YouSaid · the spoken record

Oliver Stone

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2022-05-17
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2022-05-17
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  1. “I think to realize ourselves, to realize more of what you are, to realize what life is, to appreciate it, to grow, to honor our life, to honor the concept of life, and to understand how precious life is. The preciousness of life, as the Buddhists say. And of course, the immediacy of death all around us, the causes of death are all around us. And our life is like a, as they say, is like a lantern in a strong breeze among the existing, among the causes of death. So life is so precious. And at the same time, immediacy of death, and then of course the continuation of life in whatever form it's going to take.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Takes enormous amount of work, enormous amount of work to make a film. People underestimate that. It's extremely complicated to have something be successful. Because it has so many elements of luck involved and reception and so forth.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “The same thing is true in its way of filmmaking. There are certain things you learn as you build films and you make mistakes. It's like putting an engine together and you, oh, the film is flawed in that way. You know it. Other people may or may not see it, but the car runs or made money or didn't make money. It can be good and it didn't make money. But the point is that everything is a build. Every film is a construction. Same thing as he goes through on a Tesla. We go through on each film.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Much less so than I was when I was younger. Remember I was in Vietnam, but I thought I dealt with it there, but when I came back I realized that I wanted to live. So yes, I've learned over time to get more and more used to it and get ready for it.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Of your death, yeah, sure. Absolutely. You have to come to terms with death. And that's a tough one for many people. It's always there. I'm older than you, obviously, and I'm getting closer to it. It couldn't happen any day, actually. When you get to a certain age, you can't assume that you're going to be alive tomorrow. So I try to deal with that.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “So that, I think, is the basis of a good education and a classic one is important. I think then you go on and you can learn computer if you want to, but that's specialization. If you're a computer geek, is that a life? Does that give you enough satisfaction? Do you get the joy out of people?”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I think you need a base in other worlds. One of the greatest courses I took at NYU was, and I was a war veteran on the GI bill, so I was older than the other students. I took a class outside the film school in Greek classics because I hadn't had much history. And I wanted to know more about the world of Homer and so forth. And the teacher opened my eyes to so much in that class. And I wrote about it in my memoir. It's called Chasing the Light about Professor Leahy and what he did to me. He gave me the concepts clearly of consciousness, which is the Homeric theme of Odishus. And also Lethe, L-A-T-H-E, L-E-T-H-E, which is sleep, and how most of the Crew, additious crew were experiencing leith and how unnecessary it was to stay awake. So it's not just film. It's just you have to learn the world as much as you can when you're young.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Well, I have three children, so obviously I'm not necessarily the best advisor in the world. And I do find that the children, I've raised them with a sense of freedom and they do what they want. In the end, it's their life, their destiny, their character. That's what comes out. You can try to influence it, but you can try to get your daughter to wake up at a certain hour of the day, but it never works, you know. I long ago gave up on that. And my children are all grown now. But aside from that, I think... If I was a teacher in a school and teaching film, I'd say to those students, get an education. You can't just look at film. Because it's not a full education. It's not the spectrum. I don't think you should teach film as a...”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I'm often struck by when I talk to scientists and I've talked to a few at how arrogant they can be about, they don't talk to you if you don't understand their world and they talk to each other and there's an arrogance, a closed circle kind of thing. Oh, he's not at my level. There's no discussion to be had with this person. He's a human being”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I think without love, I don't think I'd be able to carry on. I think that love is the greatest. The ability to love is the greatest virtue you can have. It's the ability to share with another, with your family, with your children, with your wife, with your lover, your partner. It's an ability to extend yourself into the world, and it brings empathy with it. If you love well, I think you expand it to the human race too. And it's the strength behind the great novelists, the great artists of our time. I think... Part of the reason I suppose we're scared of science sometimes is because the scientists sometimes don't express that clearly”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Some degree. It's very hard to learn Russian, but I had very, they have excellent translators in the Kremlin, excellent. They are people who are trained very seriously for months or years before these people are young and they're very bright. I was very impressed with the Russian translators.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Interesting man. So I would have tried to get, you know, I think I would approach it the same way. In 1939, it would have been a different story because at that point he'd attacked Poland and in 1940 France. So it's another ballgame. But certainly at whatever point you talk to him, I would try to understand his point. So I'm not judging you, Hitler. I'm saying to you, tell me what you're thinking. Why are you invading Russia? What's your thought? That's all an interviewer should do. He shouldn't be expressing his contempt for Hitler, which like an American journalist interviewing Putin. I'm getting brownie points for expressing my contempt for you That doesn't wash with me. That's ugly.