8 March 2023 ‘General Winter’ Missed the Bus By Gwynne Dyer “The cold is coming soon,” gloated former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev last June. He predicted that the citizens of the European Union, deprived of the Russian gas that normally supplied about 40% of their energy, would be freezing in their homes when ‘General Winter’ …
5 March 2023 Starmer and Gray: A Dastardly Plot? By Gwynne Dyer At first, it just looked like dumb luck. Less than a year after he was driven from office by his own party, former British prime minister Boris Johnson was getting his final comeuppance. The cross-party Privileges Committee that was created to determine whether …
1 March 2023 Israeli Pogrom By Gwynne Dyer The dictionary definition of ‘pogrom’ is “an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” So there is something deeply strange about hearing ‘pogrom’ used in Hebrew to describe …
26 February 2023 Making Lethal Molecules By Gwynne Dyer “We are but one very small company (among) many hundreds of companies using AI software for drug discovery and de novo design. How many of them have…the know-how to find the pockets of chemical space that can be filled with molecules predicted to be orders of …
20 February 2023 Nigerian Election By Gwynne Dyer There is something wrong with Nigeria. It is Africa’s most populous country, with a fifth of the continent’s entire population (200 million). It is a major oil producer, pumping 1.5 million barrels a day. But its GDP per capita is slightly less now than it was in …
20 February 2023 Ukraine War and International Law By Gwynne Dyer Just before the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Friday, 24 February), France’s President Emmanuel Macron declared that he wanted to see Russia “defeated, but not crushed.” That is a very fine distinction, but an important one. Macron is seen as ‘soft’ …
15 February 2023 The Floaty-Bag Problem: Solved? By Gwynne Dyer The United States has been having “a bit of a floaty-bag problem over its airspace,” as South Africa’s ‘Daily Maverick’ news-site put it. Indeed it has. Four balloons or other flying “objects” shot down by the US Air Force over American or Canadian territory in …
12 February 2023 The Earthquakes and the Blame By Gwynne Dyer If you are trying to dodge the blame for a great disaster, the best policy is to say that it was God’s will. So Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, visiting one of the 6,000 buildings that collapsed on their sleeping residents in eastern Turkey …
29 January 2023 A Bad Case of Cultural Lag By Gwynne Dyer “I wish you a world without Babiš. Forget about Babiš. Try to live without Babiš,” said former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš on Saturday after his campaign for the presidency failed to convince the voters. “Stop waking up in the morning with hatred …
25 January 2023 Ukraine: Will Western Tanks Bring Victory? By Gwynne Dyer On Tuesday they reset the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds before midnight. How did they know that Germany would agree to give Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine on Wednesday? Now we’re all doomed! No time to run! Ninety seconds is barely time to …