Re: Here in NY thinking about the World Situation

Thanks for asking. We are all OK. We are waiting to hear about a friend. Here in New York this is the only news there is; I assume that's the case across the country, and that you have been hearing all the news that I have. I appreciated your earlier post where you indicated your politics vis a vis the MidEast. That is what I am interested in -- how such events could be prevented by a world in which all people feel they have opportunities, something to work and live for and contribute to. How awful that there has been no challenge to the prevailing US world view -- that the world is made up of separate and independent entities (called nation states) each out striving for power and wealth (including land, resources, contracts, competitive advantage) and that this is not only the way the world is, but the way it must be in order to have freedom and prosperity (through competition). There does not seem to be a vocal debate going on about that view of the world, about the need to create a world intentionally and directly organized around the mission or goal of nation states cooperatively building a world in which all can prosper and grow. In other words, I wish there were a big debate occuring around alternative ways of building such a world -- with concrete proposals (not just saying redistribution of wealth, but talking about the WORK that needs to be done globally; the technological, industrial, agricultural policies (investments) along with the human rights protections that are needed to assure that people have opportunities to (and feel called upon to) contribute to improving the human condition locally and globally -- their own conditions and the conditions of others. Instead all we hear is the neo-liberal cant about freedom, democracy, growth, and wealth all being the result of free trade, free markets and free competition without any organized, social-governmental "intervention," (except to protect the powerful corporate powers). I wonder if these attacks will open up space for this kind of debate about creating a different kind of world in which governments must address the issue of using resources to directly build a healthy and prospering world (healthy in the broadest sense with open debate about what that encompasses) or if they will prompt only retalliatory thinking (and acting) with possible divisiveness between those taking an anti-Arab position globally and locally and those taking an anti-Israel position globally and an anti-Jewish position domestically -- with all the ugly ramifications of such positions (that bring up the F word).