USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!!

[Peter Lemkin]

I watched the four hours of Putin Interviews [they can be found on your cable channel or on the internet], and suggest this highly to all. Very pertinent to Trump and more generally to the endless invention of external 'enemies' to divert attention from crimes and deficiencies at home. Do take the time!! Putin is no fool and I think tells it like it is from his viewpoint.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, at this pivotal moment in U.S.-Russia relations, we're joined now by the Academy Award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone, one of Hollywood's best-known directors. His films have included Platoon, JFK, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July. Over the past two years, Stone conducted more than 20 hours of interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin, covering issues from NATO to the nuclear arms race, the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the 2016 U.S. election. Showtime is airing a four-part special this week called The Putin Interviews. This is an excerpt.

OLIVER STONE: But you do realize how powerful your answer could be. If you said subtly that you prefer X candidate, he would go like that tomorrow. And if you say you didn't like Trump or somethingright?what would happen? He'd behe'd win, right? You have that amount of power in the U.S.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] Unlike many partners of ours, we never interfere with the domestic affairs of other countries. This is one of the principles we stick to in our work.

OLIVER STONE: Thank you, sir.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: My pleasure.

OLIVER STONE: We'll see you tomorrow, talk about some heavier stuff.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: Thank you, sir. [translated] Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED: Thank you.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: Thank you, sir. All the best. See you tomorrow.

AMY GOODMAN: That's an excerpt from Oliver Stone's new Showtime series The Putin Interviews. Oliver Stone is also releasing a companion book compiling the transcripts of his 20 hours of interviews with Vladimir Putin. Oliver Stone joins us here in studio for the rest of the hour.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!
OLIVER STONE: Thank you. Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us.
OLIVER STONE: Good to see you, Juan.
AMY GOODMAN: There is a lot to talk about here and a number of clips we want to play.
OLIVER STONE: Yeah. And
AMY GOODMAN: But
OLIVER STONE: Can I just say? That clip, by the way, is from before the election. It was shot on 2015. That was his attitude about theand he said things before the election also, very polite and never anything bad-mouthing any of the candidates. He's always beenand he made it very clear back then. I just want tobecause we come back to see him after the election, in the fourth chapter.
AMY GOODMAN: And that's very interesting. This series, the first two ran this week. They'll continue to run.
OLIVER STONE: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: And then tonight the third, and tomorrow the fourth.
OLIVER STONE: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: And it's in that fourth hour where you really get into, because you've returned February 2017, just a few months ago.
OLIVER STONE: That's correct.
AMY GOODMAN: It's after the election. It's after Donald Trump becomes president.
OLIVER STONE: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: And you really move in on asking him about whether the Russian government hacked the 2016 election. Talk about his response.
OLIVER STONE: Oh, you want to cut right to that part of it, because it has to do with Washington today. Believe me, we didn't see this coming, and we never expected we'd have to go back for a fourth trip, because we all thought Ms. Clinton was going to win. So, I'm sure he did, too. I'm sure he did, too. I think he was as surprised as anybody, any one of us. But as he says in the fourth version, he says, "We'll work with anybody. We will work with anybody. It's not our policy to intervene, certainly not a country as big as America."
And, you know, it's not influenceable in that sense. I think money influences elections. You could say Mr. Koch, the Koch brothers, perhapsyou could say Sheldon Adelson, people like this, do add up. You could say all these lobbies add up. AIPAC adds up. But, you know, Russia's influenceI was wrong. You see, when I looked at that clip, I was thinkingyou know, I'm sayingI don't think he has that kind of influence. I think I was putting him on a bit and sayingI'm encouraging him to take a position. That's sort ofthat's what an interviewer does sometimes. You exaggerate. But I don't think he could make a difference if he said he hated Trump.
AMY GOODMAN: But you get into that issue of the elections and the hacking of the election.
OLIVER STONE: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Sure, all of the different forces
OLIVER STONE: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: that you just described affect elections, but you drill down on this issue of did Putin, the Russian government, hack the elections.
OLIVER STONE: As I said, he denies it completely, I mean, without evenhe thinks it's a silly thing. It's an internal American political struggle. And he has a point.
I also went into, extensively, if you remember, right after that, into cyberwarfare, because cyberwarfare is a new form of it. We talked about this when I was here for Snowden, in depth actually. Snowden revealed cyberwarfare to us. So much is happening on that front. And one thing he did express very strongly is, we havethe Russians have proposed a treaty, a cyber treaty, to the United States. It's been inon the desk for about a year now, and he has no response from the U.S. He would like one. I think we need one. And we can talk about that, too, if you want. It's very dangerous, cyberwarfare, because of all the rumors and the easyeasy-to-mislead misinformation, fingerprints, thinthe thin evidence that's presented. It's very possible now, with the CIA and theyou know, Julian Assange, when hethe Vault 7 leaks a few weeks agoyou covered them, I believeit was clear that a company like the CIA could in fact forge the footprints of any country onto any hack and make it look like they planted the malware.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you if you've been surprised by the level of animosity toward this project of yours by some of the media? And I saw the Colbert segment that was really an attempt to really go after you in an uncharacteristic way, even for Colbert. But because there's a long history in the United States of journalists goingtrying to get interviews. I think of Barbara Walters with Fidel Castro. I think of, going back, even Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China
OLIVER STONE: Yeah, yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: going behind the lines of Mao Zedong and providing positive assessments of what was going on in China. And Wilfred BurchettWilfred Burchett did many stories
OLIVER STONE: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: behind the lines in the liberated areas of South Vietnam, interviewing the South Vietnamese leaders, because these journalists felt it was necessary for the American people to see the other side. So I'm wondering howwhy this one isthis time around, they've been really blasting you.
OLIVER STONE: Well, this islisten, you go back in American historywe did Untold History with you, too, and we talked about this bias against Russia since 1917. And we didn't even recognize Red Russia until 1933 with Roosevelt. He was the first one to build any kind ofand he was the besthe believed in an alliance, a grand alliance, after the war, with Russia, the U.S., England and China. That wasand if he had lived a few more months, I think it would have been a completely different framework for the world. I think Harry Truman had a more limited view. We talked about this, too.
But Russia, the bias against Russia, they did it. It goes to Ian Fleming novels, to James Bond, the feeling that SMERSH is behind it, orMr. Putin has been characterized in a cartoonish way as a Dr. No figure. You don't go there. And I'm surprised, because Americans should really, if theythey think of him as this threat to America. Our generals say they're the number one existential threat to the United States. If you believe that, then you should know more about them and whatwho their leader is and what they're actually saying, because they don't print that. I don't see him speaking to American people in our language. I mean, he's always interrupted with a dub, a bad dub, generally speaking, with a harsh voice, a football voice, or, sorry, a football coach's voice. This is a chance to hear him in his own language. I think the interpreter is very good. He speaks softly, firmly, softly.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, you don't put a translator over him. You have
OLIVER STONE: No, no.
AMY GOODMAN: You have subtitles, so that makes an enormous difference.
OLIVER STONE: I think there's a harmony there. And I think, afteryou know, I'm a filmmaker. I'm approaching it not a newsman. So I see it as a 4-hour project. And in those four hours, you will cover from 2000 all the way up to 2016'17.
AMY GOODMAN: How did youhow did you end up doing this?
OLIVER STONE: By accident, kind of. I was doing the Snowden movie in Germany, and we were communicating a lot with Ed. He lived in Moscow at the time, and we were going therestill is, I'm sorry, not "at the time." And we were going there, talking to him. And at one of those nine times I went over there, I met Mr. Putin for the first time. I knew Mr. Gorbachev and, you know, another world. I knew the old Russia, but I didn't know Mr. Putin. And he clarifiedI asked him about Snowden. And he wasas in the film, he clarified the Russian position on him.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, let's turn to anothera clip from The Putin Interviews, where you ask him about Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, who was given asylum nearly two [sic] years ago in Russia.

