Oliver Stone heads 'South of the Border' to chat up Chavez and others

[bemildred]

In his new documentary "South of the Border," Oliver Stone is shown warmly embracing Hugo Chávez, nibbling coca leaves with Evo Morales and gently teasing Cristina Elizabeth Fernández de Kirchner about how many pairs of shoes she owns.

These amiable, off-the-cuff snapshots of the presidents of Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina, respectively, contrast with the way these left-leaning leaders often are depicted in U.S. political and mass media circles. That's especially true of Chávez, the former military officer turned democratically elected socialist leader, who has become the ideological heir apparent to Fidel Castro and the bête noire of Bush administration foreign policy officials.

In setting out to make "South of the Border," which is scheduled to have its world premiere this week at the Venice Film Festival, Stone, a lightning-rod figure himself for the better part of three decades, says that he wanted to supply a counterpoint to the prevailing U.S. image of Chávez, who's frequently represented in stateside op-ed pieces and political cartoons as a bellicose dictator-cum-comic opera figure.

"I think he's an extremely dynamic and charismatic figure. He's open and warmhearted and big, and a fascinating character," says the director of "JFK" and "Wall Street," speaking by phone from New York, where he's working on a much-publicized "Wall Street" sequel. "But when I go back to the States I keep hearing these horror stories about 'dictator,' 'bad guy,' 'menace to American society.' I think the project started as something about the American media demonizing Latin leaders. It became more than that as we got more involved."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-stone-doc1-2009sep01,0,6813572.story

[Judi Lynn]

1. This should be terrific, a great opportunity. Love his work. Thank you. n/t

[DutchLiberal]

2. My only beef is including dictator Castro among democratically elected leaders...

It reflects poorly on the legitimate leftist Latin-American presidents. Naming them in the same sentence with Castro has been a long-running and effective strategy of the right in order to vilify them. The left shouldn't do the same, as it will turn off a lot of people --and rightly, so.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to this film.

[Peace Patriot]

3. I kind of see your point. Although Cuba seems to be run in accord with the "will of the people,"

Castro does not have Chavez's provably transparent elections and open political process to legitimize his power. But he, too, has been slandered--far, far beyond anything he deserves--a demonization that is entirely due to the untoward influence of the Miami mafia on our public officials. It is not warranted, and, without that nefarious influence, we would long ago had made peace with Castro, to everyone's benefit. Castro is not, and never has been, a Stalinist dictator. He is not power mad; he is not psychotic; he not a mass killer. He has not done terrible harm to his people, and has in fact done quite a bit of good. He is much more like a benevolent monarch--a unifying figure, reverenced by many--than like a "dictator." Cuba's was not the first revolutionary establishment of a modern state to have bloodshed and a bit of paranoia in its early history--ours included, which was a lot bloodier than Cuba's. Castro's achievement--and the Cuban peoples' achievement--of a peaceful country, with much to recommend it (for instance, the best medical care system in the hemisphere, and possibly in the world), despite relentless hostility from its giant, armed neighbor and numerous plots against it, is remarkable. The treatment of Castro as some kind of monstrous tyrant is simply false.

So I can understand someone who is trying to bring perspective to this situation--the US vs the Left in Latin America--wanting to remedy that slander as well. We can't seem to find the language to do so. I think 'benevolent monarch'--very powerful but not evil--does a lot of good but is not democratic--is the phrase we need to grasp who Castro really is, in the Cuban system (which is like no other communist system ever devised).

But I DO see your point. Castro's name is most certainly used to slander Chavez and to try to turn Chavez into a bogeyman as well. It is blatant. "Hugo Chavez, friend of Fidel Castro...". We see this often in our corpo/fascist press. They never say, "Hugo Chavez, friend of Lula da Silva..."--for Chavez is equally good friends with da Silva (and with many other leaders). Further, Venezuela's election system is not only transparent, honest and aboveboard, it is far, FAR more transparent, honest and aboveboard than our own. The people of Venezuela deserve credit for this--and Chavez most certainly deserves to be described as a democrat with a small d (as other leaders of South American describe him). Our corpo/fascist media's obsessive association of Chavez with Castro seeks to deny Venezuelans that credit, and to deny Chavez legitimacy--as if he had somehow "grabbed" power. On the contrary, he owes every bit of his power to the people of Venezuela, who rescued him from the 2002 coup attempt. Few presidents have such directly expressed support from the people they govern. They also have consistently given him and his government very high marks, indeed--in opinion polls and votes--up in the 60% range. Chavez as "dictator" is entirely false. He is no more a "dictator" than FDR was.

