Gwynne Dyer

As the Syrian opposition abandons nonviolent protest for armed resistance, many people think this means President Bashar al-Assad and his Baathist regime are in even deeper trouble than before.

Four decades ago, Norman Borlaug, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on raising crop yields worldwide (the "green revolution"), said: "I have only bought you a 40-year breathing space to stabilise your population."

The answer to a question often depends on how you ask it, and Alex Salmond is doing all he can to get a "yes".

"The Security Council cannot go about imposing solutions in crisis situations in various countries of the world," said Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, as the UN began discussing what to do about the Syrian crisis last Friday. He needn't worry.

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 most important thing in Taiwanese politics is always left unsaid. When I interviewed Ma Ying-jeou in 2008, just before he won the presidency for the first time, he was happy to talk about the details of his plans for better relations with the People's Republic of China: direct flights, more trade and the like.

In the United States, where it is almost impossible to get elected unless you profess a strong religious faith, it would have passed completely unnoticed. Not one of the hundred US senators ticks the "No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic" box, for example, although 16% of the American population do. But it was quite remarkable in Britain.

The Durban climate summit that ended a week ago yesterday has been proclaimed a great success.

Where does the male sexual panic, the profound, ingrained fear of free women that infests all the Middle Eastern monotheisms come from, asks Gwynne Dyer.

One senior European politician said angrily that British Prime Minister David Cameron was "like a man who comes to a wife-swapping party without his wife", and there was some truth in that.