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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; the interview</title>
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		<title>Hollywood’s Last Stand</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hollywoods-last-stand/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hollywoods-last-stand</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hollywoods-last-stand/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2014 05:50:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-American]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hollywood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[movie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[the interview]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[villains]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248360</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Americans are the only safe villains left.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/article-2656810-1EB7C4F100000578-425_634x351.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248363" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/article-2656810-1EB7C4F100000578-425_634x351-450x249.jpg" alt="article-2656810-1EB7C4F100000578-425_634x351" width="331" height="183" /></a>Americans are the only people in the world who go to see movies in which they are the villains.</p>
<p>Russians stayed away from Jack Ryan Shadow Recruit with its Slavic villains (though Chinese audiences liked it well enough). And movies with Chinese villains can’t get made because the People’s Republic has more devastating penalties for offending studios than a mere hacking. Instead of leaking private emails, the studios simply aren’t allowed to release their movies in the world’s second biggest film market.</p>
<p>Hollywood’s titans take a break from patting themselves on the back for their commitment to freedom of expression and eagerly rush to work with the censors of the Chinese Communist Party to make their movies acceptable to China.</p>
<p>Muslim villains can’t appear in movies at all since September 11. The last time a movie had a villain named Mohammed, the filmmaker ended up hauled out of his home and tossed into jail. Hillary Clinton, Hollywood’s choice, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/white-house-ordered-prosecution-of-mohammed-filmmaker/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">had assured grieving Benghazi family</span></a> members that instead of punishing their son’s killers, she would “have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”</p>
<p>With script control like that, it’s no wonder that you don’t see many Muslim movie villains. Not when Hillary is planning her presidential victory tour.</p>
<p>What does all that leave Hollywood scriptwriters with? Aliens, comic book villains and North Korea.</p>
<p>North Korea is a perfect villain because it isn’t a film market. Even possession of an American film can mean death. You can’t release the next weepy melodrama or comic book movie there which makes it fair game. And so a small nasty country with no sense of humor became the favorite movie villain of a gutless entertainment industry.</p>
<p>James Bond took on North Koreans in Die Another Day, the North Koreans invaded the White House in Olympus Has Fallen (or rather a radical faction of North Koreans, even before the Sony hack Hollywood was staking out a cautious position) and took over America in the Red Dawn remake.</p>
<p>These cinematic victories over North Koreans (or North Korean extremists) were hollow displays of Hollywood cowardice and the panicked response to The Interview stripped the hollow pretense of that courage away. And all that remains is the Great American Villain.</p>
<p>If Hollywood can’t even pick on North Korea, a country with no political or economic influence in the West, then it has no safe targets left. All that Hollywood can do is continue exporting anti-Americanism in movies which make the American military and American traditionalists into the villains.</p>
<p>Anti-American movies are a safe export. By making anti-American movies, Hollywood saves Russia and China a lot of money on propaganda. Instead of having to manufacture their own stories about the Yankee Devils, they can buy them directly from the Yankee Devils.</p>
<p>Or as Lenin was said to have put it, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”</p>
<p>The entertainment industry has made anti-Americanism into its biggest export. In another age, Hollywood exported the values of a vibrant and promising nation. Now it exports dystopian fantasies, post-apocalyptic societies, corporate made satires about corporations and other narratives which depict the collapse and fall of America as the inevitable outcome of its dysfunctional society and warped values.</p>
<p>North Korea could never make better anti-American movies than Hollywood does. It’s one reason why Hollywood movies play to large audiences in countries like China and Russia where America is disliked.</p>
<p>This is the courageous storytelling that the entertainment industry prides itself on as it cringes before dictators while abusing Americans. But courage was never Hollywood’s strength. Before Hollywood studios were allowing Chinese Communists to censor their movies, they had extended that same privilege to Nazi Germany.</p>
<p>Joe Kennedy warned Hollywood, “You guys are going to be responsible for pushing the United States into war against the Nazis unless you stop your anti-Nazi films, your anti-Hitler propaganda.”</p>
<p>But Joe was wasting his time. Between Hollywood’s Communists (the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League changed its name to American Peace Mobilization once Hitler and Stalin made their dirty deal) and the native cowardice of the studio bosses, there wasn’t much to censor.</p>
