 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. My name is Vijay Prasad. Today with great pleasure, we have with us Roger Waters. Roger Waters is a revolutionary musician in two senses. On the first sense, he's a person who revolutionized music. Most people of my generation would not have had an adolescence without his songs, without Pink Floyd. But as well, he's a revolutionary who happens to be a musician. In his career as a human being, he's taken up all the major issues of our time, including the cause of the Palestinian people. And I think importantly as well, taken up causes in South America, especially in this period when imperialism has been striking back to make gains against people's movements. Roger, great to have you with us. It's really good to be here Vijay. Good to see you brother. Nice to see you. Why don't we start with where we are? I mean, we're in the middle of this COVID-19 global pandemic. You're in the United States at present. Give us a sense of what you think of the governments of, let's say, Boris Johnson in Great Britain, Donald Trump in the United States and how they've handled the pandemic and how these societies are coping with it. Well, that's an interesting question. Bojo is somewhat surprising in that his response is not pure thatcherism or it doesn't seem to be. So it may be that you have to understand when I answer these questions though, I never watch television and I don't read the papers. So somehow information only trickles down through me through a wall of resistance on my part, not to buy the propaganda, not to listen to it, not to take any notes. But obviously some of it gets through. In fact, this morning I got up and I had my first cup of coffee. And the first thing that I did was read Corona shock, your piece about China, which I've read before because now you have that story going out as a booklet with those beautiful paintings illustrating it all. But it's such an important article because people have to be told that COVID-19 is not some Chinese plot to destroy the Western civilization, which is the story that Mike Pence and Pompeo and the Donald himself clearly and probably Boris Johnson as well would have us believe because that's the way their minds work. And it's all part of that exercise control. I was in New York when this all started happening. I've sort of done a runner. So I'm now 100 miles almost from New York in the countryside somewhere in isolation. So, you know, like everybody else, I'm sort of waiting to see what's going to happen and whether all the panicking about the world economy is going to collapse and it'll be, you know, billions of people are going to die of starvation because we isolated or whatever the whatever the current fad story maybe. Thank goodness we have electron microscopes and we have, you know, competent medical authorities who are doing the research and who are trying to figure out what to do. I had an interesting email exchange with a friend of mine the other day. He's called him. His name is Greg Galliatsi and he's a lovely young man. He had both his legs blown off in Afghanistan a few years ago. And what did he do when he got back and I met him in Walter Reed where I was working with some of them making music. And what he decided to do while Greg, he decided that he was going to apply to medical school. He's now in his fourth, he's just starting his fourth year at Harvard Medical School. Can you imagine? I mean, the courage is taken to do that. So it was fascinating and he was talking, he said that because they're now in isolation techniques and things, they're having to do bits of the curriculum that they're fitting in from other place, ethics. And I went, wow, we need to talk about this a bit. And I haven't had that conversation with him, but in order to have a health service that is basically profit motivated is a contradiction in terms. It's oxymoronic. No, if you have a health service, it has to be about providing health care for the people. And of course, in the United States, they don't have one to have to have a health service for rich people. And that's it. And so it's very, it's a strange and alien atmosphere for an Englishman who grew up with the National Health Service, you know, in England. And so I live, you know, I literally started my life, you know, with Beecham and in that post war dream where the health service was created in post war England. And of course, it's all crumbled to some large extent. I don't know if you've seen John Pilger's documentary. I think it's called The Dirty War Against the National Health Service. So, you know, we see the same story is unfolding all over the world in different ways. And if you don't watch, if you don't watch television, if you live in the United States and you don't read the New York Times or the Washington Post or any other of those instruments propaganda, you do get a picture that filters down. So, and it's really interesting the way the more socialized societies are resisting the empire and kicking back. So, so you see it in, you know, obviously in South America in Venezuela and Bolivia and Mexico now. And you see this struggle going on between the pure, purest evil of Bolsonaro and, you know, whatever his name is Marquez in Colombia and, and, and all of