Showing 1 - 10 of 10
The air war: plywood and Styrofoam
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/09/2025
» 'Nato is responding with unity and strength," said British defence secretary John Healey. "If you've got drones that are putting Polish lives at risk, then Nato will take them out. There's no firm confirmation on intent, but in the end that's not the point. It's still reckless. It's still dangerous."
Dark winter ahead but jab miracles await
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/11/2020
» All the usual caveats apply: don't go out and celebrate, don't let your guard down, it's still going to be a long haul.
Be suspicious of miracle vaccines
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 14/09/2020
» Nine of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies have just promised not to apply for regulatory approval for any new Covid-19 vaccine before it has gone through all three phases of clinical study. Why would they do such a thing?
Belarus: The beginning of the end?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/08/2020
» 'Stop calling me a mustachioed cockroach," said Alexander Lukashenko. "I am still the president of this country." But that doesn't sound very presidential, does it?
What the virus is telling us about climate change
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 29/05/2020
» Human beings respond well to a crisis that is familiar, especially if it is also imminent. They don't do nearly as well when the threat is unfamiliar and still apparently quite distant. Consider our response to the current coronavirus threat.
Coronavirus response reveals China's fatal weakness
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 28/01/2020
» In an emergency, the good thing about a dictatorship is that it can respond very fast. The bad thing is that it won't respond at all until the dictator-in-chief says that it should. All the little dictators who flourish in this sort of system won't risk their positions by passing bad news up the line until the risk of being blamed for delay outweighs the risk of being blamed for the emergency in the first place.
What populists can learn from the Polish model
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/10/2019
» There is a tension at the heart of populist political parties that may ultimately lead most of them to electoral defeat. They depend heavily on the votes of the old, the poor and the poorly educated -- "I love the poorly educated", as Donald Trump once put it -- but they are also right-wing parties that do not like what they call "socialism". (Other people call it the welfare state).
'World Election Week' no cause for celebration
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/05/2019
» They don't hold world elections, but this is the week when around a third of the planet's voters get the election results for their country or region. In no case are the results a cause for jubilation.
Pakistan's army a state above a state
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/07/2018
» 'Look, we have no other choice," Pakistan's former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said last May. "These games have gone on too long. Something has to change." Then he left to be with his wife Kulsoom, who is on life support while receiving treatment for cancer in England. But last week he and his daughter Maryam returned to Pakistan to begin serving the jail sentences imposed on them by a Pakistani court.
Only the poor end up dying screaming
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/01/2018
» If you had a million dollars to spend (but not on yourself), where would it do the most good? Well, the cost to cover morphine or a morphine-equivalent pain relief treatment for all the sick children younger than 15 years who are in really serious pain in low-income countries would be just $1 million (33.4 million baht) per year. About half of them of those children are going to die, but with morphine at least they wouldn't die screaming.