Showing 1 - 10 of 30
Rambling Joe Biden officially a lost cause
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/07/2024
» It really doesn't matter whether Joe Biden is in peak condition intellectually during a second term as president. He did some useful things in his first term, but his main job now is to stop Donald Trump from coming back. If he succeeded in doing that and went gaga immediately afterwards, the ship of state would carry on regardless.
Second chance beckons for South Africa?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/06/2024
» Cyril Ramaphosa is the president of South Africa again, but everything else is different. He got his job back in a vote late on Friday, but only because at the last moment he managed to cobble together a coalition that has a majority in parliament. It's so new that the coalition partners still haven't agreed on who does what in the new government.
A small Slovak assassination bid; few hurt
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/05/2024
» Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, once called Slovakia "the black hole at the heart of Europe", which seems a harsh judgement on five million Slovaks. The assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico was alarming, but we can narrow the problem down to a more specific group of people.
Ukrainian breakthrough is a slow affair
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/09/2023
» It's nothing like the great breakthroughs of the mid-20th century wars, when combined air and ground forces would tear a hole in the enemy line, the tanks would pour through, and the front would roll back several hundred kilometres before it stabilised again.
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".
Unrest stems from France's turbulent past
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/07/2023
» On Saturday, the fifth day of violent protests all over France against the police killing of an unarmed teenager, Nahel Merzouk, the daily arrests dropped below 1,000 for the first time, but the violence became even more extreme.
In Ukraine, the fightback gets underway
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 14/06/2023
» The furious speculation on whether the Ukrainian counter-offensive will succeed has been ongoing for several months already, so the first thing I must tell you is that I don't know. Nobody knows, not even the Ukrainians.
The baby bonus just does not work any more
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/05/2023
» I was one of five children -- not seen as a particularly big family in Newfoundland at the time -- and there was one year when we allegedly beat Guatemala to have the highest birth rate in the world. (That's probably not true, but people were proud of it anyway.)
Starship: The Iterative Design Methodology
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/04/2023
» 'Obviously, this is not a nominal situation," said John Insprucker, a senior engineer at Space-X, who was doing a webcast on Thursday's launch attempt of Elon Musk's gigantic Starship rocket. So why did Mr Musk's employees, hundreds of whom were watching live, cheer when it blew up only four minutes into flight?
A complex deal: Iran, nukes, oil, Israel, Russia
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/03/2022
» As with most re-marriages between the same partners, the participants are not exactly starry-eyed. They have just figured out that the old deal was just better than no deal at all.