They don't need the government, they need a DAD...... The results are in ... and parents in Ireland voted for their own defeat -- conceding that they are not fit to make decisions about raising their own children. They effectively handed over their parental rights to their own children and the government Saturday, as the final poll results show this week that 57 percent -- versus 43 percent -- of Irish voters believe that "children's rights" should usurp their own when making crucial decisions on the upbringing of Irish youth.
In another stride toward global governance, the United Nations brought Ireland under compliance with its mandate that allows for the state's seizure of children via an amendment that voters approved into the Irish constitution. Only one-third of Irish voters showed up to cast their ballot on the measure, which was not only supported by every political party, but surprisingly by all children's charities, as well.
But pro-family groups in America are more than concerned that what goes down in Ireland doesn't stay in Ireland.
"The election results are going to require us to engage in both offensive and defensive tactics to preserve parental rights," says Parentalrights.org president Michael P. Farris. "There is absolutely no doubt that the internationalists are going to push extremely hard for ratification of a whole series of treaties that will dramatically reorder the relationship between parents and children."
And Farris promises that he will not let America sit down and bow to the dictates of the government as parents blindly stand by to watch their parental rights stripped before their very eyes.
"The nanny state will gain much ground under these treaties," Farris adds. "We must do everything we can to stop their ratification -- and we will continue to work very hard to push the Parental Rights Amendment. Getting a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate will be a significant challenge over the next two years, and we may have to hope for a turnaround in 2014."
Home Front Command asks local authorities to prepare for seven-week fighting period: In discussions held between Home Front Command Chief Major-General Eyal Eisenberg, regional commanders and heads of local authorities in the center and in the south, authorities have been instructed to prepare for a seven-week period of combat as part of Operation Pillar of Defense and to prepare emergency supplies, accordingly.
Some supplies were prepared in advance. The Home Front Command estimates that terror organizations in the Gaza Strip are still capable of launching long-range rockets, even further than a 75-kilometer range.
The Home Front Command sharpened instructions for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and southern residents and, accordingly, communities located in a range of between 40-75 kilometers from the Gaza Strip must enter nearby, protected spaces the moment blasts or sirens are heard.
If there is no protected space in the vicinity, residents should enter the nearest structure or stairwell. In light of the long-range rockets fired over the past few days, these instructions apply to all communities within a 75-kilometer range and not only in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area.
Until now, 2,000 ground reservists have been enlisted to the Home Front Command. Beyond emergency and rescue team activities at locations where missiles have landed, the Command's soldiers have been filling various duties such as providing reinforcements at hospitals, opening baby-sitting services and renovating shelters.
Shelters – on demand
Due to the escalation, the Home Front Command has been enlarging protected areas and dispersing portable shelters in southern communities. Instruction has yet to be given to the Tel Aviv metropolitan area authorities to open public shelters, but authorities have been opening shelters upon resident demands in various neighborhoods, as residents turn to the municipal 106 call center.
The Home Front Command has not yet been caught by surprise by the rocket firing range, firing rate and the like. Until now, over 550 missile landings have been counted, but only 26 of them in built-up areas.
The commander of the Home Front Command has released orders to the Ashdod Port and to factories with hazardous materials in the south. According to these orders, hazardous materials must be protected and removed.
Thousands of reservists have received emergency enlistment orders and, over the past few hours, have been trickling into the gathering and enlisting point in the south. Hundreds of military trucks with supplies, ammunition, water and gasoline, alongside tank-carriers, armored-personnel carriers and jeeps are filling the Gaza vicinity roads in a sight that has not been seen in the area since Operation Cast Lead. Ynet
Iran is on the threshold of being able to create weapons-grade uranium at a plant it has heavily fortified against Israeli attack, diplomats told The Associated Press on Thursday, calling into question an Israeli claim that Iran had slowed its nuclear time table.
One of three diplomats who discussed the issue said Iran was now technically ready within days to ramp up its production of 20 percent enriched uranium at its Fordo facility by nearly 700 centrifuges. That would double present output, and cut in half the time it would take to acquire enough of the substance needed to make a nuclear weapon, reducing it to just over three months.
Such a move would raise the stakes for Israel, which has said it believes the world has until next summer to stop Iran before it can get nuclear material and implied it would have time to decide whether to strike Fordo and other Iranian nuclear facilities.
The two other diplomats who spoke to the AP could not confirm the 700 number. But both agreed that Tehran over the past few months had put a sizeable number of centrifuges at Fordo under vacuum. It takes only a few days to begin enrichment with machines that are under vacuum.
While experts agree that the Islamic Republic could assemble enough weapons-grade uranium to arm a nuclear weapon relatively quickly, they point out that this is only one of a series of steps need to create a working weapon. They say that Tehran is believed to be years away from mastering the technology to manufacture a fully operational warhead.
