More on Oliver Stone’s latest Travesty, South of the Border
This weekend, Oliver Stone’s new documentary, South of the Border, his ode to Hugo Chavez and South and Latin America’s new quasi-Marxist and not so quasi dictators, has opened in New York City and Los Angeles, and will open nationwide in a week. It had a showing this past Wednesday at the AFI Silverdocs Festival in the Washington, D.C., area, and my article about it appears today in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. I argue therein: “What Mr. Stone and his writers have presented is a standard far-left narrative that is part of a long line of propaganda films, a modern American version of the old agitprop. There are no dissenting voices in this film. Nor is there any mention of the fact that Mr. Chávez has closed down television and radio stations that disagree with him and arrested dissenting political figures.” The film is what you can expect from the likes of Oliver Stone, a virtual know-nothing who uses his celebrity and acclaim as a film director to spew out hatred for the country that has made him wealthy and influential.
Writing in the New York Times, Larry Rohter came up with many other examples of distortions and omissions in the movie. He notes that the “78-minute South of the Border is meant to be a documentary, and therefore to be held to different standards. But it is plagued by the same issues of accuracy that critics have raised about his movies, dating back to JFK. Taken together, the mistakes, misstatements and missing details could undermine Mr. Stone’s glowing portrait of Mr. Chávez.” Rohter goes on to pinpoint some of these in stunning detail.
Unfortunately, his film has been for some strange reason convincing otherwise intelligent people that in this effort, Stone has shown nuance. The most egregious is the review of the film appearing at the Daily Beast, written by Allen Barra. His title, “When Did Oliver Stone Become Sensible?,” tells you all you need to know about Barra’s take. The answer to his question, of course, is that Stone did not.
But Barra does not pause, as I did and Larry Rohter has done, to raise any questions at all about Stone’s claims and methodology. Instead, Barra writes that “Oliver Stone’s documentary South of the Border is an even-tempered, cant-free look at a topic that has just about everyone north of the border, no matter what side of the political spectrum, foaming at the mouth.” He goes on to even call Stone “the most sensible guy on the block.”
That is the problem with so-called documentaries. They are not objective, as many people think they are or should be. It is to Stone and writer Tariq Ali’s credit that they admit this freely. As Ali told Rohter: “It’s hardly a secret that we support the other side. It’s an opinionated documentary.” Ali’s rationale does not hold water. Anyone watching the movie sees a narrative that presents their argument as total truthful fact, not as biased agitprop written to defend totalitarianism and Marxism. That is why someone like Barra can fall for it and believe it is nuanced and even-handed.
Of course, Barra reveals much about his own ignorance, writing: “They are all socialists who have distanced themselves in varying degrees from Marxism, they have all been democratically elected, and they have all been demonized, more or less, with Chavez representing the more and Lula, characterized as the closest to the center, the less.” In fact, most of them, especially Chavez, have not distanced themselves from Marxism. Chavez recently proclaimed himself a Trotskyist (the late Bolshevik, upon hearing this, certainly turned over in his grave) and the others, while elected, have to varying degrees endorsed Chavez and sought to replicate his anti-democratic methods. Of the group, Lula in fact has proved moderate, has alienated his left-wing base, and has until the recent agreement with Iran, worked with the United States.
Barra’s article is so weak that his own further apologias for Chavez are a complete embarrassment, and it reflects poorly on Tina Brown’s decision to let such a poor piece of journalistic analysis (written by a useful idiot of Chavez and Stone) to even appear on their website, especially after Rohter’s article in the Times.
At the panel after the film’s showing at the AFI last week, Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin American program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, told the audience and Stone that his film was a “fundamental disservice” to the truth, and was as distorted a picture of reality as Stone thinks Fox News and the regular media is. “This film,” she said, “is far from reality. It is a distortion of what it means to be on the Left in Latin America.” She noted that, contrary to the film’s claim, a genuine moderate left was taking a path quite different than that favored by Chavez and Castro. Moreover, she added, it is wrong on the facts, slighting Chile whose moderate government reduced poverty far more than any other country, including Venezuela. In a country like Brazil or Chile, left parties emerged in a democratic transition as part of a stable system, while in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, they emerged as the result of the collapse of democracy, and featured the absence of any limitations on power. They failed to create a desire for social and economic justice with “any measure of democratic transparency.”
