While many Americans have been led to believe the war in Afghanistan will soon be over, a draft of a key U.S.-Afghan security deal obtained by NBC News shows the United States is prepared to maintain military outposts in Afghanistan for many years to come, and pay to support hundreds of thousands of Afghan security forces. The wide-ranging document, still unsigned by the United States and Afghanistan, has the potential to commit thousands of American troops to Afghanistan and spend billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. The document outlines what appears to be the start of a new, open-ended military commitment in Afghanistan in the name of training and continuing to fight al-Qaeda. The war in Afghanistan doesn’t seem to be ending, but renewed under new, scaled-down U.S.-Afghan terms.

A secret U.S. intelligence court let the National Security Agency collect an expanded amount of data about Americans' email even after finding that the agency systematically exceeded the limits of a smaller program, newly released documents show. ● The judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court recounted a litany of problems with the first, smaller program, including the NSA collecting more categories of information than had been approved by the court and sharing data more widely within the electronic eavesdropping agency than had been authorized. At issue are emails among U.S. citizens that the NSA scooped up in its pursuit of foreign intelligence. Though historically focused overseas, the agency intensified its domestic operations after the September 11, 2001, attacks in hopes of finding people in the country working with terrorists or spies. The programs let the NSA search for Americans who had electronic contact with people who were in turn linked to people hostile to the United States. At times, however, analysts queried the database with names that had not been found to be terrorists or foreign agents, the judge found. The NSA was allowed to share criminal evidence with law enforcement agencies, but in other cases it was supposed to obscure email addresses to protect the identities of U.S. citizens because of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches. Instead, Judge John Bates wrote about the first bulk collection program, "NSA analysts made it a general practice to disseminate to other agencies intelligence reports containing U.S. person information," such as their email addresses. Bates' 117-page opinion was among nearly three dozen documents declassified and released on Monday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the wake of suits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Naftali Bennett: the face of an oppressed Jew?
Or the new face of ZioNazism?

● Robert Lenzner, the writer of the following really gives credence to accusations that most corporate media journalists are little better than intellectual whores. Not once in his article on Israel’s Economy and Commerce Minister, Naftali Bennett, does he seriously question his claim that Iran is only “6 weeks” away from producing a nuclear bomb.
● What’s more, Lenzner fails to mention that this “new rock star politician” is riding the crest of a wave of popularity in the Zionist state. Making him earlier this year “the second most powerful man” in Israel.
● Worse still, Lenzner fails to put his claim into perspective. For allegations that Iran is close to producing a nuclear bomb have been a stock in trade among Israeli politicians for decades now. As far back as 1992 Netanyahu was saying as much. While in 1995 the New York Times reported that “senior American and Israeli officials” claimed that Iran would be able to build a nuclear bomb in “five years“.
● The following year Shimon Peres was saying much the same thing with a similar timeline. Yet as we know now Iran still hasn’t developed a nuclear weapon.

● In the Kremlin today Russian President Vladimir Putin will receive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is to come to Moscow on a short working visit, the Russian president’s press-service reports. The meeting will take place according to an agreement reached earlier and the sides are expected to discuss topical issues of international politics and bilateral relations.
● Talks between the Russian president and the Israeli leader take place on a regular basis. At the beginning of November at Israel’s initiative there was a telephone conversation between Putin and Netanyahu during which they also discussed current international problems. Before that the sides talked on the phone in June this year paying special attention to the situation in Syria and around it.
● The previous meeting of the Russian president and Israeli prime minister took place in Sochi in May this year. When it was over Putin reported that the sides had come to an agreement to continue contacts with the aim of a peaceful settlement of the Syrian crisis. Putin stressed that he and Netanyahu shared the opinion that the continuation of an armed conflict in Syria is fraught with disastrous consequences both for Syria and the entire region.

