It has been an exciting week for Roger Waters. On February 7, he received a report card of sorts from Polly Samson, previously a lyricist for the band Pink Floyd (long dissolved), and the wife of the group’s former guitarist David Gilmour. After she and her husband read an interview Waters gave to the Berliner Zeitung, in which he accused Israel of “genocide,” she had this to say in a tweet: “Sadly Roger Waters, you are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.”
And the very next day, on the invitation of the Russian delegation to the UN, Waters addressed — via Zoom — the UN Security Council. The story is here: “‘Antisemitic’ Rock Musician Roger Waters Addresses UN at Invitation of Russian Regime,” by Ben Cohen, Algemeiner, February 8, 2023:
One day after he was denounced on Twitter as “antisemitic to your rotten core,” the former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters has addressed a session of the United Nations Security Council at the invitation of the Russian mission to the international body.
Claiming to speak on behalf of the world’s “voiceless majority,” Waters — a vocal supporter of the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) campaign targeting Israel — delivered a rambling address that denounced the international arms industry along with homelessness and poverty in wealthy and developing countries alike, peppered with references to the advice he received from his mother while he was growing up.
How nice that Roger Waters deplores “poverty” and “homelessness.” It would be even nicer if he managed to give more than a minuscule amount to charity, given that Waters’ net worth is $310 million. His former bandmate Gilmour has given away tens of millions of dollars. Why not, Roger Waters, follow his lead?
The singer’s appearance was first announced on Twitter on Tuesday night by Dmitry Polyanskyi, Russia’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, who posted, “for tomorrow’s UN Security Council briefing on prospects of peaceful settlement of crisis around Ukraine in the context of increasing Western arms deliveries to this country we invited as a briefer famous British Musician and rock-musician (sic) Roger Waters.”
Who better to discuss the intricacies of geopolitics than Roger Waters, World’s Greatest Authority? And who is more informed about the Ukraine War than Roger Waters, one of the very few who understands that, despite superficial appearances, Ukraine is the aggressor in this war, that Russia is more sinned against than sinning, wanting only to keep NATO away from its door? Is that really so hard to understand? And the Western countries are, as always, making trouble by sending arms to the troublemakers in Kyiv. As for that Mossad puppet and warmaker Volodymyr Zelensky, he may have fooled the world, but he hasn’t fooled Roger Waters.
Waters has been strongly criticized for supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin, opining in a CNN interview last summer that the Moscow regime had been provoked by western support for Ukraine’s democratically-elected government and accusing US President Joe Biden of a “huge crime” by allegedly “fueling the fire in Ukraine.”
In his speech to the UN Security Council on Wednesday, Waters reiterated his belief that Ukraine was partially responsible for the Russian invasion, arguing that while Russia’s actions were “illegal,” it had been provoked by the Kyiv government. “I also condemn the provocateurs in the strongest possible terms,” Waters declared. “There, that’s out of the way.”
Yes, Ukraine “provoked” Russia. How it did so, Roger Waters does not explain. Nor does he bother to explain why Russia seized the Crimea in 2014 – was that, too, “provoked” by Ukraine?
While Waters did not issue a call to boycott Israel during his speech, he emphasized that “universal human rights” belonged to Palestinians as much as Ukrainians. He urged an “immediate ceasefire” in Ukraine, insisting that the “voiceless majority” around the world backed this position, and that such a development would be greeted by “John Lennon pumping his first in the air from the grave.” Ruminating on the possibility that the UN Security Council is a “toothless chamber” and not a center of power, he said this would mean “that I can open my big mouth on behalf of the voiceless majority and not get my head bitten off. How cool is that?”
Waters’ appearance at the UN drew sarcastic condemnation from representatives of western countries, with one unnamed UN diplomat telling the Reuters news agency, “Russian diplomacy used to be serious. What next? Mr. Bean?”
The 15-member Security Council has met dozens of times since Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine in Feb. 2022. But it is unable to take any action because Russia is a veto power, along with the United States, China, Britain and France.
Roger Waters has great admiration for Vladimir Putin, the very model of a KGB apparatchik. He has also, over the years, expressed his appreciation for the rule in Syria of Bashar Assad, the mass-murdering Father of His Country. He gushes over Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator who has driven millions of despairing Venezuelans into exile. He even received a touching gift from Maduro – a musical instrument known as a cuatro, signed by the dictator himself. He is unsurprisingly on the side of the biggest dictatorship of them all, Communist China, roundly declaring that “Taiwan is part of China.”
Roger Waters exaggerates his own significance. He declared in an interview last October in Rolling Stone that he is on “Ukraine’s Kill List.” Kyiv, he fondly believes, wants to permanently silence him because he dares to tell the truth about Ukraine provoking Russia. He apparently thinks the Ukrainians are paying attention to his vaporings. They are not. They find him – as everyone of sense does – a figure of fun.
What was it again that Polly Samson said about Roger Waters?
Yes, along with being a “lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic sick-with-envy antisemite,” let’s not forget, there was one last epithet Polly Samson affixed to the 79-year-old Boy Wonder, just as true as all the others: “megalomaniac.”
