30 October 2013 Georgia: Another Messiah By Gwynne Dyer “My work here is done,” said the masked man, as he mounted his horse and rode away. But he didn’t go very far away. Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili of Georgia doesn’t actually wear a mask, but he is mysterious enough without one. It’s never been quite …
23 October 2013 Syria’s Chemical Weapons: Everybody Wins (Except the Syrians) By Gwynne Dyer “That prize should have been given to me,” joked Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad shortly after the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on 11 October. The guests gathered in his palace in Damascus …
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20 October 2013 Russia, the Maldives, and Short-term Thinking By Gwynne Dyer Short term beats long term most of the time, even when people understand where their long-term self-interest really lies. Take, for example, that well-known pair, Russia and the Maldives. Five years ago, it was hard to find senior people in the universities and …
16 October 2013 Mediterranean Cemetery By Gwynne Dyer “I don’t know how many more people need to die at sea before something gets done,” said Malta’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat. “As things stand we are building a cemetery within our Mediterranean Sea.” He was talking about the part of the Mediterranean between the North African …
14 August 2013 Australia: Race to the Bottom By Gwynne Dyer The Australian boat people are getting to be a problem. The first few million just got off the boats from Britain, pushed the Aborigines off the good land, and declared themselves the real Australians. This latest lot of boat people, though… they don’t even …
6 August 2013 The World’s Most Important Hamburger By Gwynne Dyer The most important hamburger in the history of the world was cooked (but only half-eaten) in London on Monday. It was grown in a lab, not cut from a cow, and it tasted – well, not quite good enough to fool the experts, but …
24 July 2013 The Rehabilitation of Robert Mugabe By Gwynne Dyer Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, is now 89 years old, but he is running for another five-year term in the elections on 31 July. Perhaps his optimism is justified, given that his mother died at 100, but why is he doing it? More …
21 July 2013 Motor City By Gwynne Dyer As it happens, I was in Detroit this month. I went to see the art and the architecture, domains in which Detroit is still one of the richest cities in the United States. It’s broken, and it’s broke, and now it’s officially bankrupt too. But bankruptcy is …
15 Jul 13 A Frog in the Pot By Gwynne Dyer If you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, so they say, it will hop right out again. Frogs aren’t stupid. Well, okay, but they’re not THAT stupid. However, if you put a frog in a pot of cool water, and gradually …
26 June 2013 The Nicaraguan Canal By Gwynne Dyer On 11 June, the Nicaraguan parliament voted in favour of building a $40 billion canal across the country connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Since the country is dirt poor, the money would have to come from international investors. It would be raised by a Hong …