<p>The Nazi as the standby villain had to wait until the actual Nazis had been defeated. Real Nazis were too dangerous to offend. So were Communists and Islamic terrorists. And now even North Koreans.</p>
<p>Regardless of who was behind the Sony hack, the industry reacted with kneejerk appeasement. That was the way that MGM had reacted to Nazi demands for censorship. Before theaters were turning their backs on The Interview, British theaters were turning up their noses at Chaplin’s self-financed The Great Dictator because it might offend Hitler at a time when appeasement was still the watchword.</p>
<p>While The Interview has been compared to The Great Dictator, Chaplin made his movie because he genuinely thought that Hitler needed to be opposed. By contrast The Interview is a typically ironic muddle with no moral center whose only reason for existing is its own miserably unfunny absurdity.</p>
<p>What Chaplin had was a point of view. Hollywood tends to have a political agenda, but nothing it will fight for or defend. Nothing that it truly believes in.</p>
<p>Hollywood has a long history of pandering to totalitarian regimes and ideologies. The difference is that it no longer does so under American colors. Instead it pretends to speak truth to power with its anti-Americanism while pandering to every dictator abroad.</p>
<p>With its British stars, Australian locations and Qatari investors, there isn’t much American about Hollywood these days except its anti-Americanism. That is one reason why Hollywood movies often perform better abroad than they do at home. Hollywood is becoming irrelevant in America. North American box office receipts fell 5 percent this year and 15 percent during the summer.</p>
<p>But that doesn’t matter because the international box office is holding strong.</p>
<p>A post-American entertainment industry naturally draws on American villains. Its stock of foreign villains is now exhausted. After the Sony hack, studios rushed to cancel North Korean themed movies before even waiting for the outcome of the investigation. And without North Korean villains to implausibly seize the White House and invade America, that leaves Americans as the villains.</p>
<p>At a time when few countries are willing to tolerate being ‘villainized’ in Hollywood films, Americans are still expected to subsidize their own demonization.</p>
<p>Unlike North Korea, Hollywood doesn’t take them seriously.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
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		<title>The Sony Cyberattack: A Preview of Things to Come</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/the-sony-cyberattack-a-preview-of-things-to-come/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-sony-cyberattack-a-preview-of-things-to-come</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Dec 2014 05:55:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cyber war]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hacking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Seth Rogen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sony]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[the interview]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=248053</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the North Korean hacking incident was no mere act of "vandalism." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/rtr4h6b5.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-248059" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/rtr4h6b5-389x350.jpg" alt="rtr4h6b5" width="351" height="316" /></a>The FBI accused the North Korean government last week of perpetrating the devastating cyberattacks against Sony’s computer network for which a group calling itself the Guardians of Peace took responsibility. The North Korean government denied the charge and warned of serious consequences if the United States launched any counter-attack. President Obama ignored the threat, declaring that the U.S. would respond “proportionally” to what he characterized as cyberspace “vandalism.”</p>
<p>This Monday, North Korea experienced a total Internet outage for a bit less than ten hours. “I haven’t seen such a steady beat of routing instability and outages in KP before,” Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at DYN Research, told North Korea Tech, referring to North Korea’s Internet country code top-level domain. “Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently.”</p>
<p>North Korea’s Internet access, which it obtains through China-based facilities, has since been restored.</p>
<p>Some observers have attributed the temporary Internet outage to the fulfillment, in part or in whole, of Obama’s “proportional” response, which a White House National Security spokeswoman would neither confirm nor deny. Whether China may have played a role in the temporary outage is unknown, but doubtful.</p>
<p>The FBI said that its evidence of North Korean complicity in the Sony hacking was based in part on similarities between the malware found to be used in the Sony hacking and software used in previous cyberattacks carried out by North Korea — “similarities in specific lines of code, encryption algorithms, data deletion methods, and compromised networks.” While some cybersecurity experts have questioned the FBI’s findings, North Korea certainly has a self-declared motive for going after Sony and it has sophisticated cyberattack capabilities. Moreover, it would not be North Korea’s first time engaging in such tactics. Last spring, South Korea concluded that North Korea was responsible for the hacking of several South Korean banks and media outlets that, along with another attack last year, were estimated to have caused damages in the neighborhood of $800 million.</p>
