The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1878 - Roger Waters

00:00:11.000 Thank you very much for doing this.

00:00:13.000 I really appreciate it.

00:00:14.000 I'm a gigantic fan, so it's a real honor.

00:00:17.000 And it's very nice to know that you could actually play pool.

00:00:21.000 Well, we've only played two rikes.

00:00:23.000 Yeah, but I could see.

00:00:24.000 I could see how you move the ball around.

00:00:27.000 You've got to get a little warmed up.

00:00:28.000 You know, we just started.

00:00:30.000 Well, it is true that if you start playing pool against somebody you don't know and you discover that they do understand that control of the cue ball is everything, then that's something.

00:00:40.000 You think, oh, well, maybe we could have a game.

00:00:42.000 Well, as soon as you looked at the table and said, these are very unforgiving pockets, I was like, oh, you know.

00:00:48.000 A little bit, yeah.

00:00:49.000 Yeah.

00:00:51.000 Well, first of all, it's an honor to have you in here.

00:00:54.000 I'm very excited.

00:00:55.000 But second of all, you're in the middle of a lot of things.

00:00:59.000 You've got your tour.

00:01:00.000 You've got a lot of controversy going on.

00:01:03.000 I really enjoyed that conversation that you had with CNN because that kind of conversation is rare to see on air and see someone as informed as you are to have these opinions and express them so honestly and bravely.

00:01:20.000 It was a very interesting conversation.

00:01:23.000 Well, I've known Michael a bit for a year or two.

00:01:28.000 And actually, my last kind of engagement with him, with Michael Smoconish, I'm talking about, right, the interview, was when I was playing in Miami a few years ago.

00:01:39.000 And the local Jewish community decided that I shouldn't be allowed to use local school children to sing Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2, because all during the war...

00:01:52.000 The tours that I did, I always used local children, preferably from, you know, undernourished communities, to come and sing with me, between 8 and 12 of them every night.

00:02:09.000 And they would come in, having listened to the song a bit, and I would rehearse them at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.

00:02:15.000 And then, boom, at 8, they're on stage singing.

00:02:19.000 And they get very excited, obviously.

00:02:23.000 But it's a wonderful thing for them, but also for me and also for the band, have these children come and perform with us on stage.

00:02:33.000 And the mayor of North Miami Beach or wherever it was came under some pressure from the local community.

00:02:41.000 And they weren't allowed to play, so I got some other kids.

00:02:44.000 What was the objection?

00:02:46.000 That I'm an anti-Semite.

00:02:49.000 Obviously I'm not an anti-Semitism.

00:02:50.000 Let's get that clear straight away, if you don't mind.

00:02:55.000 Because I'm obviously not.

00:02:57.000 You can study my record going back as far as you want.

00:03:03.000 Yeah, but that's always the objection because I support BDS and because I have for the last 16 years or so.

00:03:11.000 BDS? You know what BDS is.

00:03:14.000 Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

00:03:16.000 Okay.

00:03:17.000 It's a movement that was started in 2005 in Palestinian civil society and it stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

00:03:28.000 And so it's a movement to try and shine a light on the predicament of the Palestinian people, particularly in the occupied territories, but also, I guess, in Israel itself.

00:03:42.000 Using boycott and divestment from companies like Caterpillar or Hewlett-Packard, people like that, who deal in the illegal settlements in the occupied territory.

00:03:58.000 Sanctions, well, there's not many people out there who are powerful enough to impose sanctions on other people.

00:04:06.000 And most of those with that much power are allies of the Israeli government and so wouldn't do so.

00:04:14.000 But anyway, that's what it is by and large.

00:04:17.000 And since then, we have made great strides in that movement, and it's a much bigger movement than it was.

00:04:23.000 And in consequence, the sort of battle lines have been drawn, but it's got more intense.

00:04:32.000 And it's slightly less gentlemanly sport than it was 16 years ago, in my experience.

00:04:39.000 So 16 years ago, you were allowed to have different opinions about conflicts.

00:04:46.000 Well, no, but nobody knew about the conflict.

00:04:50.000 It was largely unknown that there was a problem at all in the Holy Land, certainly by most of the public in this country, and where I'm from, in the UK as well, and in me.

00:05:04.000 I mean, I had accepted back in 2005 or 6, one of those years, to do a gig in Tel Aviv.

00:05:13.000 I was asked in the middle of a European tour, hey, Raj, they want you to go and do a gig in Tel Aviv.

00:05:18.000 And I went, yeah, right.

00:05:20.000 I didn't think twice about it.

00:05:22.000 So that's where I was then.

00:05:24.000 So I'm not blaming people for not having known about the Zionist project since 1948 and everything that had happened.

00:05:32.000 Although I was vaguely aware of the Yom Kippur War, the 67 War and the 75 War and so on and so forth, I knew a little bit about the history but I wasn't really au fait.

00:05:46.000 And that's how I learned, because as soon as I said I would do that gig, I started to receive emails from supporters of BDS, although it was only five or six months old at the time, mainly from North Africa to start with.

00:06:01.000 But then I got an email from Omaba Guti, who was one of the sort of founding forces behind the beginnings of BDS. And he tried to persuade me to cancel the gig, which had sold out,

00:06:19.000 of course, in a few minutes, you know.

00:06:22.000 And eventually I was persuaded to cancel that gig.

00:06:26.000 But as an act of compromise, as I thought, I feel as if I'm repeating myself.

00:06:34.000 A speech that I've all made already, which I am.

00:06:37.000 That's all right.

00:06:38.000 I've said this often before.

00:06:39.000 Anyway, so I moved the gig to an ecumenical agricultural community called Wahat Asalem in Arabic, and translated into Hebrew, it's Nevis Shalom, so something about peace, where...

00:06:58.000 Muslims and Christians and Druze and atheists all live together in a community and all their children all go to the same school and they all mix together and they live peacefully and grow chickpeas mainly. 0.52

00:07:11.000 As an example to the rest of us, if you like.

00:07:14.000 So we did a gig there in the open air.

00:07:18.000 And it was huge.

00:07:20.000 60,000 Israelis came.

00:07:24.000 What I didn't realize at the time, of course, was, of course, they were all Israelis, because Palestinians aren't allowed to travel.

00:07:29.000 So there couldn't be any Palestinians there.

00:07:32.000 They would need special permission, you know, to cross through checkpoints and things, which they wouldn't get.

00:07:38.000 So we did this gig, and at the end of it, and it was lovely, they were extremely enthusiastic, they knew the work very well, and it was very...

00:07:53.000 And all of that.

00:07:54.000 And lovely food backstage, and it was a warm summer evening.

00:07:57.000 At the end of it, I thought, I'm going to say something.

00:08:01.000 It was euphoric at the end of the gig.

00:08:03.000 And I said, so I made a little speech, and I went, you are the generation of young Israelis who need to make peace with your neighbors, start talking to the Palestinian Authority, and the blah, blah, blah, and whatever.

00:08:18.000 And they went from Pink Floyd to nothing.

00:08:23.000 Nothing.

00:08:24.000 It was like steel shutters had come down behind the eyeballs of every one of those 60,000 young men.

00:08:33.000 They were gone.

00:08:35.000 And I was staggered by that.

00:08:40.000 And I was really shocked, really, really, really shocked.

00:08:44.000 I couldn't believe it.

00:08:45.000 And I saw it.

00:08:46.000 I went back the next year and traveled extensively in the occupied territories.

00:08:50.000 And until you go there and you see it, you cannot believe what a shock it is.

00:08:57.000 You know, things that you wouldn't believe possible anywhere on the world, like different roads for people with different religion.

00:09:04.000 Can you imagine?

00:09:05.000 Really?

00:09:06.000 Yeah, really.

00:09:07.000 Can you imagine you're going from Austin to Dallas and you can only go on the road if you're Christian? 0.99

00:09:17.000 If you're not a Christian, you can't go on the road. 1.00

00:09:20.000 So if you're an atheist or some other thing, you're not allowed to drive on the road. 0.96

00:09:25.000 You have to go on back roads and they're all filled up with boulders and there are checkpoints everywhere.

00:09:31.000 So the local indigenous people are not allowed to use the roads. 1.00

00:09:36.000 And you see that, and when you see it, you think, I don't believe this.

00:09:40.000 But you get to believe it as you drive around.

00:09:42.000 And all the checkpoints, and they have to go this way.

00:09:46.000 Only people with yellow license plates can go through here, which means that they're Jewish Israelis. 0.74

00:09:52.000 And it's mind-numbingly...

00:09:58.000 It fills you with despair when you think, how can this possibly be happening?

00:10:03.000 You know, it's 2007 or whenever it was.

00:10:08.000 How can this be happening in the world?

00:10:11.000 And nobody where I live knows about it.

00:10:13.000 Or if they do, they don't care.

00:10:15.000 How can they not care?

00:10:17.000 And I say, you might bring it up here and say, how would you feel if you weren't a Christian and that meant you couldn't use the road?

00:10:26.000 I mean, it's so weird that it's hard to get your mind around believing that that is the case, but it is.

00:10:32.000 And that is what is called apartheid. 0.53

00:10:36.000 And in those days you couldn't use the word apartheid in relation to Israel.

00:10:40.000 It was completely verboten in 2006. You could not use the word.

00:10:47.000 You would have been strung up in the press and everywhere else and accused of being a Holocaust denier and this and that and Hitler and whatever.

00:10:56.000 Now it's very difficult for anyone to have a conversation about Israel and Palestine without using the word apartheid because it is in the lexicon and the problem is far more in the light and we are looking at it more and there's more information for all of us about it than there was then.

00:11:21.000 It's the work that BDS has done and so it has made progress and I'm glad it has because what I desperately hope to live to see is a holy land, I don't care what it's called, from the River Jordan to the sea where the people all have equal religious and political and social rights,

00:11:43.000 all of them equal.

00:11:45.000 And so that's what I work for in the movement.

00:11:47.000 And maybe we should talk about something else because if you wind me up, I might go on for hours.

00:11:55.000 Well, I'd be happy to wind you up.

00:11:56.000 I mean, the definition of apartheid is, yes, it is. 0.93

00:12:00.000 It's segregation.

00:12:01.000 I mean, that is segregation, clearly.

00:12:03.000 It's the oppression of one ethnic group by another ethnic group. 0.89

00:12:07.000 Yes.

00:12:07.000 For those reasons, for the fact that they're a different ethnic group.

00:12:11.000 So the South African model clearly applies, except that the South Africans who survived the South African model all say that the Israeli model is far worse than the white South African model was.

00:12:26.000 The white South Africans at least tried to build Well, they've poured money in for a start, trying to keep the black population quiet, which they failed to do. 0.98

00:12:36.000 But both Desmond Tutu, before he sadly died, and Mandela, obviously, as well, both came out completely and said, this is a lot worse than our conditions were in South Africa before apartheid.

00:12:49.000 So just discussing this and having compassion for the plight of the Palestinian people, that made them categorize you as anti-Semitic?

00:12:57.000 Yeah.

00:12:58.000 Did anyone have – and I'm sure someone must have talked to you about this segregation.

00:13:04.000 Did anyone have any kind of argument that they wanted to bring to you for any justification of that?

00:13:11.000 You mean from the Israelis?

00:13:12.000 Yes.

00:13:13.000 No.

00:13:14.000 That's why they call me anti-Semitic.

00:13:16.000 That's why they label anyone who criticizes the apartheid policies of the state of Israel without criticizing the Jewish religion or any Jewish person.

00:13:27.000 I mean, the fact that a lot of the people who are in the government are of the Jewish faith means that they can somehow feel they can conflate criticism of the apartheid policies without With the general criticism of an anti-Semitic criticism of the Jewish people or people who...

00:13:46.000 Well, nice try, fellas, but it won't wash. 0.84

00:13:50.000 That's not what it is.

00:13:52.000 And most of us who get labelled as anti-Semites are not.

00:13:56.000 And like Jeremy Corbyn, for instance, the guy who was removed from the Labour Party in England on the grounds that he was accused of being anti-Semitic.

00:14:08.000 He's left-wing and he's pro-Palestinian, pro the idea that they should have human rights, the Palestinian people.

00:14:17.000 Who, after all, were the huge majority of the indigenous people in the Holy Land back in the start of the 20th century, before the start of the Zionist enterprise, which didn't really get going until 1920,

00:14:34.000 although the idea...

00:14:39.000 The idea was happening in the late 19th century, in the 1880s and 1890s.

00:14:46.000 I can't remember the guy's name now, but he was a Russian who thought up the idea of a return to the promised land, as it's called.

00:14:56.000 Out of all the people that perform music and travel and are as prominent as you are, you're probably one of the most outspoken and informed when it comes to issues on foreign policy and human rights.

00:15:11.000 When did this become a big part of your life and when did discussing this publicly become a big part of your life?

00:15:20.000 Well, it became a big part of my life the day my father died, I think.

00:15:25.000 I mean, I wouldn't know because I was only five months old.

00:15:28.000 My father, as you might or may not know, died at Anzio on the 18th of February, 1944, and I was born September 1943, so I was only a few months old.

00:15:40.000 But when I started to understand some of this, Was when he didn't come home and start picking me up from school when I was a little kid.

00:15:54.000 And then, all through my childhood, I was brought up by my mother, my brother, and my big brother John and I were brought up single-handed by my mum, who was a schoolteacher, but she was also very left-wing.

00:16:11.000 She's an interesting woman because she came from a very kind of middle-class family in London.

00:16:19.000 Funnily enough, they lived in Golders Green, which was sort of well known for being a Jewish community in North London.

00:16:27.000 Her father ran a business that was sort of middleman in fancy goods, toys and things like that.

00:16:35.000 So there was a big warehouse in London.

00:16:38.000 But my mother went off to a boarding school, girls' school, so she was brought up in a fairly straight-laced, English, Christian, middle-class way.

00:16:49.000 She then trained as a teacher, and her first teacher training was in a town called Bradford, which is in the north of London.

00:16:58.000 Not north of London, north of England, far north of England, in Yorkshire.

00:17:04.000 And it was a huge eye-opener to her.

00:17:07.000 There she was.

00:17:08.000 The first winter comes along.

00:17:10.000 It's really cold.

00:17:12.000 There's a foot of snow on the floor.

00:17:14.000 And she suddenly notices that half the kids in her class are walking to school with no shoes.

00:17:20.000 And something went, bing!

00:17:24.000 This would have been in 1935, 1936, something like that.

00:17:28.000 And she suddenly went...

00:17:31.000 What?

00:17:31.000 And she started to look into social conditions there in the industrial north.

00:17:37.000 And even then, in the mid to late 30s, she understood that there were inequalities in the context of the society that she lived in that she felt a personal need to do something about.

00:17:51.000 And she became extremely left-wing.

00:17:56.000 Anyway...

00:17:58.000 Cut to later on.

00:17:59.000 So our front room was always a Labour Party committee room and she was always off in the evenings canvassing at elections and dragging me and my brother to British-China Friendship Association meetings in the evening.

00:18:14.000 But she was always very careful and clear with us that she would I remember one day she said to me and my brother, when we come back from a meeting, interestingly enough, at the Friends Meeting House,

00:18:30.000 which is the place the Quakers meet, you know, wherever it is in the world.

00:18:34.000 It's always called the Friends Meeting House.

00:18:36.000 And we've been watching films of K-pop-clad Chinese, you know, soldiers fighting against Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist puppet government and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:18:47.000 And she said, you know where we've been tonight, don't you, Roger?

00:18:49.000 And I said, no.

00:18:50.000 And she said, we've been at the Friends Meeting House, that is where the Quakers meet.

00:18:54.000 She said, well, as you know, I'm an atheist, so I can't subscribe to their religious beliefs, but I will say this, they are very, very good people.

00:19:07.000 I can still recount that story now because it's so important.

00:19:11.000 You don't have to subscribe to people's beliefs.

00:19:15.000 I can be a radical atheist and you can be a Hindu.

00:19:19.000 The important thing is that we're good people.

00:19:23.000 That we have hearts and that we care about our brothers and sisters.

00:19:27.000 And my mum did.

00:19:28.000 I'm going to tell you one more mum story and then I'll stop about mum.

00:19:34.000 Because this is the most important bit.

00:19:36.000 I was 13 years old.

00:19:39.000 I had just gone through a phase where I suddenly realized I was going to die.

00:19:44.000 I don't know if all adolescents have this existential crisis in their early puberty.

00:19:52.000 But I did.

00:19:53.000 And I thought, F me.

00:19:57.000 I'm going to die. 1.00

00:19:58.000 This is scary as shit. 1.00

00:20:01.000 You know, oh my God. 0.99

00:20:02.000 And I was, it might have been that or it might have been something else.

00:20:05.000 But anyway, something was worrying me and it was probably more some kind of political thing that I'd latched onto, maybe through her.

00:20:14.000 And she looked at me and she said, all right, I'm going to give you some advice now.

00:20:19.000 Come on then, Mum.

00:20:21.000 All through your life, you're going to be faced with difficult questions and you're going to have to figure things out.

00:20:27.000 This is my advice.

00:20:29.000 When anything crops up, so it could be Israel, Palestine, it could be anything.

00:20:33.000 It doesn't matter what it is.

00:20:34.000 You must read, read, read, read, read.

00:20:38.000 That's what Smokonish was telling me.

00:20:40.000 He hadn't.

00:20:41.000 He'd only read one side.

00:20:43.000 That's the difference between Michael McConnish and me.

00:20:46.000 I've tried to look at all sides of these things, so I know a bit more what I'm doing.

00:20:50.000 Anyway, she said, read, read, read.

00:20:52.000 And, very important, learn everything you can about the subject that's troubling you.

00:20:57.000 And, importantly, look at it from both sides.

00:21:01.000 There's another opinion.

00:21:02.000 Make sure you study that as well.

00:21:05.000 It'll take some time.

00:21:06.000 It'll be hard work.

00:21:07.000 But when you've done that, the work is over.

00:21:10.000 You have done all the heavy lifting.

00:21:14.000 The rest of it is easy.

00:21:15.000 And I went, uh, what is the rest of it, Mum?

00:21:19.000 And she looked at me and she said, the rest of it?

00:21:23.000 Well, that's simple.

00:21:24.000 You do the right thing.

00:21:29.000 Sounds like you had an amazing mum. 1.00

00:21:31.000 Amazing, amazing.

00:21:32.000 Imagine giving...

00:21:33.000 Every young adolescent should be given that advice by a parent or someone they respect.

00:21:42.000 That's been jangling around in my head ever since.

00:21:46.000 Not every day, but very often I remember it.

00:21:49.000 And I tell it to anybody who cares to listen as well because it was so important.

00:21:56.000 It's incredibly important and not said nearly enough.

00:22:00.000 It's rare.

00:22:01.000 That's what's amazing.

00:22:03.000 Like it sounds, it resonates, it sounds so powerful and true and yet rare.

00:22:08.000 Yeah, but what happens then, if we're sitting down the pub and I tell you that story and we've got all night, one of us will have another drink and then we might start talking about the philosophical implications Of how you decide what's the right thing to do.

00:22:26.000 Right.

00:22:27.000 Because some bloke listening to this wherever, it doesn't matter where they are, who's Zionist and who believes in the Zionist enterprise in Israel and in the occupied territory, in fact in the whole of the palace.

00:22:42.000 A promised land.

00:22:43.000 Let's call it the promised land.

00:22:44.000 It's dangerous to call it the promised land because then you start getting biblical.

00:22:50.000 Promised?

00:22:51.000 Who was it promised to?

00:22:52.000 Ah, it was promised to the Israelis, you know.

00:22:54.000 Whoa, sorry, I didn't mean the promised land.

00:22:56.000 I meant the Middle East.

00:22:58.000 What do you mean the Middle East?

00:22:59.000 That was made up by Sykes and Pico after the First World War, you know.

00:23:04.000 But you do get into the thing of, wow, now this really is a fascinating conversation.

00:23:10.000 The right thing to do?

00:23:12.000 Should we start talking about now and what's going on in the world now and what the right thing to do might be?

00:23:21.000 I mean, you said a few minutes ago that I've been a bit controversial, particularly recently.

00:23:28.000 And part of the controversy is about the Ukraine and what's the right thing to do.

00:23:35.000 All I've done about the Ukraine is to try to lend what little weight I have to put that tiny bit of power I have in my shoulder To the wheel of encouraging anybody I can get to listen to stop the war, 0.85

00:23:52.000 including Putin.

