DAY OF THE DEAD: LIMITED EDITION (2-CD SET)

https://lalalandrecords.com/day-of-the-dead-limited-edition-2-cd-set/

La-La Land Records and Taurus Entertainment present the remixed, remastered and expanded 2-CD release of composer John Harrison’s original motion picture score to George A. Romero’s 1985 genre classic DAY OF THE DEAD, starring Lori Cardille, Terry Alexander, Joe Pilato, Richard Liberty and Howard Sherman, and written/directed by George A. Romero. Composer Harrison’s driving synth score expertly propels the living dead, while also supporting the main characters’ emotional and dramatic journeys. Unexpected, but highly effective reggae-like tones and melodic motifs add a unique personality to this beloved genre score. Produced by John Harrison and Ford A. Thaxton, remixed by Michael Farrow and mastered by James Nelson, this deluxe edition of DAY OF THE DEAD, limited to 3000 units, features the film version of the score on Disc One, and the remastered original 1985 soundtrack cues on Disc Two. Exclusive, in-depth liner notes from film music writer Jeff Bond, composer John Harrison and writer/director George A. Romero round out the delightfully ghoulish art design by Mark Banning.

Near the Vancouver Convention Centre in Downtown Vancouver. Summer of 2019.

The Vancouver Convention Centre (formerly known as the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre, or VCEC) is a convention centre in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; it is one of Canada’s largest convention centres. With the opening of the new West Building in 2009, it now has 43,340 square metres (466,500 sq ft) of meeting space. It is owned by the British Columbia Pavilion Corporation, a crown corporation owned by the government of British Columbia.

The East Building is located in Canada Place, which it shares with a cruise ship terminal, and the Pan Pacific hotel. It has 12,400 m2 (133,000 sq ft) of space, including a 8,500 m2 (91,000 sq ft), column-free, dividable exhibition hall, 20 meeting rooms, and a ballroom.

The East Building served as the Main Press Centre for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The West Building is directly adjacent to Canada Place and consists of 20,490 m2 (220,500 sq ft) of convention space, 8,400 m2 (90,000 sq ft) of retail space along a public waterfront promenade, and 440 parking stalls. Surrounding the building are 37,000 m2 (400,000 sq ft) of walkways, bikeways, public open space and plazas, for a total project area of 5.7 hectares (14 acres) of land and 3.2 hectares (8 acres) over water. The project also supplies infrastructure for future water based developments including an expanded marina, a float plane terminal, and water-based retail opportunities. The design architect for the expansion is LMN Architects of Seattle, in association with Vancouver firms MCM Architects and DA Architects + Planners. Morrison Hershfield ensured quality assurance and conducted enhanced field review during construction of all building envelope components including innovative curtain wall glazing and green roof. On February 9, 2010, the building was certified LEED Platinum by the Canada Green Building Council.

The West Building opened to the public on April 4, 2009. It effectively tripled the capacity of the convention centre. The building hosted the International Broadcast Centre for the 2010 Winter Olympics and 2010 Winter Paralympics. Connecting to the centre is the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel.

Adjacent to the West building is the “Jack Poole Plaza” (formerly known as Thurlow Plaza), in honour of Jack Poole, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2009. He was responsible for securing the bid of the 2010 Winter Olympics and 2010 Winter Paralympics to Vancouver.

The new West Building expansion is certified Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum (LEED) and is designated a PowerSmart Convention Centre by BC Hydro. It was awarded a “Go Green” certificate from the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) for industry-approved, environmental best practices in building management. The living roof, seawater heating and cooling, on-site water treatment and fish habitat built into the foundation of the West Building make it one of the greenest convention centres in the world. The Centre recycles an average of 180,000 kilograms of materials annually, nearly half of the total volume of waste generated. It avoids canned goods, disposable utensils and dishes, and donates leftover food to local charities.

The 2.4-hectare (6-acre) “living roof” is the largest in Canada and the largest non-industrial living roof in North America. The roof landscape is designed as a self-sustaining grassy habitat characteristic of coastal British Columbia, including 400,000 native plants and 4 colonies of 60,000 bees each which provide honey for the public plaza restaurant. No public access is allowed to the roof, which made it possible to create a fully functional ecosystem with natural drainage and seed migration patterns using the roof’s architectural topography. The landscape functionally connects to nearby Stanley Park via a corridor of waterfront parks. Irrigation to the roof is provided by the building’s wastewater treatment plant. In the event that the roof irrigation demands exceed the capacity of the wastewater treatment plant, make-up water can be provided by a reverse osmosis desalinization plant drawing and treating seawater pumped from the harbour as well as municipal water through an air gap connection to the storage tanks, as needed.

