The subject of this lecture could be described as annals of US imperialism, studies of US imperialism.

Now what inspired this lecture was reading a biography of one of Obama's aides about his thinking about America's rule in the world, and in talking to this aide Obama went on to say that one of his favorite films was Lawrence of Arabia and enthusiastically quoted from the film as if this was some great source of morality and truth.

Under Obama probably a million people in the Middle East were killed by US imperialism, were killed by orders given out by Obama in such enterprises as the attack on Libya which has left nothing but chaos death and destruction in its wake. The attack on Syria in conjunction with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey which has killed about 500,000 people so far and has the further distinction of having created the Isis movement... One of the most horrific terrorist religious lunatic organizations in the history of the Middle East.

If that wasn't bad enough, Obama intervened in Yemen to help set up the puppet Hadi regime, which was such a triumph of democracy in an uncontested election Mr. Hadi got 98% of the vote.  Now if that's not democracy, who says what anything could be democracy?  Problem was it was all a bunch of BS and he was thrown out by his own people. Now, it got the great Barack Obama very upset that his designated puppet was rejected by the people of Yemen, so he then made an alliance with the government of Saudi Arabia, true paragon of democracy, I think we will all agree, and gave the Saudi's arms including cluster bombs to use against the people of Yemen until they came to their senses and realized that the great Barack Obama knew what was best for them. That's right, and among the weapons that America sold Saudi Arabia were cluster bombs, which were then used against the children of Yemen. The total death toll so far is 200,000 and counting, one of the worst hit humanitarian disasters of modern times.  Now since Biden came in, he has generously agreed to pull back on this policy. The exact details of what's being done or unclear there's going to be a reduction in some form of aid to the Saudi's in Yemen though this was couched in very vague terms where there a lot of loopholes that there would be aid if the Saudi's felt threatened by anything going on in Yemen. So hopefully that working for change hopefully there working for an end of the war but who knows. Regardless Obama hailed his work in Yemen as a great success and just a shining example of what to do.

But let's get back to where president Obama may have gotten some of his ideas.  Let's get back to the issue of the film of Lawrence of Arabia. Now who was TE Lawrence? According to the film, a blockbuster success in 1962, TE Lawrence was this wonderful idealistic white guy who helped the Arabs fight for freedom. Now that certainly sounds wonderful.  Who could be opposed to that?  The problem is it's all a hoax. TE Lawrence was a fraud. He admitted he was a fraud.  He was also a sort of egotistical psychopath and a self promoter, very similar to David Livingstone in the 19th century, another very ugly figure in the panorama of British imperialism.  Lawrence and his colleagues in Egypt lied to the Arabs, falsely promising them that they would have a free and independent homeland if they sided with those great paragons of freedom the British imperialists. The Arabs foolishly believed this and went out and bled and died to try to achieve this goal . It was a fraud from the get-go because secretly the British and the French governments had concluded something known as the Sykes Picot agreement and that actually carved up the Middle East into French and British imperialist zones. The movie completely glosses over this fact indeed really ignores it altogether just suggesting in a rather hasty overview at the end that maybe things weren't all that great at the end of the war. This is a study in deceit a study in dishonesty but the dishonesty about TE Lawrence isn't restricted to the film. There was a very notable biography of him which won all sorts of awards which actually accepts a statement made by Lawrence in 2017 stating that he did not know about the Sykes Picot agreement, which is a flat out lie. It is a lie that Lawrence himself has confessed but that's a pretty good job of how official scholarship can place a happy face on the most ruthless aspects of Western imperialism.

So this puts in perspective Barack Obama's concept of America's role in the world. Now the film Lawrence of Arabia artistically is very creative but it served an important political purpose. In the late 1950s and the 1960s the Arabs finally achieved the independence that they had been promised in the first world war by England. They achieved that independence. Now this was creating a very big problem for the West and what you know, you can produce this film which shows that hey there was this wonderful guy TE Lawrence and he was fighting on behalf of Arab independence. Wasn't that wonderful?  So the film fulfilled a purpose in terms of American imperialism.

Now getting back to Obama, his other big favorite film was The Godfather. Now perhaps that was a more appropriate film for him to be enthusiastic about in terms of his actions in the Middle East. It's just a subject to be considered and as a further footnote to president Obama, we should also point out that he gloriously claimed that his uncle had liberated Auschwitz.  That was very interesting to people who knew something about WWII, which he apparently didn't, because Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army, and Obama later had to admit that the story was a hoax. So you look around the world. You can understand why people don't trust America.  This is just a small part of a larger picture but we did this lecture to highlight this point.