OLIVER STONE: Let me ask you, I'm sure you must haveas an ex-KGB agent, you must have hated what Snowden did with every fiber of your being.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] No, not at all. Snowden is not a traitor. He didn't betray the interests of his country, nor did he transfer any information to any other country which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people. The only thing Snowden does, he does publicly.

OLIVER STONE: Did you agree with what he did?

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] No.

OLIVER STONE: Did you think the National Security Agency had gone too far in its eavesdropping?

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] Yes, certainly. In that matter, Snowden was right. But you asked me, and I gave you a direct answer. I think he shouldn't have done it. If he didn't like anything at his work, he should have simply resigned. But he went further. That's his right. But since you are asking me whether it's right or wrong, I think it's wrong.

OLIVER STONE: So, he's saying that he should not have whistleblown, and he should have resigned in principle, on the principle, like Mr. Putin did when he resigned from the KGB.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] Yes, I think so. I had not given it thought, but I think yes. I resigned because I didn't agree with the actions undertaken by the government.

OLIVER STONE: OK, so you do agree that the NSA went too far?

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] Yes.

OLIVER STONE: And how do you feel about Russian intelligence activities in their surveillance?

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] I think they're working quite well. Our intelligence services always conform to the law. That's the first thing. And secondly, trying to spy on your allies, if you really consider them allies and not vassals, is just indecent, because it undermines trust. And it means that in the end it deals damage to your own national security.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was President Putin talking with you, Oliver, about the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who's actually been in Russia now for four years, not two, as I said earlier.
OLIVER STONE: Right, right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But I wanted to ask you
AMY GOODMAN: And we should point out that he's driving.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes. I wanted to say that, yeah. For those who are only listening on radio, the video is with him driving a car, and you, the passenger. Now, I have to assume that the security on the outside of the car, which the camera didn't show, must have been fantastic
OLIVER STONE: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: to be able to have the president of Russia driving a car down a street.
OLIVER STONE: Yeah, people have noticed that, and they've asked me questions like "How come he doesn't crash, if heyou know, how does he concentrate like this?" But he likes driving. He likes to be in charge this way. And what president do you see driving around the streets? It getshe's a judoka. He's an athlete. He likes to get behind things, drive things, ski. He took up skating at the age of 62. He took up hockey, which is a rough sport. And we show you a hockey game. Very likehe likes competition. He likes the challenge. He was a master, apparently, at judo, still does it every morning. He's likehe works out seven days a week.
It's interesting, you know, what he says about KGB activity. And, you know, he talks about allies, and that was a big point of his. You know, you don't go after allies. He makes it again in another chapter, that they don't listen in on allies. It's quite normal, he says, to have the U.S. and Russia going at it, and China, but neverdon'tand I think that was a shock, if you remember, when Snowden's news came out, that we were doing this to Japan, that we were planting malware in Japanwe put that in the moviethat we were listening in on Angela Merkel or Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. It's pretty shocking stuff.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But what about the issue of his repression of Russian society, of protesters, of journalists?
OLIVER STONE: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what was your sense of his response to those questions?
OLIVER STONE: We go there. We go thereI mean, probably not to your satisfaction, because he feels differently. I mean, one of the arguments he points out is democracy has been only really working in Russia since 1992, when the federation started with Yeltsin. It was a very bumpy start, if you remember. The United States business crowd moved in, and a lot of privatization went the wrong waya lot of theft, a lot of corruption. And Yeltsin had a very rocky second election in '96. His numbers were very low. It was the United States who supported Yeltsin, with an IMF loan and a lot of behind-the-scenes activity to get him in. And a lot of Russians don'tfeel he did not win the '96 election. So they had a rough start on democracy.
It was Putin that really actually stabilized the system, the society, and gave it this form that it has now, which we don't like, and we've been criticizing it. But he argues very strongly that there's laws in Russia, and there arethere's evidence of it. There's a Duma. There's people who get elected. There is a system. There are other parties. It may not meet our satisfaction. But you can be heard, unless you're calling for the overthrow of the state, you know, which is always
AMY GOODMAN: Or if you're a critical journalist, then you might be killed.
