The whole point of the CCP is to NEVER be embarrassed about ANYTHING! 
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Ukraine’s chief exports are still resource extraction based and agriculture.
Taiwan’s is mostly manufactured goods and electronics. Destroy its factories and infrastructure and all you have is some nice beach front and that’s about it.
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I don’t think anyone has ever said “shut up and play” to James Taylor. Whenever he talks during a show, it feels like a precious gift. Is it because he “stays in his lane,” and doesn’t get very political, or is it because he’s a lefty and only says stuff that we agree with?
If you don’t like Roger spouting off about topics that you think he shouldn’t share, blame the reporter for prodding and publicizing it.
Well, maybe not its greatest monster…
Many will now fume at the exposure of Churchill as an inveterate bungler, racist and war criminal, who advocated the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in the 1920s, allowed five million Indians to die of starvation during WWII, and approved the use of nuclear weapons against Japan.
Ali clearly realises that Britain needs to confront its past and understand the ugly legacy of imperialism. An appreciation of Churchill’s mistakes and motivation is obviously key to that. Thus, he carefully explains the crimes he committed in Ireland, the Middle East, Russia, Greece and India, his actions invariably motivated by a desire to maintain the British empire.
Ali convincingly debunks the myth of Churchill as an anti-Nazi since, until the moment when he realised the British empire was threatened, he admired Mussolini and Hitler. Indeed, in unleashing a civil war in Greece in December 1944 Churchill and the British army destroyed the most successful anti-Nazi resistance movement in Europe: “the British army and its Greek auxiliaries were guilty of serious war crimes, some bordering on genocide.”
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It’s because James Taylor generally doesn’t give vitrolic diatribes and comes off as a calm concerned person.
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He’s got a long history of shitty takes on things. From continually shitting on his former band mates and making it sound like he was Pink Floyd and everybody else was just along for the ride, or for his weird Nazi infatuation and antisemitic remarks. (I’m not referring specifically to his involvement with BDS, which I don’t object to — it’s other things he’s said and done that is more anti-Jewish rhetoric vs anti-Israel.) He always couching these things with with “I’m just calling it like I see it” kind of disclaimers.
He may be an important musician and Pink Floyd has done several amazing albums, but that doesn’t make him any less of an asshole.
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Do you remember any examples?
All the relevant ones I’ve heard about have been in defense of Palestinians suffering from Israeli state abuse.
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Got to love Al!
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I don’t follow him super-extensively, so my insights are limited to examples of our thinking being aligned. I learned how off my (utterly meaningless) perceptions were through this thread, and I’m cool with it; I have no interest in seeing his show at this point, anyway.
I didn’t know he was still moaning about Gilmour, et al…, and that’s a shame in and of itself.
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This sounds way too close to “shut up and dribble” or “shut up and dance.” In a democracy, anyone can voice an opinion. They are also subject to the consequences of voicing that opinion. This exact argument was used to try to shut down BLM support in the NFL and NBA and progressive statements by musicians. Funnily enough, it does not seem to be applied to assholes like Ted Nugent and his ilk, make of that what you will.
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I don’t buy all of the ADL’s characterisations of his criticisms of Israel as anti-Semitism but there are a few evidence-free comments that … make me wonder how he feels about non-Israeli Jews in the media and corporate world.
In a September 2018 interview with a German publication, Waters argued that there is a conspiracy to block criticism of Israel in the mainstream US news media, stating:
“At any rate, in the USA, the press is controlled by corporations. Journalists there who deviate from the narrative that ‘Israel is just defending itself’ can encounter difficulty. Regarding Israel, the mainstream media are still biased. I get my news these days from blogs, some of which are written by people who used to work for mainstream periodicals and lost their jobs because they criticised Israel.”
In December 2013, he gave an interview to CounterPunch.org where he accused the “extraordinary powerful” American “Jewish lobby” in the music industry of silencing critics of Israel.
For a period of time in 2010, Waters’ shows featured video of an array of symbols that placed the Jewish Star of David next to dollar signs. Waters defended himself, writing on his website that “there are no hidden meanings in the order or juxtaposition of these symbols.” However, by an October 6, 2010 show in New York City, the video no longer showed the two symbols next to each other.
His language in another instance about European Jews being part of a “cabal” doesn’t help the case that he’s not trafficking in anti-Semitic canards, either. He’s a tankie, so this kind of lazy political thinking is to be expected in all areas.
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In the '70s and '80s he seemed to be against all wars, period, or maybe just against bad military leadership—both being quite common reactions to the Vietnam era
but neither of those possibilities explain this new Roger, who’s just repeating Russian propaganda
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The Ukraine war has split the historical anti-war movement, with the tankies supporting Russia, and want the war to stop by Ukraine surrendering to Russian assimilation, and the genuine anti-war people, who want the war to stop by Russia withdrawing all it’s troops from Ukraine. Waters seems to have fallen into the first group, and his views on Taiwan are just an extension of that.
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I quite liked almost all of Amused to Death. Which is why it seems odd for the man who wrote about Tiananmen Square to now be licking Xi’s boots.
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I’d have to look them up but it was essentially perpetuating the usual lazy “Zionist puppet master cabal running the world from the shadows” tropes.
ETA I think @gracchus covered it better than me. For whatever it’s worth, I have no issues with his pro-Palestine stance and his criticisms of Israel’s shitty human rights record — and I say this as someone that’s ethnically half Jewish.
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100%
And I think Syd really said it best when he said:
“Bam, spastic, tactile engine heaving, crackle, slinky, dormy, roofy, wham I’ll have them, fried bloke broken jardy, cardy, smoocho, moocho, paki, pufftle sploshette moxy, very smelly, cable, gable, splintra, channel top the seam he’s taken off”
I mean, it really puts things in perspective
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Don’t forget all of USAland’s human rights violations (starting 500 years ago) and aggression (every year since.) I am a citizen and I can attest that the major philosophy is “I have mine; screw you.” USAland has been reshaping the world in its favor with a frightening and sepulchral fastidiousness. Don’t forget that Chiang Kai Shek was a ruthless dictator, favored by FDR. Mao Dze Dung was a great admirer of FDR for his popular and people-saving social programs, despite being a rich louse. When Mao reached out to engage in partnership with USAland, FDR rebuked him and chose the dictator Chiang instead. Mao was so disabused that he turned to Marxism. The rest is history. Had FDR not been such a shortsighted prick, China and USAland could have been partner democracies engaging the globe in freedom. Instead, look at what we have. I can understand what Waters means. Still, the clock cannot be turned back. There is only a mess that no one wants.
Ah, yes, that fucker still thinks he was the only true member of Pink Floyd, and that Gilmour, Mason and Wright were just his support band. It’s why Richard Wright started slacking off and was fired by Waters (Mason and Gilmour regretting it almost immediately).
Ol’ Roger is, from what I hear, still salty that he lost his legal attempts to keep Gilmour and Mason from resuscitating the band, and bringing back Wright.
Oi! Where’s the fucking bar, Jon?
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Both are in the province of “If I can’t have it then nobody can”, really. Or at best “if I can’t rule over them, then I will at least ensure they can no longer compete because then they will be dead.”
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No-one here is forgetting any of the actual story – lots of historians here. It’s Waters who’s willfully forgetting how Putin’s and Xi’s regimes are behaving.
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