<p>The cyberattacks against Sony were evidently in retaliation for a movie called <i>The Interview</i> Sony was planning to release that depicted a mission to assassinate North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. His regime demanded that the U.S. government ban the film, characterized it as an act of war in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last June and threatened a “merciless and resolute” response. In addition to the cyberattacks which resulted in the release of sensitive and sometimes embarrassing confidential information and internal Sony communications, the attackers issued threats of terrorist attacks against theaters that dared to display the film. An e-mail of theirs warned: &#8220;The world will be full of fear. Remember the 11th of September 2001.&#8221;</p>
<p>Theater owners cowered in the face of these threats. Sony withdrew its planned Christmas Day release of the movie, although it now claims it will make the film available to the public after all.</p>
<p>It would be easy to dismiss this latest incident as yet another in a long series of spats between the United States and the North Korean regime, precipitated in this case by a movie studio’s decision to produce and release a tasteless farce offensive to the megalomaniac North Korean dictator. President Obama played into this trivialization by downplaying the cyberattack as a mere act of “vandalism.”  Instead, it should be seen as a preview of what is likely to come as rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, as well as technology savvy jihadists such as ISIS, focus on this alternative form of warfare and intimidation to censor speech they find offensive.</p>
<p>Rep. Patrick Meehan, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, warned the “attack on Sony is the latest high-profile example of the growing danger of the cyber threat, and it won’t be the last. American businesses, financial networks, government agencies and infrastructure systems like power grids are at continual risk. They’re targeted not just by lone hackers and criminal syndicates, but by well-funded nation-states like North Korea and Iran. A lack of consequences for when nation states carry out cyberattacks has only emboldened these adversaries to do more harm.”</p>
<p><i>Reuters</i> quoted a South Korean specialist in nuclear designs, South Korea University’s Su Kune-yull, as saying, following the recent hacking of computer systems at South Korea’s nuclear plant operator:</p>
<p>“This demonstrated that, if anyone is intent with malice to infiltrate the system, it would be impossible to say with confidence that such an effort would be blocked completely. And a compromise of nuclear reactors&#8217; safety pretty clearly means there is a gaping hole in national security.”</p>
<p>The control systems of the U.S. electric bulk power distribution system, the electrical grid, is particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks without adequate defenses, which are sorely lacking today. As Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President of the Center for Security Policy, warned:</p>
<p>“The vulnerability of America’s electric grid is a ticking time-bomb…Many of our foes are aware both of the grid’s susceptibility to attack and the potentially catastrophic consequences for this country and its people should it happen.”</p>
<p>Cyberattack is one of the means available to our enemies to exploit the electric grid’s vulnerability and create a literal nightmare for the nation’s population so dependent on electricity for their day-to-day lives.</p>
<p>Congress passed earlier this month the Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, which President Obama is expected to sign. While the legislation is a step in the right direction of enlisting government and private enterprise resources to enhance the nation’s cyber defenses and awareness, it is not enough. It must be accompanied by forceful actions by the Commander-in-Chief to deter any future cyberattacks against sensitive systems and infrastructures. Our enemies are watching. As U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power told the UN Security Council during its open debate on December 22<sup>nd</sup> regarding North Korea’s abysmal human rights record, “Dictators who see threats are an effective tool for silencing the international community tend to be emboldened and not placated.”</p>
<p>Slaps on the wrist, like the type of temporary Internet outage that the Obama administration may or may not have caused to North Korea’s Internet access, are woefully insufficient. We cannot give even the appearance of being intimidated by thug regimes and terrorists who want to bully us into suppressing the fundamental right of free expression in our own country. In addition to restoring North Korea to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, further counter-measures should be seriously considered now.  These may include cutting off North Korea’s access to global finance as completely as possible and targeting critical pieces of North Korea’s military infrastructure control systems with viruses of the sort used to infiltrate and incapacitate some of Iran’s centrifuges. Another counter-measure worth pursuing is the launching of a massive propaganda counter-offensive, using the Internet and social media to which North Korean elites and military officers have access to sow further doubts they may already be harboring in Kim Jong-un’s leadership.</p>
<p>Less rhetoric and more action from President Obama is what is needed. As Teddy Roosevelt said: “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”</p>
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