by Duncan Campbell, June 14, 2002 - Guardian of London
A group of leading American writers, actors and academics have signed a
statement strongly criticising their government's policies since September
11. It is an indication of a growing feeling that the administration is
promoting its own agenda on the back of the attacks. In a statement called
Not In Our Name, the signatories say the government has "declared a war
without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression". They also
criticise the media for failing to challenge the direction the government
has taken.
They include the musicians Laurie Anderson and Mos Def, the actors
Ossie Davis and Ed Asner, the writers Alice Walker, Russell Banks, Barbara
Kingsolver and Grace Paley, and the playwrights Eve Ensler and Tony
Kushner. Martin Luther King III, Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said
and Rabbi Michael Lerner have added their names, making this the widest
ranging group of opponents of government policy since September 11.
Jeremy Pikser, one of the organizers of the statement, said
yesterday that he had been concerned that the rest of the world was under
the impression that there was no dissent in the US to the bombing of
Afghanistan and the plans for a war against Iraq. Pikser, a screenwriter who
wrote Bulworth, a satire on American politics in which Warren Beatty played
a politician who finally decided to speak his mind, said some people had
been reluctant to add their names. "A lot of people haven't signed it,
although they agree with it, because they think it might jeopardize other
things they're involved in."
Clark Kissinger, another of the organizers, said they had been
heartened by the number of people wanting to sign. Mr Kissinger, one of the
organizers of the first anti-Vietnam war marches on Washington in 1965, said
he was receiving about 60 emails a day from people who wanted to add their
name to the list. "It's a shame that there's not a voice of opposition
coming out of the United States."
The statement, which the signatories hope will be published by the
American media, says: "We must take the highest officers of the land
seriously when they talk of a war that will last a generation and when
they speak of a new domestic order. We are confronting a new openly imperial
policy towards the world and a domestic policy that manufactures and
manipulates fear to curtail rights."
Support for the president's policies remains high, however, and
those who appear critical of them have been accused of lacking patriotism.
It was announced last week that Bill Maher, host of the television
show Politically Incorrect, has not had his contract renewed by ABC. Maher
was criticized for an exchange six days after September 11 in which he and a
guest agreed that whatever else the hijackers were, they were not
"cowardly." © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002
Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright
law ( http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html ). All
copyrights belong to original publisher.
6:49:14 AM 
|
|