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yes. Certainly, church, but we have no doubts now from history revisionism that Churchill's interest, main interest, was not Germany. It was the British Empire. And to preserve it to India, the road to India and all that and Middle East, Churchill fought the entire war with the concept of preserving the British Empire. All his goals, he sent America on a goose chase into Italy. You could argue instead of establishing a sincere second front in Western Europe.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “What Churchill really wanted was Hitler to go against Russia and anything to destroy the Bolsheviks. So he was using Hitler as much as he could to go after Russia. But Hitler was too elusive to pin him down. But if you remember, Hitler was very kind at the end of kind is not the right word. Did not go after the British Empire when he had France, and he could have. He had another objective, which was obviously the East. So Hitler's goal, I think he always had an admiration for England. It's an interesting story, always.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “It depends when you do it. If you do it in 38, I certainly would have, no, you have to, if you sit down across from Hitler, you empathize. What is your beef? Where have you been? What is your consciousness? Why do you hate Jewish people? All these questions that come up. His sense of grievance as a result of World War I, there's justifications there, et cetera. By the way, Churchill was trying to make a deal with him in 38. That's a fact that people don't know. Churchill himself. And, you know, there was still the desire in England to make peace with Germany. And it was seen as a possible...”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Not for George W. Bush. He's bitching because they didn't understand him. But he had a good vision, he said, of democracy. And, you know, democracy forgives a lot of sins.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Same thing with Bush. People were shocked when I did the Bush movie. They said, How can you be in any way Anyway, receptive to this guy. That's wrong. Dramatists don't have political positions. They walk in the shoes of. That's why Bush movie perhaps was surprising to many, and many people didn't care for it. Maybe that's what, but you've got to go there. If you did a movie about a villain, you have to go there.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “George W. hasn't shown much conscience in terms of thinking about what he's done. You've seen that. You ever see my movie W? I think that's one of my best movies because it shows a man who's just out of his depth and has no, he has a conscience at the end of the movie, if you remember correctly, he talks to his wife and he says, I don't get it. I'm trying to do good in the world. I believe in good and right. And why do people not understand that kind of complaint as if he can't get outside himself to understand the way other people think empathy, walking like a dramatist is what I do? You walk in the footsteps of other people. When I did a movie about Richard Nixon, it wasn't because I liked him. It was because I wanted to, I think I understood a part of him because my father, and I think I wanted to walk in his footsteps. That's not to say I sympathize with him because I didn't. I don't think he helped the American cause at all. But it was, I empathize as opposed to sympathy.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “You can't. I mean, have you ever seen an interview with a president besides being personable? Where he actually discussed American policy?”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Seeking the truth, it's very simple, seeking the truth, being a questioner like you are, you want to know what is really going on. I could not get anywhere with Biden or Bush, or for that matter Obama. They'd be opaque with me. There's no interview possible with the president of the United States because he's got to stand for all the stuff that they stand for, which is imperialism, which is control of the world. How can you defend that? No one's going to come out and say that. They're always going to blame the enemy. They're going to blame Iran. They're going to blame China.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Reason and diplomacy. There's no reason. I mean, Talk to the guy, Mr. Biden, why don't you calm down and go and talk to Mr. Putin in Moscow? Why don't you just sit across a table and try to have a discussion without falling into ideologies and stuff like that?”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Certainly is. That's why I showed him Strange Love, because I wanted him to show him. I wanted Mr. Putin to say, look at this film. You never saw it. How can you not say it's a seminal film in American history to those people who care? And it shows you the... Kubrick had a pacifist, thank God, anti-war mentality, which he showed in baths of glory, as well as strange love. And it's such a dire, well done scenario that I wanted Mr. Putin to be aware of the way the United States thinks.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “What the hell is she doing? She's talking nuclear all of a sudden, and then since that day, everybody in the US press, all the shows have gone talk nuclear, nuclear, nuclear, secretary of state has done it. It scares you. If you think about it, the United States scares me.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Anti-imperialist. Biden seems to be the opposite. He seems to get along, go along guy who's been Not only old, but he's also gone along with this program, which I voted for Biden because I feared Trump, but I thought Biden at a certain age would mellow. I really did. He's not mellowed, apparently. He's still listening to these people and he believes them. And it seems that horrible woman, Victoria Newland, who was Undersecretary of SADI, appointed her to this sector of the world. She's very influential, and she's been one of the worst people on Ukraine. Obviously, she's behind the coup. She was the one who boasted that we got our man in, the yachts, whatever his yats, Yatsunuk, and also remembers the famous statement, fuck the EU. All these things, but she's back and she said the other day about if the Soviets, if the Russians use nuclear weaponry of any kind, there's going to be a horrible price to pay. She was out of the blue.