Showing 21 - 30 of 31
Mohamed Morsi: A death foretold
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/06/2019
» Egypt's first and last democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, died on Monday, lying on the floor of the courtroom where they were trying him on yet more charges. (He was already serving several life sentences.) It was probably a heart attack, but according to witnesses they left him lying there for 20 minutes before medical help arrived.
No real choice in Nigerian election
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/02/2019
» Lengthy delays before announcing the results of African elections are commonplace (the Democratic Republic of Congo last month, Zimbabwe last July, etc.). It just means that people voted the wrong way, and the government needs time to re-arrange the results before publishing them. Postponing the vote at the last moment is much less common, and not so easy to explain.
MBS playing with fire in Saudi's Game of Thrones
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/12/2018
» Now is the moment of maximum danger for Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS).
Gaza deaths a symptom of utter despair
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/05/2018
» When all is lost, entire communities sometimes engage in suicidal gestures. It happened as recently as 1906 in Bali, when the local royal family and thousands of their followers, knowing they could not defeat the Dutch conquerors, dressed in their best finery and walked straight into the Dutch gunfire. Thousands were killed.
China's Xi shaping up as Chairman Mao of 21st century
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/02/2018
» The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) approved a proposal on Monday that the country's president no longer be limited to two five-year terms of office. The National People's Congress will rubber-stamp the change. And that will be the end of three decades of consensus-seeking collective leadership in the CCP. The god-king model is back.
Applying a sense of proportion to acts of terrorism
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/08/2017
» London in March: five dead. Stockholm in April: another five dead. Manchester in May: 22 dead. London again in June, this time on London Bridge: eight dead. Barcelona in August: 14 dead. Five mass-casualty terrorist attacks in Europe in six months, and all but one (Manchester) carried out using rental trucks. Is it safe to go to Europe any more?
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.
The global scourge of Aids is very far from being over
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/10/2016
» Four years ago optimism was high that Aids was in retreat, and could ultimately be eradicated. Back then the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids was boldly predicting "the end of Aids by 2030". Nobody is feeling that optimistic now.
IS is fomenting a Muslim backlash
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/08/2016
» 'Our country is at war," said French President Francois Hollande after a priest was murdered near Rouen in front of his congregation by two attackers who claimed to be serving Islamic State. It's the sort of thing leaders feel compelled to say at times like this, but it does send the wrong message.
The long, loud silence from the Brexit leadership
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/06/2016
» Parliament met in London on Monday, so that MPs of every party could express their horror and disgust at the murder last Thursday of their colleague Jo Cox, MP for Batley and Spen in West Yorkshire. And on Monday everybody did, including the leaders of the Brexit campaign, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. But here's the odd thing: up to that point, the Brexit leaders had said nothing about it.