Then They Came For Us

We find ourselves faced by a new and real threat from an old foe halfway across the globe.   North Korea is definitely the most paranoid country in the world, isolating and repressing its own people for decades. This rogue nation is evidently responsible for hacking into SONY Pictures' emails and has already caused big disruption in this Japanese company to the point where SONY has backed off from the Christmas release of "The Interview", a movie farce about a fictional CIA plot to kill North Korean leader Kim Jung-Un.    So, why should our government, much less the rest of America, care that much about a foreign company's cyber security woes?   A lot of Americans reacted by saying they had no interest in this movie to begin with.   Others felt the whole movie's premise was just inviting trouble anyway.   Who cares?   

Every freedom-loving citizen on the planet should care.   This went beyond an embarrassing or costly data breach.   Movie houses who show "The Interview" were threatened with 9/11 scale attacks.   SONY and major theatre chains quickly scrapped plans to show it.   That seemed to accomplish what North Korea wanted, so they kicked it up another notch.   The perpetrators then increased their demands, telling everyone not to even think about releasing "The Interview" (including its trailers) online, on DVD or in any form.   Actor George Clooney called on his industry to stand up to this international blackmail, but supportive voices were conspicuously silent. 

North Korea has effectively exercised censorship in this case.   It is hard to imagine Kim Jung-Un stopping there.   Will our electrical grid or defense capabilities be in the crosshairs next?    This should be an issue on everyone's radar.    Cyber terror has just sounded a huge wakeup call.

"A Hallelujah Day"

Florida Senator Bill Nelson, a Democrat, called today "a Hallelujah Day" as he hailed President Obama's dramatic announcement moving the U.S. toward normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba.    It has been a long time in coming since the total break in early 1961 and the subsequent Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962 that brought the world closer than ever to the brink of nuclear war.    Many politicians representing districts with significant Cuban exile populations in Florida and elsewhere, such as Nelson's fellow Florida Senator Marco Rubio, condemned the move as recognizing a dictatorial regime's "permanency."   What rock is he living under?   Most Cuban Americans can't even remember the Castro revolution.   The Soviet Union, despite Putin's recent moves, is gone gone.   Cuba's oil supplier, Venezuela's socialist President Chavez, is dead after creating his own economic nightmare in that country.   Dictators, communist or not, justify their whole existence based on paranoia; the U.S. has conveniently played the boogie man to Fidel Castro and his successor, brother Raul.    

Over fifty years of embargoes have not brought Cuba into the democratic world.   It is high time to try a new strategy.   Open up this country at our doorstep to new economic and political possibilities.   Fidel Castro may have been totally willing to plunge everyone into World War III in 1962, but we have maintained diplomatic relations and traded with many other countries whose human rights records would make Cuba look stellar.   Let's hope this new relationship produces positive results in the lives of Cuba's ordinary citizens.   They are the ones who have suffered the most from this outdated isolation policy.  

The Issue Is Real

Alfred Hitchcock, famous for making so many scary movies, was once asked who or what frightened him.   His answer: a policeman.   The police can take away your freedom in a moment, even in a relatively democratic society.   A recent CNN documentary made it clear that being a young black male in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn automatically makes you much more likely to have that freedom taken away, with "stop and search" operations advanced by past mayors and police chiefs and still being practiced in many police precincts.   The tale of the tape in the New York killing of Eric Garner and the lack of any repercussions for the policemen involved reinforces the idea that it is easier to "indict a ham sandwich" than a policeman in our legal system.  Whether or not the police acted appropriately, these cases continue to hit a nerve in the minority community and spark a backlash among many whites who are uncomfortable about the whole discussion and deny a racial divide even exists.

Even some conservative commentators say the Garner video shows a troubling scene where cops should have eased off when the victim repeatedly said, "I can't breathe."   Now comes the outrageous claim by people who clearly have no real desire to have a conversation over what is a national issue: "If he could keep saying he couldn't breathe, he could still breathe."  The New York police union actually made that claim, and it got repeated across talk radio.   All I hear are talking points from people trying to prevail in an argument.   In failing to blow the whistle on bad apples in the ranks and denying a problem even exists, what does that get us?   We should do all we can to support those who use that police power wisely.    What makes an open society great?   It's not because our people are perfect.   It's because we air grievances and controversies.   A free press is part of the solution, and not the root cause.  Those who deny at least some validity to a racial divide and wish "those people" would just behave are fooling themselves.   Civil rights made great strides since the sixties because injustices were exposed.   Those changes are not done.  

They Didn't Want Our Business

Our 1980s GE dishwasher still functions, but my wife felt it was high time to get one updated to this decade.  A few weeks back, we shopped a couple of well-known chain stores in that massive shopping theme park that is the north end of Manchester, CT.    I'll leave store names out of this, but the experience was not good.   Given the number of other choices within one square mile, I would have thought they'd be more on their toes about follow-through, but no.   Once we (my wife, really) decided on one, the salesperson assured us that we could have it delivered within a few days and wrote "ASAP" all over the order.   We received a rather intense sales pitch for an extended warrantee, but we stood firm in opting out.   

When we got home, we realized that there were significant unexpected added charges.   We called them back quickly and got it rectified.   "It must have been a computer error," they said.   OK, fine.   Several days passed and I called the store to get an ETA for our new purchase.   Nobody could tell us definitively, but they said they'd let us know.   OK, but they curiously wasted no time in putting the charges on my new store credit card.   Their follow-up call never came, and after yet another week passed my wife got ahold of someone who said a manager would get right back to us.   They didn't.   Now my wife wanted to cancel everything, but they didn't seem to believe her and said they could deliver it by the day before Thanksgiving.   With holiday preparations, that was not going to work.   Finally, a call to the main corporate office brought a sympathetic ear who agreed this was not the way to do business and they cancelled it.  I would hope a systemic failure to come through within 16 days on something not special-ordered would prompt some repercussions from the top down, but it's someone else's problem now.   Meanwhile, we make do with 1980s technology as the search for a new dishwasher continues.