Roger Waters has joined RT to talk about his latest CNN interview,

Video Transcript:

Mr. Waters, you are very welcome to our tea intern, Ashton. Thank you for your time today. Can we spend a moment or two on that recent interview you granted to see an end? It got a huge reaction, both from those agreeing and opposing your views. But did people watching it really see exactly what you said? It's been alleged some of it was cut out. Is that right? Yeah, that is correct. If you want to see any more about that, I believe on YouTube, they've still got the whole interview up. So you can see that it was heavily edited, which is a shame, because the whole interview is only 18 minutes long. I think they aired seven minutes, seven or eight minutes. So they cut out about 10 minutes. I mean, a little bit of judicious editing is cool, but all the conversation I had, for instance, about the Ukraine was heavily edited. And so it didn't really represent my real views. I do have real views on the Ukraine, by the way. I sort of feel, I mean, a very privileged position here talking to you now, because there are very few places where I can get any airtime to express my views and the views of all the other fighters for peace and there are millions of them in the United States as I'm sure there are in Russia. And as I'm sure there are in Ukraine as well, probably more than anywhere else. And what we're all fighting for is, obviously, in the short term, peace in the Ukraine, an end to the war, which I think could be achieved pretty easily. And beyond that, support for the universal declaration of human rights in Paris in 1948, that is the other platform upon which I was done. I'm well into the day I die. I mean, I could talk about Michael, it's from O'Connish, who if you watch the whole interview, you'll see that it was quite a jovial affair, in fact, at the end of it, we shake hands. And you know, we agreed to talk more at some other point. So if you want to talk about that, we could, but I think there are far, far more important issues that we could address. Mainly, mainly peace in the Ukraine. We have to all pull together and join our voices to demand that the parties come together and start to talk to one another. That means the United States for America and its leaders agreeing to be involved in talks to stop the war. Now, please, too many innocent people are dying on both sides. Now, we have time to delve into that absolutely. But if I, if I might just continue with that interview for just a little longer, as you say, it was a jovial affair after the interview, indeed, the presenter joke that you're a troublemaker, but behind the banter and he was a fan, you could see that, is that how anyone is seen who doesn't tool the mainstream liner and irritant for one of the political. Yeah, of course it is. Yeah, of course it is, but we all know that. That's true in almost every country in the world. Anybody who doesn't tow the government line is a troublemaker. I bet you've got millions of troublemakers in the Russian Federation. There are lots and lots of us in the United States, America, and the UK and all over Europe and all over the global South as well. Of course, and I'm proud to be a troublemaker. The troublemakers are the important people. The troublemakers took to the streets in 2003 on February the 14th. Just before the UK and the United States and America invaded Iraq and murdered about a million people. So we were there and we weren't just in London and in Madrid. We were all over the United States. We were all over the world. We were in the streets saying this is a huge mistake and it goes against everything that we believe in. But specifically it goes against the universal deregulation of human rights. The Iraqi people have rights to and you are not liberating them. You're murdering them. And we said that 25 million people in the street I'll stop hectare in you about that. But it's really important to know that we are a large community. So even though I don't know any of them personally, I am now representing world without war, code pink. And I won't go on mentioning their names because there are too many to mention. But we are a global force. And we believe in love for our brothers and sisters, all of them, including the Russians and the Chinese and the Ukrainians and the Americans and the French and the Germans and the Ecuadorians and the Peruvians and the Chileans and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. OK, so that is our platform. And we're sick of watching our lunatic leaders, including your lunatic leader, banging heads. Though I do think in this case, well, now I won't go there. If you're going to get to the Ukraine at some point. We will. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, as you say, it's something very important to you. And unlike many of the people criticizing you, you've done the research over many years as well. It was questioned, Mr. Waters, why your views were being heard at all. But I would suggest artists, cultural figures have always shared their views. So why are you being singled out? Well, they haven't always. And this is a problem. And they're not now. That's why I'm being singled out because I do feel somewhat of a lone voice within the context of the arena that I work in. I'm a musician, professional musician. I'm on the road. I'm doing a tour at the moment. I'm doing 38 gigs, I think, in the States and Canada and a few in Mexico. And we have a very powerful message in the show that I'm doing, which is the one that I described to you a few minutes ago. It's all about our belief that all our brothers and sisters all over the world deserve equal rights irrespective of their ethnicity or religion or nationality. And so it's a very, very simple message. But it's a message that by and large, people in my industry are not pervading or spreading, or they're not making loud enough noise about it. That is why I'm talking to you today on R.T. because you can imagine in the United States of America, oh, he's the traitor. Speaking to R.T. because we're not where you are discouraged from communicating one human being to another. And they're talking to you today as a conduit for me to speak to all my brothers and sisters in Russia and in the Ukraine. And I'm sorry to keep bringing up the Ukraine, but it's there, there in the States, and it's extremely dangerous. It could, the Ukraine and Taiwan, which was the other thing that we talked about with Michael Schmokonech, those are the two points of potential white heat that could trigger the Third World War. And people don't take nuclear weapons nearly seriously enough. Nuclear weapons are a deadly, deadly threat, as we all know. And yet, somehow, the treatise of fallen by the wayside, partly because politics isn't taken or diplomacy and the art of diplomacy. And leadership and state craft is not taken as serious. You're certainly in the West where I live. Maybe it isn't in Russia either. I don't speak Russian, so I'm at a serious disadvantage if I try to understand what's going on. Well, it's not your country. You're from Northern Ireland, but in Russia. So I don't claim to know a great deal about internal Russian politics. But I have read all the speeches. I do understand the recent history, certainly, 21st century history of Ukraine and other things as well. And I take a global view. And so, because I'm interested in it, A, and because I have a dog in the race, my father died in Italy fighting the Third Reich. You know, I have a deeply vested emotional interest in what happens to my brothers and sisters, including all the indigenous people who have been treated so politely for the last 500 years by we Europeans, we settler colonialists. So I have dogs in that race as well. Just to delve into different issues, then, if we can. And just to widen it away from that interview you gave, you told the presenter and Michael Spirconishtad, he's believing his side's propaganda, and he immediately refuted that. But why is propaganda always said to be just one way, flowing in east to a westerly direction, apparently never the other way around? Well, it depends on your perspective, doesn't it? Unless you're a troublemaker, like me, if you're a troublemaker living in the United States, you see the propaganda coming from the US government. And it is a joke. I mean, it's extraordinary how they invent everything. If I spoke Russian and I was living in Moscow, it might, it's quite likely that I might look at what, the Russian government are putting out and go, well, this is rubbish. This is, this is Russian, I don't know. I don't live there. I can't comment on it. That's why people may think that my comments are slanted against the American government or the UK government, a Western government, a Western position. Or maybe just because they're only hearing one way before that. Well, it's rubbish. What they put out, mainly, the propaganda that they put out, it has nothing to do with the real issues, because they suppress the truth. And so to find truth in the West, certainly, I don't know about Russia, I bet it's just as hard in Russia to find real truth. Is a huge task. You have to go onto the internet and then you have to sift your ways through all the sites until you find an opportunity to perhaps discover what might be going on and what the truth of something is. I know what those sites are on the internet. In my English speaking world, I don't know about Russia. I hope the same thing exists and that there are troublemakers in Russia who are determined to learn the truth about things too. Because I bet you're not going to suggest to me that you can find the truth in Prasda or one of the other mainstream media. I don't know. It's about views. I understand. I don't know. It's about lots of different views, isn't it? It's about seeing lots of different views and making your own mind up. RT has been banned across the EU, Britain, the US. Is that not proper? No, no, no. In terms of how that's being seen, is that democracy an action or