New York Post Online Edition: postopinion

"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."

Unless of course the dialogue is American, and in that case it can be edited, censored, or outright banned. By the French. Because their "culture" bespeaks a ride down memory lane when they had a firmer grasp upon reality, and were lucky enough to create a nation wherein Roman legionaries left copious grape vines, roads, laws, a language, and when all else was beginning to wither, an Emperor who decided to borrow all of Italy's cuisine, coat it in heavy white sauces, then refer to it as forever French.

Because that's what the French do. They assimilate, tweak, then define something to have been theirs since the dawning of time. Can't do that in the modern age...pesky papertrails...so they want their culture shielded from the meddlings of American influence.

Enter UNESCO circa 2005 and the real fun begins.

by George Will

October 13, 2005 -- 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 Ronald 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. The pernicious idea is that 191 governments can be trusted to sensibly define and prudently cultivate the proper content of culture and artistic expression.

...Hollywood films earn 65 percent of the French box office — and 90 percent in the rest of Europe.