Add Kim Jong-Il to the year's already substantial fallen dictator list. Take your news from Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of Canada, or from Mayan temple walls. Look at the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement or the demise of Durban and Kyoto. These all point to a similar outlook for the year ahead: we are at the end of an era.

But, hey, whether we like it or not, it's at the end of things that what comes next is birthed. But first the hard labour.

Choosing Bank of Canada language, this is "the end of the 'debt super-cycle.'"

Three days after Hosni Mubarak resigned as the long-standing dictator in Egypt, people in the small Gulf state of Bahrain took to the streets, marching to their version of Tahrir, Pearl Square, in the capital city of Manama. Bahrain has been ruled by the same family, the House of Khalifa, since the 1780s -- more than 220 years. Bahrainis were not demanding an end to the monarchy, but for more representation in their government.

One month into the uprising, Saudi Arabia sent military and police forces over the 16-mile causeway that connects the Saudi mainland to Bahrain, an island. Since then, the protesters, the press and human rights organizations have suffered increasingly violent repression.