that. And, you know, the Bolivarian Revolution. It doesn't matter whether it's Bolivar or, or Che Guevara or whoever it is, but for the last couple of hundred years people have been trying to figure out how to wrest power from the monarchs and allow it to devolve to the people. Yeah, Roger, last year there were massive demonstrations in Chile, in Ecuador, Ecuador, of course, which you know very well, you've been to the areas where Chevron had its big oil spill. There were massive protests in, in Bolivia. It's not a spill. Don't you don't call it a spill. It's not a spill. It was the deliberate. Exactly. It's not a spill. You're quite right. The oil, let's say the, the release of oil into people's into people's communities and so on. Those protests are quite significant, but obviously they were shut down, you know, because of this great lockdown. On March 31st, you released your cover of Victor Harra's really brilliant song. Why did you release that song on March 31st in the middle of the lockdown with beautiful images of the protests from Chile? Why? Because I have a strong affinity with Santiago in particular, because that's where I've worked when I've been in Chile. But also, I got involved with when they had the big earthquake and the tsunami, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, whenever it was a little bit with an organization called Un Techo Para Chile, a roof over Chile. And, and I make, I make friends, you know, where I go and I stay in touch with people. So that video was put together by a friend of mine, Pablo Lopez, his name, he's a doctor, a working doctor. So he's, he's pretty busy at the moment in Santiago, working in ICU. And his, he put together that, the video. So he made, he made the video that goes with my rendition. However, I had made it my business to go and have a glass of wine with John, who is Victor Harra's widow. And so I met her and I met Amanda, his, their daughter, and a few years ago, when I was, when I was doing kicks there. And actually we played El derecho. I had it on my phone and, and, and in the national stadium. I held it up to a microphone and everybody started singing along with it because it was him, you know, singing the song and of course he is a great national hero. So that kind of indomitable spirit and resistance to the Pinochet's and now Piniera, who's the current. Well, he's the El Presidente, but he's, you know, he's cut from very much the same cloth as Pinochet is heroic and, and we, and we obviously will never forget them. And, and in Santiago and in a lot of other places in, in, in South America as well. The Casa Rola, which is the, you know, the, the protest with the banging of pots and pans in the street or even just after curfew leaning out of the window and is deeply moving. And they are, I mean, I wrote some new lyrics, but that's the other thing is it stems from anger as well. They are, they are shooting children's eyes. They're trying specifically to blind them. They shoot them with balls, plastic balls from shotguns. So like that size and they aim at their eyes and they're quite good shots and they blinded thousands of kids. And it's disgusting. It's so disgusting. Anyway, I don't want to rant. No, no, it's, you know, this shooting into the eyes is a commonplace thing of these kind of governments. During the uprising in Egypt in Tahrir Square, government snipers were shooting into the eyes of children. We see this in Kashmir, where the Indian troops are shooting into people's faces and things. It's repulsive, truly repulsive. But what I found most powerful about your rendition of the song was that it's a reminder that even in the lockdown, those demonstrations haven't really ended. No, they haven't. And I spoke to Pablo just last week and I said, what's going to happen? He said, well, it's all quiet and down, but he said nothing has gone away. The second that the pandemic left a bit, all those children and grown ups as well will be out on the streets. This is not going away. The people have got the bit between their teeth, certainly in Santiago. And when seeing what recently happened in Bolivia, where they got rid of Eva Morales and, you know, he's had to flee his country, which he had talked about pulling a country up by its bootstraps. That man single-handedly turned Bolivia, you know, from a feudal state into a proper modern progressive country, where they were beginning to distribute the wealth a lot more. And that man where they paid was starting to take the indigenous population, which is the huge majority of the population, including Morales. And so Bolivia was a wonderful example of, and you know, but they made one huge mistake in Bolivia. They found lithium. You know, one of the most refreshing things about the way you see things, and I wish more people did, is that you basically have the model, you know, perspective. Like this is disgusting, what is happening here, you know, and you say it right in that way. The other area where you've taken an important stand, you know, at great cost, I think, because this cost is asked of everybody who takes that stand, is the other disgusting open so on the planet, and that's the occupation of the Palestinians. Could you just tell us a little bit about how you got involved in the struggle with the