Popular uprisings continue to shake the Arab world; the Libyan conflict drags on; the Hamas-Fatah rapprochement suggests new directions for the Palestinian struggle. Immanuel Wallerstein comments on these and other developments; he also analyzes the current state of US power and global influence.

Innocent civilians in Libya were about to be slaughtered en masse, so the world community had to do something. Who propagated that message, and why? And what aren't we hearing about the reasons for the crackdown on people's uprisings in places like Bahrain? Vijay Prashad weighs in on the Arab Spring and the situation, past and present, in Libya.

Led by radical reform-minded rulers, Iran and Turkey embarked on a democratic trajectory in the early 1900s, and those two nation's democratic traditions suggests the basis for a future, very productive relationship with the US. So argues Stephen Kinzer in his new book, which recounts a series of turbulent and extraordinary events in the histories of Iran and Turkey.

The republic of Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula has come under great scrutiny by the Obama administration. Foreign policy analyst Conn Hallinan explains what the interest in Yemen might tell us about US geopolitical intentions in Asia. And Elizabeth Kneebone, co-author of a new report, talks about how American suburbs have become home to the largest population of poor people in the country.