Fighting Foreclosure: Leslie Parks Illegally Locked Out of Her Home inMinneapolis
Fighting foreclosure, Leslie Parks illegally locked out of her home
By Staff
December 8, 2009
Minneapolis, MN - On the night of Dec. 8, in a freezing blizzard, Leslie Parks returned from her job to find that IndyMac/One West had changed the locks to her home.
Locking Leslie Parks out of her home is illegal. In fact it is beyond illegal, given the struggle that Leslie Parks is waging to keep her home. It is a cynical breach of what all assumed were good faith negotiations on the part of IndyMac/One West.
After the start of national call-in week to IndyMac officials, organized by the Network to Fight for Economic Justice, IndyMac informed Leslie Parks, in writing, on Nov. 25 that they were rescinding both the foreclosure and the sheriffs sale. According to Ms. Parks, “I got an email from IndyMac stating, and I quote, ‘In an effort to work with you and your mother and come to a resolution, we have started the process of rescinding the Trusteed Sale which took place on May 29, 2009.’ They go on to say, and again I quote, ‘You expressed concern that at the end of the redemption period (on Monday November 30, 2009) you and your mother will be evicted from the property. Rest assured, that will not take place due to the rescission of the foreclosure sale.’”
On Monday, Nov. 30, the Parks family and advocates had a phone conference with IndyMac to renew negotiations for the home. But 8 days later, IndyMac locked Leslie Parks out.
The Minnesota Coalition for a People’s Bailout and the Poor Peopleâs Economic Human Rights Campaign are putting out an action alert to call IndyMac about this situation.
Bailout lawyers also point out that even if IndyMac had not come to the table, the next step would be a notice to come to court for eviction proceedings. In no case should the locks be changed. “They did the same thing in May of this year - changed the locks illegally. We had to take them to court and fine them, and we will do it again,” said Deb Konechne, of the Minnesota Coalition for a People’s Bailout.
Joblessness plagues better educated youth in Latin America - UN report
Even though young people aged 15 to 29 in the so-called Mercosur countries of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay are better educated than ever before they are more likely to be unemployed, while a Latin American youth is 30 times more likely to be murdered than one in Europe, according to a United Nations report released today.
UN World Court ends public hearings on the question of Kosovo’s independence
Public hearings wrapped up today in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the question of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia early last year, with the court now ready to begin its deliberations.
Today on New Scientist: 11 December 2009
Today’s stories on newscientist.com, at a glance, including: how plastic bags are being recycled into nanotubes, why the BMJ’s criticisms of Tamiflu are themselves being questioned, and how to slice a pizza perfectly
Tom Friedman Has the Wrong Narrative on Islamic Hatred / Moshe Dann
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Posted By Moshe Dann
Thomas Friedman’s explanation of why Major Nidal Hasan murdered 13 people at Ft. Hood[1], and why Arabs and Muslims hate America, misses the point. How does such a bright, articulate journalist get it so wrong?
Friedman correctly blames what he calls “The Narrative” â the “cocktail of half-truths, propaganda, and outright lies about America.” For example, there is the Arab perception of an “American/Crusader/Zionist conspiracy” against Muslims. However, his analysis misunderstands the problem and misleads readers by ignoring the central place of jihad in Muslim and Arab thinking.
Asking why Muslims “take to the streets” over a cartooned Muhammad (minus the murder and mayhem) but won’t protest Muslim suicide bombers is a proper recognition of fault, but it also confuses the nature of the conflict.
Jihad is to Islam what belief in Jesus is to Christianity or following Torah is to Judaism. Jihad is essential to “The Narrative,” and understanding the threat of jihad is essential to non-Muslims.
As interpreted by Muslim clerics, jihad means enforcing the superiority of Muslims and Muslim law over anything and anyone else. Islam does not preach tolerance. It is a religion of totalitarianism.
Friedman laments:
Don’t they appreciate how much we’ve done for them ⦠trillions of dollars, thousands of American and allied soldiers lives lost to bring democracy and stability to Iraq and Afghanistan?
Of course they do not appreciate what we have done.
For many, Israel is the “oppressor of Muslims” and the “occupier of Arab land.” A reasonable conclusion might suggest the U.S. drop relations with Israel in order to improve relationships with Arabs and Muslims. This seems to be Obama’s policy â weaken Israel, force it back to the armistice lines of 1949, and arm Palestinians to the teeth.
