Showing 1 - 10 of 79
No need to panic, science and history are on our side
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/02/2016
» Zika, the mosquito-borne virus spreading through the Americas that has been linked to thousands of babies born with underdeveloped brains (microcephaly), is just the latest new disease to spread panic around the world. And wait! News just in that it can be sexually transmitted too!
Why are the Islamists still terrorising?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/05/2016
» Because most people think of Islamic State, al-Qaeda and their ilk as crazies motivated solely by hatred, they are not puzzled by recent terrorist attacks on the West like those in Paris, Brussels and Los Angeles. Like the villains in comic books, the terrorists are simply evil, and no further explanation is needed. But in the real world, being violent and fanatical does not make you stupid.
Age of technology will need universal basic income
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 08/06/2016
» In a referendum on Sunday, Swiss voters rejected a proposal for a guaranteed annual income for everybody by an overwhelming 78% majority. But the idea was not crazy, and it is not going to go away.
What can we expect in Syria?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/08/2016
» After 52 years of war, the guns finally fell silent in Colombia at midnight on Sunday, when permanent ceasefires were proclaimed both by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and the Colombian government.
With Trump, the climate change fight just got harder
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/11/2016
» Even before Donald Trump hijacked the Republican Party, he was loudly declaring that the science of climate change, like Barack Obama, had not been born in the United States. It was, he insisted in 2012, a Chinese hoax "created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive".
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 vanishing civilians of Aleppo
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/12/2016
» Did it cross your mind occasionally, in the past week, to wonder where all of the "250,000 civilians trapped in eastern Aleppo" have gone? As the area of the city under rebel control dwindled -- by Wednesday morning the Syrian regime's troops had recaptured three-quarters of it -- did you see massive columns of fleeing civilians, or mounds of civilian dead?
Aleppo and distortions by West's media
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/12/2016
» The stop-go evacuation of rebel fighters and civilians from Aleppo had begun again as I write, but the reason for the last interruption was instructive. It was Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) that burned the buses coming to evacuate the wounded from Foah and Kefraya.
So much for the wave of populism
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 26/04/2017
» In his victory speech on Sunday night Emmanuel Macron, the next president of France, said: "I want to become...the president of the patriots in the face of the threat from the nationalists." The distinction would be lost on most Trump supporters in the United States and on the "Little Englanders" who voted for Brexit in Britain, but it's absolutely clear to the French, and indeed to most Europeans.
Qatar crisis could turn nasty quick
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/06/2017
» Public-spirited businessman Moutaz al-Hayat is flying 4,000 cows into Qatar from the US and Australia to boost milk supply in his country, which is being blockaded by most of its Arab neighbours in the Gulf. It will take 60 flights, and is definitely not cost-effective. But that may not be his biggest problem.