00:23:53.000 I've written to Putin.

00:23:55.000 I wrote to Putin four or five days ago because people were saying, why don't you tell Putin?

00:24:00.000 Well, just hold on a minute.

00:24:02.000 If you want to join this conversation, you have to do a bit of research.

00:24:07.000 Well, you don't have to, obviously.

00:24:11.000 But you should.

00:24:12.000 You should.

00:24:13.000 It would be wise.

00:24:14.000 If you took my mother's advice, you would before you expressed an opinion about what's the right thing to do.

00:24:23.000 And also, when you're thinking about it, if you want my advice, you will constantly put yourselves in the position of that young Ukrainian man or woman on the front line and that young Russian man or woman in the front line and their parents and their uncles and aunts and their brothers And sisters and the misery and pain and the lack of anything good at the end.

00:24:48.000 And the more it escalates, the more we send arms, the more Putin... 0.57

00:24:54.000 The only thing that they can do is start to talk to one another, just like JFK and Nikita Khrushchev did in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

00:25:08.000 Which was kept secret for years and years afterwards because JFK didn't want to look like a wimp.

00:25:17.000 He didn't want to look as if he'd look, but he did.

00:25:20.000 He and Nikita Khrushchev spoke on the telephone often.

00:25:24.000 And at the end of it, they did a quid pro quo deal where JFK said, I'll take all our medium-range missiles out of Turkey and wherever else it was.

00:25:34.000 Turkey was the main one.

00:25:36.000 If you take your missiles out of Cuba.

00:25:39.000 So they put their hands across the ocean and shook hands and that was the end of it.

00:25:44.000 And they did it.

00:25:45.000 And they kept their word.

00:25:46.000 They kept their word to that bargain.

00:25:49.000 And that led on to the later conversations between Reagan and Gorbachev and the non-proliferation treaties and all the other things that made our planet a little bit safer from the possibility of nuclear catastrophe.

00:26:03.000 Not safe, but a little bit.

00:26:05.000 Until now.

00:26:07.000 And now, By the second it gets more and more and more and more dangerous as this thing is allowed to escalate.

00:26:15.000 So I'm making my position entirely.

00:26:17.000 All I'm interested in is a ceasefire and for talks to begin.

00:26:21.000 That's all.

00:26:21.000 Nothing else.

00:26:23.000 What did you say to Putin when you wrote to him?

00:26:26.000 I said that friends of mine think that...

00:26:28.000 I said...

00:26:29.000 I need to pull the letter up if you want to really hear it.

00:26:34.000 But...

00:26:34.000 Sure.

00:26:36.000 Okay.

00:26:38.000 I'll tell you one thing I said before I pull it up, because it'll take a minute, was that I said some friends of mine, because I have a guitar-playing friend in England who wrote to me, why are you trying to suggest peace and a ceasefire? 0.94

00:26:50.000 This man has to be, he's a monster.

00:26:53.000 He's going to invade Poland and then he'll invade the rest of Europe and then, and unless we stand up to him now, we're blah, [... 0.99

00:27:02.000 And all of that.

00:27:04.000 So one of the things I said to Putin, a friend of mine thinks that you're going to invite Poland and the other Baltic states and that you're then going to influence on Europe and blah, blah, blah.

00:27:13.000 If that's true, please tell us now so we can all just say, all right, and blow ourselves to smithereens because that's what's going to happen if you do that.

00:27:22.000 For sure.

00:27:24.000 For absolutely sure.

00:27:25.000 You cannot.

00:27:26.000 If you do that, you will start World War III. We know that the Ukraine situation is complicated and it's been 20 years in the making and it's...

00:27:38.000 Well, I won't go into the American end of it.

00:27:42.000 I mean, I will, if you've got a minute.

00:27:45.000 Yeah, I've got plenty of time.

00:27:46.000 Yeah, I had Tulsi Gabbard on the other day.

00:27:49.000 Yeah, how is she?

00:27:50.000 She's great.

00:27:50.000 Good.

00:27:51.000 And we discussed this very thing and we discussed the United States when they orchestrated a coup in Ukraine and how NATO has been moving their weapons closer and closer to the Russian line.

00:28:08.000 Yeah.

00:28:08.000 And that this is instigating.

00:28:11.000 And they've been saying all along you're breaking the agreement that was made between Baker, who was Secretary of State in 1990, and Gorbachev, where Gorbachev said, okay, I will agree to the reunification of Germany so long as NATO doesn't move one inch closer to the Russian border than the eastern borders of Germany.

00:28:31.000 And they went, fine, agreed.

00:28:32.000 Yeah.

00:28:33.000 And they've reneged on it completely since then.

00:28:35.000 I think what was very important in the conversation that you had with CNN is not that Russia is good and that, you know, we should support Russia.

00:28:44.000 There was none of that.

00:28:45.000 What you were essentially saying was that we have to be honest about what the United States has done.

00:28:50.000 And that narrative is never discussed.

00:28:53.000 When he was talking about the dangers of China and you brought up the fact that China hasn't invaded anyone in over a hundred years.

00:29:00.000 Like, how can you say that when you know about all the interventionalist foreign policy decisions that the United States has made overseas, and then you look at what China's done?

00:29:08.000 Well, they have, actually.

00:29:09.000 They invaded Tibet in 1959. Oh, that's true. 0.92

00:29:12.000 Which is a huge thing, and it's something that I'm going to bring up, because it's something I've only learned about recently.

00:29:20.000 Funnily enough, I learned about it from my friend Eric Repair, who's a very well-known chef in New York, and he's a Buddhist.

00:29:27.000 And so he travels to Bhutan at least once a year.

00:29:30.000 And he was recently in India having meetings with people who are...

00:29:36.000 And we were talking about it, about the predicament of the Tibetan people.

00:29:42.000 What I never understood was that Tibet is one third of the land area of China.

00:29:50.000 Really?

00:29:51.000 Is that big?

00:29:53.000 Apparently, yeah.

00:29:54.000 And I haven't yet kind of...

00:29:56.000 Look, this was a few days ago.

00:29:58.000 I haven't checked it all out and looked on the map.

00:30:01.000 But, yes.

00:30:03.000 I would have never imagined.

00:30:04.000 I know.

00:30:05.000 And you think, well, why the hell did they...

00:30:06.000 Who wants, you know, hundreds of square miles of mountains and things?

00:30:11.000 Well, the Chinese. 0.97

00:30:12.000 Because it's not just mountains.

00:30:14.000 It's water, which is hugely important.

00:30:18.000 The Himalayas, all the glacial streams, they feed water, not just to India and Pakistan, but also to the northeast of the whole of China as well.

00:30:33.000 Plus, apparently, and not surprisingly, It's packed with everything that you make chips out of.

00:30:41.000 Of course.

00:30:42.000 It's packed and packed with an absolute...

00:30:45.000 I nearly said it's a gold mine.

00:30:47.000 Well, it's not a gold mine.

00:30:48.000 It's a mineral mine.

00:30:49.000 It's a mineral mine.

00:30:50.000 It's everything that everybody who cares about making money in the world desperately needs and wants.

00:30:57.000 So it's a fascinating subject.

00:31:00.000 Well, particularly China, right?

00:31:02.000 Because China is so involved in the Congo in extracting these minerals.

00:31:04.000 Right.

00:31:04.000 Well, yeah.

00:31:05.000 I mean, yeah, but to their credit, they didn't invade and kill everybody like the Europeans did back in the, you know, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th century. 0.68

00:31:16.000 They actually went, you know, would you like to borrow some money?

00:31:20.000 Which is more of an American plot.

00:31:22.000 Yeah, it's more of a kind of modern way of doing it.

00:31:25.000 And who knows what they do if the people say, nope, no thank you, we're good.

00:31:32.000 But they said thank you.

00:31:33.000 They said thank you, yeah.

00:31:34.000 Sure.

00:31:35.000 Yeah, of course they should.

00:31:39.000 They should be allowed to do business with whoever they want.

00:31:42.000 I believe in the idea of what's called free trade up to that point.

00:31:48.000 There has to be a fair crack of the whip of everybody.

00:31:52.000 And by and large, when multinational corporations want to invest in underdeveloped countries, they want to do it on their terms.

00:32:02.000 And they don't want the people who live there to get anything out of it.

00:32:05.000 I mean, I've been involved in a court battle for at least 10 years now with Chevron.

00:32:11.000 Because of the pollution that they caused in the Amazon, in northeast Ecuador, with a friend of mine called Steve Donziger, who was sent to prison for acting on behalf of these people.

00:32:28.000 I know I'm digressing.

00:32:30.000 Well, the Donziger case is atrocious.

00:32:32.000 It's a terrifying case because there's no reason why they had that man in prison.

00:32:38.000 And there's no reason why they keep him under house arrest.

00:32:40.000 Well, there is a reason.

00:32:42.000 Yeah, right.

00:32:42.000 But no righteous.

00:32:44.000 No legal reason.

00:32:45.000 No legal reason.

00:32:47.000 Righteous.

00:32:47.000 That's interesting because that comes back to my mother and doing the right thing.

00:32:52.000 Yeah.

00:32:52.000 Obviously, the right thing to do if you were the law in the United States would be to look at the facts of the matter and come to the conclusion that Chevron should give the $9.5 billion to the people whose lives they've destroyed making money or Texaco was the company who actually did it.

00:33:14.000 But, things being what they are, that's not the way the law works.

00:33:18.000 The law operates to support whoever can afford it, actually, which in this case is Chevron.

00:33:24.000 They still haven't paid a penny, and they're still fighting, and they will go on fighting.

00:33:29.000 And speaking as somebody who's supporting the other side, who doesn't have bottomless pockets, it's hard.

00:33:35.000 It's hard to find the amount of money that they spend on it.

00:33:42.000 Because they're worried of a domino effect, that if they lose this case, then they're going to lose the case in Nigeria, and they're going to lose the case in Australia, and suddenly they can see the whole pack of cards beginning to collapse.

00:33:55.000 Well, it should collapse.

00:33:56.000 Pay up.

00:33:57.000 You've made enough profits out of the indigenous people all over the world. 1.00

00:34:02.000 It's just a scary precedent that they were able to arrest Dawson Girl like that, that they were able to keep him in jail, the way they did it.

00:34:09.000 Yeah, and it was completely corrupt.

00:34:12.000 Back in 2014, they produced a RICO trial, which is, you know, organized crime.

00:34:18.000 It's regulations or something against organized crime.

00:34:22.000 So they pretended he was a gangster on a fraudulent mission, and they brought this case in the Southern District of New York.

00:34:31.000 Incredible that they could do it.

00:34:35.000 Incredible that the media is ignoring it, too.

00:34:38.000 This isn't something that people are absolutely outraged about.

00:34:40.000 Well, what isn't the media ignoring?

00:34:43.000 From the media, with the possible exception of you.

00:34:47.000 And some others who have great podcasts as well, but are independent of the mainstream media.

00:34:52.000 The media only has one message, which is support the status quo.

00:34:57.000 Right.

00:34:57.000 All of us work for whoever it may be, and we don't need to get all conspiracy theory about, you know, secret societies.

00:35:06.000 We know it's the very, very wealthy half of 1% who...

00:35:13.000 Tell everybody what to do.

00:35:14.000 They're called the ruling class because they are the ruling class. 0.65

00:35:18.000 And we all do what we're told by the media, who by and large repeat the same mantra over and over again.

00:35:25.000 So it's a bit tricky.

00:35:28.000 Yeah.

00:35:29.000 Well, the media has failed in their objective dissemination of information.

00:35:34.000 That doesn't exist anymore.

00:35:36.000 They're bought and paid by the advertisers.

00:35:38.000 And the advertisers are enormously powerful.

00:35:42.000 And so things like that that are inconvenient realities, like the Dossinger trial, they just swept under the rug.

00:35:50.000 Yeah.

00:35:51.000 Which it should be outrageous.

00:35:53.000 It should be something that's on...

00:35:54.000 Well, it is outrageous, of course.

00:35:57.000 But I did a gig a few weeks ago in D.C. and played to, I don't know, 16,000 people or something.

00:36:03.000 And the next day I dragged myself out of bed and pushed over to the steps of the DOG. Knowing full well what I would find, which is my friend Randy Craglico and a van with a sign on it, and about 40 of the same activists I've seen at every gathering in support of Stephen Donziger and his freedom for the last 10 years.

00:36:29.000 You know?

00:36:30.000 Yeah.

00:36:30.000 It's like...

00:36:31.000 And I was...

00:36:31.000 I actually made a little speech that day and was saying...

00:36:35.000 You know, I would be happy if there were four million of us here.

00:36:38.000 And there should be standing under that memorial, the Washington Memorial, in front of the Capitol and saying, what happened to democracy?

00:36:48.000 Where is the rule of law that we all pretend we care about?

00:36:52.000 Where are the freedoms and liberties and this and that and the other?

00:36:58.000 They've sort of disappeared under a roller coaster of consumerism.

00:37:03.000 You know, as we know, so while we're having our little meetings, people are wandering by, like, they don't even know we're there.

00:37:10.000 And they have no idea what we're there for or what we're talking about.

00:37:15.000 So yeah, it's extremely frustrating, but luckily there are those 40 or 50 people, and they have hearts of gold, all right?

00:37:25.000 And they will not shut up, however few of them there are.

00:37:29.000 And luckily you're here as well, and I can come on here and talk about these things.

00:37:34.000 Without being dismissed as a crank or a conspiracy theorist.

00:37:39.000 I don't know if you saw, but I did an interview with Rolling Stone.

00:37:43.000 Because I remember Rolling Stone when it was a magazine that was sort of about rock and roll.

00:37:48.000 But it also had a kind of semi-progressive liberal stance to it.

00:37:55.000 Well, not anymore.

00:37:56.000 It's changed hands.

00:37:58.000 Well, it doesn't matter.

00:37:59.000 I had Jan on yesterday.

00:38:01.000 Oh! 0.60

00:38:02.000 Yeah.

00:38:02.000 Did you?

00:38:03.000 Yeah.

00:38:04.000 I miss Jan.

00:38:06.000 Yeah.

00:38:06.000 He was the heart and soul of that place.

00:38:09.000 He was the heart and soul of Rolling Stone.

00:38:10.000 And he still is a progressive hippie at heart.

00:38:13.000 Yeah, of course he is.

00:38:14.000 I mean, talking to him yesterday, it's just, he bleeds it.

00:38:18.000 And his daughter is called India, as is mine.

00:38:22.000 Mine's a bit older, because I remember him coming to me one day, I said, is your daughter called India?

00:38:26.000 I said, yeah.

00:38:28.000 He said, ah.

00:38:30.000 Yeah, the first girl I think of his is called India, too.

00:38:33.000 Anyway.

00:38:35.000 Your Putin letter.

00:38:36.000 Oh! 0.60

00:38:37.000 I'm not avoiding you.

00:38:39.000 No, I know you're not.

00:38:40.000 You just pulled it up.

00:38:40.000 I just wanted to keep it on track.

00:38:42.000 I just want to see where I can find it.

00:38:44.000 I know what I'm going to do.

00:38:46.000 I'm going to go into Word and search for it.

00:38:51.000 Do you know if he received this?

00:38:54.000 Well, it was open.

00:38:56.000 I'm sure somebody will have told him about it.

00:38:59.000 Sure.

00:38:59.000 I'm absolutely certain.

00:39:01.000 But obviously he hasn't responded to it.

00:39:03.000 I mean, he is, you know, he's the president of Russia.

00:39:08.000 There's no reason why he would.

00:39:10.000 So it's not in there.

00:39:12.000 Right.

00:39:12.000 Let me do a search.

00:39:15.000 Letter.

00:39:16.000 I'll just say letter and see what comes.

00:39:18.000 Open letter to Vladimir Putin.

00:39:21.000 Okay.

00:39:21.000 Here we go.

00:39:22.000 There it is.

00:39:23.000 Jamie actually pulled it up on the screen.

00:39:28.000 Well, there you go.

00:39:30.000 So, dear President Putin, since the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine on February the 24th this year, I've tried to use my small influence to encourage a ceasefire and a diplomatic settlement that addresses the security needs of both Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

00:39:47.000 In that endeavor, I've written two open letters to Mrs. Elena Zelenska, the wife of the Ukrainian president.

00:39:53.000 I can give you those letters as well.

00:39:55.000 These letters are readily available on the internet.

00:39:58.000 I'm increasingly asked to write to you, too.

00:40:00.000 So here goes.

00:40:01.000 First, would you like to see an end to this war?

00:40:04.000 If you were to reply and say, yes, please, that would immediately make things a lot easier.

00:40:09.000 He has, by the way, yesterday.

00:40:11.000 He said, yes, please.

00:40:13.000 Really?

00:40:13.000 Yes.

00:40:13.000 He made a long speech with the accession speech of Donetsk and Lugansk and Kirshan and the other people.

00:40:24.000 Bit of Ukraine that they had the referendum and people said, can we be part of Russia, please?

00:40:31.000 Anyway, that's what that's about.

00:40:33.000 So, if you were to come out and say, oh yeah, if you were to come out and say, also the Russian Federation has no further territorial interest beyond the security of the Russian-speaking populations of the Crimea,

00:40:49.000 Donetsk and Luhansk, that would help too.

00:40:51.000 I say this because I know some people who think you want to overrun the whole of Europe, starting with Poland and the rest of the Baltic states. 1.00

00:41:00.000 If you do, fuck you. 1.00

00:41:02.000 And we might as well all stop playing the desperately dangerous game of nuclear chicken that the hawks on both sides of the Atlantic seem so comfortable with and have at it. 1.00

00:41:13.000 Yep, just blow each other and the world to smithereens.

00:41:18.000 The problem is I have kids and grandkids and so do most of my brothers and sisters all over the world.

00:41:23.000 And none of us would relish that outcome.

00:41:26.000 So please, Mr. Putin, indulge me and make us that assurance.

00:41:30.000 That he hasn't done yet.

00:41:32.000 But I have no doubt that...

00:41:34.000 It's part and parcel of what he is now saying publicly.

00:41:38.000 All right, back to the table.

00:41:39.000 If I've read your previous speeches correctly, would you like to negotiate a state of neutrality for a sovereign neighboring Ukraine?

00:41:47.000 Is that correct?

00:41:49.000 Assuming such a peace could be negotiated, it would have to include an absolute binding agreement not to invade anyone ever again.

00:41:57.000 Full stop.

00:41:58.000 I know, I know, the USA and NATO invade other sovereign nations at the drop of a hat or for a few barrels of oil, but that doesn't mean you should.

00:42:08.000 Your invasion of Ukraine took me completely by surprise. 0.89

00:42:11.000 It was a heinous war of aggression, provoked or not.

00:42:16.000 When Mrs. Zelenska replied to me via Twitter, I was very surprised.

00:42:21.000 And mightily moved.

00:42:22.000 If you were to reply to me, I would mightily respect you for it and take it as an honorable move in the right direction towards a sustainable peace.

00:42:33.000 Yours sincerely.

00:42:34.000 So what did Putin say in terms of wanting a resolution?

00:42:40.000 Well, you're going to have to look up his succession speech because I'm not going to start trying to quote Putin in translation without some words in front of me because I could get it wrong and blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:42:52.000 He said one thing that could be seen as combative, which I can remember, he said.

00:42:58.000 He said, I want to come to the table.

00:43:00.000 I want to cease fire.

00:43:02.000 I want to negotiate peace, not dictate peace, negotiate peace.

00:43:08.000 With the Ukraine, with Zelenska, he said, but the will of the people in the Donetsk, Lubansk, Kirshen, and whatever the one is whose name I can't remember, is inviolate.

00:43:22.000 That is not up for discussion.

00:43:25.000 Zelenska, in response, said... 0.99

00:43:31.000 I will not negotiate with Russia until Putin has been removed.

00:43:35.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:43:37.000 And you go, President Zelensky, I mean, that really is...

00:43:43.000 That's an insane thing to say.

00:43:45.000 Yeah, it's poking in the eye with a sharp stick, and it's not helpful at all.

00:43:49.000 No.

00:43:50.000 Anyway.

00:43:51.000 It's also not likely to happen.

00:43:54.000 I think it's extremely unlikely.

00:43:56.000 There's nothing unites people more than an existential attack upon what they consider to be their sovereignty.

