Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters on 9/11, JFK, Gaza, and Why the Israel Lobby Is Trying to Destroy Him

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roger waters thank you for doing this let's just go back to the beginning to that day september eleventh two thousand one where were you when that happened and what did you think i

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was in island studios in london making a record and what did i think i saw can i use the f word yes you may i thought fuck me what what because somebody turned to tv on so we stopped working almost immediately and i almost immediately called my then wife laurie who was in new york at the time and i was on the phone with her for the next two hours sort of watching it develop and unfold before our very eyes in a state of shock like everyone was all over the world what did i think i mean that's that that's a very long and complicated answer to that because i haven't stopped thinking ever since really and it was twenty five years ago i could actually you know i wrote something down but i know part of what i want there's one sentence in what i wrote down here was that i thought to myself if this is an attack by foreign people on the united states of america will the american people notice that some people are pissed off yes with american foreign policy and that this is a result of it and i did think that and in a way that was the only positive thing i could think was maybe maybe now the war's come home now it's you know now something has happened on american soil maybe that and it didn't happen and i was surprised which shows how naive i was i guess that nobody even even ever started to to think that or to allow that to color what happened afterwards so that's how it felt to me am i making any sense you're making a

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lot of sense and i i had a similar thought at the time which is not to obviously to justify it or any act of violence but cause and effect is real so yeah yeah i had the same thought and i had a huge contratomp with my employer over at cnn at the time because i made that point and they didn't they attacked me for it what a surprise yeah what a surprise but i kept working there to my shame but anyway then there was the investigation into nine eleven the nine eleven commission which was impaneled by the then president george w bush headed by a guy called philip zeliko and it produced a report which was then bound into a book that you could buy at the bookstore did you assess that what did you

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think of the inquiry i did not read that book i confess i did wonder why there wasn't a more thorough investigation or any real investigation into what had actually happened because in the aftermath of it we all watched the same images again and again and again and it became evident well not necessarily evident but it looked likely the whole story of controlled demolitions of buildings came up very quickly not least because building seven which was obviously a controlled demolition it's collapsed was announced on the bbc in england half an hour before it happened

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that's a sign that it's not entirely

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organic what you're watching exactly and we could laugh about it but we can't because it's too tragic but it was quite clear from the very beginning that oh bin laden got together with some terrorist arabs and they've done this and isn't it awful and now let's start world war three there was more to the whole thing than met the eye and well and i to my eternal shame had misgivings that i didn't immediately express about what had actually happened because the atmosphere was appalling around the time that if you did express any misgivings at all about the result of the nine eleven inquiry you were labeled a madman and you would lose any voice that you had about any subject on earth forever just by questioning it as we all know now the people who did start to ask the questions were correct to do so but and i know this is part of the reason that you and i are having this conversation today because of my friend matt campbell is that was that was it was a terrible mistake that the questions never got to any court of law or to any any place where you could actually listen to the evidence and look at the evidence and try and figure out what actually happened if i could put it like that who is

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matt campbell for people unfamiliar okay matt

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campbell is an englishman and he's been involved since the day it happened because his brother jeffrey campbell was in one of the twin towers and was killed on the day it happened and eventually there was a cursory inquest into his death which listened to no evidence about anything and didn't come up with any answers so the inquest said that he was killed by terrorists on the eleventh of september two thousand one and that's the end of the story and there are no more questions to be answered and matt campbell to his eternal credit has for the twenty five years since then tried to to get a proper inquest into his brother's death and it is law in the uk where i'm from that a citizen is allowed if there's anything unusual at all about the death of any person you are allowed to demand an inquest that is a judicial inquiry into why the person died who was responsible and so on and so forth and he is still trying to get that right for his brother jeff now he's he's managed to get it all the way to the supreme court it's been turned down by the by several british attorney generals who've said we're not reopening any inquest you can't do it he said but that's unlawful this is completely against all the laws of the land in england you don't have inquests in in north america i'm told but we do and they're kind of important so he's managed to get a hearing in the supreme court in england on october fourteenth and fifteenth coming up this year to try and persuade the supreme court to countermand the attorney general's decision not to allow an inquest this will mean that evidence can be heard for the first time in a court of law anywhere in the world anywhere there hasn't been one in america and there hasn't been one i didn't

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realize that how can that be how

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can it be what the three thousand

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people die that the investigation the official investigation into it is revealed as false yeah the nine eleven commission report was written before the inquest into what happened on nine eleven so it's fake philip zelikow did that we know that and yet there's been no legal inquiry into

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it since then none which is why i'm supporting matt campbell which i am and why if we could on this program there is a crowdfunder as well i've given him a lot of money in order to fight this case but we need about twice what i've already given i've given him a hundred grand dollars we need about that much again so if there's anybody out there we should give them the if you wouldn't

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mind oh i'd be happy to and his name is matt campbell of course

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i didn't write it down on my notes but but we can find it and we can and it can be

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found easily matt campbell nine eleven and you've given him a hundred grand in order to force the inquest into this

