Showing 1 - 10 of 11
Climates of fear lead to 'shoot-downs'
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/01/2020
» One of the main causes of death for airline passengers in recent decades is being shot down by somebody's military. Not the very biggest, of course: accidents account for nine-tenths of all deaths in civilian airline crashes, and terrorist attacks and hijackings cause most of the rest. But a solid 2.5% of the deaths are due to trigger-happy people in military uniforms.
Silly buggers: Russia, US play chicken
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/06/2017
» I don't remember which navy I was in when I first heard the term "silly buggers", but the meaning was clear. It included some sensible exercises like "man overboard" drills, but the heart and soul of the game was high-speed manoeuvres by ships travelling in close company. These sometimes got quite exciting, because ships don't have brakes.
Iran, Israel is a panto crisis, not a real war
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/04/2024
» Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's "Supreme Leader", is embarrassed and humiliated by the complete failure of his drone and missile attack on Israel, but does US President Joe Biden have the empathy to feel sorry for his old adversary in his time of trouble?
Iran-US: Man's gotta do what a man's gotta do
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/02/2024
» In the immediate aftermath of the massacre of 1,140 Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists last October, US President Joe Biden went to Israel and gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu some good advice.
Mideast missile madness gets even worse
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/01/2024
» Not all that long ago, attacking another country's territory was still seen as a big deal. It was, in legal terms, an "act of war", liable to have unpleasant and potentially unlimited consequences, including full-scale war. Very powerful countries occasionally made small, one-off attacks on very weak ones to "discipline" them, but even that was relatively rare.
Putin provides a shot in the arm for Nato
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 12/07/2023
» When Nato held its annual summit in Brussels two years ago, all 31 presidents and prime ministers of the alliance’s member states dutifully showed up, but their hearts weren’t really in it. France’s President Emmanuel Macron had publicly declared Nato “brain-dead” in 2019, and nobody could find a good reason to disagree.
Micro-suicide drones a real Xmas t(h)reat
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/12/2022
» Some lucky boys and girls are going to find micro-suicide drones in their stockings this Christmas! Get your orders in now!
We're safe from non-existent nukes in Iran
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/04/2021
» First, the good news. The US and Iran had talks in Vienna on Tuesday, and the nuclear deal they and all the other great powers signed in 2015 is coming back.
Azerbaijan wins the war, but few notice
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 29/10/2020
» The month-old war between Azerbaijan and Armenia is so low on everybody else's list of concerns that when Azerbaijan won the war last Monday morning, hardly anybody in the media elsewhere even noticed.
The Middle East: Winners and losers
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 30/10/2019
» The death of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi serves as a symbolic full stop to the many civil wars that have engulfed Syria in the past eight years, although Baghdadi was not personally in charge of anything by the time he died. The outcome of all those wars was already becoming clear, and it is the Russians and Bashar al-Assad who have won.