24 October 2012 Predicting Disaster: A Risky Business By Gwynne Dyer Six years in jail and an average fine of over a million dollars: that was the punishment given to six Italian scientists on 22 October for getting their earthquake advice wrong. So what will the expert geologists and vulcanologists in Italy say the next …
8 August 2012 The Fate of Africa By Gwynne Dyer Good news from Africa: after two decades of bloody anarchy, Somalia is finally on the mend. There is something resembling a government coming into being in Mogadishu, with much help from African Union troops – although the country’s most popular comedian, Abdi Jeylani Marshale, famous …
20 May 2012 The Triumph of English By Gwynne Dyer The second president of the United States, John Adams, predicted in 1780 that “English will be the most respectable language in the world and the most universally read and spoken in the next century, if not before the end of this one.” It is destined …
26 April 2012 Sudan Is Not The Norm By Gwynne Dyer President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has been having some fun with language recently. He has come up with a new name for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the party that has formed the government of South Sudan since it finally got its independence …
13 February 2012 The New Division of Africa By Gwynne Dyer Sudan was bombing South Sudan again last week, only a couple of months after the two countries split apart. Sudan is mostly Muslim, and South Sudan is predominantly Christian, but the quarrel is about oil, not religion. And yet, it is really about religion …
5 January 2012 The African National Congress at 100 By Gwynne Dyer “It’s a bittersweet victory,” said William Gumede, a distinguished South African academic, about the hundredth anniversary of the African National Congress (ANC), which opens with a enormous party in Bloemfontein on Sunday. “This is our tipping point. From here things will go downhill. …
28 October 2011 The African Population Disaster By Gwynne Dyer According to the United Nations, the world’s population will pass the seven billion mark at the end of this month, and there will be much tutting and shaking of heads over its prediction that we will be ten million by the end of the century. …
31 January 2010 Africa: The Right to Secede By Gwynne Dyer Ban Ki-moon is not the best secretary-general the United Nations ever had, but he has grasped the essential nature of his job. The UN is an organisation made up of sovereign states, and their highest priority is the preservation of their own privileges. It …
18 January 2010 Senegal and Haiti By Gwynne Dyer Is it megalomania or just a political stunt? Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade may not even know the answer himself, but his offer to let quake-stricken Haitians resettle in his West African country certainly qualifies as the most flamboyant response to the tragedy in Haiti. “The repeated …
29 December 2009 2009 Year-Ender By Gwynne Dyer The year 2009 was most notable for the three bad things that didn’t happen. Firstly, the financial melt-down of late 2008 did not plunge us all into a 1930s-style depression, although there were plenty of pundits predicting that less than a year ago. As Stephen Schwarzman, head …