Gwynne Dyer

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

Fauci has become a familiar figure standing beside Donald Trump at media briefings, never openly contradicting him but subtly trying to steer him away from his worst ideas. (Photo: Eric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images) Views
Monday, April 20, 2020
Time for Fauci to Quit?
Is it time for Dr Anthony Fauci to quit? Brazil’s health minister, Luiz Mandetta, was fired last Friday for criticising the country’s mini-Trump, Jair Bolsonaro. Like Trump, President Bolsonaro needs a booming economy in order to be re-elected, and denies the threat from coronavirus because...
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Scientist and inventor James Lovelock, 94, sits with one of his early inventions, a homemade Gas Chromatography device, used for measuring gas and molecules present in the atmosphere, during a photocall for the Unlocking Lovelock: Scientist, Inventor, Maverick exhibition at the Science Museum, south west London. (Photo by Nick Ansell/PA Images via Getty Images) Views
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
James Lovelock at 100
Forty years ago James Lovelock published his book ‘Gaia: a New Look at Life on Earth’, setting forth his hypothesis that all life on Earth is part of a co-evolved system that maintains the planet as an environment hospitable to abundant life. Today his approach is known as ‘Earth System Science’,...
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A picture obtained by AFP from Iranian News Agency ISNA on June 13, 2019 reportedly shows fire and smoke billowing from Norwegian owned Front Altair tanker said to have been attacked in the waters of the Gulf of Oman. Views
Sunday, June 16, 2019
Iran's Game
The evidence is far from conclusive, but on balance Iran probably is behind the attacks on four oil tankers in the Gulf last month and two more last Thursday. Those attacks carefully avoided human casualties, so if they were Iranian, what was their goal? If it was Iran, the answer is obvious. Iran...
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"US CALL SET VENEZUELA PLAN IN MOTION": Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jorge Alberto Arreaza, addresses the United Nations Security Council while holding up a newspaper in a meeting which was requested by the United States to offer a statement on the current situation in for Venezuela on January 26, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Views
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Venezuela: ‘Let Trump Be Trump’
The decision to promote Juan Guaidó as a rival president to Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela was clearly made in Washington, not in Caracas. The speed with which US allies in the Americas and western Europe recognised Guaidó’s claim on 23 January to be the legitimate president of Venezuela would not...
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Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (MORENA) party and Juntos Haremos Historia coalition gives a speech during the public meeting at the Children Heroes Plaza on February 11, 2017 in Guadalajara, Mexico. (Photo: Servando Gomez Camarillo/Getty Images) Views
Sunday, July 01, 2018
Mexican Election 2018: ‘Mexico’s Bernie Sanders’ Set to Win
Almost all the foreign coverage of today’s Mexican election focusses on the drug wars and the murder rate: 30,000 killed last year, and looking to be even higher this year. But there are 127 million Mexicans, so it’s not really all that bad by Caribbean standards. Mexico is not even in the top ten...
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Fox News host Tucker Carlson told his audience that Trump’s ‘shithole’ comments were “something that almost every single person in America actually agrees with.” Wrong. Views
Sunday, January 14, 2018
Shithole Countries
Poor Donald Trump. He was simply asking for information, and they’re all over him as if he were a racist thug. His choice of words was unfortunate, but the angels rejoice when an ignorant person seeks enlightenment. We should take his question seriously and answer it for him. What Trump asked last...
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel's U.S. visit is a pre-meeting for the two politicians before Germany hosts the G20 summit in Hamburg in July. Views
Monday, September 25, 2017
Germany: The Rise of the Right
Angela Merkel’s slogan in her campaign for a fourth term as Chancellor was terminally bland and smug – “For a Germany in which we live well and love living” – but it did the job, sort of. Her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is back as the largest party, so Merkel gets to form the next coalition...
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Stanislav Petrov, a former Soviet military officer, poses at his home in 2015 near Moscow. In 1983, he was on duty when the Soviet Union's early warning satellite indicated the U.S. had fired nuclear weapons at his country. He suspected, correctly, it was a false alarm and did not immediately send the report up the chain of command. Petrov died at age 77. Views
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
The Man Who Saved the World
Stanislav Petrov was never famous in Russia, just another forgotten pensioner, so the news of his death at 77 in Moscow on 19 May only recently reached other countries. He wasn’t all that famous abroad either, but people in the know think he may have saved the world from nuclear war. “The siren...
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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...
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Donald Trump's nominee for Labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, at the 2016 FreedomFest at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, Nevada. 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...
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