http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4433256,00.html
[Archive]
US artists damn 'war without limit'
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Guardian
Friday June 14, 2002
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 organisers 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 jeopardise other things they're involved in."
Clark Kissinger, another of the organisers, said they had been heartened by the number of people wanting to sign.