Socialist Voice

Adopted by the World Assembly of Intellectuals and Artists, Caracas, December 1-5, 2004

(Translation by Socialist Voice)

Meeting in Caracas, birthplace of the Liberator, Simón Bolivar, intellectuals and artists from 52 countries and many different cultures join in calling for creation of a wall of resistance against the project of global domination being imposed on the world today.

We live in an epoch in which the UN Charter is not respected, international law is violated, and principles such as non-intervention in countries’ internal affairs and respect for sovereignty are denied. In the seized territory of Guantanamo and in Iraq, the Geneva conventions regarding prisoners of war and protection of civilian populations are broken, detainees tortured, and prisons established outside of any law. The invasion and devastation of Iraq, the threats against other Mideast nations, the martyrdom of the Palestinian people, the intervention of great powers in Africa all reveal a decision to impose through fire and blood a system based on force.

In large measure, this aggression aims to appropriate resources of the less developed countries—petroleum, minerals, biodiversity, and water. We support the right of peoples to maintain control of these resources and to resist an intervention aimed at their expropriation.

The crimes against the Iraqi people reveal the extremes to which governments that claim to defend human rights will go. The now devastated city of Fallujah stands at this tragic moment of history as a symbol of heroic resistance.

This plan for domination consists in part of the burden of an illegitimate foreign debt and the scheme to annex Latin America and the Caribbean economically through the “Free Trade Area of the Americas” (FTAA) and other projects that infringe on these nations’ independence and prospects for development. There is growing danger of new forms of intervention and aggression in response to the wave of social struggles and change throughout the region. Concepts of “preventive war” and “regime change,” announced as official policy by the United States government, pose a threat to any country that does not bow to imperialist dictates or that has strategic importance. This was seen in the recent intervention in Haiti. It is more urgent than ever to mobilize in solidarity with Venezuela, Cuba, and all the popular movements of the continent.

We also express our solidarity with the peoples of Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, and all those who resist imperialist occupation and aggression.

The mobilization of the most conscious sectors of the U.S. population, together with forces in Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere, is a crucial part of the global struggle against imperialist adventures.

While condemning terrorism, we also oppose the way it has been utilized in the so-called “war against terrorism,” together with the fraudulent use of concepts and values such as democracy, liberty, and human rights. We reject applying the “terrorism” label to popular resistance struggles, and referring to the oppressors’ aggression as a “war against terrorism.”

While uncounted resources are squandered on the military industry, a silent and devastating extermination takes place daily through hunger, social evils, extreme poverty, curable illness, and epidemics. Those who claim to rule the world and who benefit from neocolonial pillage take no account of the suffering caused by their international financial institutions among the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The lack of any programs to provide a genuine solution to these problems is another sign of the dehumanization that characterizes our epoch.

We take our stand with the struggles of workers, farmers, the unemployed, the exploited, the outcast, and those whose existence is precarious; with the women; with the indigenous peoples and those of African origin; with sexual minorities; with outcast children; with victims of the sex trade. We support and we promise to uphold the demands of those defending their rights and identity against neoliberal globalizers’ totalitarian insistence on homogeneity. Deprived of a basic supply of food, medical attention, electricity, housing, and safe water, a large part of humanity is sacrificed for a system that exhausts natural resources, destroys the environment, and whose irrational and wasteful consumerism endangers the survival of life itself.

The vast majority have little access to education and are excluded from the benefits afforded by new information technology and the production of generic medicines. The prevailing economic system generalizes the commodification of most intellectual production, privatizing it and converting it into a tool to perpetuate the concentration of wealth and the dulling-down of awareness. We must prevent the World Trade Organization, through its policy of transforming the world into commodities, from annihilating cultural diversity.

Concentration of mass media ownership makes a lie of freedom of information. The power of the media serves the drive for hegemony by distorting truth, manipulating history, fomenting diverse forms of discrimination, and promoting resignation in face of the status quo, which they present as the only possible state of affairs.

We must go on the offensive through a number of actions. The first of these, decided by this Assembly, is to create a network of information networks, of cultural, artistic, and solidarity actions, of coordination and mobilization centres, which can link intellectuals and artists with the Social Forums and with popular struggles, and guarantees the continuity of these forces and their ties to an international movement “In Defense of Humanity.”

We must counteract the hegemonic centres’ propaganda by spreading the idea of emancipation through every avenue: radio and TV, Internet, alternative press, film, community resources, etc. We must disseminate projects for development, and experiences in participation and popular education, so that they can provide a factual basis for the development of the utopias that drive history forward.

The reality of Venezuela shows that popular mobilization can conquer and maintain power for the people and can promote and defend massive changes in the people’s interest. We are grateful to the Bolivarian government, the Venezuelan people, and their president, Hugo Chávez, for their commitment to the future of this international movement.

In this hour of great danger we express our conviction that a different world is not only possible but indispensible, and we commit ourselves to struggle for it with greater solidarity, unity, and determination. In defense of humanity, we reaffirm our certainty that the people will have the last word.

No Comments »