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no in order to pay the lawyers who are representing him and his brother before the supreme court in england on of october if they are successful and the supreme court overturns the decision by the attorney general not to proceed then there will be an inquest which will be a separate occasion but that will give you and me and all the people all over the world who are interested to know what actually happened on september eleventh two thousand one in new

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york so from what would be the justific what was the given justification for not allowing an inquest into nine eleven do you know like what was the excuse everybody knows what it's like to get stuck at the airport on a road trip and feel desperately hungry and that can get ugly because there's a lot of crap for sale at airports we can tell you firsthand so bring the everyday bar it's a glowing exception the everyday bar is a protein bar it's made from three simple ingredients beef sea salt grass finished beef tallow so that means no seed oils no weird blends no asterisks at the end you can read all of the ingredients on the list in two seconds and there's nothing you can't pronounce we just pronounced it this bar wasn't dreamed up in a marketing meeting it was created by a combat medic who spent months in afghanistan living on nothing but mres and he didn't like it it made him sick so that experience gave birth to the everyday bar and get this the everyday bar is now just five bucks and fits right in your pocket tear it open enjoy you don't have to prep it refrigerate it the first batch ships soon and supplies are very limited to beat the rush visit carnivore bar dot com tucker use the code tucker for fifteen percent off that's carnivore bar dot com tucker code tucker fifteen percent off your first order or click the link below or scan the qr code on the screen and check the pinned

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comment i think the powers that be have decided that would be inconvenient for them the buildings one and two world trade centers one and two and building seven given all the evidence that exists and there's an awful lot not just of eyewitness testimony but the films if you look at the film of the north tower collapsing you can see all the explosions in the controlled demolition of that building happening in front of your very eyes and there is no other explanation as to how the north tower of the world trade center fell down it didn't fall down because it was burning aircraft fluid or because an aeroplane flew into it it fell down because it was demolished and the question is who placed the explosives in it who pressed the button who demolished the world trade center and building seven and the south tower who did it and why and those are the questions that we need a proper judicial inquiry to find answers to it'll be very inconvenient to lots of people not least the security company i think they were called securicat or something who did all the security in the building because if this is true that they were controlled demolitions that must have meant that there were people working in there putting nanothermite or whatever the explosives were that brought the buildings down in the evenings when the workers weren't there behind everybody's back surreptitious it's a huge huge huge operation must have been known by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people funnily enough piers morgan who i spoke to last week about this came out and said well if it was anything to do with the government or this or that or anything thousands of people would have known about it and they would have all come out and spoke no they wouldn't you may well find that if there is a proper judicial inquiry people will start coming out of the woodwork and go actually it's funny you should say that because and this and and and it will but we the public have a right to know what that's all we're asking what happened and nobody has given us an answer you know who was it who who was your theory i'd

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be fascinated what is my theory yeah i haven't the faintest idea i think it's very obvious that elements of the american security services knew that there was a plot obviously they did know there was a plot i mean i think the evidence shows that conclusively you mean

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the you mean the p the atta and the other that's correct the other

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and the other eighteen in the united states were being followed around both by you know american government cia and the fbi and the fbi correct and and also by the israelis i mean they're these really knew they were there and and a bunch of the israelis who knew it was going to happen got

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arrested actually well they were dancing around correct sort of correct congratulating themselves or whatever it was they were doing so

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so the question is did the americans and the israelis have a hand in doing it did they allow it to happen did they did they have a complex sting operation that went wrong and it happened despite their best efforts you know because this does happen where the fbi for example will be following somebody and everyone around him will be an informant and the idea is to you know gather the evidence on him and then he goes and shoots somebody and the fbi says well we didn't want that is it that i mean i don't know the answer but and i also know or i believe that the building seven story doesn't make any sense at all and i don't know why you would attack people who raise questions about something that doesn't make any sense but they have that's not a sign of innocence right at all well i

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must have heard somewhere and maybe it was on one of the grapevines of conspiracy theorists out there questioning that a couple of the flaws in building seven were cia offices i think that's true i've certainly heard that well there was

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a field officer and an fbi field office and i think a bunch of different government agencies i think that's well

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there's exclusively well what we do know we do know certain things that happen because there is evidence so for instance general wesley clark's stories about visiting the pentagon and his meetings in the offices either of paul wolfowitz or somebody close to wolfowitz at the time where they described the plan the american plan the pentagon plan the government plan whose plan was it to destroy seven countries in the five years that followed yes of those seven countries five have gone there's only lebanon and iran left standing out of those seven countries and wesley clark he always seems like a fairly kind of down to earth straightforward kind of a guy and a very fine professional soldier and somebody who would be unlikely to make this stuff up but in order to fulfill those ambitions for the new american century as it was known by the neocons they needed a pearl harbor but who's the they who's the they israel possibly something to do with it elements possibly in the united states government it must have been it's a big big thing to pull off and i can sense people now watching this going but pull off what they didn't it wasn't it just planes flew in and the buildings fell no they didn't that's the one thing that we know for absolute sure because every single physicist or engineer or architect in the world they all agreed there is no way the north and south towers and building seven came down because of airplane sitting

