[Note from CarlD: Of course, Fox News notwithstanding, we socialists know very well that the current measures from the top have little to do with a workable socialism for the 21st century, or even a full-throated social democracy, and are more in tune with the cartoon below. Still, it's heartening to know, even with the limitations of this kind of polling, that the outer limits of those open to our militant minority is 30 percent, and even higher in key demographics. For those who are interested in studying what could be a 21st century socialism, I highly recommend David Schweickart's 'After Capitalism,' not to be confused with his longer and more technical 'Against Capitalism.' If you just want to see and hear him speak on the topic, just search on his name in YouTube. There's some older debates, plus a new 10-part series from a long talk by him given in Sweden, but in English.]
Seven in ten Americans think US transition
from capitalism to socialism bad move
2010-08-01 - About 7 in 10 American voters (69 percent) think that a transition from capitalism to socialism in United States would be a bad thing, according to a Fox News/ Opinion Dynamics Corporation poll.
Eighty-eight percent Republicans with household incomes of 100,000 dollars or more and 70 percent of those aged 55 and over are among those most likely to think it would be a bad move.
Smaller majorities of those living in lower-income households (59 percent), young people (57 percent), as well as just under half of Democrats (49 percent) agree.
34-56 percent voters think that the country is currently moving away from capitalism to socialism. Far fewer voters, however, approve.
Less than one in five voters (18 percent) think that it would be a good thing for the country to move away from capitalism and toward socialism.
Twenty eight percent of voters whose household incomes are under 30,000 dollars favour this option. Thirty one percent of them who are under thirty years and 32 percent Democrats approve this change. (ANI)
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by Carol Pagaduan-Araullo, Phillipines
After the May 14 elections, are we any closer to the democratic society that our grade school textbooks proudly proclaim the Philippines to be? Unfortunately, the general picture emerging from the stories and the images that have so far dominated the tri-media and ordinary people’s accounts is that of a nightmarish elections and post-elections situation that has confirmed our worse fears. The farcical nature of the electoral process in this country has been laid bare, much worse than even our most dire predictions.
There was widespread disenfranchisement, vote buying, “flying voters†and innumerable delays, disruption and even failure of elections due to outright grabbing of election paraphernalia, bombing of polling places and terrorizing of poll officials and the voters themselves.
The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) has been flagrantly pro-administration. This is proven by the 
by Jerry Harris, SolidarityEconomy.net
.US hegemony rapidly disappearing
US economic and political hegemony has degraded further in the rapidly globalizing world. At the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz has lost control through his own corrupt crony capitalism. But his problems stem as much from Iraq as his current missteps. Globalists who fill the bureaucracy at the World Bank never were comfortable with the US unilateralist coming to their home and Wolfowitz opened the door for their attacks. That the US can no longer control the internal politics at the World Bank is a good indicator of how far its political influence has fallen. 
The 2006 Elections and the Rightward Shift
by Robert Brenner
How should the Democrats’ 2006 recapture of Congress be interpreted in the context of the broader trends in American politics over the last decades? In what follows, I will examine the development of the two parties against the background of underlying shifts in the balance of class forces in America, to read the conjuncture of 2006 against the deeper structural movements of the American polity—from the labour struggles of the 1930s and construction of the New Deal Democrats, through the Great Society reforms of the postwar boom, to the political paradigms of the capitalist offensive with the onset of the long downturn. Within this framework, I will argue that the rise of the Republican right, building from bases in an expanding, non-unionized South, 
by Carol Pagaduan-Araullo, Philippines
How ironic that while the rest of the world, including the people of the USA, are waking up to the Bush administration’s big fat lies about the “war on terrorâ€, Filipinos continue to be fed with the same sort of lies by the Arroyo regime. In fact the latter is in the process of completing the railroading of a so-called Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB) that is the result of high-profile lobbying as well as arm-twisting by high officials of the Bush government. A two-day special session of the Lower House of Congress has been called by Mrs. Arroyo to ratify the bill so that she can quickly sign it into law. 
by Chris Hedges
The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America’s open society and build a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military would signal the end of our democracy. 
A low-profile industrial revolution based on corn and sunflower seeds is being born in Terni, a middle-sized Umbrian city, situated some 100 kilometers north of Rome. On Friday 13 October, in this once-prosperous steel and chemical industry cluster, the Italian company Novamont, pioneer in the sector of biodegradable products, inaugurated the "first green bio-refinery in the world, able to produce bio-polyesters based on vegetable oil." European leader in bio-plastics based on starch thanks to its star product, Master-Bi, 35,000 tons of which already are turned out by the Terni site, the firm is raising its production capacity to 60,000 tons, or about 60% of the global market.
Compared to 40 million tons of petroleum-based plastics consumed in 
Flooded with money from soaring oil prices there has been an explosion of investment banks, private equity funds and venture capital coming out of the Middle East. But unlike the 1970s and 1990s when both governments and investors relied on international banks to handle their wealth local transnational capitalists are now guiding their own funds. That means petrodollars aren't being recycled through New York and London but through such firms as Dubai's Istithmar and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Funds are expect to hit $10B by 2007. David Jackson, chief executive officer at Istithmar says, "In 2003, people hardly understood what private equity and alternative investments really were; now every other day we get wind of another fund." Says another banker, "In the past, they would just give the money and put it in the US. Now they want to do their own deals…" 
To Change Dramatically
The End of Faith:
Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason
by Sam Harris.
Norton, New York, 2004.
ISBN 0-393-03515-8. 336 pp. Cloth $24.95.
Reviewed by Alexander Saxton
Sam Harris' The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason is unusual among books recently issued by mainline publishers in that it begins by rejecting all religious faiths -- not just Islam or fundamentalist Christianity but ALL -- as contrary to reason and detrimental to the human condition. Thus far, your reviewer could read with enthusiastic agreement. But unfortunately, after this strong opener, Harris' book goes downhill as he develops four themes that become increasingly problematic and end by contradicting his starting assertion. 
Author Stan Goff, a retired 26-year veteran of the U.S. Army Special Forces, sounds a warning call that many of the historical precursors of fascism—white supremacy, militarization of culture, vigilantism, masculine fear of female power, xenophobia and economic destabilization—are ascendant in America today.
Can the revolution outlive its leader?
