7 February 2022 The Rise and Decline of Sociopathy By Gwynne Dyer I generally leave the psychohistory to Hari Seldon, but just this once I feel sufficiently motivated to venture into the field. The immediate spur for this departure is the spectacle – half-fascination, half-disgust – of Boris Johnson, Britain’s part-time prime minister, gradually foundering …
22 December 2021 The Right Enemy By Gwynne Dyer The right enemy can be a major asset in politics, as Chilean voters have just demonstrated once again. All the opinion polls had the two presidential candidates neck and neck before Sunday’s election, but a few days before the vote it came out that the father …
15 December 2021 Chilean Election By Gwynne Dyer British journalist Claude Cockburn once claimed that he won a contest among the sub-editors on the London Times to write the dullest headline and actually get it published in the paper. His winning headline was ‘Small Earthquake in Chile, Not Many Hurt’. It must annoy Chileans, but …
7 February 2021 If the Republican Party splits, what name should the breakaway part use? The White People’s Insurrectionary Libertarian True-Blood Republican Party (WPILTBRP), or just the Trump Party? Or maybe the hijacker-in-chief gets to keep the name of the party he stole, in which case the rump has to come up with something completely …
2 December 2020 “There is nothing wrong to participate in a sex party of any kind,” said a source in the European Parliament. “However, such kinds of meetings with many people are illegal under the coronavirus laws.” To be specific, 25 naked men attending a loud party above a gay bar in central Brussels is …
8 September 2020 Nine of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies have just promised not to apply for regulatory approval for any new Covid-19 vaccine before it has gone through all three phases of clinical study. Why would they do such a thing? You’d be surprised if brain surgeons got together and promised not to operate …
5 August 2020 An ‘October Surprise’ in the United States is now almost inevitable, because that will be Donald Trump’s last chance to get re-elected legitimately. He might try to cling to office even if he loses the vote, but it would be a lot easier and neater if he actually won a majority in …
As countries in Europe and North America emerge from lock-down and start trying to rebuild their devastated economies, the great concern is jobs. Unemployment in the US and Canada is over 13%, a post-Second World War high. If it weren’t for subsidies that keep up to a fifth of the working population in paid ‘furloughs’ …
What do you do if you are in charge of dealing with the pandemic and the number of deaths is getting out of control? Simple. Stop publishing the number. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has been having a bad time with the pandemic. His default mode has been callous disinterest: when told in early May that …
The First World War speeded up the emancipation of women; the Second World War led to the creation of welfare states in all the industrialised countries. What great change will the coronavirus crisis bring us? This crisis has not yet killed tens of millions, and it probably never will. No great empires have fallen, and …