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just not possible the first person i ever heard say that this doesn't make any sense just as a structural matter can the building come down because of an airplane strike the first person to say that that i know of is donald trump who said that on a morning show he called in the morning of nine eleven and said i was there i'm a builder i know how those buildings were built that doesn't make any sense he said that on there you can pull up the tape i think it just happened to be trump i mean it could be anybody with knowledge of building but that has kind of gotten lost over the years that structural engineers said this is impossible what happened there was a report by a bunch of structural engineers who said that what happened to them

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well nothing happened to them they still exist they're all still alive they're all still perplexed they're all still wondering why nobody took them seriously as we all are we're always like this thing that i showed you earlier where i wrote down that how

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can can you read that and tell

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us what it is sure yeah i'd be delighted to i mean it's

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so this is a note that you wrote yourself yeah wrote to yourself yeah this

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is this is it just says it says a note from roger so it was from and to me i'll read it to you if i may and i wrote this on the second of january twenty nineteen okay so this is a couple of months so i've been in staad switzerland since the twenty ninth of december twenty eighteen only three days but in these three days something has crystallized i will tell you what it is i've been wondering somewhat excitedly about a forthcoming event in new york city the convening by us attorney jeffrey berman of a special grand jury in the south circuit of new york city to consider even at this distance in time the events of september eleventh two thousand one at the instigation of the lawyers committee for a nine eleven inquiry quote we have received and reviewed the lawyers committee for nine eleven inquiry inc submissions of april tenth and july thirtieth twenty eighteen we will comply with the provisions of eighteen usc blah blah blah as they relate to your submission that's saying that they're going to have the inquiry and i wrote my heart is beating almost out of my chest all the families all the victims all our brothers and sisters all the criminals who might be brought to justice tears stained my eyes on september eleventh two thousand one that terrible day when america was attacked and the whole world recoiled in horror i was in london making a record and watched it all unfold on tv transfixed and recoiling in horror too almost immediately i couldn't help thinking to myself this is so shocking that maybe the american people will ask themselves why would anyone from another land want to do

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american mainstream media the american people didn't ask themselves that question they accepted the received wisdom of the quote they hate our freedom narrative and in spite of massive and commendable protests invaded iraq end of story well that's not actually the end or the whole of the story within days sensible concerned american citizens started to question the narrative that nineteen young arab terrorists hijacked three us american airplane flights and attacked the twin towers at the world trade center leveling three multi storey steel frame buildings informed architects and civil engineers backed up by decades of professional experience pointed out that the officially accepted nine eleven narrative was physically impossible that it defied the laws of physics the twin towers could not possibly have been razed to the ground by fires caused by the impact of two airplanes something else must have brought them down by the way when i talk of architects and engineers i mean thousands of professional engineers and architects not one or two cranks or conspiracy theorists the list comprises almost everyone with any expert knowledge of steel frame buildings and how they react to fire within a week or two the evidence that the twin towers were not downed by mohammed atta and his friends was unassailable by anyone with an iq above room temperature enter the mainstream media let us not underestimate the less than honorable influence and connivance of the mainstream media at this point to a man and maybe the odd woman also not to let you ladies off the hook the mainstream media decided to look the other way they allowed the nineteen young arab terrorists narrative to proceed unchallenged through the charade of the official investigation what official investigation the nine eleven commission no real evidence was heard the official government narrative was simply rubber stamped with no real investigation so today january second twenty nineteen i have to make an apology i knew what was happening i have an iq above room temperature i was cowed enough by the suffocating weight of society's pressure to pretend that the emperor was wearing clothes and to keep my misgivings to myself i am ashamed of my silence down all these years i challenge the united states government to have a real investigation now the convening of this special grand jury in new york city is a start we can't bring back our brothers and sisters but we can say non commas we must have a full full open judicial inquiry into the events of september eleventh two thousand one we owe it to all the victims of that dreadful crime and also to their families the powers that be blah blah blah and it goes on sisters of mercy better join with your brothers put an end to the soap opera of state they say the toothless get ruthless better run home before it's too late which is a quote from one of my songs from nineteen eighty seven the point is this man disappeared without trace where he was fired funnily enough by trump a few years later who was the attorney the us attorney in the southern district of new york who said he was going to bring it before a grand jury nothing happened it disappeared as did the investigation suggested by who was the fire chief from queensland i've got his name down here chris gioro he was a commissioner of police from queens new york who lost brothers his fireman died in nine hundred eleven he had an iq above room temperature he knows that the that they buildings didn't fall down because airplanes flew into them he tried to open he's disappeared anybody who makes any suggestion that this didn't that this was what the official narrative they they just they quietly disappear they lose the next election they lose their job they get fired you know so so this is really really really really the only member

