Nassau County, NY attempts to cancel Roger Waters show... Nassau County, NY attempts to cancel Roger Waters show...
Nassau County, NY attempts to cancel... 
johng
7 y
642
this has epic backfire written all over it... :
"NEW YORK — Long Island lawmakers are determined to stop Pink Floyd frontman and BDS activist Roger Waters from performing at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum this September.
“We are still trying to sever the contract,” said Assistant County Executive Ed Ward. Outgoing Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, who was recently indicted on federal corruption charges, has been urged to ban the artist from performing.
According to local legislators and Nassau County Attorney Carnell T. Foskey, because the coliseum is county-owned, the concert would violate local law 3-2016, which prohibits the county from doing business with any company participating in the economic boycott of Israel. This is the first time the law is being tested.
The controversy began when the Republican legislator Howard J. Kopel, who represents a large Jewish population, asked Foskey to investigate whether the concert was in compliance with the law, which was passed in May of 2016.
“Beyond the legality of this, this person [Waters] is a slap in the face to the entire community. When we passed the law we were expressing the opinion of the 1.4 million constituents in the county,” Kopel said.
After reviewing the matter Foskey said the concert would violate the law.
“By enabling Mr. Waters to perform, NEC has given Mr. Waters a forum or platform to express his ideology,” stated a letter Foskey sent on July 11 to the Nassau Events Center, NEC, which is responsible for scheduling events.
The NEC responded with a letter saying that the Waters concert is “protected speech.”
Republican legislator Howard J. Kopel. (Courtesy)
“We neither evaluate nor comment on the political artists who perform at our venue. It is our obligation and commitment to be fully compliant with our lease and applicable laws, and we are confident that we are adhering to both. We have responded to the Nassau County Attorney on this matter,” wrote the NEC.
Moreover, the NEC argued that county law doesn’t apply to sub contractors, which is how they described Waters.
“We obviously disagree with them,” Ward said, adding that Foskey is again reviewing the matter and is expected to make a decision within the next several days, as the concert is just two months away.
At a press conference Thursday, Kevan Abrahams, Democratic Minority Leader in Nassau County, said Waters wasn’t welcome in Nassau County and assailed the NEC for a lack of leadership. Additionally, Bruce Blakeman, a town councilman from Hempstead, wrote Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asking that Waters’ visa be revoked.
For his part, Waters told the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel that he expects to perform. In a Facebook Live chat he said an artist’s right to free speech should not be impinged upon because of his views.
Still, Kopel, an Orthodox Jew, said he sees the issue as a moral one.
“He’s a very popular artist but he’s clearly an anti-Semite. As [French president] Macron just pointed out, anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism. It’s about not doing something just because you can, and I hope they [the county] don’t give in to chase of the almighty dollar. I’d love to see the concert fail,” said Kopel.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/nassau-county-executive-attempts-to-sever-stadium-contract-with-waters/
Gilad Atzmon’s book Being In Time: A Post Political Manifesto is available now on: Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and gilad.co.uk.
by Adam Garrie
Jazz musician, author and philosopher Gilad Atzmon spoke with The Duran about Roger Waters verses the Israel lobby, the place of politics in music, freedom versus dogma and Palestinian freedom in the 21st century.
Recently, Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has been in the news, not for his North America musical tour but for his politics. As an outspoken supporter of Palestine, he has come up against the Israel lobby in many western countries.
Recently, various pro-Israel activists have financed the making of a film against Waters called Wish You Weren’t Here,a mockery of the Pink Floyd album and song Wish You Were Here.
Even among politically minded musicians, few talk about the Israel/Palestine issue. I recently spoke with acclaimed jazz musician, philosopher, social commentator and pro-Palestine thinker Gilad Atzmon about his reaction to the latest attempt to smear Roger Waters over his advocacy of Palestinian justice.
—
Adam Garrie: As someone who started life as a musician, I have a special affection for music and I would personally never judge my emotive experience at listening to a piece of music based on the politics of the composers and/or performers. At the same time, I am deeply political and am consequently always attentive when musicians decide to get political.
It is nothing new. From Beethoven’s 9th symphony, to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture and Strauss’s 4 Last Songs, musicians have always been immersed in world events. People look to the revolutionary attributes of jazz heroes like Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Roland Kirk and Miles Davis to the folk, pop and rock music of Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Pink Floyd as a source of meaning that ties the political into the emotional and dare I say the spiritual also.
What do you think the connection is and ought to be between music and politics?
