Showing 1 - 10 of 593
Trump and the last stand of the US Christians
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/07/2024
» The past week has been a roller-coaster ride for Donald Trump.
FGM and the need for Islamic scholars
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/07/2024
» There was a small victory in The Gambia this week when a proposed law to legalise female genital mutilation (FGM) was defeated by human rights campaigners. It was quite a small victory, however, because the great majority of little girls in The Gambia are still being mutilated by the professional "cutters" who move from village to village.
Trump: Neither unique nor irreplaceable
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/07/2024
» Almost everybody who feels obliged to comment about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump is currently insisting that "violence has no place in American politics", but of course it has. Four US presidents have been assassinated while in office, and three others (now including Mr Trump) have been injured in assassination attempts.
Rambling Joe Biden officially a lost cause
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/07/2024
» It really doesn't matter whether Joe Biden is in peak condition intellectually during a second term as president. He did some useful things in his first term, but his main job now is to stop Donald Trump from coming back. If he succeeded in doing that and went gaga immediately afterwards, the ship of state would carry on regardless.
Iran's theocracy simply cannot go on forever
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/07/2024
» 'I have heard that people's zeal and interest is higher than in the first round [of Iran's presidential election]," Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Iranian TV just before the second round of voting on Sunday. "It is wrong to assume those who abstained in the first round are opposed to Islamic rule."
Fascism rising in France, but don't panic…
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/07/2024
» Nothing else in France looks like the 1930s, so why should fascism? There really is a fascist movement in France, although it avoids torch-lit marches and jackboots. It has even stopped the Holocaust denial (mostly).
Did the West cause the war in Ukraine?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/06/2024
» There is one thing almost all populist nationalists agree on: the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the continuing carnage there was the fault of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato). If Nato had not expanded to Russia's borders, it would all still be peace and love in Europe.
The bigger game: Israel and Saudi Arabia vs Iran
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/06/2024
» Gaza, IDF, Hamas, Mr Netanyahu, famine, terrorism, genocide, and on and on: the loud, incessant clatter of local issues and tactical moves almost drowns out the low, grinding noise as the Middle East shifts inexorably into a new strategic alignment. But it's happening, and it's still about oil, sort of.
Second chance beckons for South Africa?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/06/2024
» Cyril Ramaphosa is the president of South Africa again, but everything else is different. He got his job back in a vote late on Friday, but only because at the last moment he managed to cobble together a coalition that has a majority in parliament. It's so new that the coalition partners still haven't agreed on who does what in the new government.
Stop making the 'Munich in 1938' analogies
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/06/2024
» Scarcely a week passes without some media pundit or attention-seeking historian warning that a Great War is nigh. As always, there are enough signs and portents around to make that sort of prediction plausible, but it's rarely correct. In fact, it hasn't been correct now for 79 years.