See: Boston Globe World January 3 2015
I didn't see these next two items there, did you?
"US announces more sanctions on N. Korea" by David E. Sanger and Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times January 02, 2015
HONOLULU — The Obama administration doubled down Friday on its allegation that North Korea’s leadership was behind the hacking of Sony Pictures, announcing new, if largely symbolic, economic sanctions against 10 senior North Korean officials and the intelligence agency that it said was the source of “many of North Korea’s major cyberoperations.’’
See: It Wasn't North Korea Or Russia: Sony Hack "Perpetrator" Said To Be Laid-Off, Disgruntled Employee
North Korea was NOT behind the Sony hack according to multiple security experts who discredit FBI findings and reveal that a studio insider named 'Lena' may be responsible
What? The U.S. government caught lying again?
The actions were based on an executive order President Obama signed on vacation in Hawaii as part of what he had promised would be a “proportional response” against the country.
But in briefings for reporters, officials said they could not establish that any of the 10 officials had been directly involved in the destruction of much of the studio’s computing infrastructure.
Meaning they have NO EVIDENCE and ONCE AGAIN, the American people are being LIED TO by this GODDAMN GOVERNMENT!
In fact, most seemed linked to the North’s missile and weapons sales. Two are senior North Korean representatives in Iran, a major buyer of North Korean military technology, and five others are representatives in Syria, Russia, China, and Namibia.
Oh, so the Sony hack was an excuse to do this!!!!
And how did Namibia make it in there?
The sanctions were a public part of the response to the cyberattack on Sony, which was targeted as it prepared to release “The Interview,” a crude comedy about a CIA plot to kill Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader.
What was the covert, 'er, private response? A "revenge" hack?
Then it is an act of war, isn't it?
The administration has said there would be a covert element of its response, as well. Officials sidestepped questions about whether the United States was involved in bringing down North Korea’s Internet connectivity to the outside world over the past two weeks.
That's an admission.
Perhaps the most noticeable element of the announcement was the administration’s effort to push back on the growing chorus of doubters about the evidence that the attack on Sony was North Korean in origin.
Oh, this is all a PUBLIC RELATIONS DAMAGE CONTROL CAMPAIGN because the whole world knows this administration is full of incorrigible liars!!!!!
Several cybersecurity firms have argued that when Obama took the unusual step of naming the North’s leadership on Dec. 19, the president had been misled by US intelligence agencies who were too eager to blame a longtime adversary and allowed themselves to be duped by ingenious hackers skilled at hiding their tracks.
Oh, no, NOT AGAIN!!!
Yeah, that limited hangout will work just fine! The intelligence agencies were duped.
Then why are they getting so much f***ing money when they are nothing but a failure?
But Obama’s critics do not have a consistent explanation of who might have been culpable.
Well, WE DO NOT HAVE TO! What we do know is NORTH KOREA didn't do it, and THIS GOVERNMENT LIES!!!!!! It (and its mouthpiece media) LIES RIGHT TO YOUR FACE!!!!!!
Some blame corporate insiders or an angry former employee, a theory Sony Pictures’ top executive, Michael Lynton, has denied.
Oh, the truth is now just a theory. That must mean conspiracies are fact!
Others say it was the work of outside hacking groups that were simply using the release of “The Interview” as cover for their actions.
Some say this, some say that, and some just shovel shit.
Both the FBI and Obama’s aides used the sanctions announcement to argue that the critics of the administration’s decision to attribute the attack to North Korea have no access to the classified evidence that led the intelligence agencies, and Obama, to their conclusion.
PFFFFFFFFFT!
“We remain very confident in the attribution,’’ a senior administration official who has been at the center of the Sony case told reporters in a briefing that, under guidelines set by the White House, barred the use of the briefer’s name.
Very confident? Not certain?
Still, the administration is stung by the comparisons to the George W. Bush administration’s reliance on faulty intelligence assessments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 US-led invasion of the country.
They were not faulty, they were flat-out f***ing lies!!!
Who wrote this pos anyway?
Oh, it is the New York Times. That explains everything (now working for Fox).
They note how rare it is for Obama, usually cautious on intelligence issues, to blame a specific country so directly. But they continue to insist that they cannot explain the basis of the president’s declaration without revealing some of the most sensitive sources and technologies at their disposal.
PFFFFFFFFFT!
By naming 10 individuals at the center of the North’s effort to sell or obtain weapons technology, the administration seemed to be trying to echo sanctions that the Bush administration imposed eight years ago against a Macao bank that the North Korean leadership used to buy goods illicitly and to reward loyalists.
After eight years that is the change we have gotten!
I can't believe I'm saying it, but it's all been for the worse.
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Also see:
"Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader, in his New Year speech, flagged the potential for a meeting with South Korean President Park Geun Hye, even as relations remain chilled by his pursuit of a nuclear arsenal. The two have not held any prior summit.
The U.S. will snuff out that peace talk soon enough.