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of congress i'm aware of to say anything like this was kurt weldon from pennsylvania who's a committee chairman and a a powerful incumbent and he began asking questions about nine eleven and then right before the election the fbi raided his father his daughter's business never filed charges right she was never charged but they raided the business to throw the election and and he lost so that raises the question why would you since you are a famous person successful person a rock star why would you weigh in on this knowing what's going to happen when you do

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well i sincerely care about right and wrong i sincerely care about human rights all human rights for everyone all over the world okay and whoever perpetrated this crime doesn't they didn't even care for the human or for the right to life of the three thousand people they murdered in the in the twin towers that day so for it to never be investigated is beyond the pale for me and i care about matt campbell and i care about his dead brother jeff and i care about his mom and dad and their family but they're just one family but to his eternal credit matt has put twenty six years of effort into this and i know a number of the other piers robinson and others who've put time and energy into all of this stuff for all of these years and they've done the right thing these are the people doing the right thing people doing the wrong thing or anybody who tries to stand in the way of there being a judicial inquiry with evidence so that we find out what happened you know because it's never and in america it's very very difficult to do it did lee harvey oswald pull a trigger from two hundred yards away and somehow blow kennedy's head off the back of his no we know that's nonsense as well the warren commission that one was called head by one of the dulles wasn't it foster dulles who was in charge of that and we all know it's nonsense we all know that we've never nobody's ever got to the bottom of what actually happened they can't

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release the files sixty three years later they have not released every jfk assassination related file the cia still has them

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you know and if you do crazy exactly and we all have to remember that jfk love him or not he made that incredible speech at the university of massachusetts in front of the it's called a commencement speech isn't it and it's for graduating students i'm getting chills remembering what he said you know what he said we must make peace with the russians they're our brothers and sisters and look where we are now they're desperate to have a war with russia that's the whole ukraine nonsense is all about and so kennedy was right and they killed him and so it doesn't suit whoever it is who makes all the profit out of war they want wars to have they couldn't care less about the human rights of ordinary people anywhere it doesn't matter if you're an american or a russian or chinese or indian or any national or english it doesn't matter they couldn't care less all they care about probably is profit and power well we care about something different than that we care about one another and we as i said in that little thing i gave to you earlier we try and develop our capacity for empathy with our brothers and sisters in other countries across national borders or religious differences or whatever no we're all human beings there is only one race the human race and we're all part of it and we have an absolute responsibility to try and help one another cities

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which question

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what this the questions about nine eleven like why can't we have an inquiry

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hey tucker we're doing it this is us doing it today we're doing it

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together i'm a sympathetic ear on this question but not everyone is no i

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do understand that but that's what we're doing that's why i'm here and that's why i'm so grateful for you to be having this conversation with me about this because you have a huge audience and when your audience hear this maybe they'll go you know what why don't we have an investigation well we made

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a whole documentary on the subject multi part and i didn't know until right now that there had never been an inquiry a criminal an independent inquiry never by court into nine eleven i just i'm a little bit shocked to hear

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that yes isn't it bizarre so thank you matt and god bless you jeff you know and and your family and all the other families and all the families of all the firefighters who lost their lives and this is who who are they're the eyewitness and the ear witness report boom boom boom boom they all heard it they all know it everybody knows it and you open your eyes and the story of the bbc and building seven what they tell you that it's fallen down half an hour before they demolish it it's bizarre so yeah so this is a huge this could be this conversation between you and me could be a turning point for the whole human race i often say this in other contexts but we're right in it now you and i are right in the middle of a battle an existential battle for the soul of the human race can we empathize with one another or not or will we allow the oligarchs and sometimes people in our governments to keep us at each other's throats over dimes and groats when we should be giving one another helping hand and communicating and cooperating across national boundaries particularly with the russians and the chinese and the iranians let us not forget i've got another piece here which i won't read you but on the same day i wrote another note where i said how bizarre is it that they're suggesting that we should invade iran this was eight and a half years ago that i was responding to that and then russia are you insane do you know who the russian people are and you do know do you not that they won the second world war before you lot got involved in it twenty million russians died saving this planet from the nazis twenty million and we want to have a fight with them it's just i've been there they're lovely people i agree you've been there i saw your thing about the underground station yeah it was very moving i found that moving because and it's such a surprise to be oh really no no no russians are monsters they're communist monsters they would destroy us all you know

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they're that's a civilized country yeah if there's a definition of civilized it's that

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and it's many many different groups ethnic groups from all everything from you know the chinese borders to the to the ukraine so it's it's all it's all very very difficult but are you worried

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that the west is moving toward an actual war with russia not just ukraine against russia but western europe us against russia

