Apologies in advance to our conservative Canadian friends; but the explainer here is regarding America-First trade and economics against the backdrop of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, Canada and Mexico’s alignment therein, the APEC Summit and rainbow socks.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Justin from Canada

Here’s why Canada and Mexico signing up to TPP is great news for the U.S., and couldn’t come at a better time for NAFTA round #5 on November 17th.  We don’t want TPP to collapse, because TPP ties the hands of Canada and Mexico to elements of trade that are based on collective interests. Their joining TPP provides the U.S. leverage in NAFTA.
Remember, Vietnam is exactly 12 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern time zone.  At 7:450pm last evening in Vietnam (local time), at the last minute, Rainbow Socks backed out of the signing the TPP framework (explained here).  Twelve hours later, at 7:20am (local), the AP reported the agreement was “back on” with “a compromise”:

DANANG, Vietnam (AP) — The Latest on the summit of 21 Pacific Rim economies in Vietnam (all times local): 7:20 a.m. – Trade ministers say they have reached a basic agreement on a Pacific Rim trade pact without the United States.

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The international leaders attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Da Nag, Vietnam gathered for their customary group photograph.
Justin from Canada was positioned next to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Australian PM Turnbull by the host nation (after a big controversy over TPP); U.S. President Trump was positioned next to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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The role of Fusion GPS as an active participant in the 2016 election is growing in scale amid yet another report showing the scope of their involvement.
Two weeks ago the DNC and Clinton Campaign teams were forced to admit they hired Fusion GPS to engage in political activity and research against presidential candidate Trump.  That’s sketchy. Then last week we discovered that Fusion GPS head, Glenn Simpson, actually met with Russian operative Natalia Veselnitskaya immediately prior to her visit to Trump Tower and immediately after. That’s beyond sketchy.  Now we discover Glenn Simpson actually wrote the material that Natalia Veselnitskava used to pitch herself into a meeting with Don Trump Jr.  Wait,… what…

Yes, we are now in “ludicrous mode“.  It’s no longer a surprise why Glenn Simpson’s lawyers are trying desperately to keep him from a congressional subpoena. Clinton Lawyers, Perkins Coie, acknowledged they paid $1.02 million to Fusion for research related to candidate Donald Trump. However, the entire story now looks like the DNC and Clinton camp hired Fusion GPS to construct negative material, not “discover” it.
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If you haven’t followed the entirety of how the “Freedom Alliance” was assembled in the very early months shortly after the election of President Donald Trump, it’s hard to understand the scope of what is taking place in the middle-east.
The nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), led by Saudi Arabia, are on the cusp of transforming themselves into a modern and engaged era. The goals of the GCC allies, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) are to remove the influence agents who have supported extremism, the Muslim Brotherhood, and stimulated and/or enabled crisis for personal and ideological gains.
Because of the financial reach within the parties involved, the downstream consequences are being felt within the political bodies of most nations including our own. Specifically within Washington DC’s deep-state institutions, career politicians on foreign affairs committees, and within the upper and lower tiers of the aggregate U.S. State Dept.  A great realignment is taking place.

Caption: There will come a time when you will need to choose a side. Think wisely…

French President Emmanuel Macron said today he will make an unexpected trip to Saudi Arabia after leaving the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to see Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and discuss crises in Lebanon, Yemen and the wider region.  This happens simultaneous to the UAE announcing they too are examining bank accounts for their own officials, officers and leaders within their nation.

DUBAI (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron is making a previously unscheduled trip to Saudi Arabia on Thursday to see Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman amid rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, notably over Lebanon and Yemen.

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The role of Fusion GPS as an active participant in the 2016 election is growing in scope amid another report showing increased involvement.   Previously the DNC and Clinton Campaign teams were forced to admit they hired Fusion GPS to engage in political activity and research against presidential candidate Trump.  The outcome of their efforts centered around the Russian Dossier by Christopher Steele.
However, today a report shows the founder of Fusion GPS actually met with Russian operative Natalia Veselnitskaya immediately prior to her visit to Trump Tower and immediately after.
There is a concern that Fusion GPS might have been conducting a political operation against Trump using Veselnitskaya.

(Via Fox News) […] The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya occurred during a critical period. At that time, Fox News has learned that bank records show Fusion GPS was paid by a law firm for work on behalf of a Kremlin-linked oligarch while paying a former British spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Trump through his Russian contacts.
But hours before the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, Fusion co-founder and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson was with Veselnitskaya in a Manhattan federal courtroom, a confidential source told Fox News. Court records reviewed by Fox News, email correspondence and published reports corroborate the pair’s presence together. The source told Fox News they also were together after the Trump Tower meeting.  (read more)

