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Hollywood star George Clooney said fellow celebrities and industry figures did not want to sign a petition supporting 'The Interview' film featuring the assassination of Kim Jong-un as they were afraid of the consequences. Clooney said he wanted to see the film released on-line to undermine the threats of the hacking gang, who are believed to be supported by North Korean agents. Sony's computer systems were breached following a major hacking attack last month, which saw highly confidential material released as well as a string of embarrassing emails.

Without North Korea, Hollywood Is Running Out of Politically Correct Villains by Ben Shapiro 18 Dec 2014 With Sony’s decision to pull the Seth Rogen/James Franco starrer The Interview from circulation following a brutal hack attack by the North Korean regime, Hollywood finds its list of acceptable villains growing shorter and shorter. Not only did Sony pull The Interview thanks to intimidation at the hands of Kim Jung Un – the film was about reporters trying to kill the evil dictator – they also pulled a slated Steve Carrell movie, Pyongyang, about the regime.

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,...

Diplomacy: As the Castros rejoice at President Obama's move to normalize ties, extend trade credits, take their country off the terror list and free its deadly spies, the queasy question remains: What did the U.S. get in return? The question is being asked by the more serious leaders in Washington. Marco Rubio for one. "(Obama's) foreign policy is, at a minimum, naive and perhaps truly counterproductive to the future of democracy in the region," said the Florida senator in the wake of the giveaway. "Barack Obama is the worst negotiator that we've had as president since at least Jimmy Carter,...

Fresh off his 2012 re-election victory, President Barack Obama summoned senior advisers to a series of meetings, asking them to “think big” about a second-term agenda, including the possibilities of new starts with long-standing U.S. foes such as Iran and Cuba. Two years later, after painstaking secret diplomacy on separate but surprisingly similar tracks, efforts with Tehran and Havana are in full swing. The nuclear negotiations with Iran continue and are far from a guaranteed success. But Wednesday’s announcement that the U.S. and Cuba will normalize relations after more than 50 years of hostility suggests one of the last chapters...

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, today released the following statement regarding the President’s announcement to change U.S. policy with Cuba and lift economic embargos. “We rejoice that Alan Gross’ wrongful imprisonment by the brutal Castro regime has finally come to an end, and that he will be able to spend the holidays with his loved ones. But make no mistake, although we are glad Alan is now free, the agreement the Obama Administration has entered into with the Castro regime has done nothing to resolve the underlying problem. Indeed, it has made it worse. “Fidel and Raul...

A Sony employee has described the company as being “stuck in 1992″ following the massive hacks, with employees desperately trying to avoid using any technology that could be compromised, reports TechCrunch. There has, though, been one exception to the ban on modern technology: Apple kit. “People using Macs were fine,” she said. She said most work is done on iPads and iPhones. Sony may need to buy a few extra Macs, with some departments having only one or two computers for the entire office. It is, she said, like “living in an office from ten years ago.”

As Newt Gingrich noted yesterday, the surrender by Sony Pictures to a shadowy group of North Korean hackers has set a chilling precedent... just wait 'til they grab hold of one of our nuclear plants(like the Israelis already did  to Iran)... BIG defeat for the US and Japan here, and a terrifying incident, to be sure (that's why they call it 'terrorism')- so now this little tinpot-nothing-of-a-country has substantial unchecked power/influence right inside the United States of America? Can you imagine Ronald Reagan/Cap Weinberger letting this go down without KJU being made to seriously regret it? Of course, Obama...

Five commando units trained for strikes, sabotage North Korea dispatched covert commando teams to the United States in the 1990s to attack nuclear power plants and major cities in a conflict, according to a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report. The DIA report, dated Sept. 13, 2004, reveals that five units of covert commandos were trained for the attacks inside the country. According to the report, the “Reconnaissance Bureau, North Korea, had agents in place to attack American nuclear power plants.” The document states that the North Korean Ministry of People’s Armed Forces, the ministry in charge of the military, “established...

