Politics

Moon Race

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. …

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El Salvador: ‘The World’s Coolest Dictator’

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 …

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Sahel Coups

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 …

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Heat Waves and Tipping Points

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 …

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Boing! The Anthropocene

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 …

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NATO Summit 2023

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 …

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Israel: Mowing the Lawn Again, but with Malice Aforethought

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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