Gwynne Dyer - The Japan Times

November 25, 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

Sep 30, 2010

No reason to think that 'Bibi' has changed

LONDON — The headlines in the Western media all said more or less the same thing when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled the plug on the latest round of the "Middle East peace process" on Sunday. "Netanyahu urges (Palestinian leader Mahmoud) Abbas to continue peace talks as building freeze...

COMMENTARY

Sep 29, 2010

The pope and the atheists

LONDON — The best defense is a good offense. A less worldly pope, making a state visit to Britain as the revelations about Catholic priests and bishops abusing the children in their care spread across Europe, might have been reduced to shame and silence. But Benedict XVI knows about the uses of power...

COMMENTARY

Sep 1, 2010

U.S. policy on Somalia sowed seeds for chaos

The U.S. decision in 2006 to send Ethiopian troops into Somalia was one of the stupidest moves in a very stupid decade. Last week, some of the chickens spawned by that decision came home to roost.

COMMENTARY

Aug 25, 2010

Pakistan: a question of water

This may not be the most tactful time to bring it up, with much of Pakistan underwater and many millions homeless, but Pakistan's real problem is not too much water. It is too little water — and one day it could cause a war.

COMMENTARY

Aug 21, 2010

China's cautionary tale

Will the 21st century belong to China? For a while, perhaps — but only in the sense that it was said to belong to Japan in the 1980s. Looking back now, that seems ridiculous, but at the time best-selling books were predicting that Americans, not to mention the rest of the planet, would be reduced to...

COMMENTARY

Aug 13, 2010

The rule of law wins a few against the wicked after all

LONDON — Naomi Campbell may be dimwitted and self-centered, and the poor schmuck she gave the diamonds to 13 years ago is in deep trouble even though he never tried to turn them into cash, but she certainly is useful. If she hadn't been forced to testify, nine out of 10 people wouldn't even know who...

COMMENTARY

Aug 8, 2010

Let's talk about an attack on Iran

LONDON — When Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the highest-ranking American officer, was asked recently on NBC's "Meet the Press" show whether the United States has a military plan for an attack on Iran, he replied simply: "We do."

COMMENTARY

Aug 1, 2010

Probable catalyst for violence

PARIS — Just before Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008, Vuk Jeremic, the Serbian foreign minister, warned that in Africa alone "there are about fifty Kosovos waiting to happen." The 50 African wannabes can take heart, as the International Court of Justice has just ruled...

COMMENTARY

Jul 21, 2010

Rwanda: Kagame's dilemma

Did Paul Kagame really stop the genocide in Rwanda 16 years ago, or did he just interrupt it for a while? That question frightens him so much that he will not risk everything on the outcome of a democratic election.

COMMENTARY

Jul 14, 2010

U.S. bidding Iraq goodbye and good luck

As the American withdrawal gains speed, there are fewer American troops in Iraq than in Afghanistan for the first time since 2003. By the end of August there will be no U.S. combat troops left in Iraq, though some tens of thousands of support troops will remain until next year. And still there is no...

COMMENTARY

Jul 11, 2010

Treason of the attorney

LONDON — Eighty years ago, just after the First World War and with the world rapidly sliding toward the next, the French philosopher Julien Benda wrote a book called "The Treason of the Clerks"— "clerks" in the medieval sense, educated men, intellectuals, who despite their high calling chose to serve...

COMMENTARY

Jul 2, 2010

Accepting Russia as it was

LONDON — The Georgians took down the last statue of Josef Stalin last week. There used to be thousands of such statues all across the old Soviet Union, but the Communists themselves tore almost all of them down after the great dictator and mass murderer died in 1953. They left the one in Gori, in northern...

COMMENTARY

Jun 24, 2010

First Belgium, then the EU?

Bart de Wever, the Flemish politician who promises the "evolutionary evaporation" of Belgium, is now the political kingmaker in Brussels. The bureaucrats and politicians of the European Union, who also hang out in Brussels, will therefore have a ringside seat for the dismantling of the Belgian state....

COMMENTARY

Jun 10, 2010

Finding your way to the world of happiness

There can be few things less useful than a world map of happiness. If you live in one of the unhappy places, there is little chance that you will be able to move to one of the happy ones — and anyway, there's no way of knowing whether immigrants are happy there. Besides, your personal capacity for...

COMMENTARY

May 28, 2010

Egypt's neighbors press for more Nile water

LONDON — After he signed the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said: "The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water." Well, the world kept turning, and now a potential war over water is creeping onto Egypt's agenda.

COMMENTARY

May 26, 2010

Science takes another step down a long road

"This is both a baby step and a giant step," said scientist and venture capitalist Craig Venter as he revealed that his team had created the first "synthetic cell." "It's a giant step because, until this was done, it was only hypothetical that it could work. It's a baby step in terms of all the distance...

COMMENTARY

May 21, 2010

Thailand risks taking road that ends in a Burma night

LONDON — "The government does not want to negotiate, so I think many more people will die," said "red-shirt" leader Sean Boonpracong in Bangkok on Monday. "This will end as our Tiananmen Square." Or more precisely, it may end up as Thailand's "8888": the massacre by the Burmese army of thousands of...

COMMENTARY

May 14, 2010

Escape to electoral reform

LONDON — There has not been a coalition government in Britain since World War II, but people may have to get used to them. The May 6 election left both major parties — the Conservatives and Labour — short of a majority, and put history's also-rans, the Liberal Democratic Party, in the position...

COMMENTARY

May 9, 2010

Don't talk to space aliens unless you're sure they're not very fast

LONDON — "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," said the world's most famous theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, late last month.

COMMENTARY

Apr 29, 2010

Obama conceding lead in space exploration

In the movies, all the spacemen are Americans, but that's just because Hollywood makes the movies. In the real world, the United States is giving up on space, although it is trying hard to conceal its retreat.

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.

Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat

By Greg Dvorak

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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