concern 14
Full Resolution on Concern No. 14:
Culture and arts and the free flow of information in the service of the people, and in defense of the rights of artists, creative writers, journalists and other cultural workers.
Cultural means is always included in the arsenal of imperialist aggressors. More than a hundred years ago, at the dawn of modern US imperialism, cultural offensives marked expansionist moves in Asia. In 1898, US President Mckinley justified the annexation of the Philippines through his doctrine of "Benevolent Assimilation." The process was a brutal war of human, physical, and cultural destruction. The invaders were armed troops, as well as of teachers armed with tenets of US-style "democracy", the English language, and, thus, the so-called "superiority" of the western race.
In 1904, the World's Fair in St. Louis, Minnesotaexhibited people from countries and communities subjugated by the US, portraying these groups as "savages, or inferiors whose proper role was to serve." The Exposition further "boasted of the nation's industrial might and its social and cultural achievements." Social theorists then began publicizing "scientific" theories that placed "white" Americans above other races. This gave credence to the American public that their soldiers were on a "civilizing" mission across the Pacific, and not of "conquest" of a people and culture.
A century later, the US launches its "war on terrorism." This war includes the invasion and occupation of Afganistan and Iraq, the loss of lives of thousands of innocent civilians, and the imposition of submission by force and fear worldwide.
In the US, the Patriot Act institutionalized cultural suppression through, among others, its component of obliging librarians to inform the FBI on people who access certain books, a precedent no different from the McCarthyist era. Other countries have enacted their own similar, counterpart law upon the instigation or pressure by the US.
Through the multimedia, right wing ideologues rant about the conflicts among the major civilizations-Western (especially American) versus Islamic, Hindu, Sunni, Latin American, African and Buddhist. In the US itself, hate speeches and actions, from the first days following the September 11 attacks, drew its vocabulary from the "righteousness" of the West over the fundamentalism of Islam. This fueled law enforcement efforts directed against Arabs, Muslims and Indians up to the present. Generally, the direction is to project the lie that US imperialism is the global good cop.
The war on terrorism overtly and, at the same time, subliminally uses cultural differences to conceal true interests- superprofits in control of oil supplies and the world's other natural resources.
Global creative and media control
In the sphere of global industries in culture, media ownership is now concentrated on seven companies (5, US; 1, Japan, 1, German); Hollywood (US) movies' world market share grabs 68.7% (2002) of the US$63B total sales; TV show production, cable channel and satellite system ownership, and book, magazine and music publishing is provided by roughly 50 firms that do mostly between $1 billion and $ 8 billion per year and with 9 of these doing $14 to $24 billion a year. The US is estimated to control more that 60% of global trade in television exports, estimated at $4 billion per year. This does not include the virtual monopoly of a handful of US firms led by Microsoft, Intel and HP on information technology.
The implication of these data goes beyond the control of a few companies on the global economy. Global media conglomerates have the power to crop the whole picture and show just what they want the people to see and how to view what they see. Their powers extend to the core of humanity, as their products control people's tastes, attitudes and behavior; manipulate the meaning of what is beautiful or ugly, what is good or bad, what is meaningful or what is condemnable; and "justify" or promote the wars of aggression that are being waged on other countries, peoples and races.
The industry of imagination is in the forefront of this onslaught, with Hollywood and TV dishing out not only war movies (that glorify violence), but shows that demonize Muslims and other civilizations, no different from Hitler's anti-Poland films before the war that propagated the myth of the rape of German damsels by Polish mobs. If bereft of these themes, contents would mainly focus on love (self love), partnerships (personal partnerships), or success (material success). These functions to conceal the intensification of class contradictions at the global level and facilitates imperialists' exploitative aggrandizement.
Since 9/11, oligopolized structures, like those of the media, questionable in any economic sector including electronics but unacceptable in the cultural sphere, has been consistently used for this. Oil price increases is blamed on Iraqi saboteurs and not to speculation; a kidnapped Filipino truck driver in the Middle East is released, not on the basis of the militancy of his compatriots at home protesting mercenary deployment of troops to aid US soldiers, but ostensibly to bow to terrorists. Combining an anti-democratic shroud of secrecy and the control of media, the public is so kept at the dark that stock market manipulators get away with superprofits, reports on US troop casualties in Iraq is kept low, and nationalist fighters are labeled as terrorists.
