Dexter Filkins has written an impressive essay on the tenure of Rex Tillerson as US Secretary of State for the New Yorker magazine. It is a long and detailed essay, but is particularly well-informed and touches on many aspects of the complicated relationship between multinational corporations, such as ExxonMobil, and home and host governments. It also provides some important insights into the internecine warfare that seems to be endemic to the current Administration. If, as I suspect, that Tillerson leaves the State Department fairly soon, the essay will provide an important context to how to interpret what might come after he leaves. This essay complements an earlier essay in Foreign Policy by Derek Chollet which was published before the current controversy,
There were hundreds of thousands of Catalans in Barcelona protesting the independence movement supported by the regional government. The protests are a clear sign of how divided the region is on the issue of independence. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is playing a hardball game against the secessionists, threatening to remove the autonomous status of the region if independence is declared. Pro-independence Catalans, however, continue to believe that Catalonia should declare independence.
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