Trump’s Pick for Sec. of Army, but Tillerson is Still a Problem

For the most part, the team leading the auditions for Cabinet posts in the Trump administration are pretty good. It was announced on December 19, that Trump’s choice for Secretary of the Army is Vincent Viola. Viola is a billionaire and a West Point graduate. Formerly an air borne ranger, Viola is in fact a military patriot as he helped fund the ‘counter-terrorism’ center.

Hat tip on this choice.

Upon continued deeper dives however on Rex Tillerson, there is an iceberg ahead on this as his Russian ties are even more robust than previously reported.

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ExxonMobil helped defeat Russia sanctions bill

The company’s formidable lobbying operation cleared the way for outgoing CEO Rex Tillerson to help restore a program worth billions of dollars as secretary of state.

ExxonMobil successfully lobbied against a bill that would have made it harder for the next president to lift sanctions against Russia, clearing the way for the oil giant to restart a program worth billions of dollars if Donald Trump eases those restrictions as president.

The company’s effort could be helped by outgoing CEO Rex Tillerson, who, if confirmed as secretary of state, would be a key adviser on the decision.

The bill, known as the STAND for Ukraine Act, would have converted into law for five years President Barack Obama’s measures punishing Russia for annexing Crimea, making it more difficult for Trump to roll them back. The Senate left town on Monday without acting on the bill, making it easier for Trump to end the sanctions with a stroke of the pen.

The sanctions forced Exxon to step back from a drilling project in Russia’s Arctic, a loss that the company valued in a regulatory filing at as much as $1 billion. Exxon also lobbied the Senate Foreign Relations Committee against previous bills punishing Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, according to a person familiar with the company’s efforts on Capitol Hill.

Exxon’s intervention against the sanctions bill could add to concerns among senators — including Republicans John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio — that Tillerson is too chummy with Vladimir Putin. Exxon’s business partner in Russia is state-owned Rosneft, led by Igor Sechin, a close Putin ally who was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2014. Tillerson and Putin personally concluded the joint venture in 2011.

In a statement, Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said the company “sought and provided information” about its activities in Russia and Ukraine and disclosed its lobbying as required. “Our contacts were reported per congressional requirements, but were mainly in the first half of 2014,” when the Russia sanctions were first imposed, he added. More detail here from Politico.

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Yes there is more:

Leak reveals Rex Tillerson was director of Bahamas-based US-Russian oil firm

Documents from tax haven will raise more questions over suitability of Donald Trump’s pick for US secretary of state

Rex Tillerson, the businessman nominated by Donald Trump to be the next US secretary of state, was the long-time director of a US-Russian oil firm based in the tax haven of the Bahamas, leaked documents show.

 Mediaite

Tillerson – the chief executive of ExxonMobil – became a director of the oil company’s Russian subsidiary, Exxon Neftegas, in 1998. His name – RW Tillerson – appears next to other officers who are based at Houston, Texas; Moscow; and Sakhalin, in Russia’s far east.

The leaked 2001 document comes from the corporate registry in the Bahamas. It was one of 1.3m files given to the Germany newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous source. The registry is public but details of individual directors are typically incomplete or missing entirely.

Though there is nothing untoward about this directorship, it has not been reported before and is likely to raise fresh questions over Tillerson’s relationship with Russia ahead of a potentially stormy confirmation hearing by the US senate foreign relations committee. Exxon said on Sunday that Tillerson was no longer a director after becoming the company’s CEO in 2006.

ExxonMobil’s use of offshore regimes – while legal – may also jar with Trump’s avowal to put “America first”.

Tillerson’s critics say he is too close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and that his appointment could raise potential conflicts of interest.

ExxonMobil is the world’s largest oil company and has for a long time been eyeing Russia’s vast oil and gas deposits. Tillerson currently has Exxon stock worth more than $200m.

Since his nomination, Tillerson’s Russia ties have become a source of bipartisan concern. In 2013, Putin awarded him the Russian Order of Friendship. Tillerson is close to Igor Sechin, the head of Russian state oil company Rosneft and the de facto second most powerful figure inside the Kremlin. A hardliner, Sechin is ex-KGB.

Tillerson’s award followed a 2011 deal between ExxonMobil and Rosneft to explore the Kara Sea, in Russia’s Arctic.

