Tag Archives: Kim Jong Un

International news

North Korea to attack U.S.? With what?

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un has issued a direct threat to President Barack Obama.

His country will attack the United States if the president retaliates with a cyber counterattack as payback for the hacking of Internet systems at Sony Pictures.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/21/north-korea-threatens-us_n_6362608.html?ir=Politics&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

So he’s going to attack us, yes? With what, precisely?

Well, if there ever was an empty threat, I’m guessing this is one.

Kim isn’t going to see this bit of advice, but I’ll offer it anyway.

Do not talk like that, young man. You are playing a very dangerous game when you threaten the greatest military power in the history of Planet Earth. If by “attack” you mean another cyber raid on our computers, I shall remind you as well that our resources are far greater than yours and that you would rue the day you tried that tactic as well.

I don’t mean to dismiss Kim Jong-Un as a toothless tiger on the world stage. He does have nukes … allegedly. South Korea sits just on the other side of the 38th Parallel and that nation is a critical ally of this nation; indeed, we’ve got about 40,000 troops stationed there.

However, this tough-guy talk isn’t likely to stop President Obama from considering — and perhaps ordering — a “proportional” response to the havoc Kim reportedly brought to Sony computers over the company’s production of that movie depicting Kim’s attempted assassination.

 

 

entertainment news, national news

Rethinking this Sony film matter

Mea culpa time, kind of.

I’ve been getting beaten up over a blog I posted about whether Sony erred in making a comedy about an attempted assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. I said Sony Pictures’ biggest mistake was in making the film at all.

The chastening I’ve taken has forced me to reconsider what I wrote. Here it is:

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/12/19/sonys-bigger-mistake-was-in-making-film/

President Obama said this week that Sony “made a mistake” in pulling the film from its scheduled release. He said the filmmaker should not be intimidated by a two-bit dictator. Others have noted that the United States, the strongest nation on Earth, shouldn’t be cowed by a tinhorn despot.

My friends on the left and the right have slung barbs at me for suggesting that Kim Jong-Un had a legitimate beef with the filmmakers and the film, “The Interview,” which stars Seth Rogen and James Franco.

No one likes admitting they were mistaken, but I think I’m about to go there.

Maybe I got caught up in the heat of the moment and didn’t think through the implications — all of them — in suggesting Sony had messed up.

Perhaps if I were running Sony, I would have been reluctant to depict the killing of an actual sovereign leader. Here’s the thing, though: I am not running Sony. That was someone else’s call. They had the right to make that decision.

Kim Jong-Un, therefore, didn’t have the right to bully Sony into pulling back the release of its film.

There. I actually feel better now.

 

International news

How to respond to cyber attacks?

Let me stipulate that I love living in a relatively free and open society.

However, there are some things I don’t need to know.

I don’t need to know where we’ve deployed all our nuclear weapons and which nations are targeted by them. I don’t need to know where our spies are operating overseas.

And I don’t need to know how we’re going to respond to the cyber attack launched — admittedly — by North Korea in response to that film that depicts an attempt to kill Kim Jong-Un.

President Obama said today at a news conference that the United States is planning a “proportional” response to the cyber attack.

Fine.

Go ahead and plan away. I don’t need to know what we’re going to do to retaliate.

I do have confidence that our highly trained American cyber spooks are going to deliver some serious grief to the North Koreans when the time is right and when they’ve decided how to get back at them for what they did to us on this end.

Let’s face facts. North Korea is a half-starving Third World dictatorship that has squandered its money on a military machine at the expense of feeding its people or providing them with infrastructure. Its Internet technology is third- or maybe fourth-rate as well. Yet the reclusive Stalinist state has managed to hack into American businesses using some skill its cyber geeks have acquired.

How much damage can our geeks do to the North Koreans? Plenty.

I just don’t feel the need to know the nitty-gritty details of what they’re going to do.

 

entertainment news, International news

What was Sony thinking?

7 Comments

Time allows one to think things through and to cogitate a bit on the consequences of one’s action.

Perhaps the makers of the film “The Interview” could have thought just a little bit longer about the product that was supposed to be shown to American theater crowds.

I’ve been pondering the blowback from the film, the threats of Internet hackers striking back at the producers of the film — and at the public at large. My conclusion? I believe Sony Pictures should have known with whom it was dealing when it made a “comedy” about an attempt to assassinate the leader of North Korea.

My sympathy for Sony, the actors involved and those who thought they would make a lot of money from the film is waning — rapidly.

The film stars Seth Rogen and James Franco. It’s supposedly a comedy. The main characters are plotting to kill Kim Jong Un.

Let’s be real. The entire world knows about Kim Jong Un’s weirdness. The world knows he runs a country that gives hyper-secrecy a bad name. I mean, this place is reclusive beyond description. Kim’s antics — just as those of his late father, Kim Jong Il — are, to say the least, highly unpredictable.

Why couldn’t the makers of the film fictionalized the story? Why single out the leader of a nation — and a dangerous one at that — for this kind of “comic parody”? What would the reaction be in any country on Earth if someone made a film purporting to assassinate its leader?

My conclusion is that Sony should have expected a highly negative reaction from a country that hardly anyone knows with any certainty.

