13 August 2023 Moon Race By Gwynne Dyer Don’t say ‘Moon Race’. Perish the thought! But there is a race to land on the Moon, and the Russians are cheating. Well, sort of cheating. It’s the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), renowned for its ability to do big things on a relatively small budget (ca. …
10 August 2023 Cambodia: Another Generation of Huns By Gwynne Dyer On Monday the most amazing political survivor of the 20th century, Hun Sen, formally passed the rule of Cambodia down to his eldest son Manet after 38 years in power. From youthful commander in the genocidal Khmer Rouge to Vietnamese puppet to coup-maker to …
2 August 2023 El Salvador: ‘The World’s Coolest Dictator’ By Gwynne Dyer “It’s not perfect, but it’s good. We’ve done something really good here,” said El Salvador’s vice-president, Felix Ulloa, defending the government’s no-quarter war against the street gangs that have dominated the Central American republic for decades. President Nayib Bukele agrees, calling himself “the …
30 July 2023 Sahel Coups By Gwynne Dyer If you are a democratically elected leader in one of Africa’s Sahel countries – let’s say, Niger – and you suspect that the army is plotting to overthrow you, what’s the best counter-measure? Should you: A) appoint all the army’s senior officers as ambassadors to distant countries …
26 July 2023 Israel: The End of Democracy? By Gwynne Dyer The protesters in Israel came out every week for seven months to fight what they saw as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s assault on democracy, but they lost. On Monday Netanyahu’s coalition government passed a ‘Basic Law’ that effectively ends the ability of the Supreme …
19 July 2023 Spanish Election: Franco’s Ghost? By Gwynne Dyer “Europe is threatened by anti-European mobs who destroy police stations, burn libraries and stab babies,” explained Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s far-right Vox Party and the bogeyman in this Sunday’s snap election there. Some delusional panic-mongers even see him as the Second Coming of …
17 July 2023 Heat Waves and Tipping Points By Gwynne Dyer “What we’re seeing is climate impacts that scientists thought would accompany certain temperatures happening far more rapidly, with far more devastating effects than had been forecast,” said Dr. Simon Nicholson of the Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment at American University. “We didn’t think that …
12 July 2023 Boing! The Anthropocene By Gwynne Dyer “I was there when the Anthropocene was born. It was so amazing,” said Dr. Katherine Richardson, leader of the Sustainability Science Centre at the University of Copenhagen. “It was actually in 2000, at one of these meetings of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Scientific Steering Committee.” The …
10 July 2023 NATO Summit 2023 By Gwynne Dyer When NATO held its annual summit in Brussels two years ago, all 31 presidents and prime ministers of the alliance’s member states dutifully showed up, but their hearts weren’t really in it. France’s President Emmanuel Macron had publicly declared NATO “brain-dead” in 2019, and nobody could …
5 July 2023 Israel: Mowing the Lawn Again, but with Malice Aforethought By Gwynne Dyer The two-day Israeli military incursion into the Palestinian city of Jenin in the northern West Bank (12 Palestinians killed, one Israeli dead) seems at first glance like just another example of ‘mowing the lawn’. That’s what the Israeli Defence Forces …
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