Gwynne Dyer
Independent journalist
Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries. His new book is 'Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work)'.
Taiwan is still in China's web of war games
Most news agencies reported on Sunday that China sent large groups of fighters and bombers into the Taiwanese airspace two days in a row. Much fluttering in the dovecote: the Chinese are testing the resolve of newly installed US President Joe Biden.
Can Navalny change Russia like Lenin did?
When Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned to Moscow on Sunday after convalescing in Germany from an attempted poisoning by the FSB domestic spy agency, the regime-friendly media loyally failed to mention his arrival. With one striking exception: Vremya, the flagship news show of Russian state television.
There's nothing special about democracy in US
If I have to read one more hand-wringing article about the "crisis of American democracy" and what it means for the world, I'm going to retch.
Honouring Assange, who is (almost) free at last
On Monday morning, a British judge finally rejected the US attempt to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and jail him forever (or at least for 175 years in a high-security 'supermax' prison) on the grounds that he is, as Joe Biden once called him, a "high-tech terrorist".
Major powers' defence budgets are indefensible
The recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan made sense, in an old-fashioned way. The dispute was about territory -- borders that were drawn almost a century ago by a Russian dictator, Joseph Stalin -- and Azerbaijan had lost the last war and a lot of land.
Anti-abortion laws and radicalisation
'Get your rosaries off our ovaries," chanted the women marching in support of the referendum that made abortion legal in Ireland in 2018. Two years later the 2020 election broke the century-long stranglehold on power of the two centre-right parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. They got fewer than half the votes even together.
Climate change salvation in a vat
We are putting a final end to the fossil era," said Denmark's climate minister, Dan Jorgensen, last week. What he meant was that the European Union's biggest oil and gas producer is officially getting out of the petrochemical business after 80 years.
Is this the end for reckless populism?
There is nothing wrong to participate in a sex party of any kind," said a source in the European Parliament. "However, such kinds of meetings with many people are illegal under the coronavirus laws."
Ethiopia: War in Tigray still a tricky prospect
'Love always wins. Killing others is a defeat," said Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in June 2018, shortly after surviving a grenade attack at a rally in Meskel Square in the capital, Addis Ababa. How was he to know that just thirty months after saying that he would have to stop loving and start killing?
What will a post-oil Middle East look like?
'The only officials present were American and Saudi," tweeted the Saudi Arabian foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, but he was lying. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu really did fly in to Saudi Arabia to spend a few hours with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.