Politics

How Oliver Stone is tackling the Edward Snowden story

Edward Snowden (left) with Glenn Greenwald in Citizenfour. Depending on your point of view, Edward Snowden is either a dangerous traitor or a laudable hero. It’s that split that makes the 31-year-old former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor a compelling – and increasingly popular – cinematic figure. That popularity is demonstrated by the critical reception accorded documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras’ Citizenfour, and the anticipation surrounding Snowden, the new Oliver Stone drama that has begun production in Europe with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the title role and Zachary Quinto as muckraking journalist Glenn Greenwald. How Snowden’s decision to leak scores of documents about American surveillance should be interpreted is a key moral mystery of the national security debate and hardly a clear matter even for some of those telling his story. “I’m endlessly fascinated by Snowden’s decision, his process, his motivation,” says Quinto. “The vast majority of accounts had it one way or another – he’s either one more traitor or a righteous whistleblower. And the question is, ‘Which one is it?’ Or maybe it’s something more complicated than that.” Contemporary news figures in the Snowden vein can make for weak cinematic sauce (the 2013 Julian Assange movie The Fifth Estate is a case in point). But Snowden is proving resistant to the rule. Citizenfour, in which Poitras offers an intimate look at Snowden and Greenwald in the Hong Kong hotel room where the documents were leaked, won this year’s Oscar for best documentary. Sony, meanwhile, has bought the rights to Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide in the hope of making its own movie, and has set James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli for the project, though whether it still moves forward in the wake of Stone’s take is an open question. Stone’s Snowden – which is backed by a […]

Chinese writer Mo Yan laughs as he holds a cigarette during the International Strindberg Conference in Beijing

Mo Yan wins Nobel prize for literature

Mo Yan become the first Chinese citizen to win the Nobel prize for literature, a decision that sparked rejoicing but some criticism in his homeland. State media celebrated Mo’s win and the Nobel website rapidly filled with comments from Chinese users expressing pride at his triumph. The Swedish Academy, which decides on the award, said the novelist’s “hallucinatory realism” merged folk tales, history and the contemporary, and created a world reminiscent of those forged by William Faulkner and Gabriel Garc’a M‡rquez. “He writes about the peasantry, about life in the countryside, about people struggling to survive, struggling for their dignity, sometimes winning but most of the time losing,” said the academy’s secretary, Peter Englund. The 57-year-old author’s real name is Guan Moye but he took his pen name, which translates as “don’t speak”, to remind him of the dangers of saying too much. “His work is always unique. Since Red Sorghum, he has for the past 30 years consistently been at a peak of creativity. That is not easy. Many writers have ups and downs, but he keeps himself at his writing peak,” Yan Lianke, another highly regarded novelist, said. He added that the award was a recognition of Chinese literature. This was a widespread feeling in China, where, according to Beijing-based literary translator Brendan O’Kane, writers feel Chinese literature is not comprehensible to the rest of the world. “This will be a huge confidence boost,” he said. The only other Chinese winner was Gao Xingjian, who took the 2000 prize, but he lives in exile as a French citizen and his works are banned on the mainland. The Chinese foreign ministry complained at the time that the prize had “been used for ulterior political motives” though Mo praised Gao’s “enormous contribution” to Chinese literature. This time, the national broadcaster […]

Maybe next time

If we lived in a parallel universe, then Clint Eastwood would probably be having a deep and meaningful conversation with an empty chair. But we don’t and we all know the true spirit of inspiration, conversation and debate comes from face to face communications. This editorial suggests that we have a problem with inspiring people in the world today. Of identifying them, recognising them, honouring them and putting their work out for the world to see. If the Republicans believed that this kind of cheap politicising would work and indeed have an effect on the election result then they have rocks in their head. ItÕs just so hard to understand why a time honoured, respectable and effective political party through history stoops to this level to attempt to influence an election. And there is something dated about their approach. The messages for change, the voice of reason, the direction for the future doesn’t sit on an empty chair. Hopefully, it sits in the White House. It is also true that true leadership exists throughout our pillars of society. The people making a real difference are in communities helping the sick or flying the flag for environmental change. They are found in education, organic and bio dynamic growing and bringing spiritual inspiration in the world.

