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 …
20 January 2005 Gay Bombs and Chicken-Powered Nukes By Gwynne Dyer The old Sixties slogan urged people to “Make Love, Not War,” but who says you have to choose? If you drove the other side’s soldiers mad with lust, then they’d be too busy with each other to cause you much trouble. Of course, there …
28 November 2004 Human Monsters By Gwynne Dyer “He could be very entertaining,” Stalin’s niece Kira Allilueva told biographer Robert Service in 1998. The dictator had her jailed in his last round of purges, after the Second World War, but she still remembered how kind he had been to her when she was a little …
21 October 2004 Another Endorsement for Bush By Gwynne Dyer Russian President Vladimir Putin wants George W. Bush to be reelected, Osama bin Laden undoubtedly wants him to be reelected, and the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has just endorsed him for reelection, so it’s hardly surprising that one of my sons has …
2 June 2004 The Decline of the West By Gwynne Dyer All the countries whose troops fought in Normandy sixty years ago – the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and Poland — are sending their leaders there on 6 June for the last big commemoration of D-Day. The soldiers who fought there and survived …
29 May 2003 Africa’s Thirty Years War By Gwynne Dyer In the next few days a French-led multinational force will begin arriving in the Congo’s north-eastern Ituri province, empowered by the UN Security Council to use “all necessary means”, including force, to stop the bloody struggle between the rival militias of the Lendu and Hema …
1 January 2003 The Euro’s Future By Gwynne Dyer “I want the whole of Europe to have one currency,” said the Emperor Napoleon in 1807. “It will make trading much easier.” A year ago his dream came true, more or less, and it didn’t even take a conquest to make it happen. But where does …
15 November 2002 The Stupidity Pact By Gwynne Dyer The European Stability and Growth Pact is a name so soporific that it should never be spoken aloud while operating heavy machinery. But let the president of the European Commission say that he thinks it is “stupid”, and suddenly it is on everybody’s lips — renamed …