The New Yorker: Rex Tillerson at the Breaking Point

It was through a Boy Scouts connection that he was chosen to be Secretary of State. From 2010 to 2012, Tillerson was the national president of the Boy Scouts of America, where he sat on the board with Robert M. Gates, the former Defense Secretary for George W. Bush and for Barack Obama. After quarterly meetings, Gates told me, he and Tillerson got together. “We would share a whiskey and talk about the world,” he said. (Exxon also engaged a consulting firm owned by Gates and another prominent Republican, Condoleezza Rice.) [...]

For years, as Exxon and others in the industry conducted a concerted lobbying effort against the legislation, Congress delayed acting on it. Then, in 2010, following the financial crisis, language calling for a new disclosure regulation, Rule 1504, was included in the Dodd-Frank legislation, which imposed reforms on banks and other financial institutions. Tillerson, as the C.E.O. of Exxon, went to Capitol Hill to argue against the rule, and met with one of the senators who supported it. According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Tillerson said that if Exxon had to disclose payments to foreign governments it would make many of those governments unhappy—especially that of Russia, where Exxon was involved in multibillion-dollar projects. The senator refused to drop the rule, and Tillerson became visibly agitated. (Tillerson denies this.) “He got red-faced angry,” the source recalled. “He lifted out of his chair in anger. My impression was that he was not used to people with different views.” [...]

Determined to find new reserves, Tillerson demonstrated on several occasions that he was willing to engage in deals that were contrary to the foreign policy of the United States. The most intense conflicts arose when Exxon tried to do business in countries where the U.S. had imposed economic sanctions. According to senators and aides, and to documents filed with Congress, Exxon lobbied the U.S. government extensively to relax sanctions on Iran, which were designed to curtail its nuclear-weapons program. Exxon was also a member of USA Engage, a group that lobbied against the sanctions. [...]

In addition to imposing sanctions on the Russian government, the U.S. targeted Sechin and other senior officials close to Putin. Yet the relationship with Exxon continued. Company officials made a number of oil deals with Sechin, and, after Tillerson’s confirmation, applied for a waiver to the sanctions that prevented work in the Kara Sea. The Treasury Department subsequently fined Exxon two million dollars for the deals it made with Sechin, and denied its request for a waiver. “I was very pleased about that,” a former U.S. official who worked on Russia sanctions told me. “The integrity of the people at Treasury held up. It didn’t matter that Tillerson was Secretary of State.” [...]

But what Tillerson has proposed is far more ambitious than eliminating a few dozen jobs. He has suggested deep cuts for humanitarian aid and economic development—the whole range of initiatives designed to alleviate suffering and to advance America’s interests. His budget called for drastically reducing or completely dissolving programs to help refugees, deliver aid to countries hit by disaster, support fledgling democratic movements, protect women’s groups, and fight the spread of H.I.V. and aids. The proposed cuts to such foreign-aid programs total some $6.6 billion.

read the article

The New York Review of Books: Brexit: ‘Take Back Control’?

But right after announcing these two departures, and in the very same speech, May turned on a dime. She told the assembled EU ambassadors that, following Brexit, she wanted to propel strategic sectors of the UK economy right back into the single market and the customs union, but with one big difference she called her “bespoke” deal. While Britain would still enjoy most of the benefits of membership—“frictionless trade,” in her words—the UK would be largely free of its obligations. So, no free movement of labor between the UK and the EU, no British jurisdiction for the Europe Court of Justice, and no multibillion-pound annual payments by the UK into the EU budget.  [...]

May put together her approach with only a couple of advisers in Downing Street, and without significant consultation with either her cabinet or British business leaders. But May’s fall has blown open the politics of Brexit within her cabinet. In her year of power, the contradictions of her Brexit diplomacy could be taken as evidence that she needed to make a choice between them, a choice that was hers to make. The weakness of her position now means that these contradictions have been exposed and are harnessed to rival cabinet factions fighting for supremacy, with May caught in the crossfire and powerless to control them. The most significant development in this opening-up of the politics of Brexit has been the emergence of a cabinet faction led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond. [...]

But May did not fire Johnson because he has maneuvered himself into becoming the champion of the nationalist insurgency in the Conservative Party and of those voters who see Brexit as a moment of liberation. Johnson enjoys support not only among grassroots party members but also in May’s cabinet, from ministers like Davis, Fox, and the Environment Secretary Michael Gove, along with the militant core of Conservative members of parliament for whom Brexit has been a lifelong cause. Their cause is also cheered by the pro-Brexit national press led by The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Mail. With a gravely weakened prime minister caught between these warring cabinet factions, it is hard to see how their conflicts will be resolved.

read the article

Quartz: Nearly every country on earth is named after one of four things

According to our research, the majority of country names fall into just four categories: 

• a directional description of the country
• a feature of the land
• a tribe name
• an important person, most likely a man  [...]

A few things to keep in mind: Name origins are often murky, so this is an inexact exercise. Sometimes the most fun or attractive origin stories are bunk. “Beware folk etymology (an effort to explain a name by its resemblance, in sound or spelling, or to some other name or word, or its possible association with a person or event),” writes John Everett-Heath by email. “Myths and legends may be entertaining, but rarely of value.” [...]

By far the greatest plurality—a third—of the world’s countries get their current names from some older group of people. There’s a big cluster in Europe: France is named for the Franks; Italy for the Vitali tribe; Switzerland for the Schwyz people. 대한민국, romanized as Daehan Minguk, is the Korean name for South Korea. “Daehan” means “Great Han” or “Big Han,” after three Han tribes from the 2nd century BC. (“Han” can also mean “big.”) Vietnam means Viet people of the south. [...]

By our count, there are roughly another 25 countries named for some person of importance—in all cases but one, a man. According to language blogger Paul Anthony Jones, St. Lucia, a third-century woman from Syracuse, is the exception. [...]

And then there are a few countries whose names don’t fit into any major category—and these are arguably the most poetic. There’s tiny Comoros off the east African coast, whose name means “moon,” after the Arabic “al qamar.” Mexico is also said to have lunar roots, the Spanish simplification of the Aztec city, Metztlixihtlico, meaning “in the navel of the moon.”

read the article

MapPorn: Countries that have Nobel Prize Laureates

see the original post