Wayne Madsen

"Heute Israel, morgen die Welt!" - Adolf Hitler and other top Nazis were fond of saying, "Heute Deutschland, morgen die Welt!" (“Today Germany, tomorrow the world!”), when describing the Nazi Party’s goals for global domination.

Many of Israel’s dominant political parties espouse the same goals for Zionism, which many observers believe take a page from the Nazi playbook when it comes to expansion not only in the occupied territories of Palestine but beyond to the Golan Heights of Syria, southern Lebanon, Sinai, eastern Libya, northern Iraq, and even further afield.

The top polling Israeli political parties heading into the January 22 election all advocate varying degrees of expansion. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud alliance with former Foreign Minister illegal settler-based Yisrael Beitenu is staking their election bid on building thousands of new housing units in occupied east Jerusalem, starting in the Gilo area. There are also plans to build thousands of more illegal housing units in occupied West Bank towns, including Ariel, Hebron, and the north Dead Sea and Jordan River Valley.

As expansionistic as the Likud-Beitenu bloc is, the rising star of Naftali Bennett, a dual U.S.-Israeli national who leads the new Home Party is even more nationalistic, with its platform centered on annexing 60 percent of the West Bank, referred to as “Area C” in the now all-but-dead Oslo Peace Accords. Palestinians would exercise nominal control in a Palestine fully dependent on Israel that would resemble the “bantustans” created for blacks by the apartheid government of South Africa: non-contiguous reservations that would be at the mercy of further encroachment by a militarily-dominant Israel.

But just as the Zionists contend that it is entitled to control what it refers to “Judea and Samaria” based on some mythological prose written in ancient Hebrew, they will not stop with controlling the West Bank. There are calls by many Zionists for Israel to expel the 1.7 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and forcibly relocate them in other Arab countries. Other right-wing Israelis wish to abrogate the peace treaty with Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt and seize back control of the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel occupied from 1967 to 1982. The Zionists were always hungry for Sinai. During their occupation of Sinai, Sharm-el-Sheikh was renamed Ofira by the Israelis and settlements were established in the occupied Egyptian territory.

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Ray McGovern

The Israel Lobby is hell bent on sabotaging President Barack Obama’s tentative plan to appoint former Sen. Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. And – with Obama now dithering about this selection – the Lobby and its neocon allies sense another impending victory.

Perhaps The New Yorker’s Connie Bruck described Hagel’s predicament best in assessing why the Israel Lobby is so determined to destroy the Nebraska Republican though he is “a committed supporter of Israel.”

But, as Bruck explained, “Hagel did not make the obeisance to the lobby that the overwhelming majority of his Congressional colleagues do. And he further violated a taboo by talking about the lobby, and its power.” Hagel had the audacity, in an interview for a 2008 book, to say something that you are not supposed to say in Official Washington, that the Israel Lobby pulls the strings on many members of Congress.

In Aaron Miller’s book, The Much Too Promised Land, Hagel is quoted as saying that Congress “is an institution that does not inherently bring out a great deal of courage.” He added that when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee comes knocking with a pro-Israel letter, “you’ll get eighty or ninety senators on it. I don’t think I’ve ever signed one of the letters” — because, he added, they were “stupid.”

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Stephen Lendman

America's political process is lawless, corrupt and dysfunctional. Fiscal cliff hype, noise and theater continue. Destroying fundamental civil society social protections aren't mentioned.

Rushed through legislation targeted Iran's growing Latin American influence. On December 28, Obama signed the Countering Iran in Western Hemisphere Act. It requires the State Department to "address Iran's growing hostile presence and activity." Washington wants the Islamic Republic shut out of the region entirely. It wants it isolated globally. In 2005, Iran had five regional embassies. Today it has 11. Washington's influence is declining. Its traditional backyard grows more independent. Over time, imperial extremism makes more enemies than friends.

Police state harshness intensifies domestically. Presidential diktat authority overrides constitutional law. Secret kill lists mark targeted individuals for death. US citizens and permanent residents are as vulnerable as others. Occupy Wall Street activists are called domestic terrorists. Indefinite detention is institutionalized. Innocent US citizens and others can be held uncharged, denied due process and judicial fairness, and isolated in military dungeons forever.

America is unsafe to live in. It threatens humanity. Permanent war is policy. It rages abroad. It targets US citizens, permanent residents, and others domestically. Those least advantaged are most harmed. So is anyone opposing US lawlessness. Dissent is an endangered species.

Democracy never existed and doesn't now. Rule of law principles are spurned. Wealth, power, privilege, and dominance alone matter. Official policy may destroy humanity to control it.