what? Now, of course, it isn't. Hey, don't treat me like a child. Of course not. Can we be grown up at least on having this conversation? Absolutely. Now, of course, it's got nothing to do with democracy. It's nonsense. If you just cut, it's like, for instance, in my world, the internet is becoming a smaller and smaller and smaller platform as the government and the NSA and the FBI and the CIA and Mark Zuckerberg and the whole of Silicon Valley and the whatever and the Google Brothers warts slowly but surely are cutting it, making it smaller and smaller. I'm sure I'm in there radar. I'm probably in the middle of the crosshairs. At some point, they're going to try and shout me out for good and they will probably find that, certainly I'm not even speaking to you or anyone. There's certainly nobody in the mainstream media apart from Michael's McConech would speak to me. And it may be that that was only to, no, I'm not going to choose Michael of connivance in it. But obviously it was to their advantage that my interview with Michael was cutting to little bits and stuck together to make me look like an idiot. So I'm not an idiot. And that's why talking to you today I'm making absolutely certain that people completely understand that my motivation is love for my brothers and sisters, all of you, everyone, the Chinese, the Indian, I've done it before, everyone, but there's in the short term, which is why I keep coming back to it because it was one of the things I talked to Michael about. The Ukraine is deeply important. Let us not forget that Zelensky was elected as the president of the Ukraine after the coup in 2014 on a platform of solidifying and adhering to the Minsk agreements to Minsk too and also agreeing to end the civil war that was already happening and been happening since 2014 and the illegal coup and give self-government a certain anyway to the Donbass and to Lubansk and Donetsk, sorry, and Lubansk. And of course, the minute he was elected somebody put a gun to his head, I assume, and he changed his mind and didn't do any of that. Well, a lot of that 73% of Ukrainians who voted for him presumably wanted those agreements implemented so that they didn't have to have a war. And it could be stopped, in my view, tomorrow. All it needs is for the Americans to come to the table and say, okay, let's go with the Minsk agreements and then it would be over. But do you think Western officials actually want the conflict to end? No, of course not. No, they have no interest in ending the con. They will fight to the last Ukrainian. Well, or if they do want it to end, why don't they end it because it's in their hands? It's always has been. It's in NATO's hands. It's in Joe Biden's hands, except it's not. It's in his whoever pulls his strings hands. And they don't want it to end. There's huge fortunes to be made out of the petrol. Fair enough, just before I came on the air with you and because I've been reading a lot about Orwell, recently, George Orwell, who we all know about, great hero of ours, because I couldn't remember who the factions were, or the states, the countries in 1984. So I looked it up this morning, Oshiana, okay, which nominally is where Big Brother lives, which is America, Eurasia, which is Russia, and East Asia, which is China. And I don't know if you remember, but in the novel, they saw constantly changing their positions. The important thing is that they're always at war with one or the other and that they can make new alliances, but the important thing to maintain Big Brother in power is that they have to be constantly at war. Does that remind you of anything contemporary that's going on now, this state of perpetual war, because you ask anybody in Coke, Pink, or any of the other, or Orwell without war, or any of the other anti-war organizations, and they know what I'm talking about, because we live in the state of perpetual war, and why? Because there's a huge amount of money to be made out of it. So that's what these wars are for. It's about making money for very rich people. So why do we, the people, allow it? Why do we allow them to force the rest of us into these situations? They bring problems. I don't know. Yes, profit. Well, before we move on to other global issues. There's profit for Russian weapons manufacturers, as well as profit from... You know, what's going to happen is, if I don't put that word in, they're all going to go away. Oh, he's a Putin puppet. He's a Russian, though. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. I am a supporter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from Paris in 1948. That is it. If we apply those 30 articles, or have a month of articles there are, there cannot be another war, not even a single day of it, anywhere in the world, ever again, if we apply those articles. You mentioned the accusations, puppet of Putin. It's interesting, right now. The last few weeks, I've had lots of interviews about cases of Russian artists, sportsmen, ban from competition, the works of Russian authors, prohibited at universities, Soviet monuments, the molars across Europe. I would suggest the majority of people out there disagree with that vehemently, but if they call it out, suddenly there are puppet of Putin. Has nuance itself been cancelled? And how can it return? If no one, sorry, I missed the last sentence. Well, I'm just talking about nuance itself, appears to have been cancelled. How can it return? New-ounce. Yeah, because when you talk to people, discussions, it seems to be you're either one or the other. And if you're the other, you're a Putin puppet. Yeah, well, one is constantly pointing out the hypocrisy behind all of this nonsense. So, you know, I wrote a letter to the president of Ufa a couple of weeks ago. I had it in front of me. I'd read it out. It's public. I made it public. I posted it. But basically, I was saying, if you're going to ban you in your godlike position as the president of Ufa, again, a ban all Russian soccer teams and the national team from competing in soccer, football. With the rest of us, because of the invasion of Ukraine, you have to ban Israel as well, because of the invasion of Palestine in 1967. You can't have it both ways. But of course they can. They cherry-pick human rights all the time, depending upon the political climate wherever they are based, I suppose. But obviously, it's ridiculous to ban Russian teams, but not ban Israeli teams, or other teams. I mean, I also pointed out as somewhat tongue in cheek, because I know this ain't going nowhere. I said, oh, by the way, while you're on the subject, you might have a word with the president of FIFA, your chum in the world organization of football, and asking what their position is on the fact that the United States for America are going to be playing in the World Cup and Qatar. Wow, it's not possible when they invaded Iraq in 2003, contravening everything in the United Nations, Jodder, the biggest war crime any of us have ever seen. What, why, why is that all right? Why is that a, it's just total hypocrisy, obviously. Nothing is treated with an even hand, except it is by me, and by all the other people who want peace on Earth, and goodwill to mend for all our brothers and sisters. So, you know, go figure. I mean, I don't want to be all ranty because... No, it's always interesting having you in the program. And can I just pivot maybe to more global issues while we have you on the program, Roger? Taiwan. Some claim that the timing for Nancy Pelosi's visit could not have been worse, leading to the Taiwanese people feeling the aftermath of her pilgrimage, as it's been called. But yet Beijing has seen as the aggressor, how do you see the situation? Well, she's an old idiot, you know. Nancy Pelosi is a joke. She is. She just is. And yet they are revered, they are revered in the United States of America, but the US Congress is a toothless, nothing, really. It doesn't seem to have any power, or if it does have power, it won't look squarely at things like I am, and like you are today on TV. And I hope some of the people watching this interview are as well going, you know what? He's right. Why are we in a state of perpetual war? Well, because Nancy Pelosi wants us to be, and she wanted to fly in there posturing, taking huge risks, completely ignoring the agreements that were made, the one China agreement, agreements made in 1971 and 1972, after the Nixon visit in 1972. It was absolutely agreed that there's only one China, and it's the people's Republic, and and it's the whole of China. And so the Chinese have held off on Formosa, as it was called, in 1949, at the end of the Revolutionary War in China, where Chanko Shex settled with his few defeated followers, and was supported, billions and billions of dollars boredom by the Americans, because of, oh, we're worried about communism spreading. Well, listen, if the Chinese people want to live under a communist regime, or the Russians, or anyone else in the world, let them, why shouldn't they be allowed self-determination? Self-determination is one of the human rights that is described in the Paris document. Why should you decide? You is colonial settlement in North America. Why shouldn't you get to decide how everybody else in the world behaves? They want to rule the world. That is what is so dangerous about American foreign policy. You know, now you've got me onto that subject. Perhaps, you know, if Russia had a thou, or China had a thousand military bases dotted all over the world, and were intent upon surrounding Oshihana and Eurasia, or vice versa, or if East Asia had a thousand military bases and was surrounding Oshihana, it would be just as malevolent and wrong as it is for the United States to have a thousand, but I'm thinking, no, we know best, and we will tell, we will rule the world. You can't rule the world, show by me. You can't do it, brother. It's a fool's errand, and look what it's doing right now. Look at the Ukraine and all those poor people being slaughtered. Russians and Ukrainians, while you sit