US farm income hit by collapse in grain demand

George Gallanis & Alexander Fangmann

According to the Wall Street Journal, American farmers are set to face a 50 percent decline in corn prices this year while the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is forecasting farmers across the country will earn a third less than last year. Farm income is expected to be at its lowest level in six years, and the downturn in income is expected to ripple across the entire US agricultural sector. Manufacturing and fertilizer companies, among others, expect to see demands for their products slump.

The price of corn has taken a fall, with corn futures trading at roughly $3.51 per bushel in May versus $4.65 per bushel a year ago. The value of farmland in the territories covered by the Federal Reserve Bank branches in St. Louis and Kansas City has fallen between 2.1 and 2.5 percent, while that in the Chicago territory, adjusted for inflation, has fallen by 1 percent, the first time it has fallen since 1986.

The US saw a record corn harvest in 2013, followed by another large harvest in 2014. This year’s crop will likely be smaller than last year’s based on planting estimates of 89.199 million acres, down 1.398 million acres from 2014. The large harvests have been met with less-than-expected demand from the ethanol industry and export markets, which is driving the falling price of corn.

Currently, 37 percent of all corn is used for making ethanol and biofuels. In 2014, 836 million gallons of ethanol worth $2.1 billion were exported. While this is an increase from 2013 and 2012, it is still below the approximately 1.2 billion gallons exported in 2011—the highest amount ever. The average price for ethanol in March of this year was $1.53 per gallon, a huge drop from the previous year, when it was $2.70 per gallon.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports ethanol companies have seen a steep decline in profits this year. Valero Energy Corp., the nation’s third-largest ethanol producer and owner of Minnesota’s largest biofuel plant in the city of Welcome, reported a 95 percent drop in quarterly ethanol operating profits. Ethanol producers have been hit hard by the fall in the price of oil, which competes with ethanol.

Lower demand is also being propelled by decreased corn exports. From March 2014 to March 2015, American corn exports diminished by 9 percent. While some of this is due to the ongoing currency war, which has caused resulted in a slight rise in the value of the US dollar, the most significant drop-off in demand was from China, which decreased its American corn imports by more than 92 percent. Last March, it imported 3,162,152 bushels of US corn, while in March of this year it only imported 240,521 bushels. China has instead relied upon Ukraine for filling its corn needs and has already booked more than 600,000 tons this year.

China’s declining interest in American corn has been linked to its public concerns over American farmers’ use of GMO (genetically modified organism) seeds, which China has seen as risky and potentially harmful, leading to a ban on specific varieties. At the same time, the Chinese agricultural sector is interested in developing its own GMO research and agricultural varieties and limiting its dependence on foreign imports. As Chinese agriculture minister Han Changfu stated in March 2014, “We can’t have such techniques monopolized by others.”

It cannot be ruled out either that the sharp reduction in corn imports from the United States may be a shot across the bow of the US in response to the escalating geo-political tensions, including the military brinksmanship by the US in the South China Sea.

Meanwhile, fertilizer and chemical companies are making adjustments to the fall in farm income. Jason Miner, a senior chemicals analyst, told the AgWeb online news agency, “The underlying story is that U.S. farm income is falling and that’s a reflection of lower crop prices. Farms are now more cautious about buying exactly what they need for fertilizer.” Consequently, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc., the world’s largest fertilizer producer by market value, cut its full-year earnings forecast on expectations of lower average prices for its namesake crop nutrient.

As the farming sector faces losses in profits, workers will be billed for its decline. John Deere, one of the leading global manufacturers of farm equipment, saw a steep decline in first-quarter earnings, from $681.1 million during the same period last year to $386.8 million. More recently, Deere posted a 30 percent decrease in its fiscal second-quarter net income. Rajesh Kalathur, Deere’s chief financial officer, stated, “We’re facing the deepest downturn in North American large ag equipment in 25 years. We’re managing our inventories aggressively.”

In January, Deere announced approximately 910 employees would be placed indefinite layoff from facilities in Iowa and Illinois. Deere declared that the layoffs “reflect the economic forecast included in the company’s November 2014 earnings report as the company continues to align the size of its manufacturing workforce to market demand for products.”

In August 2014, Deere slashed 600 of its workers and placed them on indefinite layoff. It stated that demands for its products had decreased, and “to remain globally competitive, the company must align the size of its manufacturing workforce with market demand for products.” The two layoff announcements eliminated more than 1,000 jobs in Waterloo, Iowa, or 17 percent of its 6,000-member workforce in the metropolitan area.

