Don't let them get you down with their capitalist propaganda.

Eugene Debs. American socialist leader.

Many of my friends tell me it is hopeless, that people are apathetic, and worse still, all a bunch of right wingers. I keep saying look at the changes for the better that have and are taking place. The BBC recently did a poll in 27 countries. Only 11% of the respondents thought that capitalism works well. Only 11%. In only two countries, Pakistan and the US, did more than one in five think capitalism works well.

In the US 36% have a "positive image of socialism." Think about this. No mass party, no mass force in the US is campaigning for socialism yet still 36% have a positive image of it. And even more surprising. The union leaders who should be campaigning for socialism, they put all their resources to campaign against it and for capitalism. Yet in spite of all this 36% still have a positive image of Socialism.

As capitalism sinks deeper and deeper into crisis an explosive movement for change will erupt. Look at the 250,000 people who went on the internet to support the flight attendant who told his company and the customers to F... off. This is a sign of a great discontent and desire for an alternative which would take on the companies and the bosses.

On another front. Racism. According to the Pew report inter racial marriages were 14.6% in 2008. This was six times the level of 1960. Racism too is on the retreat. Not that you would know it by the mass media who whip up every example they can get of minute men frothing at the mouth at Mexican immigrants or an idiot young black man shouting about killing white people.

And today I read about the industrial farming business. These industrial farmers scorned anybody who mentioned their cruel methods aimed at maximizing profits with no regard for anything else. Capitalism drives the cruelty of industrial farming. These arrogant industrial farmers relied on their connections with the Senators in the small agricultural states to keep laws off the books that would have forced them to treat their animals better. But now low and behold. look at what is happening. They are having to retreat. In California, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and other states the industrial farming big shots are sitting down and negotiating changes for the better in how their animals will be treated. They are even negotiating with animal rights people to whom they would never have given the time of day in the past.

Do not let the mass media fool you. As wee Bob Dylan said. Times they are a changing and in spite of the spin, and in spite of the capitalist offensive, and in spite of the refusal to fight of the labor leaders people do not like what they see and they are looking for a better alternative.