Showing 81 - 90 of 175
Sept 11 didn't change the world forever
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/09/2021
» 'Changed the world forever' is the most hackneyed phrase in journalism, and if you can get through this week (the 20th anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks) without hearing it half a dozen times you'll be very lucky.
Do we need more rockets in the stratosphere?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/08/2021
» If you're worried about your "carbon footprint" -- a concept foisted on the world in 2004 by British Petroleum to persuade people that their own behaviour, and not giant oil companies like BP, is causing the climate problem -- then you definitely should not sign up for a sub-orbital space flight. Besides, you probably can't afford it (US$250,000 -- about 8 million baht -- per person).
Recycled wars of benighted Afghanistan
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/08/2021
» In the year 2000, five years after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, nobody elsewhere cared what happened in that land-locked, benighted country. It was ruled by angry rural fanatics who tormented the local people with their demented rules for proper "Islamic" behaviour, but it was not a military or diplomatic priority for anybody.
How did they think the Afghan war would end?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/08/2021
» 'I will never kneel before such a destructive force [as the Taliban'," declared Ashraf Ghani, the soon-to-be ex-president of Afghanistan. "We will either sit knee-to-knee for real negotiations at the table, or break their knees on the battlefield."
Peru on edge after Castillo's election victory
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/08/2021
» Peru holds the current record for revolving presidents -- three came and went in a month last November; for coronavirus deaths -- almost 6,000 per million, and for the youngest-looking president -- seen from afar, under his trademark straw hat, he looks like a 13-year-old boy. But appearances are deceiving.
Donkeys finally twig to climate change message
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 26/07/2021
» Zeitgeist is a slippery word. At best it's just a fancy German way of saying "the spirit of the times"; at worst it is only pretentious noise. So maybe we should say "inflection point" instead. I think we are passing through an inflection point.
Bodies will pile high indeed, Mr Johnson
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/07/2021
» 'Let the bodies pile high in their thousands," expostulated Boris Johnson in his private office, but the door was open and a number of witnesses heard him.
Tigray split risks ending Abiy's 'empire'
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/07/2021
» Most analysts thought it would take a year or two of guerilla war for the rebels in Tigray to drive Ethiopian federal forces out of their state, but it has only taken eight months. "The capital of Tigray, Mekelle, is under our control," Getachew Reda, spokesman for the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), said last week.
Vulnerability marks 100 years of the CCP
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/06/2021
» The Chinese Communist Party is celebrating the centenary of its foundation tomorrow and most people in China accept the origin myth that justifies its dictatorial rule. China was a horrendously impoverished and unequal society in 1921, the official line says, and owes its current prosperity and freedom from foreign rule to the Communist revolution of 1949.
Fascists really are coming in the United States
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/06/2021
» Godwin's Law, coined in 1990, says that as a discussion on the internet grows longer, the likelihood of somebody being compared to Hitler or the Nazis rises inexorably towards 100%. But once in a very long while the comparison is correct.