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Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine | Lex Fridman Podcast #286


small model | large model

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If you could talk to Vladimir Putin once again now,
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what kind of things would you talk about here?
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What kind of questions would you ask?
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The following is a conversation with Oliver Stone.
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He's one of the greatest filmmakers of all time
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with three Oscar wins and 11 Oscar nominations.
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His films tell stories of war and power,
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fearlessly and often controversially,
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shining a light on the dark parts
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of American and global history.
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His films include Platoon, Wall Street,
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Born on the 4th of July, Scarface, JFK,
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Nixon, Alexander, W, Snowden,
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and documentaries where he has interviewed
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some of the most powerful and consequential people
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in the world, including Fidel Castro,
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Hugo Chavez, and Vladimir Putin.
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And in this conversation, Oliver and I
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mostly focus our discussion on Vladimir Putin,
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Russia, and the war in Ukraine.
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My goal with these conversations
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is to understand the human being before me,
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to understand not just what they think,
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but how they think, to steel man their ideas,
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and to steel man the devil's advocate,
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all in service of understanding, not derision.
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I have done this poorly in the past.
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I'm still struggling with this,
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but I'm working hard to do better.
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I believe the moment we draw lines
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between good people and evil people
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will lose our ability to see that we're all one people
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in the most fundamental of ways,
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and will lose track of the deep truth
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expressed by the old Solzhenitsyn line
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that I return to time and time again,
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that the line between good and evil
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runs through the heart of every man.
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Oliver Stone has a perspective
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that he extensively documents
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in his powerful controversial series,
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The Untold History of the United States,
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that imperialism and the military industrial complex
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paved the path to absolute power,
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and thus corrupt the minds of the leaders
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and institutions that wield it.
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From this perspective, the way out
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of the humanitarian crisis and human suffering in Ukraine,
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and the way out from the pull
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of the beating drums of nuclear war
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is not simple to understand,
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but we must, because all of humanity hangs in the balance.
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I will talk to many people who seek to understand
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the way out of this growing catastrophe,
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including to historians, to leaders,
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and perhaps most importantly,
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to people on the ground in Ukraine and Russia,
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not just about war and suffering,
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but about life, friendship, family, love, and hope.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description, and now, dear friends,
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here's Oliver Stone.
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You're working on a documentary now about nuclear energy.
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Yes.
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So it's interesting to talk about this.
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Energy is such a big part of the world,
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about geopolitics of the world,
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about the way the world is.
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What do you think is the role of nuclear energy
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in the 21st century?
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Good question, and first of all,
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obviously everyone's talking about climate change, right?
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So here I wake up to that a few years ago,
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and clearly were concerned.
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I picked up a book by Josh Goldstein
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and his coauthor, who's Swedish.
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Those two wrote a book called A Bright Future.
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It came out a few years ago, and I lapped it up.
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It was a book, fact based, clear,
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not too long, and not too technical,
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and it was very clear that they were in favor
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of all kinds of renewables, renewable energy, yes.
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They made it very clear how dangerous oil
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and gas were, methane,
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and made it very clear to the layman like me,
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and at the same time said that these renewables
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could work so far, but the gap is enormous
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as to how much electricity the world is gonna need
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in 2050 and beyond, two, three, four times.
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We don't even know the damage, but we have India,
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we have China, we have Africa, we have Asia
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coming onto the scene wanting more and more electricity.
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So they address the problem as a global one,
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not just as often in the United States.
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You get the ethnocentric United States point of view
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that we know we're doing well, blah, blah, blah.
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We're not doing well, but we sell that
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to people that we're comfortable.
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We spend more energy than anybody,
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this country per capita, than anybody,
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and at the same time, we don't seem to understand
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the global picture, so that's what they did,
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and they made me very worried.
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So the only way to close that gap,
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the only way in their mind is nuclear energy,
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and talking about a gap of building a huge amount
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of reactors over the next 30 years,
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and starting now, they make that point over and over again.
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So obviously this country, the United States,
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is not gonna go in that direction,
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because it just is incapable of having that kind of will,
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political will, and fear is a huge factor,
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and still a lot of shibboleths, a lot of myths
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about nuclear energy have confused
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and confounded the landscape.
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The environmentalists have played a huge role
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in doing good things, many good things,
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but also confusing and confounding the landscape,
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and making accusations against nuclear energy
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that were exaggerated.
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So taking all these things into consideration,
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we set about making this documentary,
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which is about finished now, almost finishing.
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It's an hour and 40 minutes, and that was a hard part,
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getting it down from about three and a half hours
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to about this, something more manageable,
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and is it interviews?
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It's interviews, among others,
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but essentially we went to Russia, we went to France,
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which is the most, perhaps, advanced nuclear country
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in the world, Russia, and the United States.
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We went to the Idaho laboratory,
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and talked to the scientists there,
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as well as the Department of Energy people
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that are handling this.
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Idaho is one of the experimental labs,
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the United States is probably one of the most advanced,
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and they're doing a lot of advanced nuclear there.
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We also, we studied, well, Russia gave us a lot of insight.
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We're very cooperative,
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because they have some of the most advanced nuclear,
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actually the probably most advanced nuclear reactor
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in the world, at Beloyarsk, at the Ural Mountains.
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So we did an investigation there,
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and in France they have some very advanced nuclear reactors
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and they're building, and now they're building again.
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The Green Party came into power,
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just not into power, but became a factor in France,
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and there was a motion when Hollande was president,
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they started to move away from it.
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Actually, they were beginning to just abandon,
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they let, not complete, in other words,
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close down some of the nuclear reactors,
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there was talk of that, but thank God,
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France did not do that, and Macron came in
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and recently reversed it, reversed it,
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and they're building as fast as they can now,
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especially with the Ukraine war going on,
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there's an awareness that Russia will not be providing,
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may not be providing the energy Europe needs.
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So, and then China is the other one too,
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that's the other factor, I'm talking about the big boys.
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They have, doing tremendous work and fast,
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which is very hopeful, but of course,
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China is building in all directions at once,
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coal continues to be huge in China,
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and methane too,
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but basically coal, coal in India, in China,
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have the biggest users of coal,
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and as you know, Germany went back to coal a few years ago,
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so all these factors, it's a fascinating picture globally,
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so we try to achieve a consensus that where nuclear can work
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and where it will be working,
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where it will be used more and more,
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the question is how much carbon dioxide China
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and Russia will be putting out.
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France is the only one that's not putting it out.
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The United States has not changed,
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with all the talk and all the nonsense about renewables
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and the new lifestyle and all this,
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it's great for your guilt complex,
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but it doesn't do anything for the total accumulation
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of carbon dioxide in the world.
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Who's gonna lead the way on nuclear, do you think?
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You mentioned Russia, France, China, United States,
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who's gonna lead?
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Yeah, I don't think it's gonna be
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a United Nations kind of thing,
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because the world doesn't seem capable of uniting.
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We go to these conferences, Kyoto,
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and we talk and we agree,
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but then we don't actually enforce,
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so I don't think it can happen that way.
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I think it's gonna be an individual race with countries.
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They're gonna just do it for their own self interest,
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like China's doing it.
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China, the thing is, if it works, and I'm praying
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that it will really work on a big scale,
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China will back away from coal naturally.
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The same thing will be true of India.
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They will see the benefits, because if you go to India,
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you see the cities, the pollution.
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You walk around in that stuff, and you get,
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it's not, there's no hope in this, and you sense it.
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So people will move in this direction naturally,
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because nuclear is clean energy.
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And the amount of casualties of nuclear
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is the lowest on the industrial scale
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for energy producing, from coal down to oil, everything.
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The lowest casualty rate, very lowest,
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.002 or something, is nuclear.
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So not that many people have died from nuclear.
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Not that many, I think 50 people at Chernobyl,
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which was the worst accident.
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Nobody had died at Fukushima.
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Nobody died at Three Mile Island,
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and that's what you hear all over and over again,
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these accidents.
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The environmentalists have sold us the idea
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that they're dangerous.
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And it's, a lot of environmentalists, thank God,
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are changing, they've come off that routine,
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and they've saying, this, we were wrong.
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We've done a lot of good work.
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Greenpeace did a lot of good work.
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Whale, whales, saving this, saving that.
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But they admit themselves, not they don't,
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but people who have been in the organization
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have said, we were wrong.
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In 1956, we show the articles
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in the New York Times that came out,
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the Rockefeller Foundation,
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which of course is a big producer of oil,
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the Rockefeller family, and the foundation came out
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with a study, which was weighted.
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They tipped the scale, put a thumb on the scale,
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but it was a scientific expose of radiation
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in the study that came out, printed in the New York Times,
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because the New York Times publisher, Salzburger,
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was on their board, he was one of the board members.
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So they got a lot of strong publicity
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condemning radiation, which killed,
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started the process of doubting nuclear energy.
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The radiation levels that they pointed out
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were very minor, and of course,
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if you go into a scientific analysis of this now
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with what we know, it's just not true.
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But it tilted the scale back in the 50s, 60s,
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and started the questioning the nuclear business.
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Do you think that was malevolence or incompetence?
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No, I think it was competition.
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I don't think it was conspiracy
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as much as it was essentially,
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we don't want this, nuclear energy's gonna end
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the dominance of oil, absolutely, and it will.
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And it will anyway, because it's the only sane way
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for the world to proceed.
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But the world will have to learn through adversity.
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So in other words, this situation could get worse,
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much worse, and certain countries
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are just gonna have to adapt, like we always do.
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When things become too hard, you've got to go,
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you have to change your thinking.
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And humans are pretty good at that.
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Yes, talking about human nature, they're very adept
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at that, Germany, for example.
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I mean, they were, when the Fukushima happened,
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they went out of the nuclear business.
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That was shocking to me.
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They just pulled out and they destroyed,
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destructed several of their nuclear reactors
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who were still functioning, and put up coal,
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or yeah, put up coal and oil, replaced it.
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And as a result, Germany drifted into this place
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next to France, their electricity bills went up,
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and France stayed the same.
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They don't have that, they have a different system
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in Europe, but more or less, no question that France
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was doing a lot better than Germany.
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And now, with this Ukraine issue,
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it's a very interesting fulcrum point,
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whether Germany is, what direction they're gonna go now.
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How can they, how can they keep going with coal?
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They just can't.
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What's the connection between oil, coal, nuclear, and war?
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Sort of energy and conflict.
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When you look at the 21st century,
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when you were doing this documentary,
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were you thinking of nuclear as a way to power the world,
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but is it also to avoid conflict over resources?
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Is there some aspect to energy being a source of conflict
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that we're trying to avoid?
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I don't have the energy, the history of energy
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at my fingertips, and it's a very long history here.
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But I would say, apparently not.
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It does seem that individually, each country
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can answer its needs by building.
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And up until now, we haven't had conflict,
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except in this issue of Russia supplying Europe.
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Obviously, the pipeline, Nord Stream 2 has been closed,
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and Nord Stream 1 is also probably gonna be phased out.
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And the concept of Russia supplying gas to Europe
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is now up in the air, and who knows what's gonna happen.
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I just don't see how Europe can get away
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from using Russian gas.
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But Russian gas is not the solution,
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because it's methane, too, and it goes up
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into the atmosphere.
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Methane, in the short term, is worse than coal, worse.
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There's all kinds of charts we show in the film.
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We try not to be too overfactual,
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but methane is not the answer.
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It's a short term answer.
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Will countries go to war over energy is a question
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that I'm trying to think of all the wars that happened.
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You could say Germany, of course, during World War II
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needed oil very badly, and it dictated their strategy
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with Romania, et cetera, and getting the oil fields open.
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But I haven't thought that one through.
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I'd have to make a documentary on it
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to really understand how energy and war interface.
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It's always part of the calculation,
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but it's a question of how much.
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Right, that's the question.
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I just have to ask, because you mentioned
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your mom was from France, you've traveled
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for this documentary, and you traveled in general
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throughout the world in Russia, Ukraine.
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What are the defining characteristics of these cultures?
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Let's go with Russia.
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So as I told you, I'm half Ukrainian, half Russian.
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I came from that part of the world.
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What are some interesting, beautiful aspects
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of the culture of Russia and Ukraine?
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I can't really speak honestly of Ukraine.
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I was there only in 1983 when I visited
link |
00:16:28.080
the Soviet Union under the communism,
link |
00:16:30.560
and Kiev was beautiful and was one of the nicer places
link |
00:16:34.080
I went, but they were very much stultified
link |
00:16:38.020
by the communist system, they all were.
link |
00:16:41.260
The best places to visit in Russia were always in the South,
link |
00:16:43.760
whether Georgia or the Muslim countries,
link |
00:16:49.120
it was always a better culture in terms of comfort.
link |
00:16:52.520
But communism was rough, and that was the end of it,
link |
00:16:55.120
pretty much Brezhnev regime, and then Andropov.
link |
00:16:58.720
Gorbachev was three years in the future when I was there.
link |
00:17:01.840
So I can't talk about Ukraine, and they've not been friendly
link |
00:17:05.680
to me since ISIS, of course, since I made
link |
00:17:08.160
the Putin interviews, you know, Ukraine has banned me,
link |
00:17:11.640
I believe, they've been very tough on people
link |
00:17:14.320
who are critical.
link |
00:17:16.200
I think the Russian people have been very special to me,
link |
00:17:19.520
and perhaps because of my European upbringing,
link |
00:17:22.460
but I enjoy talking to them, I find them very open,
link |
00:17:25.000
very generous, and they appreciate support,
link |
00:17:29.320
they appreciate people who say, you know,
link |
00:17:31.640
I understand why your government is doing this
link |
00:17:33.840
or this or this, I've tried to stay open minded
link |
00:17:36.720
and listen to both sides.
link |
00:17:39.140
The thing that I have seen as an American is, of course,
link |
00:17:42.040
this American enmity towards Russia from the very beginning.
link |
00:17:46.520
I grew up in 1940, 46, I was born in the 50s,
link |
00:17:50.640
it was so anti Russian, they were everywhere,
link |
00:17:54.720
they were in our schools, they were in our State Department,
link |
00:17:57.080
they were spying on us, they were stealing the country
link |
00:18:01.600
from us, that was the way the American right wing,
link |
00:18:05.640
not even the right wing, I'd say the Republican party,
link |
00:18:08.280
pictured the Russians, they were actively engaged
link |
00:18:11.800
in infiltrating America and changing our thinking.
link |
00:18:15.720
And television shows were based on this,
link |
00:18:17.840
it was very much the J. Edgar Hoover mentality
link |
00:18:21.080
that communism was even behind the student protests
link |
00:18:24.960
of the 1960s, this was the direction in which the FBI
link |
00:18:28.640
and the CIA were thinking.
link |
00:18:30.720
So I grew up with a prejudice, and it took me many years,
link |
00:18:35.240
my father was a Republican and he was a stockbroker
link |
00:18:38.800
and he was a very intelligent man, but even he,
link |
00:18:41.400
because he was a World War II soldier, he was a colonel,
link |
00:18:45.440
had fallen under the influence.
link |
00:18:47.480
In order to be successful in American business
link |
00:18:50.080
in the 1950s, you had to have a very strong
link |
00:18:53.400
anti Soviet line, very strong, you wouldn't get ahead.
link |
00:18:58.080
If you expressed any kind of, let's end this Cold War,
link |
00:19:01.640
any kind of activity of that nature, you'd be cast aside
link |
00:19:04.640
as a pinko or somebody who was not completely
link |
00:19:09.840
on the board with the American way of doing business,
link |
00:19:12.360
which was capitalism works, communism doesn't.
link |
00:19:16.280
And in particular, communism was embodied
link |
00:19:19.680
by the Soviet Union as the enemy.
link |
00:19:24.400
So hence the narrative behind the Cold War.
link |
00:19:29.400
Behind the Cold War, that's correct, and it basically
link |
00:19:33.560
lasted, I mean, you saw the ups and downs of it.
link |
00:19:37.480
When Reagan came in, I was, well, first of all,
link |
00:19:40.000
we had the crisis of 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis,
link |
00:19:44.000
and Kennedy proved himself to be a warrior for peace.
link |
00:19:47.520
He resolved that with Khrushchev.
link |
00:19:49.360
That was a big moment, huge moment, and people don't
link |
00:19:52.240
give him credit enough for really saving us from a war
link |
00:19:56.400
that could have affected all of mankind.
link |
00:19:59.480
But it still didn't avert.
link |
00:20:02.800
No, because the moment he was killed,
link |
00:20:05.760
honestly, there was a lot of, we can talk about that,
link |
00:20:08.440
and as you know, I've made a film, JFK Revisited
link |
00:20:11.240
is a documentary we released this year
link |
00:20:14.520
about the movie I made in 1991.
link |
00:20:18.600
But the moment he was killed, I would argue
link |
00:20:21.680
that Lyndon Johnson went back immediately
link |
00:20:24.200
to the old way of thinking, the old way of doing business,
link |
00:20:26.760
which was the Eisenhower, Truman way,
link |
00:20:30.360
which we had adapted since World War II.
link |
00:20:33.280
That was an interim.
link |
00:20:34.800
You have to think about it from, Roosevelt dies in 45.
