{"id":267151,"date":"2016-09-12T23:23:18","date_gmt":"2016-09-12T23:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-oliver-stones-snowden-is-the-best-film-of-the-year\/"},"modified":"2016-09-12T23:23:18","modified_gmt":"2016-09-12T23:23:18","slug":"why-oliver-stones-snowden-is-the-best-film-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-oliver-stones-snowden-is-the-best-film-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Oliver Stone\u2019s Snowden is the Best Film of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QlSAiI3xMh4\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/><em>Snowden<\/em> is the most entertaining, informing, and important film you are likely to see this year.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the true story of an awakening. It traces the path of Edward Snowden\u2019s career in the U.S. military, the CIA, the NSA, and at various contractors thereof. It also traces the path of Edward Snowden\u2019s agonizingly slow awakening to the possibility that the U.S. government might sometimes be wrong, corrupt, or criminal. And of course the film takes us through Snowden\u2019s courageous and principled act of whistleblowing.<\/p>\n<p>We see in the film countless colleagues of Snowden\u2019s who knew much of what he knew and did not blow the whistle. We see a few help him and others appreciate him. But they themselves do nothing. Snowden is one of the exceptions. Other exceptions who preceded him and show up in the film include William Binney, Ed Loomis, Kirk Wiebe, and Thomas Drake. Most people are not like these men. Most people obey illegal orders without ever making a peep.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, what strikes me about Snowden and many other whistleblowers I\u2019ve met or learned about, is how long it took them, and the fact that what brought them around was not an event they objected to but a change in their thinking. U.S. officials who\u2019ve been part of dozens of wars and coups and outrages for decades will decide that the latest war is too much, and they\u2019ll bail out, resign publicly, and become an activist. Why now? Why not then, or then, or then, or that other time?<\/p>\n<p>These whistleblowers \u2014 and&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2016\/09\/12\/oliver-stones-snowden-best-film-of-the-year\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Snowden is the most entertaining, informing, and important film you are likely to see this year. It\u2019s the true story of an awakening. It traces the path of Edward Snowden\u2019s career in the U.S. military, the CIA, the NSA, and at various contractors thereof. It also traces the path of Edward Snowden\u2019s agonizingly slow awakening [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-267151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}