A great deal has
been happening this past week, although everyone here at CESJ headquarters
managed to miss the lunar eclipse of the “Blueblood Moon” despite having gotten
up extra-early to see it. A portion of
the sky was overcast at a critical time. . . . Be that as it may, at least
advances in the Just Third Way are not a “once in a blue moon” occurrence:
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| Mabel Kurland |
• Mabel Kurland, RIP. We were
all saddened to learn of the death early in the morning of January 31, 2018 of
long-time CESJ friend and supporter, Mabel Kurland, a ten-year old miniature schnauzer
whose humans, Daniel, Karen, and Joseph, are also friends of CESJ and the Just
Third Way. Mabel was a fairly frequent visitor
to CESJ, and always had a friendly wag and a bark for everyone. After suffering massive trauma as a puppy,
Mabel went on to lead a full and productive life, affording recreation and
companionship to other members of her family.
She will be greatly missed. She
is survived by her humans and her fellow dog, Benny.
• The Centrist Project. Norman
Kurland has been having discussions with the people at “the Centrist Project” headquartered
in Denver, Colorado. The Project aims to
reshape and reform the U.S. political system, not as a traditional third party,
but as America’s first “Unparty.” They
characterize themselves as a twenty-first century grassroots organization
dedicated to organizing Centrist Americans, supporting Centrist policies and
encouraging more independent candidates to run for public office to put the
United States ahead of any political faction in order to solve problems. Their website would well be worth a visit.
• Perth Herald Tribune. There
is a pilot project, ph-tribune.com, that is intended to present business news within
the context of the Just Third Way and suggest solutions consistent with the
principles of binary economics. The plan is that Ph-tribune.com will be a daily
“newspaper” with a focus on business and human rights from a Just Third Way
perspective. While all the bugs have not
yet been ironed out, the website might be worth a visit or two to see how
things are developing.
• International Interest in the Just Third Way. There are currently two heads of state in the
European Union, and one in Asia, with whom the ideas of CESJ are being shared. Talks with these leaders are, of course, at
different stages, and few details are available. There is, however, serious consideration being
given to organize a conference on the ideas of the Just Third Way under the aegis
of one or more of these governments. Further discussions are scheduled to place
over the coming weeks.
• Vatican Contacts? A CESJ
team member has been in touch with a high-level Vatican official currently in
the United States. Another Vatican official
has expressed interest in furthering a relationship with CESJ.
• Illinois and Investment.
Marc Levine, Chairman of the Illinois State Board of Investment,
recently had a piece in the Wall Street
Journal (“Why Illinois Got Out of the Hedges,” 02/01/18, A13), explaining
why Illinois divested itself of holdings in hedge funds. Basically, the reasoning was that having
investments that nobody understood and that didn’t appear to represent
ownership of actual assets was considered “inappropriate.”
• Official Book Release. TAN
Books, the imprint of St. Benedicts Press that published Ten Battles Every Catholic Should Know,
has arranged for an interview on a national radio hookup with the author,
Michael D. Greaney, CESJ’s Director of Research. Further details will be forthcoming in the
event the interview comes off as planned.
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| Terence Powderly, Grand Master Workman |
• Red Star Over Bethlehem. New
research that has come to light has resulted in making some important “tweaks”
to the text regarding the history of the development of the term “social
justice” and explained previously confusing things about Terence Powderly and
the Knights of Labor. Newspaper articles
from the 1830s and 1840s used “social justice” with meanings in many cases completely
different from those of today, while accounts of the Knights of Labor explain
how the organization grew so fast and yet collapsed so suddenly in the space of
a decade. Changes in the main text
should be completed within the next couple of days, while editing continues on
the Introduction and the Foreword.
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| "I'm so happy I signed up for Smile!" |
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making
your purchases through the Amazon Smile
program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to
the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 39 different countries
and 49 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over
the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, the United
Kingdom, India, and Peru. The most
popular postings this past week in descending order were, “The American
Chesterton, XVII: Sheen v. Radical Catholicism,” “What is Social Justice?” “Panic
on the Street,” “Raw Judicial Power, III: Slaughterhouse, 1873,” and “The Death
of Reason, VII: A Little More Demonic Advice.”
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#