4 May 2022 By Gwynne Dyer We were talking recently about how clever the Ukrainians had been to call the invading Russian troops ‘Orcs’ even before all the atrocities in the Russian-occupied towns around Kyiv came to light. Then Tina said: “If Putin’s troops are Orcs, then he must be Sauron.” You can guess what …
14 February 2022 World War 2.1? By Gwynne Dyer Columnists are not supposed to write about the same subject twice in a row, and only last week I wrote my umpteenth piece saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not going to invade Ukraine. But US President Joe Biden just gave us a hard date …
16 Jan 22 Will Russia Play The ‘Cuban Card’? By Gwynne Dyer After a week of intense discussions about ‘security’ between Russia and the NATO countries, this is the week when the Western allies will send their written replies to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Various pundits, some of whom have actually been to Russia, warn …
9 August 2021 Friday, 13 August, is the 500th anniversary of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The capital of the Aztec empire, Tenochtitlan, fell to the invaders after a long siege, and became Mexico City instead. It was a major historical event, still mourned by millions and celebrated by millions more five centuries after it …
The Conquest of Mexico: Some History is Inevitable Read More »
4 July 2021 First the ‘heat dome’, with temperatures in the mid-to-high forties Celsius in many parts of western North America for up to a week (49.6° C in Lytton, B.C.). Then, when the forests were tinder-dry, came the wildfires (which wiped Lytton out). From northern California to northern BC, the records were being broken …
29 March 2021 “We’re waiting on food goods like coconut milk and syrups, some spare parts for motors, we’ve got some fork lift trucks, some Amazon goods on there, all sorts,” said Steve Parks of Seaport Freight Services in England, who is awaiting twenty of the 18,300 containers aboard the recently freed ‘Ever Given’. Which …
30 September 2020 I have just spent two weeks driving around Germany interviewing people (mostly climate scientists, since you ask), and I have come to the conclusion that it is the best-run – and quite possibly just the best – major country in the world right now. Some small countries are absolute jewels, of course, …
8 July 2020 Last Sunday in the city of Baltimore, they tore down a statue of Christopher Columbus and threw it into the harbour. According to the Baltimore Sun, the protesters who yanked it down with ropes were dedicated to removing statues “honoring white supremacists, owners of enslaved people, perpetrators of genocide, and colonizers.” We …
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’ …
The Ottoman Empire, like many of its Middle Eastern predecessors, had the bad habit of moving entire peoples around if they were causing trouble. And sometimes, as happened to the Armenians during the First World War, what started as deportation ended up as genocide. The empire collapsed a century ago, but old habits die hard. …