Showing 1 - 10 of 17
What would happen if Khamenei falls?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/01/2026
» The demonstrations began again in Iran last week, only two years after the "Woman, Life, Freedom" movement convulsed the country for months. However, the current protests are potentially much broader than that episode because they are driven by the collapse in Iran's currency, the rial (now 1,420,000 to the US dollar), and the explosive rise in the cost of living.
Israel's Gaza plan not quite the final solution
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/08/2025
» 'Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas [from Qatar]," Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu told the parliamentary members of his Likud Party in 2019. They were questioning his policy of backing Hamas, and he was explaining why.
Trump-era elections in the Anglosphere
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/04/2025
» The dictionary defines a "horse whisperer" as "someone who is skilled at training horses using gentle, non-violent methods based on understanding horse behaviour and psychology". By that standard, the only "Trump-whisperer" in Europe is Vladimir Putin (although Hungary's Viktor Orbán and Italy's Giorgia Meloni might get bit parts in the movie).
Why I yelled at the TV during Harris's speech
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/08/2024
» When you find yourself shouting at the TV, you know it's time to take a break. I reached that point last week, watching Kamala Harris's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, and what I yelled at the screen was, "The enemy is us!"
The lost cause of the 'Catalan Pimpernel'
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 14/08/2024
» Carles Puigdemont, the self-exiled leader of the Catalan separatist movement, aspires to become the new Scarlet Pimpernel. Last week he left Belgium, where he has lived as an unwelcome guest since he led a failed attempt to secede from Spain seven years ago, and had himself smuggled back to Barcelona, the capital of the region of Catalonia.
Trump: Neither unique nor irreplaceable
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/07/2024
» Almost everybody who feels obliged to comment about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump is currently insisting that "violence has no place in American politics", but of course it has. Four US presidents have been assassinated while in office, and three others (now including Mr Trump) have been injured in assassination attempts.
Will US military aid to Ukraine tip the scales?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 24/04/2024
» 'I've said before, you do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may," said Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives. The chips being the 10 or 20,000 extra Ukrainians who died needlessly during the six months when the Republican Party blocked the sending of any more US military aid to Ukraine.
Might Russia use its 'tactical' nuke weapons?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 31/08/2022
» On Aug 25, the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, announced that the country's combat aircraft have been "upgraded" by the Russians to carry nuclear weapons, and Belarusian pilots are being trained to deliver them. It got a single paragraph, or no notice at all, on most news sites. Nobody panicked.
Climate report: The language of the scientists
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/08/2021
» There are 150 new coal-fired plants under construction or already approved and funded in the world, so you can't really say that we are taking global warming seriously yet. But at least the scientists who wrote the report on the state of play that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published on Friday are starting to use the right language.
Pantomimes, Brexit and Boris Johnson
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/10/2020
» The British pantomime is a traditional Christmas entertainment in which stock characters face imaginary dangers and audience participation is encouraged ("He's behind you!"), but the play never frightens the children and it always has a happy ending.