00:44:03.000 And let us not forget, anybody who would like to join this conversation with me or John Mearsheimer or any of the other people who are pro-peace and pro-diplomacy and pro-negotiations and pro-learning to get on with all our brothers and sisters in Russia who are very good people.

00:44:24.000 As my mother would say, my mother used to say that about the Americans, because she came here for two years on an exchange when she was a student, and she spent the summer near Akron in Ohio at a Girl Scout camp,

00:44:39.000 and then she spent another few months in Texas.

00:44:42.000 So that was her thing.

00:44:43.000 And I'll never forget, she used to say to me, you know, Roger, the Americans...

00:44:52.000 They're really very interesting people.

00:44:54.000 He said, they're very good people.

00:44:56.000 They're very good-hearted people.

00:44:59.000 They look after you.

00:45:01.000 They're very, very hospitable and very, very good in that way.

00:45:05.000 She said, but they are also very naive.

00:45:10.000 And I thought, wow.

00:45:11.000 I mean, this is from years and years ago.

00:45:14.000 I wrote a poem.

00:45:15.000 I'm going to show you this.

00:45:18.000 I'll pull this up earlier.

00:45:19.000 So if you don't mind, there's a poem that pertains to this that I wrote.

00:45:26.000 How do I find this?

00:45:30.000 Oh, here it is.

00:45:33.000 Oh, brilliant.

00:45:34.000 I found it immediately.

00:45:38.000 All right.

00:45:38.000 So, I wrote this just after G.W. Bush was elected for the second time.

00:45:50.000 And it's just called America.

00:45:53.000 It used to be called Why Cannot the Good Prevail?

00:45:55.000 I need to wet my whistle.

00:46:00.000 Or I shall run out of spittle before I get the good bits.

00:46:06.000 Alright, yeah, I can keep those up.

00:46:08.000 Okay, here we go.

00:46:09.000 It's short.

00:46:12.000 America.

00:46:16.000 Why cannot the good prevail?

00:46:18.000 Here, in America, there is at heart a people just and true, open, sometimes to the point of ridicule.

00:46:30.000 Good neighbours to rebuild the barn, the doctor's note of Western legend carried forth beyond the grave.

00:46:39.000 I knew your pa, enough.

00:46:43.000 In caucuses across the land, deliberate they'll always stand, defenders of the Rosenbergs, symbolic of that yearning to be better than before.

00:46:54.000 They never will give up their brother to the grocer's cold machine, belt welts livid from the strong arm of the law.

00:47:03.000 On campuses, in boardrooms, over giving thanks and pumpkin pie, on hustings in committee rooms, whenever tyrants loomed, we always held in our esteem the ones who hold on to the dream,

00:47:20.000 unflinching while the bullies pose and fiddle on the hill. 0.98

00:47:26.000 Has commerce so reduced the free that, blinded like a tot, contaminated by the dogshit in the grass, we blunder, slaves to humbug and this Texan dynasty? 0.99

00:47:41.000 No. 0.63

00:47:42.000 Beyond the grip of trade, the young strain beautiful and proud, the hoar-frost breath of new blood needs but nudges from the old forgotten guard to scale the moral high grounds in the clouds.

00:48:02.000 It makes me almost emotional to read that because I wrote that 18 years ago now. 0.98

00:48:08.000 But the idea of a younger generation coming up and saying, enough with this bullshit. 1.00

00:48:14.000 This is bullshit. 1.00

00:48:16.000 This is who we are. 1.00

00:48:18.000 We are the good neighbour to rebuild the barn.

00:48:21.000 That's who we want to be.

00:48:25.000 I think the young people do have good hearts and good intentions.

00:48:31.000 It's just the narrative is so cloudy and it's so difficult to sort out what's actually going on versus what you're being told.

00:48:40.000 Yeah.

00:48:40.000 That people just sort of lose interest in it, except for the very few that are very driven and very disciplined and really do spend the time to look at things.

00:48:49.000 And those people ultimately usually wind up becoming activists or very involved at least.

00:48:54.000 Yeah.

00:48:56.000 And many of them cling to their activism till their dying day.

00:49:01.000 Like me, for instance.

00:49:03.000 But I know so many.

00:49:04.000 And there are men and women that You just want to hug, you just want to go, oh my god, you're such a, you're so dogged, but also brave,

00:49:20.000 and you've got such a big heart that you care about people enough to make a fuss.

00:49:27.000 It makes a difference.

00:49:29.000 Sometimes it doesn't feel like it does, but that signal does get out there.

00:49:35.000 And the people that have that signal, as small as their audience might be, occasionally that signal will reach someone else and they'll spread it.

00:49:46.000 Yeah.

00:49:47.000 It's like, I mean, this is all right.

00:49:51.000 Luckily, we've got time.

00:49:52.000 We've got all the time in the world.

00:49:53.000 Which is huge, because that jogs a bit of my brain that wants to say, go on then, if you could paint a picture of the future, what might it include?

00:50:04.000 What would be the first step?

00:50:06.000 You're the king of everything.

00:50:08.000 What's the first thing that you do tomorrow?

00:50:10.000 We've got to take money out of politics.

00:50:12.000 Number one.

00:50:13.000 Citizens United.

00:50:15.000 Go on.

00:50:16.000 Number one, take money out of politics. 1.00

00:50:18.000 Because the decisions that are being made are not being made in the best interest of the people.

00:50:22.000 They're being made in the best interest in the people who have money.

00:50:25.000 Quite right.

00:50:26.000 Well, I'm with you on that.

00:50:27.000 That's the number one thing.

00:50:28.000 That's the number one reason why we get involved in wars that we have no business in.

00:50:34.000 I mean, Eisenhower warned us about that when he was leaving office with that speech about the military-industrial complex.

00:50:40.000 I don't know if you noticed, because I sent you a stick of my show, but before we do the song Sheep, the last thing, it says, Orwell was right to warn us in Brave New World in 1984, and Aldous Huxley was right to warn us of the coming dystopia in,

00:50:55.000 yeah, no, Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, and Dwight D. Eisenhower was right to warn us in his military industrial speech.

00:51:05.000 I was right to warn us in my song Sheep.

00:51:09.000 And then we play it.

00:51:11.000 Anyway.

00:51:12.000 Well, I'm really excited to see your show tomorrow night.

00:51:15.000 But one of the things that's so cool about your show is that you have all of these messages that are tied into the music.

00:51:24.000 And you have this incredible visual accoutrement to this gigantic thing that goes along with your show.

00:51:32.000 Yeah, there's no question that visually and sonically it's impressive and also I use my almost, that's not my whole body of work, but a small bit of things that go back to the beginning of when I started writing songs and things.

00:51:49.000 So we play about half of Dark Side of the Moon and blah, blah, blah.

00:51:53.000 Of course, all the stuff from Dark Southern, it was all about the same stuff that I'm banging on about now.

00:51:59.000 So it's all kind of, it's all very relevant.

00:52:04.000 But I'm very interested in what you said.

00:52:06.000 I'd like to pursue that because you're so right about that.

00:52:09.000 All right, what's the second thing?

00:52:11.000 Well, money in politics is number one, right?

00:52:14.000 So the only reason why people would get involved in politics without money is to try to make the world a better place.

00:52:21.000 And I think you would recruit more people that have good intentions, and you would make it less attractive to people that are just looking to make money.

00:52:32.000 I mean, you look at what's going on, like Nancy Pelosi just shot down this thing where it bans Congress from trading in stocks.

00:52:40.000 She shot down something to ban insider trading.

00:52:42.000 Well, there's only one reason to do that, because you want to keep making money insider trading.

00:52:46.000 You're talking about a woman who's on the last days of her life, who's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. 1.00

00:52:51.000 Like, why do you give a shit, lady? 1.00

00:52:54.000 Like, you talk about lost in the game. 1.00

00:52:56.000 Well, maybe because she's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. 1.00

00:52:59.000 Well, you got your money.

00:53:01.000 Yeah.

00:53:02.000 You've got it all.

00:53:03.000 How are you even going to spend all that?

00:53:05.000 Yeah.

00:53:06.000 She's 80-something years old, right?

00:53:08.000 Yeah.

00:53:09.000 If you're lucky, would you have got 20 years left?

00:53:11.000 But how are any of them?

00:53:13.000 It's not about spending.

00:53:15.000 It's about power.

00:53:16.000 Right.

00:53:17.000 Exactly.

00:53:18.000 I gather you spoke to Zuckerberg a few weeks ago.

00:53:21.000 Zuckerberg, Bezos, Gates, I don't care who they are, the hugely rich American oligarchs, I'm sure it's true of Russian oligarchs and Chinese oligarchs, they amass the huge amounts of money because it gives them power.

00:53:35.000 Then they buy newspapers and television stations and whatever, so they become part of the system of propaganda to keep us all in line.

00:53:48.000 And I actually wrote a sketch about...

00:53:53.000 I know you're in comedy.

00:53:55.000 I wrote a sketch about Zuckerberg.

00:53:57.000 Unfortunately, it's not in the show.

00:54:03.000 But I'll tell you what it was, because it's unlikely that it'll get into the show now.

00:54:07.000 And I was writing it about being down here.

00:54:10.000 The show originally, when I wrote it, was about them up there in the cloud.

00:54:15.000 And I actually had a city on a cloud floating about.

00:54:18.000 It's gone now.

00:54:18.000 It's now a penthouse.

00:54:20.000 So it's attached to it in the show.

00:54:23.000 And I write about them up there, the oligarchs up there.

00:54:26.000 They're up there in the penthouse now.

00:54:28.000 And one of them is Zuckerberg.

00:54:30.000 So I wrote a little sketch and it's about...

00:54:35.000 Go away! 1.00

00:54:40.000 And then the door opens and a flunky comes in. 1.00

00:54:44.000 And it's Zuckerberg and he's sitting there at his desk in front of his computer working.

00:54:48.000 And he goes...

00:54:52.000 I don't know if he speaks.

00:54:53.000 I'm sure he doesn't speak like that because I've heard him speak and he's a bit soft-spoken.

00:54:57.000 Yeah, he's very soft-spoken.

00:54:58.000 And the flunky says, but sir, Mr Zuckerberg, sir, it's really important.

00:55:02.000 You know, I have to speak to you.

00:55:05.000 You know, and then he tries again and Zuckerberg's just screaming out.

00:55:08.000 I think Zuckerberg at one point says, I've told you never know how to interrupt me when I'm greeting co-eds!

00:55:16.000 When you're what?

00:55:16.000 Grading co-eds.

00:55:18.000 Oh.

00:55:19.000 You grinned at least.

00:55:21.000 I like that.

00:55:22.000 So whatever.

00:55:23.000 And he says, anyway, I'm going to stop acting because I can't use all my voice.

00:55:28.000 Really, I shouldn't be.

00:55:29.000 And the flunky says to him, we've run out of space to store the money. 0.99

00:55:35.000 And Zuckerberg screams at him, buy another fucking island! 1.00

00:55:41.000 Get out! 0.99

00:55:42.000 And then he throws his laptop away and it goes through the window and comes down and lands in the Netherlands.

00:55:47.000 So that was my little sketch and I'm sorry I didn't manage to find a space for it in the show because I kind of like it.

00:55:54.000 Do you think it's possible for someone to become that insanely wealthy and not be greedy?

00:56:01.000 No, of course not.

00:56:02.000 And you can't do it without killing people actually is my belief. 0.95

00:56:07.000 How so? 0.64

00:56:07.000 Like with Zuckerberg? 0.64

00:56:09.000 Well, I don't know because I don't know the history well enough.

00:56:12.000 Well, he created this social network and it became wildly popular.

00:56:16.000 Yeah, and he's now in cahoots with the FBI and the CIA and has some cozy meetings with them deciding who to allow to communicate with their brothers and sisters and who to censor.

00:56:26.000 Well, we discussed that on the podcast.

00:56:28.000 Did you?

00:56:28.000 Yes.

00:56:28.000 What did he have to say about that?

00:56:30.000 Well, because I brought up the Hunter Biden story because I brought up censorship in social media.

00:56:34.000 He said that the FBI had contacted Facebook and told them to be wary of a lot of Russian disinformation that was going to happen right before.

00:56:44.000 Oh, brilliant.

00:56:45.000 Russiagate!

00:56:46.000 Hooray! 0.97

00:56:47.000 It's even invaded our afternoon. 1.00

00:56:51.000 They can fuck off. 1.00

00:56:54.000 Well, if I ever hear about Russiagate, in fact, I did hear about it again. 1.00

00:56:59.000 Where did I? I read something about it.

00:57:03.000 Oh, it doesn't matter.

00:57:04.000 Well, the fascinating part of that is that it's not true, right?

00:57:07.000 That's the fascinating part.

00:57:09.000 The fascinating part is that there wasn't Russian disinformation in regards to that laptop.

00:57:14.000 That's not what was going on.

00:57:15.000 It was an actual real laptop from a man who is, at the time, the vice president's son, who had a serious drug problem and was kind of off the rails. 0.99

00:57:25.000 And he left this laptop at a repair station, and it turned out inside that laptop was a bunch of crazy shit. 0.99

00:57:32.000 And it's real. 0.99

00:57:33.000 And they were saying that this was Russian disinformation, which would be the most wildlessly slanderous thing, wildly slanderous thing that Russia has ever done. 0.99

00:57:44.000 Like create a laptop and fill it with the son of the vice president, like pornography and bribery and all this crazy shit that's supposedly in that laptop. 0.91

00:57:55.000 So the FBI contacts I don't believe he specifically said that that laptop was a part of it, 0.94

00:58:11.000 but they certainly were insinuating that.

00:58:13.000 And then they decided to limit the engagement that people had with that.

00:58:18.000 That's very vague.

00:58:19.000 I don't know what he was saying when he said that.

00:58:23.000 My perspective was, now imagine if you are him and you're running something like Facebook.

00:58:28.000 You are, first of all, you're insanely busy.

00:58:31.000 And if you have trust and faith in the FBI and the intelligence agencies, you definitely don't want to be distributing disinformation from a foreign company.

00:58:42.000 Or a foreign country that's trying to undermine our election.

00:58:46.000 So what do you do?

00:58:47.000 Well, he didn't censor it the way Twitter did, which I think is pretty egregious.

00:58:51.000 But what he did do is limit its engagement.

00:58:54.000 I don't know what that means.

00:58:55.000 The problem with that term, like limiting the engagement, like how are you doing that?

00:58:59.000 What does that mean?

00:59:00.000 Can you tell me what you do?

00:59:01.000 And they don't.

00:59:03.000 They don't tell you what's involved in whatever, at least, limited engagement protocol they have.

00:59:10.000 Whether it's censorship, or I don't know what you want to call it, because you could put that story on your page.

00:59:17.000 It would just limit the amount of people who see it.

00:59:20.000 But I don't understand how you're doing that.

00:59:22.000 And I don't think they want to reveal that either.

00:59:24.000 Well, the fact is, in my view, what's really dangerous is that this prick has any hand at all in deciding what any of us read about anything.

00:59:36.000 He should not have his finger on the delete button, on anything that goes through Facebook, in my view.

00:59:44.000 Well, I'm a pretty...

00:59:45.000 I mean, you could say there might be rules that say you can't have people saying you should go out and murder children.

00:59:51.000 Right, right.

00:59:52.000 But...

00:59:54.000 But certainly anything to do with foreign – for instance, anything to do with the Ukraine war, you can't have Meta deciding what we should believe about that.

01:00:04.000 It's bad enough that the whole of the print section of mainstream media and all television has decided what we should believe about the Ukraine. 0.97

01:00:13.000 So they're all completely happy – To tell us that Russian soldiers have been raping babies to death. 0.67

01:00:21.000 And then three days later, you find out that it's unattributable. 0.88

01:00:25.000 And where did that story come from?

01:00:27.000 And it came from some nebulous site somewhere in the Ukraine.

01:00:32.000 But nevertheless, it's already been printed and it goes somewhere into the consciousness.

01:00:37.000 You build up this thing of... 0.99

01:00:39.000 We can really hate these people enough so that people are now saying, we should just kill them all now. 1.00

01:00:46.000 We should start the nuclear war now. 1.00

01:00:48.000 Some prick on Twitter yesterday said it. 0.66

01:00:51.000 Thiemann or something.

01:00:52.000 I only know that because I've seen the tweet.

01:00:55.000 What did he say?

01:00:56.000 What did he say?

01:00:57.000 That we should actually go to war?

01:00:58.000 Nuclear war? 0.98

01:00:59.000 Yeah, go to nuclear war and wipe them all out. 0.94

01:01:02.000 Because, he said, we've been threatened. 0.99

01:01:04.000 The only thing to do is to wipe them out now.

01:01:07.000 What is this person's position in life?

01:01:09.000 I'd have to look it up on Twitter.

01:01:10.000 I've no idea.

01:01:11.000 Was it a journalist?

01:01:12.000 No, I don't know.

01:01:14.000 Do you know what it is, Jeremy?

01:01:15.000 Have a look.

01:01:16.000 That's such an insane perspective.

01:01:18.000 I wonder how many people say things like that just to get attention and likes and just to get views because I think that's a big part of what Twitter is.

01:01:25.000 It's like, look at me.

01:01:27.000 I'm going to say something outrageous.

01:01:29.000 Well, yeah, you could be right about that.

01:01:31.000 I'm sure you are right.

01:01:32.000 I'm sure there's a lot of look at me involved in a lot of these posts that go out.

01:01:38.000 And also a lot of...

01:01:39.000 What will people think of me?

01:01:42.000 Which is the whole, if you think about it, all of this, if it all developed from the beginnings of Facebook and for whatever that site was that Zuckerberg started with, grading co-eds, that's sort of the beginning of it and the FOMO and the this and that and sending pictures of yourself to your friends and caring what your schoolmates think about and all of that and it blowing up into something that is far,

01:02:06.000 far, far More important than your mother telling you, read as much as you can, get educated, make sure you know what you're talking about, and do the right thing.

01:02:18.000 Because none of them are telling us to do that.

01:02:20.000 Well, that would be wonderful.

01:02:21.000 If your mother ran Facebook, that would be great.

01:02:24.000 I think the world would genuinely be a better place.

01:02:26.000 It would definitely be a better place.

01:02:28.000 Except she'd never do it.

01:02:29.000 Of course.

01:02:30.000 Because she'd go, Roger, if you think I'm going to waste my time with something as flimsy as Facebook, you've got another thing coming, darling.

01:02:37.000 But what I tried to get from him and what I wanted to try to understand is like, what is it like when you create something that literally is just a social network?

01:02:46.000 You're just supposed to be socializing with people and sharing photographs, which is pretty innocuous.

01:02:51.000 And then it becomes something that can influence elections and foreign policy and the way the world is viewed and the way narratives are spun.

01:02:59.000 And, you know, it's a daunting task, and especially when you didn't set out to do that in the beginning.

01:03:05.000 Nor did Twitter.

01:03:06.000 Twitter set out to just be something where you just post, oh, I'm going to the movies today.

01:03:09.000 And then it became what it is now because people realize, well, this is a tool to distribute information.

01:03:16.000 And you can just put up anything.

01:03:19.000 And now...

01:03:20.000 Should we just limit that information?

01:03:22.000 And that's what they've decided to do.

01:03:24.000 They've decided to take this moral and ethical position and impose their own ideas on what should or should not be said.

01:03:33.000 But all based at some point on their position that they want to go on getting richer and richer and richer and they want Meta to be the biggest company in the world and to own everything else and then they really will rule the world.

01:03:47.000 I think that's the mental aberration.

01:03:51.000 Well, that's the problem with every technology, or excuse me, every corporation.

01:03:55.000 They want to continue growing and getting bigger.

01:03:58.000 And you have shareholders, and they demand that you make more money next quarter than you made this quarter.

01:04:03.000 And if you don't, you are not doing your responsibility.

01:04:06.000 Funnily enough, there's groups of Chevron shareholders who are going to the AGM now and telling them to pay the indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador the money they owe them because they don't sleep at night.

01:04:18.000 Well, that's great.

01:04:19.000 Which is great.

01:04:19.000 That is really important.

01:04:21.000 Well, that's what you would want from people that have that much fucking money. 0.99

01:04:24.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:04:25.000 To say, hey, you know, I'd rather have a little bit less than be able to sleep.

