Showing 81 - 90 of 149
Save the old or save the economy?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/04/2020
» The basic choice all along with Covid-19 has been: Do we let the old die, or do we take a big hit economically? So far, the decision almost everywhere has been to take the hit and save the old (or most of them), but in some places it has been a very near-run thing.
Covid-19 offers odd glimpse of a new future
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/03/2020
» They teach you in journalism school never to use the phrase "...X has changed the world forever". Or at least they should. Covid-19 is certainly not going to change the world forever, but it is going to change quite a few things, in some cases for a long time. Here's nine of them, in no particular order.
Germany, Japan and the war on fuel rationality
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/02/2020
» Germany and Japan are finally winning a war together. Unfortunately, it is the War on Rationality.
Is the Wuhan 'devil virus' a 'black swan'?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 14/02/2020
» China officially went back to work on Monday, after an extended two-week Lunar New Year holiday, while the authorities struggled to get the spread of the new coronavirus under control. But a lot of Chinese are not going back to work yet, and the spread of the "devil virus" (as President Xi Jinping called it) is manifestly not under control.
Coronavirus response reveals China's fatal weakness
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/01/2020
» In an emergency, the good thing about a dictatorship is that it can respond very fast. The bad thing is that it won't respond at all until the dictator-in-chief says that it should. All the little dictators who flourish in this sort of system won't risk their positions by passing bad news up the line until the risk of being blamed for delay outweighs the risk of being blamed for the emergency in the first place.
Missing all exits on Highway to Hell
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/12/2019
» 'The point of no return is no longer over the horizon," warned UN secretary general Antonio Guterres as the 25th climate summit (COP25) opened in Madrid two weeks ago, and the multitude of delegates from more than a hundred countries presumably understood what he meant. But they ignored it anyway.
The game of Beijing versus Taipei
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/12/2019
» One of the lesser unsolved mysteries of our time is why countries whose names end in 'u' prefer the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the People's Republic of China (Beijing). Of the 15 countries that still recognise Taiwan as the real and legitimate China, three have 'u' at the end of their names: Nauru, Palau and Tuvalu.
Defeat snatched from jaws of victory in HK
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/11/2019
» The "silent majority" in Hong Kong, who regime supporters hoped would show that they are fed up with the pro-democracy protests that have shaken the city in the past five months, turns out to be not only silent but non-existent.
Cameroon's war on anglophones is self-defeating
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/11/2019
» Sometimes Donald Trump gets it right. In February he cut off US military aid to the central African country of Cameroon because of its appalling human rights record (and didn't even offer to restore it if the Cameroon government dug up dirt on his political opponents at home). Last Friday he acted again, dropping Cameroon from a pact that promotes trade between sub-Saharan African countries and the US.
HK protesters making bad gamble
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/10/2019
» After 17 consecutive weekends of increasingly violent protests in Hong Kong, the first protester was wounded by a live bullet on Tuesday. Tsang Chi-kin, an 18-year-old student and one of a group of about a dozen students attacking a policeman who had become separated from his comrades, was shot in the chest as he struck the officer with a metal pole. He is expected to survive.