Fulfilling The Sacred Trust

Fulfilling the Sacred Trust explores the implementation of international accountability for dependent territories under the United Nations during the early Cold War era. Although the Western nations that drafted the UN Charter saw the organization as a means of maintaining the international status quo they controlled, newly independent nations saw the UN as an instrument of decolonization and an agent of change disrupting global political norms. Mary Ann Heiss documents the unprecedented process through which these new nations came to wrest control of the United Nations from the World War II victors that founded it, allowing the UN to become a vehicle for global reform. Heiss examines the consequences of these early changes on the global political landscape in the midst of heightened international tensions playing out in Europe, the developing world, and the UN General Assembly. She puts this anti-colonial advocacy for accountability into perspective by making connections between the campaign for international accountability in the United Nations and other postwar international reform efforts such as the anti-apartheid movement, Pan-Africanism, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the drive for global human rights. Chronicling the combative history of this campaign, Fulfilling the Sacred Trust details the global impact of the larger UN reformist effort. Heiss demonstrates the unintended impact of decolonization on the United Nations and its agenda, as well as the shift in global influence from the developed to the developing world.

The following is a fictional, suspense/thriller novel, by the author Moxie'. Its principal setting is a portion of the rural, river bottom area between the states of Texas and Louisiana, along the banks of the Sabine River. Much of the early settings for this tale also take place in, around, and throughout the Caribbean and the West Indies. This is only proper, in that a large portion of the Caucasian population on the islands of the West Indies are of Scottish or Irish descent. It is these descendants that have heavily influenced the generation of the legend of Banshee Bottom'. It should be noted that there exists two distinct types of episodes: the first being one that involves a present or evolving family relationship, regarding those involved in the accident and/or death; and the second being one that occurs, involving an accident and/or death of a close friend, or a significant acquaintance. Both types of episode may occur in close proximity, or at great distance, from the accident and/or death. In the early days of this tale, things were much as they are today, with the population being a bit more sparse than today. There was, of course, no electricity, no air conditioning, no central heat, and no cars. There are still no cities, or even large towns around the bottom; but rather just a few old timber mill towns, and farming communities. It was just such a small farming community, where this tale actually begins. In the 1880's, each family was a self-sufficient entity. Whatever I was needed to survive, they supplied for themselves by the sweat of their brows. If they couldn't grow it, they made it with their own hands. If they couldn't raise it, they hunted it and killed it; or they either trapped it, or caught it with hook and line. In the rare instances when all of this wasn't enough, they helped each other, as neighbors are meant to do.

The Sacred Trust represents the first such volume on SBC presidents in over a generation, and the first one to feature leaders from the Conservative Resurgence.

This book explores a variety of perspectives concerning the construction of constitutions, as well as the idea of leadership. The discussion carries a great many implications for: sovereignty, democracy, governance, and social relationships. The backdrop against which the first, lengthy chapter of this book takes place is the Canadian constitutional debates of the 1980s. Nonetheless, the discussion throughout that chapter is intended to provide food for thought for anyone in any country with respect to fundamental themes involving the process of constructing constitutions. The book's two essays on leadership complement one another, as well as the chapter on constitution-making. The initial essay on leadership critically analyzes some traditional and modern approaches to that concept, while the second essay on leadership critiques a number of ideas concerning leadership within a Muslim context. The final chapter -- 'Constitutional 911' -- examines some of the problematic issues surrounding several of the investigations into the events of 9/11. More specifically, this chapter explores both the 9/11 Commission and the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) investigations of 9/11 and, in the process, outlines some of the ways in which those two studies violate fundamental principles in the Constitution. There is a deep need for our ideas about constitutions and leadership to be reconstructed on a regular basis. The present book is one attempt to address that need.

Rabbi Pinchas Stolper, one of our generation's inspirational leaders, turns his talented pen to discuss one of life's most delicate areas: love, dating, and marriage. With the illumination of the Torah's rich and positive teachings, he brings new meaning, purpose and elevation to our lives. He offers timely insights firmly rooted in timeless teachings. This is an important book filled with wisdom, sensitivity and sound advice.

Without meaning to be irreverent, it is fair to say that in the Middle Ages, at the height of its political and economic power, the Roman Catholic Church functioned in part as a powerful and sophisticated corporation. The Church dealt in a "product" many consumers felt they had to have: the salvation of their immortal souls. The Pope served as its CEO, the College of Cardinals as its board of directors, bishoprics and monasteries as its franchises. And while the Church certainly had moral and social goals, this early antecedent to AT&T and General Motors had economic motives and methods as well, seeking to maximize profits by eliminating competitors and extending its markets. In Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm, five highly respected economists advance the controversial argument that the story of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages is in large part a story of supply and demand. Without denying the centrality--or sincerity--of religious motives, the authors employ the tools of modern economics to analyze how the Church's objectives went well beyond the realm of the spiritual. They explore the myriad sources of the Church's wealth, including tithes and land rents, donations and bequests, judicial services and monastic agricultural production. And they present an in-depth look at the ways in which Church principles on marriage, usury, and crusade were revised as necessary to meet--and in many ways to create--the needs of a vast body of consumers. Along the way, the book raises and answers many intriguing questions. The authors explore the reasons behind the great crusades against the Moslems, probing beyond motives of pure idealism to highlight the Church's concern with revenues from tourism and the sale of relics threatened by Moslem encroachment in the holy lands. They examine the Church's involvement in the marriage market, revealing how the clergy filled their coffers by extracting fees for blessing or dissolving marital unions, for hearing marital disputes, and even for granting permission for blood relatives to wed. And they shed light on the concept of purgatory, showing how this "product innovation" developed by the Church in the twelfth century--a form of "deferred payment"--opened the floodgates for a fresh market in post-mortem atonement through payments on behalf of the deceased. Finally, the authors show how the cumulative costs that the faithful were asked to bear eventually priced the Roman Catholic church out of the market, paving the way for Protestant reformers like Martin Luther. A ground-breaking look at the growth and decline of the medieval Church, Sacred Trust demonstrates how economic reasoning can be used to cast light on the behavior of any complex historical institution. It offers rare insight into one of the great historical powers of Western civilization, in a analysis that will intrigue anyone interested in life in the Middle Ages, in church history, or in the influence of economic motives on historical events.

Tom Stoppard is justly famous for his innovative theatrical techniques. Daniel Jernigan argues that while much of Tom Stoppard's early work (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and The Real Inspector Hound, for instance) is postmodern, the remainder of his career essentially tracks backward from there--becoming "late modernist" in the 1970s (Travesties) and fully modernist in the 80s and 90s (The Real Thing and Arcadia). This pattern also makes sense of Stoppard's recent and uncharacteristic foray into dramatic realism with The Coast of Utopia (2002) and Rock 'n' Roll (2006), at which point the playwright seems to embrace the more straightforward rhetorical advantages of literary realism.