The eBook is out…

The Truth about Excelsior is now available in both paperbackand Kindle eBook.
No, I’ve not yet heard about film rights, who might direct or star in the movie no doubt forthcoming.
But the significant news is that in both eBook and paperback, you can read “Far more than the usual fanciful tale of precocious children, fire-breathing dragons, disastrous monetary policy and World War.”
“‘The Truth about Excelsior’ offers a unique perspective on today’s cultural madness, and a glimpse into a world of peace, prosperity and …freedom.”

Let me know what you think of it.  If you like it, please leave a rating and review.

If you don’t like it, well, let me know what you think of it.

The TRUTH about Excelsior…on Amazon

My brother Greg published a book about three years ago.  I don’t think of myself as particularly competitive, but doggone it, I couldn’t let him beat me!  So I wrote one too.

He also has a website for both his book, and a bunch of stories from my mom (she wrote and illustrated some hilarious stuff).

…Anyway, The Truth about Excelsior is now available in paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0849X45LQ?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860.

I don’t like the way it looks as an eBook, but I’ll likely publish that, too, in a couple of weeks or so.  It’ll be cheaper, of course.

But since some stuff gets lost in the eBook version, I’m resisting it as long as I can.

The blurb is, “Far more than the usual fanciful tale of precocious children, fire-breathing dragons, disastrous monetary policy and World War, “The Truth about Excelsior” offers a unique perspective on today’s cultural madness, and a glimpse into a world of peace, prosperity and …freedom.”

I mean it to be fun, but you know me…I had to insert some serious stuff in there, too.

Anyway, let me know what you think of it…and if you like it, tell everybody, and leave a review!

Fearing our own shadow

The Land of The Free has been surrendering freedom hand-over-fist because the Home of The Brave is scared of its own shadow.  Almost literally, its own shadow.

We’ve for generations been the arms dealer and political destabilizer to the world.  Our CIA and armed forces have interfered with elections and even violently taken down one dictator to prop up another for over seventy years.

Our government has lied about its wars, warmongering, entangling alliances and foreign interventions for much longer than that.  Our CIA and NSA have been spying on the whole world, including every person within our own borders, as well as prying into foreign elections (and our own) for long enough that it’s disingenuous to complain about foreign spies and foreign interference in elections…unless we claim we’re the only ones who’re supposed to do all that.

To everybody.

All the time.

Though China is certainly a strong contender – even with its fingers in our sock puppets – We The People are still the most heavily-armed, most globally nannying and bullying, domestically intrusive, imprisoning and militarized nation of all time.

It is our own shadows that both terrify and genuinely threaten us now, and, surprisingly, in the past, too.

You think our soldiers are fighting for freedom?   Which freedom?   How many freedoms must we lose to get that elusive freedom we’re fighting for?   At what financial/future security cost?   At what moral/social spiritual cost?

We have literally reordered and molded our society’s defense/military, monetary and legal and political structure to our collective trembling nerves.   Why?

While nobody ever says it exactly like this, the predominating justification for the USA’s violent, costly Fear-Aggression Syndrome is:

Our past screw-ups necessitate today’s screw-ups.

Rational people can look at the USA’s past mistakes reasonably.  Our government made horrible, murderous, costly mistakes when it was far smaller, less powerful, less secretive, less snooping, and vastly less heavily-armed and militarized both globally, and domestically, than today.  But ironically, the closer we get to the present, the more wrong we call right, and the more we justify today’s wrong by yesterday’s wrong.

We all know that slavery and native genocide was bad.  Only the more educated among us know that the wars against Mexico and Spain were motivated by greed and desire for empire, and had nothing whatsoever to do with protecting American liberties and land.  But very few consider how Teddy Roosevelt stimulated the Empire of Japan and the USA helped create the Soviet Union, however, so we tend to think of WWII as a wholly Good War, where the USA wore white and saved the world for liberty and justice for all.