On October 1, 2015, the labor agreement expires with the United Auto Workers (UAW) covering thousands of Deere workers in Waterloo and other factories in Iowa, Illinois and Kansas. The UAW has consistently imposed the demands of the corporation for layoffs and wage and benefit cuts in the name of keeping the company competitive.

As workers are losing their jobs, Deere CEO Samuel R. Allen continues to receive his annual compensation of roughly $10 million, and the company has continued to dutifully pay out dividends to its richest investors. The most recent quarterly dividend was announced at 60 cents per share, even as company revenues declined by 18 percent. On the strength of its cost-cutting measures, the company recorded $1.9 billion in profit and saw its stock price rise by 4 percent.

US Senate prepares to extend NSA spy powers

Thomas Gaist

The US Senate voted 77-17 Sunday to proceed with a second vote on the USA Freedom Act, legislation that would renew the USA Patriot Act while supposedly restraining collection of US telephone metadata by the National Security Agency. The chamber will likely vote to approve a final version of the Freedom Act on Tuesday or Wednesday, returning the legislation to the House of Representatives, where it was approved last month.

A main element of the USA Freedom Act is the reauthorization of surveillance powers stemming from Section 215 of the Patriotic Act that officially expired yesterday. During the past week, the American public had been subject to a barrage of hysterical warnings from the Obama administration that the Senate’s initial failure to pass the Freedom Act would hamstring the NSA’s surveillance efforts and expose the nation to deadly terror attacks.

The vehemence with which claims that NSA spying would be “wound down” have been advanced by the political and media establishment is a reflection of anxieties in the ruling class over growing mass opposition to the surveillance. Fully 65 percent of Americans believe that the US government has excessive power to collect electronic communications data, according to recently published data from the Pew Research Center. The figure rises to 74 percent among Americans who are well informed about the programs.

The main reforms advanced by the Freedom Act are the addition of a “privacy advocacy panel” to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), new requirements for the FISA court to publicly disclose any “novel” legal arguments and secret interpretations invoked by the NSA, and transfer of responsibility for collecting and storing telephone data to the companies.

The “freedom” legislation has won support from establishment “libertarians” of left and right flavorings alike, including Senators Rand Paul (Republican) and Ron Wyden (Democrat).

Senator Wyden cheered on the moves toward passage of the USA Freedom Act, saying Sunday that Congress “has the opportunity to build on this victory by making meaningful and lasting reforms to US surveillance laws.”

“We’re winning,” Senator Paul proclaimed. The Obama administration will “no longer be able to collect our records all the time.” On Sunday, Paul engaged in a political stunt that blocked final passage before the expiration at midnight, while at the same time backing the fraudulent “reform” supported by the Obama administration itself.

The legislation has also received strong backing from a number of privacy NGOs and other groups.

Celebrated by its supporters for supposedly ending the NSA’s mass collection and storage of telephone metadata, the Freedom Act provides for telecoms to efficiently transfer data to the NSA, including “a six-month transition period during which the NSA would work with phone companies to ensure that they can set up their systems to quickly search for records and send them to the agency,” as the Washington Post wrote.

The NSA, FBI and other government agencies have a long history of ignoring and subverting the law whenever doing so serves their purposes. Whatever the theatrics on Capitol Hill, one can be certain that the intelligence and security agencies are forging ahead with ever-more sophisticated spy programs regardless of the current vote tally in Congress.

Entire large-scale NSA programs, including Stellar Wind—which involved data mining of email and phone communications—were kept secret for years. Knowledge of Stellar Wind’s existence was withheld even from the secret and authoritarian FISA court system that was specifically created to monitor the spying.

Under Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act (FAA), the NSA’s Prism program has received mass data transfers from Google, Yahoo, Facebook and a slate of other leading communications firms since 2007, in exchange for multimillion-dollar payments arranged through the NSA’s Special Source Operations (SSO) department. The NSA’s SSO has established contractual relations with more than 100 US companies since the 1970s.

Internal NSA documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013 describe Section 702-based operations, principally the Prism program, as the agency’s “number one source of raw intelligence,” providing more than 90 percent of the NSA’s Internet-based data.

Documents released by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper last summer confirmed that the NSA, FBI and CIA all employ interpretations of FAA Section 702 to carry out “back door searches” of both content and metadata of US communications.