Strangely, the Times film critic wrote his own positive review of the film one day earlier. Given Rohter’s article, that must also prove embarrassing to the paper and to critic Stephen Holden. Although Holden argued that Stone had “muted” his paranoid tendencies revealed in films like JFK, he did add that it was a “provocative, if shallow, exaltation of Latin American socialism.” But he even includes mention of an obviously false assertion made by the former president of Argentina, Nestor Kirchner, that “President Bush became irate at the suggestion that what the country needed was a Marshall Plan and insisted that the best way to revitalize an economy was through war.” Only an already committed leftist watching the film who hates George W. Bush could believe that Bush could have said anything like that. Holden concludes his review arguing that Stone’s film is a “naïvely idealistic, introductory tutorial on a significant international trend,” although it is not idealistic, and anything but a sound tutorial.
Stone, as he told Rohter, thinks his film is a “counter” to the “unbalance” and the “years and years of blighted journalism” that Americans read. Actually, Stone’s film is simply another in a long line of left-wing propaganda that has had more influence and effect on U.S. audiences that any critical accounts of the far left in these countries.
One major source answering Stone on one of his main points can be found in a film answering an earlier pro-Chavez movie called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The film is called X-Ray of a Lie; its alternate title is The Revolution Will Not Be Televised-Lies. It means watching a one and a half hour film on your computer, if you do not have a mechanism to stream the film to your TV. But it is well worth it, since Stone’s film essentially contains many of the same lies as the earlier film.
Finally, you should not miss the incredible BBC Hardtalk interview conducted by the fearless BBC reporter Stephen Sackur, who, unlike his US counterparts, knows how to ask the tough questions to Hugo Chavez, and who confronts him head on with his lies, obfuscations, and his inability to be honest. You will see Sackur confront Chavez on his arrest of General Baduel, which I referred to in my WSJ op-ed. Fortunately, Chavez has not learned what Fidel Castro would have told him — never agree to be interviewed except by fawning American acolytes like Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, and all the others who have interviewed Castro and failed to confront him about anything meaningful.
Why, I wonder, did Oliver Stone fail to include any of this footage in his new movie? Well here is one answer, from the film critic at the Village Voice (I kid you not — once a NYC leftie paper.) Karina Longworth writes:
The construction of false realities for political gain is the subject of much of Stone’s own work — so why is he content to take each leader’s practiced-for-the-camera spiel at face value, never pushing for information or conducting interviews on any deeper level than a photo op? South of the Border‘s subjects are masters at cooking bullshit, and Stone just eats it up.
Right on, Karina!
Update: Sunday 1:15 pm EST
I usually can’t find the time to reply to comments, but I’m making an exception for the cordial defense of Stone by a colleague of his who notes that he has made two documentary films about Stone, Joel Sucher. (I have not seen the two films he mentions.) Stone does not promote “reasoned dialogue.” Indeed, at the panel held after the showing at the Silverdocs Festival last Wednesday at the AFI in Silver Spring, Md., the organizers saw to it that the panel would lack balance — by having it 3 to 1 in favor of Stone’s film, with only one brave dissenter, Cynthia Arnson, having a small amount of time to challenge the documentary. Moreover, contrary to the usual pattern, no questions or comments were taken from the floor. And although Arnson did as good a job as possible, she had to preface her remarks assuring the audience that she too had nothing but disdain for George W. Bush.
Moreover, to call Stone’s film “courageous” and “curious” is absurd. The film is, not what Sucher claims — not a partisan job “painted in black and white,” but precisely that — a propaganda film for Chavez. The commentaries I cite give chapter and verse of how Stone consciously lies about and distorts evidence, all for the purpose of condemning the United States and praising the quasi-totalitarianism of Venezuela under Chavez. On the WSJ comment page after my op-ed, one person notes that a few years ago, Stone met Chavez at Cannes, where Chavez interviewed him and Michael Moore, for the purpose of seeing who could do a film to promote his policies in Venezuela. Evidently Stone got the assignment. The writer suggests the possibility that Chavez may have not only asked him to do it, but provided the funding. If so, that would make it state funded official propaganda.
