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.

Abby Martin Breaks the Set on the End of the World', ínterviews Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick about their documentary series, the Untold History of the United States, and looks at the Top 5 Surveillance Toys of Big Brother in 2012.

Israel has violated Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity over 3,000 times in 2012 in blatant violation of UN Security Council resolution, Press TV reports.

In the year 2012, Israel has approximately violated Lebanon's sovereignty 3,400 times through air, water and ground.

The UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which brokered a ceasefire in the war of aggression Israel launched against Lebanon in 2006, calls on Israel to respect Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The most frequent breaches of Israel are overflights by Israeli war planes and drones to Lebanese skies.

Following Israel's 2006 attack on Lebanon, the total number of violations exceeded 20,000, which is an average of more than nine violations per day.

The United States Army will be deploying troops to nearly three-dozen African nations in the coming year.

Soldiers based out of Fort Riley, Kansas' 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division will begin training in March 2013 in order to prepare for a project that will send troops to as many as 35 African nations, the Associated Press reports.

Citing a growing threat from extremist groups, including those with ties to al-Qaeda, the Department of Defense is hoping to install American soldiers overseas in order to prepare local troops there for any future crises as tensions escalate.

Earlier this month, DoD sources with insider knowledge told the Washington Post that US troops will soon be en route to the nation of Mali in order to thwart the emerging threat of Islamic extremists, including al-Qaeda aligned insurgents. With the latest news from the Pentagon, though, Mali will be just one of many African nations hosting US troops in the coming year.

Expect Obama to prioritize advancing America's imperium. He did aggressively in term one. New wars are planned. Current ones won't end. Proxy ones continue. So does increasing America's global military footprint.

Fiscal cliff hype is about greater force-fed austerity to free up more funds for America's war machine. Waging them isn't cheap. Profiteers depend on wasteful spending to boost bottom line performance.

It pays to have friends in high places. They assure all the billions wanted. Social America is being sacrificed to provide them.

Over the next decade, trillions of dollars will shift from peoples needs to war making, generous corporate handouts, tax breaks for the rich, and hardened homeland repression against nonbelievers.

At the same time, deficits will keep rising exponentially. Hype about urgently cutting them is fake. Post-9/11 has been the worst of times. Expect more of the same on steroids ahead.

Conditions today are the most perilous in world history. Global war is possible. The threat is real and ominous. Open discussion is suppressed. Media scoundrels won't touch it.

Nor do they explain Project Censored's top Censored 2013 story: "Signs of an Emerging Police State." It began pre-9/11, accelerated under Bush, then Obama exceeded his extremism.

Report states that the EU has become disenchanted with the diplomatic process in its traditional format - direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians - because they doubt its ability to lead to a solution.

The European Union will step up efforts to pressure Israel and the Palestinians into an agreement in 2013, an internal Foreign Ministry document predicts.

The report, which was compiled following last month's UN vote to recognize Palestine as a nonmember observer state and subsequent European protests over Israel's approval of new construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, states that the Europeans may try to promote the establishment of an actual Palestinian state independent of negotiations with Israel.

Foreign Ministry officials this week began discussing an evaluation to be presented to the new government after the January 22 election. The feeling in the ministry is that Israel's status has deteriorated badly over the past four years, particularly in the European Union. Ministry officials attribute the decline to the lack of progress in the peace process and Israel's response to the Palestinians' UN bid, particularly the wave of settlement construction.

Over the past year I and other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg have pressed a lawsuit in the federal courts to nullify Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This egregious section, which permits the government to use the military to detain U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers, could have been easily fixed by Congress. The Senate and House had the opportunity this month to include in the 2013 version of the NDAA an unequivocal statement that all U.S. citizens would be exempt from 1021(b)(2), leaving the section to apply only to foreigners. But restoring due process for citizens was something the Republicans and the Democrats, along with the White House, refused to do. The fate of some of our most basic and important rights - ones enshrined in the Bill of Rights as well as the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution - will be decided in the next few months in the courts. If the courts fail us, a gulag state will be cemented into place.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, pushed through the Senate an amendment to the 2013 version of the NDAA. The amendment, although deeply flawed, at least made a symbolic attempt to restore the right to due process and trial by jury. A House-Senate conference committee led by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., however, removed the amendment from the bill last week.

"I was saddened and disappointed that we could not take a step forward to ensure at the very least American citizens and legal residents could not be held in detention without charge or trial," Feinstein said in a statement issued by her office. "To me that was a no-brainer."

You've got to be careful when Syria's rebels are perpetually "closing in"

Remember the days when we thought Egypt's path to democracy was a done deal? Western-trained Mohamed Morsi had invited the people to come and meet him in Hosni Mubarak's former presidential palace, the old military toffs in the "Supreme Council of the Armed Forces" had been pensioned off and the International Monetary Fund was waiting to bestow some of those cruel deprivations upon Egypt that would ready it for our financial benevolence. How happy the Middle East optimists were by mid-2012.

Next door, Libya produced a victory for nice, pro-Western secularist Mahmoud Jibril, promising freedom, stability, a new home for the West in one of the Arab world's most fecund oil producers. It was a place where even US diplomats could wander around virtually unprotected.

Tunisia may have an Islamist party running its government, but it was a "moderate" administration - in other words, we thought it would do what we wanted - while the Saudis and the Bahraini autocracy, with the purse-lipped support of Messrs Obama and Cameron, quietly suppressed what was left of the Shia uprising which threatened to remind us all that democracy was not really welcome among the wealthiest Arab states. Democracy was for the poor.

China says it is on alert after Japan dispatched fighter jets over the East China Sea.

Japanese media report Japan sent F15 fighter aircraft after detecting a Chinese marine surveillance plane in disputed airspace near contested islands in the East China Sea.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters Tuesday Beijing will pay close attention to Japan's decision to dispatch fighter jets. She said China's surveillance plane was conducting routine patrols at the time.

The Jerusalem district planning committee has granted approval to build another 1,200 housing units in Gilo, expanding the Jewish neighborhood built on Jerusalem-area land seized by Israel in 1967.

It was the latest in a series of similar development decisions that have followed the United Nations vote in November granting the Palestinian Authority its request for non-member observer state status. Planning committee member Moshe Montag told Israel Radio on Tuesday that the plan had been submitted more than a year ago but that procedures had been blocked for diplomatic reasons -- until now.

"Unfortunately, it takes a drama, terror attack or U.N. vote to release construction in Jerusalem, our capital, and this is absurd," Montag said.