THE Global Justice Movement Website

THE Global Justice Movement Website
This is the "Global Justice Movement" (dot org) we refer to in the title of this blog.

Friday, August 20, 2010

News from the Network, Vol. 3, No. 33

It's tempting once again to indulge in an "I told you so," and point out that the stock market is down once again. This always happens between the time that the lousy numbers for the leading economic indicators are published, and the inevitable spin-doctoring that explains it all away in time for the speculators and gamblers on Wall Street to take advantage of the next temporary upswing, and then sell short when the next downturn comes around.

So we won't bother to tell you what you already know. Instead, let's go over the events of the past week:
• This week saw the CESJ monthly Executive Committee meeting. That's about the news — most of what was covered was administrative business, plus a few decision items about the upcoming trips (below).

• Norman Kurland, CESJ's president has been invited to speak at the Canada/U.S. Brownfields Summit to be held in Buffalo, New York, October 6-7, 2010. In general, his subject will be how the financing techniques found in Capital Homesteading can be a source of money for sound and sustainable economic development and recovery of ecologically as well as economically distressed areas. We understand that the mayors of a number of key cities facing both ecological and economic meltdown will be attending the conference. They should be very open to hearing about a way out of a seemingly hopeless situation.

• Later in October Norman Kurland will be attending the "Caux Round Table" to be held in Beijing, China. The discussions will revolve around integrating ethics and economics in this post-Keynesian world. Norm hopes to make some significant contacts, especially in light of the failure of entrenched Keynesian economics to address problems in any substantive manner.

• Copies of Supporting Life (now available on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble) have been sent to Lydia Fisher (our "Cinderella of Wall Street"), Max Weismann of the Center for the Study of the Great Ideas, and William Droel of the National Center for the Laity, all of whom we will be meeting in Chicago in a few weeks to discuss advancing the Just Third Way and, especially, door opening initiatives to key people.

• Norman Kurland sent a copy of Supporting Life to Bob Marshall, representing Manassas in the Virginia House of Delegates. He promised to read it. We look forward to receiving his endorsement of what we believe may be the most important Pro-Life initiative since the founding of the March for Life and has genuine outreach potential to adherents of the Pro-Choice position. (We also sent a copy to Nellie Gray, by the way, with whom we were meeting when the idea behind Supporting Life was first put into concrete form.)

• In his exchange with Bob, Norm suggested getting together with Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to discuss the idea of having the Federal Reserve officially recognized as a "Fourth Branch of Government" with a constitutional amendment.

• An historical first: A high school classmate of Michael D. Greaney, author of Supporting Life (Mater Dei High School, Evansville, Indiana, Class of 1973), has written a rap song about his efforts to promote the revival of the natural law and a Pro-Life economic agenda. We anticipate that both the song and the book will soon become the biggest things to hit southern Indiana since brain sandwiches at Bockleman's on Big Cynthiana and burgoo.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 44 different countries and 43 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 UK, India, Brazil, and Russia. People in Venezuela, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Poland and Russia spent the most average time on the blog. The most popular posting is the one on "The Federal Reserve . . . This Time It's Personal," followed by "The Slavery of Savings" posting from the "Interest-Free Money" series, then Geoff Gneuh's piece on "Money and Morals after the Crash," then a piece on the failure of the stimulus from several months ago and, finally, "Aristotle on Private Property," which seems to be particularly popular in Moscow — Russia, not Idaho.
Those are the happenings for this week, at least 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 anyway, so we'll see it before it goes up.

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