01:04:28.000 Yeah.

01:04:29.000 Yeah.

01:04:30.000 But, you know, if you...

01:04:32.000 I've never been to Davos and I never will because the World Economic Forum seems to me to be a can of worms that I don't want to get within a hundred miles.

01:04:40.000 That's a scary can of worms.

01:04:41.000 We have a photo of Klaus Schwab in the bathroom.

01:04:43.000 Have you seen it?

01:04:44.000 The one where he's wearing the crazy outfit where he looks like he's in Star Wars.

01:04:48.000 We have a giant metal photo of him.

01:04:50.000 He started Davos, right?

01:04:51.000 Yeah, he started the World Economic Forum.

01:04:52.000 Well, he's the one that's, you know, you will own nothing and you'll be happy.

01:04:56.000 Yeah.

01:04:57.000 Yeah, I read that.

01:04:58.000 What he is is almost like a character in a movie.

01:05:02.000 If it was a movie, you would go, well, that's too over the top.

01:05:05.000 There's no way there's a guy with a German accent that's telling the world how to live, and they get all the billionaires to come and meet with him and decide what to do with the future of food and healthcare. 0.95

01:05:16.000 Yeah.

01:05:19.000 Davos, the World Economic Forum, is like a bad movie.

01:05:23.000 It is.

01:05:23.000 It's like a really badly written Hollywood movie.

01:05:27.000 It's bizarre.

01:05:27.000 That you would just go, tear it up and throw it.

01:05:30.000 Well, they're all flying there to talk about climate change in private chats. 0.98

01:05:33.000 I mean, it's so ridiculous. 0.81

01:05:35.000 Like my friend Bono. 0.85

01:05:36.000 Yeah.

01:05:37.000 I met him once.

01:05:38.000 Yeah?

01:05:39.000 Yeah, I met him.

01:05:40.000 I'm going to tell you...

01:05:41.000 I shouldn't tell you.

01:05:41.000 I'm going to tell you this story.

01:05:42.000 Tell me the story.

01:05:43.000 Because it's faintly ironic.

01:05:45.000 And people will want to hang me for it because it doesn't...

01:05:49.000 Well, you can make up your own mind because you might think it's brilliant. 0.99

01:05:52.000 And people do sometimes write to me and say, why are you such an arsehole? 0.98

01:05:56.000 Why aren't you more like Bono? 0.99

01:05:59.000 So here I am.

01:06:00.000 I am going through an FBO. So I've just got off a private plane in Zurich.

01:06:06.000 And suddenly there's Bono and he sidles up to me and whatever.

01:06:10.000 And that grin he's got.

01:06:12.000 And it starts sort of trying to make small talk.

01:06:15.000 And I know very well what he's doing there.

01:06:17.000 He's going to Davos.

01:06:18.000 He's flown in for Davos.

01:06:20.000 So that's why he's there for Davos.

01:06:22.000 But what I didn't tell him...

01:06:27.000 And this is going to sound like boasting and it is.

01:06:30.000 The reason I'm there is because I've just been to northern Iraq and been across to northeastern Syria and picked up two kids from Trinidad with their mother and flown them to Zurich and then we're flying them back to Trinidad because their father joined ISIS and stole the children and took them there and then obviously he was killed.

01:06:49.000 And my friend Clive Stafford-Smith said, what are we going to do about these two kids in Camp Roche in northern Syria?

01:06:55.000 And it was one Christmas.

01:06:57.000 And it was 2019, I think.

01:07:00.000 And I thought, what am I going to do?

01:07:03.000 Am I going to go and sit by a roaring fire, you know, in Switzerland?

01:07:07.000 And occasionally go skiing?

01:07:10.000 Or am I going to go to Syria and try and rescue these kids? 0.73

01:07:14.000 So we went to Syria.

01:07:15.000 But I thought it was...

01:07:17.000 I thought it was a really interesting meeting because I've never understood his whole thing of, you know, George W. Bush is a good bloke.

01:07:26.000 I go and visit him on his ranch in Texas.

01:07:28.000 He killed a million people, not on his own.

01:07:31.000 Obviously, the rest of the neocons were with it.

01:07:33.000 Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney and, you know, Bill Kristol and all the rest of them.

01:07:38.000 They were all in it.

01:07:39.000 And Tony Blair, let's not forget.

01:07:41.000 They were all in it together.

01:07:43.000 They all did it together.

01:07:44.000 They all knew it was a lie. 0.60

01:07:45.000 They all knew it was nonsense.

01:07:46.000 They all knew they were doing it to steal oil or whatever they were doing it for.

01:07:50.000 But it certainly had nothing to do with 9-11 and it had nothing to do.

01:07:54.000 And so obviously I still boil with rage.

01:07:56.000 You can't ignore a hundred million dead.

01:07:59.000 You can't.

01:08:00.000 You just can't go, oh, well, that was 17 years ago.

01:08:03.000 Forget about it.

01:08:04.000 Forget about it.

01:08:06.000 You know, you can't.

01:08:07.000 Well, I can't.

01:08:08.000 But obviously Bono can.

01:08:10.000 I assume.

01:08:11.000 Otherwise, why is he going to visit George Bush?

01:08:16.000 Anyway, I know that I probably shouldn't have told you that story or said any of that stuff.

01:08:21.000 I think, I mean, if you really wanted to find out what a person like that is like, that would be an incentive to go visit George Bush to find out like whether or not that does hang on his conscience.

01:08:33.000 Like what was it like to talk to him?

01:08:35.000 That's interesting, yeah.

01:08:36.000 I would do that.

01:08:37.000 I would do that just to talk to him, try to figure out how do you feel knowing that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

01:08:44.000 But you wouldn't get a straight answer from him, would you?

01:08:47.000 I don't know.

01:08:48.000 I don't know what you would get.

01:08:49.000 I've seen the paintings of his feet that he did in the bath.

01:08:53.000 It's bizarre paintings, right?

01:08:54.000 Are they weird?

01:08:55.000 Yeah, they're weird and it's like, I mean obviously I'm armchair psychologist here, but I'm looking into him like that's a man that's very troubled.

01:09:04.000 That's a man that, I mean, the weight of the world and the deaths that were caused by the decisions that he made as a president and the amount of American lives that were lost, the amount of Iraqi lives that were lost, the way the world has changed. 0.55

01:09:21.000 The way the world thinks of America post 9-11 is so different.

01:09:26.000 There was a window of time right after the attacks on the World Trade Center where the whole world was united with America.

01:09:35.000 And that was squandered for money.

01:09:38.000 That was squandered.

01:09:40.000 That was squandered when we invaded Iraq.

01:09:42.000 That was squandered when people had this Real, true understanding of what the motivations really were and the fact there weren't really weapons of mass destruction and that we saw the devastation and the lost lives and the way the world looks at us is incredibly different.

01:10:02.000 From September 11, 2001 to today, it's just a complete polar shift.

01:10:09.000 Yeah, you're completely right, of course.

01:10:11.000 And the interesting thing as well is that on February, I believe it was Valentine's Day or the 15th or something, there were over 20 million people all over the world in the streets.

01:10:24.000 Saying there are no weapons of mass destruction.

01:10:27.000 What are you thinking about?

01:10:30.000 This is insane.

01:10:31.000 Hans Blix has already told you there's nothing there.

01:10:34.000 They've hunted and hunted and hunted.

01:10:37.000 Colin Powell stood up and lied in the United Nations, knowing full well that he was lying.

01:10:43.000 He must have had access to all the information.

01:10:45.000 They all knew and whatever.

01:10:48.000 And yet, you know, and yet you're going to do this thing.

01:10:51.000 My theory would be, if you go and see George Bush, he's still alive, is he?

01:10:56.000 Yes, he's still alive.

01:10:57.000 Well, if you go and see him.

01:10:58.000 You could drive there from here.

01:11:00.000 Why don't you drive over there at one weekend?

01:11:02.000 I think they'd probably shoot me.

01:11:06.000 I don't think you're allowed to just drive to George Bush's house.

01:11:08.000 Well, they let Bono in.

01:11:09.000 Yeah, well, he probably had a meeting in advance and assured them of his intentions and just kind of go over there and sing Ordinary Love.

01:11:16.000 Well, my theory would be that he never escaped from the dynasty, you know, from his genes, whatever, from that family because it's a supremely toxic background to come out of. 0.93

01:11:30.000 All that bullshit about getting rid of the Vietnam Syndrome. 0.94

01:11:37.000 That's why Desert Storm, or whatever the first one was called, happened. 0.96

01:11:42.000 All of that history is fascinating reading, but it's also It's completely insane.

01:11:50.000 It's terrifying.

01:11:51.000 It's terrifying.

01:11:52.000 It's terrifying that when you see the Eisenhower speech and you realize like, well, that's it in motion.

01:11:57.000 That's it in action.

01:11:59.000 You're seeing it right there.

01:12:00.000 That is the military industrial complex making decisions.

01:12:03.000 It's no more insane than what's going on now.

01:12:06.000 Right, right, right.

01:12:08.000 And this is where, during my show, I touch on this occasion, because in my show, as well as you will see tomorrow night, I sing two bits of a new song called The Bar.

01:12:21.000 And I make absolutely certain that the audience understand what the song is about.

01:12:27.000 It's about this place that I carry around inside me.

01:12:30.000 And I said, we all have it, if we can find it in us, in our hearts or in our soul.

01:12:35.000 And it's a place where we can converse with others and share opinions.

01:12:39.000 Do this.

01:12:40.000 Have a conversation about things and share our feelings.

01:12:44.000 Okay?

01:12:45.000 And even if we're lucky enough, share our love with other human beings in the world in a place that's safe.

01:12:51.000 And I call that place the bar.

01:12:53.000 Okay?

01:12:55.000 Why am I telling you this?

01:12:58.000 I tell you what I'm telling you, because what I've discovered doing these shows, and I've done about 30 of them or a few more in the United States, is that people get it.

01:13:07.000 The audience gets it.

01:13:08.000 You can see them getting it.

01:13:10.000 And in a way, what is good about it is that singing those three verses that I do of that song, it gives them permission to disagree with me and yet not feel they have to stand up and wave their fists and walk out.

01:13:26.000 Because they've understood what I'm saying.

01:13:29.000 It's alright to disagree about things and have different opinions about it, but we have to allow one another to express our opinions.

01:13:37.000 And it may be that we'll meet somebody who understands more about things.

01:13:44.000 You know, if you meet the Dalai Lama, you're going to learn something from them.

01:13:48.000 I'm not saying I'm the Dalai Lama, but there are things we can learn from other human beings without going on Facebook or picking up our phone and whatever.

01:14:02.000 Anyway, I'm not making much sense.

01:14:04.000 No, you are making sense, but I think that's one of the great things about your show is that you combine this amazing music that has this incredible history to it with All of these messages and with all of these visuals.

01:14:17.000 I think you got a lot of attention during the Trump administration because of the flying Trump pigs and all the other visuals that you did.

01:14:25.000 People loved it.

01:14:26.000 But then when you put up a photograph of Biden and said he was a war criminal, then people were like, wait a minute.

01:14:34.000 You're on the wrong side now.

01:14:35.000 What are you doing?

01:14:36.000 Yeah, well, let's see what happens, shall we, before we come to a final conclusion about Biden.

01:14:40.000 As I said in the Shmokonish interview, I said there's something criminal. 1.00

01:14:46.000 It is criminal not to be trying to end the war in Ukraine, but just by trying to pour weapons into it, just pouring weapons into the Ukraine.

01:14:57.000 Ukrainian people can't beat Russia in a war on the ground, however many weapons you give them.

01:15:02.000 They're just cannon fodder. 0.63

01:15:04.000 That policy shows that Joe Biden and Antony Blinken and the administration and whoever is pulling their strings to go all conspiracy theory for a minute couldn't give an F about the Ukrainian people.

01:15:18.000 They couldn't care less how many of them.

01:15:20.000 They've said so.

01:15:21.000 I saw, what's his name?

01:15:23.000 Not McConnell.

01:15:24.000 Lindsey Graham.

01:15:26.000 I saw him in an interview the other night going, we are going to help the Ukrainians fight to the death.

01:15:33.000 Jesus.

01:15:34.000 He said it in an interview on a television station.

01:15:39.000 And you go...

01:15:40.000 What, their death?

01:15:41.000 Well, I mean, I didn't.

01:15:43.000 I wasn't there, so I could not.

01:15:44.000 But that's what it means, yeah.

01:15:45.000 Let them fight.

01:15:46.000 Who cares?

01:15:47.000 They never cared about a Ukrainian before.

01:15:49.000 Why should we care about them now?

01:15:52.000 Well, the answer is because it suits the geopolitical aspirations of the people who buy the election that you were talking about.

01:16:00.000 They're weakening Russia so that they can become the unipolar, you know, the hegemony can produce again this. 0.80

01:16:08.000 They can rule the world.

01:16:09.000 They want to rule the world.

01:16:10.000 They said so back in the 90s.

01:16:13.000 Paul Wolfowitz told Wesley Clark in the Pentagon, face to face, we are going to destroy seven countries in the next five years.

01:16:26.000 Wesley Clark's gone public about it.

01:16:28.000 We all know it because he's told us all.

01:16:31.000 And people go, well, so what?

01:16:33.000 Yeah, that speech where he discusses that.

01:16:37.000 Let's play that because it's very powerful.

01:16:40.000 Pull up that Wesley Clark, the discussion where he talks about the seven countries, how they laid it out.

01:16:48.000 And a lot of that has already been put into motion.

01:16:51.000 Absolutely.

01:16:53.000 Syria's almost gone. 0.95

01:16:55.000 The Yemen's pretty well gone. 1.00

01:16:57.000 Iran is the big... 1.00

01:16:59.000 Somalia's gone. 0.99

01:17:00.000 I can't remember what the others were, but we'll find out in a minute.

01:17:03.000 That was an eye-opener for people because you're listening to a general and he's discussing this.

01:17:11.000 Well, the general is relating the story.

01:17:14.000 It was told to him by an undersecretary of state at the Pentagon.

01:17:19.000 Whatever Wolfowitz was at the time.

01:17:21.000 I can't remember.

01:17:22.000 So you're listening to someone who is one of the people that actually gets to discuss these things with the people that pull the strings.

01:17:30.000 And he's relaying it to us.

01:17:32.000 So let's play.

01:17:33.000 So this is retired U.S. General Wesley Clark.

01:17:37.000 Wars were planned seven countries in five years on YouTube.

01:17:41.000 I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz.

01:17:46.000 I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me.

01:17:50.000 And one of the generals called me in.

01:17:51.000 He said, sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second.

01:17:55.000 I said, well, you're too busy.

01:17:56.000 He said, no, no.

01:17:57.000 He says, we've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq. 0.65

01:18:02.000 This was on or about the 20th of September.

01:18:04.000 I said, we're going to war with Iraq. 1.00

01:18:06.000 Why?

01:18:08.000 He said, I don't know.

01:18:12.000 He said, I guess they don't know what else to do.

01:18:15.000 So I said, well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?

01:18:20.000 He said, no, no.

01:18:22.000 He says, there's nothing new that way.

01:18:24.000 They've just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.

01:18:27.000 He said, I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments.

01:18:34.000 And he said, I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.

01:18:41.000 So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan.

01:18:47.000 I said, are we still going to war with Iraq?

01:18:48.000 And he said, oh, it's worse than that.

01:18:50.000 He said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper, and he said, I just got this down from upstairs, meaning the Secretary of Defense's office today, and he said, this is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria,

01:19:07.000 Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran. 0.58

01:19:12.000 Wild.

01:19:13.000 Wild.

01:19:14.000 Yeah.

01:19:15.000 Just wild to hear him lay that out.

01:19:19.000 Yeah.

01:19:19.000 Because it's conspiracy theory, but...

01:19:22.000 Well, it's not.

01:19:23.000 It's history.

01:19:24.000 Right.

01:19:24.000 But actual.

01:19:26.000 Yeah.

01:19:27.000 And yet it disappears into the ether.

01:19:30.000 Like, it doesn't matter.

01:19:31.000 It's not important.

01:19:33.000 Yeah, it's like, who cares?

01:19:36.000 I care.

01:19:37.000 I care.

01:19:38.000 Yeah.

01:19:39.000 Imagine if you were Somalian or Lebanese or Syrian.

01:19:43.000 Well, look at the Iraqi. 1.00

01:19:44.000 Libya is a failed state now.

01:19:46.000 It's an incredibly dangerous place.

01:19:48.000 And they have open slave trade that you could watch on YouTube.

01:19:52.000 Yeah.

01:19:53.000 There's a lyric in another new song of mine, one of the other songs I wrote in lockdown that talks about I'd say in Timbuktu or in the Republic of the Congo and other states where something's...

01:20:12.000 I can't remember.

01:20:13.000 I'd have to look it up.

01:20:13.000 But it's saying for the old slave trade to merge seamlessly with the new.

01:20:19.000 So I'm making that point that this foreign policy is reintroducing...

01:20:26.000 Slavery to the world.

01:20:29.000 Reintroducing the slave trade in Africa.

01:20:33.000 North Africa, West Africa, and the Middle East.

01:20:36.000 That's what it's doing.

01:20:38.000 And people seem to think it's alright, but what's it for?

01:20:44.000 What is it?

01:20:48.000 I've written another letter to somebody, which I haven't posted yet.

01:20:53.000 Oh, I know, it's to a councillor in the Ukraine who has declared me persona non grata in Krakow, which is a big town very near the Polish-Ukrainian border, because he claims I'm a Putin apologist.

01:21:10.000 And so all my asking everybody that I can get to listen to me to make peace, to stop the war, to start negotiation or whatever, for them I'm a...

01:21:21.000 All they want to do is kill every Russian that they can get their hands on. 1.00

01:21:26.000 Why did I bring that up? 0.99

01:21:29.000 I'll remember in a minute.

01:21:30.000 And when I do, I'll tell you.

01:21:31.000 Because it's to do with the whole thing.

01:21:34.000 Oh, yeah.

01:21:35.000 No, I can't remember.

01:21:36.000 I've lost it.

01:21:37.000 But it will come back to me.

01:21:39.000 That's how my brain works, unfortunately.

01:21:42.000 What is your creative process?

01:21:45.000 When you sit down to write music, when you sit down to compose songs, how do you go about that?

01:21:55.000 I always used to say, for years and years, I don't go about it.

01:22:00.000 Or I haven't in the past.

01:22:02.000 In the past, my answer would always be, I don't do anything until I get a pregnant feeling. 0.96

01:22:10.000 And I can't describe the feeling, really, except that I know that I'm about to give birth to something, so that's as close as I can get.

01:22:18.000 It's a weird sort of fog of nothingness that feels as if it might clear and I might see something or something might pop out.

01:22:28.000 And very often after that, I put myself in...

01:22:33.000 Physically in the same room as a guitar or a piano and with a legal pad and a barrow.

01:22:39.000 And hey, preso, sometimes something pops out and I go, oh, that's interesting.

01:22:44.000 And then I work on it.

01:22:45.000 More recently, when COVID happened, I did two things.

01:22:48.000 One, I wrote some songs that had been bubbling a bit.

01:22:51.000 And it might be just a little guitar riff or a chord sequence or something and then I might play it and then...

01:23:00.000 My brain is a very fertile place for ideas and for lyrics and for the way lyrics scan against bits of music.

01:23:09.000 So it comes kind of quite easily once I've had a first idea.

01:23:12.000 I did that.

01:23:13.000 But also I thought, I've got a couple of years of this.

01:23:19.000 I've been meaning to write a memoir.

01:23:22.000 So I'm going to do it now.

01:23:25.000 So one day I got this out and I went, well, go on then, you prick.

01:23:29.000 Go on then, clever clogs.

01:23:32.000 So I opened a Word document and I went...

01:23:35.000 And I started to write.

01:23:36.000 And before I knew it, I'd written 10,000 words and I went...

01:23:39.000 And I was probably a bit drunk and so I went, oh. 0.64

01:23:43.000 And I went back a couple of days later and I went, bloody hell, it's prose.

01:23:47.000 And it's quite funny, but it's deep as well and it's actually rather moving.

01:23:53.000 And so I had a eureka moment, you know. 0.98

01:23:56.000 I went, fuck me, I could write prose. 0.99

01:23:58.000 I couldn't believe it. 1.00

01:23:59.000 Because I love prose.