It was put on hold in 2014 after the Obama administration imposed wide-ranging sanctions against Russia. The sanctions were punishment for Putin’s Crimea annexation that spring and Russia’s undercover invasion of eastern Ukraine.

The ban covers the US sharing of sophisticated offshore and shale oil technology. Exxon was supposed to halt its drilling with Rosneft. The firm successfully pleaded with the US Treasury department to delay the ban by a few weeks, with the Kremlin threatening to seize its rig. In this brief window Exxon discovered a major Arctic field with some 750m barrels of new oil.

Tillerson has criticised the US government’s policy on Russia. In 2014 he told Exxon’s annual meeting that “we do not support sanctions”. He added: “We always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who they are really harming.”

It is widely assumed by investors that the new Trump administration will drop sanctions. This would allow the Kara joint venture to resume, boosting Exxon’s share price and yielding potential profits in the tens of billions of dollars. According to company records, Tillerson currently owns $218m of stock. His Exxon pension is worth about $70m. The complete summary is here from the Guardian.

 

Due to Russian Aggression, U.S. Troops Being Deployed

The matter of Crimea is for the most part settle, it is part of Russia but such is not the case for Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland or Romania. Russia continues the hybrid warfare game there. The Pentagon has signed off on orders to deploy U.S. troops to the region in January.

Per an inquiry by NBC news, it appears intelligence officials have more information on Russian interference into the U.S. election cycle than is being reported.

U.S. intelligence officials now believe with “a high level of confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.

Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.

There is in fact a clandestine spy and diplomatic network of relationships and collaboration of information. Such is likely the case as well when it comes to planned 2017 military and propaganda objectives of Russia in the region of Eastern Europe.

The U.S. Army told The Associated Press that the deployment was not accelerated and is taking place as had always been scheduled.

Hodges said the troops will arrive in the German port of Bremerhaven on Jan. 6 and will be immediately deployed to Poland, the Baltic states and Romania. Their transfer will be timed and treated as a test of “how fast the force can move from port to field,” he said.

“I’m confident in the very powerful signal, the message it will send (that) the United States, along with the rest of NATO, is committed to deterrence,” Hodges said.

He said the armored brigade has already moved out of its Colorado base and is loading on ships.

“I’m excited about what my country is doing and I’m excited about continuing to work with our ally, Poland,” Hodges said.

In a separate decision, the members of NATO at a July summit in Warsaw approved the deployment of four multinational battalions to Poland and the Baltic states to deter Russia. Germany will lead a multinational battalion in Lithuania, with similar battalions to be led by the United States in Poland, Britain in Estonia and Canada in Latvia.

Poland and the Baltic nations have been uneasy about increased Russian military operations in the region, especially after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, and have requested U.S. and NATO troops on their soil as a deterrent. The alliance and the U.S. insist the troop presence is not aimed against anyone, but Russia has threatened measures in response.   

Russia has sided with the Assad regime and Iran for several years and most recently has provided troops and bombing aircraft to take back Aleppo, Syria from the anti-Assad forces. The human atrocities and death toll in Aleppo and other parts of Syria can be described as none other than a modern day genocide while the West has sidelined itself. In recent talks for alleged evacuation of Syrians from Aleppo to Idlib, the United States was not invited to participate. Meanwhile, Islamic State maintains it’s own capital in Raqqa, Syria operates with impunity.

ISIS is currently manufacturing advanced weapons on an industrial scale and currently is in possession of surface to air missiles in the region of Palmyra, a historical site once liberated by anti-Assad forces.

It cannot be overlooked that a few months ago, Russia sold Iran S-300’s while the United States under Barack Obama and John Kerry infused the Iranian financial system with an estimated $1.7 billion.

The fall of Aleppo now puts Syria into the expanded hands of the Shiite Crescent of Iran which was fully accommodated by Russia. While Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has had a major military operation in Syria since 2014, it must be noted that the top most elite specialized unit of Iran known as the Saberin Unit will continue to operate in the Syria/Iraq region.

One cannot determine what President Trump will do to address the battlefields in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia or Yemen if anything. As Trump has said he will re-do the Iran nuclear deal, such is already being challenged by Tehran which is setting up a wider base of military threats and hostilities.