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Bill Van Auken

Washington and its allies routinely invoke supposed humanitarian and democratic concerns to justify their fomenting of a sectarian-based civil war and the devastation of Syrian society for the purpose of installing a regime more aligned with US geo-strategic interests. Yet none of them have shown any inclination to devote resources to aid the millions who have been left homeless, hungry, sick and wounded as a result of this predatory military intervention.

After two years of escalating civil war, the people of Syria confront a humanitarian catastrophe, with an estimated four million people—roughly 20 percent of the population—lacking adequate food and shelter. Hundreds of thousands have left for refugee camps in neighboring countries, and as many as three million are displaced within Syria itself.

The United Nations reported Tuesday that its relief operations have been compelled to cut food rations provided to 1.5 million Syrians because of dwindling resources and rising demand. John Ging, who is director of operations at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said:

“The humanitarian community in Syria is struggling,” said UN relief official . “People are losing hope because they just see more violence on the horizon, they just see deterioration.” “It’s becoming more and more difficult just to do the very basic things to help people to survive.”

Conditions have grown increasingly desperate as the Syrian winter sets in, and many families are living in tents or unheated dwellings without adequate clothing.

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Jacob G. Hornberger

The New York Times published an article on December 25 that exposes a harsh reality about U.S. foreign policy to mainstream Americans. The article, entitled “Bahrain, a Brutal Ally,” focuses on one of the principal dark sides of U.S. foreign policy: the U.S. national-security state’s ardent support of brutal dictatorships, this one being Bahrain.

Why is the U.S. government supporting the brutal dictatorship in Bahrain while opposing, say, the brutal dictatorship in Syria?

The answer is very simple. The dictatorship in Bahrain, where the U.S. military has one of its largest naval bases, is pro-U.S. The dictatorship in Syria is independent of the U.S. government at best and anti-U.S. at worst.

Among the worst consequences of having engrafted the national-security state onto our constitutional order has been the blind faith that Americans have placed in it. That blind faith has caused all too many Americans to delude themselves about the real nature of U.S. foreign policy.

Most Americans view the national-security state (e.g., the military and the CIA) as a “force for good” around the world. Yet, how can any regime that supports and partners with brutal dictatorships be a “force for good” in the world? Brutal dictatorships are a bad thing. In fact, one might easily argue that they are evil. It goes without saying that supporting things that are bad or evil is not good.

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Stephen Lendman

Lendman: Bahraini State Terror Continues

Al-Khalifa despots run Bahrain. State terror is official policy. Washington supports it. Generous aid is provided. King Hamad remains a close US ally. Double standard hypocrisy defines America's foreign and domestic agenda.

King Hamad calls peaceful protests "foreign plots." He banned them earlier. Unauthorized public meetings and seminars were prohibited. On October 30, public gatherings were again banned. Authorities call them illegal. Participants face severe harshness. That's how police states operate. Fundamental rights are criminalized. Daily nonviolent protests still continue. Participants brave severe repression. Some end up dead.

Bahrainis want democratic change. They want popularly elected leaders. They want despotic monarchal rule, ruthless persecution, widespread corruption, and Shia discrimination ended. For many months, they've braved tear gas, beatings, rubber bullets, live fire, arrests, torture, imprisonments, and disappearances. They won't quit. The price of freedom is high.

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Paul Craig Roberts

In the Western world truth no longer has any meaning. It its place stands agenda.

Agenda is all important, because it is the way Washington achieves hegemony over the world and the American people. 9/11 was the “new Pearl Harbor” that the neoconservatives declared to be necessary for their planned wars against Muslim countries. For the neoconservatives to go forward with their agenda, it was necessary for Americans to be connected to the agenda.

President George W. Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neil, said that prior to 9/11 the first cabinet meeting was about the need to invade Iraq.

9/11 was initially blamed on Afghanistan, and the blame was later shifted to Iraq. Washington’s mobilization against Afghanistan was in place prior to 9/11. The George W. Bush regime’s invasion of Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) occurred on October 7, 2001, less than a month after 9/11. Every military person knows that it is not possible to have mobilization for invading a country half way around the world ready in three weeks.

The Orwellian “PATRIOT Act” is another example of planning prior to the event. This vast police state measure could not possibly have been written in the short time between 9/11 and its introduction in Congress. The bill was already written, sitting on the shelf waiting its opportunity. Why? Who wrote it? Why has there been no media investigation of the advanced preparation of this police state legislation?

Evidence that responses to an event were planned prior to what the government said was a surprise event does suggest that the event was engineered to drive an agenda that was already on the books.