01:24:01.000 I mean, I love to read books.

01:24:04.000 I love books.

01:24:05.000 But you never sit down intentionally to write like that.

01:24:10.000 I never sit down like, you know, professional writers, sometimes they say, I get up at 6 every morning, have a cup of coffee and a piece of bacon, and then I go to my room and I write until 12, 30. Right.

01:24:21.000 And then I have a bottle of champagne and pass out in line.

01:24:24.000 Whatever it is they do.

01:24:26.000 But they have a routine.

01:24:27.000 Yeah.

01:24:27.000 I don't have that.

01:24:29.000 So I work when I think, hmm.

01:24:32.000 Or I might be drifting past the piano and sit down and go, oh, that's it.

01:24:36.000 And I might even reach for a pen and write a chord sequence or something down.

01:24:41.000 So it's not a regimented process at all.

01:24:48.000 When you're as busy as you are and touring and all these things, how do you find time to create?

01:24:56.000 Do you allocate time to create or do you just sort of like let...

01:24:59.000 No, when I'm touring, I get back to the hotel.

01:25:03.000 We have a trough.

01:25:05.000 We have a golden trough after the show, which means that there's always food and drink for everybody.

01:25:10.000 And then I normally would get up to my room at 2 o'clock in the morning or something.

01:25:16.000 And then usually I put the stick of the show into the side of the laptop.

01:25:21.000 And then I might look at a bit of it.

01:25:23.000 And if I didn't look at it then, I look at it the next day.

01:25:26.000 And I make notes.

01:25:27.000 I change the show every day.

01:25:29.000 Really?

01:25:29.000 Yeah.

01:25:30.000 Every day?

01:25:31.000 Yeah.

01:25:32.000 Wow!

01:25:32.000 And I go in to the next show with notes.

01:25:36.000 What are you playing there?

01:25:38.000 There may be visual notes or the text, but I'm changing it constantly.

01:25:43.000 It was my production manager, Chris Cansey, lovely man, been working with him for umpteen years.

01:25:49.000 It was his birthday yesterday.

01:25:51.000 And I went and had a small glass of wine with him.

01:25:56.000 We were talking and he said, we did 211 wall shows when we did the wall.

01:26:03.000 We did it for nearly three years, starting in 2010. And I said, oh yeah.

01:26:08.000 He's reminiscing.

01:26:10.000 And he said, do you know what I remember?

01:26:11.000 And I said, what's that?

01:26:12.000 He said, the 211th show was in somewhere or other.

01:26:16.000 I can't remember where it was.

01:26:18.000 And he said, and you came in with notes and changed the show on the 211th show.

01:26:26.000 On the last show.

01:26:28.000 Wow.

01:26:28.000 And that was it.

01:26:29.000 We were never going to do it again.

01:26:31.000 So I'm a bit obsessive.

01:26:33.000 Well, that's why it's so great.

01:26:36.000 Partly, yeah.

01:26:37.000 Yeah, I don't think there's any other way.

01:26:38.000 Yeah, there's this huge excitement to go, then we could do this or we could do that.

01:26:43.000 It would be better if that word was changed or if we did this or if we changed that.

01:26:49.000 Well, that speaks to the ethic of what you're trying to do, that you're tweaking it to the very last show of a tour.

01:26:54.000 Yeah.

01:26:55.000 I'm going to talk to you just for a second about prose.

01:27:00.000 Yeah.

01:27:01.000 I told this to Chris Hedges the other day, but I'm going to tell it to you as well, because that's what's jogged my memory.

01:27:06.000 You know that thing when you're reading a book, okay, and you've got it on your bedside table or whatever, and you read it, or any time, you could be lying on the beach, and it's a great book.

01:27:18.000 It's a really great book.

01:27:19.000 And you get to about 10 pages from the end and you find yourself putting it down quicker because you don't want it to finish.

01:27:27.000 I do this anyway.

01:27:28.000 And a lot of people who read, I think, will know this experience.

01:27:32.000 So you keep putting it down because you don't want it to finish.

01:27:37.000 Well, I wrote a poem about my experience with Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses.

01:27:42.000 I don't know if you've read that novel, but if you haven't, you should.

01:27:45.000 It's a fantastic book.

01:27:47.000 And I was feeling like that about it.

01:27:50.000 So I wrote a poem and I sent it to him.

01:27:52.000 He never replied, but that's fine.

01:27:54.000 I wasn't really expecting a play.

01:27:56.000 And it's just called On First Reading All the Pretty Horses.

01:28:00.000 And I'll try and remember it.

01:28:03.000 There is a magic in some books that sucks a man into connections with the spirits hard to touch that join him to his kind.

01:28:14.000 A man will eke the reading out, guarded like a canteen in the desert heat, but sometimes needs must drink and then And then the final drop falls sweet.

01:28:36.000 The last page turns.

01:28:38.000 The end. 0.67

01:28:40.000 I know I've fucked it up because I forgot that last one.

01:28:43.000 That's all right.

01:28:43.000 You get the point across.

01:28:45.000 Yeah.

01:28:46.000 Cormac McCarthy.

01:28:47.000 I haven't read that book.

01:28:49.000 I said it's, you know, it's like And a River Runs Through It.

01:28:51.000 And Hedges just went, oh, the last paragraph of And a River Runs Through It.

01:28:56.000 Do you know that book, Norman Maclean?

01:28:58.000 Yeah.

01:28:59.000 Anyway, I don't know why I brought that.

01:29:01.000 I do, because we were talking about writing.

01:29:03.000 Yeah.

01:29:04.000 And so during the pandemic, when you had all that free time, that's when you started writing prose.

01:29:09.000 Yeah.

01:29:10.000 Yeah.

01:29:11.000 And I've written a book.

01:29:13.000 It's done?

01:29:13.000 500 pages long, more or less.

01:29:16.000 Pretty well.

01:29:17.000 I mean, we're starting to put it in a proper order and figure out, you know, whether I need to write anymore or what I need to do.

01:29:26.000 And when you wrote that, did you have a process like a writer does, where you just get up every day?

01:29:30.000 Or did you just do it whenever the spirit moved you?

01:29:31.000 No, because I was in lockdown, so I was in the same household every day.

01:29:36.000 If I wasn't sort of doing anything else, which most of the time I wasn't, I'd go...

01:29:42.000 Where was I? I'd just pull the laptop over and write another chapter about something different or leaving all the Pink Floyd stuff to last, obviously, for obvious reasons.

01:29:56.000 Hard things to write about stuff, so you just leave it alone for a bit.

01:30:00.000 What's the biggest breakup in probably rock history?

01:30:05.000 Don't you think?

01:30:06.000 I mean, it's...

01:30:07.000 I don't know.

01:30:08.000 It's up there.

01:30:09.000 Well, maybe.

01:30:10.000 I don't...

01:30:11.000 I'm not very up on rock history.

01:30:14.000 Really?

01:30:14.000 Well, I'm not very interested in most popular music.

01:30:18.000 I mean, there are certain people that I'm great fans of that mainly the sort of...

01:30:23.000 the writers, the singer-songwriters, you know, like...

01:30:26.000 So Dylan and...

01:30:28.000 Neil Young, but I won't start a long list because I probably could, but it's that end of the spectrum that I'm more interested in.

01:30:38.000 I'm not really interested in loud rock and roll, which some people are and they love it, but I couldn't care less about ACDC or Eddie Van Halen or any of that stuff.

01:30:51.000 Who?

01:30:52.000 I don't go who because obviously I know the name.

01:30:55.000 Right.

01:30:55.000 You know, and I'm sure Eddie's brilliant and a great guitar player and wonderful.

01:31:00.000 It just doesn't interest me.

01:31:01.000 Right.

01:31:04.000 But look out, Ma, there's a white boat coming up the river.

01:31:08.000 You know, what was that called?

01:31:10.000 The Powder Monkey, I think, which is on Russ Never Sleeps.

01:31:13.000 Something like that.

01:31:15.000 I kind of have to take a deep...

01:31:17.000 You know, it's like, wow, what did he just say?

01:31:22.000 When the first shot hit the dock.

01:31:25.000 So you don't really consume rock and roll music?

01:31:28.000 No, I'm too busy working on my own stuff.

01:31:30.000 Wow.

01:31:32.000 It seems to be working out though.

01:31:34.000 Whatever the process is.

01:31:36.000 It's filled in 79 years.

01:31:38.000 Yeah.

01:31:38.000 Sort of.

01:31:41.000 And I'm really excited about it.

01:31:45.000 These are the best shows I've ever done.

01:31:48.000 By far.

01:31:49.000 Really?

01:31:50.000 I've made a real breakthrough.

01:31:52.000 This is the first time I've ever sort of managed to communicate with an audience in a way that is satisfying.

01:31:58.000 What's different?

01:32:00.000 I've opened my heart.

01:32:02.000 I'm vulnerable.

01:32:04.000 And yet, because I've done that, they're responding and in consequence I've become bolder.

01:32:11.000 You know, the more you risk, the more you potentially lose, but also the more you potentially gain.

01:32:18.000 When you share your heart with somebody, they can either, you know, step on it or give you a bit of theirs back.

01:32:30.000 Well, so many performers, particularly musicians, they put up this wall.

01:32:34.000 There's this wall of image and, you know, what they're projecting.

01:32:38.000 And you get this rock and roll show, you get this superstar, and then you're the audience, and the connection is only that you love them.

01:32:48.000 They appreciate you.

01:32:50.000 You love them.

01:32:51.000 Good night, everybody.

01:32:54.000 But in showing vulnerability and trying to establish true connection, you feel like that's where you've made this breakthrough.

01:33:02.000 Yeah.

01:33:03.000 And it's risk-taking as well.

01:33:06.000 So I sing a song unashamedly about nuclear war at the end of the show when everybody's just watched the second half of Dark Side of the Moon and they're all, you know, really happy.

01:33:20.000 And quite rightly, because my band is really good and so everybody's very moved.

01:33:28.000 I take the risk of saying, you know, there's something that is a lot more important than any of this.

01:33:34.000 We are teetering on the edge of annihilation.

01:33:37.000 And they've arrived at a point in the show then where they go...

01:33:42.000 But they also go, let's listen to what he has to say.

01:33:47.000 And some of them even know the song, which is from the final cut, which was the last record I made in 1983 with Pink Floyd.

01:33:55.000 And then we do it, and a lot of the audience respond.

01:33:59.000 They want to show me that they understand and that they care, and they stand up, and that when everybody's being blown to bits and it's the end of the world in the song, and it's visual as well, it's a beautiful animation that Sean Evans has made,

01:34:14.000 who's my collaborator in all things visual in these shows.

01:34:19.000 And the people sort of get it, but still it's pretty sombre because there's nothing really rah-rah or rock and roll about nuclear war.

01:34:32.000 Nothing.

01:34:33.000 But you can't ignore it.

01:34:35.000 And when I say, you know, if you run into Joe Biden in the street, you might just tap him on the shoulder and say, hey, Joe, shouldn't we get rid of nuclear weapons?

01:34:44.000 Why not spend our time?

01:34:46.000 Let's talk to Putin about that and also China.

01:34:50.000 All the nuclear power.

01:34:51.000 Why don't we all get together and say, listen, these are too dangerous.

01:34:56.000 Can we all agree now?

01:34:58.000 We've had them since 1945 and they've done nobody any good.

01:35:02.000 Can't we just get rid of them so we don't have to worry about them anymore?

01:35:06.000 The problem is they would worry that someone wouldn't and that person would have the nuclear advantage.

01:35:12.000 Well, somebody maybe wouldn't.

01:35:14.000 Well, we've got them.

01:35:15.000 Part of the worry about the big accident is them Falling into wrong hands.

01:35:21.000 And that's a perfectly legitimate concern, in my view.

01:35:25.000 It is.

01:35:26.000 Is it possible, do you think, to put that genie back into the bottle, though?

01:35:29.000 Yeah, of course.

01:35:30.000 It can be done.

01:35:31.000 I think so, yeah.

01:35:32.000 All it requires is the will of the people to persuade.

01:35:36.000 But again, it's like you.

01:35:37.000 You can't do it until you can separate, until you get rid of Citizens United.

01:35:42.000 You can't do it until you take money out of politics.

01:35:45.000 Right.

01:35:46.000 You certainly can't do it over here in the United States, whether they could do it in Russia or, you know, Russia's an autocratic state, so who knew?

01:35:54.000 When people bring up, yeah, Russia and or China with me, you know, I say, you're talking to the wrong bloke.

01:36:01.000 I don't speak Russian.

01:36:02.000 I don't speak Chinese.

01:36:04.000 I've never lived there.

01:36:05.000 I know a little bit about the United States and about the United Kingdom and less, but a little bit about, I speak Greek, so I know a bit about Greece and And, you know, we learned French when I was at school, and there are neighbors who we hate across La Manche.

01:36:21.000 But I can't, without speaking Russian and Mandarin, How can you possibly know what's going on?

01:36:28.000 And also, how could you know in the context of their culture?

01:36:31.000 Like, you don't totally understand their culture unless you speak their language.

01:36:35.000 Exactly.

01:36:36.000 That's exactly right.

01:36:37.000 Language is so important.

01:36:39.000 That's why it's no surprise that Chomsky, you know, his work in linguistics was the thing that brought him to the notice of other academics and intellectuals back in the 50s.

01:36:51.000 But...

01:36:51.000 And he's right because, you know, linguistics has always been hugely important.

01:36:58.000 Linguistics is the basis of all philosophy and unless you speak the language that the philosophy is being described in, you can't begin to take part in the conversation.

01:37:09.000 One thing I have to ask you because I can't forget this.

01:37:14.000 The synchronization With The Wizard of Oz. 1.00

01:37:21.000 It's bullshit. 1.00

01:37:23.000 Is it bullshit? 1.00

01:37:23.000 Yeah, of course it is. 1.00

01:37:24.000 I mean, it may not be.

01:37:26.000 It may be that if you do what they say.

01:37:29.000 It may be that if you do what they say, but it has nothing to do with us, any of us.

01:37:35.000 Nothing to do with anyone in Pink Floyd or anyone who wrote or recorded any of the music.

01:37:40.000 It's something that somebody thinks.

01:37:44.000 So it's a coincidence of some time and maybe it's cosmic coincidence.

01:37:50.000 I do like the story though of the cop in Louisiana following a bus and it was weaving about the road a bit.

01:37:59.000 And so he pulls it over, young motorcycle cop, puts the bike up on the stand, opens the door, nearly falls over, there's so much smoke coming out through the bloody door.

01:38:10.000 He goes in, it goes through, and he's trying to find people, you know, with dope, because it's...

01:38:16.000 Just full of marijuana smoke.

01:38:18.000 Eventually he gets to the back of the bus where there's a private compartment and he opens the door and goes in and there's Willie Nelson.

01:38:25.000 And the story is that Willie Nelson is listening to Dark Side of the Moon and watching The Wizard of Oz on the TV. And I don't believe it for a minute, but I like the story.

01:38:37.000 Yeah, I don't even want to investigate that.

01:38:38.000 I want it to be true.

01:38:40.000 I don't want to find out it's not true.

01:38:42.000 But if you...

01:38:42.000 I've watched it.

01:38:44.000 I've watched The Wizard of Oz listening to The Dark Side of the Moon while high on marijuana.

01:38:50.000 And if it's not on purpose, it is a cosmic coincidence.

01:38:55.000 Because it's kind of amazing.

01:38:57.000 It's kind of amazing how it just flows.

01:39:01.000 If only I smoked dope, I could join you in that experience.

01:39:05.000 You don't smoke at all?

01:39:06.000 No.

01:39:06.000 Never?

01:39:07.000 Oh, yeah.

01:39:08.000 Yeah.

01:39:09.000 Ever.

01:39:09.000 Yeah.

01:39:10.000 I'll tell you why.

01:39:11.000 Because...

01:39:13.000 I used to smoke cigarettes a lot and way, way too much.

01:39:18.000 And particularly when I was working, I chain smoked, literally.

01:39:21.000 So I would smoke three packs at least a day of Marlborough Reds.

01:39:25.000 And I gave up eventually.

01:39:28.000 And I gave up like in the late 60s.

01:39:32.000 But I didn't really give up.

01:39:33.000 I gave up smoking rolled cigarettes.

01:39:36.000 I continued to smoke cigarettes with tobacco and hashish in them.

01:39:41.000 So I pretended I'd stopped smoking cigarettes.

01:39:44.000 But I hadn't.

01:39:45.000 I was addicted.

01:39:47.000 That's a big thing in England.

01:39:48.000 Spliffs. 0.68

01:39:49.000 Spliffs, yeah. 0.99

01:39:50.000 When I was over there, I was fascinated by that.

01:39:53.000 I was like, why do you guys have cigarettes in your marijuana?

01:39:56.000 Like, what is this?

01:39:57.000 But it's pretty good.

01:39:58.000 Well, I did it because I was addicted to nicotine.

01:40:01.000 And then, in 1975, I realized that that's what I was doing.

01:40:07.000 And after that, I never smoked dope again.

01:40:09.000 I didn't like it.

01:40:10.000 I don't like being stoned.

01:40:11.000 I don't like the feeling.

01:40:12.000 It makes me paranoid.

01:40:14.000 That's what I like about it.

01:40:17.000 What, being paranoid?

01:40:18.000 Yeah, I like it.

01:40:19.000 Oh my god.

01:40:21.000 I enjoy the feeling of vulnerability sometimes.

01:40:24.000 Wow.

01:40:25.000 Well, good for you.

01:40:26.000 Chacun a son goût, as the French have it.

01:40:30.000 I don't like it.

01:40:33.000 I'm paranoid enough already without smoking dark.

01:40:36.000 Oh, I am too.

01:40:36.000 But occasionally I think there's an understanding of vulnerability that comes through marijuana that I enjoy.

01:40:49.000 It's sort of a perspective enhancer for me sometimes.

01:40:52.000 Okay.

01:40:53.000 Well, good for you.

01:40:55.000 But, you know, with Dark Side of the Moon and with The Wizard of Oz, the combination.

01:41:02.000 Pretty incredible.

01:41:03.000 Alright, good.

01:41:04.000 We got that out of the way.

01:41:07.000 So, when you guys, like, in the early days of the band, what was, like, that's always the connection with rock and roll and drugs.

01:41:18.000 Like, this is like, that's the narrative.

01:41:20.000 Yeah.

01:41:20.000 Was that, in the early days of Pink Floyd, was that the case?

01:41:24.000 It wasn't really relevant.

01:41:27.000 I mean, during the time when I was smoking hash every day was 1970, 71, 70. So it's pre-Darkside.

01:41:37.000 It's when we were making medals, so it's echoes and things.

01:41:39.000 But I don't think it had...

01:41:41.000 I don't think it impinged on my burgeoning writing career, if you like, when I was, you know, starting to write songs because Sid went crazy in 19...

01:41:57.000 67. And so by 69, we weren't seeing him anymore.

01:42:03.000 He disappeared completely.

01:42:04.000 And was that because of LSD? Or was it...

01:42:09.000 No, I don't think so.

01:42:10.000 That's the narrative, right?

01:42:12.000 Yeah, that's the narrative, or one of the narratives.

01:42:16.000 It may be because he was mixing with people who were doing acid on a regular basis, I think, in 67. And And I'm sure he did too much of it.

01:42:31.000 Was he teetering on the edge of what might be called schizophrenia at the time?

01:42:36.000 I think so, probably.

01:42:38.000 A lot of the things that he was saying, and it was right at the beginning of us getting our first record in any chart, which was Arnold Lane.

01:42:48.000 No, it was after Arnold Lane.

01:42:50.000 It was when See Emily Play came out, and we were beginning to do TV shows in England.

01:42:55.000 And he went very odd.

01:42:58.000 And he started...

01:42:59.000 I remember him at Top of the Pops in the dressing room one day.

01:43:04.000 He had hair a bit like that painting on the wall.

01:43:07.000 And going sort of...

01:43:09.000 And then going...

01:43:10.000 Looking worried and a bit frightened.

01:43:14.000 And then going...

01:43:15.000 John Lennon doesn't have to do this.

01:43:19.000 You know, which was kind of wacky.

01:43:22.000 Um...

01:43:24.000 This was like three-quarters of the way through the Beatles' career because they'd only had that one decade, really.

