Oliver Stone has been announced as the head of the jury at the 22nd Busan International Film Festival. The Academy Award-winning director will lead four jurors for the New Currents, a competitive section in Asias largest film festival, thatintroduces the worksof up-and-coming Asian directors.

Joining Stone on the jury will be world-famous director Bahman Ghobadi (No One Knows About Persian Cats) from Iran, renowned French cinematographer Agns Godard (Bright Sunshine In), a multi-artist and an ideological father of the New Philippine CinemaLav Diaz (The Woman Who Left), and Jang Sun-woo (A Petal,Lies), a leader of New Wave in Korean films.

Stone has become an outspoken voice in Hollywood specifically when it comes to American culture, politics, and military. His most recent filmSnowdenfollowed the controversy and life surroundingAmerican whistleblower Edward Snowden and his 2008 filmW.was a satirical view on former U.S. President George W. Bush. American capitalism was the focus of the iconic 1987 filmWall Streetwhile his other films likeBorn on the Fourth of JulyandPlatoonexamined modern history with critical insight and significant cultural impact. He also is no stranger to South Korea, having participated inlocal anti-militarism protests in 2013.

The Busan International Film Festival has been having its fair share of trouble in the past year.In October 2016, BIFF came under fire when organizers were ordered by Busan government chiefs to cancel a screening ofThe Truth Shall Not Sink, a documentary which criticized the governments failed rescue measures at the 2014 Seoul ferry disaster. This resulted in local filmmakers boycotting the event. Former fest head Lee Yong-Kwan was a big supporter of screening the film at the fest, which then resulted in his ousting from the event. Soon after,BIFF founder Kim Dong-Ho and fest director Kang Soo-Youn announced that they would also be leaving after this years edition.

As a prominent and globally influential voice of historical events and political issues, BIFF hopes Stones attendance as chief juror will draw more attention to the winners of New Currents. The festival is set to run October 12-21.

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Oliver Stone To Lead Jury At The Busan International Film Festival - Deadline

While retired federal judge Nancy Gertner made some excellent points in her op-ed regarding the admittedly invaluable contributions of whistle-blowers (Leaker or whistle-blower? Aug. 10), she seems to suggest inaccurately that the current administration is solely responsible for stifling whistle-blowers. Gertner overlooks that the ironic imbalance between whistle-blower protection in the private vs. public sector actually began in earnest during the Obama administration.

There is no question that in corporate America, whistle-blower protection has skyrocketed during the last 10 years, fueled by new laws such as Dodd-Frank, enhanced and stepped-up regulatory initiatives at the Department of Labor and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and court rulings expanding rights and remedies for whistle-blowers. Companies have responded, as evidenced by a recent survey by leading compliance solutions provider NAVEX Global that shows that average closure times for whistle-blower cases dropped nearly 10 percent from 2015 to 2016.

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By contrast, those who blow the whistle in the public sector are branded as leakers (Edward Snowden) or, worse, thrown in jail (Chelsea Manning, Reality Winner). Indeed, during the Obama administration, the government criminally prosecuted nine people on charges related to whistle-blowing or leaks, compared with three such prosecutions in all the prior administrations combined.

While the current president may indeed be obsessed with leaks and intent on stifling would-be whistleblowers, the reality is that the seeds of such stifling took root before he took office.

Gregory Keating

Boston

The writer is an attorney and is co-author of Whistleblowing & Retaliation.

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Harsh response to whistle-blowers took root under Obama - The Boston Globe

Asia & Pacific

10:58 21.08.2017(updated 11:35 21.08.2017) Get short URL

The high-profile case of Trinh Xuan Thanh, a Vietnamese economic fugitive reportedly abducted by Vietnamese security agents from the streets of Berlin, has driven a wedge between the EU and Hanoi. Sputnik sheds light on the issue of the "Vietnamese Snowden".

On August 2, German media reported that Trinh Xuan Thanh had been returned toVietnam forhis role inthe theft of $150 million duringhis tenure aschairman ofa subsidiary ofthe PetroVietnam energy company.

