Oliver Stone to College Students: 'Let's Get Away from the American View of the Middle East'

Pro-Hugo Chavez propagandist, Oliver Stone, came to Pomona College to promote his film, “South of the Border.” Stone, fresh off making the 2010 list of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s top ten anti-Semitic slurs for his belittling of the Holocaust , continued to mispronounce Chavez as “Sha-vez” and to apologize for the Latin American tyrant’s pro-Iranian speech. Have a look here.

Stone was the guest of pro-Hugo Chavez, anti-tea party professor, Miguel Tinker Salas, according to the student newspaper. When answering a question about Chavez’s support for the Iranian dictatorship and Hezbollah, Stone curiously leaned over and whispered with Tinker Salas. I guess he was looking for the party line.

Even the left-wing newspapers think Stone’s film is propaganda. “South of the Border” was savaged in the New York Times. The Washington Post said Stone lobbed softball questions to Chavez. NPR said Stone treated Latin American leaders with “kid gloves.”

Stone, who says that he “liked what we saw” in Latin America, never met with any dissidents while there.

Here’s the transcript of an exchange with Stone and a Pomona college student. You can watch the exchange here…

Student: Chavez considers the dictatorship of Iran great for its people and fully supports the government. He also considers Hezbollah to be heroic and legitimate. Do you agree? And Danny Glover got money from the government of Venezuela; did you? And who financed this film?

[Leans over, and whispers to pro-Chavez professor Miguel Tinker Salas]

Stone: We did not get any money from the government of Venezuela for the film. We made this movie outside that domain, and we were critical, if need be, but we liked what we saw. As you can see from the movie, we were trying to balance what we see as an extremely negative picture, so we were not going to go into a ‘he-said-you-said’ kind of documentary because I think it would have taken far longer and we would not have been able to cover the general movement of change in South America. This is truly a first look, a 101 type course, on South America. On the issue of the Middle East, on Iran, I heard, and on Hezbollah, I’m not going to get into that argument, but I will say Chavez trades with us in oil and Iran is a standing member of OPEC and has been for quite a few years and all, not just Chavez, but Saudi Arabia, all the members of OPEC, Russia, and have quite a lot of [business dealings] to Iran, so does the United States, too, by the way.

A huge amount of (business dealings) as we know. Something like 250 firms are doing business with Iran, so what you read in the media is, again, you know it’s very distorted about Iran. There are some many problems, but a lot of that is bullshit. So re-examine your sources on Iran and on Hezbollah too because Hezbollah keeps getting re-elected in a very strange sort of balance in the Middle East, so I, I just, you know, let’s get off the American view of the Middle East. Just get away from it.

Student: Okay, thank you.