25 March 2011 Libya and Altruism by Gwynne Dyer They have committed themselves to a war, but they have no plans for what happens after tomorrow night. They swear that they will never put ground troops into Libya, so their strategy consists solely of hoping that air strikes on Colonel Gadaffy’s air defence systems (and …
12 March 2011 Where Are The Egyptians When You Need Them? By Gwynne Dyer The Libyan revolution is losing the battle. Gaddafy’s army does not have much logistical capability, but it can get enough fuel and ammunition east along the coast road to attack Benghazi, Libya’s second city, at some point in the next week …
25 February 2011 Arab Revolutions, China and Oil by Gwynne Dyer Muammar Gaddafi’s speeches grow ever more delusional: last Thursday he accused al-Qaeda of putting hallucinogenic pills into the coffee of unsuspecting Libyan 17-year-olds in order to get them to attack the regime. But he also said something important. Defending his massacres of Libyan protesters, …
21 February 2011 Libya and Bahrain by Gwynne Dyer Watching the extraordinarily rambling and repetitive speech by Colonel Moammar Gaddafi’s 38-year-old second son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, on Libyan television on Sunday night, I couldn’t help being struck by how ignorant the man was. According to Saif, the protests in Libya are the work of drunks, …
16 January 2011 Tunisia: The Force of Example By Gwynne Dyer The analogy might be with the chain of non-violent revolutions that drove the sclerotic Communist regimes of Eastern Europe from power in 1989. Or then again, it might not. Many people in the Arab world hope that the popular revolt in Tunisia will become …
21 August 2009 Al-Megrahi: Whatever Works By Gwynne Dyer Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was an intelligence agent. Since he worked for the Libyan government, he probably did some bad things. But he probably did not do the specific bad thing for which he was sentenced to 27 years in prison in Scotland. He only served eight …
4 February 2009 Gaddafi, King of Africa By Gwynne Dyer How could they tell him no? Muammar Gaddafi, resplendent in the gold brocade robes that he probably made from his mother’s curtains and wearing his usual bug-eye sunglasses, was urging all the other African leaders to join him in creating the United States of Africa. …
9 September 2008 Selective Compensation By Gwynne Dyer Libya was the diplomatic crossroads of the planet last week, with Condoleezza Rice making the first visit by a US Secretary of State in 55 years (to discuss a murky deal involving payments to American victims of terrorist attacks allegedly sponsored by Libya), radical Bolivian president Evo …
25 July 2007 Libya, Bulgarians and Lockerbie By Gwynne Dyer Libya is the land of make-believe, and from a safe distance it can seem comical. The 65-year-old teenager who runs the place, Colonel Muammar Gaddafy, has an even stronger commitment to fashion than my 15-year-old daughter (although she has much better taste): his outfits are …
29 January 2004 Nuclear Proliferation: It’s Not Always About You By Gwynne Dyer “We were all wrong,” David Kay told the US Senate Armed Forces Committee on 28 January, admitting that he no longer believes that Saddam Hussein had any ‘weapons of mass destruction’. But the arms inspector who led the Bush administration’s Iraq Survey …