OLIVER STONE: Yeah, well, we don't know exactly whatas to evidences, we don't have any on that. There was the famous case of Anna Politkovskaya. And, frankly, from what I've been told by people who know a lot more about it than I do, is, you know, her family knowsher family as well as her editor don't believe that it was the administration that had anything to do with it. It was much more likely that it was Chechen terrorist leaders. She was writing very tough stuff about Chechnya.
AMY GOODMAN: On the issue of Edward Snowden, it's interesting he says he does not agree with him. Yes, they've granted political asylum. And it's important, just because it's repeated so often the other way, to say that Edward Snowden did not choose to live in Russia. He had his passport yanked by the U.S. when he was flying from Hong Kong, only transiting through Russia, so ended up there. And then Putin granted him political asylum. But interesting that President Putin actually does not agree with what Snowden did, as a former KGB guy.
OLIVER STONE: He says that very clearly. He says he should have gone through channels, that he should have resigned. I don't know that he understands fully our system and how difficult it is for a person to work inside that system and say anything. And, you know, in other words, PutinI know that Mr. Snowden did it for conscience and for his own conscience. I think that's one of the great stories. That's why I made the movie.
AMY GOODMAN: And you're talking about the feature film you did on Snowden
OLIVER STONE: Yeah, the feature film, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: as opposed to thesethese four hours of interviews that are postingon Putin interviews.
OLIVER STONE: Well, this is him. I'm not making judgments here, and I'm not reallyI'm not arguing back. I'm not going to change his mind. What I'm going to do tohopefully, is show his mind to people who are interested in knowing what we're talking about, because he receives so much criticism here. You know, you have to balance it with something. You have to listen.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I thought one of the most fascinating parts in the interviews was the understanding of his perspective of how, when Russia came outwhen the Soviet Union collapses, and the Gorbachev period and the Yeltsin period, that he felt that the predatory nature of the capitalism that first came into Russia was something that had to be opposed, and that, in essence, that he feltthat he basically told the capitalists, "Look, you guys are out of control. You know, the pension systems, the conditions of the people have gotten toothey cannot be sustained this way." And so he attempted, essentially, to curb the most rapacious form of capitalism.
OLIVER STONE: Absolutely true. That's why he's popular, because he did it. He not only put Russian economy back on its feet, he got income back to the people. He was, in a sense, a populist dictator at that point, becauseI wouldn't even say dictator, just he was an authoritarian. But he got that economy going. And they're thankful. Now, things change. It's been 16 years, off and on. He's been president three times, prime minister one time. But they reallythey like his resilience. And they feeleven Mr. Gorbachev, who was very critical of him early on, says that he's the man for now, because heeveryone in Russia understands the pressure the United States is bringing, and NATO is bringing, on the borders of Russia.
AMY GOODMAN: You have this conversation, right at that time after World War II, where he talks aboutwell, he refers to the United States as "our partners."
OLIVER STONE: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And he says he thinks that the Soviets made a mistake in forming twowhat does he say?polar camps.
OLIVER STONE: Yeah. I disagree with him. I understand, but I was surprised he said that.
AMY GOODMAN: But he seems to be critical of communism.
OLIVER STONE: Yes, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And you also ask him, are you
OLIVER STONE: I think he was more critical of it than I was. Yes, definitely. He wasn't
AMY GOODMAN: And heand you say to him, "Are you the richest man in the world, as some people say?"
OLIVER STONE: Later, yeah, yeah. I think he thinks that's a pretty silly question. I don'tyou know, let's put it this way: He may have some money that I don't know about. He may have been corrupt early on in some ways. Maybe he gotbut I didn't see evidence of it in the sense of his lifestyle or his thought process. He is a man who works 12 hours a day. And we had a long discussion about materialism. And he made it very clear that he lives by another standard. And I think it's a devotion to Russia, the national interests of Russia. And I think he has a strong dose of spirituality in him, the Russian Eastern Church very important to him. He wasn'tit wasn't he who led it back into its popularity. It was the people who took it up again, because there was a void after communism.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in this clip from The Putin Interviews, Vladimir Putin
OLIVER STONE: The church?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: talks about NATO. You mentioned NATO before.
OLIVER STONE: There's a funny clip when I'm in the church, and I say, "Where do you pray?" And he says, "You don't pray kneeling down in Russia."
AMY GOODMAN: So, let's go to that clip.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] Nowadays, NATO is a mere instrument of foreign policy of the U.S. It has no allies, it has only vassals. Once a country becomes a NATO member, it is hard to resist the pressures of the U.S. And all of the sudden any weapon system can be placed in this countryan anti-ballistic missile system, new military bases and, if need be, new offensive systems. And what are we supposed to do? In this case, we have to take countermeasures. We have to aim our missile systems at facilities that are threatening us. The situation becomes more tense.