By the way, how is this manifested--Stone "including dictator Castro among the democratically elected leaders"? I read the interview and I don't see anywhere that he says this. And he would not be likely to make such a factual error. Do you mean, he shouldn't have included Castro AT ALL--nowhere in the film? That would unrealistic, because many of these new leaders have been influenced by Castro on social justice issues. Latin Americans see Castro a lot differently than our brainwashed people do. A filmmaker with the Latin American left as his subject would be remiss in not including Castro. And we don't know yet what Stone says in this film about Castro and Cuba--for instance, he may distinguish between democratically achieved revolutions like all of these except Cuba , and armed struggles--as Tariq Ali, one of the filmmakers, does in this article. I presume that they will make a similar distinction in the film. Do you have some reason to think that they won't?

Also, why play these "divide and conquer" games that our media plays--of good guys and bad guys? You can see the L.A. Times writer trying to play this game in the article. Why not take a more transcendent view--or a more Latin American view? Virtually all Latin American countries want Cuba to be recognized by the US. Why keep up this ancient "Cold War" dispute? And, criminy, it's so-o-o bloody hypocritical of the US! Shouldn't a filmmaker try to do this--transcend the subject, stretch the viewer's mind a bit? Maybe it's time to take this insane prejudice on.

And I do think it is an insane prejudice--a concoction of our corpo/fascist press right out of the darkest minds in the Miami mafia. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were dictators, and true monsters. How come Castro is hated, who hasn't done even a small part of the evil those two have done--and has, on the contrary, done quite a bit of good--how come Castro is demonized, and they get off scot free, and get to go around pushing the efficacy of torture?

Anyway, I'm just saying: maybe it's time for some perspective. Maybe it's time to challenge this falsified picture. That is the job of a good documentary maker--to lift us up so we can see over the horizon, up out of our own milieu and standard biases.

[DutchLiberal]

4. How do you know Cuba is run in accord with the will of the people?

The people don't have anything to say! They can't vote who they want as president. They have no free press to voice their wishes. If they dare to speak anything unfavorable about the regime to a foreign camera-team, they risk getting arrested. Anybody who's against the regime gets locked up and tortured, and in the olden days, they got executed.

Castro not a dictator? Castro did nothing to harm his people? Get a reality check, will you?
I wish Chavez and Morales stayed away, as far as they could, from Cuba and Castro. It reflects poorly on them.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Dear DutchLiberal, do WE have a free press?

We do not. We have corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies dictating an extreme far right political agenda.

Do OUR wishes count for anything in Washington DC? They do not. We can't even get up to the level of human decency in Cuba, on medical care for our own people.

As for getting arrested for criticizing the government, I know a whole lot of people who have been arrested for peacefully protesting war and corporate rule, right here in the USA--people who have suffered mistreatment and violence, merely for expressing their views.

"Anybody who's against the regime gets locked up and tortured." You're going to have to document that, because I've never heard of it before. And nobody can hold a candle to the US on torturing prisoners--and I don't mean just the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and secret torture prisons around the globe, I mean right here at home, as well, with prison rapes, beatings and horribly inhuman conditions.

I want to add something about elections. Cuba does have elections--that is, choices--below the level of president. I don't know much about how this works, but I hardly think we have the right to criticize their system, when, in our system, not only do you have to have at least a million dollars in hand, to even think about running for Congress, the counting of our votes is controlled by 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls. Our system is filthy corrupt, and non-transparent in the extreme. No public official in this country can prove that he or she was actually elected. This is extremely anti-democratic as well as very, very dangerous.

This is what i mean by transcending the good guy/bad guy syndrome that obsesses our corpo/fascist media, and getting off our messianic view of the US role in the world. We torture. We abuse prisoners. We just slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people to steal their oil. Has Castro done that? No. Has he done things that merit criticism? Yes. But who are we to condemn Cuba when our own system is so desperately flawed and has inflicted so much evil on the world?

[DutchLiberal]

6. Oh please, don't try to compare them. It makes you look silly...

In fact, it makes you look like an apologist for a dictatorial regime.

[Peace Patriot]

7. My comparing the US and Cuba means that I'm an apologist for a dictatorial regime?

Not true. I am a democrat with a small d. I support democracy in both places.

I don't think we have a democracy any more. We have a democratic tradition (one that is damn hard to kill), but it is mostly a phantom these days--a fake democracy, an illusion (even a delusion). We are ruled by global corporate predators and war profiteers, who dictate our health care system (the rich get health care, the poor don't), our voting system (entirely privatized and non-transparent, and filthily corrupt), our military budget (humungous--mostly private contractors), the use of our military (hijacked for corporate resource wars), our war policy (we have nothing to say about it), our prison system (who gets punished and who doesn't-rich vs.poor), our justice system (who gets a proper defense and who doesn't, rich vs. poor), our mode of transportation (which harms everything from how our communities are organized to the planet's entire ecosystem), our entertainment (what movies/TV get made, what books get published--all decided by corporate monopolies), and our access to news/opinion (all rightwing crapola, all the time)--as well as what we eat (corporate frankenfood), and everything we buy and who makes it (mostly crapola manufactured by slave labor in foreign lands). They also dictate "bailouts" for themselves--outright looting of trillions of dollars, placing the debt on our children's children. And, really, that is just a short list of how undemocratic our country has become. And, clearly, we have NO ability to hold our leaders accountable for their actions including horrendous crimes.

