A few days ago the European Union’s Earth Observation programme, ‘Copernicus’, made a special announcement at the end of its monthly report on the state of the climate. It said that the average global temperature for the past three years (2023-2025) has been 1.5 degrees C above the pre-industrial level. That’s the level we were […]
Populist parties are already in power in some developed countries and waiting just outside the door in many more. The key trick of populist politicians is to tell the voters what they want to hear, and the voters definitely do not want their lives to be disrupted by global heating, so they are told it
Javier Milei, the Elon Musk wannabe who became president of Argentina two years ago chainsaw in hand, is now in deep trouble with the voters, and the mid-term elections are due this month. He has the same political agenda as Donald Trump, give or take a folly or two, so he asked his populist big
If Donald Trump were a religious man, he might have said “There but for the grace of God go I” when he heard that former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has been sentenced to 27 years in prison. Bolsonaro’s crime was to have plotted a coup to take back the presidency he lost in the 2022
Brazil and the United States: Same Crime, Different Fate Read More »
800 words 30 April 2025 Bolsonaro and Trump By Gwynne Dyer Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president and Trump clone, is facing trial for encouraging a plot that would have restored him to power after he lost the 2022 election, but it is unlikely that he will ever end up in court. Two weeks ago Bolsonaro
27 August 2023 Expanding the BRICS By Gwynne Dyer You can expand the curious organisation called the BRICS, but you can’t define it. In fact, it’s hardly even an organisation: no headquarters, no secretariat. Even the (British) Commonwealth and la Francophonie have more substance: at least they share a former oppressor. Yet the BRICS are
14 June 2023 Populism: End of an Era – or Just a Pause? By Gwynne Dyer We’re going to miss the populist ‘big beasts’ now that they’re gone. Who will now tell us that “Voting Conservative will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3”? (Boris Johnson)
2 November 2022 Climate, Cairo and the Amazon By Gwynne Dyer This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) opens in Cairo next Sunday and continues for two weeks, but all that hot air is less important than the single fact that ‘Lula’ da Silva narrowly won the Brazilian presidency last Sunday. He may be
5 October 2022 Populism: Three Steps Forward; Two-and-a-Half Steps Back By Gwynne Dyer The reports about Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva’s impending comeback as Brazilian president verged on the ecstatic in the week before last Sunday’s vote. He was after all, fourteen points ahead of his populist rival, incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro, in the last
Populism: Three Steps Forward; Two-and-a-Half Steps Back Read More »
19 January 2024 Italy: President Berlusconi? By Gwynne Dyer It was looking like a good year for democracy. Donald Trump is gone in the United States, at least for the moment, and other populist demagogues in power seem about to lose it. Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom is teetering on the brink, Viktor Orban