The New York Times editorial board takes on the latest developments in the Sony hack:
Even a movie studio aware of Mr. Kim’s megalomania could not have fully anticipated this crime and the threats that followed. Unfortunately, Sony’s capitulation sends a signal to Mr. Kim and other criminals that they can succeed in extortion if they are creative and devious enough. Corporate executives are now rightly fearing increased hacking attacks against their computer systems.
Corporations, even large ones like Sony, cannot stand up to a rogue state and shadowy hacker armies all by themselves. That’s why the Obama administration needs to take a strong stand on this and future attacks. Officials said on Thursday that they were considering a “proportional response.”
Retaliation by the Obama administration over this attack would risk escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula and between North Korea and Japan, where Sony’s corporate parent is based. However, there are things the United States can do. Although there are already heavy sanctions on North Korea, there may be ways to inflict more economic pain.
USA Today:
If trailers are any indication, Sony Pictures' The Interview is like much that comes out of Hollywood these days: banal, superficial and unrealistic. [...]
But as insignificant as the movie may be, Sony's decision to cancel its release — in the wake of a cyber attack on its computers, release of embarrassing information and terror threats linked to North Korea — is anything but. The film's fate raises serious issues about Hollywood's spineless behavior and about America's vulnerability to cyber threats.
More on the day's top stories below the fold.
The Denver Post adds its take:
since when does Hollywood allow foreign thugs to censor its artistic product? It's a terrible precedent, effectively granting a distribution veto to any shadowy group of hackers with an ax to grind and a sinister résumé.
This is a nation that refuses — rightly — to negotiate ransom to save the lives of hostages who will be beheaded within days by terrorists, but a rogue regime halfway around the world can now determine whether we see a movie that ruffles its feathers. You can argue about the propriety of filmmakers depicting the fictional assassination of an actual world leader — North Korea's Kim Jong Un — itself an apparently unique cinematic theme. But having made the film and then to be bullied into pulling it back is far worse than never having made it at all. "The Interview" should have been released in some form, if only through video-by-demand. But other options, too, have apparently been ruled out.
Switching topics,
George Zornick at The Nation looks at the GOP's strategy on Cuba:
Unfortunately, presidential politics may trump a rational discussion in Congress.
Elections have a way of freezing domestic politics: just since November 4, Obama has signed sweeping immigration orders, released the CIA torture report and normalized relations with Cuba, while Congress finally passed an appropriations bill for the 2015 fiscal year. None of this was feasible in the heat of midterm election campaigning, and the 2016 presidential election may soon act as a vise once again.
Thanks to the traditional (though rapidly shifting) conservative politics of Cuban Americans, along with some pure happenstance, the likely GOP presidential field is top-heavy with Republicans who oppose normalized relations with Cuba.
Alana Tummino:
On my three trips to Cuba in the past two years (yes, authorized and licensed travel by the U.S. Treasury Department), I have made a number of meaningful and lasting relationships with the Cuban people. Walking the streets of Havana shows you the real Cuba behind the headlines and rhetoric.
We met men and women of all ages showing their ingenuity and creativity through their newly opened private businesses. Private restaurants, coffees shops, nail salons, cell phone repair shops and auto shops line the winding streets of Habana Vieja and the business district of Vedado, to the streets of Santa Clara and Camagüey. These businesses exist in part due to President Raul Castro’s 2011 reforms, which allowed a non-state sector to operate on a larger scale than ever before in Cuba; they were bolstered by Obama’s reforms in 2009 and 2011, which authorized increased remittances and travel.
Yet, these reforms have not meant that the Cuban people and new Cuban entrepreneurs do not face challenges. The reforms that Obama announced will provide a much-needed lifeline to this nascent private sector.
John Nichols examines how Bernie Sanders is taking on excessive or wasteful military spending:
Sanders, who is set to take over as the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, is making an argument for cracking down on budgeting abuses that the Pentagon that liberals and conservatives ought to be able to respect.
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“The situation is so absurd that the military is unable to even account for how it spends all of its money,” says the senator. “The non-partisan watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office, said ‘serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense made its financial statements un-auditable.’ ”
That does not make Sanders anti-defense. It makes him a senator who is willing to call out waste, fraud and abuse—and to apply the standards that Eisenhower proposed.
And, on a final note,
Leslie Savan looks at what The Colbert Show has taught us about conservatives:
for nine years now Colbert has been reminding us that politics, and the right-wing shtick in particular, is a performance.* For his last show, tonight, the Grim Reaper will reportedly be taking him out. But we can thank his longevity in part to the still longer reigns of his sources of inspiration—“Papa Bear” Bill O’Reilly, of course, but also Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Steve Doocy, and the Fox News mindset itself.
We can also thank these last nine years to the very thing that made them seem improbable: as a character, and not merely a critic, of the right, Colbert held a unique key to the riddle of modern conservatism: How do they keep getting away with it? Why have so many conservatives turned into such small-minded haters and deniers of science, of reality? Voters tend to disagree with their actual policies, so why do they keep voting for them?