Showing 1 - 10 of 35
It could take 1 Danish soldier in Greenland
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/01/2026
» In 1910, Henry Wilson, the British army officer charged with planning for a possible war with Germany, visited the French officer doing the same job in Paris, Ferdinand Foch. The Anglo-French alliance was still a tentative, semi-secret thing, so Wilson asked Foch, "What is the smallest British military force that would be of any practical assistance to you?"
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.
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.
South Asian nuclear war would hit globe
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/05/2025
» India and Pakistan have had several shooting matches since they carried out a total of nine underground nuclear weapons tests in 1998. However, they don't make Putin-style thinly veiled threats to use their nukes (around 170 nuclear warheads each at the moment), and they do understand that escalation from smaller, "conventional" wars is the real danger.
Sudan's war and the Africa we don't see
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/04/2025
» Last Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: "Many have given up on Sudan, but that is wrong. It's morally wrong when we see so many civilians beheaded, infants as young as one subjected to sexual violence, more people facing famine than anywhere else in the world.... We simply cannot look away."
Unpunished crimes, except Duterte's maybe
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/03/2025
» Everybody has heard the saying: "The mills of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine". The saying is a promise that all crimes will eventually be punished -- but it is a lie.
Artificial intelligence for dummies
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/11/2023
» I'm sorry that I didn't get my article on artificial intelligence in last week during the "AI Safety Summit" at Bletchley Park, the historic Second World War decoding centre in England. I got distracted by some other stuff that was happening in the Middle East.
Boing! The Anthropocene is upon us
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/07/2023
» 'I was there when the Anthropocene was born. It was so amazing," said Dr Katherine Richardson, leader of the Sustainability Science Centre at the University of Copenhagen. "It was actually in 2000, at one of these meetings of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Scientific Steering Committee."
Massacres and guns, from the US to Serbia
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/05/2023
» Here's how to sound wise when writing a story about mass killings and gun control. Last week saw two such massacres in Serbia (eight deaths and nine deaths, respectively) and only one in the United States (eight killed in a mall in Allen, Texas).
Starship: The Iterative Design Methodology
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/04/2023
» 'Obviously, this is not a nominal situation," said John Insprucker, a senior engineer at Space-X, who was doing a webcast on Thursday's launch attempt of Elon Musk's gigantic Starship rocket. So why did Mr Musk's employees, hundreds of whom were watching live, cheer when it blew up only four minutes into flight?