Showing 1 - 10 of 11
The fire this time is for US climate science
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/03/2026
» In 1953 Ray Bradbury, an American writer, published a book entitled simply Fahrenheit 451. It was a novel about an American fireman in a not-too-distant future who realised that he was doing his job all wrong -- because his job was to burn books, which were banned in that future America. (451°F is the temperature at which paper catches fire.)
Long live the Dalai Lama, but who is next?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 08/07/2025
» The whole business of succession would be a lot simpler if the Dalai Lama could just regenerate, like Doctor Who -- a long-running British science fiction series. When the time comes for The Doctor to stop looking like David Tennant and start looking like Matt Smith, there's flame coming out of his head and gushing out of his sleeves, and then he explodes. When the smoke clears, there's the new Doctor.
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.
The Sheikh of Dubai and his two daughters
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/02/2021
» Dubai can be amusing, in a voyeuristic way, for a week or two. The tallest building in the world and the mall with the shark tank, but it's the people, really.
Dark winter ahead but jab miracles await
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/11/2020
» All the usual caveats apply: don't go out and celebrate, don't let your guard down, it's still going to be a long haul.
Coronavirus response reveals China's fatal weakness
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/01/2020
» In an emergency, the good thing about a dictatorship is that it can respond very fast. The bad thing is that it won't respond at all until the dictator-in-chief says that it should. All the little dictators who flourish in this sort of system won't risk their positions by passing bad news up the line until the risk of being blamed for delay outweighs the risk of being blamed for the emergency in the first place.
Dismantling Malta's mafia state
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/12/2019
» It's two years since Daphne Caruana Galizia, the best investigative journalist in Malta, was killed by a car bomb. She had been using the huge leaks of financial data in the "Panama Papers" to track down suspicious dealings by members of the Maltese government, and she was getting too close for comfort.
The game of Beijing versus Taipei
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/12/2019
» One of the lesser unsolved mysteries of our time is why countries whose names end in 'u' prefer the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the People's Republic of China (Beijing). Of the 15 countries that still recognise Taiwan as the real and legitimate China, three have 'u' at the end of their names: Nauru, Palau and Tuvalu.
US mid-terms reflect an ideologically divided nation
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 10/11/2018
» Former United States president Barack Obama said of the US mid-term elections that "the character of our country is on the ballot", and the outcome proved him right. The country is a psychological basket case, more deeply and angrily divided than at any time since the Vietnam War.
Peeving Putin: Making Latvian society less Russian
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 07/04/2018
» Lots of countries have two or more official languages: Canada (two), Belgium (three), Switzerland (four), South Africa (11), India (23) and so on. They all have trouble balancing the competing demands of the various language groups. But Latvia has only one official language, and it has a bigger problem than any of them.