Showing 1 - 10 of 12
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.
Iran: Drought, incompetence, revolution?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/11/2025
» Twenty years of strict sanctions on Iran by both the United States and the United Nations did not bring down the regime of the ayatollahs. Half a dozen major waves of non-violent protest involving several thousand deaths have not brought it down either. Even last June's massive bombing campaign by Israel and the US did not bring it to heel.
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.
Iran's theocracy simply cannot go on forever
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/07/2024
» 'I have heard that people's zeal and interest is higher than in the first round [of Iran's presidential election]," Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Iranian TV just before the second round of voting on Sunday. "It is wrong to assume those who abstained in the first round are opposed to Islamic rule."
Time isn't on Guyana's side for oil income
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/09/2023
» Guyana is not a "hellhole country" of the sort Donald Trump complained about when he said he wanted immigrants to come to the US from white places like Norway instead, but it did used to be poor, tropical and largely populated by people of colour.
In Iran, all options to curb crisis are bad
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/10/2022
» 'Death to [fill in the blank]!" has been the slogan of choice chanted by Iranian protesters since the glory days of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. ("Death to the Shah!", "Death to America!", etc) It's now forty-three years later, however, and the content has become a bit more nuanced.
Playing football won't turn boys into manly men
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/02/2021
» It seemed innocent enough at the start: just a surge in the number of boys coming to school with notes from doctors saying they were excused from playing contact sports. But pretty soon high schools all over China were having trouble finding enough willing young men to make up a football team.
Major powers' defence budgets are indefensible
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/01/2021
» The recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan made sense, in an old-fashioned way. The dispute was about territory -- borders that were drawn almost a century ago by a Russian dictator, Joseph Stalin -- and Azerbaijan had lost the last war and a lot of land.
Motive behind Russian vote is anyone's guess
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/07/2020
» 'The very existence of an opportunity for the current president (to be re-elected in 2024), given his major gravitas, would be a stabilising factor for our society," said Valentina Tereshkova, former Soviet cosmonaut, first woman in space, and now, at 83, a member of the Russian Duma (parliament).
Fear at the root of America's race problem
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/06/2020
» It's been a bad week in the United States: six nights of protests, huge anger, rioting and looting in 50 cities, hundreds arrested or injured -- but only six dead over the police murder of George Floyd. The number may have gone up by the time you read this, but it's definitely not 1968 again.