State of the Eulogy

By David Simmons

“America is back,” Barack Obama proclaimed in his State of the Union address on January 24. But it’s only back doing what it does best, starting wars and rumours of wars.

The US president spoke of “the enduring power of our moral example”. Earlier in January, three men who had experienced that moral example first-hand stood together in a joint nose-thumbing at the superpower, the self-proclaimed leader of the free world, bastion of capitalism and democracy. The occasion was the swearing-in of Daniel Ortega to a third term as president of Nicaragua, a tiny country that – led by Ortega’s Sandinistas – was one of the first in the Western Hemisphere since the Cuban revolution to break the shackles of US-client dictatorship and enforced poverty, and paid dearly for its affront with the mining of its harbours and debilitating attacks on its people, its infrastructure and even its schools by the Contra terrorists trained and funded by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Back then, Washington was mostly worried about the spread of Sandinista-style land reform throughout Latin America, cutting into the profits of US corporations and, worse, driving up the price of bananas and incurring the wrath of the American housewife. Nowadays, it’s all about oil, which is where the other two men accompanying Ortega in January come in – Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ten years ago Chavez, the socialist president of one of the United States’ major oil suppliers, was overthrown in a coup d’état after he tried to bolster government control of the state oil company, PDVSA. Washington immediately applauded the coup and threw its support behind the new pro-US government. Before the George W Bush administration could get the corks out of the celebratory champagne bottles, the new pro-US government had collapsed, and Chavez went on to institute major social reforms and mock Bush in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly. “The devil came here yesterday,” he said. “And it smells of sulphur still today.”

But the US campaign against the nation of the third man on the stage, Ahmadinejad, has been far more ferocious and drawn-out than those against Nicaragua and Venezuela. As with Nicaragua, Cuba and a few others, Iran brought American wrath upon itself by overthrowing a US-backed (and installed to some extent, in partnership with Britain) dictator, the Shah. Foolishly, the new theocracy squandered the support it may otherwise have enjoyed from other nations weary of US hegemony by taking over America’s embassy in Tehran and holding its occupants hostage for more than a year. In retaliation, Washington backed and partly funded one of the bloodiest conflicts the Middle East has ever seen, the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

What has happened since in that unhappy arena is well known and need not be dwelt on here; Iran’s mortal enemy Saddam Hussein was helpfully overthrown by the Americans, leaving an unstable but pro-Tehran Shiite regime in charge. As America’s most loyal allies in the Middle East, the Sunni dictatorships in Arabia, wallowed in corruption and Israel continued to soak up billions of dollars in military aid to brutalize the Palestinians, Iran’s influence and terrorist activity intensified.

Today, of course, we have the looming spectre of yet another war in the region justified by the objection of the world’s most militarized and most heavily nuclear-armed nation to Iran’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction”. Washington’s lapdogs in Brussels, in a move bound to worsen their already parlous economic situation, have banned European Union members from buying Iranian oil. The US has also led an attack on the Iranian central bank, pushing the clerics who run the regime even harder against the wall.

“Through the power of our diplomacy,” Obama declared, “a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program now stands as one.” Well, except for Russia. And China and its ASEAN client states. And probably India, and possibly Japan and South Korea, the latter two of which depend on Iranian oil and are more concerned about the genuine nuclear threat in North Korea than the imagined one in far-off Iran. And then there’s Turkey, which stands ready to serve as a middleman for Iranian oil flowing into defiant (or simply desperate, like Greece) European states. And such deals, because of the sabotage against the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, will likely be transacted in gold, yen, maybe yuan – anything but the US dollar and the increasingly irrelevant euro.

The rise of China’s global control is the most important and far-reaching event of our time, but it is not the only consequence of failed US economic, foreign and military policy. Despite the dirty wars of the Reagan era, Ortega, Chavez and people very much like them – not necessarily philosophic soul-mates, but united against servitude to Washington and Wall Street – have prevailed in Central and South America. In East Asia, US-backed strongmen like Suharto, Syngman Rhee and Chiang Kai-Shek are gone, their autocratic regimes replaced by home-grown political systems that, with widely varying sincerity and success, attempt to put their people’s needs first. In North Africa, pro-US tyrants have been replaced by Islamists related in spirit if not (yet) in deed to the fanatic criminals of September 2001.

With all this in mind, Obama’s address, despite his characteristic eloquence, sounded like a eulogy, singing the praises of a corpse. I take no comfort in this. I am a Canadian, defined as an American with long johns, health care and the letter zed. I’ve lived high on the US-led system of fattening the West at the expense of the rest of the world, and I have enjoyed the genuine freedoms that democracy brings, however corrupt it becomes. So I don’t look forward to a world led by the Chinese Communist Party.

The United States of America and we its allies had the power to make things otherwise. We now prepare to reap the whirlwind of our failure to do so.

Thoroughly modern Dragon

By David Simmons

Normally I put no stock in astrology, but a convergence of events, some may say a syzygy, has stirred my interest.

Monday, January 23, is the first day of the Chinese Year of the Dragon, associated with the element water. I was born in a Year of the Dragon that also was associated with the element water.

More important, January 23 is also my wife’s birthday, and she was born in 1964 – also a Year of the Dragon.

Not having thought about any of this before, I started doing some research on Dragons, particularly on what astrologers say about two of us under one roof, which on the face of it sounds pretty incendiary.

