Showing 1 - 10 of 10
The case of the disappearing senior generals
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 10/02/2026
» Armies can be used against both against foreigners abroad and against citizens at home, but the two roles require quite different equipment and tactics. The same applies to their commanders: you need a different kind of general if you think that the primary task of their troops will be controlling dissent at home.
Israel pogroms reflect nation's shift to right
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/03/2023
» The dictionary definition of "pogrom" is "an organised massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries." So, there is something deeply strange about hearing pogrom used in Hebrew to describe what some Jewish people are doing to Arabs in 21st-century Israel.
Italy: The hard right nears the reins of power
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/09/2022
» There's an election in Italy this Sunday, almost exactly 100 years after Benito Mussolini's "blackshirts" marched on Rome and brought the first fascist dictator to power.
Could Boris Johnson make a comeback?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/09/2022
» As a child, outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly said he wanted to be "King of the World". He ended up in a somewhat humbler role, was rejected by his own party's members of parliament for his mendacity, corruption and incompetence, and will hand over to his successor, Liz Truss, on Monday. But the Fat Lady still hasn't sung.
Sri Lanka: A bad 'Band of Brothers'
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/07/2022
» 'How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked (in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises). "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly." Sri Lanka is much the same.
Shrinking Asia changing global demographics
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 26/01/2022
» In the politics of population, the magic number is 2.1.
Are we ready for the first real automatons?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/01/2021
» They were planning to put on a play written by an artificial intelligence programme in Prague, capital city of the Czech Republic, this month, to mark the invention of robots (or at least the idea of robots) in the same city exactly one hundred years ago. The coronavirus pandemic got in the way of that, and it will now only be available free online late next month. Kind of symbolic, really: the future is quite different than what they expected.
Turkey's anxious Erdogan takes on the world
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/02/2020
» Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not an "Islamist", in the extreme sense of the word. He doesn't wear a suicide vest, he doesn't behead people, he doesn't even go around holding one finger up in the air to signify his hatred of those who fail to acknowledge the One True God. But he certainly does like the Islamists a lot.
The dawn of a second Great Recession?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/09/2018
» Ten years ago this month the financial services firm Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, triggering the 2008 crash and the subsequent Great Recession from which the world's economies have still not fully recovered. Will we look back on this month as the turning point when Donald Trump's trade war with China unleashed the Second Great Recession?
Purge needed so South Africa's ANC can revive economy
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/02/2018
» As a passer-by in the upscale Johannesburg suburb of Saxonwold observed, the South African police would never have raided the enormous, high-walled compound of the Gupta family if President Jacob Zuma were not on the brink of being removed. But early on Wednesday morning, the police did exactly that.