Bottom line of democracy: transparent vote counting and holding leaders accountable. Both gone.

Cuba is a tiny country that has been under siege by our government for its entire existence. Its current government is many orders of magnitudes better than the one that the Cuban revolution overthrew, yet we have never acknowledged the brutal injustice and unmitigated corruption of the Batista regime. We have expressed NO sympathy for the dead and the tortured of that regime, nor for the excruciating poverty that it inflicted on the Cuban people. Our brutal embargo on trade with Cuba, lo these forty years, is an act of war. That's what our policy is--using war and aggression to impose hideous dictatorships on others. We've done it in virtually every country in Latin America.

Castro, like Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, was a patriot and champion of the people, and no ideologue. Both would have won free elections, if we had permitted them to occur. In Vietnam, we directly nixed UN sponsored elections, and proceeded to destroy that opportunity to have an ally in the communist world and began preparing for war. As for Cuba, we supported the Batista regime and opposed that quite just revolution from Day One, and pushed the leaders of that revolutionary war further and further into the orbit of the Soviet Union. The Cuban Missile Crisis (Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba) was our own fault. It was the direct result of the US Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba--to overturn the revolution and restore the hideous Batista regime--the year before. The Cuban people--the poor, the workers, the leftists, the liberals, the teachers, the peasant farmers and others who had thrown off the Batista dictators--were scared. We scared them--with invasions and threatened invasion, numerous assassination attempts against their leaders, the embargo, and our funding of the Batista dictators and collusion with them on war plots, in Miami.

So, it is no surprise that the Cuban revolution saw democracy as a danger. If they had created an open society, it would have been riddled with US/Miami mafia spies, war plotters, assassins and fascists. This is the reason--if not the excuse--for the lack of democracy in Cuba. It is how history played out. And the amazing thing is that Cuba did not become North Korea--run by a crazy Stalinist dictator completely out of touch with the country's people, and sick with personal egotism and paranoia. That is NOT a description of Fidel Castro!

I also think that--in judging Cuba (if we had any right to)--we need to understand the distinction between political democracy and economic democracy--for this is the heart and soul of capitalist vs communist government systems. Here, we have political democracy (currently a delusion, but in theory and tradition, anyway ). We supposedly can say anything we like. We supposedly elect our leaders. We are supposedly the "sovereign people of this land"--a sort of collective monarchy--whose will (the "will of the people") rules our government. Our leaders are supposedly our servants. But even if this system--democracy--is fairly clean and straightforward, it does not insure that most people have an adequate income, can feed their families, can get medical care, can travel freely (that takes money), can get their voices heard by government leaders, can get access to capital and credit to start businesses, and can avoid unfair prosecution or conscription into unjust war. If the democracy is working properly, it can address some of these things--as the "will of the majority." But it is still only political democracy, and can be--and has been--corrupted by the rich acting through multinational corporations, so that the "will of the people" can no longer be done. That is what has happened here, to our political democracy. Capitalism--a "dog eat dog" economic system, in the interest of the few--has overruled democracy.

Communist theory comes at these issues from another direction--that the resources of a country--its natural resources and its worker energy, its land, its agriculture (ability to feed the people), its manufacturing capability--should be commonly owned, for the purpose of everyone having a job, an income, education, medical care, pensions, food on the table, etc. It opposes the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few. And it considers political democracy to be too hijackable by the rich, which it certainly is, in practice. Witness this stupid "Punch & Judy" show we see on TV here that they call "free speech." Look at this trillion dollar "bailout" of the rich! Communism considers political democracy to be inherently a delusion. There may be temporary prosperity, at the will of the rich, but "the will of the people" will never be permitted to rule, because of political democracy's association with capitalism.

But, in practice--possibly because of how it arose historically, in two big countries that were entirely lacking in democratic tradition--Russia and China--communist government swiftly felt victim to dictators, and in the case of Russia, an insane, psychotic dictator. That is the hazard of having no political democracy--you develop an elite anyway, and you have no defenses against tyrants.

I don't agree that political democracy is inherently delusional. It is, on the contrary, essential to human well-being and happiness, if it is working properly. I also think that the main thrust of communist ideas and leadership totally failed to understand that the "marketplace" is a human need. It is in our genes! We love variety, color, new products, exposure to other cultures, making things, selling things, traveling, clever industry, marvels; we even love the chaos of the marketplace, its unpredictability. This is a deep need. And truly the communist system's ignoring of this need is what brought the system down--in Soviet Russia, directly, and in Communist China, in their own more indirect way. Russians, and other members of the Soviet Union, were sick unto death of the drabness of communist society. I visited Russia in 1972 and I can tell you all sorts of stories about this. This was the heart of that momentous change--communism was too dull.

