Tag Archives: Roger Waters

Roger Waters went off on ‘lunatic leaders’ in metro Phoenix — Pink Floyd hits said it best, by Ed Masley

You may not like Pink Floyd, but Rogers Waters pisses off all the right people. From Ed Masley at azcentral.com:

There are those among us who believe the stage is not the place for artists to share their political views. A Roger Waters concert is the last place you should venture if that’s how you feel.

Fans entering the Pink Floyd bassist’s This is Not a Drill Tour stop in Glendale on Monday, Oct. 3, were greeted by a woman distributing stickers that read “U.S. militarism fuels climate crisis.”

Just behind her, two men were encouraging people sign a petition to stop the U.S. extradition of Julian Assange. A banner at their table read “Free Assange” and depicted the WikiLeaks founder being muzzled by an American flag.

It was the type of greeting you’d expect if you’ve been following Waters with even one eye since the ’70s.

Interview:Roger Waters on ‘Us and Them’ and tearing down the wall between us

“If you’re one of those ‘I love Pink Floyd but I can’t stand Roger’s politics’ people, you might do well to (expletive) off to the bar right now,” he announced in a video message just before he took the stage. Hilarious yet sage advice.

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WATERS CONCERT: The World As It Is, by Joe Lauria

At seventy-nine-years-old, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters hasn’t lost his youthful idealism. From Joe Lauria at consortiumnews.com:

Roger Waters’ music and video spectacular is like WikiLeaks set to music: exploding myths, and exposing the ugly reality, writes Joe Lauria.

Roger Water’s “This is Not a Drill.” (Kate Izor)

The show stays outside. The reality is inside the arena.

Roger Waters’ ongoing 40-city North American tour is an eviscerating attack on a pretend America, exposing the nation’s brutality at home and abroad.

In an elaborate production playing on stages across the continent, Waters rips the cover from ruling myths enforced through education and the media, myths he has been fighting his entire life.

He reaches back to the early years to include Pink Floyd songs that were warnings, written during the relatively free 1970s, which looked forward from where we were to where we were headed — the mess we’re in today.

The performance is a startling defense of victims of U.S. state violence, searingly portrayed in video and music: indigenous, homeless, working class and developing world people who have nothing to do with power and how it’s used against them.

Waters argues that elite impunity allows a managed population to be rendered comfortable in its numbness, becoming part of a wall of ignorance erected by the state, behind which it commits its crimes.

Waters smashes that wall.

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How Rock Star Roger Waters Was Hung Out To Dry By Amnesty And Bellingcat for His Views on Syrian ‘Chemical Attack’, by Kit Klarenberg

Just one deviation from the party line can get you ostracized, even if you’re one of pop music’s biggest stars. From Kit Klarenberg at rt.com:

How rock star Roger Waters was hung out to dry by Amnesty and Bellingcat for his views on Syrian ‘chemical attack’
A leaked phone call reveals that outside pressure caused Amnesty to pull its promotion of a webinar featuring Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters – a vocal skeptic of the Douma ‘chemical attack’ that prompted Western powers to bomb Syria.

In August this year, environmental pressure group Amazon Watch broadcast an online panel discussion in support of Steven Donziger, a crusading attorney who dared try to hold US energy giant Chevron to account for widespread environmental destruction in the Amazon, and was left fighting for his life, livelihood and liberty as a result.

In February 2011, Chevron was found liable by an Ecuadorian court for contamination resulting from crude oil production in the region by its subsidiary Texaco between 1964 and 1992, in a legal action that was many years in the making and led by Donziger.

Chevron is yet to pay a penny of the settlement though, for the landmark ruling was overturned in March 2014 by a US Federal Court on highly dubious grounds – in reaching his decision, presiding Judge Lewis A. Kaplan relied heavily on the evidence of a former Ecuadorian justice who subsequently admitted to fabricating his testimony. Donziger has since been charged with contempt of court and sat under house arrest for over a year awaiting trial.

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Roger Waters Stunned At Assange’s Plight: “Orwell & Huxley Were Both Right, by Tyler Durden

The British and US governments are killing Julian Assange in broad daylight and few people care. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters has been an outspoken advocate for Julian Assange, but the most recent sight of the reporter’s physical and mental health, at his recent court appearance, has Waters stepping up his criticism of the establishment’s slow-assassination of the exposer of US war crimes.

Referring to a UK judge’s decision on Monday to deny the WikiLeaks founder a delay in US extradition proceedings, Waters proclaimed:

“Orwell and Huxley were always arguing about who had the closest view of what dystopia might look like in the future… I think we got a lot of both.”