Showing 1 - 10 of 15
Timor-Leste finally joins the Asean fold
News, Kavi Chongkittavorn, Published on 14/10/2025
» Timor-Leste will be made a full member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) on Oct 26. President José Ramos-Horta of Timor-Leste often joked that joining Asean was more difficult than going to heaven. Not anymore.
School meal programmes give food for thought
News, Gordon Brown & Kevin Watkins, Published on 23/01/2025
» When governments adopted the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, they pledged to eliminate hunger and poverty. But today, as the SDGs' 2030 deadline approaches, a gulf separates their initial ambition and the reality on the ground. The 2020s are shaping up to be a lost decade for development -- and the world's most vulnerable children are bearing the brunt of this slowdown.
Beware of rogue presidents (this time in Korea)
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 07/01/2025
» Turning yourself from a democratically elected president into a dictator is a tricky operation, and most people who try it fail. It's called a "self-coup", from the Spanish auto-golpe, and to try it without first gaining the support of the armed forces is sheer lunacy. Yet, from time to time, an elected president tries to do exactly that.
We should listen to the Global South on Gaza
News, Karishma Vaswani, Published on 23/03/2024
» There is a rising chorus of voices, mostly from the Global South, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the urgent provision of aid to a population that is facing imminent famine. Is anybody listening?
Finding Thailand's political model
News, Suchada Kulawat, Published on 25/09/2023
» August was a time of anxiety for two former leaders -- Thailand's ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra and the US' former president Donald Trump. Last month saw some uneasy moments as they both became inmates -- even if for a short time.
Solving the global food crisis
News, Michael Fakhri & Elisabetta Recine & Sofia Monsalve, Published on 26/06/2023
» When ex-Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro came to power in January 2019, one of his first acts in office was to abolish the National Food and Nutrition Security Council (Consea), a globally lauded body that had reduced food insecurity. It was a huge step back for the country, which the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) had removed from its "hunger map" in 2014.
Is it the end of populism, or just a pause?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/06/2023
» We're going to miss the populist "big beasts" now that they're gone. Who will now tell us that "Voting Conservative will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3"? (Boris Johnson) Who will describe Barack Obama as "handsome, young and also suntanned"? (Silvio Berlusconi)
The dark side of neutrality when it comes to war
News, Slavoj Žižek, Published on 20/02/2023
» Last May, before being newly re-elected as president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, bear equal responsibility for the war in Ukraine. Yet whether the refusal to pick sides comes from Brazil, South Africa, or India, claiming to be "neutral" on Russia's war of aggression is untenable.
2 failed populist coups: Compare and contrast
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/01/2023
» Pundits are making much of the similarities between the attempted coup in Washington by Trump supporters two years ago and the one by Bolsonaro supporters in Brasilia on Jan 8, but they are missing the biggest one. These debacles were the most incompetent and half-hearted attempts to seize power illegally in the history of the world.
So we're paying for THAI?
News, Postbag, Published on 27/11/2022
» Re: "THAI to borrow less amid recovery," (BP, Nov 24).