To delve into the topic of social inequality in the United States, a French university has turned to a slice of American popular culture: the HBO series The Wire.

The critically acclaimed show, created by former journalist David Simon, had previously been the subject of a course at Harvard, but now will be used by students at Paris' University Nanterre La Défense to look in on American social ills from the outside.

From January 13 to June 1, several seminars will take place within the walls of the university, the latest tribute to the gritty realism of a series depicting the largely African-American, crime-plagued neighborhoods of Baltimore. The course will focus on subjects such as the American city, the representation of African Americans and the role of institutions as they are depicted in The Wire.

Nanterre c’est west side yo. Pour faire un « The Wire » en France faudrait surtout trouver un journaliste qui limite pas ses enquêtes à son compte twitter.

The truth is that Italy wastes its subsidies and uses the costliest sources. Nuclear energy was mothballed before the power stations were fully depreciated, bringing forward billion-euro decommissioning costs by decades. In 1992, Italy adopted the CIP 6 measures, which for assimilated energy – gas treated as a renewable source – will end up adding €20 billion in incentives to bills over its 15 or 20-year lifespan. In 2007, energy watchdog chair Alessandro Ortis managed to put a €600 million cut in place by interpreting the avoided fuel cost’s tariff component very strictly. But this only lasted two years until the Council of State upheld appeals from the big groups that had cornered all the public resources. Compensatory price hikes loom.

In 2012, aid for renewables gets into full stride. Some €160-170 billion is budgeted from 2005 to 2034, much of it concentrated in this decade. It’s a huge burden on household energy bills without even creating a national manufacturing base for the sector,

Anti-Americanism is, of course, as European as Apfelstrudel

Still, it wasn’t until I ran across an article the other day in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet that I realized European anti-Americanism, thanks to Urinegate, is once again in full bloom. The article, written by somebody named Asbjørn Svarstad, begins by noting that the American soldiers who filmed themselves urinating on dead Taliban members may not be the first GIs to have behaved in such a manner. “American commandos who were dropped over Snåsa [in northern Norway] toward the end of World War II,” writes Asbjørn Svarstad, “are suspected of having displayed the same kind of contempt for their enemies.”

The main character in Svarstad’s story is none other than William Colby, who would later become head of the CIA but who back in 1945 was a 24-year-old major in charge of the Norwegian Special Operation Group (NORSO) under the command of the OSS. NORSO, which sounds rather like Brad Pitt’s unit in Inglourious Basterds, consisted of Norwegian-Americans and Norwegians who were operating behind enemy lines on a mission called Operation RYPE. On May 2, 1945, Colby’s men, who were stationed at a farm called Gjevsjøen, were discovered by five German soldiers, whom they quickly dispatched. According to Svarstad, local Norwegians – and here’s the meat of the story – later claimed that they were then invited by the Americans to urinate on the Germans’ corpses.

One of Svarstad’s sources is Norwegian journalist Ola Flyum, whom he describes as an authority on how northern Norway experienced World War II. Flyum’s verdict on the NORSO episode is as follows: “This kind of behavior says a great deal about the way in which the Americans conducted themselves. The Norwegians were shaken. Such a culture was unknown to them. I see many reasons to examine whether this was a war crime.”

Yes, you read that right. The local Norwegians had lived for five years under the Nazis, who had come to subdue and tyrannize them, to execute troublemakers and cart Jews off to their deaths. But, if Flyum is to be believed, the real trauma for these folks was being invited by their American liberators to relieve themselves on the bodies of their oppressors

A couple of readers cited the Allied bombing of Dresden as proof that America and the western Allies were at least as bad as the Nazis; one recalled having “seen videos from WWII of P51 planes mowing down German farmers in May 1945.” Several readers insisted that it wasn’t the Western Allies that whupped the Nazis and freed Norway, but the Soviets: “America would have been a**-f***ed in a one-on-one against Nazi Germany.”

A running theme was that American soldiers are, as one reader put it, “typical American white trash.” Indeed, the words “white trash” recurred frequently. Left-wing readers who undoubtedly pride themselves on their purported respect for people (especially the underprivileged) of all races and religions, and who fret about the human rights of even the most loathsome members of the species (such as Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden), were quick to deride American GIs as poor, dumb – and, indeed, barely human – hicks: “There’s no doubt that white trash from the US…have lukewarm attitudes toward morality. Without the local minister and sheriff they fumble around, unwashed and drunk, and rape, kill, and film their crimes. They’re garbage.”

All Metrobuses are now equipped with drivecam systems, which capture these types of incidents. When WTOP asked for drivecam videos from August and September, we received 134 near-collision videos, along with dozens showing collisions, traffic violations and even pedestrian accidents.