01:43:31.000 And so he had misgivings about being on a miming pop show, you know.

01:43:38.000 I mean, Sid, this is what we've worked towards for the last four or five years, is to be on top of the pops and make a few quid, you know.

01:43:47.000 Buck up, boy.

01:43:48.000 Let's get on with it.

01:43:50.000 But he never did buck up from sort of that moment on, really.

01:43:56.000 He wrote a few more songs, but Nothing of any real note.

01:44:01.000 And he just got more and more and more detached until he was completely wacky and not making any sense.

01:44:08.000 I mean, I made a lot of attempts to find out what was wrong and to involve his family.

01:44:17.000 You know, he had elder brothers who I would ring up and say, hey, there's something really wrong with Roger, as they called him.

01:44:23.000 Because his name was Roger Barrett, not Sid Barrett.

01:44:26.000 Oh.

01:44:27.000 I said, He's not well, I think.

01:44:30.000 And one of the brothers actually came to London and went and saw him and called me up and went, He's fine.

01:44:35.000 You know, he's had some troubling times, but he's actually fine.

01:44:38.000 And I went, Alan, he's not.

01:44:39.000 He's not.

01:44:40.000 But trust me, I live with him, you know.

01:44:44.000 Anyway.

01:44:44.000 And we tried to get him to a shrink on a number of occasions, but he would never go in.

01:44:52.000 And then he just got weirder and weirder.

01:44:54.000 Like in what way weird?

01:44:57.000 Incommunicative, not making any sense at all.

01:45:00.000 Not making any...

01:45:01.000 It's like I actually mentioned one of the periods, one of the moments is in the show because it's in when we play Wish You Were Here and I do wish he was here and I mean it's partly what that song's about and Shine On You Crazy Diamond is just completely about Sid.

01:45:21.000 But we were, I tell the story in text in the show and it goes, we'd been to a meeting at the Capitol Tower in Los Angeles and Sid and I were walking down the street after it and we stopped at the traffic light at Hollywood and Vine,

01:45:38.000 Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Los Angeles and he looked at me and smiled and he said, it's nice here in Las Vegas, isn't it?

01:45:47.000 Well, we were in LA, so he already had no idea where he was, even like that.

01:45:54.000 But then he, I say in the thing, you'll see at the show it says, then his face darkened, and he looked down at the ground and spat out one word, people.

01:46:06.000 And that sort of encapsulates what it was like.

01:46:10.000 Nothing made any sense.

01:46:13.000 Disjointed.

01:46:13.000 Blank, disjointed, you know.

01:46:17.000 And there we were, all young, all very young, and trying to make our way.

01:46:25.000 By that time, Dave had already joined the band to play guitar because Sid didn't play.

01:46:31.000 I'm not saying he couldn't.

01:46:32.000 Well, he couldn't really because both of us made his solo records with him, helped produce his solo records after that point.

01:46:41.000 And it was pretty kind of disjointed and difficult to get him to do anything.

01:46:48.000 Did he continue to deteriorate further after that?

01:46:50.000 Yeah.

01:46:51.000 And then he went home to live in Cambridge.

01:46:53.000 And he lived a very solitary life.

01:46:56.000 And I spoke to his sister, Rosemary, after that.

01:46:59.000 And I was saying, does it make any sense, you know, to go and visit?

01:47:03.000 She said, no, don't do that.

01:47:04.000 And she told me, I said, why not?

01:47:06.000 And she said, well...

01:47:08.000 He gets very agitated and upset if he's reminded of what happened before whatever this is.

01:47:18.000 He doesn't like it.

01:47:21.000 He doesn't want to see people from his past.

01:47:24.000 He'd rather be left alone.

01:47:25.000 And he used to paint a little bit and live just on his own in Cambridge until he died when he was 60. Wow.

01:47:40.000 So, I don't know what else to say about it really.

01:47:43.000 It was tragic, obviously.

01:47:47.000 But those of us who were in Pink Floyd at the time experienced it as an existential threat as well.

01:47:59.000 Like me, what are we going to do?

01:48:00.000 He writes the bloody songs.

01:48:02.000 Well, I wrote about 20% of them before, but they were nothing.

01:48:06.000 Sid's songs were the things that were different.

01:48:08.000 They had that weird English romanticism about them.

01:48:12.000 You know, they were beautiful.

01:48:14.000 I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like.

01:48:16.000 It's got a basket, a bell that rings and things that make it look good.

01:48:20.000 I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.

01:48:23.000 That's so quirky in terms of its meter, the way the lyric attaches both to the melody and to the time signature and the tempo of the thing is remarkable.

01:48:40.000 And it wasn't just, you know, there were lots of quirky little songs like that, all in a very English romantic tradition and whatever.

01:48:48.000 So how could we possibly survive? 0.99

01:48:51.000 If the guy who writes the songs in the band goes crazy, you're fucked, basically. 0.99

01:48:56.000 Unless somebody else starts to write. 0.99

01:48:59.000 Luckily, I did.

01:49:00.000 I did start to write.

01:49:04.000 I don't mean to laugh because he was a huge loss.

01:49:09.000 And I did love him.

01:49:10.000 Well, unfortunately, sometimes there's comedy and loss.

01:49:14.000 Yeah.

01:49:15.000 But what was it like to make that transition for you to make that shift in responsibility to start writing?

01:49:22.000 Well, it all comes back to my mum, really, because we made, in 1970, we made a record called Medal.

01:49:31.000 And on one side of it is a very long track called Echoes.

01:49:36.000 That is sort of me thinking a bit more metaphysically about our trip, you know, as humans from ancient times overhead the albatross.

01:49:49.000 It was all a bit kind of romantic and science fiction.

01:49:52.000 It was a bit Marvel comic-y.

01:49:54.000 You know, it had kind of attachments to Doctor Strange.

01:49:59.000 No Doctor Strange mentioning the lyrics.

01:50:02.000 I mentioned Doctor Strange in other songs that I was writing at the time.

01:50:05.000 But it has one verse in it that defines everything I've done since.

01:50:10.000 And the verse is this.

01:50:11.000 It goes...

01:50:13.000 Two strangers passing in the street, by chance two passing glances meet, and I am you, and what I see is me.

01:50:24.000 And will we something, will they call us to move on and whatever, but that's the important couplet, is to recognize your connection with your brother or sister, whoever they are,

01:50:40.000 wherever they are.

01:50:41.000 So to say, to make that attachment and to make a declaration that we're all in this together.

01:50:48.000 So that's why I sing songs about the potential descent into a nuclear holocaust. 0.76

01:50:55.000 To my audiences in, well, tomorrow, Austin, Texas.

01:51:01.000 It's just me saying, I see you.

01:51:04.000 And that's what the bar is all about as well.

01:51:07.000 That's what the vulnerability is.

01:51:09.000 It's saying, I recognize that we're all African.

01:51:13.000 When you say that to a crowded room of Italian journalists, they all look at each other. 0.98

01:51:18.000 These are crazy. 0.94

01:51:19.000 We're not African. 0.89

01:51:21.000 We're Italian.

01:51:24.000 No, you're misunderstanding me.

01:51:26.000 Genetically, now we have the genome.

01:51:29.000 We can stop worrying about race.

01:51:32.000 There isn't any.

01:51:33.000 There's no race.

01:51:33.000 We just look different.

01:51:35.000 Yes.

01:51:35.000 But we're not.

01:51:36.000 We're not at all.

01:51:38.000 Isn't that reassuring?

01:51:40.000 It is to me.

01:51:41.000 It's fascinating.

01:51:42.000 It is reassuring.

01:51:43.000 And one of the beautiful things about art, and particularly music, is that you can get a message like that across, and because people love the music and they'll listen to it over and over again and they'll remember your concert, it'll resonate.

01:51:57.000 It becomes a part of the way you think.

01:52:00.000 It enhances the way people think.

01:52:03.000 And that idea, like a positive mind virus, will grow in your head.

01:52:10.000 Well, we hope so.

01:52:12.000 It does.

01:52:13.000 It's a bit like when I sing Us and Them now, I stop playing my bass when we get to With, Without, and Who'll Deny It's What the Fighting's All About.

01:52:22.000 Because I wrote that in 1972. Wow.

01:52:26.000 Okay.

01:52:26.000 That line.

01:52:27.000 And it's still fucking true. 0.99

01:52:30.000 That's crazy. 0.99

01:52:31.000 So you wrote that line during Vietnam?

01:52:33.000 Yeah.

01:52:34.000 Yeah.

01:52:36.000 I was a small boy.

01:52:37.000 Forward he cried from the rear and the front rank died.

01:52:41.000 So that's like, that's another version of The Bravery Being Out of Range, which I wrote in 1990. So I wrote, 1990, I wrote The Bravery Being Out of Range.

01:52:50.000 So that's 20 years after I wrote Us and Them.

01:52:54.000 And Us and Them is only about two strangers passing in the street, because there is no Us and Them.

01:53:00.000 It's all us.

01:53:02.000 But the people with the money, who by the elections that you were describing in the Citizens United conversation, they own all the newspapers and the TV state, and they would have us believe that the Us and Them is real and that we are good and they are evil. 1.00

01:53:22.000 That's why we've got to kill them all. 1.00

01:53:24.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:53:25.000 And they sell that lie.

01:53:27.000 And some people believe it.

01:53:29.000 Intelligent people believe it.

01:53:30.000 That was what was so disturbing about that conversation that you had with that gentleman on CNN. Right.

01:53:35.000 That was an us versus them conversation.

01:53:38.000 Yeah.

01:53:40.000 Yeah.

01:53:41.000 I'm not sure Michael McConnish is a gentleman.

01:53:45.000 What do you call him?

01:53:47.000 I certainly wouldn't have him in my club.

01:53:49.000 No, I'm kidding.

01:53:51.000 That was Groucho Marx.

01:53:53.000 Well, he's a guy working for a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.

01:53:57.000 I know.

01:53:58.000 I mean, that's what CNN is.

01:53:59.000 I know.

01:54:00.000 Yeah.

01:54:01.000 I mean, if you want to work there, that's what you do.

01:54:03.000 You know, you want to be a baker, you got to work near an oven.

01:54:07.000 Groucho Marx, I believe, said, I wouldn't want to join a club that would help me as a member.

01:54:12.000 Yeah.

01:54:12.000 Didn't he?

01:54:13.000 Or something like that.

01:54:14.000 Yeah.

01:54:14.000 Well, I agree with that.

01:54:16.000 There was a thing called the Intellectual Dark Web that was a bunch of us that were, like, sort of different thinkers online.

01:54:25.000 And they grouped us all together and called us the Intellectual Dark Web. 0.99

01:54:29.000 And I was like, oh, fuck, no. 0.99

01:54:31.000 So I started calling it the International Dork Web. 0.99

01:54:36.000 I started calling it all sorts of different things to mock it.

01:54:40.000 Well, good.

01:54:41.000 Much to the chagrin of some of the people that were involved in it.

01:54:44.000 But ultimately, people stopped talking about it.

01:54:47.000 But it was like, listen, don't make a club.

01:54:49.000 Just don't do it.

01:54:51.000 Just don't.

01:54:52.000 Don't even pretend.

01:54:54.000 Yeah.

01:54:55.000 It's just people.

01:54:56.000 Yeah.

01:54:56.000 It's just humans.

01:54:57.000 Don't lump us in together, then it's just...

01:54:59.000 Yeah, clubs are a problem because they're always exclusive in one way or another.

01:55:05.000 Yeah.

01:55:07.000 There's plenty of exclusivity in the world.

01:55:09.000 We don't need more of it.

01:55:10.000 Yeah.

01:55:12.000 True.

01:55:13.000 Well, that's one of the beautiful things about music, right?

01:55:15.000 That it unites people.

01:55:17.000 And one of the beautiful things is that it unites people with different political philosophies, different religious backgrounds, different...

01:55:24.000 If you enjoy music, you enjoy art, it brings people together in a very unique way because they have the connection to this work.

01:55:36.000 They have a connection to this thing that this band or this person has created.

01:55:40.000 Yeah.

01:55:40.000 It's beautiful.

01:55:42.000 Yeah, it is.

01:55:43.000 No, it is.

01:55:44.000 You're absolutely right.

01:55:49.000 I don't know why, but I saw a picture of Dirk Bogard the other day because...

01:55:55.000 Oh, I know.

01:56:00.000 Do I know?

01:56:01.000 I was watching a documentary about Buster Keaton.

01:56:04.000 How did Dirk Bogard get into that?

01:56:06.000 Or maybe it wasn't.

01:56:07.000 Maybe that was another thing.

01:56:09.000 But I couldn't look at Dirk.

01:56:10.000 I was thinking how unbelievably handsome and elegant Dirk Bogard is, sitting there with his knee crossed over like that, you know, with a cigarette and whatever.

01:56:21.000 Doug Bogart.

01:56:22.000 Doug.

01:56:23.000 Dirk Bogart.

01:56:24.000 Yeah, he's an English actor.

01:56:25.000 Sorry, I shouldn't.

01:56:27.000 Anyway, he was in a movie called Death in Venice.

01:56:33.000 Yeah, there he is. 1.00

01:56:33.000 Look at that handsome bastard. 1.00

01:56:34.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:56:35.000 Well, at the opening of Death in Venice, he's sitting in a deck chair on the Lido.

01:56:43.000 And it's Mahler's Fourth Symphony, or is it his fifth?

01:56:48.000 Fourth, I think it's the adagiato from Mahler's Fourth Symphony.

01:56:52.000 And it's just like, you just go, when you hear that music with those shots, him on the Lido and there's a boat going across the Grand Canal or something like that, you just go...

01:57:03.000 So I find classical music often more moving than almost any of the pop music that I'm attached to.

01:57:13.000 But if it's popular music, for me anyway, it's more likely to be Billie Holiday than anything contemporary.

01:57:26.000 I was reading about God Bless the Child and I read for the first time the story about her because she wrote the lyrics to God Bless the Child and it's a true story.

01:57:39.000 Billie Holiday goes to borrow money from her mother Who won't give her any, because she's skint.

01:57:48.000 What's that?

01:57:49.000 Skint.

01:57:50.000 Out of cash.

01:57:51.000 Broke.

01:57:52.000 She's broke.

01:57:53.000 So she goes and tries to borrow money from her mother who says, get the hell out of here, or whatever she says to her. 1.00

01:57:59.000 So Billie Holiday writes, God bless the child who's got his own.

01:58:05.000 Mama may have and Papa may have, but God bless the child who's got his own.

01:58:09.000 And when you listen to that lyric, not knowing...

01:58:13.000 It's a literal story of her trying to borrow money from a parent.

01:58:19.000 I made up all kinds of stuff about it.

01:58:22.000 What does that mean?

01:58:24.000 Right.

01:58:24.000 God bless the child who's got his own.

01:58:26.000 What are you talking about?

01:58:26.000 What does that mean?

01:58:27.000 And I'm trying to figure it out.

01:58:29.000 And then I read, now it takes me, I'm 79 years old and I read, that's what it was about.

01:58:34.000 Oh my goodness.

01:58:36.000 Well, it's interesting because it means to different people.

01:58:40.000 They attach meaning to things.

01:58:42.000 And they decide, and they'll have discussions about it.

01:58:46.000 Much like connecting Dark Side of the Moon to The Wizard of Oz.

01:58:50.000 It's like people have decided, and it adds to the lore of what the art is.

01:58:56.000 Yeah.

01:58:57.000 No, that's right.

01:58:58.000 And I love kind of enigmatic lyrics in things.

01:59:04.000 I love lyrics that are very direct.

01:59:06.000 I was talking about Neil Young earlier, you know, how I lost my friends.

01:59:10.000 I still don't understand.

01:59:11.000 They got lost in something stations that became Polk, Bench Mutations, and they were waiting and waiting.

01:59:19.000 Which is an absolute direct, but me, I just headed north to where the pavement reads the road and all that stuff.

01:59:27.000 Narrative songs like that.

01:59:28.000 But there's also a lot of stuff that is open absolutely to interpretation.

01:59:35.000 One of my songs that I like to hear people talking about, or don't, but I would notice, is like...

01:59:41.000 The second verse of Wish You Were Here goes, did they get you to trade?

01:59:46.000 Your heroes for ghosts, hot ashes for trees, hot air for a cool breeze, cold comfort for change, and did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?

01:59:56.000 Well, there's so many ideas all wrapped up in those words.

02:00:02.000 I know what they mean for me, but a lot of people sometimes either misinterpret or they interpret them in ways that mean something to them, I think.

02:00:12.000 I think also they attach it to meaning that applies to their own life.

02:00:16.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:00:17.000 Yeah.

02:00:18.000 Yeah, exactly, which is cool.

02:00:20.000 Yeah, it is cool.

02:00:21.000 It is cool.

02:00:22.000 I mean, there's songs that become an anthem for a period of time in people's lives.

02:00:27.000 And when they hear that song, it just immediately connects them.

02:00:34.000 It's a beautiful thing.

02:00:35.000 It's funny that, hey teacher, leave them kids alone, which is now being taken up in Iran in all the protests in the streets because of the beating to death of, what's her name?

02:00:55.000 Amini is the girl's name who died in... 1.00

02:00:59.000 For incorrectly wearing her headscarf.

02:01:01.000 For incorrectly wearing her hijab.

02:01:03.000 It's fascinating what an uprising has come from that all over the world.

02:01:08.000 I saw this massive protest in New York City and countries all over the world.

02:01:13.000 Yeah.

02:01:14.000 And in Iran, it's wild right now.

02:01:17.000 Yeah.

02:01:17.000 I didn't go on yesterday to check it out.

02:01:20.000 But they're still killing people in the streets.

02:01:23.000 Yeah.

02:01:26.000 The government.

02:01:27.000 It's a tricky situation because obviously I'm against the idea of a theocracy under any terms.

02:01:36.000 Just as much of the Iranian mullahs, the ayatollah, as I am against the Israeli state, which is another theocracy and whatever. 0.95

02:01:48.000 But I'm also very wary of, and not that it hasn't stopped me making videos and sending my support to the protesters and saying, because it's separate from the politics of the thing.

02:01:59.000 Because there's a lot of talk that is encouraging people.

02:02:11.000 We're good to go.

02:02:24.000 So I had to make the decision when friends in Iran said to me, look, they've just done this, do something.

02:02:29.000 So I started making videos immediately.

02:02:31.000 So of course, hey, Ayatollah, leave them kids alone has become a big catchphrase in Iran.

02:02:38.000 And they're using it.

02:02:39.000 And it was, you know, it started off, I was, all my work was banned in apartheid South Africa because the kids in the townships were singing, leave those kids alive.

02:02:51.000 Wow.

02:02:51.000 They teach you, leave those kids alive.

02:02:52.000 It became a protest anthem for them there.

02:02:55.000 So I'm really happy that it fulfills that function in different parts of the world.

02:03:01.000 And whenever it does, it's always against an errant authority of one kind or another, which again is sort of the story of my life.

02:03:12.000 I don't care who you are or what country you rule.

02:03:16.000 If you're in authority and you're getting it wrong and not...

02:03:22.000 Adhering to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from Paris in 1948, I'm against you.

02:03:29.000 And the rest of it I don't care about really, but I care about that.

02:03:33.000 Well, unfortunately, most countries when they get to a position of power don't adhere.

02:03:40.000 No, they don't.

02:03:43.000 It's almost like the default setting.

02:03:45.000 Yeah.

02:03:47.000 Yeah, it is almost a default setting.

02:03:49.000 It would be nice to see, to allow a bit more leeway, particularly say in Latin America, to the new Colombian administration or the new president of Chile or the whatever, if we leave them alone and let them get on with it.

02:04:05.000 Whether or not they might develop societies where they don't feel that they need the heel of the jackboot to maintain control of her.

02:04:18.000 So it's hard to know because we, the West, the UK and the United States and the rest of NATO have interfered mightily In experiments in other ways to address social responsibility of governments in other economic models,

02:04:38.000 say, like in Venezuela or in Chile or places where we attempt to depose the duly elected democratic government of the country.

02:04:48.000 Isn't it almost ironic that the one country that was founded within the last few hundred years to escape from the control of a dictatorship became the country that intervenes in more countries' government than any?

02:05:04.000 Yeah.

02:05:04.000 It's pretty wild if you really think about the origins of the United States.

02:05:08.000 Yeah.