In any case, re Sucher’s last paragraph — Stone’s “client” is none other than Chavez and the other Latin American leftists, and he has done a yeoman job on their behalf.
Allen Barra also did a stupid trashing of To Kill a Mockingbird in the WSJ on the 24th. I’d never heard of him before, and I certainly won’t look for his reviews in the future.
Ron,
As a classmate of Oliver’s at NYU Film School, and producer of two documentaries on his life and career – “Oliver Stone: Inside/Out” for Showtime (1991) and “Back Story” for AMC (2002), I’d like to give my own personal perspective regarding criticisms that have been leveled at him, personally, and the documentary, SOUTH OF THE BORDER, in particular. Oliver has always served as a moving target for the mainstream press; and he takes to this role with both enthusiasm and vitality. Perhaps this is a legacy of his service in Vietnam, where he served as a moving target of another sort — for VC bullets and punji sticks. My feeling is that hisis feature and documentary work is from the “heart,” and has served to provoke the kind of needed dialogue that is often absent in this country. I’ve butted heads with him on occasion (certainly, I disagree with him in any number of areas), but see his films as an essential contribution to the push and pull nature of civil discourse; certainly in areas often painted black and white by partisan pundits and commentators. If nothing more, his work is courageous and curious, and unlike many a Hollywood “star,” is not the result of the urgings of agent/publicists seeking to place their clients, center-stage, on some single-issue bandwagon.
Respectfully
If nothing more, his work is courageous and curious, and unlike many a Hollywood “star,” is not the result of the urgings of agent/publicists seeking to place their clients, center-stage, on some single-issue bandwagon.
Who in Hollywood is jumping on the anti-Chavez bandwagon ? Would that be Danny Glover? Would that be Sean Penn? Would that be Kevin Spacey? Supermodel Naomi Campbell? Harry Belafonte? No, all of these have met with Chavez and praised him. Some have gotten money from Chavez. It has been chic in Hollywood circles to jump on the Chavez bandwagon, as Chavez is the anti-Bush. Oliver Stone is just following the crowd.
How “courageous” is it to be a shill for a dictator? What is your opinion of other filmmakers who have shilled for dictators? I’m sure you can think of some.
Under Chavez, the murder rate has tripled. Per capita housing construction under Chavez is half of what it was for the decade preceding his time in power. In a country with an abundance of energy sources, Venezuela had power shortages this winter – due to a lack of investment in maintenance, transmission lines, and new facilities in the 11 years Chavez has been in power. Hundreds of thousands of tons of imported food has rotted in the warehouses. Venezuela sent rotten food to Haiti for earthquake relief. While Chavez was elected partially due to his promise to deal with corruption, corruption has skyrocketed in the eleven years he has been in power. If Chavez is such a friend of the poor, then why is gasoline at ~ 20 cents US per gallon? It is not the poor who own autos.
Arrest – the criminalization of dissent- and confiscation of property are some of the methods Chavez uses to deal with his political opponents. Such as Diego Arria. Such as Guillermo Zuloaga, President of Globovision. Such as Manuel Rosales, defeated Presidential candidate who fled to Peru.
I strongly suggest that you learn something about Venezuela before you venture an opinion on Oliver Stone’s film.
http://devilsexcrement.com/ Miguel Octavio’s Devil’s Excrement is a good place to start, especially for economics.
For his blogroll links, Daniel ( Venezuela News and Views) has good narratives on Venezuela. Quico y Juan ( Caracas Chronicles) is for the policy geeks. The upper right of the Caracas Chronicles home page has a link for a “Beginner’s Guide to the Chavez era.”
A more documented and up-to-date figure on the rotted food, courtesy of El Universal in Caracas: “122,000 lost tons.”
The spoiled food could have been used to feed 17 million people a month. Businessmen at Puerto Cabello had warned against an excess of Pdval imports. Why they were not listened to?
Thank you for speaking the truth!! I am so tired of the loving tributes made by people such as Stone and the rest of Hollywood. It’s amazing how they turn a blind eye to all of the horror that happens. Even the mainstream media send out love notes. Hey, Hollywood, if Chavez is such a great leader and he has made Venezuela such a utopia – why are you still living in America?
