Author: Jason Ditz

It’s been over a week now since Boko Haram attacked Nigerian military forces in the city of Baga, which culminated in a Wednesday massacre that saw the entire city burned to the ground and some 2,000 civilians killed. Today, CNN finally noticed.

Having obsessed over the French terrorist attacks throughout the past week and into the weekend, what happened in Baga wasn’t even on the bottom news ticker until today, and coverage is just starting to catch up with what happened.

Bodies remain to be recovered, untold numbers drown in Lake Chad, and the ruins of the city are still considered occupied by Boko Haram, as indeed is most of the northeast of the country.

Boko Haram continues to grow in size and scope, and has been launching huge numbers of attacks big and smaller recently. Over the weekend, two more suicide bombers, reportedly pre-teen girls, carried out attacks.

To the extent that Nigeria gets covered on CNN or other cable news networks, it is with an eye toward US military intervention there. Yet it is hard to imagine how 2,000 people could be killed and an entire city destroyed and it virtually escaped their notice for a solid week.

The nuclear age gave way to a fascination in the 1950’s with space aliens, leading to the creation of Project BLUE BOOK by the Air Force to track the soaring number of UFO sightings being reported nationwide.

The CIA is now admitting that they were actually to blame for the vast majority of such sightings, confirming in a report on the U-2 spy planes that test flights over the US coincided with the mania.

The report explained that the U-2 planes flew much higher than conventional aircraft of the time, and indeed higher than most believed was theoretically possible.

“During the daylight hours, the silver bodies of the high-flying U-2s could catch the sun and cause reflections or glints that could be seen at lower altitudes and even on the ground,” the report explained, adding that the silver bodies of the planes appeared “fiery” when they caught the sun.

The phenomenon was so common that Project BLUE BOOK regularly checked with the CIA on UFO sightings, finding the bulk of them to be explainable by the U-2 flights. Into thje 1960s, when the CIA began the OXCART program to find the successor to the U-2, a similar flurry of sightings happened. The programs were secret, however, so the Air Force could not tell reportees of their findings.

In a weekend interview with the Magyar Hirlap, Hungarian Parliament Speaker Laszlo Kover, a top figure of the ruling Fidesz Party, has accused the United States of plotting to create a new Liberal party to replace the defunct SZDSZ and try to force the next Hungarian coalition government to exclude the nationalist Jobbik party.

Kover’s allegations come in the wake of Sen. John McCain (R – AZ) accusing Fidesz leader and Hungarian Premier Victor Orban of being “anti-democratic” and claiming Hungary was about to install a “neo-fascist dictator” who would be “in bed with Vladimir Putin.” Kover had complained loudly about McCain’s allegations.

Fidesz and the Christian Democrats presently hold a two-thirds majority in Hungary’s parliament, and both are strongly conservative. The main minority bloc is dominated by Socialists and Social Democrats, while the nationalist Jobbik Party is an increasingly popular third bloc.

Kover’s theory is that the US is so desperate to see Jobbik excluded from a coalition in the event of a close election, they want to create replacement for the Liberal Democrat SZDSZ party, the traditional king-maker in such elections, to try to undercut them.

It’s also not hard to see why Kover would oppose this move, should the US engage in it, as the nationalists would almost certainly back a conservative government over a socialist one, whereas the SZDSZ had most recently, in 2006, been a part of the Socialist coalition.

It’s unclear, of course, whether the US really cares enough about rigging Hungary’s political system to go to all this trouble. That a top ruling party official thinks it is not only possible but likely, however, suggests they are taking the matter seriously.

Every year, NORAD makes a big deal out of its “Santa tracking” mission on Christmas, one of the few non-warlike things they do any given year.

This year, not so much.

Along with tracking Santa this year, NORAD is also saying they’re establishing some sort of “anti-Grinch Firewall” to stop foreign Grinches militarily.

Absent in this is that, canonically, the Grinch became a good guy by the end of the show, so unless the cartoon is taken as some sort of prophecy of future activities, the Grinch is already a good guy, and foreign or otherwise, not someone the US military needs to be gearing up against.

The NORAD site doesn’t have a Grinch section, thankfully, so they don’t appear to be spending any money cracking down on him. Still, the fact that they felt the need to mention hostile action at all during Christmas this time is, puzzling to say the least.

Having gotten a ton of publicity for the upcoming movie “The Interview” by claiming they were never going to release it, Sony has now announced that they will be releasing the movie on time on Christmas Day.

The movie was previously pulled after hackers threatened to “9/11” every movie theater that showed it, and several theater chains pulled out. North Korea has denied involvement with the hack, and says they would not attack innocent movie-goers.

President Obama had been critical of Sony for not releasing the movie, a comedy about assassinating North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un. It is still unclear how many theaters will show the movie on time, though the hype surrounding it over the past weeks will likely attract considerable interest.

The hackers who were threatening Sony over the release have also, curiously, clammed up about the matter lately, and with North Korea publicly insisting they have nothing to do with them, their credibility is likely weakened.

Sony has made headlines with its decision to halt its planned release of “The Interview” over fears that hackers, who may or may not be North Korea-linked, might launch 9/11 attacks on movie theaters.

“The Interview” isn’t being released at theaters, and Sony Pictures says they have no plans to ever release it on DVD or anything. That’s a serious unrelease of a movie, and the scandal is starting to splash over into other movies.

Texas-based Alamo Drafthouse Cinema decided they wanted to show something North Korea-related, so they announced a plan to replace “The Interview” showings with 2004’s “Team America: World Police,” which of course has been out for a whole decade.

Paramount, who is a subsidiary of Viacom, shot down that suggestion, however, and is refusing to allow theaters to show its movie either, even though it’s already out and even though there is no threat related to it.