Agree with the latter two, but Chomsky’s long been good on the details of just how much the U.S. is a de facto empire that primarily acts in the interests of its own elites. Yes, he’s human and has gotten some things wrong, but no one’s perfect.
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I’ve had to re-examine a lot of my feeling around Pink Floyd as of late with Waters’ fuckery being exposed (to all your peers?). While I’ve long felt they were incredibly overrated, I can’t deny that Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall are absolutely brilliant and important albums that collectively I’ve listened to hundreds of times.
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It’s kind of funny how some people can wrap their heads around the idea that any country acting as an imperial power is bad… 
While true, it has led him to have some blind spots - his support of Serbia and his dismissal of war crimes by Bosnian Serbs and the situation in Kosovo was way off from what was happening. Just because the US bombed Serbia to stop what was going to end up in another genocidal war, with the Albanian population in the crosshairs, doesn’t mean it was the wrong decision. Like Clinton or not, he saved lives there.
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Yep. No one’s perfect. Not even Jimmy Carter.
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Waters has lost all sense of perspective. His anti-Israel views push the envelope into antisemitism territory. He seems to compare the Israeli government with the plight of the Palestinian people. At the same time, he fails to address the Palestinian government (Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and Iran) as well as the plight of the Israeli people. Most Israeli’s believe in a 2 state solution( or a 3 state solution at this point.) He absolutely is comparing apples to oranges. The people want peace and security. Their governments apparently not so much.
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Funny story (it really isn’t).
I used to have have a jacket and I sewed a large 3" round badge of the hammers on the front because I’m a fan of the band and the artwork that comes of them…
Then one day I’m in the States shopping at a Target… and I notice the clerk she’s got lots of ink… not fine work, but I’m thinking that maybe management should have her cover up a bit because the Swastikas on the knuckles is a bit much… and she looks at my jacket, smiles and nods in approval of my badge.
Well… didn’t I start to put 2 +2 together … I got back to my car I put duct tape over the badge and once home removed it from the jacket.
I just wanted to be a fan of the band and sport some of their merch - instead that particular merch got co-opted by Nazis and now I was ‘proudly’ wearing a symbol of hate. I was really mortified.
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It’s an extra shame he’s like this. It is possible to be anti-Israeli occupation without being an anti-Semite. He is playing right into the right-wing Israeli trope that just because you disagree with apartheid then you must hate Jews. He is harming the Palestinian cause more than anything now.
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Then why do they keep electing a far right government that does not?
I have no doubt that many Israelis believe in the two state solution. It does not seem like a majority of the voting public there does, however.
I would also argue that as bad as Hamas is (as well as the new wave of radical parties who are seeking to replace Hamas), and how ineffectual the PA has become, it is just laughable to believe that they have anywhere near the same power to act as the Israeli government right now. The reality is that the far right in Israel keeps winning elections, and keeps seeking to destabilize checks and balances so they can stay in power, and keep expanding into the West Bank. The Israeli government holds most of the cards here, and that is likely why Waters is more vocal about criticizing them.
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Lots of us are aware of the problems of the occupation, and are informed by various international news outlets that cover that topic in a more fair way than much of western media (though not all).
He’s just plain wrong on that.
You should bring a bit more critical analysis to what your heroes say. No one is right all the time, so if you find yourself nodding along to literally everything that they say, you need to stop and maybe seek out other sources of information.
While sometimes there are unwarrented accusations of anti-semitism - it is a real thing, as you’re illustrating right now. First, there are plenty of anti-Zionist Jewish folks, and plenty of pro-Zionists who are against the occupation and for a Palestinian state… so painting ALL Jews with that same broad brush is not only anti-semitic, it is just factually incorrect.
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You’re assuming that the Israeli government is elected by the people. It is not. It is a coalition government and they do not have a constitution. It is a unicameral legislature and the corrupt leadership has given more power to the judiciary, weakening the checks and balances as you stated. The proper alignment of various factions enables minority rule. This is just like in the USA. We have more people on Long Island then the three lowest populated states. Add in NYC and its even more dramatic. Yet NY state has only 2 senators, and those three least populated states (all red) have 6 senators. The minority runs the Senate, and sometimes the Executive. Its frustrating to us as it is frustrating to Israelis. Neither of our countries is a democracy. Waters is quick to accuse the Israelis of land-grabbing, but he sits in his house on Long Island that was acquired from the Native Americans in exactly the same, if not worse, methods.
I see we’ve moved onto the mansplaining portion of the day…
Yeah dude. I know fucking basic facts about how different kinds of democracies work, I don’t need you to condescend to “explain” it to me… I’m also well-aware of how corruption works, etc.
Which has literally fuck all to do with anything here. Yeah, many of us are living on land stolen from others, and that needs to be addressed. That doesn’t excuse the land grabs in the west bank. The existence of violent acts of genocide in the past doesn’t justify violent acts of ethnic cleansing in the present. This is what is happening in the West Bank right now.
[ETA]
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Thank you for the lesson of the day, PROFESSOR!
No /s intended!
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You are far more patient than I.
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In reality…
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The older Non-orthodox Israelis I know cherish the words of General Moshe Dyan who said the settlements are the biggest hindrance to peace and are morally and physically indefensible.(c.1967) The younger ones who did not live through the wars of the last century feel the biggest crime is that this problem has gone on for so long. Arts and music should permeate past the borders and governments and bring people together. Paul Simon played in South Africa before the end of apartheid, in defiance of a UN sponsored boycott. It meant a lot to so many people.
Which is beside the point when the government (which, despite your attempts to dismiss it) WERE elected by the voting public in the country, continues to empower settlers and support these settlements, which the international community AGREE is illegal.
And he was wrong to do so.
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For what it’s worth, Paul Simon recorded in South Africa for Graceland but didn’t perform there.
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Okay. I didn’t make that claim.
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Found Roger Waters’ new BoingBoing account!
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From
The first attempts to articulate the features of a marketplace of ideas from a specifically economic perspective only arrived with the advent of the law and economics movement. In fact, the history of economic analyses of the marketplace of ideas can be seen as a kind of epiphenomenon of the law and economics movement generally. The producers of what may be the two earliest scholarly articles working out the details and implications of the metaphor from an explicitly economic perspective were Aaron Director,19 the founder of the Journal of Law and Economics,20 and his co- editor, Ronald Coase,21 who published in that journal one of the founding articles in the law and economics movement, “The Problem of Social Cost.”22 Both Director and Coase attempted to use political liberals’ fondness for governmental non-intervention in the marketplace of ideas to suggest that such liberals should, as a matter of principle, be equally fond of governmental non-intervention in economic markets.23
If your political revolution is based on insulating the “free market” from governmental regulation, the already palatable idea of a “free market in ideas” would a useful starting point.
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