Maybe next time

-Doug Green If we lived in a parallel universe, then Clint Eastwood would probably be having a deep and meaningful conversation with an empty chair. But we don’t and we all know the true spirit of inspiration, conversation and debate comes from face to face communications. Written before the result of the US Elections, this editorial suggests that we have a problem with inspiring people in the world today. Of identifying them, recognising them, honouring them and putting their work out for the world to see. If the Republicans believed that this kind of cheap politicising would work and indeed have an effect on the election result then they have rocks in their head. It’s just so hard to understand why a time honoured, respectable and effective political party through history stoops to this level to attempt to influence an election. And there is something dated about their approach. The messages for change, the voice of reason, the direction for the future doesn’t sit on an empty chair. Hopefully, it sits in the White House. It is also true that true leadership exists throughout our pillars of society. The people making a real difference are in communities helping the sick or flying the flag for environmental change. They are found in education, organic and bio dynamic growing and bringing spiritual inspiration in the world.

The Dragon’s Shadow

The Chinese government announced that it will increase its stakes in the four largest commercial banks, which are already largely public-owned. The move is designed to ”support the healthy operations and development of key state-owned financial institutions and stabilise the share prices of state-owned commercial banks”. But why was this move considered necessary at all? Recently, investors have been dumping Chinese bank shares, anticipating a slowing down not just of the economy as a whole, but in particular the property market, which had experienced a bubble of massive proportions. But the underlying concern about the health of Chinese banks reflects a deeper concern, about the extent of entanglement of these commercial banks with the growing ”shadow banking sector”. What exactly is shadow banking? Basically, this refers to non-depository banks and other financial entities like investment banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, money market funds and insurers, who typically do not fall under banking regulation. The growth of this sector has been explosive in the last decade: in the United States, in the run-up to the financial crisis, its size was estimated to be significantly bigger than that of the formal banking sector. In the aftermath of the crisis, many of these institutions, and banks that were exposed to them, had to be rescued. UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Report 2011 noted that ”The shadow banking system depends on wholesale funding, which is extremely unstable and renders the system very fragile, as evidenced by the crisis.” (page 94) It argued strongly in favour of bringing shadow banking under regulation not just money market mutual funds, but also the asset-backed securities market financed with repos. Even at the IMF, a recent meeting of regulators called for greater regulatory focus on shadow banking. Participants noted that shadow banking operations, that firms doing these bank-like activities […]

Is the World Becoming a Better Place?

It has been ten years since the September 11 terrorist attacks shocked the world. Over these past ten years, the world has been swayed by the ‘war on terrorism’ through events such as the attacks on Afghanistan and the war with Iraq, triggered by 9.11. Obama’s having assumed the presidency has not changed the fact that the Middle East is a battlefield, and the Middle East peace problem has remained at an impasse. There came the sudden Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, Egypt’s January 25 Revolution that was inspired by the Jasmine Revolution, and the regime collapses in Arab nations, all while those in the Arab nations were still filled with a sense of stagnation toward the state of affairs. As authoritarian Arabian regimes, which had been believed to never budge, were overthrown by mass demonstrations, media and intellectuals in Europe and the US have become optimistic that democratization would start to spread in Middle Eastern nations in a domino effect. One wonders, however, if spring has really come to the Arab world. At the moment, it is a little too early to be joyful about spring having come to the countries where the regimes were overthrown. Spring in Arab nations, centered on the ones in North Africa where the regimes have collapsed, is an unstable season where sandstorms continue for tens of days before the flowers start to bloom. The Eastern European Revolution and the Arab Spring The optimistic view that the media in Europe and the US have in calling the political changes in Arab nations the ‘Arab Spring’ is due to their seeing these changes the same way they saw the Eastern European revolution of 1989. To be sure, there is one thing that the ‘Arab Spring’and the Eastern European revolution definitely have in common, namely, the […]

Osama bin Laden is dead

His body has been recovered by US authorities, US President Barack Obama has confirmed after a fire fight with US forces. Obama made the dramatic announcement in a hastily called, late-night appearance at the White House. Obama said the US had enough evidence last week to launch an operation against a compound where bin Laden was believed to be hiding in Pakistan. A small team of US soldiers landed in the compound and after a firefight killed bin Laden. They had his body. DNA tests confirmed it was bin Laden’s body. a