Palestinians and what it means? Yeah, I was sort of blind, like almost everybody, you know, after the Second World War. And I was, when the war finished, I was two years old, so I wasn't really copying very much what was going on. But, you know, and then in 1948 I still wasn't copying anything. The Nachba meant nothing to me living in England as a, you know, a five-year-old kid or whatever. And there was a lot of propaganda about, you know, this glorious new state for the Jewish people and Israel and blah, blah, blah, blah. And also it was very, I come from a very left-wing background in England, and so there was a lot of lauding it because it was the whole thing about the kibbutzes, and it was very socialist in its own way, or at least it was pretending to be at the time. And so anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I went to school and then I went to college and studied, and then I, you know, and then I got involved in a pop group and boom! and so and I've been doing that professionally since 1967 well 33 years later or it's the turn of the whatever and and I started doing some shows again and I was doing a tour of Europe and somebody said you can do a gig in in Tel Aviv okay and I got I started getting emails and very very very quickly I found myself in correspondence with the right guy who was Omar Boghuti who's since become a very close friend of mine you know who was one of the founders but it was right then this is in 2005 or 2006 that's it's just when the BDS movement started as an expression of the will of the whole of Palestinian civil society and so he asked me to not go join the boycott and for better or worse I cancelled the gig which was in the stadium in Tel Aviv but I did go and play but and we played a village called Neves Shalom or Wahat Masalaam is the Arab name for it which is a peace village it's ecumenical and and drew some Christians and Jews and Muslims all live together and their children all go to school together and they grow chickpeas it's an agricultural community so we did a gig there and it was the biggest gig there's ever been in Israel by a long way I did it was during my dark side of the moon tour and we had 60 000 people there and we started we didn't start till midnight because nobody could get there the roads were packed and blah and it was but I went back a year later and and I was taken under the wing of Unran and a lovely woman called what was her name Percheo um I forgot her first name anyway it doesn't matter and so the UN sort of took me all all over the occupied territory I didn't go to Gaza but I went everywhere else and I and I was like that are you this was in 2006 or 2007 and by then it was like I thought how can I've been this blind it is so horrific to watch what's going on and you're driving down this empty you know highway and um Alexia was her name anyway it doesn't matter explaining well you know of course if you're Palestinian you can't use this road they go through the little tunnels and everything's blocked off and because these these are only for settlers these are only Jewish people are allowed to drive on these roads because actually it's illegal for Israeli citizens to go into the occupied territories so so and it was just and and I had long conversations with the elders in the refugee camp in Janine and they were and I'd sit there and listen to these to these stories and and so it became quite clear to me that I couldn't rest until um you know there was some measure of equality in terms of human rights in that part of the Middle East because it's disgusting and it's got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse and so now it is completely awful apartheid fascist state white supremacist colonial settling of indigenous people and attempting to destroy them man by one at a time or maybe many at a time you know it's slow genocide is what the Israeli government is perpetrating there so that's why um my politics now have come down to this tiny platform um which is this platform it's paris 1948 universal declaration of human rights I believe in it so if I'm having a conversation with somebody from the Israeli lobby I will say to them do you believe in it I would say this to Donald Trump or Mike Pompeo or Mike Pence or do you believe in it and if they're honest they go no absolutely are you insane of course we don't believe in human rights well I do I think it's fundamentally important and the only way for this globe to survive is for us to respect the thinking that's gone on since the enlightenment over the last two 300 years and to accept that there that there is a route forward but it but it can only we can only move forward and save this fragile planet that we call home if we cooperate with one another rather than fighting one another it's it's so self-evidently clear and obvious we cannot just be driven by a profit motive and by narrow national self-interest and patriotism the last amazing what I want to say to people who are listening is that the reading assignment that comes with this interview is the 1948 UN declaration of human rights and while you're reading that make sure that you put on dark side of the moon a great soundtrack to the UN declaration Roger Waters thank you so much you're very welcome it's good to see you brother