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i'm worried that some of the people in the governments of the united states of america and the uk and the european union are making blood curdlingly bloodthirsty noises about the possibility of fighting there particularly in germany by the way they're trying now to get five percent of the gnp of all the european countries to be put into a big piggy banks in order to fight the russian the russians don't want to invade europe what are they talking about but they're saying that and they're saying it publicly and and they do it who knows why they do it they do it because maybe they're asked to say those things by whoever it is is paying them it's still a bit of a business politics in europe and definitely in the united states of america noticed there's a ruling elite with a lot of money and and they pay and so they pay politicians to do their bidding and what they want because it suits them because they make money basically it's greed they're greedy in my view that's my view i don't think there's

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any question you're right i mean it's obviously true it's obviously true it's just that when you push an entire continent into a war that it cannot win by definition you risk the lives of millions of people i mean that's a that's a big step to do something

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like that it sure sure is yeah and it's crazy now we have to be cooperating with the russians of course particularly yes and they're good people you've been there you've met them me too i've worked there a lot in my life i'm do you know i do interviews with them whenever i can it sort of half breaks my heart that i can't watch rt anymore because it's banned you can't watch russia today we used to be able to in america up until the start up until twenty two up until february the whenever it was yes twenty twenty two when the special military operation as the russians call it started because the minsk accords were not adhered to and but we that's another conversation but may ask so you

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grew up in in england your father was killed fighting the nazis in the second world war you grew up in a victor country that congratulated itself on its freedoms we you know if we hadn't sacrificed we'd all be speaking german and marching in rows they always said that is it strange to live in a world where you're not allowed to watch a certain tv channel yeah of

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course it is and i did grow up in post war england and suddenly we had a national health service because we had a labor government after the second world war and then weirdly enough it all turned to rat shit with tony blair and margaret thatcher and all that right wing stuff coming back in again which it did and interestingly enough i wrote the wall in nineteen seventy nine i wrote a song in that called goodbye blue sky and it's a beautiful song but it goes did you hear the did you hear the frightened ones did you see the falling bombs did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue sky that is a lament for the fact that the second world war was not the war to end all wars like the first world war was meant to be that we suddenly realized that this idea that we had that we could live in a socialist future where we looked after one another and also a future where we didn't have wars nation against nation was a pipe dream because it didn't suit the oligarchs who whenever it was in nineteen forty eight for the declaration of human rights had their fingers crossed behind their backs because they never believed in human rights at all they believe in profit and that's all there is to it so we live in a very difficult time where it may be unless you with your audience or me with my tiny voice can join with our brothers and sisters and pull together the ordinary working people all over the globe and we can make the voice of the choir so loud that we can drown out the propaganda of the ruling class particularly in the united states because ordinary people have been so hoodwinked by them and they believe oh we're the greatest country in the world no you're not in any way even if even if there was a great country and are not great it's not important what's important is are you kind can you be kind to people that's what's important because that's what brings joy to your life you know and we all know it charlie mckeesy who's an artist i know in england he wrote a great book it's a sort of cartoon but it's a book and it's called the boy the mole the fox and the horse is the name of this book check it out because on page three and i know this because i knew him and he gave me a copy and he sent his name or whatever the mole and the boy who've made friends are sitting on a branch of a tree and the mole says to the boy what do you want to be when you grow up and the boy says kind i'm sorry to be sort of sentimental but i get like oh my goodness yeah that's what i want to be too and that's what i want all my brothers and sisters kind of be kind to one another then you can't have a war war is a really really bad idea donald it's a terrible idea yeah for everyone

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for everyone yeah you have been vocal in your criticism of the killing in gaza yep and of the treatment of the of the palestinians over a number of years probably last twenty years and it's exactly twenty exactly twenty yeah why did you decide i mean you must have known that saying something about that yeah you were gonna forfeit some of your hard earned rock star privileges yeah i mean right yeah yeah i went

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there oh i did a gig in a place called nevish shalom wahat asalam in arabic which was a peace village halfway between tel aviv and jerusalem where they grew chickpeas and i did a gig in the open air and i did it after i'd canceled a gig in tel aviv in a football stadium called i can't remember what it's called haakon it's called haakon park and it's built on the ruins of a destroyed palestinian village so and i'd never been anywhere near israel and i'd believed all the propaganda of you know the socialist israelis with their democratic ways rolling their sleeves up and creating all this you know a wonderful country and then i went there and i saw the apartheid i saw what was happening and i went and i went back again i went back two years later and i drove all over the west bank with unra and with a woman from unra called allegra pacheo and i never forget i was we were driving north towards janine one day and i went well at least they have nice roads because it was a nice two lane blacktop tarmac road and allegra looked at me like i was daft or something and she said yeah if you're jewish i went what are you talking about she said you're not allowed to drive on this road unless you're jewish don't be i said i just said don't be silly can you imagine going you want to drive to pennsylvania or somewhere you know philadelphia and you go to get on the i ninety five and they go you're a christian aren't you because if you're not you can't go on the road and you go what don't be daft well that's that's it it's a completely apartheid society if you're an arab you're not allowed on the road i didn't believe it but i did after a bit and i saw and it was just hell on earth they've created hell on earth and in that visit and those visits that i made i decided that i would be vocal and do anything that i could to help my palestinian brothers and sisters to achieve equal human rights with their jewish brothers and sisters between the jordan river and the sea i'm not asking anyone to kill anyone right but you have to have equal you can't have apartheid you cannot allow apartheid societies to spring up in the world that is not a way to encourage one another to be kind in my view so you

