Showing 1 - 10 of 13
Fanatics, an obsessive, and a belligerent fool
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 07/04/2026
» We don't have to look very far to find a useful historical analogy for the current crisis in the Middle East. In 1967, Egypt closed the Strait of Tiran to Israeli ships, and Israel replied with a surprise air attack that destroyed almost the entire Egyptian air force on the ground.
Musk's Starship: If it sounds too good to be true...
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/12/2025
» Elon Musk promised to build a spaceship that would put people and cargo into Earth orbit at one-hundredth of the current cost per kilo and even enable human beings to create a colony on Mars. A great many people were seduced by the idea, including me.
South Asian nuclear war would hit globe
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/05/2025
» India and Pakistan have had several shooting matches since they carried out a total of nine underground nuclear weapons tests in 1998. However, they don't make Putin-style thinly veiled threats to use their nukes (around 170 nuclear warheads each at the moment), and they do understand that escalation from smaller, "conventional" wars is the real danger.
Gaza ceasefire under pressure from all sides
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/01/2025
» In the 80 hours between Wednesday, Jan 15, when the Gaza ceasefire agreement was announced, and Sunday, Jan 19, when it went into effect, Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip killed 123 Palestinians, including dozens of women and children. The Israel Defence Force (IDF) said it had tried to avoid civilian casualties, but it had to kill the "terrorists" of Hamas wherever they were.
Russia's hope for 'General Winter' missed the bus
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/03/2023
» 'The cold is coming soon," gloated former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev last June. He predicted that the citizens of the European Union, deprived of the Russian gas that normally supplied about 40% of their energy, would be freezing in their homes when "General Winter" arrived.
Playing with fire 'in the garden of humanity'
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/11/2022
» 'We appear to be witnessing a dramatic and childlike scenario," said Pope Francis in Bahrain on Friday. "In the garden of humanity, instead of cultivating our surroundings, we are playing instead with fire, missiles and bombs, weapons that bring sorrow and death, covering our common home with ashes and hatred."
Ukraine War a risky game of Mother May I?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/08/2022
» 'This obviously does not happen because of a thrown butt," said British Defence Minister Ben Wallace. But the Russian Ministry of Defence insisted that the explosions that destroyed at least eight warplanes at Saki Air Base in Russian-occupied Crimea on Aug 9 were due to "a violation of fire safety requirements".
Tunisia: The last Arab democracy goes under
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 29/07/2022
» Tunisia would seem to have everything going for it. Average salaries are the third-highest in all of Africa's fifty countries, just behind Morocco and South Africa. Literacy is 97% among the under-30s, population growth is only 1% a year, and it's a democracy that functions under the rule of law. Or rather, it was.
Chagos: a 50-year-old UK-US crime
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/02/2022
» 'The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours.... There will be no indigenous population except seagulls," wrote Sir Paul Gore-Booth, a senior official at the British Foreign Office, as the plan to expel the 2,000 Chagos Islanders from their homes was taking shape in 1966. "We must surely be very tough about this."
It's volcanoes, tsunamis and risk at La Palma
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/10/2021
» 'Don't bother your pretty head about it" is the prevailing media take on the risk of the volcanic eruption on La Palma in the Canary Islands turning into a mega-tsunami disaster. The media definitely over-hyped that risk when it was first suggested 20 years ago, so now they have to work the other side of the street.