Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

Van Rompuy Plans Shake - Up of EU Summits
Dec 12th, 2009
Daily NewsEUobserver - Honor Mahony
Categories: Today's Headlines;Revived Roman Empire

BRUSSELS - The new EU president, Herman Van Rompuy, is planning to shake up the regular gatherings of EU leaders to make them less formulaic so that they result in decisions that have immediate relevancy.

The summits, which take place at least four times a year in Brussels, will have their attendance streamlined and will produce conclusions which are "operative" and contain a message which is "readable and visible" for the European public.

Until now, summits have been numerically weighty affairs - involving over 50 people including foreign ministers, and often resulting in impenetrable conclusions the length of a short novel.

This is partly due to the fact that the post-meeting statements are carefully pre-written by ambassadors before being passed up the political food chain and partly as a result of the EU increasingly feeling obliged to take note or react to certain political situations beyond its borders as a matter of rote.

Speaking about future meetings of EU leaders, which he will start to chair from 2010, Mr Van Rompuy on Thursday evening (10 December) said: "We have to constitute a group, a club, that gets on, that works for the same cause, namely the European Union."

He emphasized that the European Council's principle members are the heads of state and government, calling them the "hard core." Other ministers - such as those in charge of foreign affairs or finance - may attend from "time to time" depending on the agenda.

Meetings will also take place more frequently and result in more political decisions, according to the former Belgian prime minister, known and chosen for his low-key style.

He said the main focus of his two and half year tenure would be the economic situation, suggesting that if the continent wants to hold on to the "European way of life" it has to grow by 2 percent, double the official projections for the EU's battered economy.

Mr Van Rompuy intends to hold informal and formal meetings over the coming months so that in half a year's time, the bloc has a "good strategy" for tackling the crisis, which has resulted in soaring unemployment and public debt in several member states.

The first informal meeting has been called for February, just ahead of the traditional Spring summit, where governments will try and agree a long term economic plan to bring the union to 2020.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy said Mr Van Rompuy's address to EU leaders on Thursday evening was an "insightful contribution." Both he and his German counterpart welcomed the fact that the new president will be able to take part in all EU ministerial meetings, giving him an oversight across all policy areas.

In addition, several EU leaders welcomed the new slimmed-down format of the meeting, with foreign ministers not invited to take part in this week's two-day summit, the first under the EU's new Lisbon Treaty.

It means they can sit around one table and not have to watch each other's interventions on a TV screen, a more relaxed set-up seen as conducive to more fluid discussions.

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Dec 12th, 2009
Daily NewsReuters _ Ed Stoddard
Categories: Today's Headlines;Apostasy

Christian Fathers Put in Jail for Shunning Explicit Sex Ed
Dec 12th, 2009
Daily NewsWND - Bob Unruh
Categories: Today's Headlines;Moral Decline

International organization fighting for parents protecting their children

An international human rights organization today announced it will pursue a civil lawsuit on behalf of parents who want to control their children's education and withhold them from explicit sex education and play-acting classes required by the German government.

Joel Thornton of the International Human Rights Group told WND the government in Salzkotten, Germany, is sending the fathers of the children to jail for terms of one week because they have refused to turn their children over to school officials for mandated sex classes.

According to a report from Richard Guenther, European director for the IHRG, eight families of Christians have decided to withhold their children from required sex education classes in Salzkotten.

Sex education classes in Germany are explicit, and the issue is one of the major reasons why families – and not just Christian families – choose to homeschool their children even though the government has maintained its illegality since the days of Hitler.

The students who are being held out of sex education classes also are not being allowed by their parents to participate in a play-acting program called "My Body Belongs to Me," which essentially teaches children how to engage in sex, the report said.

Guenther reported that one father already has served his week in jail and is scheduled to be released this weekend, while the fathers of seven more families still are facing a similar fate.

The government already has imposed fines on the families, which continue to accrue. Thornton said the families are being targeted with a "Bussgeld," a fine described as "repentance money" designed to show contrition for wrong behavior.

The families so far have refused to pay because that would be admitting guilt.