According to the US Bridal Guide, “It takes someone with thick skin who is easy-going to be a Dragon’s partner, because, despite their sentimental characters, they can be moody and insensitive. Many people will want to run when the Dragon’s temper is provoked.”

On two Dragons marrying, the Guide adds only: “If you learn to share the spotlight, you can accomplish anything together.”

This “sharing the spotlight” caveat is derived from the Dragon’s reputation as an imperialist. “A symbol of good fortune and sign of intense power, the Oriental Dragon is regarded as a divine beast – the reverse of the malicious monster that Westerners felt necessary to find and slay. In Eastern philosophy, the Dragon is said to be a deliverer of good fortune and a master of authority. Therefore, those people born in Dragon years are to be honoured and respected....

“Dragons are the free spirits of the Zodiac. [Conformity] is a Dragon’s curse. Rules and regulations are made for other people. Restrictions blow out the creative spark that is ready to flame into life. Dragons must be free and uninhibited ....

“Because they are confident, fearless in the face of challenge, they are almost inevitably successful. Dragons usually make it to the top.” (Pause for laughter here.)

“However ... too much enthusiasm can leave them tired and unfulfilled ... Dragons’ generous personalities give them the ability to attract friends, but they can be rather solitary people at heart. A Dragon’s self-sufficiency can mean that he or she has no need for close bonds with other people.”

This description demonstrates both why horoscopes are so popular and why they are nonsense. It walks a tightrope between specificity and vagueness, so we can fall into the net on either side, depending on whether or not we agree this is part of our actual personality. Naturally, we take comfort from the good bits, lending credence to the horoscope, while dismissing the bad stuff as evidence of how it misses the mark.

To its credit, this particular guide doesn’t pull many punches on the Dragon’s flaws: “Dragons are egotistical and love to be the centre of attention. Modesty is not one of his assets. Add to that the Dragon temper and you have a bossy, dominating and authoritative being. They hate solicited advice and can be hopelessly tactless and insensitive to their lovers.”

Nasty stuff. Ah, but there’s hope – my element is water, remember. “Water has a calming effect on the Dragon’s fearless temperament. Water allows the Dragon to redirect [his] enthusiasm, and makes him more perceptive of others. These Dragons are better equipped to take a step back to re-evaluate a situation because they understand the art of patience and do not desire the spotlight like other Dragons. Therefore, they make smart decisions and are able to see eye-to-eye with other people. However [drat, always a ‘however] their actions can go wrong if they do not research or if they do not finish one project before starting another.”

Of further intrigue is the attempt to mix Eastern and Western astrology, resulting in my case in the “Leonine Dragon”. According to the Guide, “The Lion is King of the Western zodiac and the Dragon is the sign of the Emperor. Leo Dragons have an innate sense of royalty; thus they are born leaders. They are flashy and like to show off, but their kindness and zest for life make them fascinating.”

Well, let’s face it, this Leo Dragon has no “innate sense of royalty”. A leader I am not, and no one is easier to elbow out of a queue.

The fascination modern educated people have with astrology is, like the description of Earth itself in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “mostly harmless”. It’s fun but nearly no one takes it to the bank.

This was not so in ancient times, or even today in primitive societies. Modern skepticism dismisses the possibility of the “arrangement” of stars and planets zillions of light-years away as viewed from our tiny planet having any effect on any individual. But the night sky was and is something of great wonder, and a source of mysticism, even religion.

Urban humans have little concept of this wonder, as our cities pollute the sky with light and smoke. Yet the brilliance of the night sky that we see when we make a rare foray into the countryside, especially a desert, was a constant in the lives of our ancestors.

Many of us have been awed by such phenomena as meteors and aurorae. Once when I was on a flight across the Pacific, the pilot dimmed the cabin lights so we could watch a comet soaring majestically through the sky.

But even without these embellishments, a clear night is a beautiful and fascinating display. I know little astronomy and can locate and identify only the Big and Little Dippers (and consequently Polaris, which has come in handy once or twice) and Orion. Yet I vividly remember camping out in the middle of the Arabian Desert, lying on top of a Chevrolet Suburban (to avoid camel spiders) as that cosmic river, the Milky Way, seemed close enough to touch, until its silent flow carried me into sleep. Imagine, then, how that sky affected the ancients who saw just as vividly lions and dragons, and reached out for their power and guidance in what was often a frightening and dangerous world.

Today our fascination with the cosmos, though more reality-based perhaps, is no less overwhelming. Now we know that those tiny points of light are in fact gigantic balls of nuclear fire, and that there are even more wondrous objects out there that we can’t even see, let alone fully understand. In fact starlight itself is in most cases only a glimmer of a time before we and possibly even our planet were born, having taken thousands of years to reach us; the stars we “see” may even have died long ago.

Another mixed blessing of our modern age, the Internet, debunked at least part of the syzygy I mentioned in the lede, and which by this time you will have looked up if I remembered to put in the link. A little research revealed that my wife is in fact not a fellow Dragon but a Rabbit. Though 1964 (or 2507 according to the Thai calendar) was a Year of the Dragon, the Lunar New Year was actually in February, a couple of weeks after her birth. In any case I think the animal year traditionally starts in mid-February, some time after New Year’s Day, which I believe is on the first new moon after the winter solstice.

But it doesn’t really matter; neither of us has ever been particularly starry-eyed, and our failure over the years to gain much fluency in each other’s languages has mitigated occasional urges for fiery battles. So I close with the hope that the Year of the Dragon will be a happy one for anyone who read down this far, and even for those who didn’t.