Showing 1 - 10 of 18
World leaders are destroying the rule of law
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/12/2025
» Russia's "big concession is they stop fighting, and they don't take any more land," US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, when asked what Russia was conceding in the thinly disguised surrender document he was trying to shove down Ukrainian throats. He truly is a 19th-century man at heart.
Three hours in Greenland and plenty of bluster
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/04/2025
» 'We need to wake up from a failed, 40-year consensus that said we could ignore the encroachment of powerful countries as they expand their ambitions," said US Vice-President JD Vance during his brief visit to the US military base at Pituffik in northern Greenland. (It was brief because the Greenland authorities wouldn't let Mr Vance go anywhere else.)
Unpunished crimes, except Duterte's maybe
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/03/2025
» Everybody has heard the saying: "The mills of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine". The saying is a promise that all crimes will eventually be punished -- but it is a lie.
The mother of all climate feedbacks?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 10/05/2024
» 'Just like this year, last year the heatwave extended from parts of India to Bangladesh and Myanmar, and all the way to Thailand. This year it went further east, into the Philippines. So, it's the same pattern," said Prof Krishna Achutarao of the Indian Institute of Technology. "I do not particularly buy into this idea that El Niño is the cause."
Freddy and the Ice: Messages From the Future
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/03/2023
» Two new things on the climate front this week, both bad news. Typhoons used to be like drive-by shootings: one pass, one hit and then gone. Now they're starting to come back for a second hit.
US startup's climate gig stirs up controversy
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/01/2023
» It was the moral equivalent of a fart in a hurricane. The "hurricane" was the explosion of the Mount Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines in 1991, which boosted 17 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere.
What's wrong with the Philippines?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/05/2022
» 'Bongbong" Marcos didn't just win the presidential election in the Philippines this week. He won it by a two-to-one landslide, despite the fact that he is the extremely entitled son of a former president who stole at least US$10 billion and a mother who spent the loot partly on the world's most extensive collection of designer shoes (3,000 pairs).
Shrinking Asia changing global demographics
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 26/01/2022
» In the politics of population, the magic number is 2.1.
Will China actually ever invade Taiwan?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/10/2021
» China's President Xi Jinping promised on Saturday that "The historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland... will definitely be fulfilled." That was a threat to Taiwan, but a threat without a deadline. However Chinese state media, in the form of the ever-rabid Global Times, warned that war "could be triggered at any time".
Democracy is default mode of civilisations
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/07/2021
» At first I was going to write about the "Arab Problem", because there is not a single functioning democracy in the Arab world. This week's presidential coup in Tunisia has probably ended democracy in the one country that actually achieved it during the "Arab Spring" of 2010-11.