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

In this handout provided by The White House, President Donald J. Trump works in the Presidential Suite at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after testing positive for COVID-19 on October 3, 2020 in Bethesda, Maryland. President Trump’s medical team says the President’s oxygen levels dropped and he took a steroid treatment of dexamethasone. (Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian/The White House via Getty Images) Views
Wednesday, October 07, 2020
Trump and Covid-19—The Odds
Now is when it gets interesting. The announcement last Friday that US President Donald Trump had fallen ill with Covid-19 hardly came as a surprise. His political strategy of playing down Covid-19 required him to be reckless about his own health, and other Republicans were already dropping like...
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"There is still a deep well of respect and trust for the United States in Europe...a second Trump election victory would finally poison that well," writes Dyer. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images) Views
Tuesday, September 08, 2020
Losing Both Elections
“To lose one parent...may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness,” wrote Oscar Wilde in his play The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895. In somewhat the same spirit, British journalist Robert Fisk wrote last week “At some point in the next two months we are going to have...
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Crowds of workers walked off the job on August 14, 2020, and marched from the Minsk Automobile Plant (MAZ) and the Minsk Tractor Works (MTZ) after the opposition called for strikes against Lukashenko's disputed claim to have won re-election. (Photo: Sergei Gapon/AFP via Getty Images) Views
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
Belarus: Another Win for Non-Violence?
On Monday, Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko went to the Minsk Tractor Works, the country’s biggest factory with almost 15,000 workers, and did his tough-guy act: “Until you kill me, there will be no other election.” The horny-handed sons of toil simply replied by chanting “Ukhodi!”—Get Out...
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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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