Showing 21 - 30 of 56
It pays to have the right enemy in election races
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/12/2021
» The right enemy can be a major asset in politics, as Chilean voters have just demonstrated once again. All the opinion polls had the two presidential candidates neck and neck before Sunday's election, but a few days before the vote it came out that the father of far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast was a Nazi.
Dismantling Africa, one nation at a time
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/11/2021
» Something is going wrong in Africa. Nigeria and Ethiopia, the two most populous countries on the continent, are both stumbling towards disintegration. There are now 54 sovereign African countries, which really ought to be enough, but in a few years there could be 60.
How did they think the Afghan war would end?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/08/2021
» 'I will never kneel before such a destructive force [as the Taliban'," declared Ashraf Ghani, the soon-to-be ex-president of Afghanistan. "We will either sit knee-to-knee for real negotiations at the table, or break their knees on the battlefield."
Today it's Zuma, tomorrow it could be Trump
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/07/2021
» Sooner or later ex-president Donald Trump is bound to be indicted for some crime. It doesn't matter which -- it could be a fraud or corruption charge, or a sexual offence, or incitement to violence, or even just tax evasion. (That's what finally got American gangster Al Capone.) And it doesn't matter whether he's convicted, either; the real drama will come before that.
Fascists really are coming in the United States
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/06/2021
» Godwin's Law, coined in 1990, says that as a discussion on the internet grows longer, the likelihood of somebody being compared to Hitler or the Nazis rises inexorably towards 100%. But once in a very long while the comparison is correct.
Objective allies: Netanyahu and Hamas militants
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 14/05/2021
» 'Objective allies' generally don't even talk to each other. They don't have common values, their ultimate goals may be completely incompatible, they often hate each other. But they share some intermediate goal, and are clever enough to realise they can both get what they want by acting together in certain ways.
Someone like 'Bibi' can't lose in Israel
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/05/2021
» A tempest in a small teapot this week, as Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel of "apartheid".
Biden speaks some sense on Afghanistan
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/04/2021
» 'If they go, we'll all have to go. That's the reality of it," said a British source about President Joe Biden's announcement that the last American troops will be out of Afghanistan by Sept 11, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. (What can possibly have possessed him to choose that date?)
Another Nobel Peace Prize winner goes rogue
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 07/04/2021
» Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed, the Nobel Peace Prize Winner in 2019, waited the statutory two years before launching his genocidal war in Tigray last November.
Afghanistan: The same old sell-out
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/03/2021
» In an letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani last weekend, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken insisted that Mr Ghani agree to share power with the Taliban insurgents in a transitional government, to be followed at some point by some sort of election. Understandably, the Afghan leader views this as a shotgun marriage in which the Taliban will hold the shotgun.