link |
00:20:37.520
Roosevelt has an interim of 15 years where he,
link |
00:20:44.520
he has more of a democratic regime, more liberal.
link |
00:20:47.200
He establishes, he recognizes the Soviet Union
link |
00:20:49.600
for the first time since the revolution,
link |
00:20:52.000
and he actually has a relationship with them.
link |
00:20:54.640
He sends ambassadors who are friendly,
link |
00:20:56.920
and he has a relationship with Stalin, et cetera,
link |
00:21:01.440
and at Yalta, or no, at Tehran, rather,
link |
00:21:05.880
that's where he had the relationship.
link |
00:21:08.000
Do you think if JFK lived, we would not have a Cold War?
link |
00:21:10.840
No, absolutely not, and we go into great depth on that
link |
00:21:14.600
in the film, and I'd urge you to see it,
link |
00:21:17.000
because it goes into all the issues around the world.
link |
00:21:19.480
Kennedy was being very much an anti imperialist.
link |
00:21:21.920
It turns out, and many people just don't understand that,
link |
00:21:24.880
but you have to look at all his policies in Middle East
link |
00:21:28.520
with Nasser, he had a relationship with Sukarno in Indonesia,
link |
00:21:33.840
with Latin America, he made a big effort
link |
00:21:35.760
with the Alliance for Progress,
link |
00:21:37.640
and when Africa, above all, with Lumumba,
link |
00:21:40.800
he was very shocked at his death,
link |
00:21:42.760
and tried to defend the right, the integrity
link |
00:21:47.840
of the Belgian Congo with Dag Hammarskjold of the UN.
link |
00:21:51.360
He made a big effort.
link |
00:21:52.840
Unfortunately, it didn't work out,
link |
00:21:55.240
because Dag Hammarskjold was killed,
link |
00:21:57.280
and then Kennedy was killed,
link |
00:21:58.840
and Congo descended into the chaos
link |
00:22:01.400
of Joseph Mobutu's dictatorship.
link |
00:22:04.560
But Kennedy was very active in terms of,
link |
00:22:07.040
as an Irishman, not as an Englishman, he was an Irishman.
link |
00:22:10.720
And I say that because, well, we'll come back to that,
link |
00:22:12.880
because Mr. Joe Biden is an Irishman,
link |
00:22:14.600
but it's a different kind of an Irishman.
link |
00:22:16.040
They're both Catholic Irish, but Kennedy really made
link |
00:22:19.400
an effort to change the imperialist mindset
link |
00:22:25.320
that still was very strong in America and Europe.
link |
00:22:30.000
Lyndon Johnson changed back to the old policy,
link |
00:22:33.160
and we were never able to really keep
link |
00:22:36.360
big talk going with the Russians.
link |
00:22:37.800
Briefly had it with Carter, but then Brzezinski came in.
link |
00:22:42.800
Brzezinski was his national security advisor.
link |
00:22:45.480
He was put there by Rockefeller,
link |
00:22:47.000
and Brzezinski was a Pole, he got revenge from Poland.
link |
00:22:50.760
Poland has always been attacking Russia,
link |
00:22:53.080
as far as I remember, back to another century.
link |
00:22:55.760
I mean, the two world wars that occupied Russia,
link |
00:22:58.960
so tragically, entry points were always
link |
00:23:02.360
through Poland and Ukraine.
link |
00:23:05.360
So Brzezinski got his revenge,
link |
00:23:07.720
and Carter ended up being an enemy of the Soviet Union,
link |
00:23:11.600
and creating, as Brzezinski took pride in it,
link |
00:23:15.240
he created the atmosphere of the trap
link |
00:23:16.880
for the Soviets to go into Afghanistan in 79.
link |
00:23:20.600
That trap was set, he says, he said, in 1978.
link |
00:23:26.240
So there was never, except for brief moments,
link |
00:23:29.400
periods of detente with the Soviets,
link |
00:23:33.240
and I grew up under that.
link |
00:23:35.200
I didn't really know anything of this going on,
link |
00:23:37.800
because I was learning, I was educating myself
link |
00:23:40.600
as I was going, learning movies,
link |
00:23:42.200
and trying to be a dramatist, and this and that,
link |
00:23:45.040
so I wasn't thinking about this.
link |
00:23:47.280
Then, when Reagan came in, I was worried again,
link |
00:23:50.440
because it was the beat of the old beat,
link |
00:23:52.520
which was there, the most evil empire.
link |
00:23:54.840
I mean, it goes on in American history, it doesn't end.
link |
00:23:57.720
Reagan got a lot of points for that,
link |
00:24:00.080
and of course, when Gorbachev came in,
link |
00:24:04.600
it was a beautiful moment for the world.
link |
00:24:07.360
It was a great surprise.
link |
00:24:09.000
It was probably the best years for America,
link |
00:24:11.480
at least from my point of view,
link |
00:24:13.040
in terms of this relaxation in the mood.
link |
00:24:16.280
1986 to 1991 were great years
link |
00:24:21.560
in terms of ability to believe, once again,
link |
00:24:24.400
that there could be a peace dividend,
link |
00:24:27.040
but the world changed again in 1991, 92.
link |
00:24:30.080
There's an internal mechanism, who knows?
link |
00:24:31.880
You could blame the United States,
link |
00:24:35.000
you could blame Russia for...
link |
00:24:39.040
Gorbachev was perhaps not the right man
link |
00:24:41.080
to try to administer that country at that point.
link |
00:24:43.400
He had great visions, he was a man of peace,
link |
00:24:47.120
but it was very difficult to hold together
link |
00:24:48.880
such a huge empire.
link |
00:24:50.080
So vision is not enough to hold together the Soviet Union?
link |
00:24:53.520
I think the details are interesting.
link |
00:24:56.360
I followed up on that a little bit,
link |
00:24:58.000
because I was recently in countries like Kazakhstan,
link |
00:25:01.520
talked about the negotiations that were going on,
link |
00:25:05.360
and the breakup of the Soviet Union.
link |
00:25:08.360
It's a very interesting story,
link |
00:25:09.800
because it involves everything, Ukraine, of course,
link |
00:25:12.160
everything that's going on now.
link |
00:25:14.080
Some, what is it, 30 million Russians
link |
00:25:15.760
were left outside of the Soviet Union when it collapsed.
link |
00:25:19.320
They had no home anymore, they were homes
link |
00:25:21.840
in other countries, such as in Ukraine.
link |
00:25:25.640
So it's an interesting story, and with repercussions today,
link |
00:25:30.200
Kazakhstan is a good example of keeping a balance,
link |
00:25:34.520
keeping it neutral.
link |
00:25:36.160
He played both sides,
link |
00:25:37.840
and because Yeltsin wanted him
link |
00:25:41.520
to join the Russian Confederation
link |
00:25:45.320
in a certain way where he'd be supporting,
link |
00:25:48.640
against Gorbachev, there's a whole inward battle there.
link |
00:25:53.400
I think the Ukraine came along with Yeltsin,
link |
00:25:57.800
as well as, I'm sorry, I don't remember now,
link |
00:26:02.280
but two other regions came with him,
link |
00:26:04.760
and that was a block that broke up the Soviet Union.
link |
00:26:09.240
It was Yeltsin's plan to,
link |
00:26:12.280
and it wasn't make the Russian Federation, and they did.
link |
00:26:15.760
I would love to return back to JFK eventually,
link |
00:26:19.240
because he's such a fascinating figure
link |
00:26:20.640
in the history of human civilization,
link |
00:26:23.600
but let me ask you, fast forward.
link |
00:26:26.200
In 2000, Yeltsin was no longer president,
link |
00:26:29.720
and Vladimir Putin became president.
link |
00:26:32.440
You did a series of interviews with Vladimir Putin,
link |
00:26:36.600
as you mentioned, over a period of two years,
link |
00:26:39.080
from 2015 to 2017.
link |
00:26:43.080
Let me ask with a high level question.
link |
00:26:45.740
What was your goal with that conversation?
link |
00:26:49.720
Oh, came out in 2017, I guess I started them in 2014.
link |
00:26:55.440
At that point, the Snowden affair had happened,
link |
00:26:58.560
and I was working on a movie on Snowden.
link |
00:27:00.760
That happened in 13, Ukraine happened in 14,
link |
00:27:08.200
and one thing after another.
link |
00:27:10.880
By 14, Putin was enemy number, again,
link |
00:27:14.640
becoming a wanted man on the American list.
link |
00:27:17.200
He was enemy, he was certainly in the top five.
link |
00:27:22.480
But the animosity towards Putin
link |
00:27:24.720
had been growing since 2007 at Munich.
link |
00:27:27.840
I remember that speech when he made it.
link |
00:27:29.880
It's in my documentary, that's a four hour documentary,
link |
00:27:32.720
four different conversations.
link |
00:27:34.000
I mean, we talked over two years, two and a half years,
link |
00:27:37.660
but I remember that image of him at Munich
link |
00:27:40.080
making a very important speech about world harmony,
link |
00:27:44.980
about the balance necessary in the world,
link |
00:27:47.480
and I remember the sneer, the sneer on John McCain's face.
link |
00:27:52.200
He was in Munich, obviously eyeballing Putin
link |
00:27:55.460
and hating him, and it was so evident
link |
00:27:57.760
that McCain had no belief whatsoever that this,
link |
00:28:01.160
he was almost treating him like these are the communists
link |
00:28:03.080
are back, and we know that Putin was not a communist.
link |
00:28:05.840
We know that Putin is very much a market man,
link |
00:28:07.840
and he made it very clear and tried to keep an open climate,
link |
00:28:13.340
a new relationship with Europe,
link |
00:28:15.000
but the United States always, certain people
link |
00:28:17.160
in the United States always saw that as a threat,
link |
00:28:18.800
like Putin is trying to take Europe away from us
link |
00:28:21.580
as if we own it, as if we have the right to own it.
link |
00:28:24.800
But Putin was making the point, it's very important,
link |
00:28:26.720
about sovereignty, and sovereignty for countries
link |
00:28:31.600
is crucial for this new world to have balance.
link |
00:28:35.000
That's sovereignty for China, sovereignty for Russia,
link |
00:28:38.240
sovereignty for Iran, sovereignty for Venezuela,
link |
00:28:41.920
sovereignty for Cuba.
link |
00:28:43.240
This is an idea that's crucial to the new world,
link |
00:28:45.960
and I think the United States has never accepted that.
link |
00:28:49.760
Sovereignty is not an idea that they can allow.
link |
00:28:53.480
You have to be obedient to the United States idea
link |
00:28:58.960
of so called democracy and freedom,
link |
00:29:02.240
but much more important is sovereignty for these countries,
link |
00:29:07.120
and the United States has not obeyed that,
link |
00:29:08.880
has not even acknowledged it, and it never comes up.
link |
00:29:13.600
So from the perspective of the United States,
link |
00:29:15.600
when power centers arise in the world,
link |
00:29:18.440
you start to oppose those, not because of the ideas,
link |
00:29:24.740
but merely because they have power.
link |
00:29:28.460
Isn't that at the heart of the doctrine
link |
00:29:30.660
of the neoconservatives,
link |
00:29:32.780
and the pact for the new American century
link |
00:29:34.940
they wrote down in 1996, seven,
link |
00:29:38.220
they said there shall be no emergence of a rival power.
link |
00:29:41.700
It was very clear it was about power,
link |
00:29:43.980
and they've stuck to that doctrine,
link |
00:29:46.480
which is if you start to get dangerous in any way
link |
00:29:49.340
or have power, we're gonna knock you out.
link |
00:29:52.680
Now that won't work, and I don't believe it can work,
link |
00:29:56.000
and that is unfortunately a policy
link |
00:29:58.220
the United States is following,
link |
00:30:00.140
and the neoconservatives group, which is very small,
link |
00:30:04.180
but it's very strong apparently,
link |
00:30:05.660
and their idea has resonated.
link |
00:30:08.020
It was behind the George Bush's invasion of Iraq.
link |
00:30:12.640
It was part of not only Iraq,
link |
00:30:14.560
but cleaning out the whole world, draining the swamp,
link |
00:30:17.780
going to Afghanistan first,
link |
00:30:19.220
and then although Iraq had nothing to do
link |
00:30:21.660
with al Qaeda's attack, going after Iraq.
link |
00:30:25.960
And of course 60 some other countries
link |
00:30:28.100
that were terrorism had some signs of,
link |
00:30:34.740
wherever America judged would be a dangerous country.
link |
00:30:38.260
We had the right, you're either with us or against us.
link |
00:30:41.300
Now that is a disastrous policy,
link |
00:30:43.540
and led to one thing after another.
link |
00:30:45.160
The Iraq war never learned a lesson.
link |
00:30:48.060
The neoconservatives were never fired,
link |
00:30:50.180
never thrown out of office.
link |
00:30:51.540
The people who prosecuted that war are still around.
link |
00:30:55.280
Many of them are still around,
link |
00:30:57.340
and they're obviously guiding America now.
link |
00:31:00.260
Let me return to this question of power.
link |
00:31:03.540
Don't forget the sneer that I saw there.
link |
00:31:07.220
That emblemized the United States reaction.
link |
00:31:09.440
Also there were several other American representatives
link |
00:31:12.580
who were laughing, kind of mocking Putin.
link |
00:31:16.180
It was very serious.
link |
00:31:17.280
I felt there was a divide there.
link |
00:31:21.780
So since then, I mean in a certain sense,
link |
00:31:25.100
the Europe reaction to Putin is crucial,
link |
00:31:27.740
and they were more with him back then.
link |
00:31:31.060
And a big thing for America was always to keep NATO,
link |
00:31:34.460
to keep Europe in its pocket as a satellite.
link |
00:31:37.500
And with this recent war, of course they've succeeded
link |
00:31:40.700
in beyond their dreams.
link |
00:31:42.620
The Russians have fulfilled the fantasy
link |
00:31:44.780
of the United States, to finally be this aggressor
link |
00:31:47.820
that they have pictured for years.
link |
00:31:50.180
We can talk about that later.
link |
00:31:51.640
But at that time, Europe had significant support for Putin,
link |
00:31:58.180
and the United States was sneering at Putin.
link |
00:32:01.700
That's correct, you can say that.
link |
00:32:03.380
And then, so there was this,
link |
00:32:05.300
there was uncertainty as to the direction,
link |
00:32:12.220
as to the future of Russia.
link |
00:32:13.420
And that's exactly when you interviewed Vladimir Putin.
link |
00:32:16.900
I wanted to know what they thought,
link |
00:32:20.020
because we couldn't get the information war
link |
00:32:24.520
that the United States was fighting against Russia.
link |
00:32:26.340
It was in evidence back then.
link |
00:32:28.020
It was full out.
link |
00:32:29.380
The condemnation of Russia on all fronts.
link |
00:32:33.500
I never saw a positive article about Putin.
link |
00:32:36.820
Although when I traveled in the world,
link |
00:32:38.420
and I traveled a lot doing documentaries,
link |
00:32:40.700
it was very clear in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia,
link |
00:32:44.180
there was respect for him.
link |
00:32:45.740
That he was a man who was getting his job done
link |
00:32:48.380
in the interest of Russia.
link |
00:32:50.100
He was, as I said in the documentary, a son of Russia.
link |
00:32:53.580
Very much so, in the positive sense, a son of Russia.
link |
00:32:58.020
Not that he's out there trying to destroy
link |
00:33:02.100
the interests of other countries, no.
link |
00:33:05.340
That he was out there to promote the interests of Russia,
link |
00:33:09.020
but at the same time, keep a balance.
link |
00:33:11.060
Keep the world into a harmony.
link |
00:33:14.140
This has always been his picture.
link |
00:33:15.980
Peace was always his idea.
link |
00:33:17.880
In other words, he always referred to the United States
link |
00:33:19.780
in all these interviews as our partners.
link |
00:33:22.740
And I said, will you stop using that word?
link |
00:33:24.320
They're not.
link |
00:33:26.580
And he was a little bit slow in waking up
link |
00:33:28.380
to what the United States was doing.
link |
00:33:31.140
Well, that said, he's one of the most powerful men
link |
00:33:34.460
in the world.
link |
00:33:35.940
He was at that time.
link |
00:33:37.980
And let me ask you the human question.
link |
00:33:42.020
As the old adage goes, power corrupts
link |
00:33:44.440
and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
link |
00:33:47.260
Did you see any corroding effects of power on the man?
link |
00:33:52.920
Forget the political leader, on just the human being
link |
00:33:55.500
that carries that power on his shoulders for so many years.
link |
00:33:59.420
Keep in mind that he's been, unlike most modern leaders,
link |
00:34:03.660
he's been in office off and on,
link |
00:34:06.220
because Medvedev was president
link |
00:34:08.860
and he was not literally in charge.
link |
00:34:12.740
He took another appointment at that point,
link |
00:34:17.060
but he was still very much involved.
link |
00:34:18.860
But for 20 years, more or less,
link |
00:34:20.540
he's been at the administrator of the state,
link |
00:34:24.580
the protector of the state.
link |
00:34:26.580
And he's apparently done a good enough job
link |
00:34:29.780
that the Russian people have kept him there.
