As President Barack Obama put it in a November 2010 speech, the Constitution of India and the United States Constitution “begin with the same revolutionary words.” Those words, of course, are “We the People.”

This past week the now hydra-like Greek debt crisis reared yet another one of its re-growing heads. Anti-austerity protests returned to Athens as Greek ministers attempted to acquiesce to the demands of European Union leaders who thought that the problem had already been dealt with. The continuation of the Greek recession, now entering historic periods of length and severity at five years and a 16 percent decrease from pre-recession GDP, should not be seen as a surprise.

2012, by all accounts, will be a year for the history books.

Turath, the Arab Students Group, hosted a debate last night on President Obama’s Middle East Foreign Policy that brought together the College Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Socialists, and The Current (Jewish-affairs magazine).

Last column, I wrote about the events in the Middle East as a sort of “grand game” between Israel and the United States against Iran. Recently, some commentators and writers have gone as far as to insinuate that what we are seeing is an attempt to destabilize and overthrow a regime that is, in some fashion, legitimate.

A Look Inside A Kenyan Landfill

Mingming Feng covers CPU's debate between the College Democrats and the College Republicans on affirmative action.

A great deal has been written on President Obama’s continuation of many of the Bush administration’s policies in regards to terrorism. Growth in the size and operational tempo of special warfare units, the extensive use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) against terrorist targets worldwide, and the National Security Agency's (NSA) ongoing warrantless surveillance programs – all of these began with President Bush.

It’s official. The war that has topped headlines for half of my life is officially being drawn down, and within a few more years, it will probably be over. I am talking, of course, about the war in Afghanistan.

You have to admit: The current crop of Latin American socialist leaders is the gift that just keeps on giving.

This month, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev sent a bill to the Duma calling for the reinstatement of direct gubernatorial elections by the people of Russia’s provinces.

The past year has been a most tumultuous one for the nations of the eurozone, from the sunny shores of debt-ridden Greece to her disgruntled northern neighbors. The seventeen-member union has approached the brink of disaster and backed down seemingly several times a day for months, exhausting lenders and spectators, while inciting political unrest throughout the region.

This week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran asserted that Iran was ready for negotiations on its nuclear (weapons) program. Indeed, he insisted that it always had been, and that European and American declarations to the contrary were, in fact, “excuses.”

On December 6 this past year, I was anxious to get to Goma, a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to witness the nation’s presidential election.

The problem with megalomaniacs is that they never stick to the script. Newt Gingrich is one of the few men in American public life that can get away with saying whatever he wants. Whatever nuance exists in his public persona is masked by the verbal violence he does to anyone who gets in his way. The conventional wisdom is that this strength, by far his greatest, will be his undoing. The reality is more complicated.

On December 17, 2011, North Korea lost Kim Jong-il ­– its “Dear Leader” – to a heart attack. Without missing a beat, North Korea’s state-run media anointed his third son Kim Jong-un as the “Great Successor” and placed the fate of the North Korean people squarely in his 28-year-old hands. One look at North Korea’s pudgy new protagonist is enough to make me worry not only about the fate of the North Korean people, but about the future security of the East Asian region as a whole.

In the past year, revolutions have swept through Northern Africa and the Middle East in what has been dubbed the Arab Spring. How has this wave of reformative spirit affected the condition of countries around the Middle East, either in terms of internal or diplomatic change? What do you foresee as potential reconciliation for the instability and popular dissatisfaction that persists?

This past year has been one of the most tumultuous ones that I can recall. Social movements have sprung up all across the world from the Middle East to India to South America to Europe to, without a doubt, here at home in the United States. Some of the most entrenched systems are being resisted and, in some cases, even shaken. The energy and enthusiasm of these movements are palpable – who hasn’t had a conversation or a heated debate with a friend, relative, or stranger about one of the movements?

Some of the snapshots from Chile’s ongoing student movement depict a lighthearted mobilization. Led by the charismatic Camila Vallejo, the students have used Twitter and Facebook to stage kiss-a-thons and superhero-themed costume protests. But other images have been more violent.