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “The same options that are open in neoconservative agreements that we see from the late 90s where they say the emergence of a rival power will not be tolerated. That's a very broad statement and it allows you to do a lot, including nuclear. So you have to understand the United States always, first of all, it breaks so many treaties. We know that from the Putin story about the anti-ballistic missile treaty in 2002 and then the INF Treaty of they broke that one. That was intermediate. I don't know when they broke it off, but the United States has not been very faithful on its nuclear agreements. And so I don't know that we can even deal with the United States diplomatically. It seems to be impossible. Now, brings me to Biden. And this is another opposite of Kennedy. Kennedy was a Catholic Irish.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Testing the limits, but perhaps if I've been younger, I would have felt it. But anyway, no, we come close. The United States has risked this several times. If I told you, it would be hard for you to believe if I could set a scene for you in a drama in 1962 when Kennedy has a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA, and they talk about a plan, the military plan, to first strike the Soviet Union and China. Okay, it was called an Eisenhower plan that had been put into potential operation in the early 60s or 50s late 50s, SIOP 62. This was an attack on the Soviet Union, first strike. That's why the United States has never given up the concept of first strike. It's interesting that the Russian nuclear policy posture is more defensive than the American one, which leaves options open.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “That's what worried me from the beginning, and that's probably why I got involved in all this stuff, because I go back to the 60s when we were so close to nuclear war, I lived through that period. And I thought, as many people did, that this was, it was going to come now. So I've lived through that. And I didn't sense the period in 83 when Reagan took us to the edge, if you remember correctly, Abel Archer was an exercise. That almost brought us to the Russians were really paranoid at that point and they were responding to our military exercise on Abel Archer. There was also the Korean airliner that went down. There were numerous incidents in the 80s, but I never felt the fear. I thought Reagan”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “incident in Syria, all these newscasters in the United States, the most heaviest of them were saying, well, President Putin is now finally acting like a real president when he attacks, when he drops missiles in Syria. They actually said that. In other words, they wanted Trump to go to war on Syria, but he didn't.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Accusations Robert Perry among them, who was one of my mentors at Consortium Press, a lot of good. You'd have to go back, but trace each, like you would trace each time they made an accusation against Putin of murder. You need that same kind of Sherlock Holmes intensity investigation, and they don't do it because the United Nations or the Chemical, not the United Nations as much as the chemical people, the organization has been tampered with. If you remember correctly, there was accusations that the chemical investigative unit, I don't know the name of it, was tampered with. And people quit people who are working on that commission quit and said that this is not legit. It's a very interesting, that serial story is wacko. So the United States is willing to use chemical in freely and did it three, four times. If you remember correctly, Trump was challenged that he did not attack after a chemical.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “On Ukraine is equivalent almost to what we spent on COVID in our own country. It's astounding the distortion of our priorities. There's also chemical. Don't forget chemical is probably the easier way to go. But in Syria, there was far too many incidents of America in its quest to demonize Assad and the Russians of all these chemical attacks that were happening that they were vowing came from Russia. And in spite of the fact that Russia pulled out of the, signed the agreement on chemical arms and apparently destroyed its stock several years ago, it's strange that the strangest incidents happened in Syria. You go back to them, trace everyone. Good journalism was done. The white helmets got a lot of fame, but they were corrupted. And many good journalists tried to point out the inconsistencies in the American.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Well, I think the United States is calculating that it's a dangerous, yes, I agree, but I think the neoconservative arrogance is such that they really believe they can push their advantage to the max now because of all these propaganda successes up to now. The Ukrainian army could be wiped out for all we know. All that's left is a neo-Nazi brigades, but they're being advised very well by U.S. And they're sending the weapons in huge amounts of weapons. What about American budget? No one talks about how much money we're giving to Ukraine. It's a billion dollars already in weaponry, and not most of it just poured in. What about, you know, the Russian budget is 60-some billion dollars a year. It's nothing compared to the United States. 1 15th of it. But yet we put so much weaponry into Ukraine. The money we've spent.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Chemical or nuclear incident. For example, it would be very not simple, but it would be possible to explode a nuclear device in Donbass and kill thousands of people. And we would not know right away who did it, but of course the blame would go right to Russia, even if it didn't make sense, if there was no motivation for it. It would just be blamed on Russia. The United States might well be the one who does that false flag operation. It would not be beyond them. It would be a very dramatic solution to sealing this war off as a major victory for the United States.