link |
00:34:32.060
Because contrary to what many people think,
link |
00:34:34.020
I really believe that if the Russian people didn't want him,
link |
00:34:37.460
he would be out.
link |
00:34:39.180
I firmly believe that.
link |
00:34:40.260
I don't think you can go against the will of the people.
link |
00:34:42.700
Now, it expresses itself in many ways,
link |
00:34:44.900
at the ballot box and so forth,
link |
00:34:46.520
but also in other ways in Russia.
link |
00:34:47.980
There's a strong currents of opinion.
link |
00:34:51.420
So contrary to what the position of him as a dictator,
link |
00:34:55.580
he wouldn't last if he was unpopular, number one.
link |
00:34:58.300
Number two, Russia is much more divided than people know.
link |
00:35:01.860
There's other factors in Russia.
link |
00:35:04.580
There are always tensions around the Kremlin,
link |
00:35:07.820
who has power, who doesn't have power.
link |
00:35:09.940
That's been going on for 100 years.
link |
00:35:12.680
But the factions in Russia are very much there.
link |
00:35:17.420
So when people refer to Russia as Putin, they're mistaken.
link |
00:35:22.140
And they do this regularly in the New York papers
link |
00:35:25.040
and all this.
link |
00:35:25.880
They say, Putin did this, Putin did that,
link |
00:35:28.020
Putin's doing that, but it's Russia that's doing it.
link |
00:35:31.100
And that's what, there's a distinction there that I,
link |
00:35:34.220
it's changed.
link |
00:35:35.060
In the old days, I would read about Khrushchev,
link |
00:35:37.780
but it was never Khrushchev personally.
link |
00:35:40.040
It was about the Soviet Union.
link |
00:35:43.100
There was respect for a country.
link |
00:35:45.020
And now when it started to get personal with Putin,
link |
00:35:48.860
it changed and our thinking changed in a negative way.
link |
00:35:53.360
We no longer respected it as a country,
link |
00:35:56.180
we were seeing it as a man.
link |
00:35:57.380
And the man we had trashed repeatedly,
link |
00:36:00.100
repeatedly as a poisoner, as a murderer,
link |
00:36:02.780
and none of which has ever been proven,
link |
00:36:04.900
but which has always been repeated and repeated
link |
00:36:07.100
to the point at which it becomes like an Orwell mantra.
link |
00:36:10.900
It becomes like, he is of course a bad guy.
link |
00:36:13.740
Can I just ask you, as a great filmmaker,
link |
00:36:17.280
as a human being, what was it like talking
link |
00:36:20.340
to one of the most powerful men in the world?
link |
00:36:23.060
For honestly, and I'm not naive,
link |
00:36:25.260
I've talked to a lot of powerful people.
link |
00:36:28.980
In the movie business, there are powerful people
link |
00:36:30.900
and many of them are corrupted.
link |
00:36:32.580
I've talked to many people in my life.
link |
00:36:34.100
I've been in the military, I've seen, I've had other jobs.
link |
00:36:38.060
I have to say, I found him to be a human being.
link |
00:36:40.420
I just found him to be reasonable, calm.
link |
00:36:44.500
I never saw him lose his temper.
link |
00:36:45.980
And I mean, you have to understand that most people,
link |
00:36:48.980
most people in the Western way of doing business
link |
00:36:51.820
get emotional.
link |
00:36:53.100
I don't see that.
link |
00:36:54.220
I saw him as a balanced man,
link |
00:36:56.700
as a man who had studied this like you have.
link |
00:36:59.020
There's a calmness to you.
link |
00:37:00.860
It comes from studying the world
link |
00:37:02.420
and having a rational response to it.
link |
00:37:06.420
It's interesting, his two daughters,
link |
00:37:07.980
one of them is very scientific
link |
00:37:09.580
and the other one's doing very well in another profession,
link |
00:37:12.500
but they're a thinking family.
link |
00:37:15.360
His wife too was.
link |
00:37:18.180
I can't talk for the new wife
link |
00:37:19.340
because I don't know about it,
link |
00:37:20.380
but he kept his family with great respect.
link |
00:37:23.660
He's raised his daughter's right.
link |
00:37:26.180
He served Yeltsin the way he looked at it.
link |
00:37:28.220
He served Yeltsin well, and he never trashed Yeltsin.
link |
00:37:32.780
Certainly a lot of people did,
link |
00:37:34.100
but I asked him repeatedly was he an alcoholic,
link |
00:37:38.020
this or that, but he wouldn't even go that far.
link |
00:37:40.220
Just respect.
link |
00:37:41.900
And this man, Yeltsin, was in many ways ridiculed
link |
00:37:46.900
by the Russians, and he turned over the power
link |
00:37:52.020
because he felt like he was overwhelmed.
link |
00:37:53.780
He turned over the power to this man because why?
link |
00:37:56.160
How many people had he fired before him?
link |
00:37:57.860
Several, several prime ministers, this, that.
link |
00:38:00.460
Why did he turn power over to Mr. Putin?
link |
00:38:03.260
Because he respected him for his work ethic
link |
00:38:07.700
and his balance, his maturity.
link |
00:38:10.860
And that's what I can say is I saw in him.
link |
00:38:12.860
A poor person from a poor family who worked his way up
link |
00:38:18.740
through the KGB, Americans keep saying he's a KGB agent,
link |
00:38:21.780
but it's like saying George Bush was a CIA agent,
link |
00:38:25.980
but he became, you grow, you grow in your life.
link |
00:38:28.860
And he went from the KGB to this technocratic position.
link |
00:38:33.060
He dealt with many problems, including the Chechnyan War,
link |
00:38:38.100
which is a very difficult situation,
link |
00:38:40.500
as well as the Russian submarine problem.
link |
00:38:43.100
Several things happened early in his,
link |
00:38:44.940
that gave him a lot of experience,
link |
00:38:47.900
and he handled them all pretty well.
link |
00:38:49.960
Do you think he was an honest man?
link |
00:38:52.100
I do.
link |
00:38:52.920
Now, of course, the question of money,
link |
00:38:54.900
the charge is that he's the richest man in the world,
link |
00:38:57.300
or ludicrous, certainly doesn't live like it
link |
00:39:00.420
or act like it.
link |
00:39:01.340
If you're rich, I've been around
link |
00:39:03.540
a lot of rich people in my life.
link |
00:39:05.140
You'd probably have, too.
link |
00:39:06.020
In America, you run into them.
link |
00:39:07.500
So many of them are arrogant.
link |
00:39:08.740
I'm actually good friends now
link |
00:39:11.380
with the richest man in the world.
link |
00:39:13.140
Of course, I saw your interview with Mr. Musk,
link |
00:39:16.820
who I appreciate.
link |
00:39:18.180
At least he speaks freely.
link |
00:39:21.480
I'm positive about him owning Twitter,
link |
00:39:23.780
because Twitter has become censorship city,
link |
00:39:27.100
as has all the major tech.
link |
00:39:29.100
I mean, the censorship that we are now seeing
link |
00:39:30.860
in the United States is so unAmerican and shocking to me.
link |
00:39:34.620
And he is a resistance to that, that is true.
link |
00:39:36.940
Yeah, I like Musk for that.
link |
00:39:38.440
Just for that only.
link |
00:39:39.340
But I also appreciate him, his adventuresome,
link |
00:39:43.380
his nature and his desire to explore the world
link |
00:39:47.680
and to ask questions.
link |
00:39:49.020
Yeah, there's certain ways you sound when you speak freely.
link |
00:39:54.060
There's certain ways you sound,
link |
00:39:56.260
a man sounds when he speaks freely,
link |
00:39:58.540
and he speaks freely.
link |
00:40:00.420
And it's refreshing.
link |
00:40:02.500
No matter whether you're rich or not, it doesn't matter.
link |
00:40:05.140
When you speak freely, it's a beautiful thing.
link |
00:40:06.940
Actually, Musk, in a major point
link |
00:40:10.180
on going back to nuclear energy,
link |
00:40:12.020
he never believed in it at first, apparently.
link |
00:40:15.580
He was going for batteries, right?
link |
00:40:17.180
And he put a lot of money into batteries.
link |
00:40:19.280
He made them bigger and bigger batteries.
link |
00:40:20.700
But it just, as Bill Gates has said,
link |
00:40:23.300
it's just, it's not gonna get us there.
link |
00:40:25.960
And now I think Musk is on another path.
link |
00:40:28.220
He understands the need for nuclear.
link |
00:40:29.900
Yeah, he's a supporter of nuclear.
link |
00:40:33.620
We're jumping around.
link |
00:40:35.060
Putin never asked for one thing, never.
link |
00:40:37.900
It was an interview, it was free form.
link |
00:40:39.940
Ask anything you want.
link |
00:40:41.580
No restrictions, no rules.
link |
00:40:44.780
As with Castro, frankly,
link |
00:40:46.140
Castro did the same thing as did Chavez.
link |
00:40:47.820
So I've had good luck in interviewing free ranging subjects,
link |
00:40:50.660
people willing to express themselves.
link |
00:40:52.380
He's much more guarded than Castro or Chavez,
link |
00:40:57.300
because as you know, he's setting government policy
link |
00:41:00.200
when he speaks.
link |
00:41:01.040
Anything he says is gonna be taken out of context.
link |
00:41:03.940
But there was no restrictions on what to talk about,
link |
00:41:06.920
none of that.
link |
00:41:07.760
Nor any desire to see anything before we published it.
link |
00:41:10.920
No need to check it with him.
link |
00:41:14.460
It was a completely.
link |
00:41:17.780
Do you think he watched the final product?
link |
00:41:19.980
Yes, I do, but I don't think he made judgments on it.
link |
00:41:23.220
I think he was pleased.
link |
00:41:25.280
He doesn't go either way.
link |
00:41:26.300
You see, he's pleased.
link |
00:41:28.460
I mean, it went well and he's happy for us.
link |
00:41:30.940
But I don't think he had great enthusiasm
link |
00:41:33.340
expressed it to me.
link |
00:41:34.820
He trusted me.
link |
00:41:35.740
And you can see the way he dealt with me each time.
link |
00:41:38.100
He warmed up to me four times.
link |
00:41:41.140
The first time I might've been a little stiff.
link |
00:41:44.300
You're asking, you don't know who you're dealing with
link |
00:41:47.180
and so forth.
link |
00:41:48.020
I understand that.
link |
00:41:49.540
But he's used to it now.
link |
00:41:51.020
He's done a lot of press.
link |
00:41:53.380
The worst press he's done, frankly,
link |
00:41:55.500
has been the American press.
link |
00:41:57.340
And not because of his fault,
link |
00:41:59.220
but because of the way they have treated him.
link |
00:42:01.420
If you look at the interviews, they're awful.
link |
00:42:04.300
First of all, I noticed one thing as a filmmaker,
link |
00:42:06.820
right away, they use an overdub.
link |
00:42:09.020
They put a Russian speaker for everything he says,
link |
00:42:11.540
who's much harsher.
link |
00:42:12.900
He speaks Russian in a much harsher manner
link |
00:42:15.140
than actually Putin does.
link |
00:42:17.420
On my interview, I left him in his original language
link |
00:42:20.340
with translator, and I think that's important
link |
00:42:22.500
because he expresses himself very clearly and calmly.
link |
00:42:27.620
When you listen to the American broadcast,
link |
00:42:29.340
it's a belligerent person who looks like
link |
00:42:30.940
he's about to bang his shoe on the table.
link |
00:42:33.940
And secondly, the questions are highly aggressive
link |
00:42:37.280
from the beginning.
link |
00:42:38.120
There's no sense of rapport, there's no sense of,
link |
00:42:41.900
well, it's why, Mr. Putin, did you poison this person?
link |
00:42:44.640
Why, Mr. Putin, did you kill this person?
link |
00:42:46.860
Why are you a murderer?
link |
00:42:47.860
I mean, it's blunt, blunt negative television.
link |
00:42:52.240
Yeah, it's not just aggressive.
link |
00:42:53.960
So I obviously speak Russian,
link |
00:42:56.940
so I get to appreciate both the original and the translation.
link |
00:43:00.640
And it's not just aggressive, it's very shallow.
link |
00:43:04.880
They're not looking to understand.
link |
00:43:06.860
To me, aggression is okay if that's the way
link |
00:43:09.460
you wanna approach it, but it should be,
link |
00:43:12.220
there should be underlying kind of empathy
link |
00:43:15.580
for another human being in order to be able to understand.
link |
00:43:19.140
And so some of the worst interviews I've ever listened to
link |
00:43:23.460
is by American press of Vladimir Putin.
link |
00:43:25.700
So NBC and all those kinds of organizations,
link |
00:43:29.580
it's very painful to watch.
link |
00:43:32.100
And you saw the reception to the Putin interviews
link |
00:43:34.060
in America was hostile without seeing it.
link |
00:43:37.380
So many people criticized my series
link |
00:43:41.460
without having seen it.
link |
00:43:43.080
Even, I went on a show, a television show
link |
00:43:45.540
with this famous coal bearer.
link |
00:43:47.660
You know, he's very famous in America.
link |
00:43:49.700
And I was shocked on the show to find out
link |
00:43:51.720
that he hadn't seen anything of the four hours.
link |
00:43:53.860
He was just attacking Putin.
link |
00:43:56.140
And he threw me, I was complicit,
link |
00:43:58.660
therefore I was a Putin supporter.
link |
00:44:01.500
And the show was a disaster.
link |
00:44:03.940
It's one of my worst television shows.
link |
00:44:05.980
I actually, I had to just shut up and get off the air.
link |
00:44:10.660
I mean, at some point, it was embarrassing.
link |
00:44:13.780
Because the audience, too, was clapping for Kobe
link |
00:44:16.180
on anything he said.
link |
00:44:17.340
Well, as an interviewer in that situation,
link |
00:44:20.100
because between you and Vladimir Putin,
link |
00:44:23.300
there was camaraderie, there was joking, there was...
link |
00:44:28.660
Are you worried, do you put that into the calculation
link |
00:44:34.020
when you're making a film with somebody
link |
00:44:37.660
that could be lying to you, that could be evil?
link |
00:44:41.780
When you talk about Castro, you talk about,
link |
00:44:43.980
so are you worried about how charisma of a man
link |
00:44:48.780
across the table from you can...
link |
00:44:51.860
Do I take that into account?
link |
00:44:53.580
I absolutely take that into account.
link |
00:44:55.300
I mean, doing Castro, he's a wonderful speaker,
link |
00:44:58.820
he's charismatic, so is Chavez.
link |
00:45:01.340
Look at those interviews.
link |
00:45:03.040
I took it into account.
link |
00:45:04.560
But Putin doesn't play that game.
link |
00:45:06.360
He doesn't charm you, he doesn't try to overwhelm you
link |
00:45:09.540
with his bon ami at all.
link |
00:45:13.780
He just says, okay, ask your question,
link |
00:45:15.620
I'll give you my answer straight.
link |
00:45:17.180
Here it is, and he analyzes it.
link |
00:45:19.340
This is the history of NATO,
link |
00:45:20.580
this is the history of our relationship
link |
00:45:22.180
with the United States.
link |
00:45:23.460
How many times have we tried to talk to them
link |
00:45:26.000
about such and such and such and such,
link |
00:45:27.740
and each time, we get nowhere.
link |
00:45:29.980
In fact, it's a very...
link |
00:45:32.860
I would like to get along with the United States so much,
link |
00:45:35.460
he's saying it so clearly in all his words.
link |
00:45:38.820
So to play devil's advocate.
link |
00:45:40.780
But he's not making a big deal about it.
link |
00:45:42.580
But there is a charisma in the calmness.
link |
00:45:44.820
Yes, there is.
link |
00:45:45.780
So let's just calm everything down, it's simple facts.
link |
00:45:50.000
That you can call, so there's like the Hitler thing,
link |
00:45:56.340
which is screaming, being very loud, charismatic,
link |
00:46:00.260
strong message and so on.
link |
00:46:02.100
And then there's a Putin style,
link |
00:46:03.500
I'm not comparing those two,
link |
00:46:04.620
there's the Putin style communication of calmness.
link |
00:46:07.860
And that, at least to me, my personality,
link |
00:46:10.500
that can be very captivating,
link |
00:46:12.220
is bringing everything down, the facts are simple.
link |
00:46:15.220
But then when you say the facts are simple,
link |
00:46:16.860
you can now start lying.
link |
00:46:18.420
And you don't know what's true and what's lies.
link |
00:46:21.220
It behooves you to do some research.
link |
00:46:23.180
Yes.
link |
00:46:24.020
And frankly, when it comes to research,
link |
00:46:26.260
you're gonna have a problem.
link |
00:46:27.100
Because if you go to the Americanized versions
link |
00:46:30.060
of Russian history, you're gonna run into a problem.
link |
00:46:33.540
And that includes even Wikipedia.
link |
00:46:35.680
They will tell you things
link |
00:46:37.140
that are just not factually supported.
link |
00:46:39.580
So it was a problem in terms of,
link |
00:46:42.540
if you read all the books in the American library
link |
00:46:45.060
about Putin, there's nothing positive about it.
link |
00:46:48.340
They're awful, they're awful.
