Embattled state Sen. Ron Calderon says federal authorities wanted him to wear a wire and record conversations with the Senate leader and another lawmaker, and after he refused they tried to ruin his reputation by raiding his offices and leaking an FBI affidavit alleging he took money in return for promoting bills. Calderon, who has not been charged and has denied any wrongdoing, made the allegations in a complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento. The Democrat from the Los Angeles-area city of Montebello asked a judge to hold federal investigators and prosecutors in contempt for leaking the sealed affidavit, which was written to support a search warrant for Calderon's Sacramento offices. The filing includes a copy of a receipt for a wireless transmitter on the letterhead of Calderon's lawyer, Mark Geragos.

Berlin has suspended the purchase of armed drones on the grounds that it “categorically rejects illegal killings.” This follows a report by Amnesty International that accused Merkel’s government of aiding the US with drone strikes in Pakistan. A draft agreement between the Social Democrats and the Conservatives obtained by Der Spiegel condemns the use of drones for targeted attacks.

Der Spiegel: Schwarz-Rot verschiebt Kampfdrohnen-Kauf

Dear Readers: For years I have reported that the Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing, that is, bond purchases in order to support bond prices, is not an economic policy directed at helping the economy recover from the financial crisis caused by financial deregulation and irresponsible gambling and fraud by large banks and Wall Street. I have reported that the Federal Reserve’s policy is directed at supporting the balance sheets of “banks too big to fail.” Despite this obvious fact, presstitutes and economists pretend that QE has brought economic recovery and that QE will end as soon as the Federal Reserve judges the recovery to be sustainable without its bond purchases. Now we have a confession from Andrew Huszar, who was the Federal Reserve official in charge of Quantitative Easing. He says that QE is for the banks’ profits, not for the economy. - Paul Craig Roberts

Andrew Huszar: Confessions of a Quantitative Easer ■ I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time. Five years ago this month, on Black Friday, the Fed launched an unprecedented shopping spree. By that point in the financial crisis, Congress had already passed legislation, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to halt the U.S. banking system's free fall. Beyond Wall Street, though, the economic pain was still soaring. In the last three months of 2008 alone, almost two million Americans would lose their jobs. [...] And the impact? Even by the Fed's sunniest calculations, aggressive QE over five years has generated only a few percentage points of U.S. growth. By contrast, experts outside the Fed, such as Mohammed El Erian at the Pimco investment firm, suggest that the Fed may have created and spent over $4 trillion for a total return of as little as 0.25% of GDP (i.e., a mere $40 billion bump in U.S. economic output). Both of those estimates indicate that QE isn't really working. Unless you're Wall Street. Having racked up hundreds of billions of dollars in opaque Fed subsidies, U.S. banks have seen their collective stock price triple since March 2009. The biggest ones have only become more of a cartel: 0.2% of them now control more than 70% of the U.S. bank assets. As for the rest of America, good luck.

Israel is lobbying US Congress for new anti-Iran sanctions as the administration of President Barack Obama is trying to convince lawmakers that any new sanctions against Iran would be viewed as “bad faith.” Israel’s Economy and Trade Minister, Naftali Bennett, is currently in Washington, actively lobbying US lawmakers to impose more sanctions on Iran.

Jason Ditz: Kerry: US 100 Percent Behind Israel on Iran ● Faced with growing Israeli anger toward the administration in general and him in particular, Secretary of State John Kerry’s speeches today focused on claiming unquestioned US backing for Israel on all things, but especially Iran. “We stand with Israel firmly – 100 percent,” Kerry insisted, a claim that seems at odds with the two being on opposite sides of lobbying efforts in the US Congress, and the Obama Administration’s criticism of massive settlement expansions.

Xymphora: What are the odds? ■ So the French guys in charge of their Iran negotiations file happen to be Meyer Habib, an outspoken Zionist Jew and close pal of Bibi (with his blood-pouring-from-the-fangs opposition to any kind of peace), and Laurent Fabius, a crypto-Jew passing as a Catholic (in another amazing coincidence much like his American counterpart). Bibi's call to Holland was just notice to unleash the already planned conspiracy (France was the fall back Plan B, as Bibi had assumed that he could bend the will of the Americans but underestimated the importance the Americans now place on a deal with Iran). The obviousness of the conflict of interest in the parties involved would be comical if it wasn't so potentially tragic. Bibi has now bought time to apply AIPAC to Congress and unsettle the scaredy-cat Barry, who was trying to sneak in a fait accompli peace deal (the Jews were a bit flat-footed after not being able to apply themselves consistently on the civilian slaughter plan for Syria).

