World
Dutch election
The Dutch political system may not have been deliberately designed to produce middle-of-the-road outcomes, but it certainly works that way in practice: many small parties, multi-party coalitions to create a
Choose the right word
The writer observes, then the writer muses on what has been observed, rethinks on the sighted, makes objective and subjective propositions related to the phenomenon under scope, and then chooses
Saudi Arabia: gambler in charge
By the end of 2015 the BND, the German foreign intelligence service, had grown so concerned that it warned the government about Saudi Arabia’s new Deputy Crown Prince and defence
Everybody take a valium
When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, he took more than half a million troops with him, and he still lost. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, he used
Trump, WikiLeaks and Russia
When a Fox News reporter asked Donald Trump about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange back in 2010, just after Assange had released a huge cache of secret US diplomatic cables, the
The reunification of Syria
So far the end-game in Syria has played out in an entirely predictable way. All of Aleppo is back in the Syrian government’s hands, that decisive victory for President Bashar
The Gambia: a short billion years
“We will win the biggest landslide this country has ever seen,” said The Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh before the small West African country’s recent election, and he had every reason
After Aleppo: a kind of peace?
Eastern Aleppo, the rebel-held half of what was once Syria’s biggest city, is falling. Once the resistance there collapses, things may move very fast in Syria, and the biggest question
A tale of two cities
By Gwynne Dyer Two great sieges are getting underway in the Middle East, one in Mosul in Iraq and the other in Aleppo in Syria. They have a great deal
Banning HFCs: too late and too slow
The chief source of new problems is solutions to old problems. The ammonia that we used in domestic fridges as a coolant in the early 20th century was poisonous if