link |
00:46:49.840
And a lot of them, I had a good relationship
link |
00:46:52.680
with Professor Stephen Cohen,
link |
00:46:54.140
who's the most, I think, one of the most informed men
link |
00:46:56.820
on Russia, he'd done a lot of research all his life.
link |
00:46:59.940
And knew Gorbachev very well.
link |
00:47:02.700
And was very analytical about all these situations
link |
00:47:07.180
that happened before his death in 2019.
link |
00:47:11.940
I'm not quite sure when Stephen died,
link |
00:47:13.560
but I knew him well.
link |
00:47:15.060
And he gave me the best information I could get.
link |
00:47:20.140
I would go to Stephen and I'd say,
link |
00:47:22.360
I'm confused here, tell me the history
link |
00:47:24.220
of this accusation of poisoning against this person
link |
00:47:27.100
and so forth.
link |
00:47:27.940
And he'd explain it to me in, I think,
link |
00:47:30.620
the clearest ways that I understood.
link |
00:47:32.820
And he said to me once, he said,
link |
00:47:34.180
most of these people who go to Russia
link |
00:47:35.780
and write this stuff about Putin are going off internet.
link |
00:47:38.580
The internet has really been a source
link |
00:47:40.660
of a lot of fractured facts here.
link |
00:47:42.440
He said, pure analysis.
link |
00:47:44.760
You have to go back to the texts,
link |
00:47:46.880
all the documents, and to really fully understand.
link |
00:47:50.440
But he spoke Russian.
link |
00:47:54.040
And his wife and him, Katerina Vanhoovle,
link |
00:47:59.080
who's an editor, publisher of The Nation magazine,
link |
00:48:03.440
would go to Russia several times a year
link |
00:48:06.280
and talk to their friend Gorbachev.
link |
00:48:08.400
And Gorbachev's an interesting character.
link |
00:48:10.440
I talked to him, interviewed him,
link |
00:48:12.440
not interviewed him, but talked to him at length,
link |
00:48:14.400
and I like him very much.
link |
00:48:16.360
And I saw the divide, as you saw in the Putin interviews,
link |
00:48:19.160
between Gorbachev and Putin.
link |
00:48:20.840
Early on in the interviews, you sense Putin
link |
00:48:23.480
doesn't particularly care for Gorbachev
link |
00:48:25.440
because in his point of view,
link |
00:48:26.980
he screwed up the administration of Russia
link |
00:48:29.400
and is responsible for so much of the disaster
link |
00:48:32.400
of leaving all those people outside the Soviet Union.
link |
00:48:36.200
So these are problems that continue into the future.
link |
00:48:39.400
But they see each other at the,
link |
00:48:44.300
or he knows he's there at the May Day Parade, we filmed,
link |
00:48:48.500
and his attitude is funny, it's very human.
link |
00:48:53.880
He says, you know, he's welcome, he's got his pension,
link |
00:48:57.040
he's a pensioneer, he's done his duty.
link |
00:48:59.760
There's no animus towards him.
link |
00:49:04.720
Even when Gorbachev, in the early days,
link |
00:49:07.000
as you remember, criticized for his manners in terms
link |
00:49:09.680
of democracy, but I don't know that that becomes a quarrel.
link |
00:49:14.800
But frankly, by the end of the situation,
link |
00:49:18.840
it's very clear that Gorbachev has now moved closer
link |
00:49:21.840
and closer to the, says that Russia is now
link |
00:49:23.860
really under attack.
link |
00:49:24.920
This is, he sees where the United States
link |
00:49:28.280
has made a concerted effort to undermine Putin.
link |
00:49:31.840
And he's repeated this several times about Ukraine.
link |
00:49:35.400
I think you've seen what he said.
link |
00:49:37.280
You can quote it.
link |
00:49:39.000
And Gorbachev is, we have no respect for Gorbachev even,
link |
00:49:42.040
even at this juncture.
link |
00:49:43.520
When can you see Gorbachev's ideas printed
link |
00:49:46.480
in most American newspapers?
link |
00:49:48.160
Very rarely, very rarely, and recently not at all.
link |
00:49:52.120
So Gorbachev, who was our hero back in,
link |
00:49:54.600
an American hero back in the 1980s,
link |
00:49:58.120
has now been condemned to the garbage can,
link |
00:50:00.580
so to speak, of history.
link |
00:50:01.780
Well, in this complicated geopolitical picture
link |
00:50:05.380
you just outlined, can we talk about
link |
00:50:08.440
the recent invasion of Ukraine?
link |
00:50:12.180
So you wrote on Facebook a pretty eloquent analysis,
link |
00:50:17.500
I think on March 3rd.
link |
00:50:22.900
Let me just read a small section of that,
link |
00:50:26.100
just to give context, and maybe we can talk
link |
00:50:28.780
a little bit more about both Russia and the man Putin.
link |
00:50:33.140
You wrote, although the United States
link |
00:50:35.340
has many wars of aggression on its conscience,
link |
00:50:38.020
it doesn't justify Mr. Putin's aggression in Ukraine.
link |
00:50:41.780
A dozen wrongs don't make a right.
link |
00:50:44.500
Russia was wrong to invade.
link |
00:50:46.460
It has made too many mistakes.
link |
00:50:48.580
One, underestimating Ukraine resistance.
link |
00:50:51.440
Two, overestimating the military ability
link |
00:50:54.100
to achieve its objective.
link |
00:50:55.940
Three, underestimating Europe's reaction,
link |
00:50:58.480
especially Germany, upping its military contribution
link |
00:51:01.760
to NATO, which they've resisted for some 20 years.
link |
00:51:04.980
Even Switzerland has joined the cause.
link |
00:51:07.580
Russia will be more isolated than ever from the West.
link |
00:51:11.540
Four, underestimating the enhanced power of NATO,
link |
00:51:15.100
which will now put more pressure on Russia's borders.
link |
00:51:18.020
Five, probably putting Ukraine into NATO.
link |
00:51:22.000
Six, underestimating the damage to its own economy,
link |
00:51:25.820
and certainly creating more internal resistance
link |
00:51:28.220
in Russia.
link |
00:51:29.360
Seven, creating a major readjustment of power
link |
00:51:32.520
in its oligarch class.
link |
00:51:34.800
Eight, putting cluster and vacuum bombs into play.
link |
00:51:39.800
Nine, and underestimating the power
link |
00:51:43.300
of social media worldwide.
link |
00:51:45.340
And you go on for a while giving a much broader picture
link |
00:51:51.020
of the history and the geopolitics of all of this.
link |
00:51:53.820
So now, a little bit later, two months later,
link |
00:52:01.020
what are your thoughts about the invasion of Ukraine?
link |
00:52:05.140
Well, it's very hard to be honest in this regard
link |
00:52:08.660
because the West has brought down a curtain here
link |
00:52:13.900
and anyone who questions the invasion of Ukraine
link |
00:52:18.380
and its consequences is an enemy of the people.
link |
00:52:24.340
It's become so difficult.
link |
00:52:26.780
I've never seen in my lifetime ever such a wall
link |
00:52:33.140
of propaganda as I've seen in the West.
link |
00:52:38.580
And that includes France too
link |
00:52:39.860
because I was there recently and England.
link |
00:52:42.020
England is of course really vociferous.
link |
00:52:46.420
It's shocking to me how quickly Europe moved
link |
00:52:50.220
in this direction and that includes Germany.
link |
00:52:52.460
I have German friends who express to me their shock
link |
00:52:55.020
over Ukraine.
link |
00:52:56.280
I have Italian friends, same thing.
link |
00:52:58.100
And Italy of course has been perhaps the most understanding
link |
00:53:01.740
and compassionate of countries.
link |
00:53:03.980
So it's quite evident that there's a united,
link |
00:53:09.060
and this attests to the power of the United States.
link |
00:53:11.820
And of course you have Finland and Svinland
link |
00:53:14.900
which has generally been reasonable jumping in,
link |
00:53:17.660
talking about joining NATO and Sweden too.
link |
00:53:21.860
Generally there's been some more restraint in Europe.
link |
00:53:26.260
That's what surprised me the most, Europe.
link |
00:53:29.100
How quickly they fell into this NATO basket
link |
00:53:33.420
which is very dangerous for Europe, very dangerous.
link |
00:53:36.300
This goes back to my idea what I was saying earlier
link |
00:53:38.960
about sovereignty.
link |
00:53:41.460
These countries don't really give me a sense
link |
00:53:44.400
that they have sovereignty over their own countries.
link |
00:53:47.420
They don't feel, to me I'm obviously intuition here
link |
00:53:52.420
is working, I just don't feel that they have freedom
link |
00:53:56.300
to say what they really think and they're scared to say it.
link |
00:53:59.620
When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003,
link |
00:54:05.040
I remember with great in a sense satisfaction
link |
00:54:07.900
that at least France, Chirac who I had not really
link |
00:54:12.420
known much about, stood up and said the United States
link |
00:54:15.120
we're not gonna join you in this expedition,
link |
00:54:17.200
basically into madness.
link |
00:54:18.940
Schroeder in Germany, same thing.
link |
00:54:21.760
Of course Putin condemned the invasion
link |
00:54:24.340
and Putin had been an ally of the United States
link |
00:54:27.260
since 9 11 if you remember correctly.
link |
00:54:29.620
And had called Bush and they were getting along.
link |
00:54:32.320
So even Putin said I won't go, don't go into Iraq.
link |
00:54:36.060
This is not the solution.
link |
00:54:38.940
He didn't oppose Afghanistan but he opposed Iraq.
link |
00:54:41.900
So Chirac and Schroeder stood for the old Europe.
link |
00:54:46.720
I remember de Gaulle, Charles de Gaulle,
link |
00:54:49.920
he was independent of the United States.
link |
00:54:52.420
Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of NATO
link |
00:54:54.620
because he saw the dangers of NATO,
link |
00:54:56.680
which is to say you have to fight an American war.
link |
00:54:59.940
When they say and they put nuclear weapons
link |
00:55:02.540
on your territory in England and France
link |
00:55:05.020
and Italy and Germany, when they do that,
link |
00:55:09.020
you're hitched to this superpower
link |
00:55:12.060
and you have no say in what they're gonna do.
link |
00:55:14.980
If they declare war and they use your territory,
link |
00:55:18.140
you're gonna be involved in a major conflict.
link |
00:55:20.820
I'm talking about sovereignty.
link |
00:55:22.060
Where is that sovereignty?
link |
00:55:23.620
They don't have it.
link |
00:55:24.940
And that has influenced their mindset for years now.
link |
00:55:28.720
Since 1940, well de Gaulle was the 60s.
link |
00:55:33.020
He actually reversed the whole flow
link |
00:55:34.940
and I think it was Sarkozy who put France
link |
00:55:38.940
back into NATO and now it's Macron.
link |
00:55:44.740
I hope because he was talking to Putin
link |
00:55:47.320
would at least have an independent viewpoint
link |
00:55:50.400
that could be helpful here, so he rolled it up.
link |
00:55:53.860
He may have told Putin something else,
link |
00:55:55.360
but within days he had rolled it up
link |
00:55:57.000
and gone along with the United States position,
link |
00:55:59.580
which was enforced by the United States in a very fierce way.
link |
00:56:03.140
The propaganda, as I say, I don't know how much time
link |
00:56:05.540
you spend in America, but it was vicious
link |
00:56:08.300
and everything was anti Russian.
link |
00:56:10.300
Russia were killing all these people,
link |
00:56:11.940
were shooting down civilians,
link |
00:56:17.100
although there was no proof of it.
link |
00:56:18.820
There was just, these are the accidents of war,
link |
00:56:20.780
but all of a sudden it was a campaign of criminality
link |
00:56:23.540
and they were talking about bringing Putin
link |
00:56:25.380
into war crime trial.
link |
00:56:27.700
Well, why didn't they talk like that when Iraq was going on
link |
00:56:30.700
and Bush was killing far more people?
link |
00:56:33.500
Or for that matter, why were they not talking
link |
00:56:35.260
about the killings in Donbass and Lugansk
link |
00:56:39.420
during that 2014 to 2022 period?
link |
00:56:45.300
That is what, it's a crime.
link |
00:56:47.180
There were so many people that were killed,
link |
00:56:49.540
many of them innocent, many of them innocent.
link |
00:56:51.620
What would be the way for Vladimir Putin
link |
00:56:54.860
to stop the killing in Donbass
link |
00:57:00.020
without the invasion of Ukraine?
link |
00:57:02.460
That's a very good question and I've asked that
link |
00:57:04.460
several times and I don't have the,
link |
00:57:06.460
I have not talked to him since about two years now.
link |
00:57:12.300
It's a very good question.
link |
00:57:13.380
What's the mistakes, what the human mistakes
link |
00:57:16.540
and the leadership mistakes made by Vladimir Putin?
link |
00:57:18.340
It's a very good question.
link |
00:57:19.180
You see, what the American press has not said
link |
00:57:21.900
and the Western press has not said is that on February 24,
link |
00:57:25.220
was it, that was, on that day when they invaded,
link |
00:57:28.660
the day before, if you check the logs
link |
00:57:31.260
of the European organization that was supervising,
link |
00:57:35.780
was in the field in Ukraine.
link |
00:57:37.820
These are neutral observers.
link |
00:57:39.940
They were seeing heavier and heavier artillery fire
link |
00:57:43.300
going into Donbass from the Ukrainian side.
link |
00:57:50.860
So they had, apparently, Ukraine had 110,000 troops
link |
00:57:55.540
on the border.
link |
00:57:56.380
They were about to invade Donbass, that was the plan.
link |
00:57:59.220
That's what I think.
link |
00:58:00.740
Russia, because of the buildup on the border of Donbass,
link |
00:58:05.580
brought 130, they say 130,000 troops
link |
00:58:09.180
to the area near Donbass, right?
link |
00:58:13.180
So you have buildup of forces on both sides,
link |
00:58:15.820
but you wouldn't know that from reading the press
link |
00:58:18.180
in the West.
link |
00:58:19.020
You'd believe that the Russians suddenly put all these men
link |
00:58:21.900
into the situation with the idea of invading Ukraine,
link |
00:58:26.980
not only Donbass, but invading all of Ukraine
link |
00:58:29.460
and getting rid of the, decapitating the government there,
link |
00:58:33.460
which is all assumption.
link |
00:58:34.780
We don't know what they would intend it to do.
link |
00:58:36.900
But you, at the time, as in a lot of people,
link |
00:58:40.220
thought that all the talk of the invasion,
link |
00:58:44.780
Russian invasion of Ukraine, is just propaganda.
link |
00:58:48.460
It's not gonna happen.
link |
00:58:49.300
It's very unlikely to happen.
link |
00:58:50.500
I think many of us thought that the United States
link |
00:58:52.300
is building this up into an invasion.
link |
00:58:54.820
In other words, that is the nature of false flag operations,
link |
00:58:58.300
when you create this propaganda.
link |
00:59:00.900
They are gonna invade.
link |
00:59:01.820
They are gonna invade.
link |
00:59:02.780
And then, when they invaded, the United States
link |
00:59:05.620
was completely ready, and all their allies
link |
00:59:07.500
were completely ready for the invasion, correct?
link |
00:59:09.840
So why did Putin do that?
link |
00:59:11.180
He fell into this, theoretically, into this trap
link |
00:59:14.100
set by the United States.
link |
00:59:16.060
Here you're telling all your allies across the board
link |
00:59:18.220
they're gonna invade.
link |
00:59:19.900
But you.
link |
00:59:21.280
Why do you think he did it?
link |
00:59:23.420
So here, is it madness, or is it common
link |
00:59:27.020
strategic calculation, perhaps?
link |
00:59:29.500
This one I cannot answer you faithfully,
link |
00:59:31.540
because, first of all, we don't know what he was told.
link |
00:59:34.700
If he was indeed getting the right intelligence estimates,
link |
00:59:38.300
from what I said earlier in that essay I wrote,
link |
00:59:44.220
you would think he was not well informed, perhaps,
link |
00:59:47.660
about the degree of cooperation he would get
link |
00:59:51.620
from the Ukrainian Russians in Ukraine.
link |
00:59:57.200
That would be one factor, that he wasn't,
link |
01:00:00.300
he didn't assess the operation correctly.
link |
01:00:03.360
Remember this.
link |
01:00:04.540
Mr. Putin has had this cancer, and I think he's licked it,
link |
01:00:09.780
but he's also been isolated because of COVID.
link |
01:00:12.540
And some people would argue that the isolation
link |
01:00:15.020
from normal activity, which he was meeting people
link |
01:00:18.800
face to face, but all of a sudden he was meeting people
link |
01:00:20.980
across the table 100 yards away, or whatever,
link |
01:00:23.940
10 yards away, it was very hard.
link |
01:00:26.380
Perhaps he lost touch with, contact with people.
link |
01:00:30.180
So it's not just power, it's the very simple fact
link |
01:00:33.460
that you're just distant from humans.
link |
01:00:34.300
As I say, I'm speculating, I don't know.
link |
01:00:36.500
I see that, and I also, perhaps he thought in his mind
link |
01:00:40.580
that there would be a faster resolution
link |
01:00:45.020
that the Ukrainian, because the evidence had been
link |
01:00:48.260
that the Ukrainian Russians, the Ukrainian army
link |
01:00:52.500
had folded so many times, and that they were only backed up
link |
01:00:56.300
and they were stiffened by the resistance
link |
01:00:57.840
of the Nazi oriented Azov battalions.
