• News & article

  Napoleon and world history: What if...?

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/05/2021

  » Napoleon Bonaparte doesn't come up much in conversation these days, which is hardly surprising given that he has been dead for two centuries. On the other hand, today will be exactly 200 years since he died, so maybe we could make an exception just this once.

• News & article

  A tale of two bombs -- in Manchester and Bangkok

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 26/05/2017

  » There were two bombs on Monday. The one in Britain killed at least 22 people and injured 120 as they came out of a concert at Manchester Arena. It was carried out by a suicide bomber named Salman Abedi and claimed by the Islamic State (IS). The other was in Thailand, and injured 22 people at a military-linked hospital in Bangkok; nobody has claimed responsibility yet. But what happened afterwards was very different.

• News & article

  Silent majority in Catalonia need to find their voice

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 31/10/2017

  » It's been going on for a while. "Recently in Catalonia we have been living through a kind of 'soft' totalitarianism... the illusion of unanimity created by the fear of expressing dissent," wrote best-selling Catalan author Javier Cercas in the Spanish newspaper El Pais in 2014. Those who didn't want independence kept their heads down and their mouths shut, in other words.

• News & article

  China's Xi shaping up as Chairman Mao of 21st century

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/02/2018

  » The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) approved a proposal on Monday that the country's president no longer be limited to two five-year terms of office. The National People's Congress will rubber-stamp the change. And that will be the end of three decades of consensus-seeking collective leadership in the CCP. The god-king model is back.

• News & article

  Turkey is swiftly heading towards a regime of terror

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/11/2016

  » 'In Turkey, we are progressively putting behind bars all people who take the liberty of voicing even the slightest criticism of the government," wrote author Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's first Nobel Prize winner. "Freedom of thought no longer exists. We are distancing ourselves at high speed from a state of law and heading towards a regime of terror" that is driven by "the most ferocious hatred".

• News & article

  Indonesian poll serves up a curious outcome

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/02/2024

  » Indonesia's President Joko Widodo concluded his second five-year term last Tuesday with a national election in which his chosen successors won a convincing victory. "Jokowi", as everybody calls him, still enjoys 70% public approval, and he has every right to be proud of his past.

• News & article

  The fascists are (probably not) coming after all

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 29/01/2024

  » ‘Fascism is on the march everywhere!” shrieked the headline on a recent think-piece by my least favourite foreign affairs commentator (who must remain nameless because I don’t want to give him any publicity). But articles and op-eds about the fascist threat are certainly on the march, and occasionally a real fascist pops up in public.

• News & article

  Trump: The mills of the gods grind slowly

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/08/2023

  » 'The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine," wrote Sextus Empiricus, a Sceptic philosopher who lived mainly in Athens and Alexandria almost 2,000 years ago. Justice may be slow to come, but in the end the wicked will be punished. The mills are turning.

• News & article

  Is Najib Bukele the world's coolest dictator?

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 07/08/2023

  » 'It's not perfect, but it's good. We've done something really good here," said El Salvador's vice-president, Felix Ulloa, defending the government's no-quarter war against the street gangs that have dominated the Central American republic for decades. President Nayib Bukele agrees, calling himself "the instrument of God".

• News & article

  Turkey and its hundred-year culture war

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/05/2023

  » Turkey's elections are fairly free, and there is going to be one this Sunday. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been in power for two decades, and he should really lose by a landslide. Imagine what the United States would be like if Donald Trump had been in power for 20 years, and that's what Turkey looks like today.

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