Gilad Atzmon: To start with, although historically musicians and artist have been highly involved in politics, I am not so sure that this is the case anymore. The culture industry has evolved into a subservient operation. First it reduced beauty into a commodity and then utilized it as a propaganda tool. Our (music) festivals are funded by banks and politically oriented cultural institutes.
There is no doubt, for instance, that Jazz, the voice of the oppressed, has lost touch with its original poignant revolutionary impetus. It has been mostly reduced into emotionless scholarly noise verging on academic masturbation.
While politicians operate within a giving symbolic order, artists question conventions and re-invent symbolism. At present, the domineering aspect of the industry reduces the artist into a propagator of accepted conventions utilizing acceptable symbolism. I rebel against all of it. I prefer to dig and to seek the truth, I don’t claim to know the truth but I love excavating.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcYy1L67S-I
AG: When it comes to the issue of Palestinian freedom and dignity, three people who can justifiably be called music legends stand out as artists who have used both their music and their voices to speak out, there is yourself, Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) and Robert Wyatt (Soft Machine). Are these artists different than others who talk about political issues, people who tend to flirt with the establishment for example like Bono?
GA: First, thank you for considering me a ‘legend.’ Supporting Palestine is no doubt a noble cause. Moreover, since the music industry is largely an extended Jewish syndicate, opposition to the Jewish State is a self-inflicted death sentence. As you would expect, not many reasonable people choose to sentence themselves to death.
Robert Wyatt has been supporting Palestinebecause he is the most authentic mench around. Waters performed in Israel a few years ago, he witnessed the oppression, he was moved by it. He joined the solidarity movement. My case is a bit different. I was born in Israel. It took me many years to grasp that Israel was Palestine and I was living on someone else’s land. When I understood this, I immigrated to London where I found that Diaspora Jews who operate politically as Jews (Zionist as well as ‘anti’) are far more obnoxious and even dangerous than Israel is. The Lobby (AIPAC, LFI, CFI, CRIFF) dominates USA, UK and French foreign affairs. It pushes us into wars. Unfortunately, a similar Jewish lobby dominates the Palestinian solidarity movement and has managed to reduce the Palestinian call for a ‘Right of Return’ into an internal Jewish debate about the ‘Right to BDS’ (Boycott, Divest & Sanction Israeli goods). I started to ask myself questions relating to Jewish power and the Jewish past. I realised that Palestinians are just the Goyim du jour. If we want to help Palestine, we have to understand that by now we are all Palestinians.
Bono, is an interesting case. I would love to believe that he is a genuine and empathetic human being. But too often his activity somehow coincides with neocon interests, colonial imperialism and mammonism in general. Whether Bono is informed enough or not is beyond me. I have never looked into his case in a scholarly manner.
AG: Have you ever personally feared that your musical career could be harmed because of your philosophical, sociological and political statements even though you’re an ardent advocate of peace and human dignity for all?
GA: Assaults against my artistic activity occur daily. Promoters and presenters of my work are subject to a constant barrage of pressure and even threats. Very rarely they succeed in having a gig of mine cancelled.
However, this is crucial. In Europe there are broad hate speech prohibitions. Despite the endless attempts to silence me, not once have I been questioned by a law enforcement body anywhere around the world about anything I said or wrote.
AG: Imagine you are the child in a secular Jewish/Zionist home. You like listening to Pink Floyd’s records as almost all young people have done since the 1960s. Your parents then tell you not to listen anymore because of Roger Waters’ views on Palestine. What might you feel? Would listening to Roger’s music become an act of youthful rebellion decades after The Dark Side of The Moon and The Wall were recorded?
GA: If Zionism was a promise to make Jews people like all other people, then stopping your children from listening to Pink Floyd guarantees that they won’t be people like other people.
AG: In addition to speaking out against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, Roger Waters encourages all musicians to boycott Israel. What are your views on this and if you were invited to Israel to perform your music would you go? If you went would you feel that you would be at risk of violence due to your philosophy and statements?
GA: Yesterday in Prague I met two Israeli musicians who used to work with me in the 1980s. We ended up talking about Roger Waters. They weren’t politically oriented people however, they suggested that Waters is on shaky moral ground because Waters mounts pressure on artists to join BDS and boycott Israel. Let me shock you, I am also troubled by that. The fact that Palestinian solidarity activists can’t differentiate between a tomato and a poet or between an avocado and an historian troubles me. I am an avid advocate of freedom of speech and expression. I want beauty and ideas to travel freely.
