Showing 331 - 337 of 337
Saudi Arabia's risky gamble is driving the oil downturn
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/02/2016
» ‘The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent,” said John Maynard Keynes (or maybe it wasn’t him, but no matter). At any rate, that was the eternal verity the Saudi Arabians were counting on when they decided to let oil production rip — and the oil price collapse — in late 2014.
The triumph and tragedy of Egypt
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/02/2016
» Exactly five years after Egypt's democratic revolution triumphed, the country is once more ruled by a military office. General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi seized power in July 2013, and he is even nastier than his predecessors.
Closing borders and bidding the Schengen zone goodbye
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/02/2016
» 'Europe has forgotten that history is fundamentally tragic," said Manuel Valls, the French prime minister. "If Europe can't protect its own borders, it's the very idea of Europe that could be thrown into doubt. It could disappear -- not Europe itself, not our values, but the European project, the concept we have of Europe, that the founding fathers had of Europe."
Five years on from Arab Spring, democracy can still work
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/01/2016
» Five years ago this month, the "Arab Spring" got under way with the non-violent overthrow of Tunisia's long-ruling dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. He dared not order the army to open fire on the demonstrators (because it might not obey), and eventually he flew off off to Saudi Arabia to seek asylum.
Why Turkey shot down the Russian plane in a heartbeat
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/11/2015
» The key fact is that the Russian plane, by Turkey's own admission, was in Turkish airspace for precisely seventeen seconds. That's a little less time than it takes to read this paragraph aloud. The Turks shot it down anyway -- and their allies publicly backed them, as loyal allies must.
Retaliation would fulfil the terrorists' strategy
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/11/2015
» As always when there is a major terrorist attack on the West, the right question to ask after the slaughter in Paris is: what were the strategic aims behind it? This requires getting your head around the concept that terrorists have rational strategies, but once you have done that the motives behind the attacks are easy to figure out. It also becomes clear that the motives have changed.
After Erdogan's win, Turkey inches closer to civil war
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/11/2015
» "You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time...", begins Abraham Lincoln's aphorism about democracy -- but in a multi-party democratic system, that is usually enough. In a parliamentary system like Turkey's, 49% of the popular vote gives you a comfortable majority of seats, and so Recep Tayyib Erdogan will rule Turkey for another four years. If the country lasts that long.