The Arab Spring uprisings were arguably the most significant events of the last 12 months. Protests are still raging across the region, even after regimes were toppled. Journalist and author F. William Engdahl gives his view on the Arab world in 2012.

Palestinians have endured decades of ruthless occupation. World leaders decline support. They're left largely on their own despite growing millions globally supporting them.

Life in occupied Palestine is harsh and repressive. On December 26, Jerusalem's mayor, Nir Barakat, delivered another blow. The Municipality will classify 70,000 Israeli Arab citizens non-residents and involuntarily transfer them to West Bank locations.

At issue is entirely Judaizing Jerusalem through forced ethnic cleansing to facilitate escalated settlement construction. It's also part of creating a greater Jerusalem and preventing a two-state solution.

Two new Haaretz reports are also significant heading into 2012, one by writer Barak Ravid.

After refusing peace negotiations with Israel unless illegal settlement construction stops, he said:

"The Palestinian leadership submitted a proposal to renew peace talks with Israel that drops their longstanding demand that Israel ceases all West Bank settlement construction, a top Israeli official said on Wednesday."

Don Quixote devoted himself to tilting at windmills: In his imagination he viewed them as a menacing, monstrous enemy that must be destroyed. He is considered a romantic figure, a hero willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of his love and ideas. Yet with all this romance, people sometimes forget that Don Quixote did not fight real monsters, but rather, figments of his imagination. He was a hero, but a pathetic one.

In mid December, Ron Dermer, a senior advisor to Israel's prime minister, sent a letter to one of the New York Times' editors. The letter was polite and bordered on flattery, yet it was meant to serve as a declaration of war.

The New York Times offered Netanyahu the opportunity to write an opinion piece. Dermer declined the offer on Netanyahu's behalf. The explanation given: Last May, the newspaper published, without qualifications, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' distorted version regarding the historical events that preceded the State of Israel's inception.

Rick Santorum said today that would be in favor of launching airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

"We will degrade those facilities through airstrikes, and make it very public that we are doing that," Santorum said on Meet the Press.

Iran announced today that it had created the country's first nuclear fuel rod, a key component in a reactor that can also be used to produce weapons grade uranium.

Several of the GOP candidates have expressed increased concerns over Iran's nuclear program after the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report that says Iran is making progress.

Scientists and researchers at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran have successfully tested the first domestically produced nuclear fuel rod containing natural uranium, Iranian news agencies reported on Sunday.

According to the reports, the first nuclear fuel rod was loaded into the core of the Tehran research reactor as part of an experiment to test its performance in operation.

Now Iran should convert fuel rods into fuel plates to power the Tehran research reactor, which produces radioisotopes for cancer treatment.

Iran has constructed an advanced plant at the Isfahan nuclear facility for manufacturing nuclear fuel plates. With the construction of the plant, Iran is now among the few countries that can manufacture both nuclear fuel rods and plates.

Iran has claimed to have successfully tested a new medium-range ground-to-air missile during naval exercises in the Gulf, amid rising tensions over the country's nuclear programme.

State news agency Irna yesterday quoted Iran's naval commander, Mahmoud Mousavi, as saying the missile was equipped with the latest technology and intelligent systems.

The missile test was made during 10 days of naval exercises to the east of the Straits of Hormuz, the narrowest section of the Gulf, which Iran has threatened to close in the event of western sanctions on its oil exports.

The exercises come a few weeks before EU foreign ministers meet to consider further sanctions, possibly including an oil embargo against Tehran, after an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report in November confirmed western allegations that Iran had worked on nuclear weapons designs, at least until 2003, and may have carried out experiments more recently.

These were among the complaints registered the last time this nation had a king:

"He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
"He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
"He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
"He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
"He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
"He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
"For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
"For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
"For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
"He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation."

To prevent the U.S. government from behaving like a king, the drafters of the U.S. Constitution empowered an elected legislature to write every law, to declare every war, and to remove its executive from office. To further prevent the abuse of individuals' rights, those authors wrote into the Constitution, even prior to the Bill of Rights, the right to habeas corpus and the right never to be punished for treason unless convicted in an open court on the testimony of at least two witnesses to an overt act of war or assistance of an enemy.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned on Saturday that the country's future hung in the balance in 2012 amid the eurozone debt crisis but said ratings agencies would not decide French policy.

"France's destiny could once again be tipped" in 2012, Sarkozy said in a televised New Year's address. "Emerging from the crisis, building a new model for growth, giving birth to a new Europe -- these are some of the challenges that await us."

"This crisis... probably the most serious since World War II, this crisis is not over," Sarkozy said.

"Yet there are reasons for hope... We must, we can keep confidence in the future," he said.

The speech was Sarkozy's last New Year's address before France heads to the polls for the first round of a presidential election in April.

"What is happening in the world announces that 2012 will be a year full of risks but also full of possibilities. Full of hope, if we know how to face the challenges. Full of dangers, if we stand still," Sarkozy said.

President Giorgio Napolitano on Saturday called on Italians to make sacrifices to prevent the "financial collapse of Italy".

"Sacrifices are necessary to ensure the future of young people, it's our objective and a commitment we cannot avoid," he said in a New Year's speech to the nation.

The eurozone's third largest economy, Italy sparked fears in 2011 that its toxic mix of low growth, high debt and spiralling borrowing costs could force it to seek a bailout like fellow eurozone members Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

"No-one, no social group, can today avoid the commitment to contribute to the clean up of public finances in order to prevent the financial collapse of Italy," he said.

Had Steve Jobs been an Israeli, Apple's slogan would not have been "Think Different." It would have been "Think Like Everyone Else."

(Inspired by the bestseller Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson )

1. Had Steve Jobs been an Israeli, his father - who was of Syrian extraction - would have been hunted by the Oz immigration police. Instead of completing a doctorate in international relations at the University of Michigan, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali would have been shoved into some prison truck in the middle of the night and from there thrown into the "prison facility" near Hadera. Jobs wouldn't have been born at all and, even if he had, he would quickly have been spotted in the gunsight of Interior Minister Eli Yishai and kicked out of here, the sooner and the further the better.
2. Had Steve Jobs been an Israeli, it is doubtful whether his fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Hill, would have noticed his exceptional talents. It is also doubtful whether his literature teacher would have taken him, in his senior year, on an "inspiring snow hike in Yosemite National Park." Instead, Jobs would have been required to memorize the difference between "chalky soil" and "clay soil"; to swallow, every year, the pornography of violence toward children called "Holocaust studies in school"; and, in his last year in high school, to be preoccupied with only one question - whether to enlist in the elite Maglan unit or the elite Duvdevan unit in the Israel Defense Forces.