Thornton said the cases being brought against the families – whose names are being withheld for the protection of the children – reveal the dedication among German officials to punish parents who refuse to hand over their children to the state for education purposes.

The government's determination is evident, Thornton said, whether parents are objecting to an explicit sex class or whether the family chooses to homeschool their children.

"Unlike American officials, German officials do not recognize the right of parents to opt their children out of offensive classes such as sex education which overrides the parent's beliefs or desires for their own children," Thornton said.

"One of the reasons for this is that German officials view the children as belonging to the state, particularly during the time they are in school," he said.

So the IHRG has launched a new "radical approach" in Germany.

"Early next year, January or February, we will be filing a civil lawsuit on behalf of a number of homeschool families to try and force the court to recognize the rights of parents to control the education of their children," Thornton said. "We will not continue to only react to these forceful actions by state officials against these families."

Michael Farris, who heads the U.S.-based Parental Rights website, said it's not surprising that the German government is reacting the way it is.

"They basically believe that the government knows best in every sector of life," he said.

He said the actions also align with the general international sympathy for U.N. protocols such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which essentially gives children rights to make their own decisions on every facet of their lives.

He cited a case a decade ago when the government of Wales allowed parents to opt children out of sex programs and it was found to have been in violation of the convention because it did not first consult the children about their desires.

There's also no assurance that the U.S. is immune to such draconian measures, officials said.

WND already has reported on a California case where the judge called parents "bigots" for opposing homosexual lessons in public schools.

The parents were represented in California's Alameda Superior Court by Pacific Justice Institute. On Dec. 1, Judge Frank Roesch denied a motion to allow them to have their children excused from the lessons.

According to the group, Roesch blasted the parents for seeking enforcement of a provision of the California Education Code that gives parents a right to opt their kids out of health education.

Education Code Section 51240 allows a parent to have a student excused from instruction, "If any part of a school's instruction in health conflicts with the religious training and beliefs of a parent or guardian of a pupil."

However, Pacific Justice Institute said Roesch repeatedly insinuated that the parents are bigots. In his opinion Roesch said the opt-out provision "is not reasonably construed to include instruction in family life education, but was intended to be more limited in scope."

WND earlier reported when the district was accused of violating federal law for approving the mandatory homosexual curriculum for children as young as 5 – without allowing parents to opt out of the lessons.

"We believe that this ruling against parents is inconsistent with the Education Code, and we are looking forward to continuing this battle until opt-out rights are restored on appeal, or the curriculum is changed," Pacific Justice Institute Chief Counsel Kevin Snider said in a statement.

Germany has been notorious for its treatment of parents decide to homeschool their children. Just weeks ago, a mother and father in Archfeld were fined $181 for homeschooling their children by a judge who spared them the jail sentences demanded by the prosecutor, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association.

The organization has been monitoring and working on the case of Juergen and Rosemarie Dudek. The HSLDA previously reported the prosecutor had suggested only jail was a deterrent to homeschooling families.

But the ruling from the judge, identified only by his surname of Drier, said the parents were guilty under the criminal law in the German state of Hessen of homeschooling even though they were providing a good education for their children.

He fined them 120 euros, or $181.

"We recognize in our German basic law about philosophical and religious conviction and that parents have rights, but the basic law also includes that it is the state's role to educate all children," the judge ruled.

Practical Homeschool Magazine has noted one of the first acts by Hitler when he moved into power was to create the governmental Ministry of Education and give it control of all schools and school-related issues.

In 1937, the dictator said, "The youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of inoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled. This Reich stands, and it is building itself up for the future, upon its youth. And this new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing."

Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, commented previously on the issue, contending the government "has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion."

Drautz said schools teach socialization, and as WND reported, that is important, as evident in the government's response when a German family in another case wrote objecting to police officers picking their child up at home and delivering him to a public school.

"The minister of education does not share your attitudes toward so-called homeschooling," said a government letter in response. "You complain about the forced school escort of primary school children by the responsible local police officers. ... In order to avoid this in future, the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement."