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.

Without Protest

By David Simmons

Normally around this time I write a year-end letter and e-mail it to everyone I can think of who might take some interest. This year, however, I simply have nothing to report. Nothing happened in 2011.

That might sound like a dismal admission, but anyone who actually read my 2010 letter will know that it is a big improvement. And any improvement is quite an accomplishment considering that Time magazine has named The Protester its Person of the Year.

History has proved that the only revolutions that have made any meaningful, positive difference to the human project have taken a lot longer than a few months. But it does seem pretty clear that some of the remarkable events we have witnessed in 2011, from the “Arab Spring” to the Occupy movement, will have lasting effects; it’s just too early to know what those effects will be. Already the hope we had for Egypt seems headed for the trash bin.

Meanwhile, though Occupy likes to portray itself as a “global” movement, it has not taken root in Asia, other than a quiet spurt in Hong Kong. But even in Thailand, where I have made my home for most of the past decade, a revolution of sorts is taking place; ordinary people are waking up, and no longer see any reason for the few to be privileged while the many are not. Unlike last year, when the “red shirt” movement descended into chaos and bloodshed, the revolution this year took place at the ballot box. Not for the first time, of course; that was a decade ago, when the elitist Bangkok-based Democrat Party was trounced by Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai (“Thais Love Thais”) party. He gave the majority a share in the country’s wealth for the first time and introduced modern social-welfare programs such as universal health care. The monarchists and the military put up with this until 2006, when a more normal manifestation of Thai politics occurred: a coup d’état. Convicted of corruption and sentenced to prison, Thaksin fled to foreign countries that were happy to host him and his billions.

But the genie was out of the bottle. Populist movements, both legitimate and illicit, took hold of the political agenda, and a succession of pro-Thaksin parties were elected, only to be ousted by the corrupt judiciary. The Democrats were reinstalled, this time with a charismatic, handsome and articulate leader, Abhisit Vejjajiva, at the helm. But he was surrounded by the usual gang of corrupt and incompetent politicians in his cabinet, and despite a “wag the dog” border conflict with Cambodia to shore up their popularity in Thaksin’s support base, the populous rural areas, the Democrats were trounced again this July in one of the fairest and best-run elections Thailand has ever seen. Promising a series of programs to deal with the country’s huge wealth gap, Thaksin’s beautiful younger sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, became the nation’s first female prime minister.

So far, the latest Shinawatra regime is still in place; even the military, which holds the real power, seems reluctant to instigate yet another coup given the overwhelming support Yingluck still enjoys in the heartland despite her alleged mishandling of the flood disaster this autumn. Legal attempts to discredit the government through impeachments have also failed, though the business class is going all out to sabotage such measures as raising the minimum wage to C$10 a day. While these efforts are predictably supported enthusiastically by US-based multinationals and to a slightly lesser extent by the Europeans, many of the Japanese and Korean firms have said they support improving the standard of living of the working (and consuming) class, and are well able to absorb the cost. The Chinese too, who are quietly taking over the entire Southeast Asian economy, have refused to be distracted by Western-based neoliberal race-to-the-bottom propaganda.

As a journalist, I am often amazed at the failure of the Western media to see what is happening in the world. Massive greed has all but destroyed Europe; by at least one analysis, nearly half the population of the formerly great United States of America is living in some form of poverty. Western democracy appears to be finished; the balance of power is shifting to the BRIC countries, only one of which – Brazil – is a reasonably well-functioning democracy, and the most powerful of the four – China – does not even pretend to be democratic, as do India and Russia. The media largely ignore this huge economic and geopolitical shift, even misunderstanding – or deliberately misinterpreting – the popular anger in their own neighbourhoods, shrugging off the corporate-backed coups in Greece and Italy, and failing yet again to take an active stance against military aggression.

Even the Occupy movement is a side-effect of the Western decline. What exactly does the “99 per cent” want? It wants what it briefly had in the past, a good standard of living, hope for a decent pension in old age, affordable education and rewarding careers for their offspring. But those benefits were only enjoyed in Europe, North America and Oceania, then latterly in a few Asian enclaves such as Japan and South Korea. Elsewhere, every year millions starved or perished from preventable diseases. The West never used its power, when it still had it, to repair global inequities; on the contrary, the US and the main European governments fuelled them, even resorting to terrorism, sabotage and war when the imbalance came under threat.

The Occupiers blame corporations, and the media and politicians they have bought, for the decline in the Western standard of living. But who gave the villains their power? In a democracy, the buck stops not with the king or the dictator, but with the demos, the people themselves, who can and usually do choose to squander their democratic rights and, ultimately, their personal well-being and their children’s futures, through blindness, laziness or greed.

But I digress. For the Simmons family, 2011 was a good year, at least compared with 2010. Nearly half of that unloved year was spent in a foreign country, away from my wife, kid and cat, in the first journalism job I have actually despised. Those frustrations were aggravated, and caused to some extent, by a latent blood ailment that was sapping my energy and finally landed me in hospital for a transfusion of O-negative.

By the end of 2010, my health had returned, I was back with my family, and things were looking up again.

That trend has continued in 2011. My health is still good; we live in comfort, with various sources of income to support a lifestyle we enjoy. I don’t travel much any more; my sense of adventure is passing with the years, and when I have managed to get some time off work over the past year, I have been content to enjoy the tropical and affordable charms right here in Thailand, easily and conveniently accessible without the hassle of airports, visas or foreign-exchange ripoffs.

And what of 2012? Will the frauds and felons who run the world succeed in destroying it, as the Maya predicted? There are ominous signs; the financial system in the West is being exposed as a gigantic Ponzi scheme, as the Chinese and their Asian allies wait patiently to lap up the dregs of a half-century booze-up in Europe and North America. And for the first time since World War II (and no, I haven’t forgotten the Cold War, which was nothing more than a game by boys with toys, albeit one that kept hundreds of millions of people in misery for decades), the possibility of a global conflagration brought about by sheer stupidity – military aggression against Iran – looms.

Difficult to see, the future; always in motion it is. I’m a survivor, of this year’s Southeast Asian flood disaster, earthquakes, tsunamis, desert sandstorms, a 30-year journalism career, my wife’s driving lessons, and myriad mistakes for which I alone was to blame.

So there is no reason yet to suspect that I won’t survive 2012. And as always at this time of year, my lovely and patient wife Pong (นวัลนอย), my spoiled but still delightful daughter LukYi (นัทนิชา), my often annoying but generally amusing cat Onet (โอเนส) and I wish all of our friends and family a happy and prosperous twelvemonth.

My, Aren't We Beastly

By David Simmons

The family wanted to go to Sri Racha Tiger Zoo just southeast of Bangkok, and I'd heard it had kind of a bad reputation, so I had a quick look around the Internet before we piled into our niece's pickup for the journey.

The first thing I came across was a long, humourless sermon by someone claiming to have spent 30 years in the zoo industry (and therefore, we presume, an expert) but had a traumatic divorce and is now a "traveller" (therefore, we presume, a cool expert).

The gist of the piece is that people who still like zoos are unsophisticated, and that the Tiger Zoo "is one of the worst I have ever visited. Sadly just because it is a bad zoo does not make it unpopular."

Well, we all know, of course, that zoos aren't politically correct in the West, but this is Asia, which, as we also all know, is still far behind when it comes to acquiring Western values, other than consumerism and unsustainable growth, where many countries including Thailand have caught on pretty well. The Sermonizer goes on to note sternly: "The opportunity is there to have your photograph taken with a Tiger Cub. People do, too. Just about everyone in my party forked out the two hundred or so Thai Baht to feed a cub."

My eight-year-old daughter joined this unsophisticated throng, sitting on a bench hugging a tiger cub as her picture was taken. Years later, we are led to presume, she will look at those photos and shake her head in wonder that she could have ever been so uncool as to be thrilled at the privilege of playing with a baby tiger.

But The Sermonizer really starts foaming at the mouth when it comes to the crocodile and tiger shows.

"The Crocodile Show was as I would expect it to be. A couple of people poking and prodding and standing on poor crocodiles. An absolute waste of time. There was the inevitable put your head in a Crocs mouth. I don't doubt that I was not the only person in the audience that wished the Croc would wreak its revenge."

Revenge? For what? Basking in the sun all day being fed fish lacking the nutrients to be found in Southeast Asia's polluted rivers? But there's more: "No education here, it was not even clever. I actually thought it lacked professionalism too even for the crappy persecution it presented. I could have quadrupled their 'tips' with a couple of simple manouveres [sic]."

The Sermonizer didn't elaborate on what his "manoeuvres" might be, but given the tone of his tome, we can presume it would be "educational". Possibly he would stand on the stage with a blackboard and pointer lecturing on the life cycle of the Siamese crocodile, while the crocs themselves (and the audience) drifted off into slumber.