All three diplomats are from member nations of the IAEA, which is scheduled to release its latest report on Iran’s nuclear program as early as Friday. They demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss restricted information with reporters.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s assertion earlier this month that Iran has “essentially delayed their arrival at the red line by eight months,” is in line with the timeframe laid out by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in September, when he spoke at the U.N. General Assembly.
IAEA officials said they would have no comment. A phone call to Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s IAEA representative, went to voice mail.
Based on intelligence from the United States and other IAEA member nations as well as its own research, the agency suspects that Tehran has done secret work on developing nuclear weapons. Washington and its allies also fear that Iran is enriching uranium to reach the ability to make such arms. But Tehran denies any interest in atomic arms, dismisses allegations that it has conducted weapons experiments and insists it is enriching only to make nuclear fuel and for research.
In Washington, President Barack Obama told reporters there is still time for the United States and Iran to reach agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.
Peaceful nuclear power
Obama said there should be a way for Iran to enjoy “peaceful nuclear power” while still meeting international obligations and providing assurances that they are not developing nuclear weapons.
The Vienna-based IAEA, in its last report in August, said that Tehran had doubled the number of centrifuges at Fordo within three months to more than 2,000. Diplomats since then have told reporters that hundreds more have been installed, bringing the total to nearly 2,800, or full capacity for Fordo. But the number operating – about 700 – has not changed from early this year.
Iran has a far larger enrichment plant at Natanz, in central Iran, which churns out uranium enriched below 4 percent. But the 20-percent material being produced at Fordo is of greater concern to the international community because it can be turned into weapons-grade uranium of 90 percent purity much more simply and quickly – and because the facility, near the holy city of Qom, is well protected against attack.
Barak’s comments appeared prompted by the IAEA’s August report, which said Iran had turned much of its 20-percent uranium into reactor fuel plates that are difficult to retool into warhead material. As a result, it is still far short of the amount of more highly enriched uranium it would need to progress to weapons-grade levels.
But depending on how many more centrifuges it activates, it could quickly replace the converted material and reach the 140 kilograms – about 300 pounds – needed for at least one warhead.
Tehran “should be in a position to produce enough (material) for two or three” nuclear warheads by the summer, if it does decide to double output in the next few weeks, said Olli Heinonen, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s deputy director general in charge of the Iran file until 2010.
The statements of Mark Elchardus, author of a 426 page study, who linked Islam with anti-Semitism, earned him a lawsuit filed by a Muslim group, which said that his comments violated Belgium's anti-discrimination law of 2007, which forbids discrimination on the basis of "religious convictions," and Article 444 of the Belgian penal code as his statements appeared in a newspaper and were therefore repeated extensively in print. Belgian law, however, apparently did not prevent Muslims from resorting to anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
Two Muslim politicians, who just won municipal elections in Belgium's capital, Brussels, on October 14, have vowed to implement Islamic Sharia law in Belgium.
The two candidates, Lhoucine Aït Jeddig and Redouane Ahrouch, both from the fledgling Islam Party, won seats in two heavily Islamized municipalities of Brussels, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean and Anderlecht, respectively.
During a post-election press conference in Brussels on October 25, the two future councilors, who will be officially sworn in on December 3, said they regard their election as key to the assertion of the Muslim community in Belgium.
"We are elected Islamists but above all we are Muslims," Ahrouch said. "Islam is compatible with the laws of the Belgian people. As elected Muslims, we embrace the Koran and the tradition of the Prophet Mohammed. We believe Islam is a universal religion. Our presence on the town council will give us the opportunity to express ourselves," said Ahrouch, who refuses to shake hands or make eye contact with females in public.
A one-hour video of the press conference in French has been posted on YouTube. At one point in the video (0:07:40) Ahrouch, 42, says he will strive to make sure that the town council's "motions and solutions are durable and definitive and will emanate from Islam."
Ahrouch, who was sentenced to six months in prison in 2003 for the assault and battery of his disabled wife, also spends considerable time talking about ethics in politics and "respect for the other."
Elsewhere in the video (0:25:40), Aït Jeddig, 50, commends Islam as having paved the way for "the emergence of European civilization." (He makes no mention of Europe's Judeo-Christian or Greek-Roman roots.) He also insists that Islam is compatible with freedom and democracy.
The video ends with an interview of a third Islam Party candidate, Abdelhay Bakkali Tahar, 51, who did not garner enough votes to secure a seat in the district of Bruxelles Ville.
The Islam Party, which plans to field candidates in European-level elections in 2014, campaigned on three core issues: ensuring that halal meals are served in public school cafeterias, securing the official recognition of Muslim religious holidays, and pushing for a law that would legalize the wearing of Islamic headscarves in public spaces.
Ahrouch has run for political office before. In 1999, he founded a political party called "Noor: Le Parti Islamique," which promotes a 40-point program based on Islamic Sharia law. These points include, among other items: 7) abolishing interest payments [riba] in the Belgian banking sector; 10) redesigning the Belgian judiciary to comply with Islamic law; 11) restoring capital punishment; 12) prohibiting alcohol and cigarettes; 15) promoting teenage marriage; 16) segregating males and females in public spaces; 20) outlaw gambling and the lottery; and 39) creating an official Islamic alms fund [Zakat].