The point is that, the closer we get to the present, the more our views of USA government become disconnected from reality.
Even after we learned that the Vietnam War was justified on, at best, a screwup, we tend to think of USA government as a benevolent god of peace and love, incapable of wrongdoing (though we keep seeing new wrongdoing every day).

This is a freakishly weird phenomenon.  But it’s also the nature of tribalism and idolatry.  We love our team, and we hate the other guys.  We can’t see the wrong in our idols, teams, champions and leaders, but we know that the other peoples’ idols, teams, champions and leaders are pure evil.

And it’s also just human: People of the past were THEM.  People of today are US.  We can easily admit that our ancestors did horrible, stupid things; but we sure don’t want to admit that, today, right now, WE are screwing up.  We’re blind to our own errors.

In other words, we see the past more clearly than the present.   And we see other sinners more clearly than we see ourselves.

So, as a result, we exemplify, even if unintentionally, the exact opposite of The Golden Rule.

This is self-immolation.   We have so many impending disasters of fiscal, social, monetary and military nature (will it be WWIII when China takes Taiwan and Russia takes Ukraine on the same day?), that we desperately need an epiphany and revolution of heart and mind.

You can’t be the Land of The Free if you’re not the Home of The Brave.   But no nation can survive at all with this kind of stupid.

Quit mortgaging our future, dang it!

Freedom, IN – Of course we need to cut taxes.  I’d vote to end income tax entirely.

But we already know this game. Politicians say that “government is too big,” but then make it bigger. They trumpet the need to cut spending, but then spend more.

And, of course, they sometimes cut taxes (just a little) without fixing the first two things; which means that they’ll later raise taxes, and cut promised benefits.

Nobody likes to pay taxes.  But taxes are a symptom, not the disease itself.  The disease is ungoverned, unregulated, out-of-control politics and all the cost and violence that entails.

Every single one of the other 2018 primary election candidates for Indiana’s US Senate seat are promising more government. Every one of the others promise more fear-aggression-syndrome foreign policy, more domestic militarization, more intrusions into our privacy, trade and personal interactions.

I’m the only candidate promising less.

A lot less. 

I have a plan for Peace, prosperity, Security, Liberty and Justice for ALL, in eight steps.

But the summary is that I mean to cut the corruption, cost, intrusiveness, abusiveness and ineffectiveness of our central government by actually cutting powers, programs, agencies…and people, from that government. I propose establishing a truly federal (instead of our increasingly unitary) government as defined by the authorizing compact.

That is how this is supposed to work. That is still the law, as written and amended.

And I’m the only candidate who’s all about that.

Liberty or Bust!
Andy Horning
Freedom, Indiana

It’s time to talk about our spies

Freedom, IN – ♬♪ They see you when you’re sleeping, they know when you’re awake; they know when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake! ♩♫

Our US Congress is trying to give its cronies a Christmas present – re-authorization and more funding for the unconstitutional mass surveillance programs we were once told didn’t exist.

I say it’s time for what some might call a “courtesy flush.”  I say it’s time to repeal, nullify, destroy and stomp on National Security Act of 1947 so decisively that it can never take root again.  The corruption and destruction and stench of our lawless, secretive societal saboteurs has grown too great.

Thomas Jefferson wrote “…that knolege is power, and that ignorance is weakness.”

So let’s stop being ignorant about who’s got the real power here, and what they’re doing with it.

The FBI was, from its start in 1935, corrupt, snooping, deceitful, and deadly.  It took some brave thieves to reveal some of the agency’s crimes.  Truman regretted creating the CIA, and Kennedy said he would “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”  The CIA and NSA have been anti-constitutionally spying on all of us, and have repeatedly lied about it…even as they paid journalists, entertainers and clerics to lie on their behalf.

Now, just think about the power of unlimited, unregulated spying, lying, and political immunity, mixed with armed force and the ability to make opposing voices go silent.  Imagine you had the power to find out everything about people, convincingly make up what you don’t find, or make even powerful people, maybe even in our own country, die…without facing any consequences.  