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Well, he also made the point that the talk of Zelensky saying nuclear weapons were going to come unto Ukraine. There was talk about that right before the invasion too, and certainly that would have set off alarms. You know, the United States is already kind of doing that by not only putting its intelligence and its heavy weaponry into Ukraine, but you've got to deal with a question, the next question that comes up the most immediate question is, is the United States going to start? And I'm saying. They're making a lot of noise in the United States Press about Russia using nuclear weapons and chemical weapons. That's a lot of noise. Again, going back to my analogy when the United States starts that, it starts the conversation going. It's in the interest of the United States. For Russia to be pinned with any kind of”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Well, when I was been in office for... Already 15 years, he had power. He didn't misuse it in my opinion. He was very even. I saw him go on television and talk to his fellows the same way he always talked to them. He grew in intelligence and knowledge because he had dealings with the whole world. Now, people had come to him. He was very well known in Africa and Middle East, certainly Syria. I just never saw misuse of his power. I saw humility in him, actually.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Well, one thing I would certainly ask is what you were thinking on February 23. And I would ask him to reply to my question about what if you took this to phase two, you surrendered in Donbass. You know no ego about it. You just surrendered. It's in your interest or your country. And you invited all the refugees from Donbass into Russia as much as they can. What would you do now? What's the US next move, in your opinion? How are you going to, okay, where are we going to go? That would be the key question because But he didn't go that way. He chose to take the sanctions and to go this way. Why he did that is a key question for our time. Perhaps it was a mistake. Perhaps it was his judgment. Perhaps, as I said, but I don't, knowing the man I did, I don't think so. I think it was calculated.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “I would say to you, yes, it's much scarier to me because there is the internet wall that they cut off and I got into problems in China too because I said something years ago about you have to discover your own history. You have to be honest about Mao. You have to be back and let's make a movie about Mao. That upset them and show his negatives. So China has been much more sensitive than Russia about criticism, much more. And it is a source of problems. But on the other hand, China has a lot of grievances, a lot going back to the 19th century and the British imperialism of that era and the American imperialism.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “With the IRA in Ireland, when Ireland was threatening them, they cut off the IRA completely. Jerry Adams, who was a wonderful guy. I met him, was not allowed to even be heard in Britain during certain years. In France, constantly through the Algerian War, the Algerians were not allowed to be heard. The Algerian War for Independence divided France greatly. You could not even show paths of glory. World War I film in France for, I don't know, 20 years after it came out. Censorship is a way of life when democracies also feel threatened. They are much more fragile than they pretend to be. A healthy democracy would take all the criticism in the world and shrug it off and say, okay, that's what's good about our country. Well, I'd like to see that in America. There are times that it's been like that, but it's so scary now. So it is scary. That's what I was trying to say. It's not unscurly.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “It's the imperialist agenda. Going back to, I'm sorry, where we left our discussion off, I mean, I was going to go on with America not only being closed down now, closed down. And you say it's not fear. Well, it is fear. I am scared because if you get your Facebook page suspended or your YouTube, your Twitter account thrown off. A lot of good people are getting their can't speak out. It affects your business. It goes back to the 1950s when my father's world, when you could not express any sympathy for a Soviet Union without endangering your job, without basically being not trusted. You had to be part of the program to get along, to go along. Same thing when the United Kingdom, I mean, for all their talk, this Boris Johnson is an idiot, but all their talk about, do you remember their policy?”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “The United States, and they don't understand the size of the pressure. That's why Putin connects with the people because he represents the more the common man who's saying to you, your interests are threatened. Russia is threatened. We are representing only the interests of Russia. We're not an empire. We're not going to expand. He has no empire intentions, although the West paints it as empire. I see no evidence of it. Why didn't he do something in all these years? Nothing. He did nothing except defend the country in Georgia and in Chechnya.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Well, as I said, my impression was that there's far more freedom in the press than was pictured by the West. And that means different points of view because the Russians are always arguing with themselves. I've never seen a country that's so contentious. There's more intellectuals in Moscow and the cities than you can believe. And you know the Russian people there. They've been fighting government for years. Back from the 1870s, Tsarist times, they always plotting against the government. And the intelligentsia has known through history as being contentious and anti-government in many ways. And we see the same thing. Educated people turning against Russia. I don't appreciate those people because I think they're very spoiled and they don't understand some of the stuff that's going on in the West. But we have a lot of Russians in Europe and America that attack Russia and sometimes don't understand that they are under pressure from”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “In the United States, for that matter, if you call for the overthrow of the governor of the United States, you're going to be in deep trouble.