The British Conservatives have finally left the European People’s Party (EPP), the Christian-Democrat group in the European Parliament. The intention to leave the EPP was first announced at the “Congress of Brussels,” a two-day conference, organized by Daniel Hannan, a British MEP (Member of the European Parliament), in Brussels in December 2005. The 2005 conference was attended by politicians from the British Conservatives, the Czech Republic’s Civic Democratic Party (ODS) of President Vaclav Klaus, Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) of President Lech Kaczyński, and others, such as Alexandra Colen, a member of the Belgian federal parliament for the Flemish-secessionist Vlaams Belang party. The second day of the conference coincided with the election in London of David Cameron as the party leader of the British Conservatives. Before his election as party leader, Mr. Cameron had promised Mr. Hannan to pull his party out of the EPP within weeks of his election as party leader. It took him three and a half years to do so. Yesterday, the British Conservatives, the Czech ODS, the Polish PiS, and a couple of tiny parties from five other EU member states, announced the formation of a new group with a somewhat contradictory name, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).

A recent article in the French newspaper Le Figaro reveals that sexual violence is on the rise in France. Rapes constitute three-quarters of the crimes committed by young persons under the age of 18. In Nº 40 of his weekly journal, available through subscription, Yves Daoudal analyzes the problem from a different perspective than that of the Le Figaro: “Today rapes represent three-quarters of the crimes committed by those under 18. And more than half of those under 13 who get into trouble with the law are indicted for acts of a sexual nature (yes: under the age of 13). One thousand adolescents are implicated every year in matters relating to sexual assaults or rapes: the figures have increased 50% in ten years.”

George Handlery about the week that was. Bail outs, even for the cadaver class. Fleeing high taxes. Minimalizing taxes is a basic right. Respect criminals: get their consent for actions against them. Never say never unless it always pays. Crime, exposure and tolerance. The common denominator. Lip service rejecting past crimes frees from acting to fight their current version. Revelations, redeemers and repression.
 
1. The story is a widely circulating and, due to its relentless repetition, widely accepted. According to it, state intervention has saved capitalism from failure. Actually, even in the USA, capitalism did not exist in a pure form. Government-by-the-Clintons has interfered in the market system massively. With devastating ultimate consequences, government meddled in the process by which credits were granted and real estate prices evolved. Huge profits awaited those playing along. (Mortgages to those who could not afford them and the resulting house prices unrelated to value are meant.) Now the government is fixing wages for the employees of financial institutions. Will this interference be more beneficial than the one that originally regulated credits, mortgages and real estate prices?
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I am aware of the fact that some British people speak of Europe as “somewhere else,” to which they do not belong. In my opinion, Britain is very much a part of European civilization whether they want to admit so or not, but I am willing to grant them a special place within the European tradition. There is a reason why English became the first global lingua franca. While I focus mainly on the history of science in my essays these days, let us have a brief look at some of the political ideas and concepts championed by the British in the modern era.

Jewish groups in Europe and the United States have reacted with alarm to the gains made by far-right political parties in the recent elections for European Parliament. Right-wing and nationalist parties posted significant victories in Austria, Britain, Denmark, Hungary, Romania and the Netherlands in four days of voting that ended on June 7.

George Handlery about the week that was. Is the real Europe to centralize power or to protect its member nations? Demonstrated good will can be taken as a sign of weakness. Some see the reactive push that responds to their shove as aggression. Ahmadinejad‘s election and nuclear issues. Who colonized whom? Too big to fail, or too big to be saved?

1. To some, voting to determine the composition the European Parliament is an exercise in futility. The writer does not share this view. The inclination to write off the institution is the result of its misuse by those that have shanghaied it. Europe needs an institutional expression that provides internal mediation and secures a voice in global affairs. The main question is the definition of what the Europe to be shall be like. Until now, the Left could dominate „Europe“ so as to achieve goals that could not be realized in the national constituencies. In the election of June 7, the parties of the right won. The result expresses the disappointment with what had been done in Europe‘s name. However, the judgment also stands for a new course that rejects PC, artificial homogenization and bureaucratic centralism. The results affirm the diversity of the constituent parts that is to be protected and not repressed by central institutions. It will be up to the new majority to correct the distortions created in the name of administratively imposed „solidarity“. The mandate is there. The need to act is undeniable. Will the opportunity be used?

One of the best modern critics of ideology, Eric Voegelin (1901-1985), often called on literature for the light it sheds on distortions of perspective in politics and thought. The novelists, poets, and essayists, being highly attuned psychologists and social observers, can penetrate, with heightened perspicacity, into derailments of orderly life and the demonic workings of the libido. In previous discussions, I have shown how works as various as Herman Melville’s Typee, the Thirteenth-Century Vinland Sagas, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 illuminate our current, early Twenty-First-Century situation in Europe and North America. In the present discussion, I wish to consider the seemingly disparate cases of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) and his story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” (1940) and the Danish writer Isak Dinesen (the pen-name of Karen Blixen) and her story “The Poet” (1934). I wish also to examine these stories in a framework of Voegelin’s analysis of totalitarianism as a type of secular religiosity or “Gnostic derailment,” a term whose meaning will emerge in the discussion.

Last Friday, two days before the election 8 million French viewers watched Home, a television documentary on saving the planet. Minister of Culture Christine Albanel praised the "historic success" of the documentary. Many feel that the impact of the film influenced the vote on Sunday to the advantage of the green candidate Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

Last week, the citizens of the 27 member states of the European Union (EU) went to the voting booth to elect their MEPs (members of the European Parliament). At least, some of them did. Never before has the turnout been so low. Of the 375 million EU citizens a record low of 43.1% cast a vote. Five years ago, this figure was 45.5%, which at that time also was the lowest turnout ever.

Yesterday, apart from the European elections, Belgium also held elections for the regional parliaments in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern half of the country, and Wallonia, the French-speaking southern half.
 
These elections highlighted the fact that Flanders and Wallonia are two different nations. While the left won in Wallonia, it was crushed in Flanders.
 
In the Walloon Parliament (75 seats) the leftist green party Ecolo won 14 seats (+11), the Parti Socialiste (PS) remained the biggest with 30 seats (-4), the liberal-conservative Mouvement Reformateur received 18 seats (-2), the centrist christian-democrat CDH won 13 seats (-1) and the Front National lost its 4 seats. The greatest surprise was that the PS was only marginally affected by the tsunami of corruption and other scandals (even one involving child pornography) in which it has been entangled.
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In the Flemish Parliament (124 seats), however, the picture is entirely different. The Socialists dropped to 19 seats (-6), the leftist Liberals to 21 seats (-4). The biggest party are the Christian-Democrats with 31 seats (-4). The Greens won 7 seats (+1). The Flemish-nationalist Vlaams Belang (VB), which advocates the independence of Flanders dropped to 21 seats (-11), but two other parties, also explicitly in favour of Flemish independence, made a major break-through: the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), which won 16 seats (+16), and the liberal-conservative LDD party, which won 8 seats (+8).