19 March 2025 Keeping the ‘Rule of Law’ Alive By Gwynne Dyer Last Tuesday there was a vote in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, that may have changed the course of history. When the vote came out ‘Yes’, you could feel the tectonic plates shift. Germany has voted to rearm. In […]
16 February 2025 Different Kinds of Thieves By Gwynne Dyer What’s the difference between smash-and-grab raids and protection rackets? Not all that much from the legal point of view, but protection rackets have a lower level of risk and a higher rate of returns. Take Rwanda, for example. President Paul Kagame is running no personal
14 January 2025 Vintage Tonnage By Gwynne Dyer The name is brilliant: ‘vintage tonnage’. It evokes 17th-century pirate vessels flying the skull-and-crossbones, 18th-century ships-of-the-line bristling with cannons, or even 19th-century clipper ships in full sail bringing tea to England and America. The images are always romantic and often beautiful . Whereas the reality is just
5 January 2025 Rogue Presidents By Gwynne Dyer Turning yourself from a democratically elected president into a dictator is a tricky operation, and most people who try it fail. It’s called a ‘self-coup’, from the Spanish ‘auto-golpe’, and to try it without first gaining the support of the armed forces is sheer lunacy. Yet from
4 December 2024 South Korea: What Did the Army Do? By Gwynne Dyer The South Korean president’s declaration of martial law on Tuesday came out of a clear blue sky. President Yoon Suk Yeol’s television broadcast made no sense whatever because there was no need to “to protect the country from North Korea’s Communist forces
6 November 2024 The Night of the Old White Men By Gwynne Dyer The Roman empire survived for four centuries despite having many rulers worse than Donald Trump (e.g. Caligula, Nero and Commodus), so we should not write off the United States just yet (250 years and counting). We should not even give up hope
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
21 October 2024 US Election: The Gender Gap and the Comprehension Gap By Gwynne Dyer Donald Trump knows that he could lose the US election in two weeks’ time and he thinks that he knows why. “You have one issue, you have the issue of abortion,” he said recently on Fox and Friends. “Without abortion,
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8 April 2024 Middle East: A Bigger War? What should you do when your government assures you that everything is under control and says there is no need to buy generators, stock up on food and withdraw money from the bank? You should immediately get your money out of the bank, stock up on food,
10 March 2024 Israel-Gaza: ‘No Boots on the Ground’ By Gwynne Dyer Good news! The US logistical support ship General Frank S. Besson Junior has just sailed from Norfolk, Virginia carrying the equipment needed to build a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza. That will enable the US to deliver food to the starving