“My feeling is that hisis feature and documentary work is from the “heart,”
The heck with this “heart” stuff. I really am quite indifferent concerning his alleged good intentions. The road to hell is often paved with them. Mushy sentimentalism has contributed to bringing about many of the horrors of the last century. Facts do matter! We cannot have a genuine debate if one of the partners cares less whether the available evidence supports their main thesis. Oliver Stone is an intellectual lazy man. That cannot be tolerated.
Dead on Target! Thats all this guy can offer as a defense of Stone? That
Stones “heart” was really behind it? What kind of naive drivel is that?
How about if Stone is intellectually vacant and corrupt to the core? What
is Stones “heart” worth then? What if Oliver Stone is insane?
But we dont go there do we? Nothing so honest
as that is allowed. I guess this fluff is what passes for
critical thought in “Film School” Which leads us to the oxymoron of Film+School.
Another travesty in the wasteland of modern education.
ehunter said: “I guess this fluff is what passes for
critical thought in “Film School”
The only critical thought in film school, or any other so-called “institution of higher learning,” is critical theory. Think Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School, original home of today’s authoritarian tyranny, known as, political correctness.
I don’t care if you gave birth to the dirt bag, he’s still an ungrateful dirt bag..from “the heart” that is… Obama probably sent him there to be with Hugo since he couldn’t be…
Stone is “un”defendable just as Moore is “un”defendable…yeah, Obama too.
You must be the voice of “synthesis” in the Hegelian Dialectic, are you not? But, in the same vein as your synthesis it is possible to commend any person, regardless of how hypocritically destabilizing or corrupt they may be, because they have, after all, played a part of that better, final outcome. We’re all winners, because even evil people are merely showing us what not to do.
I mean, even apart from my snarkiness, I think it must be so, because what purpose did your comment serve? That is the question. If you really think that Stone contributes to civil discourse by offering a polemic challenge to a free society (or however) then people are right to either agree or disagree with him, but you do neither. Your comment’s function is to make a person complacent, it seems.
Boy Mr. Sucher, congratulations, if that wasn’t a perfectly transparent example of glib obfuscation that actually argues against itself between the lines then I don’t know what is. To call it disingenuous is kind since it really is an overly wordy lie.
You damn your opinion by your own words.
You say you “produce” “documentaries”.
If your writing serves as a guide to your “documetary” products, then they must also be disorganized, improperly punctuated, thoughtless run-ons of fragments of catch-phrases. NYU Film School? No doubt.
I bet you wowed the chicks in Washington Square in those days. Stone’s flicks will have the same effect on the same mouth-breathers today.
Slightly interesting—appears to me, as just another debate surrounding a doggy-bowl. Apparently, Stone is just another of America’s losers who enjoy making a ton of money, the while, . . .
Upon getting a successful release from a hospital room—during which time, The Lord was “dealing with” me—I could “kick the bucket” at any moment and, . . . I’d like to begin making better use of what time remains to me—just in case there is a G-D—you understand. So, I took a chance and had my cable disconnected; and, The Lord was correct on the matter, I haven’t missed, . . . not in the slightest.
Respectfully, in Hollywood, I think being a leftist is about as “courageous and curious” as being a lesbian. (Once edgy, now fashionable.)
Joel…I have not seen your work. I am sure you are very talented. But shoot film or tape. Do not waste your time defending washed up hacks such as Stone…
Oliver Stone obviously does even believe in the concept of objective reality. It is perceived as simply another way for the reactionaries to delude their victims. Stone therefore feels totally justified in remaining loyal to the narrative that implicitly asserts the darker skinned Hugo Chavez is a victim of white Western imperialism. Conflicting evidence can simply be ignored. Its immediately blipped off his radar screen. Stone finds nothing whatsoever wrong with this attitude. He can also get away such nonsense because most of his fans are outright idiots. These are the ones who obtained phony liberal arts credentials during their college years. Anyone who takes Oliver Stone seriously is not wrapped too tight. We don’t owe them an ounce of respect.
What if it goes a step futher.. What if Oliver Stone is trying to discredit
objective reality as way to erase any vantage point from which to gaze
on Oliver Stone? What if Oliver Stone is insane..and uses film to destroy
all semblances of sanity in the world so that Oliver Stone is never detected
for what he is… a paranoid egomanical sociopath?
