A century of incompetence, corruption, and conflict creation

In a must-see interview on C-Span, Pierre Sprey ([Corrected 12/3/11) father co-developer under the guidance of John Boyd of the A-10 and F-16 aircraft) interviews William Hartung on Hartung’s book about Lockheed Martin, Prophets of War. Hartung lays out how the defense industry has corrupted Washington and other governments, and is now reaching into spying on Americans and other dubious enterprises. Sprey adds comments about how Lockheed Martin helped to start the Cold War and Korean War, and is currently stoking tensions with Russia in a bid to increase sales of defense hardware.

In the run-up to World War II, Lockheed Martin violated the Neutrality Act, selling (ineffectual) bombers to Britain, as well as offering to sell to Germany and Japan. In the modern era, they were a force behind the Project for a New American Century and the Iraq invasion.

Watch here (Thanks, PW!)

DDOSlinquents

Lance Whitney, CNET:

Hackers are increasingly hitting the Web sites of human rights and independent media groups in an attempt to silence them, says a new study released this week by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Based on a survey of 45 groups, the report “Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Against Independent Media and Human Rights Sites” found that a large percentage said they’ve been targeted by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks from those who disagree with their viewpoints. The Web sites typically have been knocked offline for short periods of time but in some cases have been down for days….

One example cited in the Berkman Center’s study was that of Russian independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta. …Though Sokolov can’t be sure who’s behind the attacks, he believes the culprits are government-sponsored “Kremlin Youth” organizations.

And that’s presumably who was hitting Wikileaks. The American chapter of Kremlin Youth, otherwise known as Republicans.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year

from all of us at Mercury Rising!

May your green shoots turn out to be flourishing cultivars!