7 March 2004 The UN Is Not A Morality Play By Gwynne Dyer “It may well be that under international law as presently constituted a regime can systematically brutalise and oppress its own people and there is nothing anyone can do….This may be the law, but should it be?” asked Prime Minister Tony Blair last …
21 September 2003 The Least Bad United Nations By Gwynne Dyer Just as democracy is the least bad political system, given the alternatives, so is the United Nations the least bad international system. It’s a lot better than anarchy at one extreme, or an overbearing and unsustainable world government at the other — which is …
1 September 2003 To Help Or Not To Help By Gwynne Dyer “Bring em on,” blustered President George W. Bush a month ago, so the terrorists blew up first the UN headquarters in Baghdad, and then Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, Iraq’s most prominent Shia leader, and a hundred other people in Najaf. “It is necessary …
19 August 2003 Iraq: La Politique du Pire By Gwynne Dyer United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is outraged. US President George W. Bush makes his usual clumsy attempt to paint the Iraqi resistance as just another bunch of ‘terrorists’, and to link them with some worldwide conspiracy of terrorists who attack the United States because …
28 July 2003 Solomonic Decisions By Gwynne Dyer Last Thursday an Australian-led peacekeeping force began landing in the Solomon Islands, to the almost universal relief of the 450,000 people who live in the small island state. Civil war broke out between rival ethnic groups on the main island, Guadalcanal, in 1998, and rebels from the …
13 July 2003 Waiting for the Tooth Fairy By Gwynne Dyer Every night when they go to bed, just after they’ve said their prayers, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair each tuck a tooth under their pillows. They’ve been good boys and they won their war fair and square, so …
1 June 2003 The ‘Weapons of Mass Disappearance’ By Gwynne Dyer “We know where [the weapons] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, north and south somewhat.” — US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 30 March 2003 “It is…possible that they decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict.” …
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 …
25 May 2003 The US and the UN By Gwynne Dyer “The French foreign minister…said he was not completely satisfied with the resolution but supported it in the interests of ‘unity of the international community’. Translation: we give up, you’re bigger than we are.” That was how the Los Angeles Times greeted the UN Security …
2 April 2003 Words and Meanings By Gwynne Dyer The first casualty of war is not truth, which generally dies well before hostilities begin. It is language. Consider how Iraqi resistance fighters belonging to the Fedayeen organisation and the Baath Party militia have been renamed in only a week. At first American spokespersons referred to …