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see this you're stunned by it moved by it outraged by it when do you decide to talk about it did you think about it immediately immediately yeah and what was the response you got

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well the israeli lobby in america in america particularly were not best pleased so they would they would and they have ever since then done everything that they can to destroy my career they have failed i fight back you know

B

what have they done

A

well one thing that they one thing they did and it's almost the most criminal thing in my view that they did was i used to work for an organization called stand up for heroes and it's helping wounded american servicemen limbs missing you know whatever and somebody asked me bob and lee woodruff it's the name of the people who run a foundation called the woodruff foundation i know them yes okay well and bob called me up one day and who's this bob woodruff never heard of you you know and he said there's this thing and we do a thing called stand up for heroes where comics do and somebody plays and springsteen comes and he sings a song and auctions a guitar we raised money for these wounded men would you come and sing a song and i thought it through and i thought well let me think about it and he said well we're doing a thing at the national history museum in a week's time would you come it's just you know a glass of champ champagne and meet some of the men and see what you think and so i did i went to this thing and i was wandering around with my glass of champagne and there were a number of men in uniform around one of them is in a wheelchair he's got no legs and only one arm and he's in his dress blues so he's got all the kit on and he was sitting on his own so i thought well in for a penny and i went over and started talking to him and i'm smiling now because this friend of mine now this was in twenty thirteen so that's thirteen years ago now and he looked up at me like that sort of to be polite and then his eyes opened wide and i realized that he recognized me and so he went and went like that and then he said i play the guitar too see he was latino guy and then i looked at him he's got no legs and only one arm and i'm thinking that's a bit of a stretch playing the guitar and he could see the look in my eye and bless him his name's dom so he looked at me and he went oh yeah well i don't play the guitar anymore and he went now i play the drums and he does and he's a bloody good drummer as well but and so that was the start so i went back to bob and lee woodruff and said i'd feel a bit funny getting up there and with all my arms and legs singing a song however worthy it is what if i go down to walter reed because that's where a lot of these guys were bethesda it was called then i think the naval hospital what if i find there's a bloke down there called arthur bloom who's running a therapeutic rehabilitation music program what if i went down there and started a band and we played and they went don't be daft and i went i'm not being daft i'm being serious anyway they said yes and we did it and we did it twenty thirteen in the beacon theater in twenty fourteen at madison square garden and blah blah blah and but then and this is to answer your question twenty fifteen was coming up no yeah twenty fifteen and i was in the hamptons in the summer and i suddenly thought hang on a minute it's august i haven't had the phone call because the show would be in november so i called the producer he's a lovely guy called andrew fox and i went andrew i haven't had the phone call silence i went get over here and he did and we sat outside with a glass of wine i said come on cough what's going on and he told me it was the israeli lobby who've decided that you can't do it anymore what what about the men no the men can't either because if the men do it and you're not there people will ask

B

questions you're not allowed to help veterans if you criticize israel israel that's correct

A

yeah yeah you're not allowed to help veterans or i was involved in other charities which were distributing food from restaurants posh restaurants in new york it's called city harvest yes they told city harvest the same thing not a single cent from any of us if you go on dealing with roger waters in other

B

words accepting help from you yeah you were just a volunteer just giving i

A

was a friend of the people running it as well but now you can't you can't so all i'm saying is it's disgusting beyond any imagination and for what for being critical of an apartheid state which is what it was i am very critical of the state of israel i've got nothing against jewish people nothing i don't i couldn't care less what religion anybody is as anybody who knows me will tell you so yeah so it is what it is it

B

got so intense at one point i was reading that you couldn't you were banned from certain hotels because the hotel

A

yeah is that true yes yeah that that didn't start happening until twenty twenty three which was the last big tour i did and both in europe and in south south america particularly i couldn't find a hotel to stay anywhere in buenos aires or in colombia or in ecuador in ecuador yeah in well it had just been taken over by naboa who as we know is a gangster from miami so he's who knows what his issues are yeah you couldn't stay

B

in a hotel in ecuador colombia or argentina because you criticize israel yes oh

A

uruguay montevideo yeah i couldn't stay in montevideo we did actually stay in a hotel in quito in ecuador for one night but they had to pretend i wasn't there you couldn't make it up

B

could you that's a long way from israel what what is quito ecuador or bonavedo uruguay or ba have to do

A

with israel there's an israeli lobby that is very organized in all of places and they may well be in other cities in the world as well certainly yeah certainly in many other cities frankfurt they tried to cancel my gig in frankfurt they did cancel my gig in krakow in poland in twenty twenty three