Neither these nor the many other illegal programs exposed by Snowden will be touched by the Freedom Act.

US government agencies have repeatedly devised new legal theories in order to justify programs that were held by Congress and the courts to be incompatible with existing laws. When the NSA was unable to gain Justice Department support for certain metadata collection operations during the George W. Bush administration, a new legal rationale was invented which “essentially gave NSA the same authority to collect bulk internet metadata,” according to internal NSA records from 2004.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act has itself been the basis for multiple reinterpretations aimed at authorizing indiscriminate collection of not just phone data but also Internet and personal financial information from US persons.

Attorneys with the NSA and DoJ first interpreted Section 215 as providing the basis for metadata spying in 2005, a position that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected this May.

Defending the agency before the Senate this week, the NSA’s top in-house lawyer Stewart Baker acknowledged that the readings of Section 215 by NSA and DoJ lawyers from 2005 required some inventiveness. “The interpretation of 215 that supported the bulk collection program was creative,” admitted Baker.

Baker then proceeded to speak in favor of passage of the USA Freedom Act legislation, saying that such legal “creativity” would no longer be necessary should the law pass.

“I don’t think anyone at NSA is going to invest in looking for ways to defy congressional intent if USA Freedom is adopted,” Baker said, implying that the bill provides all the necessary leeway for the NSA to operate as it desires.

Baker’s testimony makes clear that for all the talk of “ending NSA spying” and “shutting down NSA servers,” what is emerging out of the USA Freedom Act saga is, in reality, a blank check for the spy agency to continue and expand its operations, which are targeting the entire US and world population.

Even assuming that constraints against telephone metadata were actually enforced, the USA Freedom Act in no way limits the NSA’s existing authority to conduct limitless dragnet surveillance against targets in foreign countries, against US persons who communicate with persons abroad, and against US data “incidentally” collected from servers located overseas.

The vast majority of domestic surveillance operations developed by the NSA, FBI, DEA and other agencies with increasing speed since 9/11 would also not be subject to any new constraints.

Syriza’s Tsipras outlines concessions programme as Greece faces debt default

Robert Stevens

Monday evening German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and European Union Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker held a meeting in Berlin to discuss the crisis in Greece. They were joined by European Central Bank (ECB) head Mario Draghi and International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde.

On the previous evening Merkel, Hollande and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras held a conference call as negotiations over Greece’s overall debt and austerity programme entered their fifth month. The meetings follow the failure, over recent days, of the latest round of “technical” talks between representatives of the EU, ECB, IMF and Athens.

As Monday evening’s talks began, speculation began to mount that an “endgame” had been reached. The Guardian noted, “Rumours are swirling that Athens is about to get a ‘take it or leave it’ offer”. In the event the meeting did not come to any agreement, with Merkel's office issuing a stateement saying they “agreed that work must now be continued with greater intensity”.

The Greek state owes more than €300 billion and its funds are now virtually exhausted. Athens must make a further payment of €300 million to the IMF on Friday and a further €1.2 billion in payments to it in the next two weeks. The austerity programme expires on June 30, with some officials stating that if no agreements were reached this week it would be the end of the road. Any agreement extending further funds to Greece must be voted in a number of national parliaments, including Germany’s, and there would not be sufficient time for this.

Greece is still due €7.2 billion, the last tranche of the loan from the troika that was conditional on the implementation of the final austerity agreement reached with the previous New Democracy/PASOK government and accepted by Syriza in February. Since last August, the troika has denied Greece any funds. Nothing has been given to Syriza, as they have been unable to reach a deal to impose the still deeper austerity measures demanded.

Billions of euros continue to flood out of Greece’s banks, with the rate increasing. In just two days last week, more than €800 million in savings were withdrawn. Since December’s election campaign, €31 billion (18.8 percent of total deposits) have been withdrawn, with private deposits now at the lowest level since 2004. Commenting on their perilous state, the Economist wrote, “The position of Greek banks is almost as untenable as the government’s; it is a moot point which will buckle first.”

Juncker, who recently pressed for an agreement with Greece, based on giving Athens more time to impose austerity, said in an article in Monday’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, “I don't share the idea that we will have fewer worries and restraints if Greece gives up the euro”. He warned if a country were to withdraw from the euro, "it would fix the idea in heads that the euro is not irreversible.”

