The U.K Independent is reporting that a massive 800 page leak (sourced to Greenpeace activists) of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) may doom the ongoing negotiations.

Interestingly, the aspect that seems most troubling to Europe has nothing to do with actual economic trade, but rather insufficient climate change rules/regulations.

[…]  They indicate that the US is looking strongly to change regulation in Europe to lessen the protections on the environment, consumer rights and other positions that the EU affords to its citizens. Representatives for each side appear to have found that they have run into “irreconcilable” differences that could undermine the signing of the landmark and highly controversial trade deal, campaigners say.

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In 2009 the popular conservative opinion was to declare the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision a win for “our side”.   Of course, the decision ultimately opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending in elections via the new Super-PAC approach.
In 2016 90% of all American’s polled believe there is too much special interest money in politics, and both political parties no longer need the financial support of the electorate.  Corporate lobbyists were always problematic, but now in a post CU world they control almost every aspect of electoral politics – including who wins elections.  Citizens United wasn’t a win, its consequence was a major fail.

Within that reality you find one of the synergies between candidate Donald Trump and candidate Bernie Sanders.  The popular insurgencies supporting each candidate rail against the corrupting corporate financial influence. Party leadership? Meh, not-so-much.
Of course it would only take RNC and DNC rules changes, ie. self-regulation, to stop the problem of unlimited corporate funding; but when the political party leadership has that much access to money, well, they have no interest in regulating it away.  Ergo, legislation becomes the only option and the legislators would be writing law against their own financial interests…. Yeah, FUBAR.
To wit, one of the shifts amid the “common sense” electorate is the general perception that Citizens United is no longer viewed as a win.  However, with all the discussions on bad Trade Deals there’s also another shift coming into focus, the Import/Export bank.
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“America First” is the headline given to today’s Donald Trump foreign policy speech as delivered.  However, many pundits are automatically assigning that reference position to the prior non-interventionist approach held prior to WWII.  This projection is factually false.
“America First” is simply that, a view, a perspective, a filtering prism of consideration for the U.S. role in the world by first thinking strategically about our own national interests.

There’s big business, big money, and big economic globalist influence swirling around all matters of modern U.S. foreign policy.
Few people, and almost no-one in the world of corporate media punditry, really take the conversation high enough to grasp the ultimate ends of any military aspect to foreign policy.  Candidate Donald Trump is the first leader in our lifetime to grasp how economic interests have merged with, and infiltrated the engagement policies of, the U.S. military.
Secondly, the same corporate media who are entwined in the economics of globalization, have been selling a false narrative about Secretary Hillary Clinton.  According to the media Secretary Clinton’s strength is ‘foreign policy’; this is pure professional gaslighting.
Hillary Clinton is more vulnerable on her failed tenure as America’s top diplomat than any other aspect of her presidential bid. (more…)

Several years ago we first began pointing to the presidential election of 2016 as a grandly constructed enterprise of financial global entities.  Toward that end point we began to outline the strategic global players who were spending tens of millions lobbying congress for Wall Street’s global financial interests.
The conversation is vastly to expansive in scope for any reasonable encapsulation. Indeed our archives from the past four years are filled with reports and warnings about how all of the Wall Street financial interests -as they relate to the 2016 election- would ultimately boil down to global trade and commerce pacts like the Trans-Pacific Trade deal (TPP), and the Trans-Atlantic Trade deal (TTIP).

Globally, the economic wealth of massive corporate financial banks and financial institutions is dependent on the continual nudging toward the ratification of these trade pacts.  There are trillions at stake as the derivative markets are also tied to hedged bets on the outcomes.
Global trade is approximately $75 trillion annually.  However, the Wall Street derivatives market, which are essentially bets placed within this entire financial construct, now account for more than $500 trillion. (more…)

A bold BBC reporter confronted President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron over Obama’s trip to England to support Cameron in his attempts to block Britain from exiting the European Union.

Thank you, Mr. President. You’ve made your views very plain on the fact that British voters should choose to stay in the E.U. But in the interest of good friends always being honest, are you also saying that our decades-old special relationship, that’s been through so much, would be fundamentally damaged and changed by our exit? If so, how? And are you also, do you have any sympathy with people who think this is none of your business?

As you can see from the response(s), deflection became the instantaneous retort.

President Obama is fast-tracking the import of Syrian Islamists prior to the end of his administration.  Simultaneous to the State Department’s heightened activity video now surfaces of the Islamists blending their cultural jihad with the nice people of France.

(Via The Hill) The State Department is hoping to bring an average of nearly 1,500 Syrian refugees to the United States per month in order to meet President Obama’s target of settling 10,000 refugees in the country by September. About 1,300 refugees have already been placed in the United States since Obama first made the commitment in September.
That’s far fewer than those taken in by European countries such as Germany, who has dealt with an unprecedented wave of migrants fleeing Syria’s civil war, as well as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. (more…)

“You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.” – Ken Kesey

(Via Foreign Policy) Donald Trump has spent much of his campaign deriding NATO allies for “ripping off” the American taxpayer and failing to contribute to the world’s most powerful military alliance. But on Wednesday, his fellow Republicans joined the chorus during a closed-door meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Capitol Hill, according to sources inside the room.
For under an hour, senators grilled Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, about why only five members of the 28-nation club spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, the official amount NATO recommends each nation set aside. Some expressed particular dissatisfaction with Germany, the fourth largest economy in the world, which does not meet the 2 percent threshold.
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Globalist Politicians outed as hypocritical Limo-Corporatists.

Go Figure…

We’ve been waiting to write an outline regarding the “Panama Papers”, because one of the more interesting aspects in the distribution is how the sources within  the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung refused to share the massive file of information with the New York Times.
Instead, Süddeutsche Zeitung shared the data through an International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with the including the Guardian and the BBC.
Here’s a brief outline of first batch details: (more…)

How dare he.  Just, well, how dare he.  That’s the takeaway sense you get when you review the New York Times framing of a two hour ‘on-the-record’ interview with Donald Trump referencing a world-view and foreign policy outlook.
It is refreshing, and it is bizarre we can even use the word “refreshing“, to see an American candidate for the American Presidency, say their goal is to actually put America-first in all policy decisions.
It’s not protectionism, it’s patriotism.
It’s not isolationism, it’s common sense.
Almost all of Europe and most of Asia are capable of spending Trillions of dollars on their infrastructure, Airports, bullet-trains, high-speed rail, bridges, ‘Chunnels’, and the list goes on…. quite simply because they don’t spend much on their own national defense, and prefer to hide behind our military apron when needed.
To pay for this enomorus international military/police force, and overly generous commitment, we, in turn, put ourselves into debt and can’t spend on our own domestic needs.   This is not international economic theory, it’s a reality – and for the first time in decades a politician is saying enough is enough.   Charity begins at home!
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BRUSSELS — Belgian authorities announced Saturday that they had charged a man in connection with this week’s suicide bombings, saying they believe he participated in the attacks. Two others were also charged with terrorism-related offenses.

The man, identified by a European official as Fayçal Cheffou, appeared before a judge after he was detained Thursday night while sitting in a car in front of the Belgian prosecutor’s office.

Belgian security officials have been seeking a man captured in an airport surveillance video Tuesday, minutes before dual suicide blasts hit. The images show three men walking together, but only two are believed to have died in the blasts. The third has been believed to be at-large after depositing an explosives-laden suitcase in the departures terminal.

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