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 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’,... Read more |
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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... Read more |
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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... Read more |
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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... Read more |
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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... Read more |
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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... Read more |
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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... Read more |
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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 |