ARTISTS/WRITERS BREAK THE SILENCE:
Robert Altman, Donald Sutherland, Alec Baldwin, Sandra Bernhard,
Edward Said, John Edgar Wideman, Arundhati Roy,
Wallace Shawn, Michael Moore, Robbie Conal

Recently we have run across a number of artists and thinkers breaking the silence around the war, Bush, attacks on immigrants and the whole atmosphere where even critical thought is suspect. These are just a few examples, please send us news of more.

ROBERT ALTMAN, filmmaker, Gosford Park: "I am a political person," Altman says, "but I don't have to put a strong debate into a film. This present government in America I just find disgusting, the idea that George Bush could run a baseball team successfully -he can't even speak! I just find him an embarrassment. I was over here when the election was on and I couldn't believe it -and I'm 76 years old. Then when the Supreme Court came in and turned out to be a totally political animal, the last shred of any naivete that was left in me has gone. When I see an American flag flying, it's a joke." Altman also disagrees with bombing Afghanistan, even though he flew B-24 bombers in the South Pacific during the Second World War. "I don't think there was a moral choice then," he argues. "But this thing we're involved in now - these people don't even have a country, and maybe that's the problem." -The Times, London, Jan 21
For full article: go to http://www.artistsnetwork.org/news3/news134.html

ALEC BALDWIN, actor: He said the war makes it hard for Bush critics to remind voters of "this other disaster that we faced in this country? a disaster that ... has done as much damage to our country as any terrorist attack could do, in some ways. I know that's a harsh thing to say, perhaps, but I believe that what happened in [the election of] 2000 did as much damage to the pillars of democracy as terrorists did to the pillars of commerce in New York City." - from "DEMOCRAT", March 8, 2002
For full article: go to http://www.artistsnetwork.org/news3/news138.html

DONALD SUTHERLAND, actor: Debate is what is needed, a politically clued-up Donald Sutherland told me. "What the nation's built on is discussion, contradiction and growth, and at the moment you can't discuss anything. If you do start to discuss it, you get criticised. If people hate us, you have to find out why and try to solve that problem." What is not the answer, he argued, is to "railroad through an abrogation of the ABM treaty" as Bush has done, nor is it a missile defence system that will cost the country billions. "The reason the United States wants it, and unilaterally wants it, is because it makes them feel like they're better endowed as masculine individuals than the rest of the world. We all know that's a silly idea, in any relationship." -- The Scotsman, March 7, 2002
For full article: go to http://www.artistsnetwork.org/news3/news137.html

SANDRA BERNHARD, actor, writer: "Bush is amateurish and self-serving and, frankly, it's disgusting. Everybody is covering their asses with the Enron scandal and it was very convenient that September 11 came along to deflect the fact that they should never have been in the White House in the first place. What happened at the [presidential] election was completely corrupt." - from The Observor, London, March 10, 2002 http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,664894,00.html

EDWARD SAID, Palestinian writer, professor, Columbia University: "I have come to deeply resent the notion that I must accept the picture of America as being involved in a "just war" against something unilaterally labeled as terrorism by Bush and his advisers, a war that has assigned us the role of either silent witnesses or defensive immigrants who should be grateful to be allowed residence in the US." -- from Al Ahram Weekly Online, 28 Feb- 6 March, 2002
For full article go to: http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/575/op2.htm

JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN, novelist: "The designation terrorist is produced by the one-way gaze of power. Only one point of view, one vision, one story, is necessary and permissible, since what defines the gaze of power is its absolute, unquestionable authority. To label an enemy a terrorist confers the same invisibility a colonist's gaze confers upon the native. Dismissing the possibility that the native can look back at you just as you are looking at him is a first step toward blinding him and ultimately rendering him or her invisible. Once a slave or colonized native is imagined as invisible, the business of owning him, occupying and exploiting his land, becomes more efficient, pleasant..." - from Harpers Magazine, March issue - For full article see http://www.artistsnetwork.org/news3/news133.html

ARUNDHATI ROY, writer: "Imagine if the Taliban government was to bomb New York City, saying all the while that its real target was the US government and its policies. And suppose, during breaks between the bombing, the Taliban dropped a few thousand packets containing nan and kebabs impaled on an Afghan flag. Would the good people of New York ever find it in themselves to forgive the Afghan government?" To listen to a March 4 interview with Arundhati Roy by Amy Goodman on Pacifica's Democracy Now. Also link to updates on Arundhati's case. http://artistsnetwork.org/artists/aroy.html

WALLACE SHAWN, writer, actor: His wry and biting essay "The Foreign Policy Therapist" ran in the Nation in November 2001. "Who are these people? They share the world with you--one single world, which works as a unified mechanism. These people are the ones for whom the mechanism's current way of working--call it the status quo--offers a life of anguish and servitude. They're well aware that this status quo, which for them is a prison, is for you (or for the privileged among you), on the contrary, so close to a paradise that you will never allow their life to change."
http://www.artistsnetwork.org/artists/wshawn.html

MICHAEL MOORE, writer: "...as an American living during a time where our own government (and a mostly compliant press) seeks to silence discussion and "manage" the truth, it was important to tell you what I have seen, what I have been through, and to wonder what would have happened if I had not been a writer who was known and had an audience and an email list that on a good day reaches a few million people. I don't like this feeling, and I would greatly appreciate it if this country would come to its senses and start acting like America again (or least our IDEA of America!)" - Open Letter from Michael Moore on Publishing of STUPID WHITE MEN - For full article: http://www.artistsnetwork.org/news2/news117.html

Robbie Conal, artist: Robbie has a biting and hilarious new poster out NOW, ready for the walls.
To see it, go to http://www.artistsnetwork.org/artists/rconal2.html

A Call for Submissions for a new book: "OUT OF WHACK - A Response to US Policy following 9/11", from members of the Artists Network. In January 2002 the Washington Post ran an article about artists' responses to 911. The article singled out a piece in New York many of us were involved: "Just weeks after the attacks, hundreds of contemporary artists gathered for a performance titled "Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War. If art is the barometer of the public's mood, then this one's out of whack." The call from the AN for submissions says: "We believe it's imperative to create a space in which those who are opposed to government policy-or even just confused or ambivalent-can encounter the words and images of those who have protested." Go to http://www.artistsnetwork.org/news2/news124.html

Also check out, if you are in NYC: NECESSARY TARGETS a new play from the author of The Vagina Monologues, EVE ENSLER "Necessary Targets" is about two Americans working with refugee women during the war in Bosnia. Talkbacks after Sunday afternoon performances. Specially priced tickets and links available at http://www.artistsnetwork.org/news2/news121.html