Any day now, the United States will “come to the rescue” of the protesters in the streets of Iran’s cities and American bombers will unleash “hell” on the minions of the theocratic regime – or not, as the case may be. It’s nearly three weeks since the demos started (29 December) and Trump’s threats are […]
“This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper,” wrote T.S. Eliot in 1925, probably responding to the profoundly unsatisfactory aftermath of the First World War (although with a poet, you never really know). At any rate, it’s happening again, this time in the Middle East. There was another hiccup
Counting Babies in China (and Elsewhere) By Gwynne Dyer In 2014, Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and his wife paid a fine of $1.2 million for having a third child, which was against the law. They didn’t go to jail – it was treated more like a very big parking ticket – but it was assessed
15 December 2024 Syria: Another Miracle, Please By Gwynne Dyer They’re still celebrating the miraculous fall of the Assad regime in Damascus, and the killing has stopped in Syria except for parts of the north, east and south. So what are the odds that the man whose fighters brought down the regime, Ahmed al-Sharaa, can
27 October 2024 Tit for Tat for Tit for Tat… By Gwynne Dyer It’s more like a courtship ritual between exotic birds than a 21st-century war. First the Israelis assassinate Revolutionary Guard generals in an Iranian embassy on foreign soil. Tag. You’re it. After a long pause, the Iranians respond with a ‘massive’ strike against
4 August 2024 Netanyahu’s Game By Gwynne Dyer Democrats in the United States and most people who are paying attention elsewhere in the world were greatly relieved when President Joe Biden quit his re-election campaign two weeks ago and let Vice-President Kamala Harris run instead. They don’t really know much about her, but they know
21 January 2024 Routine Rockets By Gwynne Dyer Not all that long ago, attacking another country’s territory was still seen as a big deal. It was, in legal terms, an ‘act of war’, liable to have unpleasant and potentially unlimited consequences including full-scale war. Very powerful countries occasionally made small, one-off attacks on very weak
14 November 2023 The Frog, The Scorpion and Hamas By Gwynne Dyer Stop me if you’ve heard this story before. Or rather, don’t, because it’s relevant to the current situation, and we have to bring the people who don’t know the story up to speed first. It’s about a frog, doing whatever it is that
1 November 2023 Ukraine: The Big Push Fails By Gwynne Dyer On 10 September, the great breakthrough was underway. “The Ukrainians went forward again,” said breathless reports from the front lines. “The Ukrainian Armed Forces are moving west of Novoprokopovka, east of Verbovo and between Novoprokopovka and Verbovo, expanding the breakthrough zone.” Fifty days later,
2 February 2022 African Coups By Gwynne Dyer Military coups are back in fashion in Africa. There have been over 200 attempted coups in the continent since 1960, about half of them successful, but in the past two decades they had dropped to only two a year. Last year saw six, however, and there have