All wastewater from washrooms, retail, and restaurant activities in the building is reclaimed and recycled for use in toilet and urinal flushing, and green roof irrigation. The treatment facility uses a membrane bioreactor process, manufactured and supplied by GE/Zenon, consisting of two 2-zone (anoxic/oxic) bioreactor tanks (with internal recycle) and an ultra-filtration (hollow-fibre) membrane tank, followed by a chlorine contact tank that serves to remove colour and disinfect the reclaimed water. The treatment system is designed for an average daily flow of 75 cubic metres (20,000 US gal; 16,000 imp gal) per day, and maximum flows of up to 150 cubic metres (40,000 US gal; 33,000 imp gal) per day. With the City of Vancouver 2012 commercial metered water and sewer rates at $2.803 and $1.754, respectively, the convention centre can save over $21,000 per month in utility fees through water reuse. One of the biggest operating challenges when the facility first started up was the ability to maintain the treatment plant bacteria in a healthy condition during lengthy periods (e.g. late December through mid-January) with limited wastewater to feed the treatment plant due to limited convention activity and concurrent wastewater generation within the building; however, once the restaurants in the building were established this challenge was resolved.

The building’s heating and cooling system feeds through the deep water of the harbor, using it as a constant temperature base to reduce the amount of energy used for heating and cooling.

Along the waterfront, the shoreline ecology is fully restored from its previous brownfield state and supports a historic salmon migration path. An artificial reef structure rings the building perimeter, consisting of a series of concrete steps. Each step is planted with marine species adapted to a specific depth below the water, resulting in a kelp forest characteristic of the natural shoreline and supporting a diversity of harbor fauna. Underneath the building, which is set on pier foundations, runnels are set into the tide flats creating a tidal ecosystem zone that flushes daily and feeds the reef.

The site of the expansion is a former marine and rail industrial area, most of which was covered in impervious surfaces and contaminated. The decrease in site impervious surfaces is almost 30%, mitigating total suspended solids and phosphorus content from stormwater and reducing the site’s heat island contribution.

In 2002, and again in 2008, the VCEC was awarded the International Association of Congress Centres (AIPC) “Apex Award” for the “World’s Best Congress Centre”. In April 2010, the West Building expansion received an Award of Excellence from the Urban Land Institute. It has also received multiple awards from the AIA Seattle chapter.

Koch, Bradley Money Fuels Trump’s Right-Wing Echo Chamber

https://www.prwatch.org/news/2019/07/13482/koch-bradley-money-fuels-trumps-right-wing-echo-chamber

Many of the same social media influencers who attended Trump’s “Social Media Summit” on July 11 have rallied to defend his racist attacks against U.S. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-D), Rashida Tlaib (MI-D), Ayanna Pressley (MA-D), and Ilhan Omar (MN-D). And a number of them are bankrolled by the Kochs, the Bradley Foundation, and other large right-wing foundations.

In a tweet July 14, Trump called for the minority freshman lawmakers, fierce critics of his policies, to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” All four are American citizens, and three of the four were born in the United States.

Since then, Trump has doubled down on the attacks, saying the lawmakers “hate our country,” and did nothing to abate chants of “Send her back!” at a recent campaign rally in North Carolina.

In the face of widespread outrage, Trump’s friends from the Summit have gone out of their way to justify his actions.

The Heritage Foundation condemned Trump’s comments, but also suggested that he made them out of love for the country and that the “destructive and divisive nature of the rhetoric of the members of Congress in question” was to blame.

The Media Research Center (MRC) used its “Newsbusters” site to criticize mainstream media coverage, writing that “Trump didn’t say anything violent” and publishing another piece titled, “The ‘Squad’ Won’t Condemn Antifa Terrorism….WHERE Are The Media?”

And Will Chamberlain’s Human Events published a piece arguing that there’s a double standard at play because Trump’s targets aren’t white, claiming that “Ilhan Omar…really is a danger to the U.S.,” and concluding that Trump’s chanting supporters can’t be blamed “for wanting to protect America.”

Although the mainstream media has done a good job of covering Trump’s inaugural Social Media Summit and his racist attacks, there has been very little reporting on who bankrolls this online echo chamber of right-wing, anti-immigration, and white nationalist pundits.