Oliver Stone and Michael Moore are cut from the same crapumentary cloth.
They each possess the morals more appropriate to a medieval bazaar. Lying through a celluloid medium, distortion as an end game, blatant disregard for the “inconvenient truth” of a matter…remains part and parcel of their film genre. The radical leftist propaganda piece rooting around foul ground looking for literati dung beetles to lap it up and roll it into a tidy little package to present to the useful idiots who dutifully spew back this mindless drivel.
Oliver Stone is not some poor, misunderstood, misunderappreciated, misunderloved, envelope pusher of “greater dialogue”. He is a typical radical leftist and an apologist for leftism’s excesses.
The crapumentary stylings of Moore and Stone may have differences, but their end game is precisely the same. These two rather doughy, corpulent, bloated, jowl jello egos with ears, do everything they can to undermine America and cheerlead for leftist dictators around the world.
The “dialogue” is not enhanced by intentional deceit and naked propaganda. It does, however, test our willingness to be brutalized by our own rulebook. We champion open sedition, even treason …because we loathe even the slightest suppression of dissent. The irony, of course, is that leads to the puny integrities of the likes of Moore and Stone, “dissenting” through distortion about us and championing the crushers of dissent, our very enemies of thought and… of honor.
As such, the envelope is not so much pushed, but rather, licked with a diseased tongue.
You can include Al Gore in that list.
Finally, you should not miss the incredible BBC Hard Talk interview conducted by the fearless BBC reporter Stephen Sackur, who unlike his US counterparts, knows how to ask the tough questions to Hugo Chavez, and who confronts him head on with his lies, obfuscations and his inability to be honest……Why, I wonder, did Oliver Stone fail to include any of this footage in his new movie?
The answer can be found from the interview and a written summary of it at BBC HARDtalk. An excerpt follows.
The answer is two-fold. First, Oliver Stone did not include the interview because it presented Chávez in a bad light. Second,Stone did not wish to draw attention to the following. Stone’s was at the interview with Chávez’s entourage, and coached Chávez at a problematic part of the interview.
Thank you Gringo.
To complete the rational it should be noted that the “Venezuela Constitution” expressly forbids that a person be incarcerated for more than two years without a trial.
Thus the reason for freeing the businessman by the judge.
This is just another (of the many) violations by the Venezuela Government against the Constitution.
We can infer the Venezuela President is not a strict (or loose) constitutionalist.
We can infer the Venezuela President is not a strict (or loose) constitutionalist.
That is the understatement of the month.Thugo approaches the Constitution through the perspective found in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:
Such is life in Thugoslavia. Thugo is never wrong. What is ironic about it is that Thugo went to the trouble back in ’99 to have a new Constitution written. Write a new Constitution and then don’t follow it if it is inconvenient. So it goes with Thugo.
It is clear that there is a deep sickness in Oliver Stone – to look on the destruction of a country and its people, the theft of the hopes and dreams of the young and the poor, the destruction of its natural rights and freedoms and traditions, through egoism, tyranny, totalitarianism, theft, violence, and the active and deliberate aiding and abetting of numerous terrorist groups – and call this good. Shame on him.
Inevitably, a classic by your Sherab:
who is this “Oliver Stone” ???
(And goes back to delving into the treasures of the P.G. and P.L. edited by Migne)
I agree with 99% of Oliver Stone’s films/writing
I agree with 1% of Oliver Stone’s films/writing; it would interesting to discern whether there were any overlap of your 99% and my 1%.
1. Even Nancy Pelosi has been quoted describing Chavez as a “thug”.
2. Whenever I read about Venezuela in the years when Chavez was lurking in the background, the report would mention the society’s massive corruption. Therein lie warnings.
3. Joe McCarthy was a dangerous man who, per Bill Buckley, did more harm than good, but there was a valid concern buried in his demagoguery.
4. I fear that bipartisan US incompetence can lead to a Chavez in Mexico and, maybe sooner than we think, eventually here.
“Chavez recently proclaimed himself a Trotskyist (the late Bolshevik, upon hearing this, certainly turned over in his grave)”
Not an option for Trotsky.
