Showing 1 - 10 of 12
Iran: Drought, incompetence, revolution?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/11/2025
» Twenty years of strict sanctions on Iran by both the United States and the United Nations did not bring down the regime of the ayatollahs. Half a dozen major waves of non-violent protest involving several thousand deaths have not brought it down either. Even last June's massive bombing campaign by Israel and the US did not bring it to heel.
Trump smashes trade systems in record time
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 08/04/2025
» In ten whirlwind weeks, Donald Trump had already smashed the international system of rules and alliances that more or less kept the peace for the past eighty years, but his bizarre "tariffs on everybody" policy has given us a glimpse of what may take its place. It's the United States against the whole world, and America's only possible great-power ally is Russia.
Beware of rogue presidents (this time in Korea)
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 07/01/2025
» 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 time to time, an elected president tries to do exactly that.
Armenia's latest exodus: Not a genocide
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/10/2023
» It is a tragedy, but it is not a genocide. In a single week, almost all of the 120,000 Armenians who lived in the enclave in western Azerbaijan called Nagorno-Karabakh have fled across the border into Armenia. Most say they don't expect ever to go home again.
Syria: The rehabilitation of dictator Assad
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/05/2023
» There is no justice. Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator whose membership even the Arab League suspended 12 years ago, is off to Riyadh this week to celebrate his re-admission to the organisation. He will pay no price for his many crimes against humanity: the name of the game now is not retribution but 'rehabilitation'.
The molecular line between life and death
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/03/2023
» 'We are but one very small company [among] many hundreds of companies using AI software for drug discovery and de novo design. How many of them have ... the know-how to find the pockets of chemical space that can be filled with molecules predicted to be orders of magnitude more toxic than VX?" This is a warning that requires a little explanation.
Vinland history: a question of dates, timing
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/11/2022
» 'If the 20th century AD were dated at the same resolution as the 20th century BC, the two World Wars would be indistinguishable in time; and the Montgomery Bus Strike might post-date the release of Mandela." So wrote the Exact Chronology of Early Societies' (ECHOES) team of palaeohistorians at Groningen University in the northern Netherlands -- and then they fixed the problem.
Sri Lanka: A bad 'Band of Brothers'
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/07/2022
» 'How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked (in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises). "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly." Sri Lanka is much the same.
Vikings and Skraelings come full circle
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/10/2021
» It was already known that the first and only Norse settlement in North America was at L'Anse aux Meadows, at the northern tip of Newfoundland. The specialists even assumed that it happened in the early 11th century, because the Viking sagas more or less said so. But the traditional carbon-14 dates were all over the place.
The puzzle of who killed Haiti's Moise
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 14/07/2021
» The presidential dogs were still alive, which meant that something was very wrong with the official explanation of the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise on July 7. In very poor countries even moderately prosperous people whose houses contain things worth stealing usually have large dogs, and those dogs are trained to attack intruders.