“There is no reason why the highest-level talks cannot be held, depending on the mood and environment,” Kim said in the speech broadcast yesterday on the Internet. “If South Korea truly wants talks and improvement in relations, the suspended high-level contact can resume and talks on specific matters can also be held.”
They need to ask the U.S. first.
Kim’s comments are his first public response to Park saying last year she is open to a meeting with North Korea’s leader.
The two countries haven’t held a summit since 2007, when then-South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun met his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Il.
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I did catch this on the back page of my B-section today:
"Activist to drop 100,000 copies of ‘The Interview’ on North Korea by balloon" by Martina Stewart, The Washington Post News Service January 04, 2015
International tensions over ‘‘The Interview’’ may not be dying down just yet.
Who wants to keep them up?
A South Korean activist has dreamed up a way to deliver the Seth Rogen/James Franco comedy about an assassination plot against the leader of North Korea directly to the isolated country.
Activist Park Sang Hak said he will use balloons to start dropping 100,000 DVDs and thumb drives containing the movie over North Korea as early as January, the Associated Press reported. The balloon airdrops will be done clandestinely, Park said, with the pace picking up in March, when he expects wind direction to be more favorable.
Looks like a provocation to me.
‘‘North Korea’s absolute leadership will crumble if the idolization of leader Kim [Jong Un] breaks down,’’ Park told the Associated Press.
Isn't that what Goebbels told Hitler when FDR died?
To accomplish the cinematic airdrop, Park is partnering with US nonprofit the Human Rights Foundation, an ‘‘organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies,’’ according to its website.
Seriously? After the Senate torture report?
Nonprofit, you say?
Did you know "nonprofits provide new ways for corporations and individuals to influence (as if they didn't have enough already)?"
So what is the HRF doing in Korea, huh?
The nonprofit recently launched #HackThemBack, an education campaign that invites people to help North Korean defectors ‘‘break the monopoly of information that the Kim regime imposes.’’ On a crowdfunding website, the #HackThemBack campaign seeks $250,000 in donations to support the work of the defectors.
Oh, look, a CASH GRAB!!
Related: Sour Grapes
Talk about a monopoly.
‘‘Your donation will allow us to get vital information to the North Korean people so they can begin to choose for themselves the kind of world in which they want to live,’’ according to the site. ‘‘There is no dungeon deep enough to hide the truth and no wall high enough to stop the message of freedom. Fortunately, tyranny cannot control the winds.’’
I'll bet this pathetic propaganda is worse than the movie.
‘‘The Interview’’ has been at the heart of increasing tensions between the United States and North Korea. The computer systems of Sony Pictures were hacked in a cyberattack that appeared to be motivated by animosity toward the film. After the FBI blamed North Korea, North Korea denied responsibility. Then, Internet access in North Korea went down — and the dictatorial regime of Kim blamed the United States for what appeared to be a counterattack in retaliation for the attack against Sony. However, it is not clear whether the US government or independent hackers was behind recent problems with the Internet in North Korea.
That's the new$papers job right there: obfuscation.
The regime, which is no fan of a film about a plot to assassinate its leader, has taken issue with ‘‘The Interview’’ — and with recent comments by President Obama about Sony’s initial decision not to distribute the film after threats against US theaters that planned to screen the comedy.
In his year-end news conference, the president called Sony’s initial decision a ‘‘mistake.’’
‘‘We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States,’’ Obama said. ‘‘Because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don’t like or news reports that they don’t like.’’
Then I should stop buying the newspaper.
After Obama’s criticism, Sony changed course and, in a move that angered North Korea, gave the controversial film wide release online and limited release at some independent theaters.
Proving this was nothing but a big hype job by the studio, government, and media -- like pretty much everything in their pos paper.
In a recent statement, North Korea’s ruling body, the National Defense Commission, said Obama was ‘‘the chief culprit’’ for the movie’s release.
‘‘Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest,’’ an unnamed spokesman for the commission said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
See: North Korean Name-Calling
That's their response, and only that, to the trash film.
It is unclear how successful the efforts of Park and the Human Rights Foundation will be, however, in bringing ‘‘The Interview’’ directly to North Koreans. Many in the country may not have access to a computer, but access to televisions and DVD players is believed to be more widespread.
At least the Canadians won't have to go to the theater now.
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Related: Inside the Sony Hack Inside Job: Now They’re Airdropping ‘The Interview’ over North Korea
Also see:
Terrorists to Attack AmeriKan Movie Theaters
Sony Hack is Serious National Security Issue
Canceling My Christmas Shopping Trip
New War With North Korea
Christmas Eve Interview With the President
Timely Christmas Card
Globe Video Game Hacked
No big deal there, huh?
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
"N. Korea blasts new US sanctions" by Choe Sang-Hun, New York Times January 05, 2015
SEOUL — In announcing the new sanctions, President Obama also warned Pyongyang that the United States was considering whether to put North Korea back on its list of state sponsors of terrorism, which could jeopardize aid to the country on a global scale.