He was cremated.
opinionated documentary = propaganda
Oliver Stone is the producer of JFK a gigantic fraud which was based on outright lies and disortion. There was not one shred of truth in his outlandish expose. Yet Americanized schools used the film in the history classes in order to brainwash the youth of America at the behest of the teachers union. Everything Stone produces is pure Marxist propoganda; one wonders why he doesn’t move to Cuba or Venezuela and stay there.
If I had to venture a guess, it would be to enjoy the advantages and comforts of what’s left of free-market, Western societies while speaking out against it. As is the case with most politicians and rich Hollywood idiots, they wallow in their incredible wealth without having an inkling or appreciation of how it was generated.
Q: Does Stone have any curiosity about Venezuela’s continuing pogrom against its Jewish citizens???
A: Sounds of crickets chirping (here and in the 2 theaters showing this celluloid piece of dreck)
Name me a “documentary film” that has been neutral and objective – ever. There is no market for such a production: it has to have a target audience. Oliver Stone is a socialist film producer. Michael Moore is a socialist film producer. They make movies for the Socialist/Democrat market. If you’re left-leaning you’ll see them to give a boost to your bias. If you are a leftist movie critic, you’ll give them three stars. If you’re a conservative pundit you’ll go to them to prop up your predisposition and lather up your rhetoric. The rest of us will simply ignore it, except for a few badly-disappointed mariachi fans.
“South of the Border” will be a box-office flop. In three weeks it will be forgotten. Oliver Stone will go out and make another propaganda “documentary” yawner. He’s like a film-making version of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The message never changes. It’s a minor niche but, hey, if you’re a true believer, its an easy living, and the perks are great.
I wish it was all so frivolous and innocent as you describe. Actually
millions will watch it. Thousands of college age morons
with no sense of reality will sit hypnotized by the film
They will fervently believe it. They will find some version
of Hugo Chavez to promote here in America. They will rally, and
protest and contribute to the cause. The Media will promote the issue.
Elections will be won..and then the few fragmented remains of
traditional America will be ground further into the mud…which of
course is what Oliver Stone the sociopath intended all along.
With Chavez rapidly establishing himself as the Mugabe of the Caribean, I seriously doubt that Ollie’s effort will win many hearts to Chavez north or south of the border, downTtrotskyite way. In fact, Mr. Stone may well wind up the target of ridicule and derision, and much faster than Al Gore.
Trotskyite Central is right here in the USA…every University is a
regional headquarters. Chavez isnt Venzuelan ..he is just the current
poster boy of the eternal South American Marxist cycle..of class warfare,
resentment, revolutionary overthrow…failure, collapse. Here is
Ron Gochez from La Raza preaching Marxist Revolution and the racial war against white
“oppressors” in California. BTW Ron’s salary is paid by the whites he promises to destroy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iybaDyMr1rs
Gauche Eh? Both meanings!
This so called documentary will, in all probability, win an Oscar.
Meanwhile, just today Chavez
A) rolled out the red carpet for Strian dictator and Hezbullah sponsor/arms supplier Bashir al-Assad, declaring “the genocidal Israeli entity and the Yankee empire are the enemy.”
B) Declared “economic war” on… shopkeepers- some of the horrors of Chavez’ food policy are given in the very, very LEFT-leaning Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/27/venezuela-hugo-chavez-private-retailers
That’s right- collective farms. In the 21st century, and not in North Korea.
Not only is Stone’s “not-a-communist” Hugo a SELF-PROCLAIMED Marxist and Trotskyite, he has managed in a short decade to have imposed every asubmoronic economic idiocy of modern history at the same time.
Stone is not “courageous” or “thought provoking” or anything elseother than a foul liar, an odious, naked, willful propagandist for whom no falsehood is too enormous, no enormity to infamous in his quest to support a diseased ideology.
The posting on Assad reminded me of Hugo’s friends.
Chávez on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad:
on Ahmadinejad on Chávez:
Chávez on Mugabe:
Chávez on Omar Gadaffi, after he received the Gadafi Prize for Human Rights:
Like they say, friends of a feather flock together. I wonder if Oliver Stone will have the courage to make a film to shill any of the above friends of Hugo.