The Heritage Foundation

The Heritage Foundation has been one of the top supporters of Trump’s anti-immigration push on the right.

Those who attended the Trump summit from Heritage include Robert Bluey, vice president of communications and executive editor of the group’s news website, “The Daily Signal”; Bridgett Wagner, vice president of policy promotion; Maria Sousa, digital director; Lyndsey Fifield, social media manager; and Jessica Anderson, vice president of Heritage Action for America.

The Sarah Scaife Foundation is a major source of revenue for the Heritage Foundation, providing the group with at least $18 million since 1985. The foundation also funds a number of other anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim organizations, including the Center for Immigration Studies and the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Billionaires Charles and David Koch and their partners in Stand Together (formerly known as the Seminar Network) have given over $5.7 million to Heritage since 1998 through their various family foundations, and the Koch network’s preferred donor conduit duo of DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund has chipped in another half million since 2010.

The Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation has provided at least another $5.9 million to Heritage since 1998 and the Mercer Family Foundation, run by one of the “blow-it-all-up billionaires” behind Trump’s rise to power, Rebekah Mercer, has given at least another $1 million since 2015.

Heritage generally steers clear of the xenophobic language prevalent among other Trump influencers. Heritage researcher Jason Richwine, coauthor of a controversial report concluding that allowing illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship would cost taxpayers trillions, resigned from Heritage when it became public that he had argued in his Harvard dissertation that, “The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations.”

Media Research Center

Brent Bozell’s MRC operates “NewsBusters,” a site that claims to be “documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias.” It has a section entitled “Trump Coverage Studies” that attempts to refute mainstream media stories on Trump.

MRC has received at least $7 million from the Mercer Family Foundation since 2015; $2.4 million from the Bradley Foundation since 1998; and $1.4 million from the Sarah Scaife Foundation since 2012.

MRC claims to “not associate with known white nationalists,” and took down a piece it had promoted last year from a white nationalist website, which stated that Black people “are a threat to all who cross their path,” after it was reported by MediaMatters. It was not the first time, however, that NewsBusters had linked to or promoted white nationalist websites.

Bozell was a fierce critic of Trump prior to the 2016 election, but since repeatedly attacked the press for criticizing the president.

Project Veritas

Project Veritas, a 2015 grantee of the Trump Foundation, is run by James O’Keefe, a right-wing activist and provocateur who uses deception and manipulative editing in his “investigations.”

Due to O’Keefe’s methods, Project Veritas has been plagued by legal issues over the years, and the group is barred from seeking donations in Florida, Maine, Mississippi, Utah, and Wisconsin.

Project Veritas’s funders are difficult to identify as the group receives the majority of its funding through donor conduits. DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund have given the group over $4.8 million since 2011.

O’Keefe has been criticized for associating with radical white nationalists for years and has appeared on InfoWars — conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ infamous radio show denounced by ex-staffers as a “den of racism and harassment” — multiple times. After InfoWars was removed from social media platforms for promoting violence and hate, O’Keefe tweeted, “InfoWars targeted, taken off social media. These tech companies’ practices are opaque and given their power must be made more transparent. We will expose the entire rotten tech machine.”

InfoWars has also hosted Patrick Casey, the leader of the white nationalist group Evropa, which helped plan the deadly Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. Evropa has since rebranded itself as the American Identity Movement.

Most recently, O’Keefe has teamed up with Ginni Thomas, a former Heritage staffer and wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, and the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) chief marketing officer, Bill Meierling, to launch a new dark money operation to “protect President Trump.”

Prager University

Prager University, a social media video project of Dennis Prager and an attendee at the Trump Summit, has been banned and/or restricted on YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, and Twitter for providing a platform for hate speech.

Anti-Semitic Owen Benjamin, anti-LGBT Steven Crowder, and former Turning Point USA Communications Director Candace Owens have all contributed to Prager University. Owens left Turning Point USA after many campus chapters called for her resignation following her statement that “Hitler was an ‘OK’ leader until he tried to take his message global.”

In studying Prager University, the sociologist Francesca Tripodi writes that Prager’s project creates “a dense network of extremist thinkers” that “allows for those who identify as mainline conservatives to gain easy access to white supremacist logic.”

