Dear Common Dreams Readers:
Gwynne Dyer
Gwynne Dyer has worked as a freelance journalist, columnist, broadcaster and lecturer on international affairs for more than 20 years, but he was originally trained as an historian. Born in Newfoundland, he received degrees from Canadian, American and British universities. His latest book, "Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats", was published in the United States by Oneworld.
Articles by this author
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Views Wednesday, July 26, 2017 Counting Sperm “I tried counting mine once, but I went blind with exhaustion,” tweeted one reader of the BBC website after it reported that sperm counts were down by half in the past 40 years all over the developed world. And it’s true: they are hard to count. The little buggers just won’t stay still. The report... Read more |
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Views Thursday, December 29, 2016 2016 Year-Ender: We're In For A Wild Ride The main message of 2016 was that we are entering a period of economic and political upheaval comparable to the industrial revolution of 1780-1850, and nothing expressed that message more clearly than Donald Trump’s appointment of Andrew Puzder as Secretary of Labor. Even though it’s clear that... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 27, 2016 Netanyahu, Obama, and the United Nations Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is very, very cross about last Friday’s United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the creation of illegal Jewish settlements all over the occupied West Bank and in East Jerusalem. He called in the ambassadors of all the Western countries that... Read more |
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Views Thursday, December 01, 2016 Italy: "I Say No" “Today saying No is the most beautiful and glorious form of politics....Whoever doesn’t understand that can go screw themselves.” It could have been Donald Trump before the US election two weeks ago, or Boris Johnson during the Brext campaign in Britain last June, but it was actually Beppe Grillo,... Read more |
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Views Sunday, July 17, 2016 Turkey's Attempted Coup Turkey's democracy is dead. It was dying anyway, as President Recep Tayyib Erdogan took over media outlets, arrested political opponents and journalists, and even re-started a war with the Kurds last autumn in order to win an election. But once part of the army launched a coup attempt on Friday... Read more |
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Views Thursday, July 14, 2016 South Sudan is Not Africa This is not an article on South Sudan, which is just as well because the conflicts there are almost fractal in their complexity. The mini-war last weekend between the forces of President Salva Kiir and Vice-President Riek Machar, which killed more than 270 people and saw tanks, artillery and... Read more |
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Views Monday, July 11, 2016 Britain: Shakespeare in Action It’s a bit like a Shakespeare play – specifically the final scene of Hamlet, when almost all the play’s major characters die violently. And now we’re down to one. Her name is Theresa May. It has been barely three weeks since the United Kingdom (or at least, 52 percent of those who voted) chose to... Read more |
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Views Monday, June 06, 2016 Universal Basic Income: Why it is Not Crazy and Not Going Away The Dutch city of Utrecht is developing a pilot project for a universal basic income that will launch in January 2017. The Finnish government is designing a trial to see whether giving low-income people a guaranteed basic income destroys their motivation to do any work at all, as critics allege... Read more |
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Views Monday, May 30, 2016 Zika and the Olympics In the past, the only excuse for cancelling the Olympic Games has been a world war (Berlin 1916, Tokyo 1940, London 1944). But if this year’s Games had been scheduled for somewhere in West Africa two years ago, when the Ebola outbreak was nearing its peak, they would certainly have been called off... Read more |
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Views Saturday, May 14, 2016 Brazil Impeachment Brings to Mind Thailand's 2014 Military Coup Q: What’s the difference between the coup that overthrew the elected government in Thailand in Thailand in 2014 and the coup that has now removed the elected government in Brazil? A: The coup-makers in Thailand wore uniforms. The Brazilian Senate has just voted 55 to 22 to impeach President Dilma... Read more |