Showing 1 - 10 of 44
First as tragedy, then as farce: that's Trump
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 03/03/2025
» Hegel wrote that "all great world-historic facts and personages appear twice." It was Karl Marx who said that Hegel forgot to add that these repeating events happen "first as tragedy, then as farce." You know, like Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump.
The effects of Trump's Ukraine deal
News, Gene Frieda, Published on 24/02/2025
» At the end of World War I, John Maynard Keynes was part of the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, where the victorious Allies dictated the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers. He emerged from the conference distraught. As he subsequently wrote in The Economic Consequences of the Peace, delegates' focus on short-term political considerations, including the desire to "punish" Germany for its aggression, would come at the cost of long-term social and political stability in Europe. It is a warning worth remembering today.
Propaganda shows national derangements
News, Slavoj Žižek, Published on 11/09/2023
» Whenever a country's social contract unravels, conditions become ripe for rumours and absurdities to circulate. Even when these are outrageous and obviously nonsensical, they can give expression to a people's deepest fears and prejudices.
Matter of decency
News, Published on 16/01/2023
» Re: "PM term limit proposal blasted," (BP, Jan 14).
2 coups (failed) and random speculation
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/12/2022
» Could there be anything more ridiculous than last week's failed coup attempt in Peru?
Reflecting on a century of Fascism
News, Jason Stanley, Published on 07/11/2022
» When Fascist Blackshirts marched through the streets of Rome at the end of October 1922, their leader, Benito Mussolini, had just been installed as prime minister.
Help disabled more
News, Postbag, Published on 19/10/2022
» Re: "Bedridden but not alone", (BP, Oct 13).
Despite claims, Russia unlikely to take Ukraine
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/12/2021
» I must admit that I googled the plot of the 1997 film Wag the Dog before starting to write this. It's a dark comedy about a US president facing a sex scandal whose staff invent a completely fictional war in the Balkans to draw the media's attention elsewhere. But sex scandals are not the Biden administration's style.
Biden speaks some sense on Afghanistan
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/04/2021
» 'If they go, we'll all have to go. That's the reality of it," said a British source about President Joe Biden's announcement that the last American troops will be out of Afghanistan by Sept 11, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. (What can possibly have possessed him to choose that date?)
Lucky Joe Biden is thrice-blessed
News, By Gwynne Dyer, Published on 19/01/2021
» Joe Biden is thrice-blessed. Not only did he win the Democratic nomination and then the presidential election, but as a result of the events of Jan 6 he takes office when the Republican opposition is in utter disarray and likely to stay that way for a long time. None of that was foreordained, or even very likely.