President Trump would do well to attend the intelligence daily briefings as conditions do change in the region on a daily basis. Meanwhile, the Trump team has dispatched on Monday Georgia Congressman Jack Kingston to Moscow on the matter of lifting sanctions on Russia.

The Western sanctions that were imposed on Russia because of its armed intervention in Ukraine has become the top priority not only for the Kremlin but for foreign companies working in Moscow.

During the campaign, Trump indicated he would reconsider those sanctions and suggested he would get along fine with Russian President Vladimir Putin. More here.

In closing it should also be noted that diplomatic operations by Trump’s team are running parallel operations with existing Obama operations causing confusion and angst. It is apparent that due to Barack Obama’s disdain for the soon to be Trump administration, certain decisions and administrative international relations by the White House and the State Department are being applied before Obama transfers power and such is the case with the troops deployments in several regions of the globe including Afghanistan, Iraq and Eastern Europe.

Lastly, the Ukraine Defense Ministry was hit by a cyber attack by those pesky pro-Russian (old Soviets) forces.

 

 

Law Firm, Bob Dole Behind the Taiwan Phone Call to Trump

There is always more to the story right? Yes….and this phone call that set the White House and State Department on their heads when Trump received a phone call from the President of Taiwan, President Tsai Ing-wen. What has not been answered is did anyone in the Trump operation have advanced knowledge of the call or did they understand the policy ramifications for the long term when it comes to conditions in the region?

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Alston & Bird Central to Trump’s Taiwanese Phone Call

TAL: Former senator and Alston & Bird special counsel Bob Dole told The Wall Street Journal Monday that he and his firm helped arrange the president-elect’s taboo-breaking Friday telephone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen. “It’s fair to say that we may have had some influence,” Dole told the paper.

Dole and Ted Schroeder, a former Senate Democratic aide who joined Alston & Bird in January as counsel in its Legislative and Public Policy Group, are on a $20,000-a-month retainer to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, according to a lobbyist filing dated April 30. The office is Taiwan’s alternative to an embassy or consulate, handling foreign affairs and services for the Republic of China, commonly known as Taiwan.

In the lobbyist filing, Alston & Bird reported making routine diplomatic contacts on behalf of Taiwan’s U.S. representative. Awkwardly, the firm opened a three-lawyer Beijing office in January, specializing in IP, trade, tort and cyber disputes for Chinese clients in American forums.  Alston & Bird did not respond to a request for comment. Daniel Huang, a spokesman for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, said the office had no comment.

Breaking a diplomatic taboo that dates to 1979, the U.S. call with Taiwan’s head of state roiled the chattering classes in both nations, perhaps because China has more than 1,600 ballistic and cruise missiles facing the Taiwan Strait, and dozens aimed at the U.S. A far more measured but nontrivial way for China to retaliate would be for it to return once again to cyberespionage, whose decline was an unsung Obama success. Nick Rossmann of FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence says that while he detects no new change in hacking patterns, “an economic downturn in China coupled with a deterioration in the U.S.-Chinese bilateral relationship would be key factors in a shift to ramp up operations to steal IP.”

The Taiwan call made a parlor game of guessing Trump’s motives for lightly playing with the world’s highest concentration of missiles, and tweaking a rising superpower that fights to keep its own military’s jingoists in check.

“Defensiveness, ignorance, impulsivity, considered aggressive behavior, on-going real estate negotiations?” muses Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. “Not having a clear idea about which of these factors is driving decisions is and will be one of the joys of the Trump years.”

Initial speculation centered on ignorance or impulsivity. “This has all the earmarks of randomness on the U.S. side,” a senior Bush diplomat told Politico. Others noted a Taiwanese newspaper report, denied by the Trump Organization, that Trump was considering a luxury development near Taipei’s airport. The New York Times reported that a sales manager overseeing Asia for Trump Hotels had visited Taiwan in October, a trip that she recorded on her Facebook page.

As the consensus shifted toward “considered aggressive behavior” (or at least considered by Trump’s aides), the first reports pointed the finger at former Dick Cheney aide and Heritage Foundation scholar Stephen Yates. But Yates denied the reports, while voicing warm support for the reckless break in protocol.

Thanks to Dole’s candor, we now know who really deserves blame for Trump’s first foreign policy blunder. And to ignorance, impulsivity, aggression and conflicts, we must add another animating factor. Even in the drained swamp of Trump’s Washington, don’t discount the power of lobbying.