The tiger show is his next target: "The Tiger Show was just a circus with all those stupid ancient circussy  [sic] tricks. Nothing clever, no imagination and certainly no education." It's true; there was no sign in the auditorium of a lecturer's blackboard, and the audience was wide awake, laughing and applauding as the great beasts did their "stupid ancient circusy tricks", including standing on their hind legs and wai-ing to the unsophisticated, largely non-Western and therefore so politically incorrect crowd.

Coming from one of the most sophisticated countries on the planet, Canada, I have always aspired to be as politically correct as The Sermonizer. Not much progress so far, I'm sorry to report. I still don't have any problem with zoos. (Actually the best one I've ever been to was in ultra-politically correct southern California, the San Diego Zoo.) Whining that it's cruel to hold wild animals in captivity doesn't really wash with me. In all the zoos I've been to, the animals look well fed and reasonably content. I'm not convinced they'd prefer to be fending for themselves in a jungle.

As for training them to do circus acts, again I don't see why this is so horrible, and here's why.

In the animal kingdom, there are three kinds of inter-species relationships: predator, prey and symbiont. Like many mammals, humans fit into all three categories: Most of us prey on other animals, and are also preyed upon by insects, parasitic micro-organisms and, occasionally, other carnivores such as sharks, crocodiles and tigers.

As for symbiosis, the most important example is our digestive system, which relies on bacteria living inside our bodies. If these bacteria suddenly all decided to stop "exploiting" us, or simply decided there was more to life than wallowing in a stinking soup of stomach acid and Quarter Pounders, and took a hike we'd be in serious trouble.

But to an extent seen in no other species, we have established a variety of other symbiotic relationships with higher animals. We have domesticated them to assist us in transportation or agriculture. We have made pets out of them to provide us companionship. And we have used them for entertainment. While it is true that there are too many cases of humans abusing animals, by and large the most successful of these relationships have been give and take: The animals do what we want, and in return are provided food, shelter and health care. An increasing number of humans wish they could get a similar deal.

I don't know anything about how tigers are trained to wai and jump through hoops; maybe some abuse is involved, but The Sermonizer provides no evidence that this is so (in fact, he doesn't even suggest it). Certainly there has been evidence in the past of cruelty to animals for entertainment, the most famous being the Roman spectacles in the Colosseum. But even in that extreme case there were payoffs for the animals such as a reliable supply of Christians to eat. Even today some suggest reviving this idea might not be such a bad thing, to help cull the world of televangelists, for example. I am opposed to this view, more or less.

But to return to the main point, if the Sri Racha tigers are properly compensated for their work, there is no more reason that it should be condemned than "non-educational" human-based entertainment such as acting, professional sports or ballet.

To argue that it is "against nature" is nonsense. Humans are a natural species, one of the most successful, and our ability to exploit other species is a natural part of that success. At the same time, our brains have evolved pleasure centres to an extent that is probably unique in the animal kingdom, and our development of vast varieties of entertainment is therefore also perfectly natural.

These developments, especially the ability to alter our own environment (deliberately or inadvertently), could of course also lead to our extinction. Our failure to control our own procreation along with our almost universal adoption of a self-destructive economic system are putting unsustainable stresses on our planet, and on the other species with which we share it. But before we destroy the world, I for one am pleased that my daughter and I occasionally have the opportunity to encounter some of the most remarkable of those other species, such as tigers, up close.

As for the Sri Racha Tiger Zoo itself, in my opinion, in Thailand, the Dusit Zoo in Bangkok is a better value and much easier for most foreign tourists to get to. Admission to the Tiger Zoo is an eye-watering 450 baht (about C$15) for foreigners, and even the Thai rate of 150 baht is pretty steep. I could think of several ways to have a lot of fun in Thailand for 450 baht – not all of which my wife would approve of, however.

Still, this is her country, not mine, so the final verdict on the Tiger Zoo should go to her: "I very like tiger, mawden cockodie. Cockodie make me very afraid!"

The More Things Change

By David Simmons

In the autumn of 1980, I spent several happy weeks in Greece. It was a very different country than it is today; indeed, it was a different era.

Often called the "cradle of democracy", Greece had up to that point actually enjoyed modern democracy for only about five years. It had just rejoined NATO, and there were protests in the streets of Athens – for or against the alliance I didn't know. It could have been either; one of the poorest countries in Europe, Greece had been spending huge amounts of money on its military machine, apparently in fear of nearby Turkey, which was also a NATO member. So maybe the idea was that after rejoining the alliance, Greece could spend badly needed funds bringing its social services up to European standards.

On the other hand, NATO did not have a good reputation in those days. It was the middle of the Cold War, and the United States, having largely screwed up the struggle against communism in Asia, was supporting brutal dictatorships and death squads all over Latin America in the name of crushing the Red Menace. And in the eyes of many, NATO and the US military-industrial complex were one and the same. It was, as noted above, a different era.

So I wasn't sure what the protesters wanted. I wasn't very politically aware back then, just emerging from the intellectual wasteland of Protestant fundamentalism. Still, specific grievances aside, there was a broad sense that having finally rid themselves of their monarchy and military dictators and embraced the form of government whose name they had coined millennia before, democracy was here to stay. It was a time of hope, especially for the young.

I settled into a flophouse on the south coast of Crete populated largely by young Brits. Maggie Thatcher had been in power for about a year, and the miracles of monetarism were already having their effect. British youth were flocking to the Mediterranean for working holidays – mostly picking olives by day and enjoying cheap moussaka and ouzo by night. Still, everyone knew the UK's economic woes would soon be over. After the pain of Thatcherism would come the gain of European-style stability. It was a time of hope, and a good time to be young.

That November, another disciple of Milton Friedman came to power, the B-movie actor Ronald Reagan. One wag in the flophouse quipped, "I see a fiery glow over Tehran." The weak, incompetent president Jimmy Carter had crashed and burned, just like the helicopters he had sent into the Iranian desert. Soon, it was thought, the Khomeini theocracy would do the same, renewing hope for modernization of the Middle East.

Eventually, as autumn began transiting into winter and the Mediterranean surf became less inviting, I abandoned Crete and moved on to a kibbutz in the northern Negev, just east of the Gaza Strip. Founded in 1949, it was a large primarily agricultural kibbutz with a secular socialist philosophy. Kibbutzim of that persuasion had not been having an easy ride since the election of the right-wing former Irgun terrorist Menachem Begin, but the hopes of young Israelis, for the full embracement of human rights and for peace with the Palestinians, remained strong.

The literal voice of that hope was anchored not far offshore on a former Dutch cargo ship renamed MV Peace, the home of a radio station partly funded by John Lennon and called Kol HaShalom, the Voice of Peace. Days after my arrival at the kibbutz, Lennon was shot and killed in New York City. Like much of the world, everyone on the kibbutz – Zionists, socialists, industrialists, Bedouin orchard workers, foreign volunteers – mourned this loss, as Kol HaShalom and the Armed Forces Radio played Lennon's songs for 24 hours.

But mere bullets can't destroy hope. Soon it was Christmas, and our Jewish hosts turned over the kitchen facilities to the foreign volunteers and brought in special supplies so we could feast together. On New Year's Eve, we tried to stay awake as everyone's home time zone ushered in 1981. Because of the 10-hour time difference, we didn't make it to mine.

But it's the thought that counts, and good thoughts – for prosperity and democracy in Greece, for peace in the Middle East, for the success of the European experiment of human rights and economic equality, for a global end to poverty, war, racism and injustice – prevailed.

It was an era that belonged not to Thatcher, Reagan, Begin or Khomeini, and certainly not to Mark David Chapman. It belonged to youth, and the power of hope.

The Grumbling Down Below

By David Simmons

"More and more I see people losing faith in once untouchable and untarnished institutions," the editor of a Vancouver-based news website said on Facebook recently. He was commenting about the "double standards" on how police deal with criminal activities by one of their own, adding: "This force is not the same one I knew years ago and standards have declined – both in terms of investigational skills and in terms of ethics."

Vancouver is not alone in this loss of faith, of course – far from it. And disrespect for the police is only a symptom of a malaise that runs very deep, to the very core of Western society. In Europe, decades of profligacy, waste and incompetent government abetted by bankers so blinded by their own greed they could not see – or, more likely, didn't care about – the coming collapse of the euro zone have led to a breakdown of order in Greece, with rumblings of anger and dissent ready to burst forth in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, France and even Germany. Meanwhile in the US, what began as a quiet protest in New York City against the collusion of finance and government shovelling the nation's wealth away from the masses and into the pockets of a tiny few has swelled to such a level, thanks largely to police incompetence and ham-fistedness, that even CNN can no longer ignore it.

As is typical of CNN, though, it has completely missed the point of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. It sent a young reporter down to Zuccotti Park where, as veteran anchor Jim Clancy stroked his chin and nodded wisely, she found a lack of any "coherent" message from the protesters (who she claimed, amazingly, appeared to be outnumbered by media folk, even though the protest had been barely covered until the mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge).

