Talk:Gwynne Dyer

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[edit] NPOV

I have tagged this section for a NPOV violation. The term "Bush-apologists" clearly demonstrates a bias by the writer of the article. Please do what is necessary to clean this up. [unsigned]

i have remove NPOV as i have edit and corrected the piece to included his views plus evidence to back up the statment.--Crt101 03:37, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
It's still biased- the only actual quotations from his work involve the Iraq War from a recent interview. The whole paragraph makes him sound like a stereotypical 'foreign liberal', which he is far from. The whole article is far from representative of his work- nothing is mentioned about his ideas on History and the Nature of Conflict. For instance, his theory that the modern Nation-State/Economic system is inherently unstable, leading to a cyclicy of large scale wars & economic boom and busts. CFLeon 01:36, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Censor/Censure

I used to enjoy reading Gwynne Dyer's column in the Montreal Gazette and seeing him interviewed on the CBC. I also ran in to him a few times shopping at the then Steinbergs grocery in Westmount, Quebec. I have been assuming that he retired years ago, but I recently saw a book by him at a bookstore, and the blurb on the dust cover said that he was banned from being printed in the Holinger and Canwest newspaper chains. Does anyone know anything about this? (I didn't have enough cash on me to buy the book). He always seemed pretty neutral and matter of fact on Israel, for instance in his television documentary years ago, but Canwest has in the past had a very strict policy of controlling commentary about Israel. Is this part of the reason, or was there some malfeasance on Dyer's part? Seminumerical 14:28, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Re: the phrase "attempts to have his column censured from the public record". The comment by Seminumerical, above, seems germane to a pet peeve of mine: the confusion of "censure", which means (roughly) "disapprove", and "censor", which means "prevent from expressing". I'm sure Dyer has been heavily "censured", but one cannot be "censured from the public record". Has he actually been censored -- as Seminumerical (above) seems to be asking? Clarification, please. Wordie 22:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I am the writer of the last two paragraphs of the article. What I wrote was "apologists for the Bush government", meaning those who view any critique of U.S. foreign policy as anti-American. Surely you have been reading the papers lately. Change it to whatever you like though, it does indeed show my bias against anyone who continues to support this foolish and wasteful war in Iraq. There are times in history when "remaining neutral" is cowardly. Dyer now lives in London, England, where he writes a column on international affairs which is published in newspapers around the globe. If malfeasance is having an unpopular opinion, I imagine he is quilty as charged. Read him and make up your own mind. [unsigned]

i dont think being a fan of him, gives you the right to remove any critism of his work. Crt101 03:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
How is inventing a fictional "movement" justified exactly? There no such thing as the "Iraq-Nam movement". A movement is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "a body of persons with a common object", as in the 'civil rights movement' or the 'feminist movement'. Note that the definition does not include "common viewpoint", something entirely different. A 'movement' is then a group with an objective, which organizes itself in such a way as to carry out said objective. By inventing a fictional 'movement', of which Dyer is a supposed "leading figure", the writer creates a straw man, whose purpose is to discredit anyone who makes comparisons between the war in Vietnam and the present war in Iraq. Thus, anyone who compares Vietnam with the war in Iraq is part of a ahadowy "movement" whose goals must be "anti-American."

Similarly, I don't see how printing, out of context I might add, the most controversial quote you can find from an author to prove a supposed "anti-Americanism" can in any way be called objective criticism. It is also just a tad disingenuous to link to Dyer via Al-Jazeera don't ya think, when it is widely known that any association with the Arab news agency is enough to thoroughly discredit a writer in America's present political climate (despite the fact that freedom of the press is one of the pillars of democracy). This link was certainly purposeful (or very lazy), as a simple google search would have found all of Dyer's writings available, unabridged, on his web site: www.gynnedyer.net. Call it smearing, call it 'swift-boating', but don't call it criticism. These tactics are getting really old. Crt101, if you were the writer of the afore-mentioned B.S., perhaps you need to re-acquaint yourself with the meaning of the word 'bigot', whom you profess to despise. bigot - "an obstinant and intolerant believer in a religion, political theory etc." (Oxford English Dictionary, 1991)(my emphasis in italics) A movement is a group of people who follow the same idea, since before the start of the iraq war, their have been a group of people who have decided the best way for it to end is if america losses. By connect iraw and nam, which was a civil war they claim they are doing the world a flavour, I have to ask what sort of people are they, who follow the trend are easily placed in the follows group.