What government on the planet wouldn’t abuse that power? We have good reason to believe that a government that performed medical experiments on school kids, doesn’t even resist abusing it.

Could such knowledge and power actually control our elected politicians?  How about elections themselves?  They have the power to lie, to deceive, to control public opinion, to, in essence, hack our brains and control us.  

This is what people are talking about with the term, “deep state,” or probably more accurately, “shadow government.”

So-called “federal” agencies’ famous rivalries, withholding of data, rejection of congressional oversight, their anti-constitutional actions against citizens, media and foreign governments, and their trampling of local law enforcement really do make them more enemy than friend.

The greatly abused Title VII, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is set to expire December 31.  Of course Congress should let it die and tumble back into the sulphureous depths it came from.

But I further propose we abolish the FBI and CIA, and give their money back to the states and people.  I would reinforce the constitution’s already clear ban on domestic spying, deception and subterfuge, and leave all domestic law enforcement to more local, appropriate units of government, and already-constitutionally authorized courts.

I propose that the US Congress directly manage our foreign spy operations under specific congressional warrants and limitations, including the Geneva Conventions, just as with constitutional funding and declaration of war and national defense (which hasn’t been the case since WWII, BTW).  I propose we make the process and results of FOIA requests more open and complete.

And perhaps most importantly, I propose clarifying that it is a serious crime, eligible for criminal and civil punishment, for agencies and agents of government to withhold the immediate and full release of requested information to congress, and/or in most circumstances as specified by congress, to the public.

“… we want no Gestapo or secret police. The FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail. J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him.” — Harry S. Truman

###

Liberty or Bust!
Andy Horning
Freedom, Indiana

Eight Steps to Success

Here’re my suggestions for Peace, prosperity, Security and Freedom in eight steps:

1. End the cronyism/corruption network and culture.  This is fundamental and critical.  Our government is captured by people and parties who do not share our collective best interests.  So we must bust up the self-appointed, inherently divisive, eternal tug-of-war “Two Party System,” and nullify the recent, unconstitutional, immoral state codes that suppress competition, create classes and sub-classes of citizens, and make taxpayers pay for the promotion of only D and R candidates at the expense of everybody else.  To do this, we need to …vote them out of power.  Not just the individual candidates – the whole power network behind the curtain.  This needs to happen.  And make no mistake…this is not just about the parties themselves, which are really just puppet shows for a much wider, deeper system of cronies that we scarcely see.  We won’t get anywhere trimming the claws of kingmakers, bundlers, lobbyists, permanent staffers and eternal bureaucrats without first replacing the 2-party puppet show and firewall that prevents us from doing the rest of what follows:
2. Stand down our military-industrial complex and global imperialism, and replace it with strong, constitutional national defense.  This of course includes killing the CIA/NSA monster to which Eisenhower also referred to in his famous Farewell Address as the “scientific-technological elite.”  Besides, we’ve been misidentifying real dangers.  China is already in a very effective, winning war against us, and we apparently don’t even know it.  Hopefully their internal problems will lessen the danger soon, because it is the worst, in my opinion, this nation has ever faced.
3. Monetary/banking reform.  Click the link for details.  I wish this could be #1.  It is a fundamental, and currently a terrible, fast-growing problem that’s about to result in massive inflation and turmoil.  The system of monetized debt begun here in 1912/13 has gone global, and is perhaps the biggest enabler of corruption.  But as with #2, it is well protected by the crony system.  
4. Rule of Law.  …Which of course means, kill “The Administrative State” of executive agencies and unelected bureaucrats that have taken unto themselves legislative, judicial and executive powers. This would cut a lot of stuff from what we’re calling “government” today. You may not like some of the cuts; but I’m certain you’d like the end result.
5. No more loaded bills. One subject at a time, and no earmarks/pork.
6. End special classes, special deals for special people – equality under law for all at long last.  This is partially implied/ included in #1, but needs to become a fundamental moral of our society if any real progress is to last.  And it would involve scaling back and phasing out many of the extraordinary powers, rights, perks and immunities granted to politically powerful corporate abstractions.  In other words, we need to stop fearing “Big Pharma,” “Big Ag,” “Big…anything.”  We’re all people here.  We should all be equal under the law.  That is certainly not the case now.
7. Sunset provision/amendment to refine and reduce the number of laws, and keep them few, simple and important so that our rules are:
   1. Few enough to actually know.
   2. Simple enough to actually obey.
   3. Important enough to enforce without exceptions or special classes.
8. Term Limits.  Let’s face it; voters haven’t been doing their part, and there’s no procedural fix for bad choices.  But term limits won’t happen until after voters make better choices.  Similarly, I have for decades favored alternative voting schemes like Condorcet, Ranked Choice or Approval Voting (RCV or AV).  And I definitely love the idea of increasing the number of representatives to better suit our population; and we have the technology to keep them in their districts with more local accountability.  But we won’t get such changes UNTIL we get rid of the politicians who like things the way they are.  That’s why I’m placing term limits last both procedurally, and in importance, because we’ll get term limits only after a sufficient number of people wake up and act appropriately such that we fire the bad guys and, at least for the short term, defuse the huge advantage of incumbency… particularly the power of “committee” rulers based on tenure.   …But after that cultural epiphany and revolution, their kids and grandkids will gradually fall asleep again.♣   That’s just how civilizations inevitably decay and die.  If we’re to delay our self-destruction at least a little, we need term limits shorter than human life expectancy…particularly in the context of tenure/corruption-based power structures.

