Showing 1 - 5 of 5
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.
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.
Stop making the 'Munich in 1938' analogies
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/06/2024
» Scarcely a week passes without some media pundit or attention-seeking historian warning that a Great War is nigh. As always, there are enough signs and portents around to make that sort of prediction plausible, but it's rarely correct. In fact, it hasn't been correct now for 79 years.
Farewell to neutral Sweden and Finland
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/05/2022
» It's easy to imagine Vladimir Putin coming into the shop marked "Sweden", breaking some fine china accidentally on purpose, and growling: "Nice little shop you've got here. It would be a pity if something happened to it." But Sweden is not a pottery shop, Mr Putin is not a Mafia capo, and what's going on in the Baltic now is not a protection racket.
A healthcare no-brainer for Mr Trump
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/02/2018
» It began, as so many things do these days, with a Donald Trump tweet. Frustrated by his inability to kill the “Obamacare” expansion of public healthcare provision in the United States, Mr Trump seized on a protest about the under-funding of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) in London last Saturday to trash the entire concept of universal healthcare paid out of taxes and free at the point of delivery.