Showing 1 - 10 of 24
It could take 1 Danish soldier in Greenland
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/01/2026
» In 1910, Henry Wilson, the British army officer charged with planning for a possible war with Germany, visited the French officer doing the same job in Paris, Ferdinand Foch. The Anglo-French alliance was still a tentative, semi-secret thing, so Wilson asked Foch, "What is the smallest British military force that would be of any practical assistance to you?"
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.
Theatre of white refugees from South Africa
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/05/2025
» As my flight landed in South Africa on Sunday, I looked in vain for the plane that was due to take off with the first 49 white, Afrikaans-speaking "refugees" of the many thousands who are supposedly going to find safety from racist persecution in Donald Trump's United States.
Sudan's war and the Africa we don't see
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/04/2025
» Last Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: "Many have given up on Sudan, but that is wrong. It's morally wrong when we see so many civilians beheaded, infants as young as one subjected to sexual violence, more people facing famine than anywhere else in the world.... We simply cannot look away."
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.
Artificial intelligence for dummies
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/11/2023
» I'm sorry that I didn't get my article on artificial intelligence in last week during the "AI Safety Summit" at Bletchley Park, the historic Second World War decoding centre in England. I got distracted by some other stuff that was happening in the Middle East.
Starship: The Iterative Design Methodology
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/04/2023
» 'Obviously, this is not a nominal situation," said John Insprucker, a senior engineer at Space-X, who was doing a webcast on Thursday's launch attempt of Elon Musk's gigantic Starship rocket. So why did Mr Musk's employees, hundreds of whom were watching live, cheer when it blew up only four minutes into flight?
Earthquakes, Turkish politics and culpability
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/02/2023
» If you are trying to dodge the blame for a great disaster, the best policy is to say that it was God's will. So Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, visiting one of the 6,000 buildings that collapsed on their sleeping residents in eastern Turkey last week, said: "Such things have always happened. It's part of Destiny's plan."
Apocalypse may be just around the corner
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/09/2022
» Which would be worse: a global nuclear war with all buttons pressed, or real, self-conscious artificial intelligence that goes rogue? You know, the central theme of the Terminator movies.
What shall we do with climate refugees?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 29/08/2022
» You wait ages for the bus, and then three come along at once. Books are a bit like that, too, although in this case it's only a pair of them, both tackling the question of what to do about all the "climate refugees". (The United Nations' International Organization for Migration estimates that 1.5 billion people may be forced to move in the next thirty years alone.)