Stories by Gwynne Dyer
Universal health care: a no-brainer
Since half of that enormous American spending on health goes to profit-making enterprises like insurance companies, there is an immensely rich and powerful lobby fighting to keep the public-private controversy alive in the United States, but elsewhere, even in much poorer countries, it is a no-brainer. Like in India, for example.
The main reason that the Nuclear Posture Review gives for the new weapons is that the U.S. military are worried that other countries may see its existing nuclear weapons as too big to be used.
Democracy is important, and for most African countries—for most countries anywhere—it is the best solution. But the Congo is too big, too poor, and too ethnically fragmented for that to work yet.
Why has Russia given the green light for the Turkish invasion? Because Vladimir Putin senses an opportunity to prise Turkey out of NATO and make it a Russian ally.
Poor Donald Trump. He was simply asking for information, and they’re all over him as if he were a racist thug. His choice of words was unfortunate, but the angels rejoice when an ignorant person…
LONDON, U.K.—The Communists are taking over in Nepal, and nobody cares. Thirty years ago, it would have caused a grave international crisis; 50 years ago there would even have been talk of foreign military intervention.…
LONDON, U.K.—If you had a million dollars to spend (but not on yourself), where would it do the most good? Well, the cost to cover morphine or a morphine-equivalent pain-relief treatment for all the sick…
LONDON, U.K.—It’s going to be a good year in space, and the new players are aiming high. The Indian Space Research Organization intends to send Chandrayaan-2, an unscrewed orbiter, lander and rover, to the moon…Author
Whenever I get the chance, I go diving. The whole family are divers, right down to the grand-children: it’s one of the pretexts we use to get together. And we all know the coral reefs…
“The people behind what is taking place think they will be able to harm the government,” said Iran’s First Vice-President, Eshaq Jahangiri. “But when social movements and protests start in the street, those who have…
“We have three gangsters, one suspect, and a president who is prisoner of a Top Six that is clearly compromised,” said Zackie Achmat, AIDS activist and Nobel Prize nominee, on hearing that Cyril Ramaphosa, a…
I’m sitting here trying to write an article about the election in Catalonia today, because there’s nothing else to write about. Apart from that there’s nothing except more stuff about Donald Trump’s Russian links. So…
LONDON, U.K.—Politicians never lie. Well, hardly ever. They’re not into full disclosure, as a rule, but they know that if you lie, sooner or later you will be caught out, and then you are in…
LONDON, U.K.—Ali Abdullah Saleh seized power in Yemen in 1978 when he was only 36 years old. He lost it in 2012, when the ‘Arab Spring’ was in full spate and had been trying to…
“All of us are saying: ‘Hey, United States, we don’t think this is a very good idea’,” said Jordan’s King Abdullah II in 2002, when it became clear that President George W. Bush was going…
LONDON, U.K.—History never leaves Ireland alone. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the lethal alliance of the Conservative Party in Britain and the Unionist Party, which represented the Protestant minority in Ireland, made…
Here we go again. Whenever North Korea launches a new long-range missile or does another nuclear test, President Trump condemns the test and warns Pyongyang not to do it again, while his generals and diplomats…
LONDON, U.K.—“The president has absolute authority, unilateral power to order the use of nuclear weapons,” said Bruce Blair. The nuclear codes are “the length of a tweet. It would take them one or two minutes…
LONDON, U.K.—“When all the Arabs and the Israelis agree on one thing, people should pay attention. We should stop this Iranian takeover,” said Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month. So we’re paying attention now,…
“Promoting coal at a climate summit is like promoting tobacco at a cancer summit,” said Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, but President Donald J. Trump did exactly that. He sent a team of…
LONDON, U.K.—Grace Mugabe, second wife of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, had a moment of awful clarity about her future three years ago. Speaking about Joice Mujuru, the woman who was then vice-president and the elderly…
Over the next few days, U.S. President Donald Trump will be visiting the leaders of Japan, South Korea, and China, and the same topic will dominate all three conversations: North Korea. Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo…
LONDON, U.K.—China Miéville, a novelist I much admire, has published a history of the ‘October Revolution’ to mark its 100th anniversary (which is actually on Nov. 7, since the Russians were still using the Julian calendar…
LONDON, U.K.—It was a bit like appointing Count Dracula as the goodwill ambassador for the blood donor service. Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint,…
LONDON, U.K.—Five months ago, during Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, he was invited to open the “Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology.” (I’m not making that up.) The huge, darkened room he was in…
LONDON, U.K.—Here’s the scenario. Late one evening Donald Trump is watching Fox News and a report comes on that North Korea is planning to launch a missile that can reach the United States. (Kim Jong-un’s…
LONDON, U.K.—We have to face facts: there is no U.S. federal government any more in the normal sense of the word. Social Security payments still get made and the 2.79 million federal civil servants still…
Catalan nationalist leader Carles Puigdemont got most of what he wanted out of the chaotic pseudo-referendum on Sunday: 761 people injured by the Spanish police trying to block it. One or two martyrs dead for…
LONDON, U.K.—The neighbours are very cross about Monday’s independence referendum in the Kurdish part of Iraq, which is currently known as the Kurdistan Autonomous Region (KAR). They can’t go on calling it that if and…
LONDON, U.K.—Angela Merkel’s slogan in her campaign for a fourth term as chancellor was terminally bland and smug—“For a Germany in which we live well and love living”—but it did the job, sort of. Her…LONDON, U.K.—Two years ago this month, the Russian air force was sent in to save the tottering Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad from collapse. The air was thick with Western predictions that Moscow had made…
LONDON, U.K.—During the past 65 years of military rule in Burma, the army has killed thousands of people from almost every one of the country’s numerous minorities: Shans, Karens, Kachins, Karennis, Mon, Chin and many…
Politics This Morning
Your email has been added. An email has been sent to your address, please click the link inside of it to confirm your subscription.