Juncker expresses the concerns of sections of Europe’s ruling elite who fear a Greek exit from the euro zone under conditions of worsening economic and social conditions and continent-wide political instability. However, many other voices are demanding total capitulation from Athens. Should an agreement result from talks between Merkel, Hollande and Juncker, it will in reality be an edict containing the terms of Syriza’s surrender.

Despite the Greek government claiming just days ago that an agreement was close, Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters Monday that Athens must agree to a “far-reaching reform package.”

German Finance Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger said, “The aim of these individual measures is to restore Greece’s debt sustainability.”

Earlier Monday Le Monde published an article by Tsipras who complained, “The lack of an agreement so far is not due to the supposed intransigent, uncompromising and incomprehensible Greek stance.”

The delay was instead “due to the insistence of certain institutional actors on submitting absurd proposals and displaying a total indifference to the recent democratic choice of the Greek people.”

The statement is a damning verdict on Syriza’s perspective, which claimed that following a mass rejection of austerity by the Greek population in the January elections, it was possible reach an amicable, negotiated settlement with the troika over Greece’s debt, based on Athens remaining in the euro zone.

Tsipras said Syriza’s aim was to end scenarios that “prevent the long-term stabilization of the European economy and may, at any given time, weaken the confidence of both citizens and investors in our common currency.”

Greece, he wrote, “has shown that it wants to meet its external obligations, having paid more than 17 billion in interest and amortizations (about 10% of its GDP) since August 2014 without any external funding.”

It should be noted that Syriza handed over the vast majority of this amount, more than €13 billion, to the troika and international banks.

Syriza had submitted proposals “with the intent to reach an agreement that will combine respect for the mandate of the Greek people with respect for the rules and decisions governing the Eurozone.”

On this basis, “we have also offered highly detailed and specific plans” in negotiations that have “bridged the distance between our respective positions that separated us a few months ago.”

These included concessions on pension rights, privatisations and the VAT sales tax, he said. Syriza intended to repeal “provisions that wrongly allow for early retirement, which increases the real retirement age.” As for collective bargaining, Syriza wants “nothing more than what is common practice in all Eurozone countries.”

In a crushing refutation of his own claims, Tsipras comments that a “split and the division of the Eurozone, and consequently of the EU” is underway.

Describing the events that have transpired in Greece since 2010 he writes, “The first step to accomplishing this is to create a two-speed Eurozone where the ‘core’ will set tough rules regarding austerity and adaptation and will appoint a ‘super’ Finance Minister of the EZ [euro zone] with unlimited power, and with the ability to even reject budgets of sovereign states that are not aligned with the doctrines of extreme neoliberalism.”

If this continues, “elections would need to be abolished in those countries” under austerity programs. “Namely, we would have to accept that the institutions should appoint the Ministers and Prime Ministers, and that citizens should be deprived of the right to vote until the completion of the Program.”

What this means, continued Tsipras, is “the complete abolition of democracy in Europe” and “the end of every pretext of democracy, and the beginning of disintegration and of an unacceptable division of United Europe.”

For anyone opposed to this course there will be, “[H]arsh punishment. Mandatory austerity. And even worse, more restrictions on the movement of capital, disciplinary sanctions, fines and even a parallel currency. Judging from the present circumstances, it appears that this new European power is being constructed, with Greece being the first victim.”

Syriza represents sections of the Greek ruling elite and the more affluent layers of the middle class. It is hostile to a resolution of the crisis based on the mobilisation of the strength of the working class in Greece, throughout Europe and internationally, in a fight for the overthrow of capitalism on the basis of a socialist perspective.

Tsipras’ prescription is that Merkel, Hollande and every other pro-austerity figure in Europe must now come to the rescue! Spelling out Syriza’s pro-capitalist orientation, he declares, “Following the serious concessions made by the Greek government, the decision is now not in the hands of the institutions, which in any case—with the exception of the European Commission—are not elected and are not accountable to the people, but rather in the hands of Europe’s leaders.” [Emphasis added]

The European Commission responded to Tsipras’ desperate entreaties with a withering statement from Juncker’s spokesperson Mina Andreeva, who told reporters, “What matters more than op-eds are concrete reform proposals.”

With US air war in 10th month, ISIS advances in Iraq and Syria

Bill Van Auken

With the US-led air war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) now in its 10th month, the Islamist militia continues to make territorial gains in both countries, inflicting serious losses on the military in Iraq as well as both government forces and rival Islamist “rebels” in Syria.