The incident caused an angry outcry inthe mainstream media and a mixed response inVietnam itself withLuat Khoa (Justice) magazine comparing Trinh Xuan Thanh withfugitive former NSA specialist Edward Snowden who now lives inRussia.

Snowden laid bare the global system ofsurveillance established bythe US and large-scale human rights violations byWashington. He did that ona pro bono basis withoutasking formoney, Kolotov said.

He added that unlikeSnowden, who was driven byidealistic intentions, Trinh Xuan Thanh is a big-time swindler who apparently acted aspart ofan organized group.

The Germans refused toextradite him because they hoped toextract some state secrets fromhim, compromise the corrupt officials and businessmen he worked withand, using the obtained information, toget lucrative contracts bypromising them safe asylum inGermany, Vladimir Kolotov continued.

After Trinh Xuan Thanh disappeared, the Germans blamed it onthe Vietnamese authorities and started blackmailing them. If the Vietnamese government backtracks it would encourage other corrupt officials tosteal and flee abroad, he added.

The Trinh Xuan Thanh case is part ofthe Vietnamese Communist Partys ongoing crackdown oncorruption bysenior officials who put their personal wellbeing beforethe interests ofthe state, thus undermining the peoples trust inCommunity party and the government.

The very same thing happened inthe Soviet Union where corrupt government officials betrayed the countrys interests forpersonal gain.

Had it not been forthe $150 million, good connections and the knowledge ofstate secrets Trinh Xuan Thanh had, the Germans would have sent him back home injiffy, Kolotov concluded.

Meanwhile, Berlin has demanded that Trinh Xuan Thanh be allowed toreturn toGermany and declared the intelligence attach atthe Vietnamese embassy persona-non-grata.

In a commentary forSputnik, Anton Tsvetov, an expert atthe Center forStrategic Studies inMoscow, said that duringthe recent G20 summit inHamburg, the Vietnamese side requested the extradition ofTrinh Xuan Thanh who had applied forpolitical asylum inGermany.

It looks likethe Germans refused [to extradite Trinh Xuan Thanh] and the Vietnamese simply ran outof patience, especially now that their anti-corruption campaign is infull swing, Tsvetov said.

Sputnik/ Maksim Blinov

All this will obviously deal a serious blow toVietnams relations withGermany and the EU, which have previously criticized the Vietnamese authorities fortheir persecution ofindependent bloggers. Hanoi didnt likethat and it looks likeit is ready fora further escalation oftensions withEurope, Anton Tsvetov said.

Trinh Xuan Thanh disappeared afterbeing accused ofcausing 150 million dollars worth offinancial damage tothe company he worked for.

Since then Thanhs capture has been a high priority forthe Vietnamese government, which had been tracking his movements sincehe fled the country in2016.

In December 2016, Communist Party Chief Nguyen Phu Trong said that his capture was ofthe highest priority.

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New Snowden or Crook? The Man Who Drives Wedge Between EU and Vietnam - Sputnik International

Journalist Paul Farrell, formerly at the Guardian and now at Buzzfeed, has led key investigations into national security and Australias detention network. He talks to Honi about the state of journalism today, how the government sucks at tech, and what its like to be spied on by the Australian Federal Police.

HS: What does leak-driven journalism like Wikileaks and your Nauru Files investigation offer by way of impact that maybe hasnt been possible in the past?

PF: I think one of the most innovative elements of Wikileaks publication style is their focus on publishing primary source material, and the reason thats so important is because it opens up the journalism to a whole entire community of people, and it makes available a huge amount more that wouldnt ordinarily be accessible in more traditional publication form. It offers a huge amount of insight into the particular power dynamics in play for whatever the subject matter is. But it also forces news organisations to be more honest and more transparent about their own practices as well. And I think that the reason why [these] stories have resonated so much is because they publish all of that material, and they set it out in a level of detail that is just staggering.

HS: Whistleblowers are often key to getting information out for these stories. What do you make of the situation for whistleblowers in Australia?

