• OPINION

  Soft dictatorship threatens India's democracy

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/06/2023

  » We're not surprised when religious zealots in some benighted part of the American heartland ban the teaching of evolution in the local school, but what could have possessed the national government of a grown-up country like India to do the same thing?

• OPINION

  In Ukraine, the fightback gets underway

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 14/06/2023

  » The furious speculation on whether the Ukrainian counter-offensive will succeed has been ongoing for several months already, so the first thing I must tell you is that I don't know. Nobody knows, not even the Ukrainians.

• OPINION

  Sudan: Thieves fall out and the people suffer

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/04/2023

  » It's a pity that both sides can't lose in the war that broke out between rival generals in Sudan on Saturday, but the best that the 48 million Sudanese can hope for now is that one side loses quickly. Beyond that, it's all bad: the rival generals both want to strangle the democratic revolution that began in Khartoum four years ago.

• OPINION

  Pakistan bound for crisis amid changed reality

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/04/2023

  » Last year US President Joe Biden called Pakistan "one of the most dangerous countries in the world", presumably because of its potentially lethal cocktail of nuclear weapons and unstable politics. But somehow it staggers on endlessly, never resolving its permanent political crisis but never quite exploding either.

• OPINION

  Russia's hope for 'General Winter' missed the bus

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/03/2023

  » 'The cold is coming soon," gloated former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev last June. He predicted that the citizens of the European Union, deprived of the Russian gas that normally supplied about 40% of their energy, would be freezing in their homes when "General Winter" arrived.

• OPINION

  Israel pogroms reflect nation's shift to right

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/03/2023

  » The dictionary definition of "pogrom" is "an organised massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries." So, there is something deeply strange about hearing pogrom used in Hebrew to describe what some Jewish people are doing to Arabs in 21st-century Israel.

• OPINION

  2 failed populist coups: Compare and contrast

  News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/01/2023

  » Pundits are making much of the similarities between the attempted coup in Washington by Trump supporters two years ago and the one by Bolsonaro supporters in Brasilia on Jan 8, but they are missing the biggest one. These debacles were the most incompetent and half-hearted attempts to seize power illegally in the history of the world.

• OPINION

  Which way for Malaysia under Anwar Ibrahim?

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/12/2022

  » If Anwar Ibrahim had become prime minister of Malaysia in the late 1990s, when he was in his early 50s, instead of being jailed on trumped-up sodomy and corruption charges, Malaysia might now be a very different place. He's finally getting his chance, but now he's 75. Is it too late for the kind of Malaysia he promised?

• OPINION

  Italy: The hard right nears the reins of power

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 22/09/2022

  » There's an election in Italy this Sunday, almost exactly 100 years after Benito Mussolini's "blackshirts" marched on Rome and brought the first fascist dictator to power.

• OPINION

  Could Boris Johnson make a comeback?

  Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/09/2022

  » As a child, outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly said he wanted to be "King of the World". He ended up in a somewhat humbler role, was rejected by his own party's members of parliament for his mendacity, corruption and incompetence, and will hand over to his successor, Liz Truss, on Monday. But the Fat Lady still hasn't sung.

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