In its latest attack on Monday, ISIS launched a devastating suicide bombing against an army base just north of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, killing at least 45 members of the security forces and wounding scores more.

The attack was carried out using an armored Humvee fighting vehicle loaded with explosives. The attack detonated ammunition in a base depot, setting off explosions that continued for several hours.

The increasing use of US-made Humvees in such bombing attacks is the byproduct of the debacle suffered by the Iraqi regime and its US-armed and trained security forces with the fall of Mosul to ISIS last June. Iraqi army and police units fled the city abandoning massive stockpiles of US arms and ammunition that fell into the hands of the Islamist militia.

The scale of this debacle was underscored on Sunday with the admission by Iraq’s Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi that “We lost 2,300 Humvees in Mosul alone.”

As an indication of the scale of this loss, the Guardian newspaper reported that the cost of 1,000 armored Humvees approved for sale to Iraq last year was estimated at $579 million.

In a separate attack Monday, ISIS ambushed an Iraqi army column in Seddiqiya in Anbar province, killing at least 33 troops and pro-Baghdad militia fighters.

The continued attacks come in the wake of last month’s fall of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, the most humiliating defeat for the US-backed government since the rout of Iraqi forces in Mosul a year ago.

The bitter recriminations over the fall of Ramadi, with US officials blaming a lack of Iraqi “will” to fight and countercharges that the US has done little to combat ISIS, have extended to within the Iraqi regime itself.

Salim al-Jabouri, the speaker of Iraq’s parliament and most prominent Sunni politician within the Baghdad regime, told CNN that Iraqi troops abandoned Ramadi to ISIS as the result of “a clear decision to give the order to pull out -- and after that Ramadi fell.”

Al-Jabouri said that Prime Minister Abadi, installed last year with Washington’s backing, had not been informed of the order to retreat from the city. The collapse of the security forces in Ramadi occurred, he added, after the so-called Golden Division -- a US-trained Special Forces unit -- suddenly pulled out.

“We feel that there were other hands involved in this that played a role in military decisions,” he told the US news network.

Tensions continue between Abadi and the former US-installed prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who has refused to move out of the prime minister’s palace in Baghdad’s heavily fortified “Green Zone” and is widely charged with seeking to undermine his successor. Maliki remains the leader of Abadi’s own Dawa party as well as the leader of the largest parliamentary bloc. He apparently continues to enjoy support from within top echelons of the security forces, as well as from Shia militias.

Following Ramadi’s fall, Abadi was compelled to allow Shia militias to take the leading role in a counter-offensive to retake the city. Washington, which had previously publicly opposed the participation of the militias, which are in most cases aligned with Iran, was forced to accept their role in the face of the rout of the government’s own forces.

In neighboring Syria, ISIS has also registered territorial gains against both the Syrian government and rival Islamist militias. According to an assessment by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, ISIS now controls half of Syria’s land mass, while the French Syria analyst and geographer Fabrice Balanche estimated that between Iraq and Syria, the Islamist militia now controls 115,000 square miles, roughly equivalent to the size of Italy. It has also taken over all of the border crossings between the two countries.

The most recent ISIS gains have come in the north, in the province of Aleppo. It overran the village of Suran on May 31, bringing its forces to within barely six miles of the Turkish border. And on Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, its forces inflicted losses on rival “rebels,” advancing on the town of Marea, which controls a key supply route from Turkey, which has been the major source of arms for the forces backed by the West and the Sunni Gulf oil monarchies in their bid for regime change in Syria. These advances follow the May 21 ISIS overrunning of the ancient southern Syrian city of Palmyra in Homs province.

There has been no evident attempt by Washington to blunt the advance of ISIS in Syria or to dissuade its reactionary monarchical Arab allies from continuing to arm and fund the Islamist militias. ISIS, together with the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front, remains the principal fighting forces in the US-backed war to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The price paid by the peoples of both Syria and Iraq for a bloody war that is the direct outcome of US policies in the Middle East, from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the support of the Islamists in Syria a decade later, continues to grow.

May constituted the single bloodiest month since the outset of the Syrian conflict, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, with at least 6,657 killed. The largest single category of dead was that of Syrian government troops and other fighters supporting the Assad government, which accounted for 2,450 of those killed. This was followed by the Islamist militias, which reportedly lost 2,109 fighters and then civilians, 1,285 of whom lost their lives to the conflict last month.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq counted the deaths of 1,031 Iraqis from the violence last month, with another 1,684 wounded.

