In the past 25 years 67 states have abolished capital punishment for all crimes, 5 have abolished it for ordinary crimes, and a further 35 states have become de facto abolitionists. This trend is curious because abolition has met with significant domestic resistance in a number of abolitionist states; in many the majority were against abolition. What explains the emergence of the abolitionist norm?

After a stalemate of slightly over three years, diplomats are resuscitating the Six Party Talks, negotiations started in 2008 between the United States, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and China in an effort to denuclearize North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and mitigate the brinkmanship of the Kim Jong Il regime.

A number of social, political, and economic barriers to regime change exist in Iran, and each has contributed to the perceived failures of the Green Movement since June 2009. This essay is a discussion of these barriers—impediments to the Green Movement’s success—and the opposition’s attempts to overcome them.

The so called “Arab Spring” has been a popular notion in American media. US academics, journalists and politicians speak of the most recent Middle Eastern revolutionary movements as a single and similar wave of reform that they deem as one that could be defined along racial lines. Not only is this approach methodically flawed, but it also overrides a sense of remarkable national pride for individual nations.

Humanitarian assistance is supposed to be provided impartially, on the basis of need and without concern for the politics of who is right. Civilians should not be punished for the sake of making political points or achieving a military victory. What is needed now is a singular focus in getting the access and supplies needed to prevent mass starvation. Politics can wait.