Obviously, we--the human race--have to find the governmental system that best combines our political and economic needs. That is, in fact, what we are doing--evolving the organization of human activity. And it is quite stupid to look only at the downsides of some system, and not at its upsides--if those are real--and at WHY people organize things the way they do, and--very important--what works? It is utterly self-defeating to demonize other people for how their system developed and to make war on them because we don't like how they've organized things. A system like Cuba's, that has lasted for 40 years in relative peace, and that is NOT demonic--has gone in the other direction away from Stalinism--is, for one thing, fascinating, and, for another, may actually have features that the rest of us can learn from. (Their medical system is one of them.)

i don't understand why you would object to my comparing the US and Cuba. Can you point me to the hundreds of thousands of people whom Castro has slaughtered in order to steal their oil? WE did that--in a supposed democracy. Castro may be a good, bad or indifferent "dictator"--or, as I think more accurate, "monarch"--but WE, the supposed democrats, committed that terrible atrocity and many more. Or, rather, it was done in our name, without our consent. (Nearly 60% of the American people opposed the war on Iraq--Feb. 2003, all polls.) I WILL compare them. And it most certainly does NOT mean that I am an "apologist for a dictatorial regime." And I think it's fair to say that you, in refusing to compare them, become something of an apologist for the Bush regime. You think that what WE do--or what is done in our name, without our consent--to slaughter and oppress other people, is irrelevant. I think that it is, in truth, highly relevant.

And this more even-minded, even-tempered, objective view of things--which I am advocating--is why most of Latin America's leaders, and most of its people, want the US to end the embargo of Cuba, and have already established trade and diplomatic relations with Cuba. They see something of worth there. They do not see a heinous dictatorship. The notion that Cuba is a heinous dictatorship--which is peculiar to our own country--has been created by the corrupt Miami mafia, the inheritors of Batista--to control US foreign policy in Latin America, in their own greedy interests. It is not a reflection of reality--as most Latin Americans realize. They don't fear Cuba. They fear us. Castro doesn't threaten them. We do. Castro hasn't sought to destroy democracy in Latin America. We have.

We may not have a single dictator (although Cheney came close). But we have a dictatorship nevertheless--the collective dictatorship of our Corporate Rulers. Rule by the few, who dictate everything from our wars and our foreign policy to our health care system and the minimum wage. And we desperately need to throw them off, and restore democracy in the US. It is this dictatorship that concerns me--not Cuba's. Cuba has done us no harm. I cannot say the same for our own leaders.

[DutchLiberal]

9. You can make *any* comparison you want, but that doesn't mean it's valid...

By beginning to ask whether the US has a free press, in comparison to Cuba, yes, that makes you look like an apologist. You are right about the vast corporate influence on US media and you're right that it's the source of much deliberate misinformation against the public.

But the comparison is still absurd, because, last time I checked, the US government isn't controlling what is being written and broadcast in the media. Somehow, I think there's no Cuban equivalent of Jon Stewart or Bill Maher or Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow or Seymour Hersh or Bill Moyers. And neither is there a Cuban Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, who, for all their hate speech and ridiculous accusations, are still free to criticize the sitting president as much as they want. In Cuba, they would have been arrested and locked up a loooooong time ago.

I don't get the insistence with which you want to defend a dictatorship that is repressing its people. This is not something "Miami Cuban exiles" have made up out of thin air, you know.

You know who needs your defense? Chavez does, and Morales, and Correa, and all the others. Although they would definitely stand in a better light if they distanced themselves from dictators like the Castro's --and others as well.

[EFerrari]

8. Iraqi Journalist Detained for a Year Without Charge by US Forces Despite Iraqi Court Order to Releas

A year ago today, US and Iraqi forces raided the home of Iraqi journalist Ibrahim Jassam, a freelance photographer working for Reuters. Soldiers seized his computer hard drive and cameras. He was led away, handcuffed and blindfolded. For the past year the US military has held Jassam without charge. Ten months ago, the Iraqi Central Criminal Court ordered his release for lack of evidence, but the US military refused to release him, claiming he was a “high security threat.”

Audio, video, transcript at link

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/2/iraqi_journalist_detained_for_a_year

[DutchLiberal]

10. Wow, what a systematic oppression...

:eyes:

Yes, I can find a number of such cases in The Netherlands, my home country, as well. That doesn't make us the equivalent of Cuba.

Seriously, people should stop whitewashing dictatorships, *even* it's a leftist one. Didn't the left learn that lesson after they stopped singing the praises of Mao Tse-tung?

[Vidar]

11. I'm glad that Stone's doing this.