As any interested geopolitical observer will undoubtedly note, the Trump administration is systematically deconstructing the capability of multinational corporate interests to continue their decades-long exploitation of political and economic control.
Within that geopolitical battle President Donald Trump assembled a team of the sharpest, smartest and most patriotic U.S. economic insiders any administration has ever put together.  These are, quite frankly “the killers” President Trump talked about during the campaign.
The killers, dragon slayers amid the big and consequential battles, are, as an outcome of their intended objective, an existential threat to the influence of globalists who have held exclusive multinational economic control and influence for the past 30+ years.
Chief among the team is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross; a multi-billionaire in the strata of trade and finance, who, like Trump and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, set aside his own life of wealth accumulation and went to work on behalf of team ‘America-First’.  The goal of Ross is to deconstruct and restructure international trade agreements which have been killing the American middle-class for decades.   In that role, Wilbur Ross is a preeminent threat.
It cannot be overstated how effective the America-First team are in carrying out their strategy.  USTR Robert Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross are crushing their globalist opponents.
On virtually every continent the state actors within the multinational systems are reacting to the tectonic changes in geopolitical economics. India, China, Russia, the European Union, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Mexico, South America, Africa, Australia and the larger economies within the ASEAN nations are all changing or reversing their economic positions specifically because there’s a new head at the table of influence commanded by President Donald J Trump.
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Internet researcher Katica (Twitter GOPollAnalyst) may have found the hidden thread that unravels a much bigger story within the Uranium One-Clinton-FBI scandal.
In an otherwise innocuous FBI FOIA FILE Katica located a notice for preservation of documents sent by an FBI special agent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on August 28th, 2015.  What is interesting about the preservation request(s) are the recipients, their attachment to CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States), and the timeline of events surrounding the agent’s notification.

The time-line here is very important as it might change the perception of exactly what the FBI was investigating as it relates to Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.  Therefore a backdrop to understand content and context is important.
Up to now the general perception of the FBI’s involvement surrounding the Clinton emails has been against the backdrop of using a personal email server to conduct business, and the potential for unlawful transmission of classified data.
Additionally, the circumvention of official information technology protocols was the narrative most often discussed. The headlines were “Clinton used bad judgement” etc.
In essence, throughout 2015, 2016, 2017 the arguments, including FBI legal probes, were thought to center around “process“.  However, Katica’s discovery re-frames that argument to focus on the subject matter “content” within the emails, and not the process.
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Against the backdrop of the Paul Manafort indictment, Fox News host Tucker Carlson expanded on his exclusive source insight (from a former employee) into the Podesta Group and the lobbying activity on behalf of Russian interests.
Additionally, Mr. Carlson shares the legal threats he and his broadcast have recently received from lawyers representing Tony and John Podesta and the DC Lobbying Group they founded.

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Tucker Carlson and Jonathan Turley (George Washington University Law School) discuss Special Counsel Robert Mueller, his ongoing investigation, the indictments from earlier today, and both ultimately come to the same conclusion CTH shared earlier,
Being intellectually honest it appears that Mueller is focused on the bigger, and more dangerous, dynamic surrounding foreign lobbying efforts and payments to DC politicians therein to shape U.S. policy.  Toward eliminating those lobbyist payments, the legal cases against Paul Manafort and Tony Podesta are tools to send the Swamp a message to stop.
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As the Special Counsel Robert Mueller indictment documents show with increasing clarity, the entire enterprise surrounding the Washington DC Russian Investigation is not about law, it’s about creating and controlling leverage.
If you review anything within the ongoing political fiasco from the perspective of laws broken or unbroken and the application of the judiciary toward the endeavor of stopping such activity we will remain oblivious to the bigger picture. EXPLAINED HERE
It’s not about the law; it’s not about the judiciary; it’s not about what’s legal, or the illegality of behavior; only politics. These are not legal issues; the entities involved are not connected to legal or illegal application of laws as they relate to the rest of American society.

You cannot view the current action through the transactional prism of modern judicial proceedings as they relate to you and me. These are political struggles taking place inside the venue of the legal system. The players use the legal system to game out the optics and narrative of political battles for ideological wins and losses.
In essence, this is about leverage for political use.
The 2016 election caused the balance of power to shift favorably toward political forces that are external to the DC machine, ie. President Trump and the deplorables.
The subsequent action by Robert Mueller, Democrats, the Media (writ large), and President Trump is a confrontation over political goals and objectives. The DC machine, the “swamp” per se’, is attempting to frame leverage against actions adverse to their political interest.
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Well, well, well…. Long-time Clinton insider and the epicenter of all Clinton connected power in Washington DC, Tony Podesta, is stepping down from the super-lobbying group that bears his name.
According to a report in politico, Tony Podesta has discovered he is also in the cross hairs of the Special Prosecutor investigation by Robert Mueller.  Additionally, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked for the Podesta lobbying group to advance the interests of Ukraine and Russia in Washington DC.

There is some strong DC speculation that Manafort’s earlier indictment may lead to, or have been intended to, leverage cooperation with special counsel Mueller regarding the Podesta firm investigation.
Federal records show two firms doing work on behalf of Paul Manafort’s Ukraine front group beginning in April of 2012: The Podesta Group and Mercury Group.
Despite the lobbying activity neither group was disclosed as legally required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) until April of 2017. Documents: SEE HERE and SEE HERE

(Via Politico) Democratic power lobbyist Tony Podesta, founder of the Podesta Group, is stepping down from the firm that bears his name after coming under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Podesta announced his decision during a firm-wide meeting Monday morning and is alerting clients of his impending departure.

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