To summarize, I want to cut the cost, intrusiveness, abusiveness and ineffectiveness of our central government by actually cutting powers, programs, agencies…and people, from that government. I mean to establish a truly federal (instead of our increasingly unitary) government as defined by the authorizing compact.  I want to make living life more voluntary, and much less driven by deceit, tribalism, anger, fear, mandates, prohibitions, and an impenetrable thicket of taxation.

♣A good part of my reasoning for term limits is encapsulated in this quote:  “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” ― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

I believe it takes “strong men” (strong-minded, individualist, non-tribal voters) to fire bums and clean up corruption.  But the “weak men” (look around) who follow will let anything go, and continuously reelect bad politicians…or let the whole system collapse.

Droning Muslims, and the Golden Rule

If all humans lived by the Golden Rule, there’d be nothing like what we call, “civil government.”

We have kings and bureaucrats and jails and armies for two main reasons:
1. Because some percentage of us behave badly.
2. Because we think that politics will somehow fix that.

Of course, there is not now, nor was there ever, a government that operated on the Golden Rule.  Governments are always, to some degree, corrupt. And that is because people (including politicians, of course) misbehave, all power is inherently for sale, and government is nothing but delegated violence.  

It’s force.  It’s the threat and use of violence, imprisonment, fines and death. That’s why a small corrupt government is much, much better than a big corrupt government.

You’d think that since human governments have a 100% failure rate, we’d have learned this by now. But we humans are a surprisingly dumb species. We tend to self-destruct in ways that make great movies, but bad reality.

So, let’s consider our current situation with the Islam that we long ago militarized for our own purposes, monetized for our own purposes, gave good cause to unite where before it kept itself divided against itself, and now consider our enemy.

Wait… Before that… let me interject one more line of thought:
The only people who ever threatened to kill me, personally, were USA Americans (no, not Mexicans, not even Canadians).  One was a black man who claimed I shouldn’t live in a black neighborhood.  But several were red-blooded Tea Party folk who said I should burn in hell for running against their Republican Savior.

The only people who tell me what I can do, can’t do and must do are USA citizens.   It’s my fellows who take away my dwindling freedoms, take my money, tell me what I can do with what little I can keep, and make sure that I know that whatever it is I think I own (including my life), will be taken away if I don’t follow their rules.

It’s my fellow Americans who divide us into three classes for the purposes of rights, privileges, electoral access, and in courts:

1. Rich People,

2. Democrat/Republicans and their cronies,

3. All the rest of us poor suckers who believe their promises and keep reelecting the people of classes 1 and 2. 

And it’s been only my fellow Americans who’ve lied and lied and lied to me about why we’ve been at war forever. 

