Gwynne Dyer - The Japan Times

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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

Jul 25, 2001

Why Japan won't back down on whaling

LONDON -- "They do not allow them free for a moment -- not even at cocktail parties," said Atherton Martin, former Environment and Fisheries Minister of Dominica, describing how the Japanese ride herd on the representatives of countries whose votes they have bought at International Whaling Commission meetings. "It's disgusting, it's appalling. It's beyond colonial." And they'll doubtless be doing it again at the IWC meeting that opened in London July 24.

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 20, 2001

Genoa: the recession summit

LONDON — Only a dozen streets from Genoa's Ducal Palace, the protesters will be assaulting the barricades this weekend like medieval siege engineers. Inside the palace, the eight men who rule the world's richest economies — well, seven of the world's richest economies plus Russia, which is there by courtesy — will pretend to each other that they are in charge of the world's economy. But the G8 summiteers don't really control the global economy. In fact, even Alan Greenspan doesn't.

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 19, 2001

Washington's 'satellites' scupper Kyoto

LONDON -- "If nothing moves forward in Bonn then we will lose momentum and the process will sink," said Olivier Deleuze, the energy minister of Belgium, which holds the European Union's rotating presidency at the moment.

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 8, 2001

U.S. isn't isolationist, it's just isolated

LONDON -- There are a few countries that line up with the United States in opposing the creation of an international criminal court -- Cuba, China, Iraq, and Libya -- but no other respectable, democratic countries oppose it.

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 2, 2001

French success has economists wondering

LONDON -- For Americans who work long hours, get only two weeks holiday a year, and live under a system that defines job security as a socialist vice, the apparent success of the French experiment is a puzzle and an affront.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 18, 2001

The price of the 'New World blitzkrieg'

LONDON -- "The survivors are scraps," says evolutionary biologist Dr. John Alroy about the large mammal species that remain in North America after the wave of extinctions that followed the arrival of the first humans less than 14,000 years ago. And there is no longer any question about why all the rest -- mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, camels, horses, giant armadillos, and deer the size of moose -- died out. In his article in this month's Science, Alroy puts the blame firmly on human beings.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 7, 2001

Can democracy live in the Muslim Mideast?

LONDON -- "No stable system of government can be established unless it is popular." It would be an unremarkable statement in most parts of the world, but in Iran it is a subversive remark faxed by a man who has been under house arrest since 1997. The fact that he is Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, one of the founders of the Islamic Republic of Iran and once the designated heir to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, just makes it more dangerous.

COMMENTARY / World

May 12, 2001

Apologizing for a slight case of genocide

LONDON -- "Not one word of apology has been heard from your lips about the Fourth Crusade," said Archbishop Christodoulos in a hectoring tone, as Pope John Paul II sat with the head of the Greek Orthodox Church last Friday just hours after his arrival in Athens. It is, after all, the age of apologizing for your ancestors, so why not your spiritual ancestors too?

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 14, 2001

Russia's dark clouds have silver linings

LONDON -- Forty years ago Thursday, Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to go into space. Last month, the decrepit space station Mir plunged back into the atmosphere, incinerating among other things the photograph of a youthful, happy Gagarin (he died in a plane crash in 1968) that had hung on its wall for the past 15 years.

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 4, 2001

The second intifada at a turning point

Over 350 Palestinians dead, Israeli army blockades wherever they turn, growing poverty and nothing to show for it all: Six months into the second intifada, the Palestinian facade of unity is crumbling, and leader Yasser Arafat's authority, never very impressive, is getting weaker by the day.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 24, 2001

NATO's weakness threatens Macedonia

LONDON -- Ethnic peace has withstood an entire week of shooting around the Macedonian city of Tetovo, despite the efforts of ethnic Albanian guerrillas based in neighboring Kosovo to topple the small Balkan republic into civil war. Another week of fighting would probably do the trick, however -- so it would help if NATO, which has occupied Kosovo for the past 20 months, could work its nerve up enough to stop the guerrillas crossing into Macedonia.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 19, 2001

An African win in the war against AIDS

LONDON -- Half of all teenage boys in South Africa will eventually die of AIDS, predicted a United Nations report last year. "The world has never before experienced death rates of this magnitude across young adults of both sexes across all social strata," it added -- and noted that 70 percent of all the world's HIV-positive people are Africans, although Africans are only 10 percent of the human race.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 17, 2001

Taliban fanaticism is not typical of Islam

LONDON -- The problem is that the world is actually a very provincial place. Most people in the non-Muslim parts of the world have never been in any Muslim country, so if Muslims anywhere in the world do something really stupid, they will readily believe that those actions are typical of Islam -- and of course, the headlines will suggest that they ical. Like, for example, the headlines after the Taliban regime of Afghanistan blew up the giant 1,700-year-old Buddha statues of Bamiyan last week.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 3, 2001

Tightening the noose on war criminals

LONDON -- For years, former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic lived openly in Belgrade at 119 Vlagoja Parovica Street. He treated with utter contempt his indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia for directing the slaughter of 7,045 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July, 1995 -- but last week, Mladic suddenly went underground.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 1, 2001

The spy game: high stakes, low payoffs

LONDON -- It's an impressive list: CIA official Aldrich Ames jailed for life in 1994 for spying for Moscow; CIA agent Harold Nicholson jailed for 23 years in 1997 for the same offense; FBI employee Earl Pitts sentenced to 27 years later the same year for passing information to Moscow; U.S. Army Col. George Trofimoff charged last year for spying for the Russians for 25 years; and now senior FBI agent Robert Hanssen charged with working for Moscow for 15 years.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 3, 2001

Afghanistan and the gods of little things

God's preferences on dietary matters are well-known: no pork for Jews or Muslims, no beef for Hindus, and no saturated fats or refined sugar for the Western upper-middle class. But this is the first time he has taken such a strong line on haircuts.

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 11, 2001

China's 'democratic' option

LONDON -- The recently released details of the secret debate among China's leaders before they crushed the prodemocracy protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989 don't just tell us about China's past. They also tell us a lot about its present, and even about its likely future.

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 7, 2001

Corruption trials show justice is working

LONDON -- The impeachment trial of President Joseph "Erap" Estrada resumed in the Philippines Senate on Jan. 2, with further revelations promised by the prosecution and "even more explosive" evidence promised by the defense. Estrada is accused of bribery, betrayal of public trust, violation of the constitution, and graft and corruption -- and even among his supporters hardly anyone truly believes that he is not guilty.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 27, 2000

Signs of hope in Kashmir

LONDON -- Eleven years of killing, over 50,000 dead, and the highest ratio of soldiers to civilians in the world, with a nuclear war between India and Pakistan as the payoff if things get out of hand: The conflict in Kashmir dwarfs every other global confrontation in its potential for harm. But the prospects for peace are actually rising in Kashmir.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 9, 2000

Refuges are running out for Pinochet

LONDON -- The freedom to murder your fellow citizens with impunity used to be what made up for the long hours and all the paperwork. Some people simply wouldn't have taken the job of president without it, and Augusto Pinochet was one of them. If somebody had told the former Chilean dictator that he would one day be facing charges of kidnapping, torture, murder and illegal burial, he might never have left his barracks.

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

When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.

Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Students ‘study abroad’ on island of Suo Oshima

Students ‘study abroad’ on island of Suo Oshima

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