B

on what grounds

A

on the grounds that they they wanted to cancel me because because i was critical of the apart of the genocide because i'm against genocide and they're not they're in favor of it that's why they're all quiet they're silent they all keep silent they close their mouths you know they won't speak because they know that they'll get the treatment that i get if they open their mouths there is a very powerful lobby and it wants israel to go on being a genocidal apartheid state and to expand and to take over lebanon and syria and jordan and greater israel it's the whole it's the plan they're not they don't make it's not a secret netanyahu and ben gvir and who's

B

who's the ambassador there the us ambassador is called mike huckabee mike huckabee excuse

A

me for laughing but yeah crazy christian zionist right and you know what and maybe at the bottom of it all is they're all waiting for the coming of the messiah they don't care well mike huckabee obviously hopes it'll be jesus because then he can go to heaven with mike pence and and the other christian sign i'm sorry to no no

B

no i couldn't agree more that's not christianity just for the record it's not even a no close facsimile of christianity

A

as i recall you're a christian right yes i am as i recall jesus threw the money lenders out of the temple yes or tried to yeah that's probably why they crucified him braided a whip there you go and i'm not making a joke about that that that bit of history really impresses me because usury is you know what one of the things that the us government and other government particularly the israeli government have got against iran is that that lending money for profit is illegal in iran

B

really i didn't know that it's against

A

law usury is against the law in the islamic republic of iran in persia

B

it's illegal why would that offend other

A

governments yeah it's the basis of the way everything works is that you get control over a government by lending them money and once you've lent them the money or given them the money i mean don't look at me with your brow furrowed like that you've seen the congress of the united states and the cash

B

of course i know what you're saying again i agree with you completely i didn't know that usury was banned in iran though yeah where i'd forgotten what is when you saw the united states go to war with iran what did you think united states and israel

A

well it's despicable obviously to attack iran why they've done nothing what have they done nothing certainly posing no threat to anyone in the united states of america or israel as far as we can tell done they're just there in the way because they have a different view for instance usury is illegal under their system whether it's anything to do with islam or whether it's just to do with with their form of socialism i've no idea but it goes against the grain in a big way and what and but why why have another you know because it because it's part of wesley clark's prediction as well you go oh my goodness it's only iran and lebanon are the only two countries on the list that have not been totally destroyed including syria and lebanon somalia and sudan and blah and blah and blah you know this was the plan of the neocons all along the new american century i'm sorry to keep to be sound as if i'm banging on about because you know my mum came over here before the war as well and and she did say she said to me she used to say to me because she was very left wing her politics she said the people i met in america darling were very nice people many many of them very kind and very hospitable you know and blah blah blah but she would lower her voice a bit they're very very naive and i know we could we can laugh but it's like to be suckered into the state you're in now as you are the absolute devil as far as the rest of the world obviously because you wage war ferociously in order to line your own pockets and in ways that the rest of the world finds despicable look at what's happening in venezuela now and there's no pretense made about it oh we're going to go in and just steal all the oil and anything of any value under the and that's now the model so that might be the reason to have a war with russia then we could steal whatever's under the ground because we haven't got it or the chinese even worse they've got even more rare minerals if you want to make i don't know little computers and things we're getting away from matt campbell and his brother jeff but i don't mind no i'm just this

B

is an interesting conversation it is interesting and it's you probably don't read a lot of what's written about you but you are described as a hater and a dangerous man and i have listened for the last hours you've invade against war in favor of kindness yeah said i don't recognize ethnic or religious distinctions i just love people like these are not words of hate these are the opposite correct how exactly i mean i'm just taking you by your own words thank you how is it that you have been slandered by the media as the opposite of what you say you

A

are well it's like how is it that in england over the last year they've been describing pro palestinian marches that are anti genocide as hate marches not my friends who are out in the streets protesting against the actual genocide that's going on now of the palestinian people and yet the british media call those hate marches it's bizarre there's no hatred involved in those marches it's pure love pure it's exactly what i'm proposing it's exactly what i support with all my heart and have done all my life it's like me like the little thing i gave you saying every word i've ever written in all my rock and roll writing okay is about that is about encouraging empathy for others in myself and in others that that's what that's all i kind of that's all i write about because it's what i care about it's what my mum and dad instilled in me my father who was killed by the nazis and my mother who with every bone in her body believed in the inherent goodness of the human race and and and and believed in the possibility of what was it why we had to run for shelter when the promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue sky okay my mum believed in the brave new world unfurling and we're not talking aldous huxley now not that brave new world but an actual real world where people love one another and help one another and get back what it is it's like and there's a poem i wrote years ago there's something the doctor's note from ages gone or something good friends to help rebuild the barn i was thinking of it as i drove through the countryside coming up here through maine and seeing all these houses dotted they're all the same they're all exact they're all cardboard you know copies of one another they're all clapboard they're all white or brown or whatever but you can imagine people living in them human beings and you can imagine people look his barn's fallen down let's go and help him rebuild it good neighbors to help rebuild the barn that's what we need not war war is the absolute worst possible thing and yet they're the biggest industries in the developed western countries

