[Ecommerce] George F. Will on UNESCO:'dimwitted nod to "diversity"'

[Manon Ress]

George F. Will: Dimwitted nod to 'diversity'
By George F. Will
http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/story/13707680p-14550195c.html

Published 2:15 am PDT Wednesday, October 12, 2005
WASHINGTON =97 Louise Oliver never did anything to injure George W.
Bush, yet in 2003 he named her ambassador to UNESCO in Paris. For
that presidential cruelty we, although not she, should be thankful.

Not even the delights of Paris can compensate for the tiresome work
of tempering the excesses to which the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization is prone. Just now UNESCO is
reverting to the sort of mischief tinged with anti-Americanism that
caused President Reagan to withdraw the U.S. from the organization in
1984. Fortunately, Oliver is alert to the defects of the proposed
Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of
Cultural Expressions, negotiation of which culminates in the next few
days.

It is not a good idea badly executed; it is a pernicious idea
executed about as you would expect by people capable of conceiving
it. And capable of using words like "interculturality," and of
creating an International Fund for Cultural Diversity to finance
UNESCO whims. The pernicious idea is that 191 governments can be
trusted to sensibly define and prudently cultivate the proper content
of culture and artistic expression.

Not even democratic governments should be trusted to do that. And as
for unsavory governments, why should they be encouraged to engage in
cultural fine-tuning?

UNESCO, which Oliver says was supposed to be "the intellectual
balance to the Marshall Plan," was born of the sunny postwar faith
that, whatever their cultural differences, all people want
essentially the same things. Therefore wars must arise from
misunderstandings. As the American poet Archibald MacLeish wrote for
the preamble of UNESCO's constitution, "Since wars begin in the minds
of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be
constructed." So UNESCO responded to 9/11 by sonorously declaring
that "intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of peace."

All bromides are banal, but not all banalities are harmless. The
convention on diversity is an attempt to legitimize cultural
protectionism, and to cloak it in Orwellian rhetoric praising what
the convention actually imperils =97 the autonomy of culture left free
to flower and evolve without the supervision of governments.

In the Convention's windy preamble =97 the entire document is clotted
with the D words, "diversity" and "dialogue" =97 the 9th, 10th and 18th
paragraphs suggest the document's surreptitious point. The 18th says
"cultural activities, goods and services have both an economic and a
cultural nature" so they must not be treated "as solely having
commercial value." The 10th emphasizes "the importance of culture for
social cohesion." The 9th recognizes "the need to take measures to
protect the diversity of cultural expressions including its content."

Translation: Nations can "protect" their "cultural expressions"
against diversity arising from cultural imports than can be
stigmatized as threats to social cohesion, and can use means that
would be forbidden were the movement of cultural goods and services
covered by the World Trade Organization's rules that govern the
movement of other goods and services. Meaning: Nations such as France
and Canada can interfere with imports of U.S. films, television
programming, music and publications.

Oliver says that in the 1990s, as the liberalization of world trade
increased, so did some nations' interest in a "cultural exception" to
allow interference with the free flow of cultural goods and services.
Under President Jacques Chirac, France, whose vanity about the glory
of its culture is not matched by confidence in the power of that
culture to thrive unless protected, has been especially interested in
removing cultural goods and services from inclusion in the regime of
free trade.

By elsewhere defining cultural goods and services as crucially unlike
goods and services that are "solely" economic, the convention
implicitly establishes that cultural protectionism is not inhibited
by standard free trade agreements. And, worse, it leaves latitude for
individual nations to declare some goods =97 wine, coffee, textiles =97
as cultural "expressions," hence eligible for protectionist measures.

Hollywood films earn 65 percent of the French box office =97 and 90
percent in the rest of Europe. Canada has fretted about Canadians
reading U.S. magazines that absorb Canadian advertising dollars.
China and many African and Latin American countries think as France
does. But Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela are exporters of soap operas.

Oliver says nations should have the right to "protect" culture if to
protect means to nurture it, but not if to protect means to shield it
behind barriers to competition from cultural imports. UNESCO's
cultural protectionists think she does not play well with others =97
proof that Bush picked the right ambassador.


************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

Consumer Project on Technology
1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel.:  +1.202.332.2670, Ext 16 Fax: +1.202.332.2673

Consumer Project on Technology
1 Route des  Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 791 6727

Consumer Project on Technology
24 Highbury Crescent, London, N5 1RX, UK
Tel: +44(0)207 226 6663 ex 252 Fax: +44(0)207 354 0607