Showing 1 - 10 of 13
The triumph and tragedy of Egypt
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 15/02/2016
» Exactly five years after Egypt's democratic revolution triumphed, the country is once more ruled by a military office. General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi seized power in July 2013, and he is even nastier than his predecessors.
HFC ban may be too little, too late
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/10/2016
» The chief source of new problems is solutions to old problems. The ammonia that we used in domestic fridges as a coolant in the early 20th century was poisonous if it leaked, so in the 1930s we replaced it with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which you can breathe all day without harm. Problem solved.
Is Trump twigging to 'rational accommodationism'?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/12/2017
» Here we go again. Whenever North Korea launches a new long-range missile or does another nuclear test, US President Donald Trump condemns the test and warns Pyongyang not to do it again, while his generals and diplomats point out that it "threatens the entire world". But latterly, the pattern has been evolving.
US military revives its tired 'limited' nuclear war theory
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 07/02/2018
» The US "Nuclear Posture Review" recently published by the Pentagon announced the United States will get two new types of nuclear weapons to provide, in the words of US officials, "more flexible capabilities to give tailored deterrence".
Who is really behind the Gulf tanker attacks?
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/06/2019
» The evidence is far from conclusive, but on balance Iran probably is behind the attacks on four oil tankers in the Gulf last month and two more last Thursday. Those attacks carefully avoided human casualties, so if they were Iranian, what was the goal?
Lebanon was cursed even before the blast
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/08/2020
» Beirut has been living with car bombs and air raids on a sporadic but continuing basis for so long that it would probably make sense to rebuild this time with shatterproof glass. The torrent of broken glass falling from a thousand shattered buildings probably accounted for half the 158 dead found so far in Beirut and certainly for most of the 6,000 wounded.
Lebanon quickly sinking in more ways than one
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 21/10/2021
» Off the Lebanese coast about 60 kilometres north of Beirut a 104-metre battleship stands vertically, with her bow and some 30 metres of her length plunged into the mud. The seabed is 140 metres down, but you can even scuba-dive on the stern if you are a technical diver. The ship is a bit like Lebanon, for reasons I'll explain later.
Ukraine War a risky game of Mother May I?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/08/2022
» 'This obviously does not happen because of a thrown butt," said British Defence Minister Ben Wallace. But the Russian Ministry of Defence insisted that the explosions that destroyed at least eight warplanes at Saki Air Base in Russian-occupied Crimea on Aug 9 were due to "a violation of fire safety requirements".
Might Russia use its 'tactical' nuke weapons?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 31/08/2022
» On Aug 25, the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, announced that the country's combat aircraft have been "upgraded" by the Russians to carry nuclear weapons, and Belarusian pilots are being trained to deliver them. It got a single paragraph, or no notice at all, on most news sites. Nobody panicked.
Will we soon have unlimited clean energy?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 17/12/2022
» Nuclear fusion, the "holy grail" that would finally end all the world's energy problems, has been receding into the future at the rate of about one year per year all my adult life -- it was always "about 30 years away" -- but suddenly we're catching up. Unfortunately, the change of pace comes too late to save us from an acute global climate emergency.