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May 21, 2024
 

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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
Dec 24, 2006
Next to the Iraq catastrophe, minor dramas marked 2006
LONDON -- In hard news terms, it's been one of the slower years: no great events, few surprises and no real shocks. But as the little events accumulated during 2006, the shape of the future gradually became clearer in three important dimensions.
COMMENTARY
Dec 19, 2006
Warming to carbon rations
LONDON -- Here's the plan. Everybody in the country will get the same allowance for how much carbon dioxide they can emit each year, and every time they buy some product that involves carbon dioxide emissions -- filling their car, paying their utility bills, buying an airline ticket -- carbon points...
COMMENTARY
Nov 30, 2006
The sleeping dog has woken in Canada
LONDON -- "Michael Ignatieff strode back into Canada bearing gilt-edged promises that he had kept a close watch on our political evolution during his decades on foreign soil and that he would be appropriately sensitive to our sociopolitical nuances. He then, by stating a position on Quebec as a nation,...
COMMENTARY
Nov 12, 2006
Time-warp fantasies about Nicaragua
LONDON -- "Ortega is a tiger who has not changed his stripes," warned U.S. ambassador Paul Trivelli before the former revolutionary leader won back the presidency of Nicaragua in Monday's election. Retired U.S. Marine Col. Oliver North, who took the fall for President Ronald Reagan's administration in...
COMMENTARY
Nov 6, 2006
Outrage over simple truths
LONDON -- A "gaffe" is a true statement that outrages the hypocrites, who then mobilize to shut the truth-teller up. The most common gaffes are about politics and religion, because those are the areas where the level of hypocrisy is highest. Which explains former U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry's...
COMMENTARY
Oct 26, 2006
No good exit strategy from Iraq for U.S.
LONDON -- Landlubbers usually get maritime analogies wrong. "Changing course" is not cowardice; it's the sensible thing to do if the ship is headed for the rocks. "Cutting" (the anchor cable) "and running" (before the wind) is what you do when the storm is raging, the anchor is dragging, and the ship...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 16, 2006
More deadly than Saddam
LONDON -- The final indignity, if you are an Iraqi who was shot for accidentally turning into the path of a U.S. military convoy (they thought you might be a terrorist), or blown apart by a car bomb or an airstrike, or tortured and murdered by kidnappers, or just for being a Sunni or a Shiite, is that...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 12, 2006
Kim Jong Il is crying out for more help
LONDON -- In psychobabble, what North Korea has just done would be characterized as "a cry for help," like a teenage kid burning his parents' house down because he's misunderstood. Granted, it's an unusually loud cry for help, but now that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has got our attention, what...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 8, 2006
Mustering the will to prevent calamity
LONDON -- It's a law of physics that translates well into the behavior of human beings: The greater the mass involved, the more effort is needed to overcome its inertia. But it doesn't read very well as an epitaph for civilization.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 28, 2006
So much for Thai democracy
LONDON -- Democracy is fine as long as the voters elect the right people, but they often get it wrong. The Palestinians elected Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel, so the Israelis and their allies overseas have to persuade them of the error of their ways with bombs, bullets and a financial blockade....
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 14, 2006
Twins wreak havoc in Poland
LONDON -- "I am afraid that with Jaroslaw Kaczynski as prime minister, Poland will become more extreme, more anti-European and a more xenophobic country," warned Bronislaw Komorowski, a member of the opposition Civic Platform party, when the second Kaczynski twin was made prime minister by his brother,...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 13, 2006
If 9/11 hadn't happened, where would the world be?
LONDON -- Five years since 9/11, and we are still being told that the world has changed forever. But the attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, was a low-probability event that could just as easily not have happened. The often careless and sometimes incompetent hijackers might have been caught...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 1, 2006
China's revolutionary myth
LONDON -- Arriving in Beijing on Aug. 23 for his third China visit in five years, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez praised the country's Communist leaders to the skies for having rescued China from a "practically feudal" situation and made it one of the world's largest economies in less than half a century....
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 28, 2006
The fat, the starving, and global warming