PF: I think there are some pretty enormous problems with how whistleblowers are treated in Australia, both in terms of cultural attitudes towards them and in terms of the law itself. One of the big problems is that we have incredibly onerous secrecy provisions across all forms of government agencies that restrict what public servants can say. And that restriction took place with no consideration of the public interest in speaking out, and with no consideration of whether there could actually be any harm that flows from a particular disclosure. And in the absence of any kind of guarantee of freedom of expression, that really makes it very difficult. But when governments act in that particular way, it actually can be quite counterintuitive to what their intention is, which is to prevent information from getting out. There is a phenomenon that takes place, where the tighter you try to constrain debate and discourse in the public service or in other areas of government, the more likely it is that you are going to get people that are going to speak out in quite bold and incredible ways. And of course Edward Snowden is a perfect example of that, because people lose faith in those institutions that theyre a part of.

HS: Last year the AFP admitted they sought your metadata without a warrant. For a lot of people, the metadata laws were swept under the rug and theres a if you have nothing to hide theres nothing to worry about attitude, with people assuming theyd never be the target. But how does it feel to know that you are being so closely monitored?

PF: Its not a good feeling. Its immensely creepy and confronting, and just incredibly weird, to think theres some random AFP officer sitting in an office in Sydney or Brisbane whos been poking around my phone and text records, and possibly my email records and things like that. Theres definitely an effect thats had on my entire personal life, that did take quite a big toll on me thinking about all of that. Its really confronting and definitely does induce a degree of paranoia that is pretty unsettling. So I wouldnt recommend it, but I think its something Ive come to terms with, and you cant let that sort of stuff get to you. And, I guess, fortunately the Federal Police is not very good at those investigations and have not really found anything. So that is certainly one of the good things about it. It has meant that I have to be very careful on the phone or in text, or when I take my phone into meetings, how people communicate with me electronically are all things that I am very conscious of all the time.

HS: What did you make of the lack of debate around the passing of the metadata legislation?

PF: Its really challenging because I do think theres a lack of awareness and interest by the Australian public about issues around freedom of expression, privacy, that you wouldnt see in the United States or some other countries. And I dont know why that is, and I dont know how to make people care more about it. Its difficult to reach people on these kinds of issues, particularly when they are challenging and complex. And I think thats the challenge of doing journalism well in these kinds of spaces, is trying to make relatable, to articulate these issues to young people, old people or whatever, who are struggling to understand why they should care about it. HS: How do you engage young people with these issues?

PF: I think youve really got to show what some of those real life effects of surveillance are, particularly when things go wrong, or those powers are misused. Those fascinating examples from the Snowden disclosures that came up of intelligence officers doing extremely dubious things like looking up ex-girlfriends data and doing all sorts of dodgy things with that material. And I think really hammering the real-life ramifications for your personal lives and things like that are some of the really critical parts of trying to engage people more.

HS: One of your recent stories showed Australians Medicare details were for sale on the dark net. How incompetent is the government when it comes to securing peoples sensitive information?

PF: I think there are definitely some serious problems in different government agencies with how they secure Australians personal information. Weve seen time and time again over the last few years, different sorts of extremely embarrassing data breaches, whether thats the handling of asylum seekers personal data, the handling of the G20 world leaders data, how the census IT issues were navigated, and then of course the Medicare dark web story. It definitely reflects a pattern that is quite concerning, that damages a lot of trust in government with how they handle personal information. In almost all of those instances, there were very preventable measures that could have resolved these issues. For the Medicare dark web one, it would have been as simple as somebody in government actually monitoring commercial dark web sites. It took me about 45 minutes to find that listing, and I didnt set out to look for it. I just stumbled across it, and its like: why is it a journalist from the Guardian who discovers that somebodys flogging Medicare card details on the dark web? So they really need to do a lot of work to get better at that.

Catch Paul on a panel about journalism, resistance, and metadata at the University of Sydney on Tuesday 22 August.

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The fencing of the 4th estate: Q&A with Paul Farrell - Honi Soit