Advertisement
New Zealand markets closed
  • NZX 50

    11,796.21
    -39.83 (-0.34%)
     
  • NZD/USD

    0.5895
    -0.0011 (-0.18%)
     
  • NZD/EUR

    0.5528
    -0.0016 (-0.30%)
     
  • ALL ORDS

    7,817.40
    -81.50 (-1.03%)
     
  • ASX 200

    7,567.30
    -74.80 (-0.98%)
     
  • OIL

    83.36
    +0.63 (+0.76%)
     
  • GOLD

    2,413.90
    +15.90 (+0.66%)
     
  • NASDAQ

    17,137.69
    -256.63 (-1.48%)
     
  • FTSE

    7,895.85
    +18.80 (+0.24%)
     
  • Dow Jones

    37,979.18
    +203.80 (+0.54%)
     
  • DAX

    17,737.36
    -100.04 (-0.56%)
     
  • Hang Seng

    16,224.14
    -161.73 (-0.99%)
     
  • NIKKEI 225

    37,068.35
    -1,011.35 (-2.66%)
     
  • NZD/JPY

    91.0890
    -0.1650 (-0.18%)
     

Roger Waters defends himself after calling President Joe Biden a 'war criminal'


Pink Floyd's Roger Waters has defended himself after he called President Joe Biden "a war criminal".
The highly-political rocker didn't hold back when debating his decision to include the 79-year-old world leader in a slideshow of "war criminals" at his 'This Is Not a Drill' tour shows.
The concert opens with the stern statement: “If you’re one of those ‘I love Pink Floyd, but I can’t stand Roger’s politics’ people, you might do well to f*** off to the bar.”
Waters, 78, blasted Biden for "fuelling the fire in the Ukraine" amid Russia's ongoing invasion of the country led by Russia's President Vladimir Putin.
He told CNN's Michael Smerconish: “Well, he’s [Biden] fuelling the fire in the Ukraine, for a start – that is a huge crime.
“Why won’t the United States of America encourage [Volodymyr] Zelensky, the [Ukrainian] president, to negotiate, obviating the need for this horrific, horrendous war that’s killing … We don’t know how many Russians.”
Smerconish told Waters he was wrong to blame "the party that got invaded”.
However, Waters insisted it was NATO and the US that caused the conflict.
He went on: “Well, any war, when did it start? What you need to do is look at the history, and you can say, ‘Well it started on this day.’ You could say it started in 2008 – this war is basically about the action and reaction of NATO pushing right up to the Russian border, which they promised they wouldn’t do when [Mikhail] Gorbachev negotiated the withdrawal of the USSR from the whole of Eastern Europe.”
Waters then spoke out to defend the Russians for protecting the world from the "Nazi menace".
He said: “You got into World War 2 because of Pearl Harbor. You were completely isolationists [beforehand].
“Thank God the Russians had already won the bloody war by then. Twenty-three million Russians died, protecting you and me from the Nazi menace.”
The 'Another Brick in the Wall' hitmaker proceeded to mock the journalist for not doing his research on the subject
He said: “I would suggest that you… go away and read a bit more, and try to figure out what the US would do if the Chinese were putting nuclear-armed missiles into Mexico and Canada."
Smerconish declared the Chinese are “too busy encircling Taiwan as we speak,” to which Waters retorted: “Taiwan is part of China. That has been absolutely accepted by the whole of international community since 1948. If you don’t know that you aren’t reading enough. You are believing your side’s propaganda. You can’t have a conversation about human rights and Taiwan without actually doing the reading.”
He added: “The Chinese didn’t invade Iraq and kill a million people in 2013.
“Who have the Chinese invaded and slaughtered?”
Smerconish replied: “Their own."
And Waters fired back: “B*******! That’s absolute nonsense! Absolute nonsense!”