25 October 2004 A (Much Resented) World Language By Gwynne Dyer Predictably, the French were furious. A national commission looking into the future of the French education system recommended last week that English, which it called “the language of international communication,” be made compulsory in French schools, and the usual suspects erupted in outrage. It …
6 October 2004 An Excess of Nationalism By Gwynne Dyer “This is the true frontier of transportation,” said Marion Blakely, head of the US Federal Aviation Administration, when SpaceShipOne, designed, built and flown by American private citizens, flew into space for the second time in two weeks and won the $10 million Ansari-X prize. Then …
22 August 2004 A Blessing in Disguise By Gwynne Dyer Some time this week or next, oil is likely to reach $50 a barrel for the first time ever. The price is up by a third since the end of June, and US prices have set record peaks in all but one of the past …
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 …
18 May 2004 Sonia Gandhi: Throwing It All Away? By Gwynne Dyer The past few days must have been very frightening for Sonia Gandhi: death threats from racists furious at the defeat of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will have been flooding in, and she has already seen both her mother-in-law and her …
16 May 2004 The Tortoise and the Hare? By Gwynne Dyer India has its first foreign-born prime minister. Sonia Gandhi, born 57 years ago in the village of Orbassano, not far from Milan, is going to be the leader of the world’s largest democracy and its second-largest country, even though her Hindi is still Italian-accented …
29 April 2004 Disappearing Babies By Gwynne Dyer The one-child policy in China is coming to an end. It has a few years left to run yet in most of the country, but Shanghai’s city government announced in mid-April that divorced people who remarry can have a child together even if they each have a …
4 April 2004 Wrong Answer in Sri Lanka By Gwynne Dyer “I have a strong belief that our nation will have peace but I am under no illusion that it will be easy,” said Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe two years ago, as his government signed a ceasefire in the civil war that had …
THIS ARTICLE MAY BE USED ALONE, BUT IS THE FIRST OF A TWO-PART SERIES ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMY. THE SECOND PART FOLLOWS WITHIN A DAY. 28 November 2003 The Global Economy Part I: An Enormous Sucking Sound By Gwynne Dyer “That enormous sucking sound you hear,” third-party candidate Ross Perot told American voters during …
THE EU AGRICULTURE COMMISSIONER GAVE SUCH A GOOD QUOTE YESTERDAY THAT I RE-WROTE THE ARTICLE. DON’T WORRY IF YOU’VE USED IT ALREADY. 4 September 2003 Farming Is Different By Gwynne Dyer On 9-14 September the World Trade Organisation brings together the trade ministers of 146 countries in Cancun, Mexico to try for a new deal …