Friday, May 22, 2015

News from the Network, Vol. 8, No. 21


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:

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.

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.

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