I guess we won’t get a Pink Floyd reunion any time soon. Guitarist David Gilmour and his novelist wife Polly Samson lashed out at bassist Roger Waters after he offered a sympathetic view of Russian dictator President Vladimir Putin regarding his invasion of Ukraine.
We all know Roger Waters is anti-Semitic and anti-Israel:
But Samson and Gilmour’s criticism comes three days after the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung interviewed Waters. The publication asked him about his views on Russia and Israel.
Last September, Waters wrote a letter to Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, asking the country to negotiate with Russia. She called him out, and Poland canceled his shows.
Then Waters wrote an open letter to Putin with the same message. At the time, it felt forced because he lost his show in Poland.
I guess I was correct because Waters changed course in the German interview. Like WOW. I found the translated version, and we see the real Waters. The bold is the interviewer:
…you called him a “gangster”……exactly, 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?”
Waters twists himself into a tight pretzel to justify Putin’s actions because some Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazis:
There is no evidence that there has been genocide in Ukraine. At the same time, Putin has repeatedly emphasised that he wants to bring Ukraine back into his empire. Putin told former German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the saddest day in his life was in 1989, when the Soviet Union collapsed.Isn’t the word origin of “Ukraine” the Russian word for “Borderland”? It was part of Russia and the Soviet Union for a long time. It’s a difficult history. During the Second World War, I believe there was a large part of the population of western Ukraine that decided to collaborate with the Nazis. They killed Jews, Roma, communists, and anyone else the Third Reich wanted dead. To this day there is the conflict between Western Ukraine (With or without Nazis Alina) and Eastern The Donbas) and Southern (Crimea) Ukraine and there are many Russian speaking Ukrainians because it was part of Russia for hundreds of years. How can you solve such a problem? It can’t be done by either the Kiev government or the Russians winning. Putin has always stressed that he has no interest in taking over western Ukraine – or invading Poland or any other country across the border. What he is saying is: he wants to protect the Russian-speaking populations in those parts of Ukraine where the Russian speaking populations feel under threat from the far right influenced post Maidan Coup Governments in Kiev. A coup that is widely accepted as having been orchestrated by the US.
Um, could someone remind Waters that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, which at first worked with Hitler?
But then Waters whined about Poland canceling his shows. Poland did it because of Russiaphobia, and they easily fall for Western propaganda.
*rubs eyes* Dude, Poland has hated and feared Russia for a loooooong time. How do I history?
Yes, Waters stands by his previous comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany without even blinking twice:
Yes, of course. The Israelis are committing genocide. Just like Great Britain did during our colonial period, by the way. The British committed genocide against the indigenous people of North America, for example. So did the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese even the Germans in their colonies. All were part of the injustice of the colonial era. And we, the British also murdered and pillaged in India, Southeast Asia, China…. We believed ourselves to be inherently superior to the indigenous people, just as the Israelis do in Palestine. Well, we weren’t and neither are the Israeli Jews.
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