27 August 2023 Expanding the BRICS By Gwynne Dyer You can expand the curious organisation called the BRICS, but you can’t define it. In fact, it’s hardly even an organisation: no headquarters, no secretariat. Even the (British) Commonwealth and la Francophonie have more substance: at least they share a former oppressor. Yet the BRICS are …
14 June 2023 Populism: End of an Era – or Just a Pause? By Gwynne Dyer 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) …
2 November 2022 Climate, Cairo and the Amazon By Gwynne Dyer This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) opens in Cairo next Sunday and continues for two weeks, but all that hot air is less important than the single fact that ‘Lula’ da Silva narrowly won the Brazilian presidency last Sunday. He may be …
5 October 2022 Populism: Three Steps Forward; Two-and-a-Half Steps Back By Gwynne Dyer The reports about Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva’s impending comeback as Brazilian president verged on the ecstatic in the week before last Sunday’s vote. He was after all, fourteen points ahead of his populist rival, incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro, in the last …
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19 January 2024 Italy: President Berlusconi? By Gwynne Dyer It was looking like a good year for democracy. Donald Trump is gone in the United States, at least for the moment, and other populist demagogues in power seem about to lose it. Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom is teetering on the brink, Viktor Orban …
9 November 2021 COP26: A Mixed Bag By Gwynne Dyer It’s not too early to assess the success or failure of COP26, the climate summit that began in Glasgow on 31 October. The first week, while the heads of state are there, is when all the big promises are announced; the second week is devoted …
1 August 2021 Peru holds the current record for revolving presidents (three came and went in a month last November), for coronavirus deaths (almost 6,000 per million), and for the youngest-looking president (seen from afar, under his trademark 20-gallon straw hat, he looks like a 13-year-old boy). But appearances are deceiving. Pedro Castillo, inaugurated as …
January 07, 2021 If I have to read one more hand-wringing article about the ‘crisis of American democracy’ and what it means for the world, I’m going to retch. The last straw was an article in the ‘New Yorker’ this week by Adam Gopnik, an accomplished journalist whom I usually admire. It was called ‘What …
What do you do if you are in charge of dealing with the pandemic and the number of deaths is getting out of control? Simple. Stop publishing the number. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has been having a bad time with the pandemic. His default mode has been callous disinterest: when told in early May that …
Wuhan, the Chinese city where it all started, was locked down for 79 days before the restrictions on movement were finally lifted last week. A bit over-cautious, perhaps, but in China the coronavirus does really seem to be under control – not totally eradicated, but controllable without extreme measures. If Donald Trump “reopens” the United …