Author: Jason Ditz

A message released by claimed hackers of Sony Pictures threatened to carry out “9/11-like attacks” on movie theaters in the United States if the movie “The Interview” was released.

The US has claimed the hackers may be linked to the North Korean government, although North Korea itself denies this. At any rate, the ability of anyone to carry out 9/11-style attacks on individual movie theaters nationwide seems preposterously unlikely, at best.

Despite this lack of serious threat, a number of major movie theater chains pulled out of showing the movie and Sony, in an act of flat out cowardice, bailed on the movie entirely, announcing that not only will it not be released on Christmas, but that there are “no plans” to release the movie at all now, not even on DVD, even though North Korea is clearly not going to “9/11” individual DVD players, for Christ-sakes.

Presumably, cooler heads will prevail eventually and Sony will release the movie somehow, because they already dumped $44 million into it. President Obama is admonishing Americans to “go to the movies,” but the reality is they don’t have that option.

Does everyone remember when USAID created that “Cuban Twitter” and paid all those guys to start agitating for regime change on it? What if that wasn’t even the most ridiculous thing USAID was doing in Cuba at the time?

Good news, it wasn’t! USAID also hired a bunch of Serbian music promoters and spent millions of dollars trying to create a regime-change themed hip-hop music movement in Cuba.

The scheme wasn’t totally unrelated to fake Cuban Twitter, which they used to try to promote the

It didn’t take long for the hip-hoperation to be found out, either, as when they tried to bankroll a music festival put on by a pro-government singer, in the hopes of turning it toward the aim of regime change, Cuba started detaining people involved, and learned of the USAID involvement.

Senators are criticizing USAID once again for wasting a bunch of money on a crazy plot with money that was supposed to be for humanitarian aid. As usual, USAID is defending the program as an attempt to “increase civil engagement.”

Sony Pictures went through a nasty hacking attack this past week. It ground the studio to a halt for awhile, and also led to the leaks of some upcoming movies.

So whodunnit? Believe it or not, it sounds like it was North Korea.

Sony speculated that North Korea was behind the attack, and North Korea explicitly didn’t deny the idea, and the FBI’s own investigations are focusing on that possibility.

It’s potentially the best and craziest publicity a movie could possibly get, but upcoming Seth Rogen movie The Interview, a comedy in which a TV host and producer go to North Korea to interview Kim Jong Un and are courted by the CIA to assassinate him, made North Korea livid.

North Korea complained to the UN that the Seth Rogen movie amounts to a war crime, which itself could be the setup to myriad bad Hollywood jokes, but now it seems they got so mad that they attacked Sony Pictures.

The village of Oakley, Michigan is easy to miss, even when you’re driving through it. There’s one stop light, and on either side are a gas station and a tavern/restaurant. 290 people call it home.

It’s also the home of one of the most bizarre secret police organizations in the United States. Tiny little Oakley has over 100 “reservist” police, who basically bought their badges from the police chief.

The reservists reportedly include high-profile Michigan lawyers, who use their nominal status as police officers to access police databases for cases, and NFL players who want to carry guns into stadiums, which would be illegal if they weren’t sort-of cops.

I say reportedly because the list of reservists is secret. Not just in that it hasn’t been made public, it’s preposterously secret. Like last month when the village finally managed to force the police to stop being police (because they had no insurance at the time and the village couldn’t afford the lawsuits), they asked the state police to try to help get all the equipment back, and conceded that even they have no clue who these “reservists” who have all their equipment are. Some of that equipment, reportedly, included Pentagon-provided gear, because a 290-person village surrounded by farmland clearly needs that.

The attempts to eliminate the police force began in September, failed, and continued up until the courts finally upheld the village council’s right to take away police powers they granted in the first place. That’s likely to be reversed, as the November election saw pro-police candidates sweep the vote, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Rather, the focus now is on already approved FOIA requests for the names of those secret police, filed in some cases by the village council members themselves. There had been no response from the police, other than a vague mention of ISIS, but now there’s an outright lawsuit.

According to the Saginaw News, the new lawsuit is filed by multiple John Does and the reservist force in general. Apparently they don’t even want the courts to know who they are, and the suit is once again citing the “perceived threat” from ISIS as a reason to keep their names, as police officers, secret from the public, from the village they putatively work for, from everybody.

The lawsuit goes on to accuse the owner of the tavern (who in a village this small you’ll find unsurprising was also a village council member) of plotting against the police over liquor law violations.

That too is a topic with a crazy amount of backstory, starting with a policeman unsuccessfully trying to pick up a waitress. This led to demands from the chief to fire her, and half a dozen harassment lawsuits from the tavern against the police chief, most of which the tavern-owner won, which were a big part in why Oakley’s old insurance company dropped them.

The lawsuit goes on to cite a Department of Homeland Security bulletin which warns that law enforcement should consider themselves targets for ISIS, which is a ridiculous claim in the ass-end of Saginaw County, and doubly so because these reservists aren’t remotely law enforcement officers. Rather, they just bought badges at a highish price so they could flout the law.

When I was five years old I had a little star-shaped metal badge that said “Sheriff” on it too. It was shaped like a star and came with a little toy gun. It didn’t cost thousands of dollars like these did, but it seems equally valid as a tool of law enforcement. It also seems equally likely to attract ISIS.

The US war against ISIS couldn’t be going much worse. ISIS continues to gain in Iraq, despite soaring US ground deployments into the nation, and the Syria air war has backfired so bad its wiped out most of the US allies, and brought al-Qaeda, once an ISIS rival, into a partnership with them.

The administration has tried alliances, they’ve tried escalations, they’re tried everything. Now, they’ve fallen back to name-calling, with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey mocking ISIS as a “bunch of midgets.”

Dempsey claimed the war was starting to turn in America’s favor, despite all indications to the contrary, though he conceded that the war is still going to take “several years.”

Secretary of State John Kerry was also eager to give the appearance of confidence, however unwarranted, in his own comments, insisting he is “not intimidated” by ISIS and that the US will continue to fight them irrespective of the execution of American hostages.

The desperation to portray ISIS as an unworthy opponent is palpable, and makes some sense in that it would keep people from watching the day-to-day operations of the war too closely. It also gives future officials the opportunity to argue for escalation on the grounds that they “underestimated” the ISIS threat, a card President Obama has already played in his own escalations. Either way, the feigned confidence is bizarre with the war going so badly on so many fronts.