OK, so, back to Muslims, the North Koreans, Russians, or whoever our rabid Fear-Aggression Syndrome makes us see as the enemy du jour:
They think they’re right, too, you know. They’re convinced that their corrupt, self-destructing political scheme is right, and we’re the bad guys. And they’re not living by the Golden Rule any better than we are.
Are they our enemy?

Sure they are.
Who isn’t?
Just as hammer sees everything as a nail, a government, or by extension to the root…a human, sees everything outside its limits of power as a threat.

Even within our borders we make enemies of white men, Jews, gays, Democrats, Republicans…or people who aren’t gay Jewish white Democrats or Republicans. We’ve been dividing and subdividing against ourselves for so long that we feel we must tighten the cliques in order to defend them against all outsiders.
Right?

But this is why we suffer discord, fear, and violence.
We have politics because of our discord, fear and violence. 

And governments thrive and depend upon discord, fear and violence. Governments tend to stimulate and amplify that discord, fear and violence because that means more power and money for the individual politicians and cronies who comprise governments…

But hasn’t our own government, our own society, become a vastly greater threat to our personal freedom, health, security and prosperity? Shouldn’t we address this before we go picking fights with others?

Here’s what I recommend:
The Golden Rule.
Exemplify the peace, freedom, prosperity and security that’d flow from better behavior – both personally, and then reflected in our governance (our government is, after all, just our reflection, our avatar, our sins amplified).

To whatever degree we do The Golden Rule, our debts, intrusions, deceits and aggressions would diminish, and everything else would get…better.  Other people would see that what we’re doing is working, and maybe try to emulate that to some degree.

Would that be so bad?
I’m not saying that we don’t have to go blow up half the world. Maybe we do. Maybe we’ve been equipping, funding, training and motivating enemies so well and for so long that now we really do have to unleash all the hell we’ve been summoning before it eats us up first.

Maybe.

But how about we try to do at least a little of what we say we’re all about, first?

About our nation’s violence…

Reasonable people can disagree both strongly and with facts about our political laws, of course; or about economics; or even the proper role of political government in human societies.

But even among my list of friends, (Facebook and otherwise) there is a disturbingly broad, hostile, and in practice, dangerous range of perceptions and opinions regarding the appropriate use of deadly violence; both abroad, and domestically.

The range is roughly from Peace and Love toward All – No Matter What, to Nuke ‘Em All ‘cause …whatever.  And this is both at a global level, and at a very personal, within-your-home level.

Now I don’t intend to waste time and effort discussing relative merits/ demerits in the arguments, as the divisions are so hard and deep that people hear only what they want anyway.

I just wish more of us would consider a few things when voting, speaking and otherwise enacting or supporting political violence:

1. Are you being consistent?  Are guns really an answer when we’ve eliminated the militia system (killed completely in 1903), stopped free gun training in schools, and have jacked up so many kids on psychotropic drugs, and the rest of us on political lies/divisions, that it’s amazing that there aren’t more mass murders?  Are you sure guns are the problem when you’re proposing taking guns away by force with armed force you may claim is corrupt and globally malignant?  Do you trust the politicians and armed forces who’d take our guns?  Do you trust the politicians and armed forces you say are why we need guns?

2. Are you sure your beliefs aren’t based on fear, or hate?  Does your lip curl and your fingers tighten when hearing opposing views?  Have you tried to understand why others disagree with you as violently as you disagree with them?  Is, in other words, your view on guns and armies and drones and spies based upon fear-aggression-syndrome?  Would you, as some have suggested, shoot people who want to keep their guns?  If you support guns, do you support ownership for…everybody, or are there “certain people” who you don’t want to have guns?  Are there whole countries that need to be smacked down?  Really?

3. Have the political promises you believe, and vote for, ever been kept? Have the predictions and “facts” proven true? …Ever? When?

