Category Archives: Europe

Germany voted to rearm—Did the Earth Move? Gwynne Dyer Says Yes

Keeping the ‘Rule of Law’ Alive
/ Politics / By Gwynne Dyer
19 March 2025

Last Tuesday [March 18 2025)] there was a vote in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, that may have changed the course of history. When the vote came out ‘Yes’, you could feel the tectonic plates shift. Germany has voted to rearm.

In an ideal world, disarming would have been the better choice, but we are not in that world. The United States has changed sides and Donald Trump is about to deliver a besieged Ukraine that he has deliberately starved of weapons into the hands of his good friend, the invader Vladimir Putin.

The Bundestag’s decision was not just about Ukraine. It is about the ‘rule of law’, which can be summed up in one sentence: henceforward, no country shall expand its border by force. Borders may be ‘unfair’ and they are almost always the result of past violence, but you must live within them in peace forever (unless you can negotiate voluntary changes).

What kind of fools would try to impose such an extreme and idealistic rule on the world?

Continue reading Germany voted to rearm—Did the Earth Move? Gwynne Dyer Says Yes

From “Tell It Slant”: Fighting for A Future

Adapted from Tell It Slant, a biography of Chuck Fager, by Emma Lapsansky-Werner.


St. Paul, Kansas, 1939

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
                           — Yogi Berra

Plowing to a fork in the road.

This story begins with a young man coming to a fork, pushing a mule-drawn plow down a long furrow on a small farm in southeastern Kansas, in summer heat, circa 1939.

The young man was Callistus Fager, known as “Click” to his friends. On that day, like so many, Kansas farming would have been sweaty, dusty work. But that work was about all that was available. Kansas, like much of the United States, was mired in what is now called the “Great” Depression.

Even many years later, Click Fager remembered the unfamiliar noise he’d heard behind the plow, that summer day: a buzzing that wasn’t a farm sound. Continue reading From “Tell It Slant”: Fighting for A Future

Ukraine Update: Zelensky’s Term Ends on May 20. What Then??

The Economist — Time’s up—

Volodymyr Zelensky’s five-year term ends on May 20th

But he has no plans to step down or call an election during wartime

Volodymyr Zelensky


Five years
ago, on May 20th, 2019, a fresh-faced Volodymyr Zelensky began his presidency with the offer of a contract to his people. “Each of us is the president,” he said from the rostrum of parliament. “This is our joint victory and chance…and joint responsibility.”

The intervening years have not been kind, to him or Ukrainians in general. First came the crisis of Donald Trump and “Ukrainegate”, then covid-19, and then Russia’s terrifying full-scale invasion. By surviving this far, Mr Zelensky has already written himself into history. But as problems worsen on the front lines, the Ukrainian president may be about to face his biggest political challenge yet: renewing his contract with his people with no obvious possibility of elections.

Continue reading Ukraine Update: Zelensky’s Term Ends on May 20. What Then??

Don’t Miss This Classic Radio Christmas Story from Canada!

War clouds were gathering as winter arrived in 1990. President George H. W. Bush was mobilizing a huge military strike to roll back Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait. War fever was being ginned up on every side, ignoring huge protests and objections even from Pope John Paul II.

I was working at a large post office in northern Virginia, moving sacks and bundles and mails, on shifts that stretched into the cold nights. I was surrounded by many coworkers who were traumatized Vietnam veterans, being triggered in numerous ways by the approaching battles. My opposition to the war was very much a minority view there; mainly I kept quiet about it. Continue reading Don’t Miss This Classic Radio Christmas Story from Canada!

The Mounting Math of Massacres

Israel-Gaza: A Question of Numbers

Gwynne Dyer

Being the Heritage Minister is not the summit of achievement in Israeli politics, but it is a cabinet position, and Amihai Eliyahu, the current occupant, really should watch what he says. When Radio Kol Berama asked him whether an atomic bomb should be dropped on Gaza, he should not have replied “This is one of the possibilities.”

Continue reading The Mounting Math of Massacres