Gwynne Dyer - The Japan Times

November 22, 2024

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Gwynne Dyer

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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.

COMMENTARY

Mar 15, 2012

Brace for China's impending crash

Building a skyscraper is the ultimate expression of economic confidence, and more than half of the 124 skyscrapers currently under construction in the world are being built in China. But confidence is often based on nothing more than faith, hope and cheap credit, and a frenzy of skyscraper-building is...

COMMENTARY

Mar 12, 2012

Delusional pretexts to attack Iran

The last time U.S. President Barack Obama met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it was obvious that the two men distrusted and despised each other. This time (March 5), their mutual dislike was better hidden, but the gulf between them was still as big, especially on the issue of Iran's alleged...

COMMENTARY

Feb 27, 2012

Don't sweat the power shift

On Feb. 15, just as Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping arrived in the United States for a four-day visit, U.S. President Barack Obama told an audience of American workers in Milwaukee: "Manufacturing is coming back!" Coming back from China, that is. But while the Master Lock Co. of Milwaukee has moved...

COMMENTARY

Feb 18, 2012

Religion an increasing source of strife in Africa

Sudan was bombing South Sudan again last week, only a couple of months after the two countries split apart. Sudan is mostly Muslim, and South Sudan is predominantly Christian, but the quarrel is about oil, not religion. And yet, it is really about religion too, since the two countries would never have...

COMMENTARY

Jan 30, 2012

Islamist military coups and nuclear weapons

The eastern half of what used to be Pakistan narrowly escaped a military coup last month. Brig. Masud Razzak, spokesman for the Bangladeshi Army, announced Jan. 19 that "a band of fanatic officers has been trying to oust the politically established government. Their attempt has been foiled."

COMMENTARY

Jan 27, 2012

Conciliating the Armenians

I go to France quite often, but after this article is published, I may be liable to arrest if I set foot in the country. The French parliament has just passed a bill, proposed by President Nicolas Sarkozy's party, that will make it a crime to question whether the Armenian massacres in eastern Turkey...

COMMENTARY

Jan 13, 2012

Caveman defense budgets

If you're not allowed to enslave people any more, or even loot their resources, then what is the point of being a traditional great power?

COMMENTARY

Dec 31, 2011

Year of revolution and crisis

Every year brings changes, but some years really are turning points: 1492, 1789, 1914, and 1989, for example. Does 2011 belong in the august company of such Really Important Years? Probably not, but it definitely qualifies for membership in the second tier of Quite Important Years.

COMMENTARY

Dec 20, 2011

Suicide pact at Durban climate-health summit

The Durban climate summit that ended Dec. 11 has been proclaimed a great success. The chair, South Africa's international relations minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, told the delegates: "We have concluded this meeting with (a plan) to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren...

COMMENTARY

Dec 19, 2011

Why are monotheisms so sexually obsessed?

One should not mock the sexual obsessions of Islamic fundamentalists; it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

COMMENTARY

Nov 30, 2011

Arab Autumn progress report

The Arab Spring was fast and dramatic: Nonviolent revolutions in the streets removed dictators in Tunisia and Egypt in a matter of weeks, and similar revolutions got underway in Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. The Arab Autumn is a much slower and messier affair, but despite the carnage in Syria and...

COMMENTARY

Nov 19, 2011

Fear drives Arab League to act

For most of its 66-year history, the Arab League was a powerless organization, dominated by autocratic regimes that made sure it never criticized their lies and crimes. But suddenly, this year, it woke up and changed sides.

COMMENTARY

Nov 16, 2011

The West starts beating its war drums once again

"We will not build two (nuclear) bombs in the face of (America's) 20,000," said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in response to an International Atomic Energy Agency report last week that accuses Iran of doing just that. He called Yukiya Amano, the head of the IAEA, a U.S. puppet, saying: "This...

COMMENTARY

Nov 7, 2011

The population disaster looms mostly for Africa

According to the United Nations, the world's population passed the 7 billion mark at the end of October. We can expect much tutting and shaking of heads over its prediction that we will be 10 billion by the end of the century, but almost nobody will have the temerity to point out that this is almost...

COMMENTARY

Oct 21, 2011

Peace in the Basque Country?

Neither the Spanish government nor the ETA terrorists were there, but a conference in the northern Spanish city of San Sebastian last weekend will probably lead to the end of ETA's long and violent campaign for Basque independence. "We believe it is time to end, and it is possible to end, the last armed...

COMMENTARY

Oct 18, 2011

Time is running out to avoid civil war in Syria

Back in 1989, when the communist regimes of Europe were tottering, almost every day somebody would say "There's going to be a civil war." And our job, as foreign journalists who allegedly had their finger on the pulse of events, was to say: "No, there won't." So most of us did say that, as if we actually...

COMMENTARY

Oct 12, 2011

Up from the heritage of monsters

They didn't invite the city fathers of Ferrol, the birthplace of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, the bloody tyrant who ruled Spain from 1938 to 1973, so the conference can't just have been about fascist dictators.

COMMENTARY

Oct 4, 2011

Saudi Arabia's balancing act

It's amazing how much subtext you can pack into a single word. Consider this recent announcement by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia: "Women will be able to run as candidates in the municipal elections and will even have the right to vote."

COMMENTARY

Sep 28, 2011

Let Greece default and live

Few things are as galling as being right too soon. Back in 1970, dissident Soviet historian Andrei Amalrik wrote a book boldly called "Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?"

COMMENTARY

Sep 26, 2011

Divining the will of a Russian puppet master

"He took off the Kremlin dog collar," said a friend of Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia's third-richest man, as the political party Prokhorov had founded to run against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the December elections blew up in his face this month.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.

A boom for business tourism in Japan?

By Kathryn Wortley

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SWCC keeps changing with keyword ‘new challenges’

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