B

and the most zealously defended i will say that you've been doing media interviews for people fifty years more how would you describe the media's role in war

A

well sadly it's holding it up more war is basically what the western media now is sort of more or less saying more war they're certainly not going i think we should go and stand outside raytheon and stop it you know or can i no well let's all go to washington dc and say if you drop another bomb on iran you won't be anywhere to do with any government that represents me because it's the worst possible thing that you could be doing or going and kidnapping nicolas maduro and celia flores from caracas where they live where he's the president of the country and the head of state just because you've got helicopters and morons with guns will do anything they're bloody well told you know it's awful obviously this is even worse than the biden administration or bush before that or it's gone you've gone downhill in a big way haven't you i mean it feels like it to me i mean i think

B

it's going to be hard to emerge from this iran thing intact i mean i think it's very destructive well it's

A

so self destructive as well entirely entirely

B

anyway yeah it's yeah i'm still trying to figure out why we did it exactly the mechanics of it but yeah no it's it's worse even than i worried it would be for us and for the world so i completely agree so when you go do interviews or how do people respond to you how does the media respond to you well

A

the media doesn't speak to me what do you mean well they don't they don't i don't do any mainstream media the closest i come to mainstream media is piers morgan who shouts at me for half an hour and you who have i have to say a very nice host give me a sandwich for god's sake which was very nice but

B

you don't do you don't do morning shows on network television no one asks you to come and talk or no

A

i'm no i'm persona non grata out there in media land you think the new york times would print in an article if i wrote it i've sent umpteen articles to big newspapers all over i don't anymore because i know that nothing will ever get printed not a single word i'm verboten and i'm proud of it i sort of am proud of it because i'm preaching kindness yes thank you charlie mckeesy by the way i hope you see this and you get your name thing because it's such a beautiful little book the boy the mole the fox and the horse what do you want to be when you grow up kind

B

last last question thank you go on man where does this go do you think so we're on the precipice of a deepening iran war a total explosion in russia are you do you have any hope at all that this can be resolved peacefully these

A

two conflicts sumud is an arabic word that means perseverance steadfast perseverance in resistance particularly to the occupation of your homeland so it's very well used and well worn arabic word and it moved me when i first first heard it or what it is and i've written a song called samud and i won't try and remember all the lyrics because i can't but i know how it finishes up it finishes up with me talking about all the ordinary people all over the world standing shoulder to shoulder from the river to the sea from every river to every sea all over everywhere okay and raising their voices together as one ordinary people okay and i'm not going to try and remember the exact form of the words but it ends up with this idea when they do that with sumud with steadfast perseverance altogether they can turn this ship around but it will take them to do it they will have to do it the people standing shoulder to shoulder arm in arm it will take that kind of force to turn this ship around from its path to the ultimate destruction of the human race imminent destruction of the human this could end in a nuclear conflagration any minute with the way very easily very easily so we the people and people who do speak to me right like usb speak to me who's usb usb is the dock workers union in italy they revere me i'm a

B

hero so at least you got the dock workers union seriously and and that

A

and oh that makes me so happy you know the the thought that ordinary people may hear my voice and may go you know what he makes a lot of sense that's how i feel too oh do we really all have yes you do you all got to come together and raise your voice whenever you get the chance to do it because we are many and they are few the enemy is a very few very very rich oligarchs probably a thousand or two thousand of them in the whole world and they run the whole thing they keep the wars going and they do it because they're greedy they are naboa in ecuador or this new woman who's just been who's just stolen the erection in peru fuji vrami or whatever her bloody name is and there's somebody else just come in and cast in chile unfortunately there's a big move to the right politically in south america which i follow quite a lot so you have to stand out people and you have to organize you know it's back to listening to what our friend malcolm x had to say back in the sixties we have to organize we've been out organized we're not outnumbered or out thought or out felt but we have been out organized and so is there any hope yeah there is you know i wrote an opera about the french revolution called which is the future tense of sava sava means that's it or that means that will be so it's it's a sort of full i'm

B

sorry you wrote an opera about the french revolution yes i did okay something i've never done no okay but you

A

but hang on and so i just want to say this the guy who wrote the libretto mainly who was a frenchman called etienne rodigil he said he said something to me one day we were walking down fifty fourth street it was early in the morning he's an alcoholic so he had to stop for a couple of large scotches and i had a cup of espresso anyway and he was doing that french thing that they do with his gitan or you know and looking love to whatever and and i i asked him i said something to him i said what gives you hope etienne you know and he went and he thought about it and then he let another benson hedges and another whisk and then he went and he started to speak and he wrote i was here i beg your pardon i was here ah we i felt something yeah and perhaps i was not alone i wrote it on a piece of paper and it's been in my back pocket ever since and you may have to think about it for a bit i was here i felt something and perhaps i was not alone it gives me hope too you could use it to describe our conversation i was here i felt something and perhaps i was not alone i don't think we're

B

alone good roger waters thank you for

A

that not at all thank you