The Whistleblower

Assange was the winner of the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award (New Media), awarded for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya with the investigation The Cry of Blood Ð Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances. The Whistleblower In these times, it is commendable to know of people who are attempting to bring forward the facts on such sticky situations as the war in Afghanistan and the (prior, but on-going) war in Iraq. Very recently, Wiki Pedia released another 400,000 documents on top of the prior 70,000 documents which deal primarily with Iraq and Afghanistan, resulting in serious implications for US and British foreign policy. Just what has gone on in the name of national security and how real are the grave concerns about the way people are being treated in these two theatres of war. Being a whistleblower organisation must take a lot of guts, or a foolhardy sense of wanting to be the focus of attention on the world stage. Julian Assange, at present, cannot be judged for his and his organisation Wiki LeaksÕ actions. To know that so much inhumane suffering has occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan is so obscene that it warrants cleaning up, accountability and responsibility taken for the supposed actions. Meet Julian Assage. Julian Assange is an Australian internet activist, best known for his involvement with Wikileaks, a whistleblower website. Assange was a physics and mathematics student, a hacker, and a computer programmer, before taking on his current role as Wikileaks’ spokesperson and editor-in-chief. He has been described as being largely self-taught and widely read on science and mathematics. From 2003 to 2006, Assange studied physics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne but does not claim a degree. On his personal web page Assange described how he represented his University at the Australian National Physics Competition […]

Losing our direction

From the archives. Way down at the end of the world is New Zealand, a country that needs to find ways to remain a viable, first world place to live. A country whose light shines for everyone to see, who wants an image of ‘being green’, environmentally friendly and the home of the All Blacks. New Zealand has fine wines, great scenery and a way of life which is seen as settled and without (fortunately) traumas which occur just about everywhere else. Think civil war, tsunamis, oil spills, massive financial upheaval (Greece and Spain) and a change of government every other year in Japan. The truth is actually more brutal than we think. New Zealand is a country which is just about too expensive to live in. The National government, when in power, embarked on reforms which made the average New Zealander poorer in the pocket. These reforms include the Environmental Trading Scheme (ETS) tax and an increase in the Goods and Service Tax (GST due to become law on 1 October. It is time for Kiwis to stop the moaning about GST and do something about it. A proposed Bill by the Maori Party suggesting no GST on healthy foods is commendable. In Australia and Great Britain a GST tax does not apply to all that the consumer buys. But government cannot consider this proposed Bill because – wait for it – it is too much work. Which really means reduced revenue will come our way! We need a more caring approach to people instead of government expecting everyone to go along with the changes because they say so. The whole GST system needs urgent consideration – an overhaul- and the extra five percent increase from 1 October is enough to send people over the wall – or over […]

Let’s Get On With It

The millennials, the people born between 1980 and 2001, got Barack Obama elected. They turned out in record numbers, and they registered untold numbers of other voters. They grew up with computers, cell phones, and the Internet. They experienced 9/11 together. They have met the dire doomsday warnings of Al Gore and others not with resignation or despair, but with a resounding “Yes, we can!” Last November I spent a week in Jrna, Sweden, teaching social entrepreneurship to 39 millennials from 18 countries. They were participating in an 11-month gap-year program called the International Youth Initiative Program (YIP). Being with these millennials felt like hanging out in a troupe of Cirque du Soleil performers. They were gymnasts and acrobats, dancers and jugglers, musicians, singers, sculptors, painters, writers, and filmmakers. We sang to begin each class. During breaks each morning, a clutch of them jumped into the freezing Baltic Sea. They performed impromptu skits and practiced the Brazilian martial art capoeira. They cheerfully cleaned the classroom and dining room in work crews. Most shared a poem or song in their native language on open-mike night. They looked into each other’s eyes. They cried tears of sadness and joy. They felt and expressed their anger, frustration, and outrage at the state of the world. One day I led them in a guided meditation devised by author Joanna Macy: Imagine yourself 75 years from now, alone in a field of soft green grasses, blue sky,and a gurgling brook nearby. Environmental disaster has been averted and war put to an end. A little girl of 8 or 9 comes skipping across the meadow and comes up to you, asking, “Is it really true that the world almost died from war, disease, and pollution when you were young? How did you keep from worrying all […]

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