Why are we so acutely responding to the expansion of NATO? Well, as a matter of fact, we understand the value, or lack thereof, and the threat of this organization. But what we're concerned about is the following. We are concerned by the practice of how decisions are made. I know how decisions are taken there. I remember one of our last meetings with President Clinton in Moscow. During the meeting, I said, "We would consider an option that Russia might join NATO." Clinton said, "Why not?" But the U.S. delegation got very nervous.

OLIVER STONE: Have you applied?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: NATO, and your summation of that?
OLIVER STONE: Thirteen countries have joined NATO since Clinton made this, I think, rash decision to expand it to the east. That was not the promise made by Baker and the senior Bush to Gorbachev. Gorbachev swears to this. That was not put on paper. This is one of the reasons that Putin is upset with Gorbachev, as a practical man, as a politician. It should have been on paper, but it wasn't. So they see Gorbachev as acting out of weakness, and, as a result, the whole Soviet Union collapsed very quickly. And 25 million people, roughly, were left outside the old borders, withoutwith new countries, without the protection of the Soviet Union, their pensions and so forth not met. And then, of course, the internal system collapsed. So, it was an ugly time, and a second Chechen war broke out. You know, we talked about NATO, but NATO is a huge problem for them, not for us. And a lot of the people who are in NATO now are very anti-Russian, Eastern countries, and anything can happen. An accident like in Dr. Strangelove could happen very, very easily.
AMY GOODMAN: And we're going to get to his response to Dr. Strangelove in a minute.
OLIVER STONE: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: He even says he'd like to join NATO.
OLIVER STONE: Well, he was kind of joking, and he wasno, what was surprising about it was Clinton's quick response: "Why not?" You know, that's the way Clinton used to kind of act. And when the delegation heard that, their faces dropped. They didn't want Russia in NATO, because NATO would havethey'd have a veto. And none ofand he makes the point that none of these countries in NATO have ever said no to the United States' positions, never, which is, he says, vassals. They're not allies. They're vassals. It's interesting.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: One of the things that came across to me was also the command of detail and the thought processes that he goes through when you're asking questions. It's clear, as you mention at one point, that he reads the actual reports, not summaries.
OLIVER STONE: Yeah, yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you compare him to President Obama, who did the same thing, that he never got his intelligence summaries. He actually read the actual reports to make up his own mind.
OLIVER STONE: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So there's really a hands-on approach to his governance of the country.
OLIVER STONE: He's a CEO who kicks the tires. He really works too hard. I was worried about his health, you know, 16 years of this. I said, "Why don't you act more like Reagan and have some fun, eat jelly beans and smile more? People would appreciate it." He understands the value of that, but it's not his style.
AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go to a break and then come back to more of The Putin Interviews. Our guest is the three-time Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter Oliver Stone. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Stress" by Justice. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, let's turn to another clip from The Putin Interviews, where the Russian president talks about how the Soviet Union entered the nuclear arms race.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] You remember how the nuclear project developed? When the United States created the nuclear bomb and the Soviet Union entered the race and started to actively develop the nuclear program. Russia had both Russian scientists working, foreign scientists, Germans primarily. But our intelligence also received a lot of information from the United States. Suffice it to remember the Rosenberg spouses, who were electrocuted. They didn't acquire that information. They were just transferring that information. But who acquired it? The scientists themselves, those who developed the atomic bomb. Why did they do that? Because they understood the dangers. They let the genie out of the bottle. And now the genie cannot be put back. And this international team of scientists, I think they were more intelligent than the politicians. They provided this information to the Soviet Union of their own volition to restore the nuclear balance in the world. And what are we doing right now? We're trying to destroy this balance. And that's a great mistake.