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Patrick Martin

SOS: Participants in a rally in Salem. Bargaining broke down over a state
proposal that could cut in half the number of home care workers eligible
for employer-provided health coverage. (Photo: nwlaborpress.org)

...Democrats, Republicans prepare major cuts in workers’ wages, benefits

Four days before the New Year triggers a series of tax increases and budget cuts, both the Obama administration and congressional leaders are whipping up a crisis atmosphere to justify attacks on the social benefits and living standards of working people.

Whether or not there is a last-minute deal to postpone some elements of the so-called fiscal cliff, the outcome of the political charade in Washington is not in doubt. The political representatives of the super-rich, Democrats and Republicans alike, are orchestrating events to insure that the main burden of the crisis falls on those least able to defend themselves, including the unemployed, the sick, the elderly and the poor.

All the proposals from the Obama administration and the Republican leadership to address the “fiscal cliff,” as measures that could take effect at the New Year, are premised on an historic attack on social programs that benefit the working class.

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Arthur Silber

"Yes, sir. We've been tracking them for the last week. They've been traveling through an area controlled by that terrorist group we're watching. Every night, they've stayed at the homes of people who are family relations or friends to someone we suspect of being a terrorist. All of them are involved with those protests about taxes, the land appropriation policy, and the forced labor program. As you know, sir, some of those protests have been very violent."

"Tell me again what they look like."

"Well, sir, as best we can tell, they're pretty scraggly and dirty. And swarthy, you know? They certainly don't look like regular folks or decent people, you know, not like us. And of course, they're carrying those suspicious looking packages."

"You still don't know what's in them?"

"No, sir. We haven't been able to figure it out for sure. We've caught glimpses of things that look like they might be drugs. And a few glints of something that might be precious metal. As you know, that all fits the terrorist profile."

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Stephen Lendman

CIA/Special-Ops & surveillance somewhere in Africa...

It's more than about oil, stupid. It's for vast African riches. Resource/mineral wars define America's agenda.

On December 15, 2006, the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) was authorized. On February 6, 2007, it was announced. On October 1, 2007, it was established. On October 1, 2008, it became operational. It's mission is controlling Africa's riches.

They're vast. They're some of the world's largest and richest. Potential new deposits await to be found. Others known about await development. Modern exploration methods enable global exploitation. Virtually nothing escapes discovery. Africa's rich in oil, gas, gold, silver, diamonds, uranium, iron, copper, tin, lead, nickel, coal, cobalt, bauxite, wood, coltan, manganese, chromium, vanadium-bearing titanium, and much more. Continental agricultural lands are valued. So is offshore fishing. Congo, Southern Sudan's Darfur region, Gulf of Guinea, Libya, Nigeria, and Niger, among other areas, hold special interest.

So does Mali. Last October, Reuters headlined "Mali war plan to be ready within weeks: AU," saying:

Military intervention is planned to reclaim territory seized by "Islamist militants." On March 22, an army coup toppled President Amadou Toumani Touré.

At the time, France signaled readiness to intervene. Malian junior officers revolted. They control northern areas. Obama officials call Mali a "powder keg." Conditions threaten regional destabilization, they say. Reasons are invented to intervene. Obama wants congressional funding. He prioritizes wars. He's eager to begin term two with new ones. Permanent ones define his agenda.

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Barry Grey

"[The] direct attack on Constitutionally protected free-speech rights, begun under the Bush administration, has been expanded by the Obama administration, which treats virtually all forms of social and political protest as a potential criminal and terrorist threat."

Internal Federal Bureau of Investigation documents released last Saturday by a civil liberties organization show that FBI anti-terror units across the US targeted and spied on the Occupy Wall Street protests even before they got underway in September 2011.

The secret documents, obtained by the Partnership for Public Justice Fund (PCJF) through Freedom of Information requests and published on the organization’s web site, show that the FBI used police informants and infiltrators to systematically monitor the activities of anti-Wall Street groups and share information about them with other federal, state and local police agencies as well as with private corporations.

The documents are heavily redacted. Nevertheless, they demonstrate that the so-called “war on terror” and the police-state laws and agencies established in its name are being employed to disrupt and suppress political dissent and protect the American corporate-financial elite against the growth of social opposition.

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Glen Ford

It’s not a sudden madness, but a long history of mass murder come full circle.

As a native-born American, I grew up watching cowboy and Indian shoot-em-ups in which the highlight of the movie was when the white guys in the circled wagon train shot the Indians off their horses until all the red men were dead, and very silent. Indians didn’t do a lot of screaming in pain when they were shot; they just expired. Same thing with buck-toothed Japanese, line after line of them, charging into U.S. machine guns, falling instantly silent and dead. It was somehow quite clean, almost antiseptic, these cinematic rituals of death, all staged for the broadest popular consumption to demonstrate the inevitability – and cosmic justice – of ultimate white victory over the darker races.

