Oliver Stone

I listened to this interview on the Mark Kermode 5 Live podcast. while I think Oliver stone's films are awful - over-long, silly and preachy - his views on Chavez and Latin american politics, in general, seem pretty sound, especially for an American. He seems to be echoing Chomsky when talking about the double standards we apply to Latin American leaders, with reformers being held to a much higher standard, and the west jumping on every little thing that goes wrong even if there's no pattern of human rights abuse, and literacy has gone through the roof, the worst poverty has been mostly removed, and Chavez remains insanely popular among the poor. This to America and the right wing in Venezuela spells "dictator" - ie, someone so popular that you cannot remove them even with all the press under your control and by rigging elections. Democracy to those people are controllable leaders and fixable elections. They've tried to remove Chavez once - who knows what elese they will try. However, removing Chavez now is unlikely to stop the new left in Latin America which has already burst through national boundaries. The American empire is, at last, on the wane.