Stock Market soar like eagle . . . to suck in all the
turkeys . . . We’ve talked enough about the stock market, though, and prefer to
report on something most people and all politicians are unaware of: the
alternative to the fake economic growth caused by government debt and stock
market speculation. We refer, of course,
to Capital Homesteading, and our efforts to tell people about the Just Third
Way:
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| "Five for the Family" would like to ensure enough beta carotene for all. |
• The “Five for the Family” campaign has slowed
a little, probably because this is the time of year when families are taken up
with the end of the school year in the United States., but as with anything
else good, it takes time. If you’re
waiting around to see what happens with it, however, you might want to make a
special effort to visit the page and “share” and “like” it. We have already received contributions on the crowdfunding webpage. The more people know
about this, the better — and the sooner we’ll reach our goal. Remember: it won’t go anywhere without your
help.
• Yesterday we had a conversation with
a radio show host in Chicago who focuses on Catholic education, featuring a
different school each week on his program.
He was very interested in the Just Third Way’s emphasis on giving
students a solid grounding in fundamental principles of justice from the
earliest grades — as well as the economic means to empower families to make
their own educational choices.
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| Kenaf ... and it's not what you think. It only looks like it; cannabinus, not cannabis. |
• We’ve been following the situation in Burundi closely,
trying to figure out which news reports — if any — to believe. The current president (or he may be the
ex-president) precipitated a constitutional crisis recently by attempting to
run for a third term when the constitution imposes a two-term limit. He argued that his first term had not been by
direct election, so it doesn’t count. In
any event, he controls the major media, so reports coming out of Burundi must
be regarded as suspect. Our interest is
due to the fact that some people interested in development in Burundi, one of
the poorest countries in the world, have expressed great interest in the Just
Third Way as well as a native African plant, kenaf, not currently grown there,
but that has the potential to solve the country’s perennial hunger problem. Kenaf was an important food crop for both
humans and livestock 5,000 years ago in Ancient Egypt.
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| A dark and stormy day, deserving better than Bulwer-Lytton. |
• Speaking of ancient times, we just
received word of a
breakthrough in reading ancient texts recovered from Herculaneum, one of
the cities and towns buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, of which
Pompeii is the most famous, probably thanks to Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) — the
quality of which can be judged by the fact that Bulwer-Lytton is today most
noted as the author who penned the immortal worst-ever line to open a novel, “It
was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional
intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the
streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the
housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled
against the darkness.”
(Paul Clifford, 1830.) Bulwer-Lytton’s work has been described as “perfervid
turgidity.” What interested us, however,
is the fact that, contrary to popular misconception, most ancient texts are not
great works of literature — or even literature at all. They were financial instruments, e.g., bills of exchange, mortgages,
letters of credit, drafts, promissory notes, and so on. Instead of the lost books of the Æneid, we’re more likely to find
something along the lines of “Esteemed Dominus: In
response to your letter of the Ides of March inst., your account for three
orgies and a cartload of Falernian is, I regret to say, past due, and we will not
make any more deliveries until such time as you are able to make payment and
redeem your bill. Please remit XL aureii and VI denarii of good weight at your
earliest convenience, or we will send Brutus, our large and burly Collections
Slave, over with a large club and spiked caliguli. Watch out. He is paid a
commission on collections and he's only V denarii short of his manumission
price and a secure retirement.”
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| "Master want payment NOW!" |
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 50 different countries and 47 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from
the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Kenya. The most
popular postings this past week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “The
Purpose of Production,” “Halloween Horror Special XIII: Mean Green Mother from
Outer Space,” “Knute Rockne and Social Justice,” and “The Great Sprawlmart
Conspiracy.”
Those are the happenings for this week, at least those that
we know about. If you have an
accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at
mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into the next
“issue.” If you have a short (250-400
word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog —
do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#