Those who dare to uncover the truth behind the war-mongering propaganda, like journalists from alternative media, are subjected to various forms of harassment- from confiscation of their belongings to arrest to outright extermination.
For example, more than 60 journalists have been killed in Iraq over the past 18 months. Last month, Indymedia servers in the US, dedicated for no-holds-barred reportage and analysis opposing imperialist globalization and wars of aggression, were seized by the FBI, resulting in the temporary closure of some 30 Indymedia websites.
Combatting cultural globalization and its corollary, the commercialization of culture, is to promote cultural pluralism alongside resistance. Herein lies the value of international cooperation among cultural artists.
In 1994, French movie producers, director and actors scored an impressive victory over World Trade Organizations' encroachment on the European film industry, through the "cultural exception" amendment, wherein a country protected its movie, television and radio industries with subsidies and minimized foreign competition through quotas of products with cultural content. In 1998, a similar demand by the U.S. pressured the South Korean government to agree to the abolition of the "screen quota system" by which movie exhibitors were prescribed by law to devote a specific number of screening hours to the showing of Korean films. Such a system had prevented Hollywood movies, through sheer number of imported films, from wiping out the South Korean film industry. The abolition of the "screen quota system" so outraged the film industry and brought together producers, directors, actors, technicians and the movie-going public to counter the pressure.
Conclusion
Culture, the arts and media are used as weapons of imperialist aggression. Thus, resistance in the sphere of culture is indispensable. Maximizing the use of creative arts and media for education and information; concern and involvement in creative productions; encouragement, support, and engagement in people's culture endeavors are key ingredients for liberation.
It must be noted that since the adoption of the resolution on culture by the First International Assembly in 2001, much has been done in the cultural field. Independent media, including alternative video productions and community radio, have flourished. So have community theater, murals and other forms of visual art, literature, music; and folk, ethnic and indigenous art and cultural forms been employed to expose and oppose imperialist culture and express the visions and aspirations of oppressed peoples. The millions mobilized to protest the war has revived a culture of exception that has seen the significant role of artists, such as Not In Our Name and ANSWER. We salute these movements amidst the challenge to let anti-imperialist culture, arts and media bloom a thousandfold.
We therefore resolve to:
a. Oppose culture of submission as promoted by the Patriot Act in the US and the equally repressive copycat laws in countries throughout the world. (These also include provisions that promotes a culture of secrecy).
b. Seek justice for slain journalists who pursued the truth, who include journalists slain in Iraq and the Philippines. Defend the democratic rights of independent and progressive journalists everywhere.
c. Oppose the impediments to the free flow of information through censorship laws and other barriers, such as programs that monitor internet traffic or enables states to monitor computers while online.
d. Turn into the people's advantage technological developments in media, such as video and the internet, in the production and propagation of cultural materials that deepen commitment to anti-imperialist efforts.
e. Expose and oppose imperialist exploitation and oppression of artists and cultural workers.
f. Demand reparations for the destruction of cultural heritage sites and artifacts in Iraq and elsewhere brought about by U.S. and other imperialist wars of aggression. Return all cultural artifacts pillaged and plundered by imperialism and colonialism. Expose and oppose privatization of cultural heritage sites.
g. Promote the rights and welfare of artists and cultural workers. Support independent media and artists groups (to include artist prisoners of conscience) that produce pro-people outputs, by way of providing material and skills resources. Develop collective ownership of media and other means of cultural production and distribution.
h. Promote cultural cooperation among protest movements, progressive international and multicultural productions and their wide distribution, and link-up with mass movement struggles in less developed countries.
f. Promote and popularize artistic productions that counter individualism and consumerism.
g. Encourage the use of arts and culture as tools in countering imperialist and reactionary propaganda.
h. Promote folk, ethnic and indigenous art and cultural forms to express the visions and aspirations of oppressed peoples. #