OLIVER STONE: So stop referring to them as partners, "our partners." You've said that too much.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] But the dialogue has to be pursued further.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Oliver Stone, his views on the nuclear arms race?
OLIVER STONE: He's a resilient negotiator. He comes back. He doesn't take no. He always talks and tries to keep it open. He's worried. I saw him more wary than ever. Listen, this thing is dangerous, because we put ABMs in Poland and Romania. You know that. It's a stated fact. ABMs are very dangerous. They can be shifted into offensive weapons overnight. They won't knowthe Russians won't know what's in the air, if it's offensive or defensive. And they're very close. So the timeit's not like Dr. Strangelove, where you have a little more time. In that movie, you had an hour or two hours or whatever it was. Now you're down to 15 minutes. So there's much more chance of an accident.
The problem is with parity and America committing again, under Obama, to another trillion-dollar program to remodernize all our nuclear weapons. It's a hopeless race, because you're going toeither we're going tothe Russian economy is not going to be able to keep up. They havethey spend one-tenth of our budget on military. And what's going to happen if we keep spending and blowing them out? We have awe want first-strike superiority. I believe we may have it. And when we have it, what are we going to do with it? With people like Mattis and the people in the Defense Department, you have to worry.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to your most recent interview with Vladimir Putin in February, so this is when Donald Trump is president, when you asked him about Senator John McCain, a well-known fierce critic of Vladimir Putin.

OLIVER STONE: And it seems we have Senator McCain, for example, today or yesterday, was proposing a veto, a Senate veto, of any lifting of sanctions from Trump, in advance.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] You know, unfortunately, there are many senators like that in the United States.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Putin is a killer. There is no moral equivalent between the United States and Putin's Russia. I repeat, there is no moral equivalent between that butcher and thug and KGB colonel and the United States of America, the country that Ronald Reagan used to call a shining city on a hill.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] Well, honestly, I like Senator McCain, to a certain extent. And I'm not joking. I like him because of his patriotism. And I can relate to his consistency in fighting for the interests of his own country. You know, in ancient Rome there was Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder, who always finished all of his speeches using the same words: "Carthage must be destroyed."

OLIVER STONE: "Carthage must be destroyed."

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] People with such convictions, like the senator you mentioned, they still live in the old world, and they're reluctant to look into the future. They are unwilling to recognize how fast the world is changing. They do not see the real threat, and they cannot leave behind the past, which is always dragging them back.

