Gwynne Dyer

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.

"Throughout the day, it was like receiving reports from a war zone," said Communist Party deputy head Ivan Melnikov last Sunday, speaking about the thousands of calls he had received from regional offices about ballot-box stuffing and other violations in the Russian parliamentary elections.

The plans for a new global deal on climate change lie broken and abandoned. The usual suspects are meeting again, this time in Durban, but there is even less hope of progress than there was in Cancun last year.

The "Arab Spring" was fast and dramatic: non-violent revolutions in the streets removed dictators in Tunisia and Egypt in a matter of weeks, and similar revolutions got under way in Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Yemen. The "Arab Autumn" is a much slower and messier affair but, despite the carnage in Syria and the turbulent run-up to Egypt's first democratic elections, the signs are still positive.

Burma is the second-poorest country in Asia (after North Korea), although 50 years ago it was the second richest.

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

In December 1893, the Greek prime minister of the day stood up in Parliament and announced: "Regretfully, we are bankrupt." Nobody was greatly surprised, because the country had already defaulted on its foreign debt three previous times during the 19th century.

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." Well, hooray.

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?

Scientists who are working on various concepts for "geoengineering" the climate are almost comically eager to stress that they are not trying to come up with a substitute for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, the main cause of man-made global warming.

Somebody (perhaps a Jesuit) once said: "Force is an instrument of love in a world of complexity and chance." I'd be grateful if someone could tell me where that comes from, but it has stayed with me for a long time because it embodies a kind of truth.

In war, the moral is to the physical as three to one, said Napoleon, and the Libyan rebels certainly demonstrated the truth of that. Gaddafi had more soldiers; they were better trained and much better armed; and they did not lack courage.

Last week's riots in England have rocked that nation and caused much soul searching. Gwynne Dyer sees the real issue as the despair of the under-class, a phenomenon now common in the West.

Former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was wheeled into court in a hospital bed (his lawyers claim he is very ill), and put into the same kind of iron cage that so many of his opponents were tried in before they were jailed or hanged.