Seeking The Light Of Justice

During a routine dismantling of an antique book's binding, Israeli Archaeologist Yoshua Rosenberg discovers the first solid clue in his quest for the legendary king, The Light of Justice. Following the professor's Internet posting, the Pope is notified of the find by Vatican security. He ventures into an underground vault and finds an ancient directive to destroy all copies of the Hoshiyan Chronicles; this book describes social, economic, spiritual and technological advances far beyond those of 15th century Europe. The pope in those days feared that a Hoshiyan Army would defeat of Christian Europe. While researching archives in Granada, the professor finds his next clue, a former synagogue converted to a now vacant chapel. Professor Rosenberg negotiates to buy it. While at the land registry office in Cordoba to transfer the deed of ownership, a suspicious briefcase catches the professor's eye. The professor saves many lives; the briefcase contained a bomb planted by the Basque Separatist movement. The Spanish press declares Yoshua a hero. Upon transfer of ownership, a local priest provides the professor with an old set of blueprints for the chapel. While examining them, the professor discovers that the outer dimensions exceed those of the interior, indicating an additional room that was sealed off. When the professor and his team breach the walls, they discover a monstrous horror: 46 tortured mummies, the remnant of a Jewish community tortured by the Inquisition and sealed behind a double brick wall. Thus, their place of worship became their tomb. Eight books were found with the bodies.Yoshua realizes his discovery will cause the Spanish government humiliation on an international scale; he fully expects the authorities to shut down Yoshua's excavation project and confiscate everything. Financer of the project, Dr. Simon Jamerson, suggests they should grab the books and escape to Gibraltar. Yoshua argues that such an action would incite the authorities to 'disappear' the bodies forever. Providing a proper burial for the martyrs morally outweighs whatever they might find in the books. Fueled by Papal encouragement, the Spanish government arrests the Israeli archeologists and confiscates all their finds. The Deputy Minister of Interior accuses Professor Rosenberg of planting the bomb in Cordoba and arrests him and part of his team on charges of terrorism. .Concerned about the valuable treasures found at Nido de Aguila, the Israeli Ambassador deploys the Mossad to watch over them. The Mossad reveals a plot by the Vatican black ops unit to destroy all the evidence from the site. The Mossad agents lay an ambush in the medical examiner's office and catch the Papal agents red-handed with accelerants. The fire at the morgue was meant as a distraction from the main mission, the destruction of the books.The final chapter of the book finds the Israel scientists in solitary confinement in Madrid's Valdemoro prison, known as "Madrid III", which sits amid the arid badlands south of Madrid.The final scene is of deep reflection and spiritual growth of the three and Professor Rosenberg's decision to start planning an escape. After a harrowing experience in prison, Rosenberg is provided information by Israeli intelligence, concerning a high-ranking terrorist traitor operating in the Spanish government. They hope to trade this valuable information for the bodies and books. Professor Rosenberg and his brother, Ysrael, employ the anti-terrorist expertise they acquired in the army and police force in a daring operation. During a shoot-out, Yoshua and Ysrael kill several terrorists and capture the traitor. The Deputy Minister of the Interior, indebted to the professor; negotiates a deal.

Based on sound biblical, theological, and liturgical grounding, Becoming a Justice Seeking Congregation offers practical know-how strategies from McElvaney's ministry and from the experiences of others addressing justice issues in a variety of settings. Idealism and realism are combined in a "rubber hits the road" local church kind of justice discernment and discovery. Designed as an ecumenical study guide for local congregations, clergy groups, and seminarians, Becoming a Justice Seeking Congregation addresses the why, what, where, and how questions related to practicing justice. It provides a fresh invitation for the church to work for systemic change in the world. Advance praise for Becoming a Justice Seeking Congregation "Bill McElvaney is a reliable and sure-footed guide who traces out the deep and urgent connections between faith and social reality. In this book he brings both his long years of reflective study and his heart filled with passion to the hard issues facing faith. Readers will surely feel both assured and summoned by his words." -Walter Brueggemann, Emeritus Professor of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia "For forty years I have witnessed and appreciated Bill McElvaney's consistent commitment to the struggle for social justice and peace. His faithful track record in this challenging area of ministry gives him the practical and theological authority to write this book." -Zan W. Holmes, Jr., Pastor emeritus, St. Luke Community United Methodist Church, Dallas, Texas