On the other hand, we've been supporting the U.S. fight for independence. We were allies during World War I and War War II. Right now there are common threats we're both facing, like international terrorism. We've got to fight poverty across the world, the environmental deterioration, which is a real threat to all humanity. After all, we've piled up so many nuclear weapons that it has become a threat to the whole world, as well. And it would be good for us to give it some thought. There are many issues to address.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can respond to his response to McCain? Also, you actually are more critical of Putin when you're questioning him than here? I mean, you drill down a lot
OLIVER STONE: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: whether you were talking about the Russian hacking of the elections, which, by the way, just recently, Putin said, talking about Russian hackers may havehaving to play a role, he suggested that that may well have been the case. And it's not just about hacking or getting into the spaces. A lot of countries do it
OLIVER STONE: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: and especially the United States, as well. It's about weaponizing that and releasing that information. But you were quite critical when you were actually speaking to him.
OLIVER STONE: I was trying. You know, it'sI am digging. So peoplethere are things people say. You know, when you put a camera on somebody for four hours, there is a certain behavior, the eyes. There's a feeling about the person you get. You can't get that from reading the text. So, I think there's great value in a camera and the body language. His body language is fascinating, because it's not very overt. You don't see the Castro mannerisms or the Chávez ones, but you see little things.
AMY GOODMAN: Both of whom you've interviewed.
OLIVER STONE: And hisyeahand his eyes are very half-Asiatic. You know, they're almostthey're Russian eyes. But you seeI know the man much better after spending time watching him. I have to say, he likes patriotism. He's certainly a nationalist in that way, in the interest of Russia, not bellicose, but a wounded nationalism. He feels that patriotism is important in Russia, the idea of Russia, not a return to the old empire, but a continuation of a new empire that's capitalist with a market economy that would work in Europe.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's get to Putin discussing Fidel Castro, assassination attempts and his own personal security.
OLIVER STONE: Sure.

OLIVER STONE: And in 2012, you run for president, and you win by 63 percent?

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: Yeah, right.

OLIVER STONE: Three times president, five assassination attempts, I'm toldnot as much as Castro, who I've interviewed. I think he must have had 50. But there's a legitimate five I've heard about.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] Yes, I talked with Castro about that. And he said to me, "Do you know why I'm still alive?" And I asked him, "Why?" "Because I was always the one to deal with my security personally." I do my job, and the security officers do theirs. And they are still performing quite successfully.

OLIVER STONE: In other words, you trust your security, and they've done a great job.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] I trust them.

OLIVER STONE: Because always the first mode of assassination, you try to get inside the security of theof the presidency.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] I know that. Do you know what they say among the Russian people? They say that those who are destined to be hanged are not going to drown.

OLIVER STONE: What is your fate, sir? Have youdo you know?

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] Only God knows our destinyyours and mine.

OLIVER STONE: To die in bed maybe.

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: [translated] One day this is going to happen to each and every one of us. The question is what we will have accomplished by then in this transient world and whether we'll have enjoyed our life.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Putin philosophizing about life and death as a leader. Your sense of how he approaches the possibility of possible assassination?
OLIVER STONE: Yeah. Well, I think he has a very Russian philosophical view. I was kidding him about Dostoevsky. But, you know, when you've been the leader of avilified like you have, and you have Chechen terrorists trying to kill you, and, you know, Syrians now, it's not easy to run this whole thing. Every day, he doesn't know what's going to happen. The United States may do something again very provocative.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, he, like the U.S., is also killing Syrians. I think the U.S., now, -led coalition has surpassed Russia, but they have both been, to say the least, complicit.
OLIVER STONE: Well, I don't want to get off topic, but, basically, you know, the bombing, the Russian bombing, on the roads against the trucks really destroyed the foundation of the ISIS empire, which is money and oil, shipping through Turkey. He got to the base. Obama bombed for what? Three, four years, didn't achieve anything. He talks about running a hundred sorties a day. The Russians were intense. It seemed to stop the flow, the momentum. As to terrorism
AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.
OLIVER STONE: you know his feelings, because he comes from a background where there's been a lot of it in Russia.

Why Don't the U.S. Mainstream Media Report Vladimir Putin's Take on the Ukraine Crisis?

Posted on Jun 14, 2017

By Robert Parry / Consortiumnews

Oliver Stone, right, interviews Russian President Vladimir Putin for "The Putin Interview," a four-part series on Showtime. (Showtime)