Then, miraculously, Arabs and Muslims will embrace America’s “crusade” against Muslim countries. No more 9/11s and Ft. Hoods. A second Arab Palestinian state will make things better! No more nasty jihad!
Hardly. As smart as Friedman is, he distorts the conflict (and “The Narrative”) between Israel and Arab Palestinians by defining it as territorial rather than existential. He and his colleagues at the New York Times fail to understand the true nature of “Palestinianism[2],” in which Maj. Nidal Hasan believed, and its jihadist roots. Israel’s presence in any form is unacceptable, and anyone who supports Israel deserves death.
The “occupation of Palestine” did not begin in 1967; it began in 1948, when Israel was established. The root of “Palestinianism,” as Matthias Kuntzel points out in Jihad and Jew-hatred, Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11[3], is “the narrative” of jihad. Israel represents everything America and Western civilization stand for â democracy, tolerance, modernity â which is precisely what Islamists and jihadists despise.
Naively, Friedman calls on Muslims to promote a “positive interpretation” of Islam. Nice, if you don’t get murdered trying. And what about “liberating Palestine”?
If “ending the occupation” is a prerequisite for rapprochement, as Friedman proposes, let’s get that narrative straight. If “Palestinianism,” wiping out Israel, is simply another form of jihadism, then why not include that in “The Narrative”?
When genocidal calls to eliminate Israel are not only tolerated but applauded in the United Nations; when Israel is vilified daily, not only by the Arab world, but by the media, including the Times; when Arab terrorists are called “activists” and Arabs preaching incitement and Jew-hatred receive U.S. and EU funding, why isn’t that part of “The Narrative”?
“The Narrative” against which Friedman writes so eloquently is not only about Islamists; it is also about those who preach “Palestinianism” as another form of jihad, masking a fake and virulent nationalism supported by the international community that seeks Israel’s elimination.
Homicidal Muslim leaders aren’t the only danger â so are the respectable politicians and journalists who believe that giving Arab Palestinians a state and appeasing terrorists will end the violence.
Friedman’s take on “The Narrative” is not a solution. It’s part of the problem.
Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com
URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/tom-friedman-has-the-wrong-narrative-on-islamic-hatred/
Israeli settlements are more than legitimate
Critics may assail them on other grounds, but no one can deny that they are legal. In fact, the 1922 Mandate for Palestine encourages them.
President Obama asserts, seconded by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, that "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements" in the West Bank. Both have praised the 10-month freeze on new residential building — excluding eastern Jerusalem — that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced late last month.
Netanyahu now calls for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to resume negotiations or take the blame for lack of progress when the "one-time-only" freeze expires. Abbas' precondition — adopted after Washington's pronouncements — is that all Israeli construction, including in eastern Jerusalem, must cease permanently.
Too bad international diplomacy doesn't have a replay button. If it did, the parties could look back at history, which would show that Israeli settlements not only are legitimate under international law but positively encouraged.
The basic relevant provision, the League of Nations' 1922 British Mandate for Palestine, Article 6, encourages "close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public use." Most Israeli settlements in the West Bank have been built on land that was state land under the Ottomans, British, Jordanians and, after the 1967 Six-Day War, under the Israelis, or on property that has been privately purchased.
The United States endorsed Article 6 by signing the 1924 Anglo-American Convention, a treaty stipulating acceptance of the mandate. The League of Nations is long gone, but Article 6 remains in force. The United Nations' 1945 Charter, Article 80 — sometimes known as "the Palestine article" — notes among other things that "nothing in the charter shall be construed to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or peoples or the terms of existing international instruments."
Eugene Rostow, U.S. undersecretary of State for President Lyndon Johnson — who is an authority on international law and the coauthor of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which outlines requirements for Arab-Israeli peace — reaffirmed this principle. In 1990, he said: "The Jewish right of settlement in the West Bank is conferred by the same provisions of the mandate under which Jews settled in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem before the state of Israel was created."
As for Resolution 242's call for "secure and recognized boundaries," according to Rostow in 1991 in another piece, a careful look at the wrangling over the resolution in 1967 makes it clear that it did not mandate Israeli withdrawal from all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Sinai peninsula to the post-1948 armistice lines.
