Showing 41 - 50 of 98
Democracy is default mode of civilisations
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/07/2021
» At first I was going to write about the "Arab Problem", because there is not a single functioning democracy in the Arab world. This week's presidential coup in Tunisia has probably ended democracy in the one country that actually achieved it during the "Arab Spring" of 2010-11.
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.
Killer 'Wave-7' heat getting far more common
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/07/2021
» First the "heat dome", with temperatures in the mid-to-high forties Celsius in many parts of western North America for up to a week (49.6°C in Lytton, British Columbia). Then, when the forests were tinder-dry, came the wildfires (which wiped Lytton out). From northern California to northern British Columbia, the records were being broken every day.
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?)
Genocide in Armenia: Call it what it was
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/04/2021
» Following in the path of 31 other countries including Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Russia, and Brazil, the United States on Saturday at last "recognised" the Armenian genocide. Not that the United States ever denied it, but it officially avoided the word "genocide" for 106 years for fear of angering the Turks.
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.
Climate change salvation in a vat
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/12/2020
» We are putting a final end to the fossil era," said Denmark's climate minister, Dan Jorgensen, last week. What he meant was that the European Union's biggest oil and gas producer is officially getting out of the petrochemical business after 80 years.
Anti-abortion laws and radicalisation
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/12/2020
» 'Get your rosaries off our ovaries," chanted the women marching in support of the referendum that made abortion legal in Ireland in 2018. Two years later the 2020 election broke the century-long stranglehold on power of the two centre-right parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. They got fewer than half the votes even together.
HK and China: One country, one system
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/11/2020
» One Hong Kong lawmaker, Claudia Mo, said it was "the death-knell of Hong Kong's democracy fight". But she was part of it: one of the 15 remaining pro-democracy members of the Legislative Council (Legco) who resigned last Thursday in protest at the expulsion of four other democratically elected members of the pseudo-parliament.
Premature to mourn death of Bolivia's democracy
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 14/10/2020
» The quotation is usually given as "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely", but Lord Acton's original remark went on to say: "Great men are almost always bad men." And so they are.