Religion Seeking Justice and Peace not only highlights the values that the different religions share in their pursuit of justice and peace but also provides concrete examples of how individuals and institutions from different religious backgrounds have worked for justice and peach throughout history. The book also exposes the danger of religious extremism, religious exclusivism and other such negative traits to the struggle for justice and peace. It takes cognisance of the impact of the larger environment upon religious ideals and, at the same time, makes a plea for the application of universal values and principles embodied in the various religions to politics. Economics, culture and society. This is particularly important, some of the contributors argue, at a time like this when humanity is confronted with multiple global crises.

Seeking Justice: Access to Remedy for Corporate Human Rights Abuse explores victims' varying experiences in seeking remedy mechanisms for corporate human rights abuse. It puts forward a novel theory about the possibility of productive contestation and explores governance outcomes for victims of corporate human rights abuse across Latin America. This foundation informs three pathways that victims can use to press for their rights: working within the institutional environment, capitalizing on corporate characteristics, and elevating voices. Seeking Justice challenges the common assumptions in the governance gap literature and argues, instead, that greater democratic practices can emerge from productive contestation. This book brings to bear tough questions about the trade-offs associated with economic growth and conflicting values around human dignity-questions that are very salient today, as citizens around the globe contemplate the type of democratic and economic systems that might better prepare us for tomorrow.

Unusual coming from a leftist perspective, this book argues that those who care for social justice should seek more globalization and not try to prevent its development or roll it back.

Today human rights represent a primary concern of the international legal system. The international community’s commitment to the protection and promotion of human rights, however, does not always produce the results hoped for by the advocates of a more justice-oriented system of international law. Indeed international law is often criticised for, inter alia, its enduring imperial character, incapacity to minimize inequalities and failure to take human suffering seriously. Against this background, the central question that this book aims to answer is whether the adoption of the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples points to the existence of an international law that promises to provide valid responses to the demands for justice of disempowered and vulnerable groups. At one level, the book assesses whether international law has responded fairly and adequately to the human rights claims of indigenous peoples. At another level, it explores the relationship between this response and some distinctive features of the indigenous peoples’ struggle for justice, reflecting on the extent to which the latter have influenced and shaped the former. The book draws important conclusions as to the reasons behind international law’s positive recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights, shedding some light on the potential and limits of international law as an instrument of justice. The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of public international law, human rights and social movements.

In 1996, the Guatemalan civil war ended with the signing of the Peace Accords, facilitated by the United Nations and promoted as a beacon of hope for a country with a history of conflict. Twenty years later, the new era of political protest in Guatemala is highly complex and contradictory: the persistence of colonialism, fraught indigenous-settler relations, political exclusion, corruption, criminal impunity, gendered violence, judicial procedures conducted under threat, entrenched inequality, as well as economic fragility. Human and Environmental Justice in Guatemala examines the complexities of the quest for justice in Guatemala, and the realities of both new forms of resistance and long-standing obstacles to the rule of law in the human and environmental realms. Written by prominent scholars and activists, this book explores high-profile trials, the activities of foreign mining companies, attempts to prosecute war crimes, and cultural responses to injustice in literature, feminist performance art and the media. The challenges to human and environmental capacities for justice are constrained, or facilitated, by factors that shape culture, politics, society, and the economy. The contributors to this volume include Guatemalans such as the human rights activist Helen Mack Chang, the environmental journalist Magalí Rey Rosa, former Guatemalan Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz, as well as widely published Guatemala scholars.

Based on presentations made at the conference entitled Environmental Justice and Global Citizenship held in July 2006 at Oxford, UK, 14 papers consider environmental concerns against their social contexts. Contributors address theories in environmental management as they pertain to society and to orientations in "perverse" ecologies, the framework of sustainability, including voluntary agreements and incentives, class and conflict in environmental governance, including the uses of effective conflict, information management including the public debate on genetic modification and the differences between experts and laymen, environmental activism, education, including environmental education in a course on ethics and international development, and the effects of free trade, corporate capitalism, and empowerment of professionals, on sustainability and international environmental law.