SONY HACK AND "THREATS" TO NYCPD
Monday
January 5, 2015

Let me see if I can get this straight... Sony's servers were hacked, supposedly by North Korea, who used the information they got to blackmail Sony into scrapping their plans concerning their movie, The Interview. When their attempts to blackmail didn't initially work, they supposedly followed their blackmail talk up with threats of actual "9/11" style attacks on any theaters who allowed the movie to be shown in their theaters. Fearing violence from terrorists, and lawsuits from viewers who may have been hurt, major theaters refused to show the movie and somehow, Sony ended up shouldering the entire blame for the movie being pulled. People started to complain, with increasing loudness, followed by the media and finally, even our President chipped in with his two cents. Throughout it all, all you could hear was talk about how this movie, while distasteful to the leader of North Korea, was nevertheless our purest form of our constitutionally protected right to freedom of speech. While I certainly wouldn't want someone making movies of me that show my head exploding like a watermelon smashing into the concrete sidewalk from a 3-story drop, this doesn't mean that I don't understand, and agree, with the exercise of free speech as carried out with this movie. That being said, let's look at the situation that followed in New York City...

The lamestream media's all up in arms about a recent arrest in New York City. A young black man was arrested for posting a picture of someone, presumably him, firing a firearm into a police cruiser belonging to the New York City Police Department. While the lamestream media went into various details of his life, pointing to his gang affiliations, his outstanding charges for which he was already out on bail, etc., never once did they make any claims that this was an actual photo of him shooting into a police cruiser, which makes me question whether this was simply a doctored picture made to look as if he, or someone else, was firing into a police cruiser. That being said, perhaps someone could tell me why he was arrested in the first place, and why lamestream media's up in arms about him being released without posting any bail. Didn't we, as a society, just get done arguing about how The Interview, Sony's controversial movie, was all about exercising our constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech?

Lamestream media recently, and briefly, reported on another instance of someone being arrested for something they posted on social media. From what I understand, after the recent executions of the 2 NYPD police officers, some guy posted that the killer, who cowardly killed himself afterwards, shouldn't have killed the 2 cops he killed, but should have instead went out and killed 2 white cops.

Say what? While I couldn't disagree more, the last I looked, we do still live in a country where freedom of speech is constitutionally protected. If he feels that the killer should have picked some white cops as targets, then that, as vile as it may be, is his opinion, and he's free to express it. He wasn't asking someone to go out and kill a couple of white cops. Indeed, his statement was directed towards a person who no longer existed, regarding an incident which had already taken place, so someone please explain why this guy was arrested.

Listen, I don't agree with many of the things that have been said, publicly or privately, but you can't have true freedom of speech if you're going to pick and choose who can say what. Freedom of speech, true freedom of speech, means you have to absolute right to express whatever opinion you want, regardless of how others may feel, just as we have the right to express our opinions, regardless of your view on the matter. Once you limit someone's ability to express their opinion, regardless of how minute, the freedom may as well not exist, we may as well be living in North Korea.

Again, I don't agree with many of the things that have been said, especially as of late, but I'll gladly lay down my life to defend their right to say it. So long as they're free to do so, then I'll know that my rights, and yours as well, are secure.

Shawn L. Perrot CDCR# V-42461
CMC-East Cell# 6326
P.O. Box 8101
San Luis Obispo, CA 93409-8101

shawnlperrot@hotmail.com