4 April 2009 Obama’s Emission Cuts: Pragmatic Suicide By Gwynne Dyer “We want to be in (the new UN climate pact), we want to be pragmatic, we want to look at the science,” said Jonathan Pershing, the head of the US delegation, during the talks on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in Bonn last week. So …
27 February 2008 Stereotyping Russia By Gwynne Dyer The coronation of Dmitri Medvedev as Vladimir Putin’s anointed successor, by means of a presidential election on Sunday whose outcome is a foregone conclusion, has unleashed the usual deluge of stereotypes about “the Russians” in the Western media. They are backward, they cannot ever escape from their …
6 September 2007 Terrorism: Lessons from Germany By Gwynne Dyer On 5 September, German police raided a house near the village of Oberschledorn, about an hour’s drive east of Dusseldorf, and arrested three suspected Islamist terrorists. They had accumulated enough hydrogen peroxide to build a bomb with the explosive power of 550 kg (1200 lbs) …
17 September 2006 The Pope and Islam By Gwynne Dyer On a scale of one to ten, Pope Benedict XVI’s first attempt at an apology was barely a 3. He said nothing himself, but on Saturday Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told the world that “The Holy Father is very sorry that some passages of his speech …
4 September 2006 Poland: The Terrible Twins By Gwynne Dyer “I am afraid that with Jaroslaw Kaczynski as prime minister, Poland will become more extreme, more anti-European and a more xenophobic country,” warned Bronislaw Komorowski, a member of the opposition Civic Platform party, when the second Kaczynski twin was made prime minister by his brother, …
10 October 2005 Gerhard Schroeder’s Long Game By Gwynne Dyer Gerhard Schroeder has already won, even if he has to give up being the chancellor of Germany. The “grand coalition” talks that begin on 17 October between his Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the conservative Christian Democratic Union would make CDU leader Angela Merkel the …
19 September 2005 Turkey: The Door Is Still Open By Gwynne Dyer The near-tie in the German election, in which Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder came from 13 percentage points behind conservative challenger Angela Merkel in late August to less than one point behind her by the vote on 18 September, has thrown German politics into turmoil, …
2 September 2005 Angie and the Flat Tax By Gwynne Dyer No political campaign in the West is now complete without a signature rock song to capture the baby-boomer demographic. If Margaret Thatcher were running for office in Britain today, they’d be playing Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” at every rally. Never mind that the actual …
16 June 2005 Africa: Debt, Aid and Race By Gwynne Dyer “We are very sorry and apologise to viewers and other people who felt offended,” announced the Japanese cosmetics firm Mandom early this month, but mass ritual suicide would have been a more appropriate form of apology. The company had aired a TV commercial that …
8 May 2005 Yalta, Truth and Tact By Gwynne Dyer Presidents aren’t expected to know much history, but their speech-writers are — and even presidents are expected to be considerate of their hosts’ feelings. President George W. Bush’s speech in Riga on Saturday did not measure up. It wasn’t Bush who started the quarrel about …