02:05:09.000 But what's really...

02:05:12.000 Really interesting.

02:05:13.000 Yes, it is very, very interesting.

02:05:15.000 It's fascinating.

02:05:16.000 But if you read the Constitution, you've probably read your Constitution more carefully than I had and the Bill of Rights and the whatever.

02:05:23.000 And the way the Electoral College was set up.

02:05:25.000 It was sort of set up so that the people never really have a chance to have any power in it.

02:05:32.000 It's set up to be ruled by the elite who created and wrote the Constitution.

02:05:36.000 But what I was going to say was...

02:05:39.000 What was I going to say?

02:05:41.000 Isn't it that...

02:05:42.000 Yeah, but it's interesting as well that the media is so powerful and so sewn up and says the same thing in context.

02:05:51.000 Democrats and Republicans, all of it together, which is, no, we're the good guys.

02:05:57.000 Yeah.

02:05:57.000 And somehow...

02:05:59.000 It gets ignored that the United States of America has interfered in more elections and have been involved in more coups and invaded more countries and deposed more democratically elected.

02:06:11.000 Not least the government of the Ukraine in 2014. And it's like none of it ever happened, you'd think.

02:06:20.000 We wave the flag and, no, everything's great.

02:06:25.000 No, it's not.

02:06:26.000 It just isn't.

02:06:29.000 We just have so much momentum in this country for the dissemination of propaganda that to like put a halt to that and start objectively analyzing the United States role and all these foreign conflicts and where money has played a part and what are the motivating factors for us to get involved in this and who stands to profit and what are the forces behind this?

02:06:53.000 To expect that from Mainstream media at this point, they're almost like, well, that's just not what we do.

02:07:02.000 Well, the unfortunate thing is, and without wishing to decry all journalists everywhere, but most of them in the mainstream media, the problem is that if you speak up against the story that they're selling on behalf of the ruling class,

02:07:20.000 you get fired.

02:07:21.000 You get fired, yeah.

02:07:22.000 You're gone.

02:07:23.000 Just happened to Katie Helper from The Hill. 0.97

02:07:25.000 Yeah.

02:07:26.000 She agreed with Rashida Tlaib that Israel is an apartheid endeavour, which it obviously is. 0.98

02:07:32.000 You're fired!

02:07:33.000 You're not allowed to say that.

02:07:35.000 So it's really problematic.

02:07:38.000 And it may well be that in journalism school, they may well teach people now that You have to be really careful to toe the line.

02:07:47.000 You can only say what they want you to say.

02:07:50.000 I nearly said little prick, but the guy from Rolling Stone, he's not from Rolling Stone, who interviewed me the other day.

02:07:58.000 No, not Michael.

02:08:00.000 This was Rolling Stone.

02:08:02.000 This was like two days ago.

02:08:04.000 I was a bit hot under the collar about it two days ago because it was a hatchet job.

02:08:09.000 If you don't believe me, read it.

02:08:12.000 But I know you do believe me.

02:08:14.000 I believe you.

02:08:15.000 Anyway, this kid...

02:08:16.000 Yeah, we were having a conversation and I was talking to him about something where there is a narrative...

02:08:24.000 Yeah, I will.

02:08:25.000 I'll just say this one.

02:08:26.000 Okay, and it's...

02:08:30.000 It's about Syria, and it's about false flag, and it's about chemical weapons, and it's about Duma, and it's about April the 13th, and it's about the OPCW, and it's about the inspectors, Ian Henderson and Inspector B, and it's about the whole narrative,

02:08:45.000 and about how it was taken eventually to the Security Council by Aaron Marte from Grey's own and others, and blah, blah, blah.

02:08:52.000 So there are two narratives.

02:08:54.000 One is the Sad Ghastis people, which is the officially accepted narrative.

02:08:59.000 And the other is that he didn't.

02:09:01.000 It was a false flag by al-Nusra and al-Qaeda who were in Duma, in control of the place on the day it happened, but left the next day because they'd already given up.

02:09:13.000 And the Assad government actually sent the buses to take them all away, saying, let's not fight in the streets. 0.93

02:09:20.000 You've lost.

02:09:21.000 You can go.

02:09:22.000 Anyway, so this kid started accusing me because...

02:09:29.000 I've done so much reading and research into this particular subject and I've been in a lot of trouble since 2018 because I stood up on stage in Barcelona and expressed my misgivings only because the United States and the UK and the Republic of France were about to go and bomb Syria in reprisal for a chemical weapons attack that there was a huge amount of Why

02:10:15.000 am I telling you this?

02:10:17.000 Oh, because he just shouted me down in the conversation.

02:10:20.000 Shouted you down?

02:10:20.000 Yeah.

02:10:21.000 Just said and accused me in the post thing of being a conspiracy theorist and having weird ideas about...

02:10:30.000 How old was this gentleman?

02:10:31.000 Not old.

02:10:32.000 Little prick?

02:10:33.000 Old enough to know better.

02:10:35.000 He's called James Ball.

02:10:37.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:10:38.000 Yeah, I didn't describe his prick. 0.99

02:10:40.000 I said he was a little prick. 0.99

02:10:42.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:10:46.000 And so he was shouting at him.

02:10:48.000 Well, you can listen to it.

02:10:49.000 Okay.

02:10:50.000 Anyway, but we never resolved anything.

02:10:53.000 That's the problem.

02:10:54.000 The thing is that, you know, oh, and he claims to run something called the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

02:11:04.000 Oh, really?

02:11:05.000 And you buy this story of the Duma chemical as if it was absolutely the truth and you know it.

02:11:14.000 How do you know?

02:11:14.000 Oh, I know people in...

02:11:17.000 There's smacks of Bellingcat and Elliot Higgins and all of that stuff and the intermingling of the security services both in England and probably in Russia and God knows where else.

02:11:31.000 You can't believe anything.

02:11:35.000 You really do have to read everything, and you have to read the small print, and you have to look in if you want to know the truth about things that happen.

02:11:45.000 When you're doing something like that, you're reading both sides, and you're trying to get an objective assessment of what actually happened.

02:11:52.000 How do you discern?

02:11:55.000 Well, you have to read everything, and particularly you have to read the documents that are leaked by whistleblowers.

02:12:04.000 There were new documents as late as 2020 from the OPCW from a further person who came out and said, I'm going to give you these documents now because they show that what you're saying is true and they show that Ian Henderson's misgivings about the official OPCW document...

02:12:24.000 Which was an absolute made-up job.

02:12:27.000 The guy who runs the OBCW now is called Arias, okay?

02:12:32.000 And they produced a final report on Duma that said it is likely that these people died of chlorine poisoning from a canister drop from a helicopter or whatever.

02:12:43.000 None of the evidence points to that.

02:12:46.000 It all points to the fact that nobody quite knows who killed these people, but the evidence all points to the fact that the canisters that were found at the site were put there, were placed there, were left there.

02:13:02.000 They were not dropped from the air.

02:13:05.000 Anyway, I don't want to go through the whole thing.

02:13:07.000 You know, again, if you want to know about it, or if anyone out there wants to know about it, you should read Aaron Marte's articles in The Grey Zone.

02:13:15.000 That's the first place to go.

02:13:17.000 And then you should read, I've forgotten his name, but the guy who actually started the OPCW, who was fired because he started asking questions.

02:13:27.000 You should read what he has to say about it.

02:13:30.000 This is the guy who started the OPCW, something for protection of chemical weapons.

02:13:40.000 I can't remember what the O stands for.

02:13:42.000 Anyway, I'm going to stop talking about it.

02:13:44.000 So this person who shouted you down, they had not read all this?

02:13:49.000 No.

02:13:50.000 So they had this narrow-minded perspective, this one-side perspective, which is the mainstream narrative.

02:13:56.000 Yeah, and if you question it, they say you're a conspiracy theorist and a Putin apologist and a Russian bot, and they just call you names and laugh at you as if... 1.00

02:14:09.000 You're an idiot, you know, which obviously I'm not. 0.91

02:14:14.000 And I had read an awful lot more than this, which is why we couldn't have a conversation about it, because he hadn't read any of this stuff. 1.00

02:14:21.000 I've read it all.

02:14:23.000 Well, you always have to be when someone starts shouting you down and they haven't read the other side of it.

02:14:28.000 That's never a good sign.

02:14:30.000 It's never a good way to show the veracity of your argument.

02:14:33.000 Well, it's public, so people can listen to the conversation.

02:14:37.000 But they may do.

02:14:38.000 But he and somebody else from Rolling Stone...

02:14:42.000 The very next day, i.e.

02:14:44.000 yesterday, they recorded a conversation between the two of them before playing a recording of the conversation I'd had with the little prick.

02:14:53.000 And that conversation they had was 10 minutes of hatchet job.

02:14:59.000 I can't believe he said that about the Jews.

02:15:02.000 You know, that sort of thing.

02:15:03.000 Are you trying to make up the story that I'm an anti-Semite?

02:15:07.000 Right.

02:15:08.000 Again.

02:15:09.000 Yeah.

02:15:09.000 And load that onto them.

02:15:11.000 I wonder why people do that.

02:15:12.000 Do you think they do that to just support their own argument, to try to make it look like it makes more sense what they're saying, and then calling you a conspiracy theorist?

02:15:21.000 So just for their own ego?

02:15:24.000 No.

02:15:25.000 Do you think that this is something that they're being encouraged to do by the publication?

02:15:29.000 Yeah.

02:15:29.000 Well, the anti-Semite thing, if I could take that first, they do it because they have no argument.

02:15:34.000 There is no position.

02:15:36.000 There is no defense for the apartheid state of Israel and its occupation of the Palestinian land.

02:15:44.000 None.

02:15:44.000 And so by calling you an anti-Semite, they just stop the conversation dead in its tracks because that's an indefensible position.

02:15:51.000 Exactly.

02:15:52.000 And you're not allowed to say...

02:15:55.000 I'm not.

02:15:56.000 Right.

02:15:57.000 You're not allowed to.

02:15:58.000 Yeah.

02:15:59.000 Oh, you once put the Star of David on the side of a pig in a show.

02:16:02.000 Yeah, but I also put this hammer and sickle and the crescent and whatever and a dollar sign and, you know.

02:16:09.000 Yeah.

02:16:10.000 No, but you put the...

02:16:11.000 Yeah, well, it's a symbol of an oppressive state, you know.

02:16:15.000 Yeah.

02:16:16.000 I am lumping you in.

02:16:19.000 But it's not like just you.

02:16:22.000 Right.

02:16:22.000 But that is just me criticizing the policies of your government.

02:16:27.000 And I'm afraid the Star of David does represent the nation that is committing the crime of apartheid every day and murdering Palestinians every day. 0.79

02:16:38.000 Men, women and children every single day.

02:16:42.000 So...

02:16:45.000 Yeah, I did.

02:16:46.000 Yeah, I did.

02:16:46.000 And I'm unapologetic about it.

02:16:49.000 But at the time when it happened, which was in 2013, I think, somebody complained.

02:16:55.000 And I thought, God, this is more trouble than it's worth.

02:16:57.000 I actually took it off after a few gigs because I was sick of it.

02:17:02.000 And at the time, the ADL said, well, we don't approve of everything he does, but he's not an anti-Semite.

02:17:09.000 But by God, they've changed their mind now.

02:17:12.000 And it's not just me, obviously.

02:17:16.000 It's mere anyone, anyone who dares to suggest that there's something bad about their policies.

02:17:26.000 And so that's why the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is so bad and so dangerous and why the guy who wrote it has said, I'm sorry!

02:17:38.000 It's been taken completely out of the context that I meant it.

02:17:42.000 He's called George Steve or some...

02:17:45.000 I've forgotten his name, sadly.

02:17:46.000 But he stood up in public on many occasions, speaking to academics and, you know, colleges and whatever and said...

02:17:55.000 I really apologise for writing this, because it's been taken in completely the wrong way, and I wish I'd never suggested it. 0.96

02:18:04.000 I was, you know, influenced by people I shouldn't have been influenced by, and it's bullshit.

02:18:11.000 The guy wrote it, but they're off and running, and so... 0.76

02:18:16.000 But it has to be walked back from.

02:18:20.000 The IHR, the International Holocaust Remembrance Association.

02:18:26.000 Alliance, sorry.

02:18:27.000 Alliance.

02:18:28.000 Definition of antisemitism.

02:18:31.000 You can't take a word and change its meaning completely.

02:18:35.000 Right.

02:18:35.000 Or you can, but you'd have to get everybody, anything to do with dictionaries, to agree to change the meaning.

02:18:42.000 Right.

02:18:43.000 If you want anti-Semitism to mean criticism of the Israeli government, you have to say this isn't like the anti-Semitism that we talked about, which is where you're down or criticize or say bad things about Jewish people or the Jewish faith.

02:19:01.000 That's what anti-Semitism means to me and to everybody else.

02:19:05.000 But it doesn't...

02:19:07.000 The idea that Israel can behave like people in the past behaved towards Jews in Northern Europe.

02:19:16.000 No, it can't mean that.

02:19:18.000 It cannot mean that.

02:19:21.000 No.

02:19:22.000 To criticize your behavior now is not anti-Semitic.

02:19:27.000 It's something else.

02:19:28.000 It's being in favor of equal human rights for Palestinians.

02:19:34.000 So being in favor of the Palestinians having rights is not anti-Semitic.

02:19:41.000 It's pro-human rights.

02:19:43.000 It's pro-human being.

02:19:45.000 It's pro the culture of the world.

02:19:47.000 When you did that show in Florida and the Jewish group removed the children from the show, did you replace them with other children?

02:19:56.000 Imagine those poor kids who were going to come and do the show. 0.90

02:19:59.000 It would have been an amazing experience for them.

02:20:03.000 I mean, I'm in contact with quite a lot of the kids that have worked with us in shows.

02:20:08.000 Yeah?

02:20:08.000 Oh, yeah, because some of the stories, you know, particularly in South America, where they were a bit needier than...

02:20:16.000 In Europe, they were by and large fairly all right, but in the United States, we did a thing...

02:20:24.000 They've just come back to me.

02:20:26.000 We had these kids who were a bit older than usual, and they were in Oakland, up in the Bay Area.

02:20:33.000 And they were black kids, all black kids. 0.97

02:20:39.000 You know, and the boys had sort of almost had moustaches, and they were surly and uncooperative and really, you know, very difficult to work with and didn't want to...

02:20:54.000 You know, and it was hard work and I can remember feeling a bit negative towards these people.

02:21:01.000 Anyway, they did it and they did the show and they were fine and whatever.

02:21:07.000 And like a week later, there was a phone call came in another city into the production office and it was a guy on the phone and he was talking to one of the girls in the office.

02:21:19.000 And he wanted to talk about these kids.

02:21:22.000 And she was busy and went, yeah, what?

02:21:24.000 He said, well, hold on a minute.

02:21:26.000 Don't get short with me.

02:21:28.000 I want to talk to somebody.

02:21:31.000 And I didn't talk to him, but somebody just went, oh, well, hold on.

02:21:35.000 Who's that?

02:21:36.000 Oh, it's Sean from Oakland, whatever.

02:21:38.000 I brought the kids to the show.

02:21:39.000 Oh, yeah.

02:21:40.000 Hi, Sean.

02:21:40.000 How are you doing?

02:21:41.000 He said, good, but I think I need to say something.

02:21:44.000 Could you pass this on to Roger?

02:21:46.000 Yeah, he said, because I could see it was difficult working with my kids.

02:21:51.000 He said, yeah, what?

02:21:53.000 He said, well, I want to tell you about those kids.

02:21:55.000 He said, none of them has two parents of those 12 kids, boys or girls.

02:22:03.000 They either have a mother or a father, but none of them have both. 0.99

02:22:08.000 If they have a mother, she's a hooker and she's a junkie. 1.00

02:22:12.000 If they have a father, he's in prison. 0.97

02:22:16.000 So if they were a bit uncooperative, I can feel myself getting emotional now.

02:22:22.000 That's why.

02:22:23.000 And he said, the other thing I want to tell you is this.

02:22:29.000 He said...

02:22:39.000 Nothing like that has ever happened to any of those children before.

02:22:43.000 And they've talked about nothing else since they came and did that show.

02:22:49.000 It's the first thing that they've ever done that they're proud of.

02:22:55.000 Those kids.

02:22:56.000 Wow!

02:22:57.000 I know.

02:22:59.000 I think I was in Chicago.

02:23:04.000 That night.

02:23:05.000 I'll tell you why.

02:23:06.000 I don't know why.

02:23:07.000 Yeah, I do know why I'm telling you.

02:23:08.000 Because, you know, we were having an open conversation.

02:23:11.000 I think I was in Chicago.

02:23:13.000 Steve Bing, do you know who that is?

02:23:15.000 He was a rich bloke from L.A. He left a ton of money and he was in film production and this and that.

02:23:21.000 And he was a strange bloke.

02:23:22.000 He killed himself in the end.

02:23:25.000 Somebody told me that the other night.

02:23:27.000 I said, do you know that Bing threw himself off a 27-story building?

02:23:30.000 When did that happen?

02:23:31.000 I don't know.

02:23:32.000 A few weeks ago, I think, or months ago.

02:23:34.000 I honestly don't know because I hadn't spoken to Steve for years.

02:23:39.000 So I don't know. 0.95

02:23:41.000 He had more money than cents and he did a lot of junk.

02:23:48.000 Anyway, that's not the thing.

02:23:49.000 But he happened to be in Chicago and came to the gig in Chicago.

02:23:53.000 And when I heard this news about these kids in Oakland, so I said, you should send them some money, Steve, you're rich, to this group of kids in Oakland so they can maybe do something theatrical and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

02:24:11.000 And he said, you've got money.

02:24:13.000 Why don't you send them some money?

02:24:15.000 And so I think we sent them either 50 or 25 grand each.

02:24:21.000 And I was really glad.

02:24:22.000 So they got a cheque for 50 or 100 grand.

02:24:26.000 I don't know what it was.

02:24:26.000 I can't remember.

02:24:28.000 But they did, and I never spoke to the guy again, and I have no idea what happened to the money, and I don't know.

02:24:33.000 But I do remember when I heard him say, that's the most important thing that's ever happened to these children.

02:24:41.000 It's amazing, isn't it?

02:24:42.000 You touch those lives, however briefly.

02:24:45.000 And you brought it up because you talked about the kids in North Miami who weren't allowed to sing with me because some prick had told the mayor that I'm an anti-Semite.

02:24:56.000 Some probably very worthy feeling, you know, local Jewish community association.

02:25:03.000 And I'm sure they believe it.

02:25:05.000 They probably think I'm bloody, you know, Goebbels or somebody.

02:25:09.000 It's a very defensive position that's taken up by many people where any criticism of the policies of Israel is anti-Semitic.

02:25:17.000 Yeah.

02:25:18.000 And it's like an absolute, almost a binary thing.

02:25:21.000 It's either you're on or off.

02:25:23.000 You're either with us or against us.

02:25:24.000 Yeah.

02:25:25.000 Well, luckily, I mean, I have lots of, you know, close friends who are in organizations all over the world who are actually Jewish people.

02:25:39.000 In Jewish Voice for Labour, I won't mention the names, but become close friends of mine.

02:25:46.000 So it's a weirdly divisive thing.

02:25:49.000 That anybody should think that the settler-colonial project in Palestine has anything to do with Judaism.

02:25:58.000 It shouldn't have.

02:26:00.000 You know, if you're going to be a settler-colonialist nation and subjugate the indigenous people to death, well, okay, but you can't do it under the cloak of your religion.

02:26:16.000 And so you can't criticize this because of my religion.

02:26:19.000 As I said to you before, how would that be if we suddenly decided that the United States was a theocracy and only Christians could have rights? 0.99

02:26:29.000 What?

02:26:31.000 What?

02:26:31.000 Yeah.

02:26:33.000 Anyway.

02:26:34.000 Yeah, it would be insane.

02:26:36.000 It's somehow...

02:26:37.000 Well, it's removed from our...

02:26:40.000 It's not discussed publicly.

02:26:43.000 It's also removed from our view.

02:26:45.000 It's not something that we see.

02:26:46.000 We're not over there.

02:26:48.000 And I've had friends that have gone over there, and Abby Martin in particular, who's come on the podcast and said...

02:26:54.000 Talked about the atrocities that are committed there and even attacks on journalists and murdering of journalists over there by Israeli troops.

