Although the New York Times chose to relegate the story to a whimsical observation embedded in a Super Bowl article, there is currently a small tempest in congress over the removal of the word "God" from an Air Force emblem. As the net version of the U.K.'s Daily Mail reported the story:The U.S. Air Force has provoked outrage by removing a Latin reference to God on one of its logos after complaints from a military atheist group. The Rapid Capabilities Office patch included a motto until several weeks ago in Latin saying: ‘Doing God’s Work with Other People’s Money’. But this was altered to ‘Doing Miracles with Other People’s Money’ after the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers kicked up a fuss.
Mr. Forbes claimed the removal of the reference suggests the Air Force believes the word ‘God’ cannot be used in the force at all. ‘The RCO’s action to modify the logo sets a dangerous precedent that all references to God (must) be removed from the military,’ he wrote. Mr Forbes believes the change to ‘Miraculi Cum Pecunia Alienum Efficemus’ is not required to abide with the First Amendment. The RCO was created nine years ago to speed up weapon systems and reports to a board of directors including top Air Force officials. Mr Forbes tried to reaffirm ‘In God We Trust’ as the U.S. motto in a bill last November, but Barack Obama was unimpressed, reported The Hill. ‘I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work,’ President Obama said, reported ABC News.
Now anyone who knows the U.S. air force's "philosophy" on God's role in its mandate will not be all that surprised by the appearance of "opus dei" on one of its emblems. A few years back the Air Force Academy in Boulder was the victim of an expose which revealed that non-Christian cadets were subjected to outright coercion should they have the misfortune of being discovered to be Jewish or atheist or--God Knows--Muslim. Non-Christian students confided that their lives became hell. It is easy to imagine officers at the academy resembling the General Jack D. Ripper character in Dr. Strangelove. And let me further disabuse any reader who may be so innocent as to believe that the emblem in question is an aberration that somehow fell through the cracks. In doing research on the phrase, I came upon an often frightening piece published by Ralph Nader titled, "I COULD TELL YOU BUT THEN YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE DESTROYED BY ME -- EMBLEMS FROM THE PENTAGON'S BLACK WORLD" written by Trevor Paglin. A look at the web site will reward the visitor will numerous other examples of the obvious pride taken by various special ops types in having access to the dark world that is beyond the ken of such innocent rubes as most of us hapless Americans.
Nevertheless, the world is full of suprises. Not least of which is that there is something called the "Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers." One can't help but wonder how many members that organization has. (Another web site worth visiting for its long list of other violations of free speech and thought within the military [militaryatheists.org.]. The Air Force academy is no anomaly.) But, frankly, most surprising of all is the fact that what was found most objectionable in the Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office's motto was its allusion to God. No mention is made in any of the--admittedly sparce--coverage of the story that addresses the remainder of the phrase, namely, "other people's money." Although it is not entirely clear what the authors of the motto had in mind, it seems to treat the--once again--feckless and naive taxpayers as "other people." There seems to exist in this nation the military ubermenschen, the 1% whose interests they protect, and then the rest of us slobs who pay for the one percent's protection.
This is a division of labor and class structure that transcends even the world William Golding created in the novel Lord of the Flies in which a group of choir boys survive a plane crash only to revert to savagery on a deserted island. For those of us trying to understand the New World Order, no Illuminati or Bilderberg conspiracy need be considered, our new world has brought us back to a tiny, fabulously rich aristocracy living in chateaus protected by good Christian knights and their neo-con squires. And it is all being played out in the open, right before our eyes. I am now designing an emblem for the rest of us. Its motto? Deus nobis!