Aleppo: Tell Our Story After we are Gone

Update as of 2:24 EST, December 13, 2016, a truce and a cease fire announced.

The Syrian government has established control over eastern Aleppo, Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday. More from CNN.

It was October of 2016, that I interviewed Abdulkafi Al-Hamdo that is mentioned weeks later, today, in this article. He told me the same then, don’t cry for us, tell our story. You could hear the reckoning in his voice, his time on earth was short. (Segment 2) Barack Obama and John Kerry own this genocide and hence should be the mantle of their policy legacy.

 

Last Rebels in Aleppo Say Assad Forces Are Burning People Alive

As the Syrian dictator’s coalition captures the last rebel-held neighborhoods, residents are bidding the world farewell and opposition media says mass atrocities have already begun.

DailyBeast: Amid celebratory gunfire and cheers from Assad loyalists, foreign militias under Iranian command and troops loyal to the regime on Monday captured about 90 percent of the opposition-held areas of eastern Aleppo.

The last hope of the besieged rebels, most of whom seem to have withdrawn in the face of certain defeat, had been to receive reinforcements or resupplies from their counterparts in the southern and western suburbs. That option has now been foreclosed upon as these routes are completely interdicted by the regime.

The triumphal takeover of the citadel of the Syrian revolution followed a day of intense bombing of houses and apartment buildings, destroying so many that it was impossible to determine the death toll. The neighborhoods of Bustan al-Qasr, al-Kallasa, al-Farod and al-Salhin in the Old City, as well as Sheikh Saed, in the southern district, are all now under regime control.

The Syrian Civil Defense, or White Helmets, an internationally renowned team of first responders, said more than 90 bodies of people presumed to be still alive are under debris and that its volunteer staff reported they could hear the voices of children trapped in the rubble of their houses.

A member of the group in Aleppo told al-Arabiya TV on Monday night that men, women, and children were huddling and crying in the streets and at the gates of empty buildings in the few neighborhoods that remained in the hands of the opposition. He described the situation as hopeless, because precision munitions and indiscriminate barrel bombs had destroyed the city’s medical facilities, ambulances, and fuel supply.

Unconfirmed reports, circulated by opposition media, suggest that mass atrocities have already begun, such as the summary executions of 17 in al-Kalaseh neighborhood, 22 in Bostan al-Kasrand, and the immolation of four women and nine children on al-Firdous Street. The Daily Beast could not independently confirm these figures.

The official Syrian news agency SANA claimed that eight people were killed and 47 were injured in regime-held Aleppo after opposition fighters bombed the city. Most of the victims were women and children, according to the agency.

Activists and residents of the ever-dwindling opposition pocket, an urban islet of about five square kilometers and home to as many as 100,000 people, spent the day signing off from social media, asking journalists to tell their story, and warning of their impending demise.

The Daily Beast was able to get in touch with Abdulkafi Al-Hamdo, a university teacher in the besieged city. The brief conversation was as follows:

TDB: “I hope you’re safe.”

AA: “I don’t think I will be tomorrow.”

TDB: “Do you expect all the remaining besieged neighborhoods will fall by tomorrow?”

AA: “No. Except over the body of every civilian. I won’t surrender my body, and my wife, and my daughter to the Assad regime without defending them… I hope that you’ll tell everyone what I’m saying.”

On a publicly visible WhatsApp feed belonging to the Aleppo Siege Media Center, al-Hamdo was more fatalistic. “Doomsday is held in Aleppo,” he said. “People are running don’t know where. People are under the rubble alive and no one can save them. Some people are injured in the streets and no one can go to help them [because] the bombs are [falling on] the same place.”

Award-winning blogger and activist Marcell Shehwaro, a native of Aleppo, shared on Facebook a message from one of her most “peaceful” and least-sectarian friends. “No Marcell, don’t worry,” it read. “I will kill myself, I won’t let them arrest me.”

