Showing 1 - 10 of 11
China holds back for now over Taiwan
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/07/2025
» 'I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we [the US and China] will fight in 2025," wrote General Mike Minihan, head of US Air Mobility Command, in a private memo two years ago. There are still five months to go, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he's wrong.
First as tragedy, then as farce: that's Trump
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/03/2025
» Hegel wrote that "all great world-historic facts and personages appear twice." It was Karl Marx who said that Hegel forgot to add that these repeating events happen "first as tragedy, then as farce." You know, like Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump.
FGM and the need for Islamic scholars
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/07/2024
» There was a small victory in The Gambia this week when a proposed law to legalise female genital mutilation (FGM) was defeated by human rights campaigners. It was quite a small victory, however, because the great majority of little girls in The Gambia are still being mutilated by the professional "cutters" who move from village to village.
The frog, the scorpion and Hamas
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/11/2023
» Stop me if you've heard this story before. Or rather, don't, because it's relevant to the current situation, and we have to bring the people who don't know the story up to speed first.
What the Global South thinks of the Ukraine war
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/04/2023
» There is a deep and growing rift between "the West" and "the Rest" about the need to resist and defeat the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is because it is really a war in defence of sovereignty, which ought to be something every sovereign country can buy into -- but Western governments publicly insist that it is a war in defence of democracy.
Ukraine: lessons for Taiwan, and for China too
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/03/2022
» Almost a month in, China is still being extremely coy about its attitude towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The regime is acutely aware that there are many parallels between the Russian-Ukrainian relationship and the Chinese-Taiwanese one, and that the Russian attempt to conquer Ukraine is failing, or at least stalled.
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.
Covid-19 offers odd glimpse of a new future
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/03/2020
» They teach you in journalism school never to use the phrase "...X has changed the world forever". Or at least they should. Covid-19 is certainly not going to change the world forever, but it is going to change quite a few things, in some cases for a long time. Here's nine of them, in no particular order.
EU elections point to hectic Brexit agenda
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 29/05/2019
» The best way of describing what just happened in the European Union elections is to say that the choices are getting clearer -- and a lot of people are realising which side they are on.
China and Taiwan following a well-rehearsed script
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/01/2019
» 'Independence for Taiwan would only bring profound disaster to Taiwan," said China's President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Wednesday, and he ought to know. He is the one who would make sure the disaster happened.