3 June 2013 Drums Along the Nile By Gwynne Dyer Beware the open mike. On Tuesday Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi summoned senior politicians of all parties to discuss Ethiopia’s plan to dam the main tributary of the Nile river. One proposed sending special forces to destroy the dam. Another thought buzzing the dam site with …
3 June 2013 Drums Along the Nile By Gwynne Dyer All students of geopolitics are familiar with the legend that Egypt has privately warned all the governments upstream on the Nile that it will start bombing if they build dams on the river without its permission. The truth of that story is about to be …
26 December 2012 Egypt: The Not So Bad Constitution By Gwynne Dyer Egyptian politics over the past nine months has not been an edifying sight, but the new constitution does not spell the end of democracy in Egypt. It scares the 36 percent of Egyptian voters who rejected it, but their fears are probably misplaced. …
25 November 2012 Morsi Goes Too Far By Gwynne Dyer “There is no middle ground, no dialogue before (Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi) rescinds this declaration,” said pro-democracy advocate and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed ElBaradei. “There is no room for dialogue when a dictator imposes the most oppressive, abhorrent measures and then says ‘let us …
16 September 2012 Insulting Muslims By Gwynne Dyer One of the first scenes in the ridiculous but thoroughly nasty film “Innocence of Muslims” shows angry Muslims running through the streets smashing things and killing people. So what happens when a clip from the film dubbed into Arabic goes up on the internet? Angry Muslims run …
12 August 2012 Egypt: Clean Sweep for the Civilians By Gwynne Dyer Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi’s spokesman did not mince words. He said that the “retirement” of all the senior military commanders in the country represented the completion of the Egyptian revolution. And guess what? The rest of the officer corps accepted Morsi’s decision. Even …
11 July 2012 The “Arab Spring”: Good News By Gwynne Dyer The good news about last weekend’s election in Libya, as relayed by the Western media, was that the “Islamists” were defeated and the Good Guys won. The real good news was that democracy in the Arab world is still making progress, regardless of whether …
20 June 2012 Egypt: End Game By Gwynne Dyer “If we find that Scaf (the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) stands firm against us as we try to fulfill the fulfill the demands of the revolution,” said Fatema AbouZeid of the Muslim Brotherhood as the final results of Egypt’s presidential election last weekend rolled …
13 May 2012 Egypt Elects a President By Gwynne Dyer After eleven demonstrators were killed outside the Ministry of Defence in Cairo early this month, Mohammad al-Assaf, a member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), expressed his astonishment that anybody might suspect the military of wanting to rig the forthcoming presidential elections …
20 April 2012 I’ll Have a Slice of Clitoris, Please By Gwynne Dyer Let’s suppose that you are an artist who knows you have to shock people if you really want to get on in the trade. And not being Damien Hirst yet, you should probably justify your shock tactics by claiming that they serve …