By Roger Waters

Truth and Love or Lies and Hate?

Every morning, noon, and night, I have to delete a few notifications of new subscribers to my short Substack stack. My new subscribers liked the recent publication of my email exchange with Thom Yorke of Radiohead from back in 2017. It seems it cleared a few things up for them. Good. Let’s clear up a few more.

The genocide and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people of Palestine by the murderous state of Israel, aided, abetted, and financed by the Western Empire, takes my breath away to the point where I can hardly write. My hand shakes, my chest is tight, my breath comes in fits and starts, and my eyes blur with tears of compassion, rage, and disbelief. I am thousands of miles from the nearest stiff, cold, dead child. I haven’t heard a single gunshot, or smelled the faintest whiff of putrefaction from the rotting bodies of mums and dads and uncles and aunts and cousins and grandpas and sisters and brothers under the rubble, and yet…?

Maybe I’ve got PTSD.

“Calm down, you lanky prick!”

I shake my head, to clear it momentarily of my agony. I thought we had all agreed.

“Never again.”

I thought when our leaders signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10th, 1948, in Paris, enshrining its thirty articles in law, they all meant to abide by it. But I was wrong. Not all of them meant to abide by it. Some of them were telling porkie pies, weren’t they, Thom? Some of them had their manicured fingers crossed behind their backs, didn’t they, Thom?

It was a bit like July 4th, 1776, in Philadelphia, wasn’t it? The Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

When we read the history of the American Revolution, we assumed these inalienable rights to which the founding fathers referred were meant to extend to brown people, didn’t we, Thom? Like African Americans, or Native Americans, or Palestinians?

I suppose it is just possible that the founding fathers believed what they declared, but it seems hardly credible, given that history shows us that their attachment to the fundamentally European notion of white supremacy and settler colonialism has, for the last 240 years, overridden the supposedly inalienable rights of anyone of non-European lineage who stood or stands in their way of what they believe to be their manifest destiny.

This obviously includes the forty or fifty million or so indigenous Native Americans who stood in their way in 1776, not to mention the African slaves shipped in to make the white man’s fortunes, or currently, the seven million indigenous Palestinians who are so heroically standing in resistance to defend their native land.

Let’s leave aside the genocide of the Native Americans for the moment and focus on the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

So, Thom? Sorry, Thom, I’d almost forgotten you. Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it, Thom? Do I sound angry, Thom? Well, well spotted, Thom. I am. Can I ask you a question, Thom? Do you own a smartphone? If you do, you can’t claim ignorance, can you? Or are you just a sociopath, Thom?

Why are you not manning the barricades with me and Brian Eno and Ken Loach and Susan Sarandon, howling your outrage alongside ours, at Israel and the USA, and the UK and France and Germany and all the rest of the genocidal, white supremacist, manifest destiny, European cabal?

Or are you just philosophically, emotionally, and politically aligned with all those who signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 with their manicured fingers crossed behind their backs?

So, was the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the biggest smirking porkie pie of the twentieth century, Thom? What do you think? You seem to be dithering a bit, Thom, so I’ll answer for you. No, Thom, the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights wasn’t a porky pie. It was a heroic, magnificent attempt at progress, Thom. It was an expression of a global desire to make a world that was better than it was before the two World Wars, to end all war.

For most of the signatories, it wasn’t a lie. Most of them believed in what they were signing. Most of them still do. No, Thom, it wasn’t a lie. It was a universal expression of love, truth, and above all, hope for the future of mankind. It still is, and if we, the people, stand together unflinching in our resistance to the genocide, being brought to an iPhone near you, Thom, all day, every day, 24/7, in all its disgusting detail…

If we do, Thom, and demand the implementation of the thirty articles of that declaration from Paris, 1948, under international law, we may—just may—be able to save our precious planet, our home, and all life on it, irrespective of ethnicity, religion, or nationality, from extinction.

The planet Earth, Thom, our home, which, with your connivance, is being inexorably nudged by hateful white supremacist leaders, mainly, but sadly not exclusively, American and Israeli (yes, Sir Keir Starmer, I mean you!). Where was I? Oh yes, hateful white supremacist leaders spewing lies and hatred, garnered from malign ancient religious texts, nudging Planet Earth ever closer to its final plunge into the abyss.

Just to be clear, Thom, when I speak of malign holy writ—Amalek and Armageddon—were always a nightmare, Thom, never a dream… even for the chosen few.

Love and truth,

R.

PS: I attach a song.

Crystal Clear Brooks

When the time comes

And the last day dawns

And the air of the piper warms

The high crags of the old country

When the holy writ blows

Like burned paper away

And wise men concede

That there’s more than one way

More than one path

More than one book

More than one fisherman

More than one hook

When the cats have all been skinned

And the fish have been hooked

When the masters of war

Are our masters no more

When old friends take their whiskey

Outside on the porch

Raise a glass to their comrades

Who carried the torches

We will have done well

If we’re able to say

As the sun settles down

On that final day

That we never gave in

That we did all we could

So the kids could go fishing

In crystal clear brooks

Crystal Clear Brooks c. Roger Waters

(Live performance of Crystal Clear Brooks with the men of Musicorps at The Daughters of the American Revolution Hall, Washington DC, November 2015. It was a great night! It was called Music Heals. It does. We were joined that night on the barricades by Tom Morello, Billy Corgan, Sheryl Crow, G.E. Smith, and Jeff Kazee, among others. Thank you, comrades all. Love and truth. R.)