6 September 2023 Culinary Counter-offensive By Gwynne Dyer The French government has just published a decree banning the use of terms like ‘steak’, ‘spare ribs’ and ‘ham’ on plant-based foods. Sausages and ‘poultry nuggets’ will escape the ban so long as the plant protein content is less that 6%. It’s not that the French are …
6 June 2023 Insurance to the Rescue? By Gwynne Dyer California’s fall from grace has been steep and swift, and now even the insurance companies are pulling out. The two biggest American home insurance companies, State Farm and Allstate, announced last week that they will stop selling insurance policies to Californians. Why? Climate change-related wildfires …
7 May 2023 Massacres and Guns By Gwynne Dyer Here’s how to sound wise when writing a story about mass killings and gun control. Last week saw two such massacres in Serbia (eight deaths and nine deaths respectively) and only one in the United States (eight killed in a mall in Allen, Texas). There was …
22 January 2023 On the Persistence of Politicians By Gwynne Dyer “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs,” wrote British politician Enoch Powell half a century ago – and then proceeded to demonstrate the …
11 December 2022 Two Coups (Failed) and Some Random Speculation By Gwynne Dyer Could there be anything more ridiculous than last week’s failed coup attempt in Peru? Last Wednesday morning, President Pedro Castillo made an unscheduled broadcast announcing that he was dissolving Congress, suspending the constitution, and would rule the country by decree. But within …
30 November 2022 China’s Covid Trap By Gwynne Dyer “Our COVID-19 policy is the most scientifically effective, the most economical, and yields the best result,” insisted the ‘People’s Daily’ newspaper in China after mass public protests against the government’s ‘zero covid’ policy last weekend. If President Xi Jinping believes that, he is in for a …
16 February 2022 Afghanistan: The Taliban and the Starving Afghans By Gwynne Dyer Because the Taliban have been designated as ‘terrorists’, it is possible for the United States not only to embargo American aid and trade to Afghanistan, but also to block or at least seriously hinder efforts by other countries to send humanitarian aid. …
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29 December 2021 China: No More Mr. Nice Guy By Gwynne Dyer More than 200 Hong Kong police raided and shut down one of the last pro-democracy news websites in Hong Kong on Wednesday, in the latest sign that the Beijing regime will no longer tolerate dissent of any kind. It was total overkill – …
6 September 2021 Too Big To Be Equal? By Gwynne Dyer Never mind the destruction of the relatively free society of Hong Kong (no emergency airlift like Kabul, but the number of people fleeing Hong Kong may ultimately be larger). Never mind the persecution of the Uyghurs, or the Orwellian surveillance society that the Communist …
1 September 2021 Afghanistan: Keeping the Elephants Away By Gwynne Dyer A man is sitting in a train somewhere in Europe, tearing sheets of paper into little pieces and throwing them out the window. (It could have been in America too, but passenger trains are pretty scarce there.) The only other person in the compartment, …