A prime example of how today's mainstream media paradigm works in the U.S. is the case of Ukraine, where Americans have been shielded from evidence that the 2014 ouster of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych was a U.S.-supported coup d'etat spearheaded by violent neo-Nazi extremists.
As The New York Times has instructed us, there was no coup in Ukraine; there was no U.S. interference; and there weren't even that many neo-Nazis. And, the ensuing civil conflict wasn't a resistance among Yanukovych's supporters to his illegal ouster; no, it was "Russian aggression" or a "Russian invasion."
If you deviate from this groupthink if you point out how U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland talked about the U.S. spending $5 billion on Ukraine; if you mention her pre-coup intercepted phone call with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who the new leaders would be and how "to glue" or how "to "midwife this thing"; if you note how Nuland and Sen. John McCain urged on the violent anti-Yanukovych protesters; if you recognize that snipers firing from far-right-controlled buildings killed both police and protesters to provoke the climactic ouster of Yanukovych; and if you think all that indeed looks like a coup you obviously are the victim of "Russian propaganda and disinformation."
But most Americans probably haven't heard any of that evidence revealing a coup, thanks to the mainstream U.S. media, which has essentially banned those deviant facts from the public discourse. If they are mentioned at all, they are lumped together with "fake news" amid the reassuring hope that soon there will be algorithms to purge such troublesome information from the Internet.So, if Americans tune in to Part Three of Oliver Stone's "The Putin Interviews" on "Showtime" and hear Russian President Vladimir Putin explain his perspective on the Ukraine crisis, they may become alarmed that Putin, leader of a nuclear-armed country, is delusional.
A Nuanced Perspective
In reality, Putin's account of the Ukraine crisis is fairly nuanced. He notes that there was genuine popular anger over the corruption that came to dominate Ukraine after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 and the selling off of the nation's assets to well-connected "oligarchs."
Putin recognizes that many Ukrainians felt that an association with the European Union could help solve their problems. But that created a problem for Russia because of the absence of tariffs between Russia and Ukraine and concerns about the future of bilateral trade that is especially important to Ukraine, which stood to lose some $160 billion.
When Yanukovych decided to postpone the E.U. agreement so he could iron out that problem, protests erupted, Putin said. But from that point on Putin's narrative deviates from what the U.S. government and mainstream media tell the American people.
"Our European and American partners managed to mount this horse of discontent of the people and instead of trying to find out what was really happening, they decided to support the coup d'etat," Putin said.
Contrary to the U.S. claims blaming Yanukovych for the violence in the Maidan protests, Putin said, "Yanukovych didn't give an order to use weapons against civilians. And incidentally, our Western partners, including the United States, asked us to influence him so that he did not give any orders to use weapons. They told us, We ask you to prevent President Yanukovych from using the armed forces.' And they promised … they were going to do everything for the opposition to clear the squares and the administrative buildings.
"We said, Very well, that is a good proposal. We are going to work on it.' And, as you know, President Yanukovych didn't resort to using the Armed Forces. And President Yanukovych said that he couldn't imagine any other way of dealing with this situation. He couldn't sign an order on the use of weapons."
Though Putin did not specifically finger blame for the sniper fire on Feb. 20, 2014, which killed more than a dozen police and scores of protesters, he said, "Well, who could have placed these snipers? Interested parties, parties who wanted to escalate the situation. … We have information available to us that armed groups were trained in the western parts of Ukraine itself, in Poland, and in a number of other places."
After the bloodshed of Feb. 20, Yanukovych and opposition leaders on Feb. 21 signed an accord, brokered and guaranteed by three European governments, for early elections and, in the meantime, a reduction of Yanukovych's powers.
Ignoring a Political Deal
But the opposition, led by neo-Nazi and other extreme nationalist street fighters, brushed aside the agreement and escalated their seizing of government buildings, although The New York Times and other U.S. accounts would have the American people believe that Yanukovych simply abandoned his office.
"That's the version used to justify the support granted to the coup," Putin said. "Once the President left for Kharkov, the second largest city in the country to attend an internal political event, armed men seized the Presidential Residence. Imagine something like that in the U.S., if the White House was seized, what would you call that? A coup d'etat? Or say that they just came to sweep the floors?
"The Prosecutor General was shot at, one of the security officers was wounded. And the motorcade of President Yanukovych himself was shot at. So it's nothing short of an armed seizure of power. Moreover, one day afterwards he used our support and relocated to Crimea (where he stayed for more than a week) thinking that there was still a chance that those who put their signatures on the (Feb. 21) agreement with the opposition would make an attempt to settle this conflict by civilized democratic legal means. But that never happened and it became clear that if he were taken he would be killed.
"Everything can be perverted and distorted, millions of people can be deceived, if you use the monopoly of the media. But in the end, I believe that for an impartial spectator it is clear what has happened a coup d'etat had taken place."
Putin noted how the new regime in Kiev immediately sought to limit use of the Russian language and allowed extreme nationalist elements to move against eastern provinces known as the Donbass where ethnic Russians were the vast majority of the population.
Putin continued, "First, there were attempts at arresting them [ethnic Russians] using the police, but the police defected to their side quite quickly. Then the central authorities started to use Special Forces and in the night, people were snatched and taken to prison. Certainly, people in Donbass, after that, they took up arms.
