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Roger Waters Goes Off The Rails
The West is brainwashed; Biden is worse than Putin; Putin is a consensus leader who was provoked into invading Ukraine to prevent a Nazi genocide of Russian speakers; Israel is absolutely comparable to Nazi Germany.
Roger Waters has been a divisive figure for a long time. For the most part I have accommodated his contrarian views. Not now. The following are excerpts from his Berliner Zeitung Interview, 4th February 2023.
You called [Putin] a “gangster”
... I did. But I may have changed my mind a little bit in the last year. There is a podcast from Cyprus called “The Duran”. The hosts speak Russian and can read Putin’s speeches in the original. Their comments on it make sense to me. The most important reason for supplying arms to Ukraine is surely profit for the arms industry. And I wonder: is Putin a bigger gangster than Joe Biden and all those in charge of American politics since World War II? I am not so sure. Putin didn’t invade Vietnam or Iraq? Did he?
The most important reason for arms deliveries is the following: It is to support Ukraine, to win the war and to stop Russia’s aggression. You seem to see it differently.
Yes. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am now more open to listen what Putin actually says. According to independent voices I listen to he governs carefully, making decisions on the grounds of a consensus in the Russian Federation government. There are also critical intellectuals in Russia, who have been arguing against American imperialism since the 1950s. And a central phrase has always been: Ukraine is a red line. It must remain a neutral buffer state. If it doesn’t remain so, we don’t know where it will lead. We still don’t know, but it could end in a Third World War.
In February last year, it was Putin who decided to attack.
He launched what he still calls a “special military operation”. He launched it on the basis of reasons that if I have understood them well are: 1. We want to stop the potential genocide of the Russian-speaking population of the Donbas. 2. We want to fight Nazism in Ukraine. There is a teenage Ukrainian girl, Alina, with whom I exchanged long letters: “I hear you. I understand your pain.” She answered me, thanked me, but stressed, I‘m sure you’re wrong about one thing though, “I am 200% certain there are no Nazis in Ukraine.” I replied again, “I’m sorry Alina, but you are wrong about that. How can you live in Ukraine and not know?”
You irritate a lot of people because it always sounds like you are defending Putin.
Compared to Biden, I am. The US/NATO provocations before February 2022 were extreme and very damaging to the interests of all the ordinary people of Europe ... What everyone in the West is being told is the “unprovoked invasion” narrative. Huh? Anyone with half a brain can see that the conflict in Ukraine was provoked beyond all measure. It is probably the most provoked invasion ever.
https://rogerwaters.com/berliner/
Rogers Waters antipathy towards the State of Israel is well known. In the interview he says he compares Israel to Nazi Germany. Russia, unlike Israel, is not 'committing genocide against its indigenous people'.
15 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Wth?
Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour to Russia: ‘Stop Killing Your Brothers’
Former Pink Floyd frontman David Gilmour tweeted support for Ukraine on Tuesday. “Russian soldiers, stop killing your brothers,” he wrote. “There will be no winners in this war.” He punctuated his message by saying, “Putin must go.”
In the tweet, he included the lyric video for his 2015 antiwar song, “In Any Tongue.” Its words, written by Polly Samson — Gilmour’s wife and collaborator since Pink Floyd’s Division Bell album — describe soldiers dying and children crying. “I hear ‘Mama’ sounds the same in any tongue,” goes one refrain. The song bears a personal significance to Gilmour and Samson as a couple, in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Gilmour explained in his tweet. “My daughter-in-law is Ukrainian, and my granddaughters want to visit and know their beautiful country,” he wrote. “Stop this before it is all destroyed.”
In the past week, musicians around the world have spoken out against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Stevie Nicks likened Putin to Hitler in a personal missive in which she said she was worried about a Ukrainian friend. “I have been crying ever since [I read about the invasion],” she wrote. Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, whose grandfather was Ukrainian, also gave his support to Ukrainians using his band’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” “People are asking me why I endorsed the use of ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ for the Ukrainian people and did not for the anti-maskers,” he wrote on Twitter. “Well, one use is for a righteous battle against oppression; the other is an infantile feet-stomping against an inconvenience.”
Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova launched a crypto fundraiser for Ukrainians that raised nearly $3 million in 24 hours. “It’s obvious that Putin is just a dangerous dictator who has to be stopped,” she told Rolling Stone. “He’s not just dangerous for people in his country, he’s dangerous for peace globally. A lot of people have been half-joking, talking about this invasion starting the Third World War. But it’s a war in Europe. It’s not a joke. It’s full-blown war.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pink-floyd-david-gilmour-russia-ukraine-1314374
Former Pink Floyd frontman David Gilmour tweeted support for Ukraine on Tuesday. “Russian soldiers, stop killing your brothers,” he wrote. “There will be no winners in this war.” He punctuated his message by saying, “Putin must go.”
In the tweet, he included the lyric video for his 2015 antiwar song, “In Any Tongue.” Its words, written by Polly Samson — Gilmour’s wife and collaborator since Pink Floyd’s Division Bell album — describe soldiers dying and children crying. “I hear ‘Mama’ sounds the same in any tongue,” goes one refrain. The song bears a personal significance to Gilmour and Samson as a couple, in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as Gilmour explained in his tweet. “My daughter-in-law is Ukrainian, and my granddaughters want to visit and know their beautiful country,” he wrote. “Stop this before it is all destroyed.”
In the past week, musicians around the world have spoken out against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Stevie Nicks likened Putin to Hitler in a personal missive in which she said she was worried about a Ukrainian friend. “I have been crying ever since [I read about the invasion],” she wrote. Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, whose grandfather was Ukrainian, also gave his support to Ukrainians using his band’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” “People are asking me why I endorsed the use of ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ for the Ukrainian people and did not for the anti-maskers,” he wrote on Twitter. “Well, one use is for a righteous battle against oppression; the other is an infantile feet-stomping against an inconvenience.”
Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova launched a crypto fundraiser for Ukrainians that raised nearly $3 million in 24 hours. “It’s obvious that Putin is just a dangerous dictator who has to be stopped,” she told Rolling Stone. “He’s not just dangerous for people in his country, he’s dangerous for peace globally. A lot of people have been half-joking, talking about this invasion starting the Third World War. But it’s a war in Europe. It’s not a joke. It’s full-blown war.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pink-floyd-david-gilmour-russia-ukraine-1314374
