• by Federico Mayor Zaragoza
• Tuesday, June 28, 2011
• Inter Press Service

The world can be fixed 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, writes Federico Mayor Zaragoza, ex-Director General of UNESCO, President of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace and President of IPS News Agency.

In this article, the author writes that investments in weapons and the military must be reduced and shifted to funds for sustainable global development such that the number of people benefitting from progress increases, and tax havens must be rigorously eliminated and alternative financial mechanisms, like a tax on electronic transactions, finally put into practice.

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 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.

(*) 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).

// NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN CANADA, CZECH REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES //

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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