Free Republic

By now you know President Obama announced yesterday he will unilaterally normalize the relationship between Cuba and the United States. Back in 2008, Obama said he would talk and negotiate with Iran and now, sources tell the Los Angeles Times that the president attempted to start talks with North Korea and failed last year. A White House official made two secret visits to North Korea last year in an unsuccessful effort to improve relations after new ruler Kim Jong Un assumed power, according to former U.S. officials familiar with the trips. The former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of...

George Clooney: Kim Jong-un can’t tell me what to watch By Derrick Bryson Taylor George Clooney won’t be told what to watch, especially by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. “Sony didn’t pull [The Interview] because they were scared,” the 53-year-old actor told Deadline. “They pulled the movie because of all the theaters said they were not going to run it. And they said they were not going to run it because they talked to their lawyers and those lawyers said, if somebody dies in one of these, then you’re going to be responsible.” Clooney also shared that he had been...

Cate Blanchett's Oscar-winning role in Blue Jasmine "nothing close to the degree of difficulty" of any of the male nominees, says "The Social Network" screenwriter Female leading Hollywood film roles are "nothing close to the degree of difficulty" of male roles, one of America's leading screenwriters has said, in the latest set of leaked emails published by the "Guardians of Peace" hacker group. Aaron Sorkin, writer of The Social Network and Moneyball, singled out Cate Blanchett's 2014 Best Actress Oscar-winning performance in Blue Jasmine as significantly easier than the performances by the five male nominees that same year. “Year in...

I’m glad he spoke up, not only because he’s right, not only because a little public shaming from an A-lister might get others to rethink, but because that tribute to Hollywood’s bravery that he gave a few years ago at the Oscars would have looked even more embarrassing in hindsight if he’d kept quiet about this.Nothing fancy about the logic of his petition: “We know that to give in to these criminals now will open the door for any group that would threaten freedom of expression, privacy and personal liberty. We hope these hackers are brought to justice but...

The hackers behind a devastating cyberattack at Sony Pictures have sent a new message to executives at the company, crediting them for a "very wise" decision to cancel the Christmas day release of "The Interview," a source close to the company told CNN. The email message was received by Sony's top executives on Thursday night and was obtained by CNN. The source said that the company believes the email was from the hackers because it followed a pattern of previous messages, sent to a list of particular executives and formatted in a particular way. A Sony spokesman declined to comment.

Sony executive at the heart of the leaked emails met with the civil rights activist to discuss battling an ‘exclusionary, almost all-white hierarchy’ in Hollywood.Amy Pascal, the embattled executive whose personal emails were exposed by the hack on Sony Pictures, has met with civil rights advocate Al Sharpton to discuss white bias in Hollywood. The meeting was prompted by leaked emails from Pascal to producer Scott Rudin, in which the pair joke about Barack Obama’s likely taste in films. “Would he like to finance some movies?” Rudin asked, ahead of Pascal meeting the president. “I doubt it. Should I ask...

The FBI said Friday that North Korea is responsible for the cyberattack on Sony Pictures that led the studio to cancel the release of a movie. Confirming what government officials were saying privately for days, the FBI announced that is months-long investigation concluded that North Korea was behind the attack, based on technical similarities to previous attacks. A statement from the FBI said investigators found “significant overlap in the infrastructure” used in the Sony hacking and in previous attacks. The agency said there were also similarities in technological tools used in this attack and an a cyberattack in March 2013...

Today, the FBI would like to provide an update on the status of our investigation into the cyber attack targeting Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE). In late November, SPE confirmed that it was the victim of a cyber attack that destroyed systems and stole large quantities of personal and commercial data. A group calling itself the “Guardians of Peace” claimed responsibility for the attack and subsequently issued threats against SPE, its employees, and theaters that distribute its movies. The FBI has determined that the intrusion into SPE’s network consisted of the deployment of destructive malware and the theft of proprietary information...

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The Daily Beast has unearthed several emails that reveal at least two U.S. government officials screened a rough cut of the Kim Jong-Un assassination comedy The Interview in late June and gave the film—including a final scene that sees the dictator’s head explode—their blessing. The claim that the State Department played an active role in the decision to include the film’s gruesome death scene is likely to cause fury in Pyongyang. Emails between the Sony Entertainment CEO and a security consultant even appear to suggest the U.S. government may support the notion that The Interview would be useful propaganda against...

#BREAKING New message to @Sony top execs from hackers: "very wise" decision to scrap movie from theaters via @CNN @brianstelter #SonyHack

Newt Gingrich Interview: Sony Hack Is An Act Of War

National Review's editorial board, Mitt Romney, and other Republicans seem to be MORE willing to stand for freedom of speech than the Obama administration. Getting pushed around by third world tin pot dictators is modus operandi for Demon Rats.

By gum, he sounds like presidential material to me. Your move, Jeb. .@SonyPictures don’t cave, fight: release @TheInterview free online globally. Ask viewers for voluntary $5 contribution to fight #Ebola.— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) December 18, 2014 More than 13,000 retweets as I write this. Clearly there’s a demand for countermeasures among an American public that doesn’t like the idea of foreigners, especially savages like the Kim cabal, holding veto power over their culture. (Too bad China, Kim’s chief patron, already sort of does.) Am I right, though, in thinking that no major Republican pol aside from Romney has said anything...

Cyberwar: Like a bomb detonating in slow motion, the scale and destructiveness of the Sony hack has only now become fully apparent. Telling Americans to go to the movies doesn't cut it as a government response. At first, it seemed as if Sony was the latest victim of hackers who delight in stealing confidential information and sending it along to WikiLeaks. The hackers called themselves "Guardians of Peace" and claimed, "We want equality. Sony doesn't." Sony initially labeled the event as "an IT matter." For a while, the hack seemed to threaten only the reputations of some Hollywood big shots,...

Fans of Seth Rogen and James Franco are going to have a harder time seeing the guys' latest funny film, The Interview, as several movie theaters are refusing to play the movie. The Thursday premiere of The Interview at New York City's Landmark Theater was canceled after threats alluding to attacks of 9/11 were made by hackers responsible for the leaks of private Sony documents. Rogen and Franco's new comedy is about two journalists who set out to assassinate the North Korean president, and since the recent promotion of the movie, Sony Pictures has faced tremendous pressure to pull the...

Sony hacks: Sorkin says media are 'morally treasonous' By Anthony Zurcher Editor, Echo Chambers The messages read like something from a bad Hollywood film about Hollywood. The misbehaviour of egotistical studio executives, petulant stars and dictatorial directors seem almost too cliched to be true. But, apparently, they are. Major media outlets have been sifting through the voluminous trove of Sony Pictures emails made public by an anonymous group of hackers known as the Guardians of Peace for more than a week, picking out the particularly salacious details. The resulting stories have provided a candid look at the sometimes ugly, sometimes...