"Happy New Year" felt like a hollow greeting if not a wise-crack on December 31, 2012 , for many members of the Arab hemisphere, entering their third year of Arab Spring. The New Year’s celebrations were muted to a minimum in the Arab capitals, as the region let its upheaval roll into another year. While Lebanese, Iraqis and Jordanians were among those who had ducked the outright 'change' of some of their neighbors in-revolution, they could not avoid the same old problems with plenty of new issues to add to ...