Lina al-Shamy, a 26-year-old woman, posted a video of herself to Twitter. Speaking in fluent English, al-Shamy said: “To everyone who can hear me. We are here exposed to a genocide in the besieged city of Aleppo. This may be my last video. More than 50,000 civilians who rebelled against the dictator, al-Assad, are threatened with field executions or dying under bombing. According to activists, more than 180 people have been field executed in the areas the regime has recently retook control of by Assad’s gangs and the militias that support them. The civilians are stuck in a very small area that doesn’t exceed two square kilometers. With no safe zones, no life, every bomb is a new massacre. Save Aleppo, save humanity.”

Jouad al-Khateb had a similar message—one hesitates to call it valedictory— for the world. In Arabic, he told the camera: “Behind me is the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood. Since last night up to the present moment, it is being bombed with every kind of weapon; vacuum rockets, missiles. The rockets have not stopped since last night. The people coming out of Bustan al-Qasr are telling me it’s become a city of ghosts. More than 20 families remain under the rubble across various districts.” The White Helmets were unable to reach any of the victims, al-Khateb added.

“My message to those watching: Just stop the waterfall of blood for us. We don’t want to leave the besieged areas. Just stop the waterfall of blood. It’s as if this has become very normal for the international community, you know, a rocket falls, 20 or 30 people are killed, under the rubble, they can’t pull them out—that’s a totally normal thing. In any case, there’s no space for graves to bury them in. Let them be buried under the buildings. I think this will be my last video, because we’ve gotten bored of talking, bored of speeches.”

Al-Khateb was interrupted by a loud groaning sound.

“That’s a barrel bomb,” he said, referring to one of the regime’s most notorious improvised munitions, a metal canister filled with high explosives and shrapnel, which are dropped indiscriminately from helicopters.

Another trapped resident, Ameen al-Halabi, boasted on Facebook, “I’m waiting for death or imprisonment by the Assad forces. I would rather die on the soil of my land than be arrested by their faithless militias.” Al-Halabi asked his friends to forgive him if this was the last message he wrote.

On several rebel chat forums on the popular messaging application Telegram, there were calls for the youth of Syria to wage “jihad” against the conquerors of Aleppo, if only to defend the honor of women who had allegedly been raped in the course of the Assadist blitzkrieg.

Whether or not that particular war crime has yet occurred in Aleppo—though human-rights monitors have documented mass rape in Syrian regime prisons since the start of the conflict—the call for holy war against the regime may yet take hold. For this reason, the CIA and Joints Chiefs of Staff earlier advised the Obama administration that the fall of eastern Aleppo, apart from being a humanitarian catastrophe, would also constitute a counterterrorism threat to the United States. The radicalization of survivors is all but a foregone conclusion.

As for those already radicalized, they’ve had a remarkably auspicious week. While the regime was focused on reclaiming Aleppo, ISIS, or the self-proclaimed Islamic State, was able to completely retake another ancient Syrian city, Palmyra, which it had lost, to much international fanfare, last March.

Despite the gravity of the day’s events, and the many breaches of international law that led to the collapse of the rebel-held area, U.S. political leaders were slow to comment. President Obama has watched in silence as Russia and the Assad regime have committed what Secretary of State John Kerry called crimes against humanity, and Donald Trump has not once publicly mentioned the word “Aleppo” on his favorite social-media platform, Twitter, since being elected president of the United States a month ago. Kerry even meekly invited the Kremlin over the weekend to show “a little grace” in how it recaptured eastern Aleppo.

“The Holy Quran teaches that whoever kills an innocent is as—it is as if he has killed all mankind. And the Holy Quran also says whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.”

So did Obama tell a receptive audience in Cairo, in 2009, in a much-scrutinized maiden speech of his administration. (The second line in this sacred allusion, as it happens, is also the mantra of the now-helpless White Helmets.)

The president who came to office promising to repair the breach between the United States and the Islamic world, putatively caused by the war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq, is now set to leave office having done little to stop to the slaughter or displacement of millions in Syria or the wholesale destruction of one of Islam’s most venerated cities.

The Final Hours for Aleppo

The end nears for besieged eastern Aleppo with 99% of the enclave now captured by the Syrian regime the last 2% with some estimated 200,000 civilians still inside is under heavy air and ground bombardment thousands of men and young boys who have surrenderd and past to the regime side of Aleppo are reported as missing corpses and dying peole are said to litter the battered area with no medical or rescue services left intact food water and electicty is depleted.

           Raw: Syrians Flee Eastern Aleppo