‘mad’ and Chavez… trench mates?
Don’t ask, don’t tell.
The likes of Chavez and their groupies, like Oliver Stone, are all in one tent: enemies of civilization, enemies of freedom, enemies of decency. I don’t feel any obligation to waste any of my rhetorical time on those fools.
The other problem with so-called documentary leftist films like this, is that they will be force-fed to our children in the public schools by leftist teachers. Both of my daughters were required to watch Al Gore’s so-called documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, at least 3 times during their high school years. I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes part of the curriculum too.
Can Stone be any more irrelevant?I spend no money on anything he is involved in. . . .anyone else can do the same.
Oliver Stone?
just not all that important…
Ron: spew hatred of the country that made him wealth and influential?
Look: the only country we are not allowed to crisize is Israel, otherwise we would be called anti semites, Jew haters or self hating jews. all other countries are open to critisism
There goes miriam with her lies again.
1) You are allowed to criticize Israel. However if your criticisms are quite clearly lies (as all of yours have been) you leave yourself open to the charge of being an anti-semite.
2) If you criticize Israel for the same thing that you give other countries a pass on, you leave yourself open to the charge of being an anti-semite.
3) If no matter what the subject matter, you find a way to link it to the Jews, then you are quite probably an anti-semite.
You have proven yourself, by your words and lies, to be an anti-semite.
Look: the only country we are not allowed to crisize is Israel, otherwise we would be called anti semites, Jew haters or self hating jews. all other countries are open to critisism.
If you would please inform me what crisize means, as I have not been able to find it in any dictionary, I would be pleased to comment on that.
Since for some unknown reason, you brought up Israel on a thread which comments on a movie by an American about South American politics, here is an excerpt from Assad and Chavez last weekend.
In 1982,Assad’s father was responsible for the killing of some 20,000 of his countrymen in Hama, which took only several days to accomplish. Assad Jr. is responsible for the assassination of several Lebanese politicians. Sounds like Assad Jr. fits the definition of “chutzpah.” But anyone who would accept a “human rights” award from Gadaffi(see my previous comment) would welcome Assad with open arms.
“not allowed to crisize”(sic)is such a demonstrably
infantile parody of a comment.
The majority of world comments are about Israel, and mostly they’re pejorative. Israel gets far more press (again, mostly negative) than any other area of dispute.
Compare the coverage of the DPRK act of war against South Korea (with 46 murdered), and the loony left’s MSM focus on the Mavi Marmara. Nine attacktivists were apparently killed by members of a boarding party (who had previously asked the ship to turn around)after they were viciously attacked with steel stanchions, and knives.
And how much coverage of the cultural genocide of Tibet, the army occupation of Burma, or the state rapine and ethnic cleansing of Darfur?
WHY the disparity in reportage; and the universal condemnation of Israel, before any inquiry?
Because all the other four situations are communist driven,(by one state China). And the MSM devil looks after his own. Israel is the oh so convenient whipping boy for all the world’s ills.
Given their ‘druthers’ the world (or the MSM)would prefer the other figure of speech: they will literally make Israel a scapegoat, or sacrificial lamb.
A question: Antisemitism/Jew bashing has been around so long that it is endemic in the christian and mohammedan psyches. Do shintoism, buddhism and other large religious groups also indulge in this psychopathy?
Anti-semitism is not endemic to the Christian psyche. Most of those in the so called Christian countries who engage in anti-semitic words and actions have never graced the insides of a church.
From what I have read, admittedly fairly quickly, both Sikh-ism and the Baha’i faith have strong anti-Jewish statements and opinions written into their theologies; as far as I know, the same is true of Mormonism, which claims it was really fighting the false Israelites (Indians).
And, yes, MarkTheGreat notwithstanding, there is plenty of anti-Jewish sentiment in the ‘New Testament.’ The translations of the Torah/Tanach into various languages were often done in such as way as to highlight the ‘fundamental’ errors of all Jews and claim to predict the coming of Jesus as Messiah. The actual Torah does not in fact predict the coming of Jesus.
Having studied both, I have to disagree on both counts.
I’m sure Stone’s latest effort will bomb at the box office. But Stone himself will be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
At times I wonder about Americans savvy. It’s no wonder we seem to elect idiot after idiot to our elected offices.