4. Have you looked skeptically at the forces and money behind the news stories?

5. Are you so sure your opinion isn’t what some very wealthy, powerful – even rogue clandestine agents, put into your head?

If more people actually thought long and hard about the above five things, I’m convinced that there’d be substantial changes in our global and domestic war machines, and military-industrial complex.

In any case, I’m also convinced that what we’re doing right now is madness.
And we had been warned many times by many people.

I think now’s a good time to picture a world that’s more peaceful, prosperous and secure, with liberty and justice for all…and find a way to work together with your neighbor (yeah; the one you think has crazy political notions) to make it so.

We could fix it in a Single Day

But voters, as always, must choose

Freedom, IN – Many feel that our “Major Party” choices on Election Day have been getting worse and worse, while the general condition of our society and individual lives seems to be devolving toward calamity.

That’s true, of course.

But we could fix it if only we’d acknowledge the problem, admit who freely chose this, and realize who’s got the power to turn this around. The fix itself is simple enough, and mostly written-down already.

The most important three steps are:

• Stand down our military-industrial complex and global imperialism.
• Monetary/banking reform.
• End the cronyism/corruption culture.

That’s in reverse order, unfortunately; because as congressmen I could address the first two listed only after voters take a stand against the recent (since the 1970’s), self-appointed and irretrievably corrupt, “Two Party System”…by electing me!

Only voters can topple the two-party-in-name-only, crony network, which has become little more than a front, distraction, protection and marketing group for the finance and militarism elites who run the world behind the Two Party Firewall.

So before we can nullify the unjust, profligate, unconstitutional judgments, agencies, laws and actions which produced the welfare cliff, the horrific cost of healthcare, oppressive lawless bureaucracy, and of course endless war and ever-more militarization, voters must first say something to the ruling elites that they’ve not heard in a hundred years:

…NO!

The other 8^th district candidates have no intention or ability to fix the mess they choose to represent. So, first, voters must vote against that corrupt monstrosity. Yes, it’s good to vote against what’s wrong. To say otherwise is a terrible misunderstanding of the whole point of elections; and that is for peaceful revolution. If they feel that they can vote for me, that’d be great. But first, voters must fire the Two Party System!

After voters fire that shot heard ‘round the world, we can talk about other reforms including:

• Term Limits
• Rule of Law
• End “earmarks” (pork)
• End special classes, special deals for special people – equality for all at long last
• Sunset provision/amendment to refine and reduce the number of laws so that our rules are:
  • Few enough to actually know
  • Simple enough to actually obey
  • Important enough to enforce without exceptions or special classes

None of the preceding is ideological, untested or even new. Most of it is already law.

It’s all in voters’ power to set things right. But first, in order to use their power, they must understand that they’ve always had it, and used it to get to where we are today. And for that to happen, they need to be better informed of their choices, and how elections have been working up to now.

Liberty or Bust!

Andrew Horning

Libertarian for 8^th District US House of Representatives

Facebook www.facebook.com/HorningForCongress/

This ain’t about religion, folks

First, I will not deny that Islam has a history of slavery, brutality, deceit and war.

Second…so does every other religion, race, ethnicity or other description of “human” on the planet.

People tend try very hard to rationalize the anger and desire for violence stirring in their heads.  The justifications people come up with sometimes become motivation and fuel for actual violence.  And often that process at the individual level becomes cliquish, tribal mob-think.  So it’s easy to see why non-Muslims react against “The Religion of Peace.”

But us flag-waving, non-Muslim Americans really need to discuss a few things honestly; including our own culture of global, politically-inflamed and monetary-policy-fueled violence.  

I wish more people understood and acted upon the truth that ALL people everywhere in all times think they’re right…and that only the other people are wrong.

But with so much obvious ignorance and disastrously bad policy (have ANY of our government’s promises or justifications for warfare turned out to be true?), we’re past-due for a look at both OUR history, and our allies…including the one that seems off-the-table, taboo, and the Name Never Spoken: Saudi Arabia.

