“America has not lived up to what America should be...”

Stone’s latest film is the true story following Edward Snowden, the American computer professional who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) to The Guardian in June of 2013. Due to be released early next year, it is based on the book The Snowden Files by Luke Harding.

While Stone was keener to publicise his book The Untold History of the United States, he did say that while the film is a dramatisation and not a documentary, “it is important historically, as it covers the period from 2009 to 2013 in the United States and highlights all of the major problems the modern world is having to face today.”

And for the problems we are facing today, he holds George W. Bush, and his two lapdogs, the former Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar and Tony Blair, responsible, although Stone has some choice comments to make about Obama who, he said, was by no means qualified to have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

“What George Bush did was polarise the world and fill it with weapons and as a result of that, the world has become an extremely dangerous place again. It is a result of Bush’s militarisation of the world that the world has become more extreme. ISIS is just the beginning of a new caliph. The United States foreign policy in the Middle East has totally backfired and that has forced Obama to go back on his words. Nobel Peace Prize winner? They should have waited because only the other day he was keen to underline the fact that he has now bombed seven Muslim countries as he continues to develop new drone killing tactics, but these drones could one day be used against us.

“I honestly thought Obama would have been more progressive. He said he was going to be more transparent but is the first to come down hard on journalists. He’s even used the World War One espionage act to take on seventeen people, who include journalists. So, he has not helped to ease the pressure which has been mounting around the world and now look where we are.  Like I say in my book, the problem with this world is the United States.”