Kevin Barrett: Nuclear rogue states Israel-France obstruct Iran deal ■ Pushing hypocrisy to new heights, the world's two biggest nuclear rogue states, Israel and France, have obstructed a P5 + 1 deal that would have eased sanctions penalizing Iran for its peaceful nuclear energy program. Israel, the world's worst nuclear outlaw, played the key role. All sources agree that the Israelis pressured the French to torpedo an agreement that was approved by all other parties. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu called the P5+1 Iran deal “a mistake of historic proportions” and insisted that it be “rejected outright.” Yet none of the parties paid any attention to Netanyahu - except the French. Why did the French delegation, led by Laurent Fabius, kill the deal?

Sheldon Richman: Netanyahu and the War Mongers ■ The best way to keep Iran from building a nuclear bomb is for the Obama administration and its nuclear client Israel to stop threatening the Islamic Republic. Look at recent history. In 2003 Iraq’s government had no nuclear weapons (or other WMD). The U.S. government invaded, and before long Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hanging from a rope. In 2011 Libya’s government had no nuclear weapons. The U.S. government led NATO on a bombing campaign to help a group of rebels, and before long Libyan Col. Muammar Qaddafi lay dead on a roadside. Today Syria has no nuclear weapons. On the other hand, North Korea has nuclear weapons, and Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un appears safe from any regime change sponsored by the U.S. government and NATO. Lesson for foreign leaders who are in the doghouse with the U.S. government: Get a nuke.

As many of you will recall, the protagonist in George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 (sales of the book exploded higher this past June following the Snowden revelations) was a man named Winston Smith who worked for the Ministry of Truth. One of his key functions was to revise old newspaper articles in order to make them consistent with the ever changing propaganda intentions of Big Brother. Apparently 1984 really was an instruction manual, particularly for the Conservative Tory Party in the UK. Incredibly, not only did it go back and delete ten years of speeches from their website, they have taken the extra step to block their access via the Internet Archive. Compete and total desperation has set in across the pond…

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair had “deliberately” excluded members of the government from the decision-making process in the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, ex-Cabinet secretary says.

● Speaking at a Foreign Office seminar in February, former top British civil servant Lord Butler said Blair intentionally kept away the majority of the Cabinet from documents drawn up to examine the case for the Iraq war in 2003, the Civil Service World magazine reported on Wednesday. “A lot of very good official papers were prepared. None of them was ever circulated to the Cabinet, just as the Attorney General’s advice was not circulated to the Cabinet,” Butler said. He also concluded that the British Cabinet was not as “well-informed” as the premier, foreign secretary and defence secretary.
● Blair, the former leader of Britain’s Labour party, is globally discredited for his war crimes, as under his premiership between 1997 and 2007 hundreds of thousands were killed and injured in illegal military interventions. On March 19, 2003, US-led forces invaded Iraq under the pretext of wiping out the stocks of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) belonging to the executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime. However, no such weapons were ever found in the country. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed and Iraq’s infrastructure was destroyed following the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of the country. [Image: horrorshow-artwork]

on November 13th, WikiLeaks released the text containing secret agreements and disagreements between countries, on what they call the ‘largest-ever economic treaty’, the ‘Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement. Quoting the WikiLeaks press release:

“Since the beginning of the TPP negotiations, the process of drafting and negotiating the treaty’s chapters has been shrouded in an unprecedented level of secrecy. Access to drafts of the TPP chapters is shielded from the general public. Members of the US Congress are only able to view selected portions of treaty-related documents in highly restrictive conditions and under strict supervision. It has been previously revealed that only three individuals in each TPP nation have access to the full text of the agreement, while 600 ’trade advisers’ – lobbyists guarding the interests of large US corporations such as Chevron, Halliburton, Monsanto and Walmart – are granted privileged access to crucial sections of the treaty text.“

Wikileaks: TPP press release
Yahoo: Internet freedom at risk, revealed leaked TPPA draft
The Guardian: WikiLeaks publishes secret draft chapter of Trans-Pacific Partnership
Brother Nathanael Kapner: TPP & One World Government
Sarah Lazare: Obama's Pacific Trade Deal 'Worst Ever' Attack on Public Health, Leaked Draft Shows