Every discourse is a set of boundaries. I was invited last year to participate in the 30th Red Sea Festival. My personal boundary is that I will not visit the Jewish State or any other state that is set to serve the interest of one race. I vowed not to visit Israel unless it is a state of its citizens and by that I mean that it is Palestine from River to the Sea.
AG: Roger Waters often pens open letters to fellow artists. Here is your opportunity to do the same. What would you write to Roger?
GA: Dear Roger:
As a hero of humanity and freedom who made the prospect of a bright future into a song, I urge you to distinguish between Athens and Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the city of revelation and commandments, it provides us with a set of laws that define right and wrong. Athens, on the other hand, is the symbol of philosophy, beauty, science and reason. Activists belong to Jerusalem, philosophers are from Athens. You cannot fight Jerusalem while being a Jerusalemite. Athens is where you belong. Let’s enable people to think for themselves and learn to make ethical judgements. Let us choose Athens rather than setting a different tyranny of correctness.
AG: Roger Waters is now 73. His musical statement has been very much ingrained on the world and that won’t be taken away. If there was a young man of 17 with the musical talents of for example yourself or Roger and the political views of either yourself or Roger, would you advise them to hold their tongue for the sake of their career assuming you were asked with sincerity and respect?
GA: I guess that I pay a price for being outspoken, but I am very happy. I am a free agent. As I said above, I am not an activist, I don’t advise people what to do or what to say, I endeavor to help people form their own thoughts as they move along. The same rule applies to me, my thoughts are shaped and reshaped constantly. For me this is what Being in Time is all about.
AG: Gilad, you recently played on Pink Floyd’s ‘final’ record, The Endless River featuring the line-up of David Gilmour, Nick Mason with archived recordings from the late Richard Wright. If you are able to do so, can you disclose if your politics were discussed during the recording sessions given that the elephant in the room would have been the fact that your politics are most similar to the ex-Pink Floyd member Roger Waters who was not on that particular album?
GA: We didn’t touch upon politics, we were there for music. What fascinated me was that I initially experimented with my tenor sax. It wasn’t easy, I am not the ideal Pink Floyd saxophonist. Then I went into the control room and told David Gilmour and Phil Manzanera that in my mind, I heard something completely different—a Turkish clarinet. I played one take, there was silence. David said that it was beautiful but totally foreign to Pink Floyd’s sound. I agreed, he was correct. But I told him that this was what I heard. I didn’t think that my clarinet would make it into the Album, but it did. The explanation is simple: through art, beauty reveals itself as an authenticity.
AG: Do you think condemnation of artists like yourself, Roger Waters, Robert Wyatt and others from the Israel lobby has any negative effect on how your music is perceived and enjoyed? On the contrary does it have a positive effect or is it immaterial to most music lovers?
GA: If anything, the attacks provide humanity with a glimpse into the vindictiveness that is unfortunately embedded in Jewish Identity politics, both Zionist and anti. My response; the more they attack, the faster and louder I play. Still, there is something I fail to understand. If the lobby is upset by my criticism of Jewish Identity politics, all they have to do is make sure that the saxophone is constantly shoved into my mouth. They should insure that I play 24/7, they should book my gigs rather than try to cancel them.
Gilad Atzmon’s book Being In Time: A Post Political Manifesto is available now on: Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and gilad.co.uk.
Re: Ah Voltaire... trapper/kcmo
7 y
653
my struggle with israel and jews in america and especially dual citizens of both countries is this - they are traitors to the united states by definition and by practice, both here and abroad.
i swore to uphold the constitution and protect it and my commander in chief, jimmy carter. forget the legitimacy of those who have come after him, the constitution is still intact. it clearly separates church from state so that the state has nothing to say about church.
this is not true in israel. this is not true about jews. being jewish is at once a race, a religion and a national origin with all the politics involved. the jews and the scribes and the pharisees went to the herodians and conspired to drag jesus in front of the romans for crucifixion. the religion of judaism follows the talmud and makes jews gods and everyone else property of the jews. the religion is codified into secular life in israel. it is in no way like our republic. it is not our friend. it is a genocidal theocracy.
because of this jews in america should not be able to hold property, maintain a great store of wealth, vote, be involved in media or hold any public position, even trash collection and janitors. they are traitors. they defy the constitution in their very beliefs.
i dont care that they live here. i dont want any harm done to them. but i also dont want them in charge. in charge of anything that matters. any public trust. any involvement in politics. any positions of power. they cant handle it. its not arguable. they abuse power when they have it. they should not have power.
and now they own us via nuclear threat. this is real. just ask anyone in power. you will be silenced. not because you are a threat to them. but because they are truly a threat to us all and they are already in charge. they have taken over. to think otherwise is to fall for the lies they have placed for you to find and make you feel clever.
you are clever monkeys who believe in the jew.
trust jesus.
repent.