Ahrouch says that his ultimate goal, creating an Islamic state in Belgium based on Islamic Sharia law, has not changed.
The reporter interjected: "An Islamic State in Belgium?" Ahrouch replied: "In Belgium, of course! I am for the Sharia. Islamic law, I am for it. It is a long-term struggle that will take decades or a century, but the movement has been launched."
The rise of the Islam Party comes amid a burgeoning Muslim population in the Belgian capital. Muslims now make up one-quarter of the population of Brussels, according to a book recently published by the Catholic University of Leuven, the top Dutch-language university in Belgium.
In real terms, the number of Muslims in Brussels -- where half of the number of Muslims in Belgium currently live --- has reached 300,000, which means that the self-styled "Capital of Europe" is now the most Islamic city in Europe.
In practical terms, Islam mobilizes more people in Brussels than do the Roman Catholic Church, political parties or even trade unions, according to "The Iris and the Crescent," a book that is the product of more than a year of field research.
The book's author, the sociologist Felice Dassetto, predicts that Muslims will comprise the majority of the population of Brussels by 2030. In Belgium as a whole, Muslims now comprise roughly 6% of the total population, one of the highest rates in Europe. This number is expected to rise to more than 10% by 2020.
Most of the Muslims in Brussels are from Morocco (70%) and Turkey (20%), with the other 10% from Albania, Egypt, Pakistan and North Africa. They began arriving in Belgium in the 1960s as guest workers. Although the guest-worker program was cancelled in 1974, many immigrants stayed and, using family-reunification laws, brought over their families.
Today the Muslim community continues to grow through both high birth rates and marriage migration. More than 60% of Moroccan and Turkish youths marry partners from their home countries.
As in the other European countries, the Muslim population in Belgium is young. Nearly 35% of the Moroccans and Turks in the country are below 18 years of age, compared to 18% of the native Belgians.
Since 2008, the most popular name in Brussels for baby boys has been Mohammed. It is also the most popular name for baby boys in Belgium's second-largest city, Antwerp, where an estimated 40% of elementary school children are Muslim.
Much of the crime is being attributed to shiftless Muslim youth, especially in the Anderlecht and Molenbeek districts, where "the police have lost control."
In Molenbeek, where an estimated 25% of the population is Muslim, the growing insecurity has forced multinational companies to leave the municipality. In June 2011, for example, the American advertising agency BBDO abandoned Molenbeek after citing over 150 assaults on its staff by local youth.
In an open letter addressed to the then-mayor Philippe Moureaux, BBDO reported that each one of its employees had been the victim of crimes in Molenbeek. The letter states: "Youngsters who forcibly rob our bags. Youngsters who smash car windows. Youngsters who verbally corner us so that we become paralyzed with fear. Young people who are not afraid to even point a gun at one of our male colleagues." BBDO criticized Moureaux, a Socialist, of inaction due to his multicultural notions of political correctness.
On November 5, the Belgian Interior Ministry reported that gang rapes in the country have reached epidemic levels.It reported an average of five new cases of rapes each week involving two or more offenders, in addition to an average of 57 rapes per week involving single violators.
The rise in Muslim immigration has also contributed to an increase in anti-Semitism. Fully one-half of the Muslim students in Brussels are anti-Semitic, according to a 426-page study entitled, "Jong in Brussel" [Young in Brussels], produced by the Youth Research Platform.
In an interview with the Belgian newspaper De Morgan, Mark Elchardus, one of the authors of the report, said: "What is alarming is that you can describe half of the Muslim students as anti-Semitic, which is very high. What is worse is that those anti-Jewish feelings have nothing to do with a low educational level or social disadvantage, which is the case with racist Belgians. The anti-Semitism is theologically inspired and there is a direct link between being Muslim and having anti-Semitic feelings."
Elchardus's linking Islam of anti-Semitism earned him a lawsuit filed by Vigilance Musulmane [Muslim Vigilance], a Muslim activist group. Vigilance Musulmane said Elchardus' comments violated Belgium's anti-discrimination law of 2007, which forbids discrimination on the basis of "religious convictions." They also said his statements violated Article 444 of the Belgian penal code because they appeared in a newspaper and therefore were repeated extensively in print.
Belgian law, however, apparently did not prevent Muslims from resorting to anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism during the municipal elections in October. Yves Goldstein, a Jewish candidate for the Socialist Party in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek was singled out by Turkish political activists as "an active Zionist and enemy of Islam." This smear was echoed by a Moroccan political party called the "Equality Party," which distributed an e-mail telling voters that casting their ballots for Goldstein would be like "stabbing Palestinians in the back." The Equality Party'splatform includes removing Hamas from the Belgian government's list of terrorist groups.
"The Iris and the Crescent" matter-of-factly sums it all up: "Islam is definitely part of the reality of Brussels."
