22 January 2023 On the Persistence of Politicians By Gwynne Dyer “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs,” wrote British politician Enoch Powell half a century ago – and then proceeded to demonstrate the …
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 …
30 November 2022 China’s Covid Trap By Gwynne Dyer “Our COVID-19 policy is the most scientifically effective, the most economical, and yields the best result,” insisted the ‘People’s Daily’ newspaper in China after mass public protests against the government’s ‘zero covid’ policy last weekend. If President Xi Jinping believes that, he is in for a …
16 February 2022 Afghanistan: The Taliban and the Starving Afghans By Gwynne Dyer Because the Taliban have been designated as ‘terrorists’, it is possible for the United States not only to embargo American aid and trade to Afghanistan, but also to block or at least seriously hinder efforts by other countries to send humanitarian aid. …
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29 December 2021 China: No More Mr. Nice Guy By Gwynne Dyer More than 200 Hong Kong police raided and shut down one of the last pro-democracy news websites in Hong Kong on Wednesday, in the latest sign that the Beijing regime will no longer tolerate dissent of any kind. It was total overkill – …
6 September 2021 Too Big To Be Equal? By Gwynne Dyer Never mind the destruction of the relatively free society of Hong Kong (no emergency airlift like Kabul, but the number of people fleeing Hong Kong may ultimately be larger). Never mind the persecution of the Uyghurs, or the Orwellian surveillance society that the Communist …
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, …
15 July 2021 Sooner or later ex-president Donald Trump is bound to be indicted for some crime. It doesn’t matter which – it could be a fraud or corruption charge, or a sexual offence, or incitement to violence, or even just tax evasion. (That’s what finally got Al Capone.) And it doesn’t matter whether he’s …
6 July 2021 Five times in the past two weeks, government soldiers in Badakhshan and Takhar provinces in northern Afghanistan have fled across the border into Tajikistan after clashes with Taliban militants. They didn’t lose the firefights, and they’re not cowards; 1,600 trained soldiers – over 100 a day – just fled abroad to avoid …
23 June 2021 Godwin’s Law, coined in 1990, says that as a discussion on the Internet grows longer, the likelihood of somebody being compared to Hitler or the Nazis rises inexorably towards 100%. But once in a very long while the comparison is correct. Patrick Cockburn is a well-known Irish journalist, currently writing a column …