link |
01:01:02.380
That was a factor, of course.
link |
01:01:04.260
And that is a big factor for the Russians
link |
01:01:06.100
because these people are very tough, they rush.
link |
01:01:08.820
See, what people don't understand is that Ukraine,
link |
01:01:11.460
since 2014, has been a terror state.
link |
01:01:14.460
They've been run, anytime a Ukrainian has expressed
link |
01:01:18.620
any understanding of the Russian Ukrainian position,
link |
01:01:25.920
they've been threatened by the state.
link |
01:01:28.240
From 2014 to 2022, there's been a set of hideous murders
link |
01:01:32.700
that people don't even know about in the West.
link |
01:01:34.200
Journalists, people who speak out, liberals,
link |
01:01:37.900
people who, I interviewed Viktor Medvedev,
link |
01:01:40.980
who they make out to be some kind of horrible person,
link |
01:01:43.660
but Medvedev was a very important figure
link |
01:01:46.380
in the administration of Khushma,
link |
01:01:48.180
the first Ukrainian Prime Minister in the 1990s,
link |
01:01:52.020
and he did a great job on the economy.
link |
01:01:54.260
He was a very thoughtful man.
link |
01:01:55.660
If you'll see my interview, it's called Ukraine Revealed.
link |
01:01:58.260
He's very thoughtful about the future of Ukraine.
link |
01:02:00.620
He doesn't want to go back and join Russia.
link |
01:02:02.660
He wants it to be an independent country.
link |
01:02:04.860
Ukraine is independent, and he wants it to be
link |
01:02:07.740
a functioning economic democracy, more or less,
link |
01:02:10.760
a democracy, if you can get that,
link |
01:02:13.900
that exists in a neutral state,
link |
01:02:15.740
a neutral state, which Ukraine used to be before 2014.
link |
01:02:19.500
It was neutral from 1991 to 2014, neutral, very important.
link |
01:02:25.740
Under Poroshenko, it just immediately went
link |
01:02:28.700
into an anti Soviet Cold War position
link |
01:02:31.740
as an ally of the United States,
link |
01:02:34.100
and my point was that it was a very dangerous place
link |
01:02:39.100
in Ukraine.
link |
01:02:39.940
People were being killed, death squads were out there.
link |
01:02:43.940
Medvedev, they stripped him of his television stations
link |
01:02:47.540
very suddenly, this is Zelensky, the new president.
link |
01:02:50.620
Zelensky was elected on a peace platform, remember that.
link |
01:02:54.460
70% of the country was for him to make peace with Russia.
link |
01:02:57.860
Did he ever even try to make peace with Russia?
link |
01:03:00.780
Did he attend any of the Minsk Two agreements?
link |
01:03:04.460
Did he visit, did he pay any attention to the Minsk?
link |
01:03:08.460
Did he pay attention to Putin?
link |
01:03:09.660
Did he go to Russia?
link |
01:03:10.500
No, not at all.
link |
01:03:11.900
The moment he got into office, I'm convinced
link |
01:03:14.580
that the militant sector of the right sector parties
link |
01:03:22.780
of Ukraine let him know that you will not make a deal
link |
01:03:26.900
with Russia, there'll be no concessions to Russia.
link |
01:03:30.140
This is very dangerous.
link |
01:03:31.220
This is where this attitude that's very, very hostile
link |
01:03:34.520
to Russia has hurt us.
link |
01:03:35.940
The whole world is being hurt by this,
link |
01:03:37.940
and no one calls them out.
link |
01:03:40.460
No one calls them out.
link |
01:03:41.860
Zelensky backed off from his platform
link |
01:03:45.180
as running for president, and as president,
link |
01:03:47.540
has been ineffective, did nothing to promote it.
link |
01:03:50.220
On the contrary, went the other way,
link |
01:03:52.180
and seemed to support the Ukrainian aggression.
link |
01:03:56.700
Well, he found his support in this war.
link |
01:03:59.440
You've revealed through your work some of the most honest
link |
01:04:02.820
and dark aspects of war.
link |
01:04:04.800
Nevertheless, this is a war,
link |
01:04:07.960
and there's a humanitarian crisis.
link |
01:04:10.760
Millions of people, refugees, escape in Ukraine.
link |
01:04:16.040
What do you think about the human cost of this war,
link |
01:04:20.080
initiated by whoever, just as you write,
link |
01:04:24.640
whatever the context, whatever NATO, whatever pressure,
link |
01:04:28.960
as you wrote, Russia was wrong to invade.
link |
01:04:32.880
Okay, yeah, let's get back to that original question.
link |
01:04:36.400
You said, what was he thinking at that time?
link |
01:04:38.320
We never answered that.
link |
01:04:39.920
Now, by the way, among those people
link |
01:04:44.920
who've been ruined by this war,
link |
01:04:48.440
you have to include the 2014 to 2022 Ukrainian Russians.
link |
01:04:53.120
14,000 were killed, not necessarily by,
link |
01:04:58.600
some of them by maybe accident and this and that,
link |
01:05:01.080
but certainly a large number of that
link |
01:05:02.800
is responsible to the Ukrainian military
link |
01:05:05.760
and the Nazi related battalions
link |
01:05:09.120
who have done a good job of death squatting that whole area.
link |
01:05:11.880
And remember, I did a film about Salvador.
link |
01:05:13.920
I know a little bit about death squads and how they work,
link |
01:05:16.000
and I know about paramilitaries,
link |
01:05:17.640
because in South America, they're all over the place.
link |
01:05:19.920
America supports, hates Venezuela,
link |
01:05:22.800
goes on about Venezuela,
link |
01:05:23.920
but do they tell you anything about Colombia,
link |
01:05:25.840
its next door neighbor?
link |
01:05:27.040
Colombia for years has been plagued by paramilitaries
link |
01:05:30.440
that are right wing, and the United States has said,
link |
01:05:32.600
nothing about them except occasionally,
link |
01:05:34.360
there's a newspaper report now.
link |
01:05:36.040
So this support of death squads by the United States
link |
01:05:39.720
is all over the world.
link |
01:05:40.720
It's not just in South America and Central America
link |
01:05:43.680
where we see plenty of evidence of it.
link |
01:05:46.440
It's here too, and this is what's horrible
link |
01:05:48.680
about this whole thing, this hypocrisy of America
link |
01:05:51.960
that they can support such evil, such evil.
link |
01:05:55.000
Now, going back to your larger question about,
link |
01:05:59.720
yeah, it's a terrible refugee disaster,
link |
01:06:02.000
but again, we have to get the numbers.
link |
01:06:03.880
Let's get the numbers and get the evidence,
link |
01:06:05.520
because I would ask you, I'm not sure at this point
link |
01:06:09.080
whether more civilians were killed before 2022 in Donbass
link |
01:06:13.440
than have been killed in this latest.
link |
01:06:15.880
So we can't talk about this without,
link |
01:06:17.880
we can't talk about the invasion of Ukraine
link |
01:06:19.840
without considering the full war
link |
01:06:21.360
between Russia and Ukraine since 2014.
link |
01:06:24.480
That's correct, absolutely,
link |
01:06:26.520
and take the toll on both sides,
link |
01:06:29.560
and you might be surprised by the result.
link |
01:06:32.320
I think the Russian military, of course, I'm not there,
link |
01:06:35.440
and I'm not, this is speculation.
link |
01:06:37.520
The Russian military has slowed down,
link |
01:06:39.240
and part of that reason
link |
01:06:40.560
is not to keep the civilian corridors open,
link |
01:06:43.240
and I think the Ukrainian military
link |
01:06:45.160
has made it more difficult on purpose,
link |
01:06:47.640
especially some of these battalions
link |
01:06:49.240
that are death squad battalions have gone out of their way
link |
01:06:51.920
to keep the civilians locked into these cities in danger
link |
01:06:55.680
because it's in their interest to do so.
link |
01:06:58.400
So there's no reason why Ukrainian military,
link |
01:07:01.840
who have killed Ukrainian civilians for years,
link |
01:07:04.320
would change their policies.
link |
01:07:06.120
They would have no compunctions about wiping out,
link |
01:07:08.600
for example, people with white armbands in Bukha.
link |
01:07:12.600
Okay, as to what Putin was thinking at the time,
link |
01:07:16.440
I wondered this, and I still do.
link |
01:07:18.640
I said, okay, so Putin can say,
link |
01:07:22.320
let's say the Ukrainian government
link |
01:07:24.880
wants to now invade Donbass.
link |
01:07:27.720
This is on February 23, and they have artillery,
link |
01:07:30.600
they're peppering the whole place.
link |
01:07:32.000
They're gonna go in, and they're gonna get Donbass back.
link |
01:07:35.600
What do you do?
link |
01:07:36.880
And you have Russian separatists,
link |
01:07:39.680
who are Russian Ukrainians who are on,
link |
01:07:42.440
who are gonna fight.
link |
01:07:47.720
How far do you go in supporting them?
link |
01:07:49.200
Can Russia at this point say, well, we can't help you.
link |
01:07:51.640
You have to get along, you have to somehow,
link |
01:07:54.080
you have to be absorbed by the Kiev,
link |
01:07:56.960
you're gonna be absorbed by them,
link |
01:07:58.080
and they're not gonna give you autonomy,
link |
01:08:00.920
and you have to live with them,
link |
01:08:02.640
and there's gonna be a price to pay.
link |
01:08:04.440
You could do that, and you could also say,
link |
01:08:05.800
well, we open our borders to Donbass.
link |
01:08:08.120
You can come in to our country, you can leave,
link |
01:08:10.360
and we will help you to resettle.
link |
01:08:13.760
And that would be a reasonable approach.
link |
01:08:16.360
So you take it to the next stage, as Putin's thinking.
link |
01:08:18.640
You take it to the next stage.
link |
01:08:20.640
You stall, it's harder for your,
link |
01:08:23.640
of course, there's this pressure on Putin
link |
01:08:25.040
from inside his own government to say,
link |
01:08:27.800
what are you gonna do?
link |
01:08:28.640
I mean, you can't do this,
link |
01:08:29.840
there's a lot of nationalists in Russia.
link |
01:08:31.640
They would certainly bring, it would be to his,
link |
01:08:34.480
they'd say Putin is weak, and that's the biggest rap
link |
01:08:37.320
you can ever give a Russian leader,
link |
01:08:39.080
is you're weak, you can't get anything done.
link |
01:08:41.240
So there would have been some damage,
link |
01:08:42.800
but let's say he goes with that, and he says,
link |
01:08:44.840
okay, we know what the United States intention is.
link |
01:08:47.840
It's to get rid of me, regime change,
link |
01:08:51.640
and to get another Yeltsin in.
link |
01:08:53.240
That's what they want.
link |
01:08:54.640
And they will go to any ends,
link |
01:08:55.880
they will destroy Ukraine if necessary,
link |
01:08:58.200
but they want regime change in Russia.
link |
01:09:00.480
And then after they do that, of course,
link |
01:09:02.680
they'll go after China,
link |
01:09:03.600
but that's the ultimate policy of the United States.
link |
01:09:06.240
This is a country that has no compunctions
link |
01:09:09.560
about going all the way,
link |
01:09:11.400
and it will use hypocrisy and all the news propaganda
link |
01:09:14.680
in the world to get what it wants.
link |
01:09:16.360
This is the equivalent, frankly,
link |
01:09:17.760
of Germany's goals in World War II, world domination.
link |
01:09:22.760
There's no question in my mind,
link |
01:09:24.320
but we're going about it in our way
link |
01:09:26.680
as opposed to Hitler's way.
link |
01:09:29.000
So just to finish your thought, where do they go?
link |
01:09:32.160
What's stage two?
link |
01:09:33.120
Okay, let's say they take, Ukraine takes back Donbas.
link |
01:09:36.880
Let's say people get killed in large quantities.
link |
01:09:40.520
So we now to the next stage,
link |
01:09:42.000
we're finished with the Minsk II agreements
link |
01:09:44.400
that were never adhered to.
link |
01:09:45.840
So what does Russia do?
link |
01:09:46.680
They wait for the next aggression,
link |
01:09:48.880
which is gonna come in one form or another.
link |
01:09:52.000
Perhaps in Georgia, I don't know what happened,
link |
01:09:54.960
what the US is thinking,
link |
01:09:56.480
but the US cannot say Russia has done anything.
link |
01:10:02.080
They have not used violence to stop Donbas
link |
01:10:05.160
from belonging back to Ukraine, right?
link |
01:10:07.920
So you're in a new setup now.
link |
01:10:10.080
It's a whole thing rearranges.
link |
01:10:12.240
Now you have, but you still have nuclear weapons,
link |
01:10:15.560
and you still have a Russian nuclear weapons,
link |
01:10:17.800
and they're serious weapons.
link |
01:10:19.520
They're very well developed, crude,
link |
01:10:21.560
but not as refined as the American nuclear force,
link |
01:10:24.320
but powerful.
link |
01:10:26.720
That becomes another game.
link |
01:10:27.960
Then you open another chess board,
link |
01:10:29.560
and you still haven't been condemned.
link |
01:10:31.720
The sanctions haven't been imposed.
link |
01:10:33.400
That's a new, it's a new game.
link |
01:10:35.440
Could he have done, could he have lived with that?
link |
01:10:36.880
That's the question I ask myself.
link |
01:10:39.160
So you see ultimately Ukraine today
link |
01:10:41.960
as a battleground for the proxy war
link |
01:10:43.960
between Russia and the United States.
link |
01:10:45.640
The United States would have then NATOized Ukraine,
link |
01:10:49.120
or certainly put more weapons in.
link |
01:10:51.360
The United States has already done a lot in Ukraine
link |
01:10:53.480
with intelligence, with training advisors.
link |
01:10:57.800
The intelligence aspect of the Ukrainian army
link |
01:11:00.800
has been raised enormously by the United States contribution.
link |
01:11:04.120
Is it possible for you to steal man,
link |
01:11:05.920
to play devil's advocate against yourself,
link |
01:11:07.960
and say that Vladimir Zelensky
link |
01:11:11.940
is fighting for the sovereignty of his nation?
link |
01:11:14.920
And in a way against Russia,
link |
01:11:17.240
but also against the United States,
link |
01:11:19.120
it just happens that for now, the United States
link |
01:11:21.880
is a useful ally.
link |
01:11:23.960
But ultimately, the man, the leader,
link |
01:11:27.140
is fighting for the sovereignty of his nation.
link |
01:11:29.640
I would think, he thinks so.
link |
01:11:31.280
Yes, and he could say that.
link |
01:11:33.200
But he's not acknowledging that the sovereignty
link |
01:11:35.240
of his nation was stolen in 2014
link |
01:11:38.320
with the coup d'tat that brought this right sector
link |
01:11:42.960
into power, and they have controlled the country since then.
link |
01:11:46.400
It's thuggery, what they've done.
link |
01:11:50.040
The Medvedev case is a case in point.
link |
01:11:52.080
They just take what they need.
link |
01:11:53.840
They go to a house, and they have a,
link |
01:11:55.880
how many people have been killed?
link |
01:11:57.640
Serious people, journalists killed by these battalions.
link |
01:12:02.980
That's what people don't realize.
link |
01:12:04.560
In other words, you can't speak out.
link |
01:12:06.160
A person like me would have been on the death list
link |
01:12:08.440
on day five.
link |
01:12:11.240
There's no opposition to Zelensky,
link |
01:12:13.480
so he doesn't have a real sovereignty.
link |
01:12:16.000
It was a stolen sovereignty.
link |
01:12:17.840
Do you think President Zelensky would accept
link |
01:12:21.280
an interview with you today?
link |
01:12:24.160
Actually, since I made Ukraine on Fire,
link |
01:12:27.720
a documentary which perhaps you've seen,
link |
01:12:29.920
which records the incidents of 2014
link |
01:12:35.040
and the Maidan demonstrations,
link |
01:12:37.820
and shows you the dishonesty behind it,
link |
01:12:40.600
no, I think that they've been very negative,
link |
01:12:43.000
and they would kill me if I was in Ukraine.
link |
01:12:46.320
I mean, they don't have any,
link |
01:12:48.360
these people are very tough.
link |
01:12:50.400
These are as rough as they come, in my opinion,
link |
01:12:52.760
and I've seen rough in my life.
link |
01:12:54.120
I mean, these guys are not playing fair at all.
link |
01:12:57.920
These are death squads.
link |
01:12:59.360
No, I don't think, and Zelensky would have
link |
01:13:01.080
nothing to do with it, but of course,
link |
01:13:02.920
it would be dangerous for me,
link |
01:13:04.460
and they've been very hostile in their policies
link |
01:13:07.800
to any Ukrainians abroad who are also threatened.
link |
01:13:11.320
In other words, you could be in Paris,
link |
01:13:12.840
but if you speak out too much,
link |
01:13:16.080
I think Ukrainians know that they're gonna be targeted,
link |
01:13:18.840
and I think that's part of the reason they don't talk.
link |
01:13:21.680
A lot of them, you have to take the anti Russian line,
link |
01:13:24.800
but I think a lot of them are divided.
