Showing 1 - 10 of 14
Kingdom of Denmark vs the Shadow Fleet
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/10/2025
» Back in the 16th and 17th centuries, two-thirds of the Danish kingdom's income came from taxes paid by every ship passing through the Øresund ('The Sound') Strait, the only exit from the Baltic Sea. Each ship had to declare its cargo -- and if the Danes thought they were undervaluing it, Denmark had the right to buy it at the declared price.
The air war: plywood and Styrofoam
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/09/2025
» 'Nato is responding with unity and strength," said British defence secretary John Healey. "If you've got drones that are putting Polish lives at risk, then Nato will take them out. There's no firm confirmation on intent, but in the end that's not the point. It's still reckless. It's still dangerous."
First as tragedy, then as farce: that's Trump
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/03/2025
» Hegel wrote that "all great world-historic facts and personages appear twice." It was Karl Marx who said that Hegel forgot to add that these repeating events happen "first as tragedy, then as farce." You know, like Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump.
A small Slovak assassination bid; few hurt
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/05/2024
» Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State, once called Slovakia "the black hole at the heart of Europe", which seems a harsh judgement on five million Slovaks. The assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico was alarming, but we can narrow the problem down to a more specific group of people.
3 steps forward, but 2.5 back for populism
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 10/10/2022
» The reports about Luiz Inácio 'Lula' da Silva's impending comeback as Brazilian president verged on the ecstatic in the week before the vote on Oct 2. He was after all, fourteen points ahead of his populist rival, incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro, in the last opinion poll before the vote.
Ukraine: the reversal of expectations
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/05/2022
» Two months ago, when Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine, every message from Washington or Nato about the invasion included a prominent passage saying what the western alliance would not do.
Belarus becomes a small storm in a sea of anxiety
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/11/2021
» It's not a tempest in a teapot; it's smaller than that. A few thousand Arabs and Kurds, mostly young men but including women and children, are trapped between Poland, which will not let them in, and Belarusian border guards and militia who will not let them back into Belarus. But the language is getting menacing.
Anti-abortion laws and radicalisation
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/12/2020
» 'Get your rosaries off our ovaries," chanted the women marching in support of the referendum that made abortion legal in Ireland in 2018. Two years later the 2020 election broke the century-long stranglehold on power of the two centre-right parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. They got fewer than half the votes even together.
A warning from Poland on Trump
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/07/2020
» Few people outside of Poland care about the outcome of last Sunday's presidential election there, but maybe they should. Andrzej Duda is practically a Polish clone of Donald Trump, who will also be seeking re-election less than four months from now -- and Mr Duda squeaked out a victory.
What populists can learn from the Polish model
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/10/2019
» There is a tension at the heart of populist political parties that may ultimately lead most of them to electoral defeat. They depend heavily on the votes of the old, the poor and the poorly educated -- "I love the poorly educated", as Donald Trump once put it -- but they are also right-wing parties that do not like what they call "socialism". (Other people call it the welfare state).