Whenever I tell anyone that my Irish grandfather translated Hitler's Mein Kampf, the first question tends to be, "Why did he do that?" Quickly followed by, "Was he a Nazi?"
Simply answered, No he wasn't a Nazi (more on that later) and why not translate it? He was a journalist and translator based in Berlin in the 1930s and that's how he earned his money. And surely it was important for people to know what Europe's "Great Dictator" (apologies to Charlie Chaplin) was about?
Certainly my grandfather and many other non-Nazis thought so at the time. Let's also not forget this was before Hitler became the most notorious figure of evil in history.
Hitler made a fortune from Mein Kampf. Not only did he excuse himself from paying tax, after he became Chancellor the German state bought millions of copies which were famously handed out to newly married couples. It's estimated that 12 million copies were sold in Germany alone.
The story of my grandfather's translation - the first unabridged version in English, which was eventually published in London in 1939 - is an intriguing one. It involves worries about copyright, sneaking back into Nazi Germany to rescue manuscripts and a Soviet spy.
My grandfather, Dr James Murphy, lived in Berlin from 1929, before the Nazis came to power. He set up a highbrow magazine called The International Forum which chiefly contained translations of interviews he'd done with eminent people, including Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann. However, as the Depression worsened, he was forced to move back to the UK.
Image caption Dr James Murphy, journalist, translator and polymath
While there he wrote a short book, Adolf Hitler: the Drama of his Career, which sought to explain why so many Germans were attracted to the Nazi cause.
My grandfather returned to Berlin in 1934, where he ridiculed the garbled translations of Nazi policy statements. He was especially critical of an abridged version of Mein Kampf - about a third of the length of the original two-volume work - which had been published in English in 1933. Towards the end of 1936, the Nazis asked James to start work on a full translation of Mein Kampf. It's not clear why. Perhaps Berlin's Propaganda Ministry wanted to have an English version which it could release when it felt the time was right.
But at some point during 1937 the Nazis changed their minds. The Propaganda Ministry sequestered all completed copies of the Murphy manuscript. He returned to England in September 1938, where he quickly found British publishers keen to print his full translation - but they were worried that the Nazi publishing house, Eher Verlag, hadn't given him the copyright. And anyway, he had left his completed work behind in Germany.
Just as he was about to set off for Berlin to sort all this out, he received a message through the German embassy in London, saying he wasn't welcome. James was distraught. A natural spendthrift, he'd run out of money, and had great hopes for the English publication. But at this point, his wife - my grandmother - said she would go.
"They won't notice me," she said, according to my father, Patrick Murphy.
"So she went back into Germany and made an appointment with a Nazi official we knew in the Propaganda Ministry, a man called Seyferth," my father says.
Unfortunately Mary Murphy had chosen a bad day, 10 November 1938 - the morning after Kristallnacht, when Jewish shops and businesses were attacked by Nazi thugs. Nevertheless, her meeting with Seyferth went ahead.
"You know a group of Americans is working on a translation right now, so you can't stop it coming out," she told him. "You know my husband has done an accurate and fair translation - an excellent translation… so why not hand over the manuscript?"
Seyferth refused. "I have a wife and two daughters. Do you want me put up against a brick wall and shot?" he said.
Then Mary remembered that she had previously handed a carbon copy of a first draft of her husband's translation to one of his secretaries, an English woman called Daphne French. She tracked her down in Berlin and, fortunately, Daphne still had the copy. Mary brought it back to London. With an American translation about to be published in the US, the race was on to get my grandfather's translation out as quickly as possible. In March 1939, Hurst and Blackett/Hutchinson published the first British unexpurgated version of Mein Kampf.
Image caption Hurst and Blackett's 1939 edition of Mein Kampf
By August 32,000 copies had been sold and they continued to be printed until the presses were destroyed - by a German air raid - in 1942. A new American version subsequently became the standard translation. One copyright expert, who has written about Mein Kampf, estimates that between 150,000 to 200,000 copies of the Murphy edition were eventually sold.