This is of course about the upcoming movie "The Interview." My wife and I saw this preview the day before it got pulled, and it's a shame because it looks like it's REALLY funny!Also, the reaction across the political spectrum has been unified in a way we rarely see.

HOLLYWOOD (KCNA) — The Revolutionary Artists Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scientists are happy to announce that His Excellency Kim Jong-un will host the 87th annual Academy Awards. This will be the first time a supreme leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has led the ceremony, but it most certainly will not be the last. “All peoples celebrate Dear Leader’s most humble decision to host the Oscars,” said Sony Pictures Chairman and CEO Michael Lynton. “We have witnessed his strength and honor from afar and welcome the divine opportunity to explode our love in...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay, what do you want to start with? You want to start with Cuba? Or you want to start with the Sony/North Korea hack? You want to start with showbiz first? All right. Because you know they're linked. They are intertwined. I'll be happy to explain it. I just hope -- well, let me just say at the beginning, my purpose here is not to dispirit anybody. It's quite the opposite in fact. I'm not trying to depress anybody with the take that I'm gonna have on this today. I'm trying actually to wake people up. Not...

U.S. government officials are preparing to publicly blame North Korea for the Sony Pictures hack -- but haven't yet decided how to respond to the attack. The White House and other agencies are holding a series of high-level meetings to discuss the United States' range of options, a senior official in President Barack Obama's administration said. "We do think it's appropriate to respond," the official said. Those options could include new sanctions against North Korea, another source said. White House press secretary Josh Earnest wouldn't confirm that the Obama administration has pinned the hack on North Korea, saying it's still...

Oh, the irony. After Sony cancelled the release of The Interview, a few theaters declared that they would show the 2004 hit Team America: World Police in its place as a protest against threats to free expression. That film also derided the government of North Korea, as well as the liberal Hollywood establishment that catered to anti-American despots in what was a prescient (if irreverent and very R-rated) satire.As if to emphasize the latter critique, two cinemas have announced that Paramount Pictures has forbidden them to show the film publicly: At least two movie theaters say Paramount Pictures has...

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...

Sony’s capitulation in the face of threats by unidentified sources, who are presumed to support the odious Kim dynasty, serves to confirm what most of us have known for some time. Namely, the extent of allowable political discourse in popular culture is inextricably linked to the willingness of the objects of political criticism to violently suppress that criticism. Or, at the very least, intimate the unpleasant nature of the response in store for those willing to offer a dissenting voice. An interview the iconic Indo-British author and apostate Salman Rushdie did with Irshad Manji several years ago is worth watching...

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.

Yesterday, moments before the North Korea "hacking" tragicomedy escalated into full retard mode with Sony pulling The Interview, or a movie that absent the attention would certainly be a flop, Wired released an article titled: "North Korea Almost Certainly Did Not Hack Sony" (title subsequently changed to the one below as can be seen in the URL alias "http://www.wired.com/2014/12/north-korea-did-not-hack-sony-probs"), which however, and for the better, retains its content as it is quite critical in debunking the latest government "certainty."

"Sometimes, you just need Texas," writes Mary Katherine Ham. How right she is. A brave response to Sony's cave to whoever was threatening to attack theaters that showed 'The Interview." Another film that shows a North Korean leader being killed by Americans, "Team America: World Police," will be screened by the Alamo Drafthouse on December 27. Talking to the Hollywood Reporter, the creative manager and programmer at the Alamo Drafthouse Dallas/Fort Worth location, James Wallace, said ”We’re just trying to make the best of an unfortunate situation.” For someone who may not understand the connection here, Team America: World Police is Trey...

Seth Rogen and James Franco give every indication of being in life something very much like the loveable dopes they play in the movies, and that they should be central figures in a matter of international importance is unlikely indeed. But that is nonetheless where we find ourselves: Hackers working on behalf of the regime of Kim Jong-un, the third-generation dictator of North Korea, stole a trove of documents from Sony Pictures and released them to the public to punish the entertainment concern for commissioning The Interview, a Rogen-Franco comedy in which a celebrity journalist secures an interview with Kim...