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 Gwynne Dyer

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Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer has worked as a journalist, broadcaster and lecturer on international affairs for more than 20 years; his articles are published in 45 countries. His book, "Climate Wars," deals with the geopolitical implications of climate change and has been translated into Japanese, French, Russian, Chinese and a number of other languages.
For Gwynne Dyer's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 20, 2013
The problem with Australia's refugee problem
Compared with any other English-speaking people, a great many Australians are openly racist. That's why 'boat people' these days are settled in Papua New Guinea.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 16, 2013
Of spies and whistleblowers
Edward Snowden, a former contractor to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, has been trapped in the transit lounge of Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow for the past two weeks, while the United States government strives mightily to get him back in its clutches. Recently it even arranged for the plane flying...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 5, 2013
China eyes a canal project in America's backyard
It would be easy to blow off the plans to build a canal across Nicaragua to connect both oceans if it were not for the expected support of the Chinese government.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2013
Preposterous population forecasts for Africa
It's hard enough to see how the world can sustain another 4 billion people by 2100. The alarming figure is that three-quarters of that growth will be in Africa.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 11, 2013
Egypt threatens to beat war drums for the Nile
The Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will serve as the first real test of Egypt's tolerance for upstream dam-building on the Nile.
COMMENTARY / World
May 9, 2013
'Genetic' warfare getting less violent
Many people don't want to admit how violent our 'primitive' past was, because they are afraid that our past will define our future — despite evidence to the contrary.
COMMENTARY / World
May 1, 2013
Pressure cookers now WMD?
George W. Bush wasn't lying about Iraq after all. Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction — pressure cookers in the homes of Iraqi officials.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 29, 2013
Third option for global disaster and recession
Unfortunately a there is third option regarding the world's fate. It piggybacks civilizational collapse because of global warming with the Mother of Recessions.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 26, 2013
Somalia comes back enough to receive arms
Somalia was a failed state for more than 20 years. But now it has come back enough for the U.N. Security Council to partially lift the embargo on arms sales.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 23, 2013
Suu Kyi can't wait forever to defend minorities
With Myanmar's army complicit in anti-Muslim violence, it hopes Aung San Suu Kyi speaks out in defense of Muslim Burmese and thus lose nationalist support.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 11, 2013
The Iron Lady's lasting legacy
Margaret Thatcher was the woman who began the shift to the right that has affected almost all the countries of the West in the past three decades.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 28, 2013
Kurds and Turks: end of the war at last?
After three decades of low-level guerrilla war in southeastern Turkey, both sides — Kurdish insurgents and Turkey — now realize they cannot win.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 11, 2013
Venezuela left with good potential
Hugo Chavez changed the political psychology of Venezuela, which now has the potential to be a Saudi Arabia with democracy. That is not a bad thing.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 25, 2013
Nonsensical doomsday scenario for the West
The world's center of economic gravity may have shifted to Asia, but it'll take more than China to eat Westerners' lunch. A coherent bloc is not there.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 19, 2013
Catholic Church is losing battle with modernity
There's no point in going on about how Pope Benedict XVI failed to modernize the church. What the Catholic Church is really fighting is modernization, which it sees as moral decline.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 28, 2013
The Little Englanders are gaining
The real problem is continental drift: Brussels, the capital of the European Union, is getting further and further away from England. Or at least that is British Prime Minister David Cameron's line.
COMMENTARY
Dec 31, 2012
Cloudy prospects for Asia, 'Arab Spring,' global weather
To begin on a happy note, the world didn't end this year. Dec. 21 came and went without a sign of the Four Horsemen, leaving the Mayans (or rather their ancestors) with egg all over their faces.
COMMENTARY
Dec 12, 2012
Coasting to climate disaster
They made some progress at the annual December round of the international negotiations on controlling climate change, held this year in Qatar. They agreed that the countries that cause the warming should compensate the ones that suffer the most from it. The principle, known as the Loss and Damage mechanism,...
COMMENTARY
Dec 3, 2012
Separatist dreams that are mostly just hot air
In other parts of the world, separatist movements are usually violent (such as Kashmir, Sri Lanka, the various Kurdish revolts) and they sometimes succeed (South Sudan, Eritrea, East Timor).
COMMENTARY
Nov 26, 2012
Anti-nuclear madness doesn't jibe with concern about global warming
After the loss of 10 million American lives in the Three-Mile Island calamity in 1979, the death of 2 billion in the Chernobyl holocaust in 1986, and now the abandonment of all of northern Japan following the death of millions in last year's Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, it is hardly surprising that...

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