GWYNNE DYER

No more Palestinian refugees GWYNNE DYER

No more Palestinian refugees

Who said this? “The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong.” Nietzsche? Goebbels? You-know-who?

September 05 2018
BBNJ GWYNNE DYER

BBNJ

Nobody loves the United Nations. It’s a bureaucracy, and its job is to make rules. But where else could you negotiate a treaty on “The Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction“ (BBNJ for short)? That is to say, bringing the rule of law to the high seas before all the fish are gone.

August 28 2018
Corbyn, Palestinians and Brexit GWYNNE DYER

Corbyn, Palestinians and Brexit

It sounds like a tempest in a teapot, but it could bring down Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain’s Labour Party – and that could end up meaning that Britain doesn’t leave the European Union after all.

August 15 2018
Duterte and the ICC GWYNNE DYER

Duterte and the ICC

Here’s the good news. Last February the International Criminal Court at The Hague opened an inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity committed by President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines as part of his ‘war on drugs’. Now for the bad news. True to form, Duterte replied that the Treaty of Rome which created the ICC was “all bullshit” and that the court was only backed by “white idiots”. He then announced that the Philippines was withdrawing from the ICC “effective immediately”.

August 14 2018
Hothouse Earth GWYNNE DYER

Hothouse Earth

It would be churlish to ask what took them so long. Let us be grateful, instead, that the climate scientists are finally saying out loud what they all knew privately at least ten years ago.

August 10 2018
1918: The turn of a coin GWYNNE DYER

1918: The turn of a coin

On 8 Aug. 8, 1918, one hundred years ago on Aug. 8, it finally became clear who was going to win the First World War. Nine Canadian and Australian divisions, almost 200,000 men, attacked the German trenches near Amiens, deep in France – and for the first time in the war, the German troops ran away.

August 09 2018
South-East Asian fall GWYNNE DYER

South-East Asian fall?

A quarter-century before the Arab Spring of 2011, there was a democratic spring in South-East Asia: the Philippines in 1986, Burma in 1988, Thailand in 1992 and Indonesia in 1998. The Arab Spring was largely drowned in blood (Syria, Egypt, Libya), but democracy really seemed to be taking root in South-east Asia – for a while.

August 02 2018
Where Will It All End GWYNNE DYER

Where Will It All End?

This is Armageddon Summer in the northern hemisphere: out-of-control wildfires all around the Arctic Circle (not to mention California and Greece), weeks-long heatwaves with unprecedented high temperatures, torrential downpours and Biblical floods. And yes, it’s climate change.

July 31 2018
Zimbabwe election GWYNNE DYER

Zimbabwe election

“I am as soft as wool. I am a very soft person in life,” Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa told the BBC in a recent interview, but his nickname is ‘The Crocodile.’ There is probably no more ruthless person active in Zimbabwe’s politics, and three months ago he looked like a shoo-in to win the presidential election due to be held on 30 July.

July 26 2018