Gwynne Dyer

By Gwynne Dyer ‘Cad.’ ‘Scoundrel.’ ‘Rotter.’ The words that members of the British public used to describe Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the aftermath of last weekend’s failed attempt ...

“Ninety per cent of ice flowing to the sea from the Antarctic ice sheet, and about half of that lost from Greenland, travels in narrow, fast ice streams measuring tens ...

‘What happens in Davos stays in Davos’, they say – or at least it should stay there, because some foolish things are said at the ‘World Economic Forum’, the annual conclave ...

“Well, my dear, we didn’t know where to look. The old codger was getting away with it again, fielding the questions like a man only nine-tenths of his age, ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin will almost certainly not be in power three years from now. The war he foolishly began in Ukraine has fatally undermined his political credibility among the ...

Four months ago Jonathan Powell warned that the ‘Good Friday’ agreement of 1998 that ended 30 years of killing in Northern Ireland was at risk. “What worries me is the casual political ...

We were talking recently about how clever the Ukrainians had been to call the invading Russian troops ‘Orcs’ even before all the atrocities in the Russian-occupied towns around Kyiv came ...

Two months ago, when Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine, every message from Washington or Nato about the invasion included a prominent passage saying what the western alliance would not ...

Tropical Storm Ana in January, Tropical Cyclone Batsirai in February, then Dumako, Emnati and Gombe in quick succession: three cyclones and two ‘tropical storms’ in six weeks hitting the coasts ...

Last Sunday Vladimir Soloviev, the anchor of Russia’s most popular current affairs show, Sunday Evening, was delivering his usual ‘all is going splendidly’ take on the war in Ukraine ...

It’s generally bad form to quote another journalist, but Stewart Lee’s day job is stand-up comedian, so we can make an exception just this once. Writing in The ...

By Gwynne Dyer Ukraine wants more offensive weapons including modern tanks, self-propelled artillery and combat aircraft from Nato countries for its war with the Russian invaders, but it won’t ...

Two weeks ago, the three biggest wars in the world were in Ukraine, Ethiopia and Yemen. Now truces have silenced the guns and the air strikes in two of the ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin may not be able to save himself, but he may already have saved another despot, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban. There’s an election in ...

Russian troops are stalled for the third week outside most of the major cities of eastern and central Ukraine, but they have failed to surround and cut off any of ...

It was my wife Tina who noticed it first, a couple of weeks ago. Her father Charl, a clever, gentle man whom we all loved, was addicted to steroids – a ...

From occupation to thousands of refugees Now that Russian President Vladimir Putin has invaded Ukraine and foreclosed his and everybody else’s other options, certain aspects of the near future ...

Because the Taliban have been designated as ‘terrorists’, it is possible for the United States not only to embargo American aid and trade to Afghanistan, but also to block or ...

At the stroke of midnight last Friday, half of Germany’s remaining nuclear power stations closed down. The remaining three plants (of an original 17) will shut down on December 31 of ...

As a dreadful year draws to an end and the Omicron variant turns out to be less lethal than its predecessors, premature outbreaks of cheerfulness have been spotted in many ...

The geopolitical question of the moment is: how important is it to humour Russian leader Vladimir Putin? The answer is: not very. Throw him a fish or two, because he’...

By Gwynne Dyer The “new normal”, said International Energy Agency spokesperson Heymi Bahar last May, may be a far faster expansion of renewable energy than expected, driven mainly by market ...

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 ...

The new Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus was discovered last week by scientists in South Africa and Botswana, the only countries in southern Africa that have the skills and ...