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Let's talk about Russia because you would know more about it. But my last experience there, newspapers, there was some more interesting, put it this way. When I went to Venezuela, the United States was saying back then that Chavez controlled the press. I get to Venezuela and there's nothing but criticism of Chavez in the press. It was owned by the oligarchs of Venezuela and who hated him. So it was across the board. That's why Chavez opened the state television, spent more money on it and advertised his point of view through state television. But in Russia, there is, what I saw was criticism. I met with a publisher who got the Nobel Prize of that famous newspaper. And his point of view at that time, when I spoke to him a few years ago, was we're operating, there is criticism of him. But, you know, you can't call for the overthrow of the government nor in Venezuela.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “I wouldn't get in. I wouldn't get in, except through Donbass. There are some Americans in Donbass who are reporting on the war there. And I read their reports. Actually, they're pretty interesting because they show you the cruelty of what's going on, but never mentioned in the West. Never. That's what's so strange about this. This is a modern world that we're living in, and yet this information is not coming out to the mass of the people. And on the contrary, the United States has closed down all the proper all the RT, all the information centers that are possible, alternative news getting to the American people. They've seriously made an effort, and the BBC, English, and France, I was shocked when France closed RT down because RT is actually pretty good. Yes, they may, you could call there are distortions, but you know as well as I do because you hear you speak that RT has done a very brave job of putting correspondence into the field.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Actually, since I made Ukraine on fire documentary, which perhaps you've seen, which Records the incidents of 2014 and the Maidan demonstrations and shows you the dishonesty behind it. No, I think that they've been very negative and they would kill me if I was in Ukraine. I mean, they don't have any, these people are very tough. These are as rough as they come, in my opinion. And I've seen rough in my life. I mean, these guys are not playing with fare at all. These are desk squads. No, I don't think in Zelansky would have nothing to do with it, but of course it would be dangerous for me. And they've been very hostile in their policies to any Ukrainians abroad are also threatened. In other words, you could be in Paris, but if you speak out too much, I think Ukrainians know that they're going to be targeted. And I think that's part of the reason they don't talk. A lot of them, you know, you have to take the anti-Russian line. But I think a lot of them are divided.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Thinks he thinks so, yes, and he could say that, but he's not acknowledging that the sovereignty of his nation was stolen in 2014 with a coup d'etat that brought this right sector into power. And they have controlled the country since then. It's thuggery what they've done. The Medvedev case is a case in point. They just take what they need. They go to a house and they have a, how many people have been killed? serious people journalists killed by these battalions that's what people don't realize in other words you can't speak out you can't a person like me would have been on the death list on day five you don't you there's no opposition to zelensky so he doesn't have a real sovereignty it was a stolen sovereignty”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “The United States would have then NATOized Ukraine or certainly put more weapons. And, you know, the United States has already done a lot in Ukraine with intelligence, with training advisors. The intelligence aspect of the Ukrainian army has been raised enormously by the United States contribution.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “That becomes another game. Then you open another chessboard and you still haven't been condemned. The sanctions haven't been imposed. That's a new game. Could he have done, could he have lived with that? That's the question I ask myself.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “What stage two? Okay, let's say they take Ukraine takes back Donbass. Let's say people get killed in large quantities. So we now to the next stage. We're finished with the Minsk II agreements that were never adhered to. So what does Russia do? They wait for the next aggression, which is going to come in one form or another, perhaps in Georgia. I don't know what the US is thinking. But the U.S. cannot say Russia has done anything. They have not used violence to stop Donbass from belonging back to Ukraine, right? So you're in a new setup now. It's a whole thing rearranges. Now you still have nuclear weapons. And you still have a Russian nuclear weapons. And they're serious weapons. They're very well developed, crude, but not as refined as the American nuclear force, but powerful.”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Compunctions about going all the way and it will use hypocrisy in all the news propaganda in the world to get what it wants. This is the equivalent, frankly, of Germany's goals in World War II, world domination. There's no question in my mind, but we're going about it in our way as opposed to Hitler's way. So just to finish your thought, where do they go?”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “And that would be a reasonable approach. So you take it to the next stage, is Putin's thinking. You take it to the next stage. You stall, it's harder for your people, of course, there's pressure on Putin from inside his own government to say, what are you going to do? I mean, you can't do this. There's a lot of nationalists in Russia. They would certainly bring it would be to his, they'd say Putin is weak. And that's the biggest rap you can ever give a Russian leader, is you're weak. You can't get anything done. So there would have been some damage. But let's say he goes with that and he says, okay, we know what the United States intention is. It's to get rid of me, regime change, and to get another Yeltsin in. That's what they want. And they will go to NENs. They will destroy Ukraine if necessary, but they want regime change in Russia. And then after they do that, of course, they'll go after China. But that's the ultimate policy of the United States. This is a country that has no...”

    2022-05-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #286 – Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source