link |
01:13:26.480
So you think you would be killed,
link |
01:13:29.120
and Zelensky wouldn't even know about it, so there is?
link |
01:13:31.920
Well, I don't think, if I was killed certainly abroad,
link |
01:13:34.800
no, they wouldn't kill me abroad.
link |
01:13:35.880
I think they'd figure out a way.
link |
01:13:37.600
No, no, no, no, if you traveled to Ukraine, I mean.
link |
01:13:40.360
I wouldn't get in, I wouldn't get in,
link |
01:13:42.600
except through Donbass, I'd come through.
link |
01:13:44.520
There are some Americans in Donbass
link |
01:13:46.160
who are reporting on the war there,
link |
01:13:48.080
and I read their reports, actually.
link |
01:13:49.640
They're pretty interesting,
link |
01:13:50.820
because they show you the cruelty of what's going on,
link |
01:13:53.180
but never mentioned in the West, never.
link |
01:13:55.440
That's what's so strange about this.
link |
01:13:58.200
This is a modern world that we're living in,
link |
01:13:59.920
and yet this information is not coming out
link |
01:14:02.020
to the mass of the people,
link |
01:14:03.520
and on the contrary, the United States has closed down
link |
01:14:06.700
all the information centers that are possible
link |
01:14:11.700
to alternative news getting to the American people.
link |
01:14:15.060
They've seriously made an effort,
link |
01:14:16.420
and the BBC, English, and France.
link |
01:14:20.060
I was shocked when France closed RT down,
link |
01:14:22.400
because RT is actually pretty good.
link |
01:14:24.380
Yes, they may, it's called, there are distortions,
link |
01:14:27.200
but you know as well as I do, because you hear,
link |
01:14:29.140
you speak that RT has done a very brave job
link |
01:14:33.260
of putting correspondents into the field
link |
01:14:35.320
in very dangerous positions,
link |
01:14:36.620
and they've gotten great footage
link |
01:14:38.620
of some of the violence that's going on.
link |
01:14:40.760
Well, given the wall of propaganda in the West,
link |
01:14:43.720
I also see the wall of propaganda in Russia,
link |
01:14:47.380
the wall of propaganda in China,
link |
01:14:49.380
the wall of propaganda in India.
link |
01:14:51.900
What do we do with these walls of propaganda?
link |
01:14:54.220
Yes, let's talk about Russia,
link |
01:14:55.460
because you would know more about it,
link |
01:14:57.320
but my last experience there, newspapers,
link |
01:15:00.740
it was more interesting, put it this way,
link |
01:15:03.400
when I went to Venezuela, the United States was saying
link |
01:15:06.540
back then that Chavez controlled the press.
link |
01:15:09.300
I get to Venezuela, and there's nothing but criticism
link |
01:15:11.660
of Chavez in the press.
link |
01:15:12.940
It was owned by the oligarchs of Venezuela,
link |
01:15:16.300
and who hated him, so it was across the board.
link |
01:15:18.640
That's why Chavez opened the state television,
link |
01:15:22.540
spent more money on it, and advertised his point of view
link |
01:15:26.180
through state television.
link |
01:15:27.620
But in Russia, there is, what I saw was criticism.
link |
01:15:32.180
I met with a publisher who got the Nobel Prize
link |
01:15:34.480
of that famous newspaper, and his point of view
link |
01:15:38.100
at that time when I spoke to him a few years ago
link |
01:15:40.300
was we're operating, there is criticism of him,
link |
01:15:44.320
but you can't call for the overthrow of the government,
link |
01:15:48.060
nor in Venezuela, nor in the United States for that matter.
link |
01:15:50.700
If you call for the overthrow of the government
link |
01:15:53.060
of the United States, you're gonna be in deep trouble.
link |
01:15:55.540
Well, all right, so to push back on that,
link |
01:15:57.860
it's interesting, it's so interesting,
link |
01:15:59.620
because we mentioned Elon Musk,
link |
01:16:02.540
and there's a way that people sound when they speak freely.
link |
01:16:06.480
When I speak to, I have family in Ukraine,
link |
01:16:09.580
I have family in Russia.
link |
01:16:11.140
When I speak to people in Russia,
link |
01:16:12.820
let's put my family aside,
link |
01:16:14.100
when I speak to people in Russia,
link |
01:16:16.940
I think there's fear.
link |
01:16:21.300
I think they don't,
link |
01:16:25.860
sometimes when you call for the overthrow of government,
link |
01:16:28.380
that's important, not because you necessarily believe
link |
01:16:30.860
for the overthrow of the government,
link |
01:16:32.720
but you just need to test the power centers
link |
01:16:36.820
and make sure they're responsive to the people.
link |
01:16:41.060
And I feel like there's a mix of fear and apathy
link |
01:16:47.380
that has a different texture than it does
link |
01:16:51.140
in the United States.
link |
01:16:53.620
That worries me, because I would like to see
link |
01:16:58.980
the flourishing of a people in all places.
link |
01:17:01.520
Well, as I said, my impression was that there's far more
link |
01:17:05.460
freedom in the press than was pictured by the West,
link |
01:17:08.980
and that means different points of view,
link |
01:17:10.900
because the Russians are always arguing with themselves.
link |
01:17:12.660
I've never seen a country that's so contentious.
link |
01:17:14.580
There's more intellectuals in Moscow and the cities
link |
01:17:19.700
than you can believe, and you know the Russian people there.
link |
01:17:23.420
They've been fighting government for years,
link |
01:17:25.620
back from the 1870s, it was czarist times,
link |
01:17:27.680
they're always plotting against the government,
link |
01:17:30.260
and the intelligentsia has known through history
link |
01:17:32.900
as being contentious and anti government in many ways.
link |
01:17:37.140
And we see the same thing,
link |
01:17:39.180
educated people turning against Russia.
link |
01:17:40.860
I don't appreciate those people,
link |
01:17:41.980
because I think they're very spoiled,
link |
01:17:43.900
and they don't understand some of the stuff
link |
01:17:45.280
that's going on in the West.
link |
01:17:46.620
But we have a lot of Russians in Europe and America
link |
01:17:51.100
that attack Russia and sometimes don't understand
link |
01:17:55.060
that they are under pressure from the United States,
link |
01:17:57.240
and they don't understand the size of the pressure.
link |
01:17:59.940
And that's why Putin connects with the people,
link |
01:18:02.480
because he represents the common,
link |
01:18:05.860
more the common man who's saying to you,
link |
01:18:08.820
your interests are threatened, Russia is threatened.
link |
01:18:11.980
We are representing only the interests of Russia,
link |
01:18:14.220
not, we're not an empire, we're not gonna expand.
link |
01:18:16.940
He has no empire intentions,
link |
01:18:19.000
although the West paints it as empire.
link |
01:18:21.940
I see no evidence of it.
link |
01:18:24.180
Why didn't he do something in all these years?
link |
01:18:26.020
Nothing, he did nothing except defend the country
link |
01:18:29.140
in Georgia and in Chechnya.
link |
01:18:30.980
So the imperialist imperative is coming more
link |
01:18:33.820
from the West.
link |
01:18:34.660
It's the imperialist, it's the imperialist agenda.
link |
01:18:37.420
Going back to, I'm sorry, where we left our discussion off,
link |
01:18:40.620
I mean, I was gonna go on with America
link |
01:18:42.780
not only being censored, closed down now, closed down.
link |
01:18:47.620
And you say it's not fear, well, it is fear.
link |
01:18:50.180
I am scared, because if you get your Facebook page
link |
01:18:53.900
suspended or your YouTube, your Twitter account thrown off,
link |
01:18:58.220
a lot of good people are getting there, thrown off.
link |
01:19:02.020
You can't speak out, it affects your business.
link |
01:19:04.460
It goes back to the 1950s when my father's world,
link |
01:19:07.660
when you could not express any sympathy for a Soviet Union
link |
01:19:12.620
without endangering your job,
link |
01:19:14.220
without basically being not trusted.
link |
01:19:16.380
You had to be part of the program to get along, to go along.
link |
01:19:20.700
Same thing when the United Kingdom,
link |
01:19:22.660
I mean, for all their talk, this Boris Johnson is an idiot.
link |
01:19:26.300
But all their talk about, do you remember their policies
link |
01:19:29.220
with the IRA in Ireland when Ireland was threatening them?
link |
01:19:32.260
They cut off the IRA completely.
link |
01:19:34.140
Gerry Adams, who was a wonderful guy, I met him,
link |
01:19:37.860
was not allowed to even be heard in Britain
link |
01:19:40.260
during certain years.
link |
01:19:41.220
In France, all constantly through the Algerian War,
link |
01:19:44.620
the Algerians were not allowed to be heard.
link |
01:19:46.660
The Algerian War for Independence divided France greatly.
link |
01:19:51.060
You could not even show Paths of Glory,
link |
01:19:52.820
World War I film in France for, I don't know, 20 years
link |
01:19:56.820
after it came out.
link |
01:19:58.980
Censorship is a way of life
link |
01:20:00.380
when democracies also feel threatened.
link |
01:20:02.940
They are much more fragile than they pretend to be.
link |
01:20:05.300
A healthy democracy would take all the criticism
link |
01:20:07.500
in the world and shrug it off and say,
link |
01:20:09.300
okay, that's what's good about our country.
link |
01:20:11.340
Well, I'd like to see that in America.
link |
01:20:13.340
There are times that it's been like that,
link |
01:20:15.260
but it's so scary now.
link |
01:20:17.860
So it is scary, that's what I was trying to say.
link |
01:20:20.020
It's not unscary to me.
link |
01:20:22.940
In China, I would say to you, yes, it's much scarier to me
link |
01:20:26.260
because there is the internet wall that they cut off,
link |
01:20:30.260
and I got into problems in China too
link |
01:20:32.620
because I said something years ago
link |
01:20:34.700
about you have to discover your own history.
link |
01:20:37.100
You have to be honest about Mao.
link |
01:20:38.500
You have to go back and let's make a movie about Mao.
link |
01:20:42.060
That upset them and show his negatives.
link |
01:20:46.900
So China has been much more sensitive than Russia
link |
01:20:49.300
about criticism, much more.
link |
01:20:51.460
And it is a source of problems, but on the other hand,
link |
01:20:54.020
China has a lot of grievances,
link |
01:20:56.660
a lot going back to the 19th century
link |
01:20:58.700
and the British imperialism of that era
link |
01:21:01.020
and the American imperialism.
link |
01:21:02.620
If you could talk to Vladimir Putin once again now,
link |
01:21:07.620
what kind of things would you talk about here?
link |
01:21:11.580
What kind of questions would you ask?
link |
01:21:13.500
Huh, well, one thing I would certainly ask
link |
01:21:19.300
is what you were thinking on February 23,
link |
01:21:21.940
and I would ask him to reply to my question
link |
01:21:24.340
about what if you took this to phase two.
link |
01:21:26.580
You surrendered in Donbass.
link |
01:21:28.900
You had no ego about it.
link |
01:21:30.580
You just surrendered.
link |
01:21:31.420
It's in your interest to your country,
link |
01:21:33.140
and you invited all the refugees from Donbass into Russia
link |
01:21:36.780
as much as they can.
link |
01:21:38.900
What would you do now?
link |
01:21:40.500
What's the US next move in your opinion?
link |
01:21:43.780
How are you gonna, okay, where are we gonna go?
link |
01:21:46.740
That would be the key question because it's,
link |
01:21:50.020
but he didn't go that way.
link |
01:21:51.020
He chose to take the sanctions and to go this way.
link |
01:21:56.020
Why he did that is a key question for our time.
link |
01:22:00.460
Perhaps it was a mistake.
link |
01:22:01.620
Perhaps it was his judgment.
link |
01:22:03.260
Perhaps, as I said, but I don't,
link |
01:22:05.340
knowing the man I did, I don't think so.
link |
01:22:07.300
I think it was calculated.
link |
01:22:09.420
Now this is projection and speculation,
link |
01:22:12.380
but there's something different about him
link |
01:22:14.620
in the past several months.
link |
01:22:16.820
It could be the COVID thing,
link |
01:22:17.980
the isolation that you mentioned.
link |
01:22:20.180
I listen to a lot of interviews and speeches in Russian,
link |
01:22:23.940
and there's something about power over time
link |
01:22:28.120
that can change you, that can isolate you.
link |
01:22:30.620
Well, when I was there,
link |
01:22:31.860
no, he'd been in office for already 15 years.
link |
01:22:35.820
He had power.
link |
01:22:37.140
He didn't misuse it in my opinion.
link |
01:22:38.700
He was very even.
link |
01:22:39.540
I saw him go on television and talk to his fellows
link |
01:22:42.220
the same way he always talked to them.
link |
01:22:44.180
He grew in intelligence and knowledge
link |
01:22:47.700
because he had dealings with the whole world.
link |
01:22:50.540
Now people had come to him.
link |
01:22:52.260
He was very well known in Africa and Middle East,
link |
01:22:55.620
certainly Syria, and I just never saw misuse of his power.
link |
01:23:01.780
I saw humility in him, actually.
link |
01:23:03.940
So perhaps there was a calculation and he calculated wrong
link |
01:23:09.180
in terms of what happens if he doesn't invade.
link |
01:23:12.620
Perhaps there was a calculation,
link |
01:23:14.060
perhaps he had a calm and clear mind,
link |
01:23:16.900
and he calculated wrong.
link |
01:23:18.360
Well, he also made the point that he,
link |
01:23:20.380
the talk of Zelensky saying,
link |
01:23:22.780
well, nuclear weapons were gonna come into Ukraine.
link |
01:23:25.180
There was talk about that right before the invasion too,
link |
01:23:28.260
and certainly that would have set off alarms.
link |
01:23:30.980
You know, the United States is already kind of doing that
link |
01:23:34.000
by not only putting its intelligence
link |
01:23:36.460
and its heavy weaponry into Ukraine,
link |
01:23:39.660
but you've got to deal with the question,
link |
01:23:41.300
the next question that comes up,
link |
01:23:42.480
the most immediate question is,
link |
01:23:44.600
is the United States gonna start?
link |
01:23:47.680
And I'm saying this is good.
link |
01:23:50.420
They're making a lot of noise in United States press
link |
01:23:52.660
about Russia using nuclear weapons and chemical weapons.
link |
01:23:56.360
That's a lot of noise.
link |
01:23:58.460
Again, going back to my analogy,
link |
01:24:00.580
when the United States starts that,
link |
01:24:02.100
it starts the conversation going.
link |
01:24:04.280
It's in the interest of the United States
link |
01:24:07.380
for Russia to be pinned with any kind of chemical
link |
01:24:12.980
or nuclear incident.
link |
01:24:16.560
Except, for example, it'd be very, not simple,
link |
01:24:19.560
but it would be possible to explode a nuclear device
link |
01:24:23.380
in Donbass and kill thousands of people.
link |
01:24:27.520
And we would not know right away who did it,
link |
01:24:29.740
but of course the blame would go right to Russia,
link |
01:24:32.380
right to Russia, even if it didn't make sense,
link |
01:24:34.460
if there was no motivation for it.
link |
01:24:36.320
It would just be blamed on Russia.
link |
01:24:38.340
The United States might well be the one
link |
01:24:40.140
who does that false flag operation.
link |
01:24:42.540
It would not be beyond them.
link |
01:24:44.580
It would be a very dramatic solution
link |
01:24:48.240
to sealing this war off as a major victory
link |
01:24:50.700
for the United States.
link |
01:24:51.540
That's terrifying.
link |
01:24:52.700
No, but it can happen.
link |
01:24:53.740
It can happen.
link |
01:24:54.580
A one kiloton device, low yield, it's possible.
link |
01:24:59.260
So when you walk across that line,
link |
01:25:01.860
you can potentially never walk back.
link |
01:25:05.020
Well, I think the United States is calculating
link |
01:25:07.540
that it's a dangerous, yes, I agree,
link |
01:25:10.520
but I think the neoconservative arrogance is such
link |
01:25:13.460
that they really believe they can push their advantage
link |
01:25:16.300
to the max now because of all these propaganda successes
link |
01:25:20.340
up to now.
link |
01:25:21.500
The Ukrainian army could be wiped out for all we know.
link |
01:25:23.780
There's all this leftists or neo, Nazi brigades,
link |
01:25:25.960
but they're being advised very well by US
link |
01:25:29.580
and they're sending the weapons in,
link |
01:25:30.860
are huge amounts of weapons.
link |
01:25:31.940
What about American budget?
link |
01:25:33.020
No one talks about how much money we're giving to Ukraine.
link |
01:25:36.900
It's a billion dollars already in weaponry
link |
01:25:39.200
and not most of it just poured in.
link |
01:25:41.780
What about, you know, the Russian budget is,
link |
01:25:47.440
defense budget is 60 some billion dollars a year.
link |
01:25:51.060
It's nothing compared to the United States, 1 15th of it.
link |
01:25:54.780
But yet we've put so much weaponry into Ukraine.
link |
01:25:59.020
The money we've spent on Ukraine is equivalent almost
link |
01:26:03.060
to what we spent on COVID in our own country.
