The BBC news site carries two stories today that really deserve more attention, especially in light of many debates on European culture and identity. The two stories highlight trends that have been going on for quite a while now and I suppose you could consider these trends to be intrinsically ‘cultural’ as they reflect contemporary [...]

Browsing through the archives of EUTUBE, “the YouTube space of the European Commission”, I came across a video called 50 years of EU in the world. Since we haven’t really done anything special here on AFOE to commemorate the European Project’s 50th anniversary, I thought this video might be an appropriate birthday gift to our [...]

My daughter’s school broke the law yesterday. I don’t mind too much, though, as the law in question is stupid and ought to be abolished.

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Under German law, religious [...]

We’ve said this before: but it’s worth saying again. In fact, it’s never been more worth saying. Now, British forces in southern Iraq actually are drawing down, and the government still doesn’t want to take the people who worked for us along.
If you are resident in the UK, please take a moment to read [...]

Physics Today has a very interesting, and refreshing, online article (hat tip Sargasso) on Islam and science that ties in neatly with AFOE’s review of Olivier Roy’s latest book Secularism confronts Islam. The article is written by Pervez Hoodbhoy, nuclear physics professor at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. As usual, I shall give our [...]

When I look at contemporary public discourse, no day seems to go by without at least someone mentioning the threat of Islam. Last week Dutch MP Geert Wilders even went as far as to call for a ban on the Koran itself, comparing it in true Godwin style to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, because “it incites [...]

Christopher Caldwell, senior editor of neocon house journal the Weekly Standard, once wrote a six-page feature in the New York Times magazine in which he claimed that Robert Kilroy-Silk would “transform European politics”. Despite this, he is still taken seriously by some people; disturbingly, this includes the editors of the Financial Times. In his column [...]

Le Monde reports on a fascinating crisis, one that incorporates essentially all the themes of the times. In northern Niger lurk huge reserves of uranium, and the French nuclear power industry covers about a third of its requirements from mines there owned by Areva SA. It was this mining industry that Joe Wilson was ordered [...]

That there’s less blogging going on in August. On the other hand, you may already be en vacance and not have noticed.
In any event, a number of AFOE people got together in Paris this weekend just past. Alas, I was not one of them, so I can neither confirm nor deny that new innovations, [...]