. Hence the need for aerial refueling, and consequently, the all too common mis-programming of smart bombs; weddings, allied forces, etc.
Motto of Strategic Air Command was “Peace is our Profession” – had better PR writers and graphic designers then. Agree, this logo looks very like a folded paper airplane. Maybe they’ll run their ads on the cartoon channel. Some people have too much time on their hands.

Posted by: Allen/Vancouver | Mar 14 2008 3:14 utc | 14

Sent your blog-post to my mil contractor buddies.
Here’s their epistle in reply:
“If anyone is offended by our great US Air Force,
then get out, and go back to where you came from.
There is nothing making you stay here – buy a one-
way ticket and leave. If you were born here and
dont like it – then find somewhere you like better.
If you werent born here, you don’t belong here.
God Bless America.”
Anyway, to honor the “Fighting 484th” spirit, here,
this battle-ready graphic for Iran carpet-bombing:
http://i28.tinypic.com/1z4h4wk.jpg
“Unsere Schwanstücke ist Grösser als Alles Gotts”
Soon our Air Force will have hypersonic cruise
missiles, able to deliver a nuke bunker buster
anywhere on the globe within 18 minutes to GZ,
and because these missiles fly in a thin band
of radar-opaque high-altitude, nobody will be
able to say whose glowing mushrooms they were.
Deniability Uber Alles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubjgisuitDw

Posted by: Arnold Carlyle | Mar 14 2008 4:11 utc | 16

That slogan will piss of the rest of the military. I have no doubt that it really means “Above All the other branches”
America’s greatest protection against military coup is all the most fascist, nutcase right-wing officers are in the air force and the Air Force can’t pull off a coup because F-22’s and stealth bombers are about as good for doing that as they are at counter-insurgency.
I have a theory that the nutcase element of the Air Force comes from an unconcious acknowledgement that when you get right down to it the role of an Air Force officer is one of the most cowardly in human history. Of all the men and women in an Air Force only the tiniest fraction, just the pilots, are ever in actual physical danger. And in modern war even these are almost as safe as someone catching a train home at night. The epitamy of the air force today is to joy ride around in a toy that is so expensive its pilot will never be put in harms way and drop bomb’s on people who can’t shoot back. The machismo of the air force is a massive over compensation for fact that they know not one of them can hold a candle to the lowliest Marine or Army soldier at showing real physical courage.

Posted by: swio | Mar 14 2008 6:49 utc | 18

Okay, now the logo looks like a mean-eyed fox or animal face. The colors blue and silver are natural military colors, blue steel.
My overall impression is that this is not a strong logo, it’s too symmetrical, too spread out. I’ve seen many eagles and this doesn’t remind me of them at all.
I am seriously interested if anyone else can comment on the graphic design.
The book cover that Bernhard posted as a comparison also seems weak to me. The original stuff was more powerful I think, not that I’m really one to judge.
Contrast these to the circular blue and white UN logo, with leaves around the globe, or for that matter heraldry that says something about the country or mission such as sheaves of wheat, ocean waves, lions rampant.
The USAF logo has only a five-pointed star and stylized wings. The pentagram has been its symbol on airplanes for decades … I always preferred the UK’s concentric circle target logo myself.
And none of these are a patch on the spray-painted graphics of the NYC art collective Guerrilla Girls, Lincoln Clarkes’ continent-wide alley wall tags of broken M16s or the ubiquitous upraised fist.
Or even the four syncopated black bars of the Black Flag logo.

Posted by: jonku | Mar 14 2008 8:22 utc | 20

“If you werent born here, you don’t belong here.”
So true.

Posted by: beq | Mar 14 2008 11:37 utc | 22

What does “Above All” mean?
“What brings me here,” Yanar says, “it is that everybody that I love, all the people that I love have been crushed.”

Posted by: citizen | Mar 14 2008 16:52 utc | 24

Alert: much boring detail. (I was compelled to look this up.)
On the US air force *recruiting site*, the emblem hovers above an earth globe, of which about an upper third is shown, featuring the US. The text below says: In a changing world, it takes Air Force dominance of air, space and cyber space to defend our nation. This is explained in vid: …the globe spins, and the first spoken sentence is “the cold war has given way to the cyber war”…link
The official US air force site shows the logo in abbreviated form at right. The Academy, not at all, and the Headquarters of US air force shows the airforce SEAL prominently at left, and only the shape of the ‘new’ logo at right (without text.) The air force reserves show only the shape, at left, with ‘air force reserves’ next to it. (No seal to my surprise.) Ambivalence, resistance?
— One thing to understand is that in such emblems /symbols what is to the right side for the viewer is ‘sinister’ and what is to the left is ‘dexter’ – the emblem is traditionally constructed from the pov. of the wearer, with the symbol on the breast. This one is symmetrical so avoids all that, certainly deliberately, but the websites introduce it again, confusedly, or unintentionally, or following other conventions…
This symbol is a trademark, a registered one, see here for variants,
link– but just for the shape and not the text.
Other text is however forbidden, for those permitted to use the icon. (Compare with traditional seals, emblems, flags where text and other material are one.)
It’s iconic symbolism is a confused mish-mash. The intention is laid out by the airforce. Wings, traditional (see eagle); sphere (that is the globe earth); the 5 pointed star – turned into “our active duty, civilians, Guard, Reserve and retirees.”; and its star like quality, in space, dominating; the 3 diamonds represent ‘core values’ – integrity, service, excellence.
To sum up, the visual or iconic aspects are muted, weak, clumsy, meaningless today – the airforce intentions are not visible, only the wings, hardly glorious ones, and possibly a ‘star’ or a ‘5 pointed star’ will be perceived; the colors are traditional and not set – it can appear in black, etc.
Overall, it resembles, in its planning, its graphics, its branding, its flexible rendition, its lack of icon/text relation, a very poor corporate logo. The kind designed by an overpaid in-house committee.
The semantic component. The AF’s Above is explicilty related to space, or spatial dimensions (in the sky, above the earth, wide / distant / global view-point) and control, action, domination from that position. The references are material, direct, pragmatic. It bears no or few traces of nationalism, of ideology, politics. In short, it is a PNAC logo, yet constructed to be acceptable to all.
see also: af mil heraldry

Posted by: Tangerine | Mar 17 2008 13:13 utc | 26