This was mother’s milk to the white American nation – which is why Richard Pryor and kids like me rooted for the Indians. Mass murder is at the core of the American national religion, which is a celebration of a genocidal march across a continent filled with other, doomed human beings. America’s contribution to European culture was to invite “all the nations of Europe” to come to these shores and become fellow “white” citizens, whose status was defined by the enforced inferiority of Blacks and the remnants of the Indians. Ritual burnings of Blacks were organized as great public festivals, attended by thousands, staged in order to affirm whites’ collective right to commit murder. This monopoly on violence was what made them white Americans.

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Stephen Lendman

So-called "Free Syrian Army" fighters and residents carry the
bodies of people killed at a bakery in Halfaya, northern Syria.

Syrians struggle valiantly to defeat Western-recruited invaders. Islamofasists infest their ranks. They're cold-blooded killers. Assad is falsely blamed for their crimes. They include horrific atrocities.

On December 23, Hama province residents were slaughtered. Reports said up to 100 in Halfaya. Headlines claimed a government air strike hit a bakery. Suspect videos showed bloodstained corpses amid rubble and shrapnel.

On December 24, Voice of Russia headlined "Syria: Halfaya residents massacred," saying "The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) said "Militants have massacred the residents of Halfaya in Hama (Syria).""

Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and Western media falsely blamed Assad.

"The terrorists photographed them in a way enabling them to accuse the local residents of an attack on the government forces at the moment when the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria Lahdar Brahimi arrived in Damascus."

Russia Today quoted Syrian TV. Insurgents were blamed. They were accused of "filming the aftermath to 'frame the army.' " Videos are easy to fake. An amateur YouTube one "has not been independently verified." Why would Syrian forces target civilians lined up to buy bread? Dubious sources don't explain.

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Stephen Lendman

OWS activists marching to Riverside Church to honor Martin
Luther King, the arch-terrorist who preached dangerous stuff
like peace, unity & love. (Image: SOB Photography)

Tyranny in America approaches full-blown. Freedom hangs by a thread. No one anywhere is safe. Rogue governance takes precedence.

US history is littered with repressive laws. Constitutional protections and civil liberties have been targeted. The 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts restricted First Amendment freedoms. So did the 1917 Espionage Act, 1919 anti-communist Palmer raids, 1934 Special Committee on Un-American Activities, its House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) successor, FBI COINTELPRO crackdowns, 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, 2001 USA Patriot Act, and other post-9/11 measures.

Police state harshness today reflects US policy. Compromised civil liberties expanded government surveillance, eroded habeas rights, formalized military tribunals, permitted torture-extracted confessions, and sanctified violence in the name of national security. Thousands of political prisoners languish in America's gulag. It's the world's largest by far. It's one of the harshest. Many there deserve praise, not imprisonment. OWS activists may join them. More on that below.

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Paul Craig Roberts

Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.

Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.

The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.

In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice. This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.

Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.

The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.

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Tony Cartalucci

Image: (via The Guardian) "Chemical containers in the Libyan desert. There are concerns unguarded weapons could fall into the hands of Islamist militants. Photograph: David Sperry/AP" As increasing evidence reveals Libyan fighters and weapons are pouring into Syria, the West has been preparing to cover up the inevitability that Libya's chemical arsenal will also found its way into the besieged nation. It now appears that such weapons are being deployed by NATO's terrorist proxies.

Chemical weapons reportedly used by NATO-armed, funded terrorists near Damascus.

PressTV has reported (more details via Fars News) that chemical weapons have been used by militants fighting Syrian government forces in Daraya, near Damascus. PressTV also reported that threats have been made against Syria's ethnic minorities that their water supplies will be poisoned by militants - this on the heels of the UN itself warning of (and preemptively spinning) impending sectarian-driven genocide.

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Stephen Lendman

President Shimon Peres meets with US Senator John Kerry at the
President's Residence in Jerusalem in May 2012.

Jew or gentile matters less than supporting America's imperium. Kerry's fully on board. His job entails being Israel's man at State.

The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) is a pro-Israeli front group. It promotes strengthening US/Israeli ties. Its executive director, Mitchell G. Bard, formerly was AIPAC's Near East Report editor. Earlier he was polling division senior analyst for GHW Bush. He's featured prominently on US scoundrel TV. Best to avoid him entirely.