"But once this happened, hostilities started so instead of engaging in dialogue with people in the southeast part of Ukraine, they [Ukraine government officials] used Special Forces, and started to use weapons directly tanks and even military aircraft. There were strikes from multiple rocket launchers against residential neighborhoods. … We repeatedly appealed to this new leadership asking them to abstain from extreme actions."
However, the civil conflict only grew worse with thousands of people killed in some of the worst violence that Europe has seen since World War II. In the U.S. mainstream media, however, the crisis was blamed entirely on Putin and Russia.
The Crimea Case
As for the so-called "annexation" of Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea that was historically part of Russia and that even after the Soviet break-up hosted a major Russian naval base at Sevastopol, Putin's account also deviated sharply from what Americans have been told.
When Stone asked about the "annexation," Putin responded: "We were not the ones to annex Crimea. The citizens of Crimea decided to join Russia. The legitimate parliament of Crimea, which was elected based on the Ukrainian legislation, announced a referendum. The Parliament, by an overwhelming majority, voted to join Russia.
"The coup d'etat in Ukraine was accompanied by a surge in violence. And there was even the threat that violence would be perpetrated by nationalists against Crimea, against those who consider themselves to be Russian and who think Russian is their mother language. And people got concerned they were preoccupied by their own safety.
"According to the corresponding international agreement [with Ukraine], we had a right to have 20,000 people at our military base in the Crimea. We had to facilitate the work of the Parliament of Crimea, the representative government body, in order for this Parliament to be able to assemble and affect actions in accordance with the law.
"The people had to feel they were safe. Yes, we created conditions for people to go to polling stations, but we did not engage in any hostilities. More than 90 percent of the Crimean population turned out, they voted, and once the ballot was cast, the [Crimean] Parliament, based on the outcome of the referendum, addressed the Russian parliament, asking to incorporate it into the Russian Federation.
"Moreover, Ukraine lost the territory, not due to Russia's position, but due to the position assumed by those who are living in Crimea. These people didn't want to live under the banner of nationalists."
Stone challenged some of Putin's concerns that Ukraine might have turned the Russian naval base over to NATO. "Even if NATO made an agreement with Ukraine, I still don't see a threat to Russia with the new weaponry," Stone said.
Putin responded: "I see a threat. The threat consists in the fact that once NATO comes to this or that country, the political leadership of that country as a whole, along with its population, cannot influence the decisions NATO takes, including the decisions related to stationing the military infrastructure. Even very sensitive weapons systems can be deployed. I'm also talking about the anti-ballistic missile systems."
Putin also argued that the U.S. government exploited the situation in Ukraine to spread hostile propaganda against Russia, saying:
"Through initiating the crisis in Ukraine, they've [American officials] managed to stimulate such an attitude towards Russia, viewing Russia as an enemy, a possible potential aggressor. But very soon everyone is going to understand, that there is no threat whatsoever emanating from Russia, either to the Baltic countries, or to Eastern Europe, or to Western Europe."
A Dangerous Standoff
Putin shed light, too, on a little-noticed confrontation involving a U.S. destroyer, the USS Donald Cook, that steamed through the Black Sea toward Crimea in the middle of the crisis but turned back when Russian aircraft buzzed the ship and Russia activated its shoreline defense systems.
Stone compared the situation to the Cuban Missile Crisis when a Soviet ship turned back rather than challenge the blockade that President John Kennedy had established around the island. But Putin didn't see the confrontation with the U.S. destroyers as grave as that.
Putin said, "Once Crimea became a full-fledged part of the Russian Federation, our attitude toward this territory changed dramatically. If we see a threat to our territory, and Crimea is now part of Russia, just as any other country, we will have to protect our territory by all means at our disposal. …
"I wouldn't draw an analogy with the Cuban Missile Crisis, because back then the world was on the brink of a nuclear apocalypse. Luckily, the situation didn't go so far this time. Even though we did indeed deploy our most sophisticated, our cutting-edge systems for the coastal defense," known as the Bastion.
"Certainly against such missiles as the ones we've deployed in Crimea such a ship as the Destroyer Donald Cook is simply defenseless. … Our Commanders always have the authorization to use any means for the defense of the Russian Federation. … Yes , certainly it would have been very bad. What was the Donald Cook doing so close to our land? Who was trying to provoke whom? And we are determined to protect our territory. …
"Once the destroyer was located and detected, they [the U.S. crew] saw that there was a threat, and the ship itself saw that it was the target of the missile systems. I don't know who the Captain was, but he showed much restraint, I think he is a responsible man, and a courageous officer to boot. I think it was the right decision that he took. He decided not to escalate the situation. He decided not to proceed. It doesn't at all mean that it would have been attacked by our missiles, but we had to show them that our coast was protected by the missile systems.
"The Captain sees right away that his ship has become the target of missile systems he has special equipment to detect such kinds of situations. … But indeed we were brought to the brink, so to speak. … Yes, certainly. We had to respond somehow. Yes, we were open to positive dialogue. We did everything to achieve a political settlement. But they [U.S. officials] had to give their support to this unconstitutional seizure of power. I still wonder why they had to do that?"
It also remains a question why the U.S. mainstream media feels that it must protect the American people from alternative views even as the risks of nuclear confrontation escalate.
Regarding other issues discussed by Putin, click here. For more on Stone's style in interviewing Putin, click here.