LONDON -- Being fat is the new normal, but it won't last. The global surge in overweight people is concentrated among lower-income city-dwellers, and some may choose to slim down as they climb further up the income scale. ("You can never be too rich or too slim.") But the real guarantee of a slimmer...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 7, 2006
Merger option after Castro
LONDON -- "Are revolutions doomed to fail?" asked Fidel Castro last November, addressing an audience of university students in a five-hour speech that was followed by a question-and-answer session that lasted until dawn. "When the veterans start disappearing to make room for new generations of leaders,...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 5, 2006
Israel-Hezbollah conflict: the end game
LONDON -- The kill ratio is becoming a problem: Israel has been killing about 40 Lebanese civilians for every Israel civilian who is killed. They are all being killed by accident, of course, but such a long chain of accidents begins to look like carelessness, and even in Israel and the United States...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 3, 2006
Death of the Doha round
LONDON -- When I came out of the house this morning, Jean-Baptiste was standing in the road gazing into the field opposite with a worried expression. He had lost two cows, he said. And he was obviously right, because there were only five cows in the field.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 2, 2006
Perfect storm brewing in Horn of Africa
LONDON -- It has the makings of a perfect storm extending right across the Horn of Africa. The 15-year war of all against all in Somalia is threatening to morph into an international war bringing chaos and disaster to the rest of the region, and the al-Qaida-obsessed "securocrats" in Washington are the...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2006
The oil party is finally over
LONDON -- Welcome to the world of $70-per-barrel oil. That's if there is no crisis in the Persian Gulf over Iran's nuclear ambitions. If there is, then get ready for $140 a barrel. Oil briefly breached the $70 barrier eight months ago, but this time it is going up for good.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 18, 2005
One of the last great anti-America rants
LONDON -- They gave British playwright Harold Pinter the Nobel Prize for Literature recently, and the committee that awarded it made particular note of his lifelong opposition to "oppression." So Pinter, 75 and ailing, sent his acceptance speech to Stockholm by pretaped video link, and at its heart,...
Rare sequel to 'My Neighbor Totoro' to play at Cannes
A screening of "Mei and the Baby Cat Bus," which is being billed as a "mini-sequel" to the Studio Ghibli classic "My Neighbor Totoro," is set to take place at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday.
America wasn’t made for walking, and it’s killing them
A 2010 study found that U.S. adults averaged 5,117 steps daily and that this was lower than the averages found in similar studies in Switzerland, western Australia and Japan.
Fuchu Prison adapting to foreign prisoners
From the outside, the light-brown complex that is Fuchu Prison in western Tokyo could easily be mistaken for a city hall.
Why half of Japan's cities are at risk of disappearing in 100 years
A couple looks out onto the Fukuoka nightscape. Due to its distance from Tokyo and its close proximity to South Korea and China, professor Tomoya Mori believes that Fukuoka is one of the few metropolitan regions of Japan that will see some form of growth in the decades to come.
Japan concerned over U.S. officials' remarks on atomic bombings
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham speaks to reporters during a news conference in Washington on Thursday.
Fuchu Prison adapting to foreign prisoners
From the outside, the light-brown complex that is Fuchu Prison in western Tokyo could easily be mistaken for a city hall.
The politicians moving Japan forward on climate
While not the most outspoken politician on the issue, digital minister Taro Kono has a track record of being serious in his commitment to addressing the climate crisis.
Seoul's eclectic Art OnO shines light on Japan's artists and galleries
Art OnO, which took place from April 19 to 21 in Seoul, featured a modest number of 36 participating galleries from 15 countries.
Want to be a voice actor? Stay 'true to the character'
SungWon Cho is a veteran with more than 10 years of experience portraying characters in anime, cartoons and video games.
Local theater in Japan is more than a hobby — it’s a community
Japan Times contributor Laura Pollacco (front right) was offered the role of one of her all-time favorite heroines, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Bennet, in the Tokyo International Players’ production of “Pride and Prejudice.”

Podcast

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.
[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Longform

Things may look perfect to the outside world, but today's mom is fine with some imperfection at home.
How 'Reiwa moms' are reshaping motherhood in Japan
By Mai Yoshikawa

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Cultural properties:A Fujiya Hotel insider’s view
Cultural properties:A Fujiya Hotel insider’s view

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