Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Getting to Know Oliver Stone | National Review Online

Getting to Know Oliver Stone | National Review Online: "During the question-and-answer session, Luis Eduardo Barrueto of Guatemala read some of the group’s open letter to the panel and asked for a response. What followed was revealing. Stone, who is producing a biopic on the life of Hugo Chávez, said the American media don’t give Venezuela a fair shake and implied that student protests against the regime there weren’t legitimate. “Venezuela is a democratically elected government. These people who keep protesting are sore losers,” he told the skeptical audience. He said revolutionary changes were needed in the county because rich people still owned so much of it.



I spoke with several of the Latin American students afterward, and they were appalled. When it came to Venezuela, they noted that Human Rights Watch recently concluded that “the concentration of power and erosion of human rights protections had given the government free rein to intimidate, censor, and prosecute Venezuelans who criticized the president or thwarted his political agenda.”



“Just a few days ago, three students were shot dead in Caracas and one of our Students for Liberty colleagues, Jesus Armas, was jailed,” Gabriel Salas of Venezuela told me in disgust. “The populists always justify repression in the name of the poor, but they are impoverishing everyone,” Antonella Marty of Argentina added."



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