1 May 2024 The Second Time as Farce By Gwynne Dyer “History repeats itself – the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce,” said Karl Marx. He was talking about European history, of course, and here it comes again, a century later, doing a tribute act to the 1920s. In Germany, we have […]
24 January 2024 The Fascists Are (Probably Not) Coming! By Gwynne Dyer ‘Fascism is on the march everywhere!’ shrieked the headline on a recent think-piece by my least favourite foreign affairs commentator (who must remain nameless because I don’t want to give him any publicity). But articles and op-eds about the fascist threat are certainly
20 December 2023 Gaza: The Bombed and the Bombers By Gwynne Dyer Today (or yesterday, or tomorrow), the known death toll of Palestinians in Gaza since October 7th will reach 20,000. The deaths of Hamas fighters are included in the numbers that the Hamas-run health ministry releases, and in past clashes with Israel the overall
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
11 December 2022 Two Coups (Failed) and Some Random Speculation By Gwynne Dyer Could there be anything more ridiculous than last week’s failed coup attempt in Peru? Last Wednesday morning, President Pedro Castillo made an unscheduled broadcast announcing that he was dissolving Congress, suspending the constitution, and would rule the country by decree. But within
24 February 2022 Ukraine: Ten New Realities By Gwynne Dyer Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has invaded Ukraine and foreclosed his and everybody else’s other options, certain aspects of the near future have become clear. So have some aspects of the longer run. Here are ten predictions, made with varying degrees of confidence. 1.
30 November 2021 The new Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus was discovered last week by scientists in South Africa and Botswana, the only countries in southern Africa that have the skills and resources to detect a new variant. So what did the rich countries of the world do? Like the drunk looking for his
Covid-19: Digital Peasants and the Ignorant Rich Read More »
22 September 2021 After Merkel By Gwynne Dyer Last January Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) were ahead in the German opinion polls by fifteen points. She was stepping down after sixteen years as chancellor (prime minister), but she was still by far the most trusted politician in Germany. Indeed, she is universally known as ‘Mutti’
1 September 2021 Afghanistan: Keeping the Elephants Away By Gwynne Dyer A man is sitting in a train somewhere in Europe, tearing sheets of paper into little pieces and throwing them out the window. (It could have been in America too, but passenger trains are pretty scarce there.) The only other person in the compartment,
20 January 2021 When Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned to Moscow on Sunday after convalescing in Germany from an attempted poisoning by the FSB domestic spy agency, the regime-friendly media loyally failed to mention his arrival. With one striking exception: Vremya, the flagship news show of Russian state television. Presumably somebody there was hoping