If you're an American and you want to buy real estate in the Philippines, you can't. Why? Because you must be a Philippine citizen to own land there. Many countries on this planet in fact require citizenship or otherwise place limits or restrictions on the purchase and ownership of property in order to mitigate potential future influences that could damage their economies and quality of life.
The United States is different: we don't care where you're from or how you made your fortune: so long as your cash is convertible to U.S. dollars, you can buy anything: real estate, companies, corporations, aircraft, jobs - even people, if they happen to be the right pedigree.
And so once again, as President Clinton before him, President Obama evidently received an epiphany that told him to ship more jobs, more technology and more intellectual property created right here in the good ol' U.S.A. to offshore countries - but not South America this time. No: for this particular hat trick which puts another fist-full of nails in the coffin for America's middle class, we're going to "gift" Oceana - those captivating countries you see in vacation brochures in the South Pacific - with our life's blood for reasons only the President and his compatriots know. And just who are these compatriots, you might ask? Maplight gives us at least a partial list in the link below the highly-cultured orange worm. Prepare to be amazed.
As someone observed some time ago, it you want to find out who is behind something, follow the money. So when I read the linked article below:
http://maplight.org/...
There was a part of me that swallowed very hard and tried to keep from flat out laughing - not because I found anything amusing about it - far from it! - but because it seemed so, so - so damned familiar.
Here's a partial list they published - the full list is in the article itself:
AT&T
General Electric
Verizon
Johnson & Johnson
Cisco
Biotechnology Industry Organization
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
Recording Industry Association of America
Mylan Inc.
Gilead Sciences
Entertainment Software Association
Zippo
Accessory Network Group
I purposely avoided listing the amount of money each of these organizations spent on political influence in this country to fast-track the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) negotiations through D.C. because the amounts of money and the names of the people who are being paid off to garner their influence are equally profane. They are also listed in the article. However most of the really huge corporations here were players during the last so-called "trade agreement" from Clinton's era.
For the same reasons I struggle with the intellectual conundrum that forces me to argue in my own head where the definition of "whistleblower" stops and "treason" begins, I find myself wondering where the definition of "patriot" stops and "traitor" begins - especially when the long-term implications are so clearly obvious from previous similar arrangements.
For this I leave the august body of Kossaks to ruminate upon. Meanwhile I believe it might be getting close to the time that requires me to bone up on developing my Aussie accent if I expect to find other employment in the future...