Showing 41 - 50 of 57
Future looks bleak for Grace Mugabe
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/11/2017
» 'Someone, anyone, with close links, please make sure Uncle Bob reads the correct speech ... Old man reads the 2013 inauguration speech and we're in kak for another five years," tweeted Mubaiwa Bandambira just before Zimbabwe's beleaguered president, Robert Mugabe, went on television with what was supposed to be his resignation speech. After all, Mr Mugabe is 93 years old, and he has read the wrong speech before.
Looking back at the October Revolution
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/11/2017
» China Mieville, a novelist I much admire, has published a history of the "October Revolution" to mark its hundredth anniversary (which is actually on Nov 7, since the Russians were still using the Julian calendar in 1917). It had an unusual effect on me. It made me question whether I was right about the utter futility of that revolution.
Balfour Declaration and 100 years of bloody conflict
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/10/2017
» One hundred years ago next week, in the midst of WWI, the British government sent a letter known as the Balfour Declaration that led, three decades later, to the creation of the state of Israel.
Car revolution spells end of combustion engine era
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/09/2017
» France and the United Kingdom recently announced that they will ban the sales of petrol and diesel-engined cars from 2040. The Lower House of the Dutch parliament has passed a law banning such sales from 2025. India says it will institute a similar ban by 2030.
Reunification of Syria under Assad
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/01/2017
» So far the end-game in Syria has played out in an entirely predictable way. All of Aleppo is back in the Syrian government's hands, that decisive victory for President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian backers has been followed by a ceasefire, and the Russians are now organising a peace conference in Astana, Kazakhstan for later this month.
Trump's 'jobs' plan faces uncertainty
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/01/2017
» The main message of 2016 was that we are entering a period of economic and political upheaval comparable to the industrial revolution of 1780-1850, and nothing expressed that message more clearly than Donald Trump's appointment of Andrew Puzder as his secretary of labour. Even though it's clear that neither man understands the message.
Rethinking the Russian Revolution
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/12/2016
» 'We have imagined how things would have been at that time if there was an internet and people were using social media," said Mikhail Zygar, the creator of the biggest-ever interactive historical website. It's called "1917: Free History", and it's a quietly subversive attempt to make Russians think about how they ended up where they are now.
Morsi verdict shows justice is not entirely dead in Egypt
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/11/2016
» Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected president, has now been in prison more than three times as long as he was in the presidential palace, but his death sentence was quashed last week. On Tuesday, the country's highest appeal court also overturned his life sentence on a separate charge -- but that doesn't mean he's going to be free any time soon.
Park a victim of a 'Seoul Rasputin'
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/11/2016
» 'Sad thoughts trouble my sleep at night," said South Korea's President Park Geun-hye. "I realise that whatever I do, it will be difficult to mend the hearts of the people, and then I feel a sense of shame." And so she should, but it's also hard not to feel some sympathy for her plight. This isn't your usual political corruption case. She never benefited from her actions in any way.
Where do we go now the jobs are gone?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/11/2016
» One of the judges on an employment tribunal said: "The notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common 'platform' is, to our minds, faintly ridiculous." So the tribunal ruled that Uber's 30,000 drivers in London were actually employees, and therefore entitled to be paid the minimum wage, to be given sick pay, even to have paid holidays.