In 1973, Pink Floyd released a hit song Money from the album Dark Side of the Moon, a number one selling album that remained in the pop charts for a record 900 weeks. The song is about the seductive and corrosive power of money – which can blind people from their humanity and serve instead the force of evil.
Money, so they say. Is the root of all evil today
Money, it’s a hit. Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit
So it’s no suprise that Roger Waters, songwriter of Money and the conceptual leader of Pink Floyd, supports Move the Nuclear Weapons Money, which aims to move money from the evil of nuclear weapons to instead be spent for human good.
In a video message supporting the Count the Nuclear Weapons Money action released today, Waters holds up a mock $1 million note and says that we have a choice: ‘We can either spend this million bucks on this – MAD, mutually assured destruction. Or on this: kids, our future, the planet, education, equality.’
Roger Waters giving a mock million dollar note to Alyn Ware, Co-founder of Move the Nuclear Weapons Money, and stating that it should be used to support children, peace and the environment – not nuclear weapons.
Waters also calls on individuals to ‘join the hundreds of organisations and millions of people around the world who are participating in the Count the Nuclear Weapons Money action this October,’ and ‘after the counting talk to your mates and work and write to your congressman to urge them to take action as well.’
Risks of nuclear weapons and power of the nuclear weapons corporations
In a longer interview with Move the Nuclear Weapons Money, Waters warns about the risks of nuclear weapons, and he highlights the negative role of the corporations which are making millions or billions of dollars producing the weapons.
‘On at least three occasions we have come within a hair’s breadth of the end of the world,’ says Waters.
‘On one occasion the second in command on a Russian submarine counter-manded his captain’s order to fire missiles at the United States of America, because he didn’t think the risk was worth taking. And that would have been the end of the world. And there was another time when nuclear weapons fell out of an airplane over North Carolina. And luckily they didn’t go off.’
‘The nuclear arms race, which is spiralling out of control, is due in large part because over the past five decades, more and more and more money has been made,’ says Waters.
‘Nuclear weapons make no sense of any kind except to the people who make money out of making them, distributing them, maintaining them, building the submarines, making a whole load of military guff that the world does not need.‘
‘The counting of the money is about what we could do with the money that we are going to spend on the nuclear arsenal instead.’
