From Utoya Island to Capitol Hill

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Definition of DECLASS

Transitive verb: to remove from a class; especially to assign to a lower social status

It is ridiculed by poets and libertines; idolized by moralists; the target of speeches by politicians, popes and all others who climb into the pulpit to recruit voters or followers; evasive of revolutions; the pillar of families and communities; the lifeblood of public treasuries and guarantor of the welfare state. The middle class is the true face of Western society. In a globalized world, where even in the poorest country you can always find someone with enough money to go for a ride in a space shuttle, only the pre-eminence of the middle classes distinguishes so-called developed nations from the rest. Countries cease to be poor not because of the positions their millionaires occupy on the ranking of the world's largest fortunes -if this were true, Mexico and India would be at the top of the list- but because of the size of their middle class. Ramón Muñoz - El País

The problem with US manufacturing is not that it has been shrinking – despite the “offshoring” of textile and electronics manufacturing to China, US manufacturing output rose by 3.9 per cent a year between 1997 and 2007. However productivity grew 6.8 per cent annually in the same period, so millions of jobs were lost. If manufacturing carries along the same path, McKinsey estimates that it could shed another 2.3m jobs by 2020, while the economy needs to create 21m more jobs to return to full employment. The mini-recovery in manufacturing jobs – 164,000 were added in the six months to April – recently stalled. John Gapper - Financial Times

Anders Behring Breivik has killed and maimed dozens of people and we have yet to see how many millions of Americans and others around the world will have their lives and futures mangled by the Tea Party, but be sure that they too will be legion.

At bottom, both the evil-hearted Norwegian massacre and the obstinate, nihilistic stupidity of America's congressional Tea Party, have the same origin: the crisis of the stagnating middle class in the industrialized countries. Their anger, paranoia and their resentment lie beneath the surface everywhere in the developed world, ready to erupt without warning like the magma of a volcano.

Why such hideous, stupid, selfish, mean-spirited, hatefulness and why so much of it?

You needn't go far to find the answer, it is all around you... if you are immune to it, count yourself as fortunate.

Millions of people in developed countries, people whose ancestors were always poor or who barely scraped by, began to live opulently after WWII; they were surfeited with full employment and a consumer cornucopia for several decades; in some countries this was accompanied by a generous social system. As we have seen, since the 1970s a placebo version of this lifestyle has only been maintained by easy credit both for individuals and for the governments themselves, and now this ease of financing has dried up.

Coming down in the world is always harder than going up... There always has to be someone to blame... The politicians and communicators and those who finance them, the ones who find a convenient "someone", are the only "winners" in times like these.

It is certainly easier and more convenient to blame Muslim or Mexican immigrants, climate science, homosexuals, multiculturalism, or George Soros for that matter, than to look under the hood of the economic system to see if something there is broken that could be fixed....

More regulations? More taxes? Better to blame the Koran or Barack Hussein Obama's "socialism" than to examine a system that can give so generously one moment and turn into a wicked old stepmother the next.

Utoya island and Capitol Hill are only stops on what promises to be a long journey. Read Breivik's "manifesto", read and listen to what the Tea Party have to say. Study them all with care and intent and if even the smallest thing in them resonates for you in any way, stop and study yourself carefully, knowing that you are a valuable "sample" of the zeitgeist yourself. We all live in the same world as these murderers and imbeciles and nobody, but nobody, is immune to what is coming down. DS

Norway: a taste of the magma

David Seaton's News Links

Magma (from Greek μάγμα "paste") is a mixture of molten rock, volatiles and solids that is found beneath the surface of the Earth, and may also exist on other terrestrial planets. Wikipedia

The Norwegian right wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, who killed at least 76 people in two terrorist attacks Jul. 22 Oslo and Utoya, is a member of a network of more than 10,000 neo-fascist groups spread across North America and Western and Northern Europe. Common to this informal North Atlantic neo-fascist coalition is the hatred of Islam, the radical opposition to immigration and to multicultural society, the belief in white racial supremacy and in Christian fundamentalism, the unconditional support of Israel, sympathies for the U.S. ‘Tea Party’ movement, and contempt for democratic institutions. Sympathetic to these neo-fascist groups are extreme right wing parties functioning in practically all European countries, from the Norwegian Progress Party, the Sweden Democrats, the True Fins, and the Danish People’s Party, to the French Front National (FN), and the Italian Lega Nord. The perpetrator of the massacre on Jul. 22 was a long-standing member of the Norwegian Progress Party. IPS

Interviewed on a popular radio show, Francesco Speroni, a leading member of the Northern League, the junior partner in Berlusconi's conservative coalition, said: "Breivik's ideas are in defence of western civilisation."(...) "If [Breivik's] ideas are that we are going towards Eurabia and those sorts of things, that western Christian civilisation needs to be defended, yes, I'm in agreement," he told Radio 24. In France, the National Front announced on Tuesday it had suspended a former local election candidate who made remarks on his blog that were interpreted as supportive of Breivik. Guardian

Glenn Beck spoke out about the mass killings in Norway on his Monday radio show. Beck said that he was troubled by the summer camp that was the site of the overwhelming majority of the carnage perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik, the right-wing extremist who has admitted to the killings. The camp is run by Norway's leading center-left party, the Labor Party, and has long been a haven for young people looking to break into the political scene. Beck said the camp "sounds a little like the Hitler Youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing." He then went on to say that he had warned that there would be horrible consequences due to the rise of what he called the "evil" strain of Islam in Europe. Islam, he said, is "squeezing the neck" of the continent, and multiculturalism is "killing" it. Huffpost

Lone gunmen running amok killing numerous people is widely seen as an "only in America-mom and apple-pie", US specialty, so no American should feel smug for a moment about Anders Breivik's Norwegian shooting spree. Nor should anyone think that America's ultra-right is any less insane than Europe's or further away from power than Europe's... The Tea Party led debt negotiations are ample proof of that.

Given the access to guns and explosive that Americans have, and the training in using them that so many Americans have received and the general craziness of the American "conservatives", the world of Glenn Beck and his wannabes, I would be very surprised if somebody doesn't try to top the Norwegian massacre in America any day now.

What is very much needed at this precise moment is a rigorous cui bono analysis of the ultra-right, in Europe and America. Who profits from this insanity, what is in it for them? What economic or geopolitical interests activate or free ride on the milieu where Breivik was nourished?

This neo-fascist culture has to be explored in depth and the dots have to be connected. That should be the first task that progressive set themselves today. DS