in Washington, D.C., you know, checking out your shares in Raytheon. I mean, it's just despicable. So I don't know what's going to happen, but if I can nudge any of them towards, what's wrong with Minsk, too? No, why isn't it in the news every day? Why is it every newspaper in Russia and the United States going, hey, why don't we just implement the Minsk agreements? The Ukrainian people voted 73% of the Ukrainian people voted for Minsk, too, and for the end of the civil war and the Donbass. That's what they voted for. And they're not getting you. You mentioned Joe Biden. You also, you're in the middle of an North American tour, by the way, it's very good of you to speak to us during it as well. I'm sure a lot of people will leave to get back out and start rocking again after two years of COVID, etc. But there is one part of your concert. Joe Biden's image when it comes up on stage during your performance, I think it was your anti-war song, the bravery of being out of range. And does that come in your head because there's a line there all-timer, who are you going to kill next? It's a great song. But is that how you see him? How's direct as that? Well, Joe Biden, let's not forget, was the Democratic whip in the Senate, whipping up the Senate in 2003 in support of the invasion of Iraq. So did Joe Biden commit a war crime today almost certainly? I mean, who did they kill the other day with an extra-d judicial assassination? Zabadaya, is that his name who was supposedly the second-income man to a summer bin Laden? They claim that. Nevertheless, you're saying we have the right to fly around the world and murder anyone we want. We're using drone attacks and using surveillance and satellite imaging and blah, blah, blah. You know, they killed our walkies son. I believe you, whether how was he, I can't even remember, but he was sitting in a cafe. That's after they'd killed our walkie, who was a US citizen living in some other country who was a Muslim, though. And so he had different ideas about it. So they just killed him. It choose those two-stim meetings under Obama. Every single one of those meetings was a war crime. Everyone. But, and yet it still goes on. And the drone attacks have gone on through Trump and through and now through Biden. And they go on. You know, they killed Suleiman and they killed this and that and the other. And it's always wrong. It's always a war crime, always. With the war, it hasn't changed. The law hasn't changed. So, yeah, Biden, poor old chap, you know. I don't feel sorry for him because he's made his bed and he has to lie in there. But this is the man who wrote the Patriot Act. I know that's not a war crime. It was a crime, but it wasn't a war crime. So, but he's committed thousands of war crimes, showed by and will continue to do so. His lack of interest in speaking to the Russians and the Ukrainians, okay. Is a war crime, in my view. And you can, people can take that away if they want and tear it to shreds and go, oh no, I've looked in the dictionary. It's not Rodgers wrong about this. Well, it is. It is. He could stop the war. I think it's a crime if you're in a position of power. And there's a horrific war going on. And people are dying. In the thousands, thousands, thousands of people dying. And you're doing nothing but poor ordinance into it. Give them, give them the weapons to keep the finger, instead of acting diplomatically and stopping it, which you could do in a heartbeat. I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to sit here and start taking sides. Though I do, I have looked at it all. I do think it was a huge mistake. For the Americans to try and push NATO right up to the Russian border. But far clearer brains than mine. Anybody who's concerned about this at all, go and read everything that John Meersheimer has written about it. And watch all his television speeches or speeches on the internet. Listen to it. Read about it. Do your homework. Check out the history. Find out what the history of the Ukraine. And please don't tell me that the Ukraine doesn't have Nazis in it. Because it does. And the way the way the West flipped suddenly. So it's, it's, yeah, yeah, of course it's nuanced and complicated. But it's not really because we are slaughtering Ukrainians every day. And they should be alive. They should be taking their children by the hand and taking them to school. And to their ballet lessons or and to their soccer matches. And they go on, go and have a run around and kick a ball. Instead of cowering in the shelters, it's disgusting that we're allowing this to happen. And we are allowing it to happen. Putin is too obviously, but it's a difficult situation. That's why you have to talk to one another. I said the other day, I did a webinar which people should watch. I did it with, well, without war, it's about an hour long, maybe an hour and a half. I can't remember. I forgot what we're going to say now. No, absolutely. Maybe just we can move to another subject Roger. That's very close to your heart. The