  • saddam lovers (he only murderd 2-3 million people)
  • anti jewish (saddam the man who stuck it to the jews)
  • anti american (hate bush, love america ha ha)
  • arab nationals (love the arab, they are mis-understood) [last several paragraphs unsigned]


wow lets talk about the word bigot, as i took your advice and looked it up, it actually means:
  • A person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

So people who believer in religon are bigots, wow if you going to call people a bigot, it would be better if you decided to look in the mirror first. [unsigned]

Drew de Souza says: I destest the concept of being angry over a comment made via the internet, but whomever wrote the above 3 paragrahps is actually just being immature, let alone totally wrong (his/her definition and the following statement are not parallel). Please do not discuss the dictonary definitions of a word (as there are hundreded of dictionaries), unless necessary (censor/censure) but instead source information that has been asked to be sourced, and work to make the article full. if the man is criticized, then put in the article. that is all. i will look for information, and add it if possible. 142.214.60.130 14:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC) Drew

[edit] Cleanup

The article needs wikification. Anchoress 08:42, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I have removed NPOV section tag, as that problem seems to be sorted. Can clean-up tag go yet? BobFromBrockley 11:18, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Well I didn't add the NPOV tag, but there is still a citation needed, so do you think it should go? Maybe you should ask the person who added it. The article still needs wikification, the reason I added the cleanup tag, so that should stay. Anchoress 11:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Can someone explain wikification? How can we improve the article to get rid of the tag?GarethChantler 29 December 2006
Wikification means formatting the text in line with WP standards. A lot of what was needed when I placed the cleanup tag has been done, but the article still needs a reference for one of its more contentious statements, and the references need wikifying. Anchoress 03:18, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I've done some referencing, and added the photo/profile box. Are there some further steps that need to be taken before the cleanup tag can be removed?GarethChantler 30 December 2006

[edit] "Views" section

Analysing Dyer's articles and drawing conclusions about his perspective on the world counts as original research (apart from being in grave danger of being POV). I've removed the section completely, since that was all it was. If someone can find a reference to an accredited person, or Dyer himself, describing his views, then that would be ok. Mention of praise/criticism, again with references to accredited sources (ie: not somebody's blog), would be good, too. -Kieran 21:40, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


Most of the views section was referenced. It said:

Dyer's thinking does not fall into conventional categories of right and left. (But to read his novels they reflect the left's thinking) Partially informed by his extensive experience working as a journalist in the former Soviet Union, he favours free markets.[1] On the other hand, he is a strong supporter of the goals of the Kyoto Protocol and has admonished Western governments for not giving it their full support.[2][3] Dyer's perspective on world affairs has a distinctly internationalist cast.[4] In his column he often writes about events in countries that are seldom discussed in mainstream media. He has been a harsh critic of American foreign policy, once writing for example that: "the United States needs to lose the war in Iraq as soon as possible"[5] and more recently that "[t]he US was deeply involved in all of Saddam's major crimes"[6].

There are only two or three comments there that are unreferenced. I'd suggest something like this:

Dyer's thinking does not fall into conventional categories of right and left. Partially informed by his extensive experience working as a journalist in the former Soviet Union, he favours free markets.[7] On the other hand, he is a strong supporter of the goals of the Kyoto Protocol and has admonished Western governments for not giving it their full support.[8][9] Dyer's perspective on world affairs is internationalist.[10] He has been a harsh critic of American foreign policy, once writing for example that "the United States needs to lose the war in Iraq as soon as possible" [11] and more recently that "[t]he US was deeply involved in all of Saddam's major crimes" [12].

BobFromBrockley 11:44, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem is to keep fact seperated from original research (read: conjecture). Stating that Dyer has admonished western governments for not supporting the Kyoto protocol is fine if he actually did that and the citation backs it up. Concluding thereby that he is a "strong supporter of the goals of the protocol" is original research. Much worse is drawing conclusions about how "right", "left", "conventional" or "unconventional" the man's thinking is. I think it could be possible to have a views section in the article, but it needs to stick to views which Dyer has explicitly stated holding in his articles or interviews. At a glance, that means stripping out about half the paragraph you've proposed. (This is not to say that his views on other topics could not be included.) -Kieran 23:59, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anti-Bush editorial

The non-sensical prattle about Commanders-in-Chief not being subject to physical harm struck me as irrelevant to the article, and also a veiled anti-Bush diatribe, so I removed it. I don't see what it has to do with Gwynne Dyer. It was not referenced in any event. The rest of the paragraph really should go - at best, it doesn't belong in the intro to the entire article.139.48.81.98 21:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I would call it nonsensical, but it is certainly something that needs to be referenced, since it is an interpretation of the book. As such, I've removed it. A referenced statement by either Dr Dyer or a critic would be perfectly acceptable, however. -Kieran 14:47, 13 November 2007 (UTC)