Showing 1 - 10 of 48
Somaliland: Mixed motivations
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/01/2026
» Last week Israel was the first country in the world to establish diplomatic relations with Somaliland. Not Somalia, a wreck of a country on the East African coast that has been mired in civil war for the past thirty-five years, but Somaliland, a different country just north of there that has been peaceful, relatively prosperous and even democratic for all those years.
Arab fraternity weakens and hegemons rule
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/11/2025
» 'This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper," wrote T S Eliot in 1925, probably responding to the profoundly unsatisfactory aftermath of World War I (although with a poet, you never really know). At any rate, it's happening again, this time in the Middle East.
Kingdom of Denmark vs the Shadow Fleet
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/10/2025
» Back in the 16th and 17th centuries, two-thirds of the Danish kingdom's income came from taxes paid by every ship passing through the Øresund ('The Sound') Strait, the only exit from the Baltic Sea. Each ship had to declare its cargo -- and if the Danes thought they were undervaluing it, Denmark had the right to buy it at the declared price.
Give Trump's Gaza peace plan a chance
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 08/10/2025
» When a bad man does a good thing, we should honour him for it, even if his motives are selfish.
Feedback on climate – not in front of the kids
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/01/2025
» 'This does not mean the international +1.5ºC target has been broken because that refers to a long-term average over decades." If those carefully chosen words don't set your alarm bells ringing, you have not travelled much in the land of lawyers.
Nobody really wants to be a Nazi, but....
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/12/2024
» 'Alternativ fur Deutschland" (AfD) means "The Alternative for Germany", and the alternative on offer is fascism. Not actual Naziism, but the AfD uses fascist rhetoric and tactics to attract German voters. It has also attracted some improbable foreign admirers.
Climate change: the August deadline
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/08/2024
» When you spend four years writing a book on climate change, you get to know most of the leading players. I have never seen them so dismayed.
The gigantic 'anomaly' in climate change
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/03/2024
» It was bound to happen some time, and the time could well be now. We know that when there was strong warming on our planet (like at the end of the last Ice Age about 11,000 years ago), there were sudden big leaps in the global temperature. It wasn't a smooth process at all.
Hope on horizon for starving Palestinians?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 14/03/2024
» Good news! The US logistical support ship General Frank S. Besson Junior has just sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, carrying the equipment needed to build a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza. That will enable the US to deliver food to the starving (yes, literally starving) Palestinian population of the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip.
South Korea: Very competitive and childless
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 05/03/2024
» There are enough people to go around: eight billion now, compared to two billion less than a hundred years ago. Fifty-one million in South Korea, compared to only twelve million a hundred years ago. So why are South Koreans obsessed about their low birth rate?