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CAN THE WORLD BE FIXED?

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MADRID, Jun 28 2011 (IPS) - The world can be fixed:

1) If democracy is consolidated and politicians take charge and, rather than cave in to pressure from financial institutions, replace the current speculation-based economy with one based on knowledge.

2) If investments in weapons and the military are reduced and shifted to funds for sustainable global development such that the number of people benefitting from progress increases.

3) If tax havens are rigorously eliminated and alternative financial mechanisms, like a tax on electronic transactions, are finally put into practice.

4) If the plutocratic clubs of the G-7, G-8, and G-20 imposed by “globalisers” are dissolved once and for all and the United Nations is strengthened and given the means necessary to fulfil its missions to bring territorial security worldwide, to enforce respect for international law, to incorporate the World Trade Organisation into the UN and insure that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund achieve the goals they were founded to achieve, to rapidly deploy UN peacekeepers helmets rather than merely provide impassive witnesses to genocide and human rights abuses, and to coordinate the actions of peacekeepers especially to reduce the impact of natural and man-made disasters.

5) If the decision is made overnight that drugs are worthless and made available everywhere at a modest cost, as happened with alcohol and tobacco. This “legalisation” would be accompanied by a campaign to discourage drug use through advertising and school programmes and by the introduction of treatment programmes for addiction.

6) If citizens around the world recognise the power they have through their virtual presence via the internet and social networking and decide to stop being passive subjects and begin to take action.

Those who sought to replace multilateralism -guided by human rights and democratic principles- with pro-market government by the few brought the world a catastrophic failure. And yet they are moving ahead as if nothing happened, imposing a economy based on speculation and war through the use of the media and financial ratings agencies that were incapable of detecting “bubbles” and yet are now moving aggressively to advance the interests of the major market presences.

It is the same old recipe, with no consideration for human suffering, social disruption, or the plague of fear afflicting so many people on the planet: foreign policy, defence policy, and a pro-market stance intended to insure the rule by the few and the obedience of the many.

After the major wars, there were always ideals, utopias, and hopes to light the path toward a peaceful tomorrow with human dignity and equality and harmonious co-existence, such that certain indisputable values -justice, liberty, and fraternity- could mobilise people and give meaning to their lives.

The major difference in the current situation is the spiritual, intellectual, and mental emptiness which effects and paralyses so many people because they tried -and in many cases succeeded- to fill their lives with entertainment, material objects, and the activities of docile and resigned people who allow life to guided by supranational processes that appear to be inexorable.

How long will the majority of people remain passive and allow things to continue as usual? I don’t think for very long. The new communications technologies allow the people, who are now spectators, to actively participate in the formation of a worldwide network that at the global and local level will strengthen global democracy and the transition from a culture of imposition, violence, and war to a culture of dialogue, reconciliation, and peace; from a security strategy that is exclusively territorial to a strategy for security in food, healthcare, and protection from catastrophe; from a market economy to a global sustainable economy.

There is a way to fix the world, but it is not the G-20 of the “Bush solution” that will do it, or the “rescue” of irresponsible bankers with public funds, or the shifting of production in a greed-driven race to the bottom, or investing billions in defence and security equipment for the confrontations of the past, or allowing disgraceful tax havens to continue, or leaving people blinded and distracted by the new real and virtual circuses of the 21st century.

The formulas of yesterday will not meet the challenge of today and tomorrow.

The solution must be the imagination, and the invention of the future.

The solution is applying the solutions backed by trustworthy people: “In times of crisis, only the imagination is more important than knowledge.” (Albert Einstein). “All change is possible. There is no challenge that if beyond the reach of human creativity.” (John F Kennedy). Jose Monleon in his excellent essay on “Crisis, Culture, and Democracy” quotes Amin Maalouf, who writes, “Humanity is facing unprecedented dangers that require unprecedented solutions.”

The future, I like to say, is ours to make. A new world of human dignity might finally be created in the dawn of the 21st century. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Federico Mayor Zaragoza, ex-Director General of UNESCO, President of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace and President of IPS News Agency. This article is excerpted from his last essay, The Crime of Silence (Editorial Comanegra).

 
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