02:27:04.000 And, you know, she just gets mercilessly attacked for talking about this.

02:27:09.000 She even interviewed people on the street in Israel and asked them questions about Palestinians and got these horrific responses, dehumanizing the othering of those people.

02:27:21.000 I know Mike and Abby very well, and I believe you, and I've heard those stories from her as well.

02:27:29.000 Well, it's a small country, and they're a long way away, and the press is completely...

02:27:37.000 Well, it's not, actually.

02:27:38.000 Funnily enough, there's one independent paper called Haaretz in Israel.

02:27:43.000 And a close friend of mine, who is an Israeli Jew, writes articles for it, and they're very humane.

02:27:50.000 But somehow they just get brushed aside.

02:27:53.000 His name is Gideon Levy, if you ever want to look up somebody who's making sense from, you know, that side of the tracks or that part of the world.

02:28:04.000 Gideon's your man.

02:28:08.000 I don't know why.

02:28:09.000 It's very hard to shine a light brightly enough that people go, oh, I get it.

02:28:15.000 And particularly if the leader of your great country is going, I don't want to hear anything, I'm not interested, I will be the greatest supporter of Israel.

02:28:28.000 Three million percent that there's ever been ever in the whole history of everything, whatever they do, I don't care.

02:28:37.000 There's no political consequences for saying that, though.

02:28:39.000 That's part of the problem.

02:28:40.000 You can say that and there's zero political consequences.

02:28:44.000 But if you do talk about the Palestinian people and their rights and the plight of the Palestinians, then you are connected to Hamas.

02:28:53.000 And then all of a sudden you're connected to this terrorist organization and it doesn't matter about those people.

02:29:00.000 The narrative is support of Israel equals you're on the right side.

02:29:04.000 Yeah.

02:29:06.000 Regardless of how their policies impact individual human beings, through no fault of their own, just happen to be born Palestinian and been stuck in this apartheid state.

02:29:18.000 And the other thing is that they, you know, it's very binary in that way.

02:29:24.000 It's like you're either with Israel or you're with Hamas. 0.82

02:29:27.000 You're with this terrorist organization that puts its people in danger purposely and uses them as cannon fodder.

02:29:34.000 So they can gain support internationally and does all these human rights atrocities and launches missiles at Israel.

02:29:42.000 Well, yeah, I know.

02:29:44.000 I hear all of this just the same as you do.

02:29:47.000 But they're just human beings.

02:29:48.000 Well, they're also the democratically elected government of Gaza, Hamas.

02:29:54.000 And there is an armed wing and whatever.

02:29:57.000 But if you actually read international law at all or the Geneva Conventions, an occupied people have an absolute legal and moral right to resist the occupation.

02:30:09.000 And this is a fact that is not bandied about when they talk about firing rockets into Israel, which almost never do any damage because they're very ineffectual.

02:30:22.000 And another thing that is a great worry to the Palestinian community is that...

02:30:30.000 The Israelis seem now to have a policy of pushing them, murdering so many of them that they are absolutely trying to create another intifada so they can make it an armed conflict where they're a thousand times, 0.95

02:30:45.000 ten thousand times more powerful than the Palestinian people who they are hoping will arm themselves and the young people gather together in bands and try and have an insurrection, an armed intercept, so they can just kill them all. 1.00

02:30:59.000 When you say that Hamas is the democratically elected leaders of Palestine, how corrupt— I didn't say of Palestine, I said of Gaza. 0.90

02:31:07.000 Excuse me, of Gaza.

02:31:08.000 Yeah.

02:31:08.000 How corrupt is that election?

02:31:12.000 I've no idea.

02:31:13.000 I wasn't there, but it was in 2011, I think.

02:31:18.000 How's there been an election since then?

02:31:20.000 I don't know.

02:31:20.000 How you would organize anything in Gaza, which is a prison.

02:31:24.000 Right.

02:31:25.000 It's got borders.

02:31:26.000 The Israelis control who comes in and goes out. 1.00

02:31:29.000 They opened fire on Palestinian fishing boats again yesterday.

02:31:34.000 So I can't really answer that question because I'm not there and I don't know.

02:31:39.000 Does anybody have a clear path of resolution that makes sense for that area where they could sit down and come up with some sort of humane, logical, compassionate way to mitigate some of these problems?

02:31:54.000 Does anyone?

02:31:55.000 Yeah, I do.

02:31:56.000 You do.

02:31:58.000 You give equal human rights to people, but you would have to stop the occupation and stop one group of people oppressing another group of people.

02:32:08.000 You would have to accept the principles of Paris 1948. And everything would develop from that.

02:32:17.000 Then you could have a process.

02:32:19.000 You could all get on a plane and go to Oslo and have meetings.

02:32:22.000 They did that once before but nobody stood by anything that was agreed in Oslo.

02:32:27.000 It was just a delaying process to consolidate the occupation of Palestine, i.e.

02:32:34.000 the settlement building, the private roads, all of that stuff.

02:32:39.000 Yeah, but you would need the will.

02:32:41.000 You would need the will of the Israeli government and then it could move forward.

02:32:47.000 Is there any discussion from the Israeli government or from Israel about the human rights of the people of Gaza?

02:32:54.000 None.

02:32:55.000 They're implacable.

02:32:57.000 All they want is for Liz Truss to move the UK Embassy to Jerusalem and compound the problem, just like Donald Trump did when he did that. 1.00

02:33:08.000 And he exacerbated the problem beyond all measure.

02:33:12.000 Because it's like, oh look, The President of the United States has said it's alright for us to annex the Golden Heights and occupy the whole of what was left of Palestine in 1967 and establish an apartheid state.

02:33:27.000 Donald Trump says it's okay.

02:33:30.000 Even though the whole international community up until that time had said, no, Jerusalem cannot be all combined under the control of the state of Israel.

02:33:45.000 That is not what we all agreed in 1947. And so the occupation in 1967 of East Jerusalem was illegal and still is.

02:33:57.000 All the settlements in the occupied territory are illegal, not just under international law, but under the Fourth Geneva Convention as well.

02:34:09.000 And it's also illegal not to allow the refugees to return into Israel as well. 0.65

02:34:15.000 You can't do it.

02:34:17.000 It's illegal.

02:34:18.000 But international law, as we know, because the United States isn't a party to the Treaty of Rome, they said, well, we didn't sign any of those treaties.

02:34:30.000 So we're not subject to international laws.

02:34:34.000 So...

02:34:37.000 The United Nations Charter is a wonderful document, but unfortunately, the United Nations came in the ashes of the Second World War and included within its charter is the fact that the five permanent members of the Security Council,

02:35:00.000 the United States, France, England, China, Russia all have the power of veto of any resolutions.

02:35:13.000 And so the United Nations actually has no teeth if you have the power of veto.

02:35:18.000 So you get anything to do with Israel is always vetoed.

02:35:22.000 Any resolution that says they better stop behaving badly and do the right thing, as my mother would say, is always vetoed by Israel, the United States, the Marshall Islands, Australia, and a couple of other odds and sods.

02:35:37.000 It's always the same five or six people.

02:35:41.000 Well, who support, or rather who don't support resolutions in the General Assembly that say Israel should behave better.

02:35:53.000 So it's very difficult.

02:35:55.000 Thank goodness it exists and that people are allowed to stand up on their hind legs and make speeches.

02:36:01.000 And thank goodness that they can make alliances that are outside the control of the Security Council.

02:36:08.000 But they can't make it.

02:36:09.000 They can't exert any pressure.

02:36:11.000 There's no...

02:36:12.000 They can't make sanctions or...

02:36:15.000 They can't...

02:36:16.000 They can't exert pressure, so it has no teeth, but it is a great forum still for discussion.

02:36:23.000 I actually spoke, not to the General Assembly, but I spoke to the Human Rights Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations on the 29th of November 2012. Really?

02:36:41.000 I put a suit and tie on, and I called them Your Excellencies.

02:36:46.000 It was the weirdest thing.

02:36:47.000 It's on YouTube.

02:36:48.000 I'm sure you can find it.

02:36:49.000 If you want to see what I said, you can find it.

02:36:51.000 What was that like?

02:36:52.000 I loved it.

02:36:54.000 Yeah?

02:36:54.000 It was really great.

02:36:56.000 You know, and the ambassador, this bloke came up in a suit, but with a funny collar.

02:37:04.000 And he put his hand out and he went, I want to thank you and blah, blah, blah.

02:37:09.000 That was a great speech and whatever.

02:37:11.000 I said something and he wandered off.

02:37:13.000 And I said to somebody, who was that?

02:37:15.000 You know?

02:37:16.000 And they say, oh, he's the ambassador to the United Nations from Iran.

02:37:21.000 And I went, wow, how cool is it to meet such a person even?

02:37:27.000 Yeah.

02:37:28.000 Anyway.

02:37:31.000 They've never invited me back.

02:37:34.000 I think that's a one-and-done type situation.

02:37:36.000 But it's, you know, if I hadn't done that, it would be on my bucket list to go and talk in an august gathering of people like that.

02:37:47.000 And they clapped as well.

02:37:50.000 When I'd finished, I was only calling for peace, just like I'm with Ukraine.

02:37:55.000 My platform is no different.

02:37:57.000 Paris 1948, come on, lads.

02:37:59.000 That's all we have to do.

02:38:01.000 What a weird world we live in, where calling for peace is controversial.

02:38:04.000 Yeah. 0.76

02:38:06.000 You're considered a traitor.

02:38:09.000 Very strange.

02:38:10.000 Yeah.

02:38:11.000 Well, people are just so—there's so much confusion as to how the world actually works.

02:38:19.000 Yeah.

02:38:19.000 And there's so much confusion as to, like, what the clear solution is.

02:38:24.000 And what you're saying is a clear solution to be a good person, to do the right thing.

02:38:29.000 Yeah.

02:38:30.000 And to apply that to the whole earth.

02:38:32.000 Yeah.

02:38:33.000 Yeah.

02:38:33.000 Well, the problem is, or a big problem here, as I've said many times before, is that that group, including Wolferwitz and Rumsfeld and Cheney and Bill Kristol and the rest of them, the whole neocon cabal,

02:38:52.000 We're good to go.

02:39:22.000 They probably find it hard to believe that we haven't revolted, that there hasn't been a revolution.

02:39:29.000 Do you really think they find it hard to believe?

02:39:31.000 That they find it hard to believe.

02:39:33.000 Well, no, no, probably they don't.

02:39:35.000 I find it hard to believe.

02:39:37.000 But we're all, you know, throw the dog a bone, give him a phone.

02:39:41.000 Check out your Facebook likes.

02:39:42.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:39:45.000 Everything will be alright. 0.99

02:39:46.000 Let them kill Assange, you know. 0.99

02:39:49.000 The Assange thing is bizarre. 0.99

02:39:51.000 Yeah, it is.

02:39:52.000 It's the most bizarre.

02:39:54.000 Yeah.

02:39:54.000 Because there's no case for what they're doing to him.

02:40:01.000 And initially it was like some sexual thing.

02:40:04.000 And now it's... 0.99

02:40:08.000 The little prick wanted to argue with me about that as well.

02:40:12.000 What did he want to argue?

02:40:13.000 And this is a guy who claims to run something, which I haven't had time to look into, called the Bureau for Investigative Journalism.

02:40:24.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:40:24.000 And he doesn't give a fuck about Julian Assange being murdered by Liz Truss. 0.98

02:40:30.000 Slow murder. 0.99

02:40:32.000 Tortured.

02:40:33.000 By Boris Johnson and the whole of the English judicial system and with the connivance of or at the behest of the US government who want him dead. 0.93

02:40:43.000 They want him hung up like a magpie in a hedge.

02:40:55.000 Don't leak anything that's very important.

02:40:57.000 Or don't publish it.

02:40:58.000 He didn't leak anything.

02:41:00.000 He just published it.

02:41:04.000 It's amazing how little support there is for him and how much...

02:41:10.000 You don't hear anybody outraged.

02:41:15.000 It's nothing.

02:41:17.000 Even if someone is in support of him being arrested or him being deported to the United States, there's no good argument.

02:41:25.000 There's nothing there.

02:41:27.000 Think about all the things that people have gotten away with. 0.99

02:41:30.000 I mean look at this fucking Ghislaine Maxwell thing. 1.00

02:41:34.000 Ghislaine Maxwell, I've said this before I'll say it again, she's the only person ever to be tried and arrested and put in jail for sex trafficking to no one. 0.99

02:41:49.000 There's no list.

02:41:51.000 Where's the list of the people that she sex trafficked to? 1.00

02:41:55.000 Well, the problem is we know that they're head state, billionaires, wealthy people, famous people.

02:42:02.000 King's brother.

02:42:03.000 Yeah, King's brother.

02:42:04.000 Where's this list?

02:42:05.000 Where's the list of people?

02:42:07.000 The list does not exist.

02:42:08.000 So you're trying her and convicting her for a crime.

02:42:12.000 Where if you're sex trafficking, that means you're trafficking to someone.

02:42:18.000 And if that someone is an American citizen or a British citizen, that is an illegal act.

02:42:23.000 So who are these people that have committed this illegal act?

02:42:27.000 Because they're responsible as well.

02:42:29.000 Right.

02:42:29.000 So who are these people?

02:42:30.000 And how is there no discussion of this?

02:42:33.000 Well, there's no discussion because Jeffrey, watch his face, hung himself in his prison cell.

02:42:38.000 Yeah.

02:42:39.000 Yeah.

02:42:41.000 Which is insanely bizarre, right?

02:42:44.000 That one.

02:42:45.000 That's insane.

02:42:45.000 Oh, the cameras just happen to not work.

02:42:47.000 How convenient.

02:42:49.000 Yeah.

02:42:49.000 There's ligature marks around his neck and a fractured neck bone.

02:42:52.000 No worries.

02:42:53.000 Yeah. 0.84

02:42:53.000 That's what happens when you hang yourself. 0.84

02:42:55.000 We were having a cup of coffee.

02:42:57.000 Yeah.

02:42:57.000 Or whatever it was.

02:42:58.000 I confess I don't know a huge amount about the Jeffrey Epstein affair.

02:43:03.000 I know too much, unfortunately.

02:43:05.000 It's a very disturbing thing.

02:43:06.000 But the most disturbing thing is that there's no list.

02:43:12.000 That's a real crime, right?

02:43:15.000 Well, isn't the story, the anecdote is, isn't Andrew supposed to have given somebody 12 million quid to go away and to get off the list?

02:43:32.000 Supposedly, it's hard to know whether or not that's true, but for sure, money's been exchanged.

02:43:37.000 Influence has been exchanged.

02:43:38.000 They're not throwing any bones.

02:43:41.000 There has to be a large group of people that were involved in this, and there's none that are being exposed, which is quite fascinating.

02:43:49.000 Because I guess if you did get exposed, if someone said, hey, you know, blah, blah, blah, head of this bank, we have evidence that you were having sex with underage girls...

02:44:00.000 That person could say, okay, what about Bill Clinton? 0.82

02:44:02.000 What about this guy?

02:44:03.000 What about that guy?

02:44:04.000 He was there too.

02:44:05.000 And then the House of Cards comes down.

02:44:08.000 Bill Gates.

02:44:09.000 Bill Gates.

02:44:10.000 Hard to imagine.

02:44:11.000 Not just Bill Gates, but Bill Gates after Jeffrey Epstein had been arrested and convicted for statutory rape.

02:44:20.000 Right?

02:44:20.000 I mean, he had that very light slap on the wrist.

02:44:26.000 Yeah, that was the first arrest.

02:44:29.000 There was the first arrest.

02:44:31.000 And then he was convicted and he got this very light sentence.

02:44:35.000 And then I believe it was a journalist.

02:44:38.000 I forget who the journalist was, but one journalist.

02:44:42.000 Who kind of tracked this down and hounded this story until it became exposed publicly.

02:44:48.000 And then he got rearrested.

02:44:50.000 And then he got arrested and tried for other crimes.

02:44:52.000 And then once he was in jail, that's when they, you know, suicided him.

02:44:58.000 Yeah.

02:44:59.000 It's a wild story.

02:45:02.000 Yeah.

02:45:02.000 But just the fact that there's a place like that, there's an island.

02:45:06.000 That he owned. 0.99

02:45:07.000 Like, where's this guy getting this fucking money? 1.00

02:45:10.000 I don't know. 1.00

02:45:11.000 To own an island.

02:45:13.000 And the island is for sale now for, I think it's $100 million or something like that.

02:45:17.000 Like, where'd you get that money?

02:45:20.000 You know, and then the CEO of Victoria Secrets gives him a $60 million mansion in Manhattan.

02:45:27.000 Like, what?

02:45:28.000 And then you find out that these other CEOs have given him $100 million, $150 million, $50 million.

02:45:34.000 Like, what?

02:45:35.000 What?

02:45:36.000 What is this?

02:45:37.000 Some bizarre intelligence operation?

02:45:41.000 What is this?

02:45:42.000 What are they doing here?

02:45:44.000 You sound like a conspiracy theorist.

02:45:46.000 I do.

02:45:46.000 I am a conspiracy theorist.

02:45:49.000 Look, some of them are real.

02:45:51.000 I'm not an outrageous or illogical conspiracy theorist, for the most part.

02:45:57.000 I believe you.

02:45:58.000 But there's a lot of conspiring.

02:46:02.000 The idea that conspiracies don't exist.

02:46:04.000 Well, what about Enron?

02:46:05.000 What about the Iraq War?

02:46:07.000 There's so many conspiracies that you can prove easily.

02:46:11.000 They've turned out to be true and just follow the money and power.

02:46:22.000 It's a weird world we live in, Roger. 0.99

02:46:24.000 Sure as shit is. 0.99

02:46:25.000 It is. 1.00

02:46:26.000 I'm living in...

02:46:27.000 But I confess I'm living somewhere in the moment right now.

02:46:33.000 And I don't...

02:46:35.000 We shouldn't talk about the Ukraine anymore, but that's kind of mostly what I think about.

02:46:40.000 Is the Ukraine.

02:46:41.000 Well, it's the most potent possibility for the destruction of mankind.

02:46:48.000 Yeah, it is.

02:46:49.000 Yeah, it is.

02:46:50.000 And there are so many people that are putting Ukraine flags in their Twitter bio and causing for an escalation, calling for an escalation rather.

02:47:00.000 Yeah.

02:47:00.000 And it's very disturbing.

02:47:02.000 Yeah, it's very, very, very, very disturbing.

02:47:06.000 Well, you know, all I can do is keep writing letters to Mr. Putin and Mr. Biden, you know, and Mr. Zelensky and Mrs. Zelenska.

02:47:18.000 I had no idea that you changed the letter at the end of their name, depending on gender.

02:47:24.000 But now I know.

02:47:25.000 Yeah, I didn't know that either.

02:47:27.000 Well, she's Zelenska and he's Zelensky.

02:47:30.000 It's interesting, isn't it?

02:47:32.000 It is.

02:47:32.000 What you learn about, you know, other people.

02:47:39.000 Well, what should we talk about now?

02:47:43.000 We can wrap this up.

02:47:45.000 Well, we still have some pool to play.

02:47:47.000 Yeah, let's go play some pool.

02:47:48.000 We'll play some pool.

02:47:49.000 We'll wrap this up.

02:47:51.000 But it's been a very enjoyable visit.

02:47:53.000 Thank you very, very much.

02:47:54.000 I really appreciate it.

02:47:55.000 I appreciate your time.

02:47:57.000 I appreciate your courage and I appreciate your intellectual curiosity and the way you chase down these ideas and these stories.

02:48:06.000 And you have so much information at your disposal when you're discussing these things.

02:48:10.000 You're so informed.

02:48:11.000 And I think that's very, very rare.

02:48:15.000 Well, thank you for that.

02:48:16.000 I really appreciate it.

02:48:19.000 Thanks for being here.

02:48:20.000 It's been a great pleasure.

02:48:21.000 Thank you.

02:48:22.000 I can't wait to see your show.

02:48:23.000 I can't wait to see you get that bloody pool stick out and break. 1.00

02:48:27.000 Let's do it. 0.99

02:48:28.000 It's your break.

02:48:29.000 Okay.

02:48:30.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - October 06, 2022

Joe Rogan Experience #1878 - Roger Waters

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Summary

Transcript