Prager University has received at least a million dollars since 2010 from the Bradley Foundation. Bradley internal documents examined by CMD show that Bradley funds Prager for its strong reach across social media platforms and because it “distills (conservative/Judeo-Christian) principles into content-rich, entertaining five-minute video ‘courses’ taught by public intellectuals, many of whom are Bradley Prize winners.”

Turning Point USA

Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA has a history of racism that extends beyond former employee Candace Owens. The group’s former chapter president at University of Nevada, Las Vegas used racial epithets and exclaimed “white power” while hugging another individual who shouted “we’re going to rule the country” and “fuck the niggers” in a video that went viral earlier this year.

Kirk also named Kyle Kashuv, widely known for his racial slurs, to be Turning Point USA’s high school outreach director. Kashuv resigned from the post when he was outed by a former classmate who said he “used the N-word frequently,” ranked women’s attractiveness by race, and referenced his “Jewish slaves.”

Turning Point USA has received close to $300,000 since 2014 from GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein’s Ed Uihlein Family Foundation.

American Decline and who’s Objectively to Blame

Colonel Schulz and Count Ciano visiting a technical and air war academy

Originally posted on March 27, 2018:

In this addition to my post about the situation in the United States, I think that I will get into the reason why the United States is in decline and about what Israel represents.

First of all, what place does capitalism occupy in Western states? Capitalists are the rulers of the West, and what we have in the West is a dictatorship of capital. What this means is that capitalists are above the law and above the state in Western countries. The state and even some other forms of accumulation of surplus are tolerated in Western countries, but capitalists are the real rulers, they make the laws, and they control the thoughts of the masses. In other words, everything in Western countries revolves around capitalists. This is why it’s not surprising that the capitalists of different Western countries have close ties and that they even bypass state power when they make agreements. It’s a whole system and governments don’t play the main role in it.

I have to disagree with the people that call what has been happening in the USA for the last several decades fascism. To me, fascism is industrial capitalism in its post-expansion, imperial form, like what happened in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or, less significantly, in other Western states like Augusto Pinochet’s Chile or Francisco Franco’s Spain. Under fascism, capitalists, who used to be the rulers of some state, finally give up real power to the instruments of class oppression and imperialist war that they’ve been funding and supporting. They do this in order to oppress the disgruntled masses and to prevent upheaval. So, the capitalists take a back seat to the new, authoritative people in power. Under fascism, the new military rulers begin massive spending and usually begin attacking other states in the civilization, and even outside of the civilization, in order to alleviate the economic crisis and to create an empire. The massive spending and the loot that comes from wars of aggression result in stability and prosperity, for a time. This is why the German Nazis, for example, had military, social, and scientific successes before they were defeated. This is why many Germans and other Europeans fought to the end for the defense of the Third Reich. The same can’t be said about the USA now. In the USA, power is still in the hands of capitalists, like the Rockefellers, the Kochs, the Fords, or those unpleasant members of the Bush family. I think that many people are still under the influence of American propaganda, which states that capitalism equals freedom. No, in the end, capitalism becomes oppressive, just like any other system. South Korea, for example, used to be an oppressive capitalist state before the Korean Miracle was created by the Americans there. South Korea became a less oppressive state because fast economic growth and industrialization began there several decades ago. The reason why capitalism didn’t appear to be so oppressive in the USA before is because of the serious economic growth that used to exist. But it’s worth pointing out that, since the 1930s, this growth has been coming from the imperialist operations of the USA. Another way of putting this is that, since the 1930s, the USA hasn’t been growing from the inside. It’s because “expansion” came to an end in 1929 in the USA. The USA has been growing by exploiting the peoples and the resources of the many territories that are outside of the USA. The USA has spread its tentacles all over the world, to the extent that there’s no serious opposition to American force and economics anywhere in the world now. But even this tremendous imperialism hasn’t been enough to put an end to the decay in the USA. It has only postponed and softened this decay because the vested interests of capitalism have remained in power. These vested interests continue to resist change and progress. Therefore, now that there’s little or no economic growth under capitalism, and now that the Soviet Union doesn’t exist to keep the capitalists in check, the capitalists are showing the masses in Western countries who their daddy is. So, as Paid Liar Jones (Alex Jones) once said, “Shut up, slave filth” and don’t raise your voice or you’re gonna get it.