We all have seen Stone’s work. He claims that says he is manufacturing ‘entertainment’ but then claims historical, cultural and factual accuracy in his ‘plots’ as social truths as seen through his eyes. Relativistic truth.
Americans have got to learn to be discerning and selective when it comes to where their discretionary money goes. Ideologues, like Stone, are and have long been communists. America haters. All the while sucking up the money that we pay him as some form of financial homage paid in agreement with his ‘artistic expressions’ of anti American sentiments that he holds as his relative truths.
RickGreenvilleSC has the right answer.
IMHBLO Hollywood has almost exclusively been the source of communist propaganda and infiltration of anti-American dogma outside of politicians, that is most commonly in the face of Americans. If that success is used to flaunt marxist ties and establish friendships (don’t forget his similar relationship with Fidel Castro) with dictators and tyrants, he is laughing at America and Americans.
Who would pay for some one to destroy our way of life? It’s very nearly exactly what we are doing by patronizing his tripe.
Miriam: today’s topic is NOT ISRAEL- you have a very singular obsession dear-
do try to comment on the piece above you
as long as youare trying to connect some dots whynot look at
Ollie’s partner in this Marxist propaganda is a MUSLIM?
strange bedfellows indeed- leftists should have learned by now that the Muslim cannibals will eat them when they are finished using them………
Venezuela is the new Iran
markthegreat, gringo and Isahuah62:
All I am saying is you just can not lablel someone becuase they disagree with you.. that is it!
Stone is allowed to critisize US, if he wants to.
My spelling has nothing to do with anything.
so please get over it…
Its amazing how you simply have no idea of what “truth” means. Whether criticism
resembles reality or not..simply doesnt matter. All that matters
is if something fits your emotional needs or not. Children operate this
way..and psychotics too.
in addition to your spelling skill being non-existant, it appears that your ability to read in general is woefull inadequate.
For the 23rd time. You can criticize Isreal, just don’t use lies to do so. Especially when it has been pointed out to you many times that you are using lies.
I wonder why the anti-semites also appear to be big on conspiracy theories as well?
In the good ol days of the CIA Hugo would have long ago slipped on a bar of soap in the bathroom and fallen out a 20 story window.
You bet we better start labeling people if they are out to destroy our country. Shallow leftist like Stone choose to subvert our heritage in favor of foriegn doctrine that is proven to fail time and time again. What are the two things communism has in common from the Soviet Union to Venezuela to Cuba? Third world poverty and totalitarian dictatorship.
Stone is a hypocrite of the first order considering he would find none of his fame and fortune under those systems. In fact he would probably have dissappeared during the night as he would have been considered a dangerous intelluctual and a committed contrarian. I know using Stone and intelligence is an oxymoron but dissappear he would. He had a bad experience in Viet Nam so he trashes our country and praises a despot. Too bad he didn’t find his way to North Veit Nam.
“Stone is allowed to critisize US”
Yeah, and I’m free to call Stone a blithering idiot too.
And, I intend to exercise that freedom.
I’ll always remember the Ditzy Chicks, after they made their on stage comments blasting President Bush. Lots of radio stations stopped playing their music, and lots of customers not only stopped buying their music but stopped going to their concerts.
A few months after, the DC’s were on some talk show whining about how their freedom of speech was being supressed by those evil rednecks.
Like most liberals, they believe that they have freedom, and everyone else has responsibility, to them.
Mindlessly spewing out hatred for money…isn’t that what this website does?
As you are here, apparently that is what attracts you.
I happened to catch a minute of Ollie in an interview yesterday. He looked exactly like Joseph Mengele as played by Gregory Peck in “The Boys From Brazil”. Same white suit and the exact same moustache. I think he might be a Nazi.
O. Stone is living proof that creativity and insanity are not incompatible.
I wonder if “south of the border” is just the first movie of a series named “missunderstood tyrants”. Will Mahmoud be next?
Stone and his associates completely rebutted every factual challenge in Larry Rohmer’s piece. It’s only fair to share their response here: http://pulsemedia.org/2010/06/28/stone-ali-and-weisbrot-respond-to-attack-from-the-new-york-times-larry-rohter/