link |
01:26:07.060
It's astounding the distortion of our priorities.
link |
01:26:11.700
There's also chemical.
link |
01:26:12.860
Don't forget chemical is probably the easier way to go.
link |
01:26:15.820
But in Syria, there was far too many incidents of America
link |
01:26:20.500
in its quest to demonize Assad and the Russians
link |
01:26:25.660
of all these chemical attacks that were happening
link |
01:26:27.980
that they were vowing came from Russia.
link |
01:26:31.140
And in spite of the fact that Russia just pulled out of the,
link |
01:26:36.660
signed the agreement on chemical arms
link |
01:26:38.460
and apparently destroyed its stock several years ago,
link |
01:26:43.780
it's strange that the strangest incidents happened in Syria.
link |
01:26:47.660
You go back to them, trace every one,
link |
01:26:50.300
good journalism was done.
link |
01:26:51.900
The White Helmets got a lot of fame,
link |
01:26:53.620
but they were corrupted.
link |
01:26:55.060
And many good journalists tried to point out
link |
01:26:58.060
the inconsistencies in the American accusations.
link |
01:27:04.140
Robert Parry among them,
link |
01:27:05.780
who was one of my mentors at Consortium Press.
link |
01:27:08.620
A lot of good, you'd have to go back,
link |
01:27:10.100
but trace each, like you would trace each time
link |
01:27:13.420
they made an accusation against Putin of murder.
link |
01:27:16.020
You need that same kind of Sherlock Holmes intensity,
link |
01:27:19.660
investigation, and they don't do it
link |
01:27:21.740
because the United Nations or the chemical,
link |
01:27:24.660
not the United Nations as much as the chemical people,
link |
01:27:27.020
the organization has been tampered with.
link |
01:27:30.740
If you remember correctly, there was accusations
link |
01:27:33.220
that the chemical investigative unit,
link |
01:27:36.780
I don't know the name of it, was tampered with.
link |
01:27:39.980
And people quit, people who were working on that commission
link |
01:27:42.900
quit and said that this is not legit.
link |
01:27:45.380
So very interesting, that Syria story is wacko.
link |
01:27:48.780
So the United States is willing
link |
01:27:49.900
to use chemical in Syria freely.
link |
01:27:52.300
It did it three, four times.
link |
01:27:53.340
If you remember correctly, Trump was challenged
link |
01:27:55.420
that he did not attack after a chemical incident in Syria.
link |
01:27:59.980
All these newscasters in the United States,
link |
01:28:02.460
the most heaviest of them were saying,
link |
01:28:04.700
well, President Trump is now finally acting
link |
01:28:08.860
like a real president when he attacks,
link |
01:28:11.180
when he drops missiles in Syria.
link |
01:28:12.900
They actually said that.
link |
01:28:14.300
In other words, they wanted Trump to go to war on Syria,
link |
01:28:17.140
but he didn't.
link |
01:28:17.980
Chemical weapons and nuclear is really terrifying.
link |
01:28:23.260
Do you think, now combine this with the fascinating choice
link |
01:28:28.740
in your interviews with Vladimir Putin
link |
01:28:31.260
to watch Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove
link |
01:28:36.300
or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
link |
01:28:38.860
And given the fact that you did that,
link |
01:28:42.180
now looking at the fact that the word nuclear,
link |
01:28:46.380
and it feels like the world hangs
link |
01:28:49.820
on the brink of nuclear war,
link |
01:28:52.180
do you think that that's overstating the case?
link |
01:28:55.740
No, that's what worried me from the beginning,
link |
01:28:58.300
and that's probably why I got involved in all this stuff,
link |
01:29:00.580
because I go back to the 60s when we were so close
link |
01:29:06.320
to nuclear war.
link |
01:29:07.440
I lived through that period,
link |
01:29:08.720
and I thought, as many people did,
link |
01:29:11.220
that this was, it was gonna come now.
link |
01:29:14.900
So I've lived through that,
link |
01:29:16.620
and I didn't sense the period in 83
link |
01:29:19.700
when Reagan took us to the edge,
link |
01:29:21.540
if you remember correctly.
link |
01:29:22.500
Able Archer was an exercise that almost brought us to,
link |
01:29:26.380
because the Russians were really paranoid at that point,
link |
01:29:29.240
and they were responding to our military exercise
link |
01:29:32.860
on Able Archer.
link |
01:29:33.700
There was also the Korean airliner, they went down.
link |
01:29:35.580
There were numerous incidents in the 80s,
link |
01:29:37.500
but I never felt the fear.
link |
01:29:40.200
I thought Reagan was testing the limits,
link |
01:29:43.300
but perhaps if I'd been younger, I would've felt it.
link |
01:29:46.240
But anyway, no, we come close.
link |
01:29:48.340
The United States has risked this several times.
link |
01:29:51.380
If I told you, it would be hard for you to believe,
link |
01:29:53.540
if I could set a scene for you in a drama in 1962
link |
01:29:57.980
when Kennedy has a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff
link |
01:30:01.180
and the CIA, and they talk about a plan,
link |
01:30:06.220
a military plan, to first strike the Soviet Union and China.
link |
01:30:11.220
It was an Eisenhower plan that had been put into potential
link |
01:30:18.820
operation in early 60s or 50s, late 50s, SIOP 62.
link |
01:30:27.060
This was an attack on the Soviet Union, first strike.
link |
01:30:29.820
That's why the United States has never given up
link |
01:30:32.220
the concept of first strike.
link |
01:30:34.700
It's interesting that the Russian nuclear policy posture
link |
01:30:38.520
is more defensive than the American one,
link |
01:30:41.860
which leaves options open.
link |
01:30:44.900
The same options are open in neoconservative agreements
link |
01:30:49.300
that we see from the late 90s, where they say,
link |
01:30:52.460
the emergence of a rival power will not be tolerated.
link |
01:30:56.140
That's a very broad statement,
link |
01:30:58.260
and it allows you to do a lot, including nuclear.
link |
01:31:01.780
So you have to understand the United States is always,
link |
01:31:05.620
first of all, it breaks so many treaties.
link |
01:31:07.900
We know that from the Putin story
link |
01:31:10.180
about the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002,
link |
01:31:13.940
and then the INF Treaty of, they broke that one.
link |
01:31:17.240
That was the intermediate missiles.
link |
01:31:19.980
That was 2019.
link |
01:31:21.380
I don't know when they broke it off,
link |
01:31:22.920
but the United States has not been very faithful
link |
01:31:25.040
on its nuclear agreements, and so I don't know
link |
01:31:29.560
that we can even deal with the United States diplomatically.
link |
01:31:32.140
It seems to be impossible.
link |
01:31:34.220
Now, it brings me to Biden.
link |
01:31:36.240
And this is the opposite of Kennedy.
link |
01:31:40.220
Kennedy was a Catholic Irish anti imperialist.
link |
01:31:43.820
Biden seems to be the opposite.
link |
01:31:45.300
He seems to be a get along, go along guy
link |
01:31:48.300
who's been not only old,
link |
01:31:50.780
but he's also gone along with this program,
link |
01:31:52.760
which I voted for Biden because I feared Trump,
link |
01:31:56.140
but I thought Biden at a certain age would mellow.
link |
01:31:59.020
I really did.
link |
01:32:00.260
He's not mellowed, apparently.
link |
01:32:01.620
He's still listening to these people, and he believes them.
link |
01:32:05.040
And it seems that his, that horrible woman,
link |
01:32:08.300
Victoria Nuland, who was Under Secretary of State,
link |
01:32:10.540
he appointed her to this sector of the world.
link |
01:32:14.580
She's very influential,
link |
01:32:16.020
and she's been one of the worst people on Ukraine.
link |
01:32:19.460
Obviously, she's behind the coup.
link |
01:32:21.860
She was the one who boasted that, you know,
link |
01:32:24.740
we got our man in, Yats, whatever it is, Yatsenuk.
link |
01:32:28.780
And also, remember the famous statement, fuck the EU?
link |
01:32:32.780
All these things, but she's back,
link |
01:32:34.400
and she said the other day about if the Soviets,
link |
01:32:37.340
if the Russians use nuclear weaponry of any kind,
link |
01:32:41.440
there's gonna be a horrible price to pay.
link |
01:32:44.020
She was out of the blue.
link |
01:32:44.900
I said, what the hell is she doing?
link |
01:32:46.660
She's talking nuclear all of a sudden.
link |
01:32:48.660
And then since that day, everybody in the US press,
link |
01:32:52.780
all the shows have gone, talk nuclear, nuclear, nuclear.
link |
01:32:55.620
Secretary of State has done it, Blinken, it scares you.
link |
01:33:05.580
If you think about it, the United States scares me.
link |
01:33:08.300
So that's the military industrial complex machine,
link |
01:33:11.300
fully functional, fully operational
link |
01:33:13.220
behind this whole thing.
link |
01:33:14.140
Certainly is.
link |
01:33:14.980
Is that what's to blame?
link |
01:33:16.220
Certainly is.
link |
01:33:17.460
That's why I showed him Strangelove,
link |
01:33:18.900
because I wanted him to show him.
link |
01:33:20.700
I wanted Mr. Putin to say, look at this film.
link |
01:33:22.900
You never saw it.
link |
01:33:23.720
How can you not say, you know,
link |
01:33:24.860
it's a seminal film in American history
link |
01:33:27.740
to those people who care.
link |
01:33:28.940
And it shows you the Kubrick had a pacifist, thank God,
link |
01:33:34.100
antiwar mentality, which he showed in Bows of Glory
link |
01:33:39.560
as well as Strangelove.
link |
01:33:42.300
And it's such a dire, well done scenario
link |
01:33:46.180
that I wanted Mr. Putin to be aware
link |
01:33:48.700
of the way the United States thinks.
link |
01:33:51.360
Yeah, the absurdity of escalation,
link |
01:33:53.940
the absurdity of war at the largest scale,
link |
01:33:56.500
the absurdity of nuclear war, especially.
link |
01:33:59.420
Can we walk back from the brink of nuclear war?
link |
01:34:03.740
Can we?
link |
01:34:04.580
Can we?
link |
01:34:05.400
Yes, yes we can.
link |
01:34:06.240
What's the path to walk back?
link |
01:34:07.740
Reason.
link |
01:34:08.580
Reason.
link |
01:34:09.420
Between who and whom?
link |
01:34:10.240
Reason and diplomacy.
link |
01:34:11.380
There's no reason.
link |
01:34:12.420
I mean, talk to the guy.
link |
01:34:15.180
Mr. Biden, why don't you calm down
link |
01:34:17.860
and go and talk to Mr. Putin in Moscow?
link |
01:34:20.860
Why don't you just sit across the table from him
link |
01:34:23.020
and try to have a discussion without falling
link |
01:34:26.060
into ideologies and stuff like that?
link |
01:34:29.540
Can I ask you for advice?
link |
01:34:31.180
You did some of the most difficult interviews ever.
link |
01:34:34.740
Do you have advice that you can give to someone like me
link |
01:34:38.460
or anyone hoping to understand something
link |
01:34:40.540
about a human being sitting across from them
link |
01:34:44.780
about what it takes to do a good interview?
link |
01:34:47.860
You're doing one.
link |
01:34:48.760
Well, no, but there's a, listen,
link |
01:34:52.720
there's levels to this game.
link |
01:34:55.080
And interviewing somebody like Vladimir Putin,
link |
01:34:58.080
also language barrier, sit across from the man,
link |
01:35:03.160
try to keep an open mind,
link |
01:35:06.120
try to also ask challenging questions,
link |
01:35:08.840
but not challenging with an agenda,
link |
01:35:11.040
but seeking to understand and understand deeply.
link |
01:35:14.340
How do you do that?
link |
01:35:15.920
Seeking the truth.
link |
01:35:17.200
It's very simple.
link |
01:35:18.080
Seeking the truth, being a questioner like you are.
link |
01:35:20.960
You wanna know what is really going on.
link |
01:35:23.400
I could not get anywhere with Biden or Bush
link |
01:35:26.960
or for that matter, Obama.
link |
01:35:28.400
They'd be opaque with me.
link |
01:35:30.080
There's no interview possible
link |
01:35:31.360
with the president of the United States
link |
01:35:32.640
because he's got to stand for all the stuff
link |
01:35:34.920
that they stand for, which is imperialism,
link |
01:35:37.640
which is control of the world.
link |
01:35:39.160
How can you defend that?
link |
01:35:41.360
No one's gonna come out and say that.
link |
01:35:42.560
They're always gonna blame the enemy.
link |
01:35:44.720
They're gonna blame Iran.
link |
01:35:45.760
They're gonna blame China.
link |
01:35:47.920
So with some people, it may not be possible
link |
01:35:50.040
to break through the opaqueness.
link |
01:35:51.360
You can't, you can't.
link |
01:35:52.200
I mean, have you ever seen an interview with the president
link |
01:35:54.280
besides being personable,
link |
01:35:57.480
where he actually discussed American policy?
link |
01:36:00.200
Yeah, I mean, not really, but maybe after their president.
link |
01:36:03.600
I could see Obama being able to do such an interview.
link |
01:36:06.880
I could see George W. being able to do such an interview.
link |
01:36:10.220
Or are they not able to reflect at all on the?
link |
01:36:13.360
George W. hasn't shown much conscience
link |
01:36:15.200
in terms of thinking about what he's done.
link |
01:36:17.680
You've seen that.
link |
01:36:18.640
You ever see my movie, W.?
link |
01:36:20.520
I think that's one of my best movies
link |
01:36:22.240
because it shows a man who's just out of his depth
link |
01:36:25.400
and has no, he has a conscience at the end of the movie.
link |
01:36:28.320
If you remember correctly, he talks to his wife
link |
01:36:31.080
and he says, I don't get it.
link |
01:36:33.200
I'm trying to do good in the world.
link |
01:36:34.480
I've done, I believe in good and right.
link |
01:36:36.880
And why do people not understand that kind of complaint
link |
01:36:40.920
as if he can't get outside himself
link |
01:36:42.660
to understand the way other people think?
link |
01:36:45.040
Empathies, walking like a dramatist is what I do.
link |
01:36:47.800
You walk in the footsteps of other people.
link |
01:36:50.720
When I did a movie about Richard Nixon,
link |
01:36:52.440
it wasn't because I liked him.
link |
01:36:54.080
It was because I wanted to,
link |
01:36:55.820
I think I understood a part of him because of my father
link |
01:36:57.960
and I think I wanted to walk in his footsteps.
link |
01:37:00.680
That's not to say I sympathize with him because I didn't.
link |
01:37:03.160
I don't think he helped the American cause at all,
link |
01:37:05.920
but it was empathize as opposed to sympathize.
link |
01:37:08.920
Same thing with Bush.
link |
01:37:10.080
People were shocked when I did the Bush movie.
link |
01:37:11.720
They said, how can you be in any way receptive to this guy?
link |
01:37:18.360
That's wrong.
link |
01:37:19.720
Dramatists don't have political positions.
link |
01:37:22.120
They walk in the shoes of.
link |
01:37:23.940
That's why Bush movie perhaps was surprising
link |
01:37:27.160
and many people didn't care for it.
link |
01:37:29.380
Maybe that's what, but that's, you've got to go there.
link |
01:37:34.840
If you did a movie about a villain, you have to go there.
link |
01:37:38.080
You have to walk in their shoes.
link |
01:37:41.000
Yes.
link |
01:37:41.840
So see them, cause they usually,
link |
01:37:43.640
villains usually see themselves as the hero.
link |
01:37:46.640
Yes.
link |
01:37:47.560
So you have to consider what is it like to live in a world
link |
01:37:51.160
where this person is the hero?
link |
01:37:53.880
Yes.
link |
01:37:55.680
Is that a burden?
link |
01:37:56.980
Is that hard?
link |
01:37:57.820
Not for George W. Bush.
link |
01:37:59.480
He's bitching because they didn't understand him,
link |
01:38:02.600
but he had a good vision he said of democracy
link |
01:38:05.140
and you know, democracy forgives a lot of sins.
link |
01:38:09.720
Can I ask you a hard question on that?
link |
01:38:11.780
Yes, sure.
link |
01:38:13.280
So because empathy is so important to a great interview,
link |
01:38:16.860
let's ask the most challenging version of empathy,
link |
01:38:19.400
which is when you're sitting across from a man
link |
01:38:23.080
on the brink of war that leads to tens of millions
link |
01:38:26.840
of deaths, which is Hitler.
link |
01:38:28.620
So if you could interview Hitler in 1939,
link |
01:38:32.200
as the drums of war start to beat or 1941
link |
01:38:36.780
when they're already full on war, but there's still
link |
01:38:39.840
a lot of pacifists, there's still a lot of people unsure
link |
01:38:44.100
what are the motivations behind what Hitler's doing.
link |
01:38:48.320
How would you do that interview?
link |
01:38:49.640
Well it depends when you do it.
link |
01:38:50.760
If you do it in 38, I certainly would have,
link |
01:38:54.480
no you have to, if you sit down across from Hitler,
link |
01:38:57.120
you empathize.
link |
01:38:57.960
What is your beef?
link |
01:38:59.040
Where have you been?
link |
01:39:00.680
What is your consciousness?