It’s not easy nowadays to make sense of what’s going on in the Western world and with its dominant state, which is the USA. But one thing that’s clear to me is that the USA and other Western states are now demonstrating incompetence such as they haven’t demonstrated before. This is happening because Western civilization is in a crisis. And this crisis didn’t begin in 2008. It began in the second half of the 19th century, first in core states like England and France. This is why the British Empire and the French Empire collapsed some decades later and why they no longer exist (though England and France still act as imperialist powers). This crisis reached peripheral Western states like Germany and the USA in the first half of the 20th century. The reason why this crisis appeared is because capitalism (more precisely, industrial capitalism) is no longer functioning as an expansive system in the West. In the West, industrial capitalism has turned into a structure of vested interests called monopoly capitalism. This means, as Carroll Quigley explained in his books, that Western civilization has been in the Age of Conflict, the third in Western history, for about a century already. When a civilization enters the Age of Conflict, this doesn’t mean that progress and growth come to an end. Progress and growth begin to slow down. The USA, for example, definitively entered the Age of Conflict in 1929, several decades after England did so, because it’s a peripheral Western state. Therefore, the USA has been demonstrating incompetence since 1929, and this incompetence has only been growing since then. For example, some American nationalists say that if there had been more determination in the USA, and if the politicians in Washington hadn’t been so afraid and so hesitant, the USA would have won the Vietnam War (1955 – 1975). And, sure, there’s a possibility that the USA would have won the Vietnam War, but only if the Vietnam War had taken place decades earlier, when the USA was in the Age of Expansion. Since the Vietnam War took place after 1929, and since the Americans were fighting against a strong-willed enemy (an enemy that also had the backing of the Soviet Union), the Americans had to give up and leave Vietnam. And the war itself may have been started simply to boost the profits of the American military-industrial complex. It has even been admitted that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a false flag. In other words, there’s a reason for the American loss in Vietnam. This reason is the fact that the USA has been losing strength and morale since 1929. This has been happening because industrial capitalism has become a structure of vested interests called monopoly capitalism in the USA. But American nationalists and right-wing radicals, who are brainwashed and who are still obsessed with a fictional communist enemy, just can’t accept that capitalism is the root of their problems. Therefore, they say that they would have cut through the Viet Cong like butter, and that the USA would have bombed Vietnam back to the stone age, if only the politicians in Washington hadn’t been so weak. So, instead of looking for faults in the capitalist system, they imagine that some “other” is responsible for the problems. This “other” takes on the shape of something that they already don’t like. For example, in the case of the American right (who are often irrational, poorly educated liars), the “other” is usually communism (though communism doesn’t exist), or the Jews, or some conspiracy of bankers, or “cultural Marxism”, or some other country like Russia, or certain left-wing politicians. What’s interesting is that some people in the ruling class try to take advantage of this irrationality and shortage of knowledge by supporting them. Through their agents in the media and in culture, some monopoly capitalists support claims about a communist conspiracy or about a banker conspiracy because this shifts attention away from the real root of the problems, which is the uninvested surplus of the capitalist ruling class. This is especially the case when conservative leaders (like Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan) are in power in the USA or in the UK. They bring out people such as Joseph McCarthy, Anthony Sutton, or Yuri Bezmenov on television in order to make the dupes believe that the evil commies are out to get them or that there’s a conspiracy of the left. Because, you know, it’s not the all-powerful capitalists who are at fault but those non-existent or few-in-numbers commies. Carroll Quigley called these people, and the oligarchical faction to which they belong, the “lunatic radical right” in his book ‘Tragedy and Hope’ (1966). If I remember correctly, Quigley also wrote that Douglas MacArthur was close to this oligarchical faction, and this is why he disobeyed Harry S. Truman during the Korean War. Economic growth and population growth in the USA have been slowing down, and all kinds of social problems have been appearing, because the vested interests of capitalism no longer invest their surplus. I’m not saying that conspiracies (like a conspiracy of some bankers) don’t exist. I’m saying is that, even if some of them do exist, they’re not the root of the problems. By the way, what has been happening in the USA since 1929 is what happened in Russia from 1900 to 1917. There’s a reason why a revolution took place in Russia. The Russian state, which was the “instrument of expansion” of Russian civilization, became a structure of vested interests in 1900, during the rule of Nicholas II of Russia. Therefore, problems began to appear in the Russian Empire after 1900 and “expansion” began to slow down. Like the Americans, the Russians began to demonstrate incompetence, they began to lose wars, and it took only 17 years for order to collapse in Russia. In the USA, on the other hand, this has been going on for almost a century already because the USA doesn’t have the problems and the issues that Russia had.

