On History

In working together on two challenging new documentaries South of the Border and the forthcoming The Untold History of the United States series for Showtime filmmaker Oliver Stone engaged with author and filmmaker Tariq Ali in a probing, hard-hitting conversation on
the politics of history.

Their dialogue brings to light a number of forgotten or deliberately buried episodes of American history, from the US intervention against the Russian Revolution and the dynamic radicalism of the
Industrial Workers of the World to Henry Wallace’s sidelining by Democratic Party machine insiders and the ongoing interference of the United States in Pakistani political affairs.

For Stone and Ali two of our most insightful observers on history and popular culture no topic is sacred, no orthodoxy goes unchallenged.

TARIQ ALI is an internationally acclaimed Pakistani writer and filmmaker. He has written more than two dozen books on world history and politics and seven novels (translated into over a dozen languages) as well as scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of New Left Review and lives in London.

OLIVER STONE has directed, among other films, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, W., World Trade Center, Alexander, Any Given Sunday, Nixon, Natural Born Killers, Heaven and Earth, JFK, The Doors, Born on the Fourth of July, Talk Radio, Wall Street, Platoon, Salvador, and the documentaries Looking for Fidel, Comandante, Persona Non Grata, South of the Border, and the upcoming The Untold History of the United States series for Showtime.

Section 1

World War I
Russian Revolution
The Wobblies
U.S. enters WWI
Wilson and the Treaty of Versailles
Economics of WWI
French Revolution
Defeat of the Russian Revolution
King Leopold and the Belgium Congo
British Empire
Wilson sends troops to Russia
Causes of WWII
Atlantic Charter
The Japanese and Pearl Harbor
Oil Embargo against the Japanese and Germans
German thoughts on the U.S.

Section 2

U.S. need for raw materials post-WWII
Saudi royal family ties to U.S.
India
MacArthur Constitution
U.S. as imperial power
U.S. inherits Britain's colonial legacy
Slavery
Dr. Liyingston
Sir Richard Burton
Russian Revolution ends British Empire
Roosevelt
Russians agree to Hiroshima
Anti-communism in the U.S.
American Labor Movement
Wallace vs Truman
The Cold War
Korea
lran
Vietnam

Section 3

U,S. involvement in lndonesia
Nehru in lndia
Pakistan
Greek Civil War
Soviet expansion post WWII
Czarist empire
Cuba and the Soviet Union
Soviet empire and economic control
Marshall Plan and American imperialism
Berlin
Stalin and Tito from Yugoslavia

Section 4

Nuelear bomb as principle weapon
China, India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa
Apartheid ends nuclear system in South Africa
Confessional states
lranian nuclear
Iraq and the United States
Muslim empire 7th and 8th centuries
1099 the Crusades
ottoman empire
lslam and trade
Egypt
Allah and Mohammed
Nasser
American and British opposition to Nasser
Tony Blair
British Empire
Triumph of tIe Vietnamese
My Lai massacre

Section 5

Pax Americana
Venezuela and the IMF
Increase ofAmerican power and influence
Confessional states lsrael and Pakistan
Thomas Freeman and McDonald Douglass
Economics and Marxism
Capitalism
Bourgeois civilization
Eco-Climate issues

Section 6

War on Terror
Terrorism
Iraq War
Madeline Albright
U.S. can't go into lran
Doctrine of pre-emptive war
Afghanistan now
Another Vietnam?
Human Rights as a reason to intervene
Violence and torture as acceptable
Media and profit
Latin America and Chavez
Paid Army, mercenaries
Collective punishment
History has become subversive
Origins of American Empire
Salem witch trials, Monroe Doctrine
The end of History?
George Mccovern
Obama
Nixon and China
Kipling poem
Joseph Conrad
Al-Nawab poem "On the Bird"