Oliver Stone to RT: ‘US has become an Orwellian state’

[Taverner]

http://rt.com/news/oliver-stone-us-orwellian-022/

Americans are living in an Orwellian state argue Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick, as they sit down with RT to discuss US foreign policy and the Obama administration’s disregard for the rule of law.

­Both argue that Obama is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and that people have forgiven him a lot because of the “nightmare of the Bush presidency that preceded him.”

“He has taken all the Bush changes he basically put them into the establishment, he has codified them,” Stone told RT. “It is an Orwellian state. It might not be oppressive on the surface, but there is no place to hide. Some part of you is going to end up in the database somewhere.”

According to Kuznick, American citizens live in a fish tank where their government intercepts more than 1.7 billion messages a day. “That is email, telephone calls, other forms of communication.”

RT’s Abby Martin in the program Breaking the Set discusses the Showtime film series and book titled The Untold History of the United States co-authored by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.


<snip>

OS: Primitive of course. There has been a blind worship of the military and patriotism. I strongly believe in the strong military, but to defend our country, not to invade other countries and to conquer the world. I think there is a huge difference that has been forgotten: morality. Once you take the laws away, as Einstein once said famously, the country does not obey its laws, the laws would be disrespected. So it seems that the fundamental morality has been lost on us somewhere on the way recently and now it is what is effective. Can we kill Bin Laden without having to bring him to trial, can we just get it done? And that ‘get it down’ mentality justifies the ends and that is where countries go wrong, and people go wrong. All of our lives are moral equations. Does the end justify the means? No, it never did.

[Blue_In_AK]

1. I don't care what anybody says.

I like Oliver Stone.

[flamingdem]

3. I agreed before I read the sheeps clothing part

dang I expect more from him .. ah well

He could save it for the repukes ..

[AverageMe]

7. It is time that progressives on the left talked to crazies on the right

Ever since 9-11 and the start of "the War on Terror" we have seen the slow loss of our freedoms and rights. And we have become more and more willing to accept this loss of freedom and personal liberty. Not all paranoia is crazy, sometimes they (big brother) really are watching you. What is our right to privacy, for it lies at the core of all individual freedom, whether it is in the bedroom, what we smoke, or any other area of our lives. When does government become too big?

[AtheistCrusader]

2. Einstein?

Didn't he mean Bastiat?

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.

See: FISA, Patriot Act, the war on some drugs, etc.

[JVS]

4. Does Bastiat explain why he considers the loss of moral sense as bad as loss of respect for the law?

I'm inclined to view a loss of moral sense as much worse than a lack of respect for the law.

[AtheistCrusader]

5. Depends. I tend to agree with you, insofar as allowing torture or indefinite detention without legal

counsel is concerned. When people start accepting that shit... I think it's a measure of evil beyond anything Bastiat was familiar with, in his time.


Edit: In fact, civil disobedience is an example of lack of respect for the law, and it can be a down right good outcome.

[green for victory]

6. ^

&r

Here it is explained 11 years ago.

This is one of the best articles explaining US Foreign policy I have ever come across.

It is more timely than ever.

It explains why, for example, it was a big deal to announce that Cinnabon (...) was the first corporation to establish itself in the "New Libya". As if Libyans couldn't wait for cinnamon rolls.

Backing up Globalization with Military Might

by Karen Talbot Covert Action Quarterly, Issue 68, Fall 1999
http://www.globalissues.org/article/448/backing-up-globalization-with-military-might#McDonaldsNeedsMcDonnellDouglastoFlourish

McDonald's Needs McDonnell Douglas to Flourish

An article by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times entitled "What the World Needs Now" tells it all. Illustrated by an American Flag on a fist it said, among other things: "For globalism to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is....The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist-McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps...(Much Much More...)

It is a long, detailed article that few have bothered to read.

But if you read it you will understand more than 96% of the people in the United States about what is actually happening with these invasions.

PNAC Lives!

"Cinnabon has many international franchise operations, and its largest branch outside the United States and Canada is in Stars Centre in Cairo. The restaurant is noted for being the first U.S franchise to open in Libya after the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011."

[dreamnightwind]

9. Great post!

Welcome.

[Taverner]

12. +100

[Ian62]

13. An excellent comment

TY for sharing

[awoke_in_2003]

8. The Patriot Act was wrong...

when it was enacted under Bush. It was wrong when it was extended under Obama.

[Bonobo]

10. Is Oliver Stone a DU troll too? A closet Republican sowing dissent?

Or could it be...just maybe... that SOME of us haven't changed our understanding of right and wrong just because "our guy" won the election?

[sabrina 1]

11. That depends. It depends on whether your ethics are situational or not. Iow

if you thought Bush's policies were wrong and spoke out against them while he was president, and you still think they are wrong now that he is gone and don't care what letter comes after the name of the politician implementing draconian, anti-Democratic policies, then NO, Oliver Stone is who he always was, a man who was right about Bush and his policies and still is.

But if you think that policies that were bad under Bush are not so bad when the President has a 'd' after his name, then YES, Oliver Stone, together with a long list of other formerly respected-by-the-left Americans, like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, and Jeremy Scahill et al, is a 'troll'. Lol!

It's simple really, blind partisanship is as dangerous as the FFs predicted it would be. It is what allows policies that should be abhorrent to any democracy, to prevail as one side or the other will always turn a blind eye to them if it is their team in charge.

[Ian62]

14. Oliver Stone is correct

America is now the most spied upon nation that has ever existed.

[DonCoquixote]

15. all the same

Anyone who thought OBL would be caught alive is a fool. He wanted to die in a blaze of glory, to be a martyr, and he would have committed as many cases of 'suicide by cop" that it needed.

[RomneyLies]

16. I lost all respect for Oliver Stone after his completely whacked out CT movie

about the JFK assassination.

Stone is a complete nutjob IMO, thus nothing he says is of any consequence

[Blue_In_AK]

17. I don't think the movie JFK was ever intended to be a documentary.

Not many people I know expected it to be 100% factual.

[RomneyLies]

18. The problem is, Stone believes most of the nonsense presented in the film.

that makes him an unreliable source for anything and everything.

[Archae]

19. Even the greats of film-making can be assholes.

DW Griffith was the pioneer of the epic motion picture.
He was also a raging Confederate sympathizer, and racist.

Cecil B. DeMille made epics to dazzle the eyes and are still enjoyed today.
But he was all too happy to join in the red-baiting of the late 40's and early 50's, he slandered many of his fellow movie makers as "secret communists."

Oliver Stone takes existing history and re-writes it for "dramatic license," to the point where a real event is distorted totally out of reality.
He's also a vicious anti-Semite.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/26/oliver-stone-jewish-domin_n_659795.html

[Taverner]

20. Have you seen his new documentary

Trust me, it has been thoroughly researched

Talks about Henry Agard Wallace, who's ascendency might have prevented the cold war....


The man knows of what he speaks.

Yes, his JFK movie was based on the ravings of a madman - and is why I am actually a Warren Commission believer...

But his new documentary is really good.

[Archae]

21. I haven't seen it, now will I see it.

"Once burned, twice shy."

I won't watch a Mel Gibson movie, or Tom Cruise one.

[Blue_In_AK]

22. I like it, Taverner,

But then I'm a raging Leftie conspiracy theorist.