Showing 1 - 10 of 20
Syria needs another miracle for peace to stay
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/12/2024
» They're still celebrating the miraculous fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, and the killing has stopped in Syria except for parts of the north, east and south. So what are the odds that the man whose fighters brought down the regime, Ahmed al-Sharaa, can bring peace, prosperity and even democracy to Syria?
No place on earth is worse off than Sudan
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/11/2024
» There are wars in the world worse than those in Ukraine and Gaza. The war in Sudan is insanely cruel and stupid, but you hardly hear anything about it. Why not? Because, like me, other journalists hate writing about it and avoid doing so if they can.
End dangers to Thai workers in Israel
News, Matan Kaminer, Published on 13/11/2024
» The deaths of Akkhaphol Wannasai, Prayad Pilasram, Thana Tichantuek and Kaweesak Papanang, killed together with their employer on an Israeli farm near the Lebanese border on 31 October, were foretold. These workers, who came to Israel from Isan to provide a better future for their families, were killed by a rocket fired by Hezballah -- an indefensible attack on civilians by the Lebanese organisation. But they were exposed to danger by the Israeli and Thai states, both motivated by cold economic calculations.
Propaganda shows national derangements
News, Slavoj Žižek, Published on 11/09/2023
» Whenever a country's social contract unravels, conditions become ripe for rumours and absurdities to circulate. Even when these are outrageous and obviously nonsensical, they can give expression to a people's deepest fears and prejudices.
Israel pogroms reflect nation's shift to right
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/03/2023
» The dictionary definition of "pogrom" is "an organised massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries." So, there is something deeply strange about hearing pogrom used in Hebrew to describe what some Jewish people are doing to Arabs in 21st-century Israel.
Israel heads to yet another poll in just 3.5 years
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 31/10/2022
» Israeli voters are indefatigable. The election on Nov 1 will be the fifth in just three-and-a-half years, and yet the turnout is still likely to be around 70%. That's especially remarkable because all five elections have really been about the same question: should Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu go to jail, or should he be prime minister?
Seeking a fresh start
News, Anucha Charoenpo, Published on 28/03/2022
» Two months have passed since Saudi Arabia and Thailand agreed to fully restore diplomatic ties, a move that followed Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha's visit to Riyadh on Jan 25.
Someone like 'Bibi' can't lose in Israel
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/05/2021
» A tempest in a small teapot this week, as Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Israel of "apartheid".
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?)
France's failings a lesson for Thailand
News, Editorial, Published on 15/11/2020
» Five years on after the Bataclan massacre, France is once again facing a resurgent Islamist threat. Over the past few months, three separate attacks have rocked the proud secular nation which champions freedom of expression: stabbings near the former office of political satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, the beheading of 47-year-old school teacher Samuel Paty, who showed his students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, and a knife attack in Nice.