Let's "address the key interpretive questions"

20 foot summer "museum" gertee with
RadiantGUARD on walls, roof and floor.
Raised the temperature to wearing shorts!

Me and some of the boys, whooping it up
at closing time at Tonsina River Lodge.

I'll be on Melodee's radio show,
Give Me Some Truth, Oct 21:
http://www.givemesometruth.info/

Several people have sent me the link to Phillip Jones' Oct 20, 2008 article, The Corporatists published at rense.com. Jones does a fine job of explaining the history of the European "sides," and he identifies them all, by name:

"Their New European Order is little more than a stepping stone to the imposition of a Global tyranny based on the new `Third Way` or Communitarian ideology so beloved of the likes of Tony Blair et al.

"Communitarians want to create a post-modern, post-democratic feudal society run by a small number of rich and powerful people with everyone else working as peasants. In order to achieve their objectives they must destroy the middle class and the nation state."

(Update added 12:19 am, Oct 21: I just noticed the 2nd graph in the above quote in Phillip's article is the exact same thing written on the Stop Common Purpose's Philosophy page @ http://www.stopcp.com/cpphilosophy.php.)

More people are writing about communitarianism than ever before. Unlike Jones, many of them are still clueless what it actually means. Tim Wilson explains the confusion caused by people attempting to describe the synthesis while still "believing" in one side of the dialectic:

"My take on it is that libertarians, frustrated that libertarianism was being mocked by all sides, created communitarianism as a mirror opposite party. Libertarians have insisted that they are somewhere in the middle, even though it's quite impossible to place it on a standard, left/right, political chart. So, making communitarianism into a middle ground as well, well, that is a stroke of genius.

"Is this is an improvement on calling people socialist, or communist?"

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977279249

David Icke put a link to my blog on his "news" page. I've had hundreds of hits from England coming from here from his site. I don't know him and I admit I've never studied his work or listened to any of his tapes. As far as I know Icke does not include anything about communitarianism in his research. My focus has always been communitarianism so I didn't spend any time on his work. Besides, to me he's always seemed like the British Alex Jones (I don't study or listen to Jones either). Icke's Latest News links look like good reading and I don't know why, exactly, but it just seems odd to me that the post he linked to on Oct 18 was "Is the Anti-Communitarian League really necessary?" http://www.davidicke.com/content/blogcategory/30/82/

Rich and powerful people are creating an elitist global system of justice. It continually seeks self-validation for their imposition of corporate trade law on all nations. Now (it seems) national security and public order are in jepordy when international funny money starts disappearing and changing hands. It's called a "state of necessity" (as opposed to the old, familiar "state of emergency"?). My only question for Gov. Sarah Palin now is, will she call out the AK State Militia during a "state of necessity?"

Dear friends of the Jean Monnet Center,

We are pleased to announce the online publication of the sixth paper in the 2008 Jean Monnet Working Paper series. We include the abstract of this paper below:

Jürgen Kurtz, "Adjudging the Exceptional at International Law: Security, Public Order and Financial Crisis"
(JMWP no. 06/08)

This paper examines the impact of international law on the ability of states to mitigate the effects of financial crises. It focuses on the invocation of investment treaty disciplines in the aftermath of the 2001-2 Argentine financial crisis and the adjudication of Argentina's defence of a state of necessity, under both subject treaties and at customary international law. The paper uncovers three interpretative methods in the jurisprudence on the relationship between the treaty exception and customary plea of necessity: methodologies I (confluence), II (lex specialis) and III (primary-secondary applications). Method I is the dominant approach in the jurisprudence and the most restrictive of the three readings. The paper argues that method I is mistaken both on a careful interpretation of the two legal standards and on a broader historical analysis of the emergence of investment treaty norms. Given these substantive flaws, the paper isolates the motivations to account for the popularity of this method through a close reading of the awards. These reveal continuing tensions in the field, not least the problematic suggestion that a single value of protection should exclusively inform our understanding of the purpose of investment treaties. These sociological features of investor-state arbitration should, it is suggested, inform our choice on other interpretative methods. This comes down to an election between methods II (lex specialis) and III (primary-secondary applications). Method III is the most convincing and coherent reading of the relationship between the two legal standards. The paper concludes by offering a framework to address the key interpretative questions implicated in that method: (i) the identification and scope of the notion of "public order" and a state's "essential security interests"; and (ii) the appropriate test of "necessity" or means-end scrutiny.

We invite you to access this Working Paper on the Jean Monnet Center website at www.jeanmonnetprogram.org.

In the meantime, I'm busy as heck getting more insulation up and tearing out the molding carpet created from the leak during the big rains. Someday I WILL get to build a gertee from start to finish and THEN move into it. It's been a bigger struggle redoing the inside walls because I pulled all the wool out of little gertee and brought it in here. No more snow yet but it's only getting up to 28 or so during the day so putting up the new roof is going to take some extra figuring out. Got about 2 cords of dried spruce logs, chopped and stacked by my wonderful big strong neighbors who still can't figure out why I don't get myself a husband who will do all the hard work for me. Even without bottom teeth they still think I'm marketable. heh.