So, when it comes to the election of Donald Trump and to what’s been happening since then, I don’t really agree that the American authorities are engaged in some effective deception with Trump. The American authorities are simply demonstrating incompetence and desperation, and there’s a possible struggle in the American ruling class. When it comes to me, I don’t really pay much attention to this struggle, even if it exists. Well, firstly, I’m not American. Secondly, I need proof that there is a struggle. I can’t just rely on maybes and assumptions. I’ve come across information that seriously puts in doubt this “left vs. right” nonsense. Thirdly, even if there is a struggle between oligarchs, there’s really no difference for the average person because the oligarchs are all monopoly capitalists anyway. They may disagree on minor issues, but they agree on major issues. I’m still surprised sometimes when I see people running after the next big thing. They still haven’t learned, after all these years, that it’s not important who they vote for. Sure, I kind of supported Trump in 2016. I did this only because of his anti-war rhetoric. But even then I knew that he won’t change anything. I’m a little wiser and older now, and I think that I shouldn’t have thrown my weight behind any of the presidential candidates in the USA. Still, it was interesting to observe what happened because the majority of the Anglo-American establishment didn’t want Trump in the White House. Even Morgan Freeman, the “Voice of God”, was brought out for a funny propaganda stunt. I also can’t forget the 2016 film Independence Day: Resurgence, which was released just before the election. In this film, which I kind of like by the way, the president of the USA is a woman. This was a clear suggestion that the next president should be a woman (Clinton), and it’s just one example of the backing that Hillary Clinton received. Still, even all of the support from the media and from Hollywood didn’t get Clinton to the coronation hall. I mean, don’t get me wrong. This support got her very far, but it wasn’t quite enough to beat Trump because Clinton was just so hated. When I was dining at a restaurant once, in 2016, I overheard two young women talking not far from me about what was happening in the USA. One of them called Clinton an old bag. Later, I found even more useful information and opinions on Scott Creighton’s (American Everyman) website. I basically knew what was happening, but his observations about why Clinton lost the election were so good that I began donating some money to him every month for his work. Creighton is an American, and, therefore, he follows what’s going on in the USA. He’s also old, which means that he knows things. This also means that he grew up at a time when Americans were provided with a somewhat better education. He’s not like the 20 year-old or 30 year-old airheads who ramble on the internet these days. It’s somewhat refreshing to listen to a knowledgeable person like him because there are just so many middle class reactionaries and pro-fascists on the internet these days. These middle class people have the time and the money to ramble on the internet. They’re wealthy enough to afford a computer and other accessories. They generally believe that they benefit from the system and from the existing order. Consequently, they have an aversion to change. But they’re also angry and insecure because they’ve been brought down by the economic crisis, thus losing some of their prospects and expectations. Since they believe that leftist ideas are alien to them, and since they can’t sympathize with the working class, they generally support conservatives and reactionaries. Hence, many of these people voted for Trump because most of Trump’s rhetoric is reactionary.

When it comes to Israel, I also have a few thoughts. Well, first of all, I think that the most important thing is that Israel seems to be a Western state because it was founded mainly by Western Jews. Moreover, Israel is the youngest Western state because it was created in 1948 on the territory of the dying Islamic civilization. Since Israel has existed for only several decades, we can deduce that it hasn’t been institutionalized yet, like England, France, Germany, or even the USA have been institutionalized. This is why Israel, which is a capitalist state and which has a population of about 8 million, seems to be functioning more effectively than even the USA. In other words, the process of decline that has reached other Western states hasn’t yet reached, or is now reaching, Israel. Therefore, I don’t buy into the mythology that Israelis, or Jews in general, are supermen. Israelis aren’t as incompetent as the Americans or as other Western peoples simply because Israel isn’t yet in serious decline. Obviously, Israeli capitalists have ties to other Western capitalists, like American capitalists (or a faction of American capitalists). So, the fact that Israel has influence and friends in the USA isn’t at all surprising to me. Israel is a very important strategic ally for the USA. What’s also worth mentioning is that since Israel hasn’t yet been institutionalized, and since it has been growing so far, Israel has been taking land from its neighbors and settling the land with Israelis. This is the same process that, for example, happened in the USA more than a century ago, when the Americans drove away the Native Americans, took their land, and then settled it with Anglo-Saxons and other Americans of European descent.