>The Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of
>Cultural Expressions has been adopted by the plenary session of the
>33rd UNESCO General Conference with the following result: 148 for,
>2 against (USA and Israel), 4 abstentions (Australia, Honduras,
>Nicaragua, Liberia) This has provoked a number of hostile
>reactions in USA media and Think Tanks.

I have also been blogging on the Convention on a UNESCO news blog:

http://unescoeducation.blogspot.com/
The drafting of the Convention began while the United States had
withdrawn from UNESCO, and the U.S. State Department has been trying
to affect the terms since rejoining UNESCO.
While U.S. industries with financial interests at stake have been
quite concerned with and generally opposed to the Convention, which
is to have the force of a treaty when it is confirmed, there are a
lot of people in the United States who favor international efforts to
preserve and protect cultural diversity. I suspect that it is just
harder for them to organize politically to support such an initiative
than it is for the media
industries to organize to oppose it.

John Daly
http://www.geocities.com/stconsultant/
Nearby Sat Oct 22 12:34:31 2005