VoR: Will Putin manage to persuade Netanyahu?
Russia Today: Netanyahu to Putin: Resolve Iran like you did Syria

Iran's foreign minister has censured Israel for its strenuous efforts to block a nuclear deal between Iran and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany. "We have seen that statements coming out of Israel indicate that they are not interested in finding solutions [to the nuclear issue], they have been trying to push for problems,” Mohammad Javad Zarif said after meeting his Italian counterpart Emma Bonino in Rome on Tuesday. Zarif accused Israel of trying to sabotage the nuclear talks and of stoking tensions in the Middle East. “So we have reason to be suspicious of every move they make, because every move they make is about building tension and spreading mistrust,” he added.

PressTV: Obama asks senators to ignore Israel lobby against Iran - Video

The Israeli regime has carried out several airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip, but there have been no immediate reports of casualties. ● According to Palestinian sources, Israeli warplanes launched at least seven airstrikes in the north and south of the coastal enclave on Tuesday. They were the second such attacks in recent weeks. A spokesman for the Israeli army [falsely] claimed that the airstrikes were conducted in retaliation for one rocket that had been fired from Gaza into the occupied Palestinian territories earlier in the day. Last week, the Tel Aviv regime carried out two airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military frequently bombs the besieged Gaza Strip, claiming the attacks are being conducted for defensive purposes. However, disproportionate force is always used, in violation of international law, and civilians are often killed or injured. The 1.7 million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip are living in what is called the world's largest open-air prison as Israel retains full control of the airspace, territorial waters, and border crossings of the territory. Gaza has been blockaded by the Israeli regime since June 2007, a situation which has caused a decline in the standard of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and unrelenting poverty.

Morris Smith: Our First Jewish President Lyndon Johnson? ■ A few months ago, the Associated Press reported that newly released tapes from US president Lyndon Johnson’s White House office showed LBJ’s “personal and often emotional connection to Israel.” The news agency pointed out that during the Johnson presidency (1963-1969), “the United States became Israel’s chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier.” But the news report does little to reveal the full historical extent of Johnson’s actions on behalf of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Most students of the Arab-Israeli conflict can identify Johnson as the president during the 1967 war. But few know about LBJ’s actions to rescue hundreds of endangered Jews during the Holocaust – actions that could have thrown him out of Congress and into jail. Indeed, the title of “Righteous Gentile” is certainly appropriate in the case of the Texan, whose centennial year is being commemorated this year. Appropriately enough, the annual Jerusalem Conference announced this week that it will honor Johnson.

Andre Damon & Barry Grey: US government lets JPMorgan off the hook for mortgage fraud: There has as yet been no criminal indictment of Dimon or any other leading JPMorgan official. ■ This is in keeping with the administration’s policy of shielding the Wall Street elite from prosecution for its criminal actions both before, during and after the financial crash of September 2008. Not a single top banker has been criminally charged, let alone convicted and jailed, despite detailed exposures of illegal actions made public two years ago by a special investigatory commission into the financial crisis and, in a separate report, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The settlement, hailed by the Obama administration and the media as a “breakthrough” in government policing of the banks, is nothing of the kind. The headline figure of $13 billion is deliberately deceptive. Only $9 billion of the total is in cash, the rest taking the form of relief to troubled homeowners, partly through reductions in mortgage principals and partly through the lowering of interest payments. It is likely that JPMorgan was already planning to offer much of this $4 billion in relief for business reasons.

BBC: JP Morgan in record $13bn settlement with US authorities

At least 23 people were killed and over 140 injured Tuesday in a suicide bomb attack targeting Iran’s embassy compound in Lebanon. Most of the dead were passersby in the predominantly Shiite southern Beirut neighborhood of Janah, where the embassy is situated. Iran confirmed the death of its embassy’s cultural attaché. An al-Qaeda affiliated group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigade, claimed responsibility for the attack in a tweet by its “spiritual mentor,” Sheikh Sirajeddine Zuraiqat. The Brigade has reportedly vowed to continue such attacks until Iran and Hezbollah, an Iranian-allied Lebanese Shiite militia, cease militarily supporting Syria’s government.