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Dyer column termed ‘gibberish’

January 20, 2016   ·   0 Comments

Dyer column termed ‘gibberish’

I am responding with indignity and disbelief to the article “Refugees, sex assaults and Merkel” by Gwynne Dyer in your paper of January 14. 

Who is this Dyer person?  I never read his gibberish but the title of this article enchanted me.  I was not disappointed.  This alleged writer-of-war in fame offers some insensitive, if not downright offensive statements to, and about, women.  He “doubts very much” that these Muslim German refugees “would sexually attack young Muslim women in public.”  Oh really?  He pontificates that “these mostly village boys consider loose Western women fair game for sexual assault.”  He goes on to tell us about his wife who “when she went out alone, was the target of constant sexual harassment” when they lived in Istanbul. “At least once a day, as young men passed her in the crowded streets, she would suddenly experience the full frontal grab.”

It almost sounds like he passively accepted this heinous behaviour.  We do not want, nor tolerate that kind of behaviour here in Canada, Mr. Dyer!   

As a final insult, Dyer says this kind of behaviour “is not an unbearable price for Germany.”  Maybe not unbearable for you, Mr. Dyer!  The tone of this article, if not the spirit, seems to me to trivialize sexual assault of women.  Why does the Citizen continue to print and (I surmise) pay this man?

J. Fairley

Editor’s note: Gwynne Dyer, OC (born April 17, 1943) is a London-based independent Canadian journalist, syndicated columnist and military historian.

Dyer was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador (then the Dominion of Newfoundland) and joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve at the age of sixteen. While still in the naval reserve, he obtained a BA in history from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1963; an MA in military history from Rice University in Houston, Texas, in 1966; and a PhD in military and Middle Eastern history at King’s College London in 1973. Dyer served in the Canadian, American and British naval reserves. He was employed as a senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, 1973–77. In 1973 he began writing articles for leading London newspapers on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and soon decided to abandon academic life for a full-time career in journalism. In 2010, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. (Wikipedia)


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