My grandfather, however, did not receive royalty payments. Hutchinson argued that he had already been paid by the German government and that the full copyright hadn't been secured, so they could still be sued by Eher Verlag. An official letter from Germany, which turned out to be a diatribe against James Murphy, made clear Berlin disapproved of his translation. But the Germans didn't take any action. Eher Verlag even requested complimentary copies and royalty payments. They didn't receive them.
The Murphy edition is now out of print but copies are scattered across the world and it can be found online.
The Wiener Library in London, which has a unique collection of material on the Holocaust and genocide, has a remarkable copy of Murphy's Mein Kampf in its vaults. Inside the flyleaf there's a photograph of Hitler, and a group of smiling people, in Berchtesgarden, in the Bavarian Alps. A note, written in pencil, explains that Hitler came into the village and signed copies of Mein Kampf. His signature is there, in pencil.
The book, bought in 1939 in the UK, was seemingly taken by British admirers as they visited the Fuehrer's Alpine retreat. The photograph has somewhat comical annotations in the form of three pencilled arrows. By the top arrow is the handwritten note, "M. Bormann?" The next one down simply says, "Hitler". And the last arrow, pointing to a young woman in a white dress in front of Hitler, says: "Karen".
Image caption An edition of Murphy's translation of Mein Kampf, signed by Hitler
"Karen must have been the owner of the book or related to the owner of the book," says Ben Barkow, the Director of the Wiener Library. "But it's always slightly chilling to hold the book in one's hand, knowing of course that he held it in his hand when he autographed it."
And if that wasn't strange enough, Barkow, then produces a Murphy edition which Hutchinson brought out in 18 weekly parts. Bright yellow and red, each part sold for sixpence. What's extraordinary, though, is what it says down one side of the cover: "Royalties on all sales will go to the British Red Cross Society." On the other side of the cover: "The blue-print of German imperialism. The most widely discussed book of the modern world."
Viewpoint: Let Germans read Mein Kampf
There's another intriguing twist to the story of the English translation. While my grandfather was working on it he employed the help of a German woman (recommended by a half-Jewish writer, who was also the Murphys' landlord). James referred to Greta Lorcke, as she was then, as one of the most intelligent people he'd ever met. But he had battles with her. While he wanted to produce an intelligible translation, in good English, Greta would on occasion alter the translations, to reflect some of Hitler's convoluted and vulgar language. "This annoyed him intensely," my father says. "He would alter it back again."
But there was something else about Greta that my grandfather didn't know at the time.
Image caption The serialised edition of Murphy's translation
During the War the Nazis discovered that Greta and her husband, Adam Kuckhoff, were members of a famous Soviet spy ring, known as the Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle). Adam was executed. Greta had her sentence commuted to life imprisonment. She survived the war, and in her autobiography she describes her first meeting with James Murphy, who she refers to as Mr M.
"I was very impressed by Mr M as he came to meet me in the main lobby. He was a handsome man - 2m tall and carried his 100kg with regal dignity - a man who inspired confidence. The way he discussed his translation work, with which I was to assist him, made me believe he was no friend of National Socialism."
Greta had considerable doubts about translating Mein Kampf, as she explained to my father, years later.
"'Why should I help this man translate this awful book into English?' she wondered. But she consulted her Soviet contacts who explained that it was necessary to translate it into good English," my father says.
"They had heard from the Soviet Ambassador to London, Maisky, who knew Lloyd George quite well. Lloyd George had said to Maisky, 'I don't know why you tell me all these things are in Mein Kampf - I've read it and they aren't.' It turned out that what Lloyd George had read was [the] abridged version, which was only about a third of the length, and which had been controlled to a certain extent by the Nazis. Some of the worst things were taken out of it. So the Russians had said to Greta, 'You must help this man - get this into English!'"
Unfortunately I never met my grandfather. He died of a heart condition in 1946, just before his 66th birthday. This large Irishman from County Cork was a complicated and fascinating man. He was a true polymath, with a deep knowledge of literature, art and science; a journalist, a lecturer, a translator; an expert on Italian fascism and Nazi Germany.
He spoke French, Italian and German fluently. He harboured dreams of a United States of Europe - at peace. Ultimately, though, even if it wasn't his intention, he'll be best known as the man who translated Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Mein Kampf: Publish or Burn? produced by John Murphy with reporter Chris Bowlby was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 11:00 GMT, 14 January - you can now listen to it on the BBC iPlayer
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