The big news this week involves the backlash from the failed
coup and political situation in Burundi.
CESJ’s current Fellow is a top scholar from Burundi, bringing events
there a little closer to home than is usual for happenings in East Africa. Despite that, Burundi remains a fascinating
place, with great opportunities for implementing the Just Third Way once the
situation stabilizes:
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| Fulton Sheen Mini-me says "TEN for the Family!" |
• The “Five for the Family” campaign is still going, and we’re working on getting it a boost in the
media. 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, which will make it more interesting for
media types to notice. 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.
• A number of projects are being
discussed with CESJ’s new Fellow, Jean-Marie from Burundi, that could take off
suddenly once the political situation in that country stabilizes. In the meantime, we are setting up meetings
for Jean-Marie with key and influential figures in government and private
industry, especially those with ties to funding sources for special projects
and to extend his Fellowship past the current mid-June deadline. If you have contacts with funding sources or
interested private donors, please feel free to get in touch with CESJ at thirdway@cesj.org.
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| Putting on the final touches. |
• Work is almost complete on an important article on the
Just Third Way requested by the editor of a major Catholic journal. The Five for the Family campaign and the need
to focus on fundraising for Jean-Marie, however, has delayed final
editing. We expect to submit the final
version early next week.
• Mark Gross of the Dominican Western
Province is reaching out to one of his state’s senators in Washington to see if
he can arrange for Dr. Norman G. Kurland, president of CESJ, to meet and
discuss Jean-Marie’s situation and some of CESJ’s monetary and tax reforms for
the United States that we believe have the potential to turn the economy around
for us ordinary folks, not just the gamblers on Wall Street.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 48 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 United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Switzerland. The most
popular postings this past week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “Halloween
Horror Special XIII: Mean Green Mother from Outer Space,” “Knute Rockne and
Social Justice,” “The Great Sprawlmart Conspiracy,” and “The Purpose of
Production.”
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#