This lack of "coherence" of Occupy Wall Street has emerged as something of a theme, now that the movement, in the words of The Independent, has become "too big to ignore". Self-described British "leftie" Brendan O'Neill, in one of the most mean-spirited and scathing attacks on the protest to date, wrote in his Telegraph blog that the occupiers "spend their time spreading all sorts of demented conspiracy theories about modern political life. 'Corporations … run our governments', they claim, indulging in a David Icke–like fantasy that faceless men-in-suits puppeteer the political sphere. Apparently these evil men, not content with making squillions of dollars and starting billions of wars, have also 'poisoned the food supply through negligence', inflicted 'cruel treatment on countless non-human animals', and 'purposefully covered up oil spills'."

But it is the very incoherence sneered at by these reports that speaks most loudly of the unrest rumbling, like a dormant volcano, too far below the surface for behind-the-curve analysts to hear. They are like someone who criticizes an AIDS sufferer dying of pneumonia: "He is just lashing out, complaining about his lesions at one point, then about his inability to breathe, then about HIV, then about the fact that he can't afford antiretroviral drugs. And when pressed, he can't offer any cure for AIDS."

It is the disease itself that is incoherent: an economic system built first on paper, then on bubbles, and now on unsustainable debt repackaged and resold as "derivatives", while the basic necessities of life – food, shelter and health – are so downgraded in importance that vast numbers of people in what used to be called the Third World (now the "developing" world, though what it is "developing" into is never explained) don't have these things at all, while more and more people in the once-prosperous West are losing them.

The police in New York, or Vancouver or Toronto or Athens or Chelsea, are not the problem. They are only the armed force of a system that is not simply broken, it is shattered. Their pepper-spray canisters, their truncheons, Tasers and guns are powerless against the volcano, which must eventually erupt. Will it be a Pinatubo, a Mount St Helens, or merely a plume of noxious gas that quickly peters out? Only time will tell, but it's down there, it's down there somewhere. CNN and Brendan O'Neill just can't hear it yet.

On Onet

By David Simmons

One of the good things about living in Thailand is that I've never run up against that bane of the renter in Canada, the "no pets" policy. But it's not only Canada that permits this violation of the basic human right to animal companions; the Vatican Apartments also ban them, to the chagrin of their best-known tenant, Pope Benedict. His black-and-white shorthair Chico has to stay at his home back in Bavaria.

Our cat Onet takes full advantage of Thailand's tolerance of tabbies. In fact, she wanders off for days on ends sometimes, apparently taking up temporary residence in other townhouses in our neighbourhood that, we suspect, bribe her with squid, her favourite snack. At our place, if she wants squid and we're not paying due attention to her needs, she'll steal a package from the shop my wife runs in our carport, subsequently enduring the wrath of said shop's proprietress.

My wife isn't keen on cats. When she was a child, one bit her in the head while she was sleeping, and she still has the scar. But she puts up with Onet for my sake.

Onet's latest neighbourhood walkabout started last month, when we were all out of town for a short time. When we returned, the cat was nowhere to be seen for several days. Our eight-year-old daughter decided that when Onet did finally return, she would be thirsty, and so she filled a tub with water and left it in the kitchen for everyone to stumble over.

I had a look around the Internet to see if anyone besides Benedict shares my fondness for cats, and some of the "famous cat-lover" entries are not too surprising: Albert Schweitzer, Mark Twain, Florence Nightingale, Albert Einstein. I didn't know before that the Prophet Muhammad, who thought dogs "unclean", liked cats so much that they now reportedly hang around his gravesite. Sir Winston Churchill was very fond of a cat named Jock, while Adolf Hitler, like Napoleon Bonaparte before him, despised them.

Among my fellow linguists, Noah Webster defined the cat as a "deceitful animal and when enraged, extremely spiteful", while Samuel Johnson's cat Hodge was so "indulged", according to biographer James Boswell, that a statue of Hodge (with oyster) stands outside Johnson's former home in London. But the late Barbara Holland, who wrote the book The Joy of Drinking decrying the rise of "broccoli, exercise and Starbucks", suggested that both lexicographers had missed the point: "There is no cat 'language'. Painful as it is for us to admit, they don't need one."

Onet isn't around as I write this – out hunting birds, maybe, or stealing squid from the neighbours. That's OK; as many have observed, you can never really "own" a cat, and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead noted, "If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer." But at least I get to indulge in the simple pleasure of a purring cat in my lap fairly often, without having to go all the way to Bavaria. Benedict, meanwhile, has to content himself by issuing edicts against condoms.

In the end, it's a mistake to get sentimental about cats – they would consider that a victory, proof of their superiority, if they even cared that much. American humourist Garrison Keillor probably got it right: "Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function."