link |
01:39:02.200
Why do you hate Jewish people?
link |
01:39:05.200
Why, what is, all these questions that come up.
link |
01:39:10.840
His sense of grievance as a result of World War I.
link |
01:39:13.880
There's justifications there, et cetera.
link |
01:39:16.380
But if I, and by the way, Churchill was trying
link |
01:39:19.120
to make a deal with him in 38.
link |
01:39:21.120
That's a fact that people don't know.
link |
01:39:23.040
Churchill himself, there was still the desire
link |
01:39:25.780
in England to make peace with Germany.
link |
01:39:29.880
And it was seen as a possible, what Churchill
link |
01:39:34.440
really wanted was Hitler to go against Russia.
link |
01:39:36.900
And anything to destroy the Bolsheviks.
link |
01:39:40.080
So he was using Hitler as much as he could
link |
01:39:42.760
to go after Russia, but Hitler was too elusive
link |
01:39:46.760
to get, to pin him down.
link |
01:39:48.640
But if you remember, Hitler was very kind at the end of,
link |
01:39:51.640
kind is not the right word, was,
link |
01:39:54.960
did not go after the British Empire when he had France.
link |
01:39:58.560
And he could have.
link |
01:40:00.740
He had another objective, which was obviously the East.
link |
01:40:04.300
So Hitler's goal, I think, he always had an admiration
link |
01:40:08.880
for England.
link |
01:40:09.720
It's an interesting story, always.
link |
01:40:13.040
And the empire.
link |
01:40:15.320
Yes, and certainly Churchill, we have no doubts now
link |
01:40:19.320
from history revisionism that Churchill's interest,
link |
01:40:22.560
main interest, was not Germany.
link |
01:40:24.560
It was the British Empire.
link |
01:40:26.160
And to preserve it to India, the road to India
link |
01:40:28.480
and all that, and Middle East.
link |
01:40:31.240
Churchill fought the entire war with the concept
link |
01:40:34.360
of preserving the British Empire.
link |
01:40:36.160
All his goals, he sent America on a goose chase into Italy,
link |
01:40:39.920
you could argue, instead of establishing
link |
01:40:41.840
a sincere second front in Western Europe.
link |
01:40:47.680
Interesting man.
link |
01:40:49.120
So I would have tried to get, you know,
link |
01:40:50.480
I think I would have approached it the same way.
link |
01:40:52.660
In 1939, it would have been a different story
link |
01:40:55.080
because at that point, he'd attacked Poland,
link |
01:40:58.080
and in 1940, France.
link |
01:41:00.420
So it's another ball game.
link |
01:41:02.440
But certainly, at whatever point you talk to him,
link |
01:41:05.320
I would try to understand his point.
link |
01:41:07.660
I'm not judging you, Hitler.
link |
01:41:09.200
I'm saying to you, tell me what you're thinking.
link |
01:41:11.360
Why are you invading Russia?
link |
01:41:12.560
What's your thought?
link |
01:41:13.800
That's all an interviewer should do.
link |
01:41:15.160
He shouldn't be expressing his contempt for Hitler,
link |
01:41:18.080
which like an American journalist interviewing Putin,
link |
01:41:21.420
I'm getting brownie points for expressing my contempt for you.
link |
01:41:26.880
That doesn't wash with me.
link |
01:41:27.880
That's ugly.
link |
01:41:29.160
Seek to understand.
link |
01:41:30.280
Yes.
link |
01:41:32.280
This is a technical question,
link |
01:41:33.760
but was language a barrier as an interviewer?
link |
01:41:36.840
To some degree.
link |
01:41:37.780
It's very hard to learn Russian.
link |
01:41:40.160
But I had very, they have excellent translators
link |
01:41:42.520
in the Kremlin, excellent.
link |
01:41:43.880
They are people who are trained very seriously
link |
01:41:47.560
for months or years before they,
link |
01:41:50.460
these people are young and they're very bright.
link |
01:41:53.720
I was very impressed with the Russian translators.
link |
01:41:55.520
It's interesting.
link |
01:41:56.360
I mean, I'm impressed as well,
link |
01:41:58.260
but there's a humor that's lost.
link |
01:42:01.760
There's a wit, a dry wit.
link |
01:42:03.680
There's stuff said between the lines.
link |
01:42:06.880
That's not actually how much content,
link |
01:42:09.380
but it's more kind of the things
link |
01:42:12.720
that make communication more frictionless.
link |
01:42:15.360
It's the, there's a kind of sadness to a Russian humor
link |
01:42:20.920
that permeates all things.
link |
01:42:22.720
And that sometimes is lost in translation.
link |
01:42:24.840
The translation is a little bit colder,
link |
01:42:26.960
meaning it just conveys the facts.
link |
01:42:29.880
Would you call it sardonic humor?
link |
01:42:31.720
I would say so, yeah.
link |
01:42:33.440
And so it's interesting.
link |
01:42:34.320
But I think you could see that from facial expressions
link |
01:42:36.440
when you're sitting across from the person
link |
01:42:38.160
and you can feel it.
link |
01:42:39.000
I feel it, yeah.
link |
01:42:39.820
You can feel it.
link |
01:42:41.280
Let me ask you in general,
link |
01:42:43.840
what's the role of love in the human condition,
link |
01:42:48.500
in your life, in life in general?
link |
01:42:50.760
You've talked, you looked at some of the darkest aspect
link |
01:42:53.720
of human nature.
link |
01:42:55.600
What's the role of this,
link |
01:42:57.160
one of the more beautiful aspects of human nature?
link |
01:42:59.520
I think without love, I wouldn't,
link |
01:43:01.040
I don't think I'd be able to carry on.
link |
01:43:02.920
I think that love is my, love is the greatest,
link |
01:43:08.520
the ability to love is the greatest virtue you can have.
link |
01:43:11.120
It's the ability to share with another,
link |
01:43:14.960
with your family, with your children, with your wife,
link |
01:43:17.680
with your lover, your partner.
link |
01:43:19.440
It's an ability to extend yourself into the world
link |
01:43:22.360
and it brings empathy with it.
link |
01:43:23.860
If you love well,
link |
01:43:25.840
I think you expand it to the human race too.
link |
01:43:28.400
And it's the strength behind the great novelists,
link |
01:43:32.440
the great artists of our time.
link |
01:43:35.640
I think part of the reason I suppose
link |
01:43:41.300
we're scared of science sometimes
link |
01:43:42.800
is because the scientists sometimes
link |
01:43:44.320
don't express that clearly.
link |
01:43:45.640
You can lose that when you focus on the facts,
link |
01:43:49.480
on empirical data, on the science of things.
link |
01:43:54.480
You can lose the humanity that's between the lines.
link |
01:43:58.320
I'm often struck by when I talk to scientists
link |
01:44:00.720
and I've talked to a few,
link |
01:44:02.040
that how arrogant they can be about,
link |
01:44:03.920
they don't talk to you if you don't understand their world
link |
01:44:06.960
and they talk to each other and there's an arrogance,
link |
01:44:09.120
a closed circle kind of thing.
link |
01:44:10.620
Oh, he's not at my level, I can't,
link |
01:44:12.520
there's no discussion to be had with this person,
link |
01:44:14.580
he's a human being.
link |
01:44:16.200
That arrogance is terrifying to me
link |
01:44:18.080
because it's next door neighbor to closed mindedness
link |
01:44:23.040
which then can be used by charismatic leaders
link |
01:44:25.440
as it was in Nazi Germany
link |
01:44:27.440
to commit some of the worst atrocities.
link |
01:44:29.740
The scientists can be used as pawns
link |
01:44:34.040
in a very cruel game.
link |
01:44:37.800
What advice would you give to young people?
link |
01:44:39.560
You've done, first of all, some of the greatest films ever.
link |
01:44:43.720
You've lived a heck of a life.
link |
01:44:47.920
You've, were fearless and bold
link |
01:44:51.180
in asking some really difficult questions of this world.
link |
01:44:53.960
What advice would you give to young people today,
link |
01:44:56.280
high school, college, about career?
link |
01:45:00.920
How to have a career they can be proud of
link |
01:45:02.800
or how to have a life they can be proud of?
link |
01:45:06.640
Well, I have three children
link |
01:45:07.840
so obviously I'm not necessarily the best advisor
link |
01:45:11.920
in the world and I do find that the children,
link |
01:45:15.640
I've raised them with a sense of freedom
link |
01:45:17.460
and they do what they want.
link |
01:45:19.280
In the end, it's their life, their destiny, their character.
link |
01:45:22.800
That's what comes out.
link |
01:45:24.520
You can try to influence it
link |
01:45:27.040
but you can try to get your daughter to wake up
link |
01:45:30.360
at a certain hour in the day but it never works.
link |
01:45:34.160
So I long ago gave up on that
link |
01:45:38.200
and my children are all grown now
link |
01:45:40.200
but aside from that, I think if I was a teacher in a school
link |
01:45:44.500
and teaching film, I'd say to the students,
link |
01:45:48.720
get an education.
link |
01:45:49.920
You can't just look at film because it's not
link |
01:45:53.640
a full education, it's not the spectrum.
link |
01:45:55.900
I don't think you should teach film as a,
link |
01:45:59.240
I think you need a base in other worlds.
link |
01:46:02.760
One of the greatest courses I took at NYU was,
link |
01:46:05.840
and I was a war veteran on the GI Bill
link |
01:46:08.520
so I was older than the other students.
link |
01:46:10.300
One of the great, I took a class outside the film school
link |
01:46:13.520
in Greek classics because I hadn't had much history
link |
01:46:18.160
and I wanted to know more about the world of Homer
link |
01:46:20.680
and so forth and the teacher opened my eyes
link |
01:46:23.600
to so much in that class and I wrote about it
link |
01:46:26.380
in my memoir, it's called Chasing the Light
link |
01:46:29.600
about Professor Leahy and what he did to me.
link |
01:46:33.080
He gave me the concepts clearly of consciousness
link |
01:46:36.600
which is the Homeric theme of Odysseus
link |
01:46:39.560
and also lethe, L E T H E, which is sleep
link |
01:46:47.240
and how most of the crew, Odysseus's crew,
link |
01:46:53.240
were experiencing lethe and how necessary it was
link |
01:46:56.200
to stay awake.
link |
01:46:58.360
So it's not just film, it's just you have to learn
link |
01:47:01.880
the world as much as you can when you're young
link |
01:47:04.460
and so that I think is the basis of a good education
link |
01:47:10.040
and a classic one is important, a basis.
link |
01:47:15.440
I think then you go on and you can learn computer
link |
01:47:18.120
if you want but that's specialization.
link |
01:47:21.900
If you're a computer geek, is that a life?
link |
01:47:24.600
Does that give you enough satisfaction?
link |
01:47:26.380
Do you get the joy out of people?
link |
01:47:29.860
No, just like filmmaking is a skill.
link |
01:47:32.120
Yes, right.
link |
01:47:32.960
You have the broad background to understand the world,
link |
01:47:36.640
literature, history.
link |
01:47:40.360
Absolutely.
link |
01:47:43.760
So one of the things about being human is life is finite.
link |
01:47:48.520
It ends.
link |
01:47:50.000
Do you think about your death?
link |
01:47:52.200
Are you afraid of your death?
link |
01:47:53.240
Yeah, sure.
link |
01:47:54.320
Absolutely, you have to come to terms with death
link |
01:47:56.640
and that's a tough one for many people.
link |
01:47:58.640
It's always there.
link |
01:47:59.480
I'm older than you, obviously,
link |
01:48:01.320
and I'm getting closer to it.
link |
01:48:02.960
Couldn't happen any day, actually.
link |
01:48:04.820
When you get to a certain age,
link |
01:48:06.260
you can't assume that you're gonna be alive tomorrow.
link |
01:48:08.480
So I try to deal with that.
link |
01:48:10.360
Are you afraid of it?
link |
01:48:12.320
Much less so than I was when I was younger.
link |
01:48:15.520
Remember, I was in Vietnam
link |
01:48:16.760
but I thought I dealt with it there
link |
01:48:18.320
but when I came back, I realized that I wanted to live.
link |
01:48:21.800
So yes, I've learned over time
link |
01:48:24.600
to get more and more used to it and get ready for it.
link |
01:48:27.940
What's a good answer to the question of why live?
link |
01:48:31.000
So the realization that you wanted to live.
link |
01:48:34.600
What was the reason to live?
link |
01:48:36.580
Because it was better than being one of those corpses
link |
01:48:38.720
that I saw in the jungle.
link |
01:48:40.760
I saw how finite death is.
link |
01:48:45.320
Are there things in your life you regret?
link |
01:48:48.080
Oh, sure.
link |
01:48:48.920
Too many.
link |
01:48:55.640
Is there something you wish you could have done differently?
link |
01:48:58.020
Like if you could go back to do one thing differently
link |
01:49:00.600
or that it regrets all of it.
link |
01:49:01.820
Did you ask Musk this?
link |
01:49:02.660
I'm curious.
link |
01:49:04.040
What did he say?
link |
01:49:04.880
Offline all the time.
link |
01:49:09.600
No, no.
link |
01:49:11.520
You'd be curious to know.
link |
01:49:12.680
And he's an engineer too
link |
01:49:13.960
and engineers really value mistakes.
link |
01:49:17.360
Engineers value mistakes.
link |
01:49:18.200
Value mistakes and errors
link |
01:49:19.600
because that's an opportunity to learn.
link |
01:49:22.400
I mean, this is what you do with systems
link |
01:49:24.120
is you test them, then test them, then test them
link |
01:49:26.520
and errors is just information.
link |
01:49:28.560
He did that with the rockets.
link |
01:49:29.400
That is true in its way of filmmaking.
link |
01:49:31.240
There are certain things you learn as you build films
link |
01:49:35.240
and you make mistakes.
link |
01:49:36.720
It's like putting an engine together and you,
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01:49:39.600
oh, the film is flawed in that way, you know it.
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01:49:42.260
Other people may or may not see it,
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01:49:43.880
but the car runs or it made money or it didn't make money.
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01:49:48.260
It can be good and it didn't make money,
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01:49:49.900
but the point is that everything is a build.
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01:49:53.120
Every film is a construction.
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01:49:54.800
Same thing as he goes through on a Tesla,
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01:49:57.540
we go through on each film.
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01:49:59.480
But films are art.
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01:50:03.100
It's a little tricky.
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01:50:03.940
Yeah, the thing is one film does not lead
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01:50:05.760
to a lifetime guarantee of copyright.
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01:50:11.580
Well, yeah, you have the movie game as you've called it.
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01:50:17.120
Yeah.
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01:50:17.960
It's a complicated and cruel game.
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01:50:22.640
But it takes enormous amount of work,
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01:50:24.920
enormous amount of work to make a film.
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01:50:26.520
People underestimate that.
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01:50:28.800
It's extremely complicated to have something be successful
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01:50:34.900
because it has so many elements of luck involved
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01:50:38.200
and reception and so forth.
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01:50:42.000
What do you think, I apologize for the absurd question,
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01:50:46.280
but what do you think is the meaning of life?
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01:50:48.520
Why are we here?
link |
01:50:50.280
The why.
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01:50:51.100
I think to realize ourselves,
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01:50:52.320
to realize more of what you are,
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01:50:54.700
to realize what life is, to appreciate it,
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01:50:57.700
to grow, to honor our life,
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01:51:01.040
to honor the concept of life
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01:51:02.580
and to understand how precious life is.
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01:51:06.180
The preciousness of life, as the Buddhists say.
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01:51:08.880
And of course, the immediacy of death all around us.
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01:51:12.360
The causes of death are all around us.
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01:51:15.880
And our life is like, as they say,
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01:51:18.600
is like a lantern in a strong breeze existing
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01:51:23.600
among the causes of death.
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01:51:25.600
So life is so precious.
link |
01:51:27.520
And at the same time, the immediacy of death
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01:51:31.080
and then of course, the continuation of life
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01:51:33.160
in whatever form it's gonna take.
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01:51:36.280
But in this life, to wake up to the preciousness of it.
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01:51:40.200
To the preciousness.
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01:51:41.080
Yeah, that's a wonderful thing, by the way.
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01:51:42.480
I didn't have that when I was young.
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01:51:43.800
I took it for granted.
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01:51:47.280
Oliver, like I said, I'm a huge fan.
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01:51:49.840
You're an incredible human being,
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01:51:51.760
one of the greatest artists ever.
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01:51:54.760
So it's a huge honor that you sit with me
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01:51:57.320
and talk so deeply and honestly
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01:52:00.720
about some very difficult topics.
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01:52:02.480
Again, you're an inspiration and it's an honor
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01:52:05.180
that you will spend your valuable time with me.
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01:52:06.840
Thank you very much.
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01:52:07.680
Thanks for talking to me.
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01:52:08.520
Fun being here.
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01:52:10.000
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Oliver Stone.
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01:52:12.640
To support this podcast,
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01:52:13.920
please check out our sponsors in the description.
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01:52:16.280
And now, let me leave you with some words
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01:52:18.360
from Oliver Stone in the untold history
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01:52:20.560
of the United States.
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01:52:22.560
To fail is not tragic.
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01:52:24.720
To be human is.
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01:52:26.440
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.