Courts Are the Last Defence Against Tyranny By Gwynne Dyer India and the United States are the world’s two biggest democracies, and both of them seem to be in danger. In each of them populist federal governments are deliberately polarising the population, radicalising the politics, and seeking to undermine the impartial rule of law. In […]
It’s a Shame They Can’t Both Lose By Gwynne Dyer The last time oil-tankers were being shot up in the Persian Gulf, back in the 1980s, it was Saddam Hussein’s brutal tyranny in Iraq versus Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary Islamist regime in Iran, and people used to say “It’s a shame that both sides can’t lose.”
Venezuela: Things Could Change By Gwynne Dyer Bad things happen, and some of them are nobody’s fault. Big earthquakes in Venezuela are about a century apart (1812, 1902, 2026), so you can’t blame the planners and the politicians for not being well prepared for this one. How high a priority should they have given to
10 June 2026 Middle Eastern Wars: Wait for September By Gwynne Dyer Last Tuesday US President Donald Trump told journalists that the United States and Iran are “in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal.” On Wednesday, after an American helicopter gunship crashed in the Strait of Hormuz, presumably downed
Tulsi Gabbard, the recently resigned/retired/fired US Director of National Intelligence, told Congress just two months ago that US intelligence agencies had concluded Iran was not building nuclear weapons. Indeed, she added, experts also determined Iran had not resumed its suspended 2003 nuclear weapons programme. However, Donald Trump said she was “wrong” His claim that “Iran
These countries are absolute losers by every metric: literacy (below half even among the young); GDP per capita (less than $100 a month); health (life expectancy around 60 years, vs low 80s in every major developed country except the United States.) They also account for over half of all terrorism-related deaths in the world. It’s
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio should be careful what he wishes for. Donald Trump has speculated that Rubio could be “the next president of Cuba” after the US overthrows the Communist regime that has ruled the island for the past 67 years, and this week he suggested that this takeover might be done by
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran.” Familiarly genocidal threats from Donald Trump, with the trademark mobster-style “NO MORE MR NICE GUY” at the end. Amazing
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk sent a message congratulating Hungary’s newly elected prime minister, Peter Magyar, for having evicted long-serving populist leader Viktor Orban (aka ‘The Viktator’) from power. All the usual welcoming words, but Tusk’s message ended with two slightly mysterious words in Hungarian: “Ruszkik Haza” – Russians Go Home. There are no Russians
We don’t have to look very far to find a useful historical analogy for the current crisis in the Middle East. In 1967 Egypt closed the Strait of Tiran to Israeli ships, and Israel replied with a surprise air attack that destroyed almost the entire Egyptian air force on the ground. Israel followed up with