"SS canonised," leads Tageszeitung, with a front-page photo of the leader of the Nazi organisation, Heinrich Himmler, on a visit to SS volunteers in Estonia in October 1943.

The Berlin daily is referring to a bill that the Estonian Minister of Defence is hoping to have adopted in March. According to the text, all those who took part in the fight against the Soviet Union during the Second World War will be granted the status of “freedom fighters,” which includes Estonian members of the SS

Germany and Italy undermine French bid for financial tax

German and Italian leaders at a meeting in Berlin said they would only back a financial transactions tax at the level of the EU-27, not just the eurozone-17, dampening France's campaign for the levy. Merkel said her earlier comment on Monday backing a eurozone-17 tax was a "personal opinion" only.

While both sides want to maintain the NATO alliance, this long expected move leaves European leaders naked with regard to the state of EU foreign, security and defence policy, especially their inability to even begin the construction of a common European defence.

Since a press statements on every mishap in the world seems to be the extent of EU foreign policy, perhaps the high representative Catherine Ashton could crank out a few lines to let the heads of state or government continue sleeping on the job

To get to the end of the month on this kind of money in your pocket is a Herculean task. Many families are counting the cents closely before they head out to shop. For thousands of Spaniards today, buying something has become an act of renunciation.

Against this harsh backdrop, the low-cost shopping phenomenon is flourishing, and it does not look set to die out any time soon. Quite to the contrary, it's becoming a more and more prominent feature of society and its economy. Restaurants, travel, cars, insurance, electronics, real estate, leisure, clothing, food: nothing seems to escape the pull of low-cost shopping.

The question, though, is whether low-cost shopping will still be around once the crisis has passed. Is it a structural or temporary strategy? How will the consumer have changed by then? Will he or she be more rational, less impulsive? Dare we assume that the search for the lowest price has become a new way of life?

In the meantime, the low-cost concept is spreading fast and wide. “The consumer has gone from looking for what I call a 'superior functionality' to looking for the 'good enough functionality', which is cheaper. In other words, why should I buy a car with all the extras if I don't really need them?”

In any case, at bottom this phenomenon conveys a sense of urgency and need. As paradoxical as it sounds, it also conveys a desire to keep up one's standard of living and to go on enjoying a product or a simple luxury.

The National Confederation of Disabled People called the action "incomprehensible," and said pedophiles are now awarded a higher government disability pay than some people who have received organ transplants.

The Labor Ministry said categories added to the expanded list - that also includes pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists and sadomasochists - were included for purposes of medical assessment and used as a gauge for allocating financial assistance.

The new list gives pyromaniacs and pedophiles disability pay up to 35 percent, compared to 80 percent for heart transplant recipients.

"It's really not serious to grant Peeping Toms a 20-30 percent disability rate, and 10 percent to diabetics, who have insulin shots four or five times a day," said Vardakastanis.

Greece has been fighting to avoid bankruptcy since 2009. Public spending on health and welfare programs has been sharply cut under austerity measures imposed as a condition for receiving emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund and other countries using the euro currency.

What they conveniently ignore is that American Dream is not what it used to be. (Neither is the European Dream of an ever closer union, but that's another story).

Europe is socialist, bloated and a threat to the global economy. That appears to be the message from the ongoing presidential campaign in the US. Republicans in particular have discovered Europe as a convenient punching bag -- and have even begun accusing each other of being too "European."

If equal opportunity is essential to freedom, then freedom is under attack!

- from “Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything”, (Frank J. Fleming)

And the Progressive beat goes on. Even in the case of enabled and rationalized graft, their echo-chamber of protectors permits no questioning.

|

A number of people working for the EU institutions have had their emails, passwords and credit card details hacked and released to the general public over the Christmas break.

A partial list was recently published online by Anonymous, a loose network of cyber activists campaigning against the so-called 'New World Order'.

Among the victims are administrators and officials at the European Commission, Eurojust (an EU body fighting organised crime), the European External Action Service, the European Parliament and Brussels-based think-tank the European Policy Centre (EPC).

All together, some 850,000 confidential details were released when Anonymous hacked into the Texas-based Stratfor Global Intelligence security firm.

Stratfor is a widely used private security research company. About 75,000 of its paying subscribers also had their credit card details disclosed, including some working for the EU institutions.

The leaked database has 19,000 email addresses ending in the .mil domain of the US military according to the Guardian newspaper. The list also included 242 Nato staff members.

The entire operation could cast a long shadow over intense US lobbying against a leaked draft proposal for a Data Protection Regulation from the European Commission this past December.

Among the US complaints are the European Commission's views on data breach requirements, which they consider as "overly" severe and could undermine corporate data security practices.

"It is interesting to note that the US document tends to oppose specific proposals, such as the notification deadline and fines, in support of the vague issues such as not distracting businesses from improving corporate data security practices,"