Many who allege that Jewish communities in the West Bank violate international law cite the 4th Geneva Convention, Article 49. It states that an occupying power "shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." But Julius Stone, like Rostow a leading legal theorist, wrote in his 1981 book, "Israel and Palestine: An Assault on the Law of Nations," that the effort to designate Israeli settlements as illegal was a "subversion . . . of basic international law principles."
Stone, Stephen Schwebel, a former judge on the International Court of Justice, and others have distinguished between territory acquired in an "aggressive conquest" (such as Nazi Germany's seizures during World War II) and territory taken in self-defense (such as Israeli conquests in 1967).
The distinction is especially sharp when the territory acquired had been held illegally, as Jordan had held the West Bank, which it seized during the Arab states' 1948-49 war against Israel.
Further, Article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention was intended to outlaw the Nazi practice of forcibly transporting populations into or out of occupied territories to labor or death camps. Israelis were not forcibly transferred to the West Bank, nor were Palestinian Arabs forced out of it. Two years after President Carter's State Department determined that Israeli settlements violated international law, President Reagan said flatly that they were "not illegal."
One can argue, as Reagan did and Obama does, that Israel's establishing towns in the disputed territories after 1967 obstructs diplomacy, or, as some Israeli critics do, that building Jewish communities near Palestinian Arab population centers disperses the country's Jewish majority too widely. But one cannot accurately declare the settlements illegal.
Eric Rozenman is Washington director of CAMERA, the Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
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UN agency calls on European Union to reinforce refugees’ rights
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) today welcomed a new European Union (EU) asylum programme, but urged the body of nations to ensure the rights of refugees are protected.
European Union demands that Iran agree to talk???
You can’t make this stuff up. Note Speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Larijani’s attempt to stifle a laugh.
According to a draft statement being circulated among the member countries, the European Union proposes to establish a deadline for Iran to agree to more talks about its nuclear program. Are they serious?
Of course Iran will agree to talk - that is all they have ever truly agreed to do. The farce of an agreement in October by which Iran would export its stockpile of low-enriched uranium was merely the latest in a series of Iranian delaying tactics. As I have said repeatedly, they agree to talk - all the while enriching several kilograms of uranium each day.
Here is the EU’s stern, punishing threat to Iran: agree to come back to the negotiating table by the EU meeting at the end of January, or we will “consider” supporting a sanctions protocol wanted by the United States.
Yes, that’s right - they might consider doing something if the Iranians don’t agree to talk. Finally, the Europeans have delivered a devastating ultimatum to the Iranians. I imagine this has sent shock waves throughout the Iranian leadership. No doubt they are having special meetings in Tehran to deal with this crisis.
I am going to go out on a limb here and predict that the Iranians will agree to have talks. Yes, they will agree to once again talk about having more talks about their nuclear program. They have always declared that their nuclear enrichment program itself was non-negotiable, but that they would agree to talk about having talks. It seems we are about to repeat this “self-licking ice cream cone” kabuki dance.
Satire aside, this is a welcome, albeit virtually meaningless gesture. The key players in the Iranian sanctions debate are the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China. Although in recent weeks Russia has softened (but not abandones) its opposition to tough sanctions on Iran, China remains steadfast that diplomacy needs to be given more time. I don’t know how much more time the Chinese have in mind, but at some point it will be too late and Iran will present the world with a fait accompli and declare that it is a nuclear-armed state.
It is important to also note the somewhat surprising position of Turkey on sanctions. They have also stated that diplomacy needs more time. In the past, Turkey was concerned about Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon and its support of terrorist groups - Turkey has been a frequent victim of Islamist terrorist attacks. That appears to have changed. Perhaps the Turks have concluded that the new American administration is not going to be able to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and is attempting to incur favor with the mullahs in Tehran. If there is a sanctions regime put in place, Turkey, with its border with Iran, will be a key player in the enforcement protocol.
Again, Iran seems to have convinced the world that be agreeing to endless talks that there may be a successful diplomatic outcome to the nuclear issue. I doubt there will be - I also doubt there will be effective sanctions. This issue is not going away soon.
Unusual meteor shower set to light up the sky
The Geminid meteor shower this weekend will be one the of best sky shows of the year
UN pays tribute to fallen staff members on second anniversary of Algiers attack
United Nations staff members today remembered their colleagues who were killed and injured in a terrorist attack two years ago in Algeria’s capital.
