• OPINION

  Making Asean more relevant to youth

  Oped, Published on 31/08/2023

  » International Youth Day is celebrated annually in August. Growing up as a young person in Singapore in the 1980-90s, I was more in tune with the arts, music, and literature of American and British influences than I was with local and regional popular culture. I was also more familiar with Western-based landmarks, for example the Eiffel Tower, than I was with those in Southeast Asia, such as Borobudur Temple. That was how oblivious I was of the region I was living in.

• OPINION

  Syria: The rehabilitation of dictator Assad

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/05/2023

  » There is no justice. Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator whose membership even the Arab League suspended 12 years ago, is off to Riyadh this week to celebrate his re-admission to the organisation. He will pay no price for his many crimes against humanity: the name of the game now is not retribution but 'rehabilitation'.

• OPINION

  Sri Lanka: A bad 'Band of Brothers'

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/07/2022

  » 'How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked (in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises). "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly." Sri Lanka is much the same.

• OPINION

  Fuel tax cut needed

  Oped, Editorial, Published on 22/10/2021

  » The price of oil is a notorious headache for governments around the world. Now, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is reaching for the pill bottle with the global price of oil having risen sharply from US$20 per barrel last year to over $80 this week.

• OPINION

  Spat over history futile

  Oped, Editorial, Published on 10/07/2021

  » A temple construction project in Buri Ram, which features Khmer-style sandstone towers, has drawn the ire of some Cambodian netizens who accuse the builder of "copying" their Angkor Wat heritage site, leading to a war of words between netizens of both countries.

• OPINION

  Bitter fruits of US poll will be felt for years to come

  Oped, Published on 12/11/2020

  » The aftermath of a US presidential election is, in normal times, a moment to muse about possible new policy directions of the candidate who prevailed at the polling booth.

• OPINION

  Fight for the Mekong gathers pace

  Oped, Passakorn Jumlongrach, Published on 26/11/2020

  » More than 20 years ago, when two Chiang Rai-based environmentalists, Niwat Roikaew and Somkiat Kuenwongsa, learned that the Chinese government were blasting rapids in the upper Mekong River from Yunnan to Myanmar and Laos to clear the way for large commercial vessels, they started worrying.

• OPINION

  Battle of Warsaw in 1920 a victory for Europe

  Oped, Published on 20/08/2020

  » There are crucial moments in history that define the world's future. For Poland and Europe, one such moment in the 20th century was the day of Aug 15, 1920. It was then that Poland, newly reborn in 1918, fought a decisive and victorious battle with the Bolshevik forces that aimed to spread the fire of the communist revolution all across Western Europe, devastated by the human and material losses of World War I.

• OPINION

  Look at history, Syrian sanctions won't end war

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/06/2020

  » Last week the US imposed new sanctions on Syria: a "sustained campaign of economic and political pressure" to end the nine-year war by forcing President Bashar al-Assad to UN-brokered peace talks where he would negotiate his departure from power. Mr Assad's wife was already cross about not being able to shop at Harrod's or Bergdorf Goodman, so he should crumble any day now.

• OPINION

  Brexit doesn't mean the European project is dead

  News, Published on 11/02/2020

  » Brexit is a disaster for the United Kingdom. Given the risk that it will now lose Scotland and Northern Ireland to secession, the country seems to have accepted the idea of Great Britain turning back into "Little England". Britain is that rare lion that chooses to become as small as a mouse.

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