Terror threats in response to the film? Well, duh! Do you think?

 

entertainment news, International news

Terrorism goes online

Twenty-first century terrorism has entered a new phase.

It’s highly offensive and utterly mind-blowing. It comes in the form of threats to hack into people’s emails if they dare attend a movie — a movie, for crying out loud! — that portrays the North Korean goofball/dictator in a decidedly unflattering light.

This is what terrorism looks like in the Digital Age.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/17/media/the-interview-sony-theater-owners/index.html?hpt=hp_t2&hpt=hp_c2

The film in question is “The Interview.” It stars Seth Rogan and James Franco. Sony today cancelled the release of the film after major movie chains declined to show the film because of terrorist threats by computer hackers.

The film is about an attempted assassination of Kim Jong Un, the bizarre North Korean dictator who succeeded his equally bizarre father, Kim Jong Il. It’s a comedy. It’s meant to make people laugh. It’s meant to poke fun at the reclusive Marxist government that operates in the shadows on the Korean Peninsula.

So now some mysterious Internet terrorists are telling American movie-goers that they cannot watch the film. What do they fear? That someone is going to see the film and then become motivated to try to do what is portrayed on the screen? That the movie is going to produce an assassin bent on killing Kim Jong Un?

Sony already has been hit by hackers reportedly angry over the film.

All of this has me absolutely bumfuzzled.

 

 

Uncategorized

Try crossing this ‘red line’

It appears another nation has drawn a “red line” across which no one should dare cross.

President Obama drew one involving the use of chemical weapons by Syria; he threatened to respond militarily when the Syrians crossed the line, asked Congress for permission to act and then watched as the Russians intervened to work out a diplomatic solution.

Now come the Chinese regarding their neighbor North Korea. China’s foreign minister, Wang Wi, declared that the People’s Republic has drawn a red line as it regards war on the Korean peninsula.

http://news.msn.com/world/china-draws-red-line-on-north-korea-says-wont-allow-war-on-peninsula

The PRC will have none of it, Wang said.

What does it mean? Well, some observers — such as Secretary of State John Kerry — see it as a possible shot across North Korea’s bow, a warning to take down its nuclear weapons program.

If the PRC is as close to the loons in North Korea as it is believed, then the Chinese know that North Korean dictator/madman/lunatic Kim Jong Un is capable of just about any foolish act. That just might include striking South Korea militarily, crossing the red line that the North Koreans’ allies in Beijing said they must not cross.

The world knows that North Korea set such a precedent in 1950 when it invaded the south and started the Korean War, an intense and bloody conflict that killed more than 40,000 Americans in just three years. And oh yes: China sent in its troops, too, to aid the North Koreans.

Still, I am inclined to believe Wang Yi when he draws such a line.

Another war in Korea will have far more serious consequences for the entire world. If Kim Jong Un ignores the warning from the PRC, then he is crazier than the world thinks he is — and that’s really saying something.

Uncategorized

N. Korean leader redefines ‘hideous’

There is hideous conduct.

And then there is the kind of act being reported out of North Korea involving the late uncle of dictator Kim Jong Un.

If it’s true, then we have seen a new standard for barbarism.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/03/22156917-kim-jong-uns-executed-uncle-was-eaten-alive-by-120-hungry-dogs-report?lite

The report says the despot’s uncle was stripped naked and thrown into a cage where he was eaten by 120 starving dogs. That’s how the kid executed the husband of his aunt, reportedly for crimes against the state.

Jang Song Thaek had been taken into custody reportedly for plotting against Kim Jong Un. He was killed apparently days after his arrest. Reports didn’t confirm a trial of any consequence, merely a death sentence carried out with extreme dispatch.

U.S. officials haven’t confirmed the reports through any independent sources. However, NBC.com says the reports are coming from sources with close ties to China’s ruling communist party, which apparently is about the only friendly government left on the planet for North Korea.

To think we actually want to start talking to this animal.

I don’t want to jump to any conclusions until the world knows the facts — if they can be ascertained in that super-secret society.

This, however, falls into that category of despicable act that somehow shouldn’t totally surprise anyone.

Uncategorized

Is a Rodman defection on tap?

I am acutely aware that this is not an original thought, but I cannot prevent myself from weighing in.

Is Dennis Rodman ready to defect to North Korea?

He made a second trip there supposedly to seek the release of an American being held captive. He went there a few months ago and declared for all the world — or at least that part of the world where people actually care what he thinks — that North Korean dictator/weirdo Kim Jong Un had become his “friend.”

Well, with Rodman, one never knows what the term “friend” actually means. The pro basketball Hall of Famer flipped many years ago — about the time his coach at Detroit, Chuck Daly, retired from the game. Rodman couldn’t continue acting like a semi-normal human being without his mentor and friend to hold his hand.

So he died his hair many colors, got all tatted up with body ink and now has pierced just about every visible appendage on his body — and maybe even some he keeps hidden in front of decent company.

Rodman’s friendship with Kim Jong Un is a match made somewhere, but certainly not in heaven.

The dictator presides over a nation that still starves its people while building one of the strongest military machines in Asia. But he’s Rodman’s pal.

I’m waiting — and hoping — for a defection. These two weirdoes deserve each other.