47, Canada, Protests, Tariffs

Gwynne Dyer: How Trump’s Tariffs Could Change the World

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GWYNNE DYER, April 7, 2025

Trump’s tariffs have ricocheted around the world. Here’s how it will change the system
He may have overestimated the role the US plays in trade

In 10 whirlwind weeks, Donald Trump had already smashed the international system of rules and alliances that more or less kept the peace for the past 80 years, but his bizarre ‘tariffs on everybody’ policy has given us a glimpse of what may take its place.

It’s the United States against the whole world, and America’s only possible great-power ally is Russia.

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Accountability, Death & Dying, Indictments, Jail & Incarceration, Justice?, Philippines, Terror and Terrorism, The Law — Inside & Outside it, Torture & Human Rights

Dyer: On Philippines Ex-President Duterte’s Arrest for Mass Murders

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Dyer: Philippines drama first step in long journey

Gwynne Dyer  — Mar 23, 2025

Everybody has heard the saying: “The mills of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine”. The saying is a promise that all crimes will eventually be punished
– but it is a lie.

Most crimes everywhere always have gone unpunished. So, while the arrest of former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court (ICC) last week was long overdue, it also came as a great surprise.

Duterte was elected president in 2016 on the promise he would wage a war on drugs, but he meant “war” literally. Once in office, he sent the police out with orders to kill drug dealers and drug users without trial or even arrest. Their bodies generally were left in the streets.

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"New Normal"?, 47, Activism, Aftermath, Antiwar activism, Arts: Storytelling, Catholics & Catholicism, Coup, Current Affairs, DEI, Guns, Hard-Core Quaker, Libraries & Archives, Minority Rule, Novels & other Fiction, Peacework, Project 2025, Quakers, Russia, Vietnam, War & Peace

EXCLUSIVE: A Leaked View of the “Afterlife” of the U. S. Institute of Peace

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March  22, 2025

From confidential Washington sources, the following excerpt is drawn from an account of the aftermath of the March 17 seizure and closing of the U. S. Institute of Peace, by armed agents of the DOGE administration. The account has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Brief Encounter at 2301

Mid-March, 2025, on the edge of the National Mall, not far from the Vietnam War Memorials.

It was almost break time, the leftover dinner pizza was hours cold, and Hennigan thought he heard something.

Standing up from the desk chair, he closed the Security Inc. employee handbook, which was making him drowsy anyway, and peered across the open atrium: first left, then right, following the protocol.

Everything seemed in order: several tiers of closed offices rose or each side. Lights were dim. Nothing moving.

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Empire, Europe, Germany, NATO, New Cold Wars, Putin, Ukraine, War Notes

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

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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?

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