people are very close to your heart. Palestine. And we recently saw an upscale of events. There are Israeli restaurants and Gaza killing, Scores of People. Young child, sexual girl. Few words of condemnation from the world on that. They said that we're targeting tourists as really defense forces. Why do you think, just your views on that and also as an aside, why do you think the international community treats conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine quite differently? Well, it depends what you mean by the international community where I live in the United States. The mainstream media, they do like that because they do what they're told. They do what they do what they are told to do and they print what they are told to print by the ruling class, by the oligarchs, by the Zuckerbergs and the Bezosis, right? And the Elon Musk's and the Bill Gates's. They print what they're told to. I know that's a bit controversial to say that, but if you look at the evidence, that's what appears in all of it. I don't print anything that I have to say. I promise you that. They will never print. Hang on a minute. We should be looking at this in a global fashion where all brothers and sisters, we all come from Africa. We're like cousins. We should be embracing one another, not blowing one another to be. They don't think like that. And that's partly because it's sort of enshrined in their political ethos that only thing that matters is the bottom line. And the corporations have only one responsibility and that is to their shareholders and the only responsibility is to maximize the bottom line. Well, clearly in a civilized place, corporations should have a responsibility to protect the environment, to make sure that those in society least able to look after themselves are looked after that there's a safety net and so on, that we educate our children and so on and so on. And so those are the important things and those should be at the responsibility of the corporations, just as much as there's supposed to be the responsibility of a government that represents the people. Well, that doesn't happen. And again, I'm not saying that this is only the United States. It's just I live here. I see it. I see the homeless on the streets every day when I'm in the city. So you see it happening before you're very eyes and you think, how cool, don't you see the people all around me not being able to make the sums add up at the end of the month because of inflation and because of this and because the ruling class fight to keep their wages at the lowest possible level, they're still arguing about $15 or no. Oh my goodness, I cannot imagine trying to live on 15 bucks and how could anybody possibly do it? It's impossible. Sandwich costs 15 bucks. It's crazy. Anyway, as I say, I want to know, I can't go on knocking. It's just that I live here, so let's see it. You can see it yet. It hurts you. Can I just ask as a final question, what makes you put yourself in the firing line like this? If you quit in your pocket, you're a musical legend, your icon to many, you could live a nice comfortable life. What makes you keep questioning, keep probing, despite the obvious heat that comes your way in return? I've told this story more times than I can remember. I'm going to tell it once more. Please pay attention. My mom, when I was 13 years old and I was struggling with something or other that I was trying to make a decision about, she said, what is it? What's, and I told her what it was, and she said, listen to me carefully now. And I said, yeah, she said, all your life, you're going to struggle with waiting questions probably, if you care about anything at all. When you do, here's my advice, read, read, read, read, read, read, find out as much as you can about whatever the question might be. Okay. And listen to all sides of the argument. Okay. When you've done that, you've done all the heavy lifting, your work is over. But, but I went, she said, the next bit is very easy, very easy, Roger. And I went, well, what's the next bit, Mum? And she said, do the right thing? I can't, you know, no, I feel quite emotional. Even saying that now, I mean, she's been dead for 15 years. But my Mum said that to me when I was 13 years old. And I would say to anybody, or to any child or young adolescent or anyone really, read, read, and when you've done all that, do the right, that's what I try and do is the right thing. So talking to you today, on R.T. although it's going to come back and bite me in the ass, I couldn't give an F. You know, why? Because it's the right thing to do. And to go on making your noise as long as I have a voice and as long as I have breath in my body, I will continue to do this. I will never stop. All of yours love hearing from you and hearing your views on all that. Are we so appreciate your time today? You've been more than good. Roger Waters, finding member lyricist, principal composure and creative force behind Pink Floyd. Many thanks, sir. Thanks, brother. See you soon. Yeah.