When are they going to put themselves on it, being the biggest terror network out there?
American officials portrayed the sanctions as a swift, decisive response to North Korean behavior that they said had gone far over the line. Never before has the US imposed sanctions on another nation in direct retaliation for a cyberattack on an American company.
There have been doubts in the high-tech field, however, about the extent of North Korea’s involvement.
What?
Many analysts have said it’s possible that hackers or even Sony insiders could be the culprits, and questioned how the FBI can point the finger so conclusively.
Yeah, but DON'T BOTHER WITH THAT!
Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the sanctions were “a good first step” but didn’t go far enough.
Menendez said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that he had urged Secretary of State John F. Kerry to consider putting North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, “which would have far more pervasive consequences.”
He ought to know all about that, and his involvement with underage girls seems to be a characteristic of the elite and powerful!
See: TONY BLAIR LINKED TO TEEN SEX SLAVE STORY
Or don't see it, because it's sick in the truest $en$e of the word.
And how about this mind-f*** for the kids:
UK Teachers to Tattle on Toddlers at Risk for Becoming Terrorists
One wonders what long ago leadership would say when faced with such monsters (isn't that the guy who advocated the use of poison gas against Iraqis and other "uncivilized" people?).
In its statement Sunday, North Korea noted that many cybersecurity experts had expressed skepticism about Washington’s evidence that the country was responsible for the cyberattack.
It's not just them. Given the atrocious track record of this government and its seemingly limitless lying, it's the whole world. We dumb-dumbs reading the pre$$ won't be told.
Dismissing such doubts, Washington on Friday announced sanctions....
They can't climb down now without losing face so it is stick to the lie.
I thought when Bush left we had gone beyond this. Silly me.
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At least I was right about one thing:
"‘The Hobbit’ wins its third consecutive week at box office" by Jake Coyle, Associated Press January 05, 2015
NEW YORK — Hollywood kicked off the new year on a positive note, with three films vying closely for the weekend box-office title that nevertheless remained with ‘‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’’ for the third straight week.
Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth finale took in $21.9 million for Warner Bros. in North American theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday, narrowly edging out the Disney musical ‘‘Into the Woods’’ ($19.1 million) and Angelina Jolie’s World War II tale ‘‘Unbroken’’ ($18.4 million) from
Universal.
If you check my link I was pretty much $pot on!
The weekend’s lone new wide-release, the Relativity Media horror sequel ‘‘The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death,’’ landed in fourth place with $15.1 million.
The first weekend of 2015 gave Hollywood the chance to begin turning the page on a rough 2014 in which box-office revenue slid 5 percent and attendance dropped to its lowest level in nearly 20 years. With a closely contested weekend at the multiplexes, overall business was strong, up 5.5 percent from the same weekend last year, according to box-office firm Rentrak.
In its second week of limited release, Sony Pictures’ ‘‘The Interview’’ earned an estimated $1.1 million theatrically. A representative for Sony said digital figures likely wouldn’t be announced Sunday.
In its first four days of online streaming and sale, the comedy made $15 million, Sony said last week. Since then, the film has expanded to video-on-demand via cable operators and on more digital platforms like Apple’s iTunes.
Several Oscar contenders began to attract larger numbers of moviegoers, as Hollywood’s awards season picks up stream. The Golden Globes are Sunday, Jan. 11.
Playing at 754 theaters, ‘‘The Imitation Game,’’ the Weinstein Co.’s code-breaker thriller about World War II hero Alan Turing took in $8.1 million in its sixth week. (By comparison, ‘‘The Hobbit’’ played at more than 3,800 theaters.) The Reese Witherspoon drama ‘‘Wild’’ also added $4.5 million for a five-week $25.8 million total for Fox Searchlight.
You know, first "Unbroken" and now this. So many other things have happened in over 70-plus years, and yet Hollywood gives us a steady diet of WWII, war in general, and cop action flicks.... hey, maybe that's part of the problem(?).
Opening in limited release at four locations, J.C. Chandor’s New York thriller ‘‘A Most Violent Year’’ debuted with a theater average of $47,000. The acclaimed A24 release, starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, will soon expand.
Demand, though, was strongest for ‘‘American Sniper,’’ Clint Eastwood’s drama about Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper). In its second week playing in just four theaters, ‘‘American Sniper’’ attracted a remarkable $160,000 per-screen-average. The film opens wide on Jan. 16.
Yeah, I've seen the ads, and the first thing I thought was the guy wouldn't be on a cellphone talking to his wife in the middle of an operation.
Putting that aside, the whole campaign troubles me because "our snipers" are heroes, "their snipers" bad!
Of course, "their snipers are our snipers," so that settles that.
Estimated ticket sales are for Friday through Sunday at US and Canadian theaters, according to Rentrak. Where available, the latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
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UPDATE (see if my calculations and formula are correct):
"After three weeks atop the box office, ‘‘The Hobbit’’ has been taken down as it slid to fourth place with $9.4 million."