Ibn Taymiyyah, Abd al-Wahhab (1703 – 1792) was a Sunni Muslim cleric who rejected modern culture and technology, and sought to purify and distill Islam to the faith and practices of the Salaf.  In other words, he wanted people to live in the year 700.

This was not a very popular idea among the very many Muslims who liked the advances made in the intervening thousand years…many of the advances coming from Muslims themselves.

Putting it more simply, many Muslims wanted him dead. So the cleric sought out the protection of a well-known desert warrior/ emir, Muhammad ibn Saud.

It turned out that Wahhab’s ideas of religious discipline and zeal fit very well with Saud’s ideas of military conquest and political domination. They legitimized each other, in effect; and so they created a dynasty that endures to today.

But this weaponized religion in the form of Wahhabism and the House of Saud had pretty powerful enemies within the prevailing Ottoman Empire. So the Ottomans eventually (albeit violently) contained Saudi Arabia’s inherent military expansionist zeal.

Through all this, however, Ottomans and Europeans were also fighting each other. It was mostly the British who started a practice of deceit and division to ally with opposing factions to disrupt the empire.

After the horrific Young Turk Revolution and during WWI is when the young archaeologist T.E. Lawrence was pushed into Britain’s assymetric engagement to bring down the Ottoman Empire.

Thomas Edward Lawrence, CB DSO FAS, better known as “Lawrence of Arabia,” was an amazing guy; and not just because the multilingual soldier/ archaeologist/ writer liked motorcycles. Mostly, it’s because he was both a key historical figure, and a Cassandric chronicler of our current problems in the Middle East.

During the revolution/fall of the Ottoman Empire, Lawrence tried to help the Egyptian-led Hashemite forces make a stable, peaceful transition to the modern world. But England was, at first unbeknownst to Lawrence, also subsidizing the opposing faction of Muslims in Riyad…the House of Saud.

“The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.” – “Report on Mesopotamia” The Sunday Times (22 August 1920)  (does this seem familar somehow?)

Lawrence’s axis of Egyptian/Syrian Arabs did most of the real dismantling of the old Empire while the House of Saud/Wahhabis pretty much rebuilt in the background (and certainly avoided the forces helped/led by T.E. Lawrence).

With the increasing importance of oil, and the ready sources of it in his grasp, Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdul-Rahman al Faisal al Saud became more than just a military force.

So the British then did in that conflict what the USA has done ever since…they funded, equipped and aided two sides of a revolution against a third entity, and ended up picking the worst side.

So it was the Wahhabist Saudi faction that gained the real power from the post-revolution/ post-WWI power struggles…because western powers took their side.

To make the long story short, Saudi Arabia became nobody’s friend, but everybody’s ally; especially since FDR signed a deal with the Saudis, and Nixon based the dollar on their oil trade instead of gold after unilaterally ending the Breton Woods Agreement (the connection to gold was essentially broken by FDR long before, but at least we still promised to trade dollars for gold with the BWA).

Richer by far than the dissipating Rothchilds, as heavily armed as they want to be, and to seal their imperviousness to our domestic production, we just gave the Wahhabis our biggest oil refinery in Port Arthur Texas.  

Global imperialism and concomitantly devalued currency wrecked the British Empire, so the USA has now taken on Britain’s role of self-destructing meddler-bully.

We’ve become both puppet and puppeteer, both thug and serf. The middle east is a divided, angry wreck because we made it that way over the past one-hundred years.  And to fight for the value of our dollar on the global market, we have to fight wars for the House of Saud.

What’s next?  What would you do if you were a non-Saudi in the Middle East?

Consider what Lawrence wrote as applicable to all of us:

“Whether they are fit for independence or not remains to be tried. Merit is no qualification for freedom. Bulgars, Afghans, and Tahitans have it. Freedom is enjoyed when you are so well armed, or so turbulent, or inhabit a country so thorny that the expense of your neighbour’s occupying you is greater than the profit.” – “Letter to the Editor” The Times (22 July 1920)