AICE publishes the Jewish Virtual Library (JVL). It's an online pro-Israeli resource. It wholeheartedly supports John Kerry. Using material from his 2004 presidential campaign bid, it said:

He's "been at the forefront of the fight for Israel's security" throughout his Senate tenure. He endorses "strengthening Israel's security and bolstering the US-Israel special relationship." "His pro-Israel voting record is second to none." "John Kerry will never do anything to compromise (Israel's) security." He's committed to a "special relationship." His support for Israel is "unwavering." He endorses "Israel's right to respond to terrorism - including against Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups in Gaza." He backs "continued assistance in strengthening Israel's homeland defenses." He called Arafat "a failed leader and unfit partner for peace and therefore supported his total isolation." He "demanded a new, responsible Palestinian leadership, committed to ending the violence and fighting terror." He wholeheartedly supports generous Israeli foreign aid. In the early 1990s, he wanted more than GHW Bush planned to give. He always believed that America "must stand solidly behind Israel at the UN and other international organizations."

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Michael Snyder

Do you have faith in the people running this nation? When answering that question, most people would bash either the Democrats or the Republicans, but my question goes much deeper than that. Power is constantly shifting back and forth between the two major political parties, and it seems like things don’t really change no matter who is in power. What I am asking is if you have faith in the entire system. Do you have faith in the U.S. government, the Federal Reserve, the state governments, the local governments, our public schools and our financial system? Do you believe that the people that are running things in this country are doing a good job? When you look at the results, it is hard to argue that those in power are making good decisions. In fact, this country is caught in such a downward spiral that it would be easy to argue that most of our politicians should immediately resign in disgrace. Our leaders just keep coming up with one bad idea after another. Sometimes it almost seems as though it would be better for our leaders to do absolutely nothing at all because every time they try to do something they only make things worse.

Posted below are a few dozens questions that reveal the stupidity of the people running this nation. The truth is that the list below could be much, much longer. If the founders of this nation could see us now they would be absolutely disgusted with us.

As you read the following list of questions, try to think about what the answers might be….

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Wayne Madsen

Kerry’s Southeast Asia war experience and U.S. - China ties

To say that departing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton soured U.S.-Chinese relations with her constant saber-rattling rhetoric about China’s intentions in East Asia is an understatement. China’s new leadership will be closely examining the record of prospective Secretary of State John Kerry, a Navy SEAL officer during the Vietnam War, for past statements decrying America’s military intervention in Southeast Asia. How Kerry responds to growing friction between China and neighboring nations over maritime waters and island disputes may reflect his past experiences in fighting in an unpopular war in Asia and his later activism against such future wars involving America.

One of Mrs. Clinton's lasting legacies from her time as Secretary of State is her penchant for encircling China with governments that are advancing America's interests in the region. For example, Clinton’s use of India to confront China in the South China Sea officially avoided getting the United States involved militarily in the Sino-Southeast Asian maritime conflict while assuring claimant countries like the Philippines and Vietnam that other non-claimant naval powers like India, in addition to Australia, have stakes in the maritime dispute with China.

However, it is the future of Sino-Japanese relations, especially with the advent of a right-wing revanchist Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government in Tokyo and a new and younger Chinese government willing to flex China’s new-found financial and military might that poses the greatest challenges and risks for a Secretary of State Kerry.

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Ellen Brown

The “fiscal cliff” has all the earmarks of a false flag operation, full of sound and fury, intended to extort concessions from opponents. Neil Irwin of the Washington Post calls it “a self-induced austerity crisis.” David Weidner in the Wall Street Journal calls it simply theater, designed to pressure politicians into a budget deal:

The cliff is really just a trumped-up annual budget discussion. . . . The most likely outcome is a combination of tax increases, spending cuts and kicking the can down the road.

Yet the media coverage has been “panic-inducing, falling somewhere between that given to an approaching hurricane and an alien invasion.” In the summer of 2011, this sort of media hype succeeded in causing the Dow Jones Industrial Average to plunge nearly 2000 points. But this time the market is generally ignoring the cliff, either confident a deal will be reached or not caring.

The goal of the exercise seems to be to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, something a radical group of conservatives has worked for decades to achieve. But with the recent Democratic victories, demands for “fiscal responsibility” may just result in higher taxes for the rich, without gutting the entitlements.

The problem is that no deal is going to be satisfactory. If we go over the cliff, taxes will be raised on everyone, and GDP is predicted to drop by 3%. If a deal is reached, taxes will be raised on some people, and some services will be cut. But the underlying problems – high unemployment and a languishing economy – will remain. More effective solutions are needed.

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