US defense secretary signs joint military statement with Hanoi

Joseph Santolan

US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter traveled to Haiphong and Hanoi yesterday as part of his 11-day tour through the Asia-Pacific region, prosecuting Washington’s campaign toward war against China in the South China Sea. During his stay, Carter worked to further enmesh Vietnam in the imperialist military agenda of the United States.

Carter arrived in Vietnam from Singapore, where he delivered a plenary address at the Shangri-La Dialogue denouncing Beijing for its land-reclamation activity in the South China Sea, which he condemned as “out of step with international rules and norms.”

Washington has seized upon China’s minor construction activity as the pretext for the dramatic escalation of regional tensions, going so far as to deliberately provoke a military encounter in the disputed waters by deploying surveillance aircraft over territory occupied by the Chinese.

The recklessness of Washington is made all the more apparent by the flimsiness of the pretext. The Wall Street Journal admitted in an analysis published on Sunday that “the U.S. is constrained by the fact that China’s island-building doesn’t violate maritime law, and other claimants to the Spratlys, including Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines, have all expanded the geographical features they control … Nor has China threatened shipping in the South China Sea ... And although the U.S. accuses China of militarizing the islands, so far it has identified only two light motorized artillery pieces on one of them. Even after their expansion … the islands remain mere specks in the ocean and have limited military value … they are virtually indefensible.”

Carter sought to shore up Washington’s pretext of opposing “destabilizing reclamation activity” by calling on Hanoi to discontinue its own reclamation work on disputed islands. He told a joint press conference that the Vietnamese government was “considering” the request. His counterpart, Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh, said the Vietnamese military was only engaged in maintenance against erosion, and not expansion activity. He added that the Vietnamese military occupied nine “floating islands” and twelve “submerged islands,” where they were shoring up existing structures.

Carter reportedly said he would like clearer distinctions drawn “between what is new construction that would be barred and what is maintenance that might be permitted.”

This rather friendly treatment of Vietnamese reclamation activity highlights the hypocrisy of Washington’s outrage at China’s so-called island building. Washington will not be publicly denouncing Vietnam for its “flagrant disregard for international norms,” nor will it be staging provocative military encounters against Hanoi. It is China that is in Washington’s crosshairs.

Carter and the Vietnamese government signed a Joint Vision Statement, underscoring the alignment of Hanoi’s military interests with those of Washington.

As part of this deal, Carter announced that the United States would begin training Vietnamese troops to participate in United Nations peacekeeping operations and would station a US peacekeeping trainer at the American embassy in Hanoi. This training will amount to preparation to carry water for US imperialist ventures around the globe.

Carter committed the US to providing Vietnam with $18 million for the purchase of two US Metal Shark 75 Defiant patrol boats. He pointedly made this announcement after touring the Vietnamese coast guard vessel that Hanoi accused a Chinese navy ship of having rammed in May of last year.

The most crucial component of the Joint Vision Statement that has been announced was the intent to begin the co-production of weapons and defense supplies.

Vietnam currently buys more than 90 percent of its defense materiel from Russia. In October 2014, Washington lifted its ban on the sale of lethal maritime weaponry to Vietnam. The move toward co-producing weapons in Vietnam seeks to simultaneously curtail Russian military influence in the country and the region, and fully enmesh Vietnam in Washington’s imperial orbit.

Washington has already stepped up its pressure on Hanoi to end its military ties with Moscow. On March 11, Reuters reported that Washington asked Hanoi to stop letting Russian ships and aircraft use the military facilities at Cam Ranh Bay. The implementation of this request will no doubt be a prerequisite for increasing military ties with the United States.

Russia announced yesterday that it would conduct joint war games in the South China Sea with Beijing, although no date for these exercises has yet been announced.

In order for Washington to replace Moscow as the Vietnamese military’s chief supplier, Hanoi has requested the full removal of the US weapons sales restrictions. Currently Washington has only lifted the maritime weaponry ban. Defense Minister Thanh said lifting the ban would be “in line with the interests of both countries. And I think we should not attach that decision to the human rights issue.” Carter made no mention of human rights.

Carter’s visit was clothed in the hubris of imperialism. He visited Hanoi and Haiphong, both of which were devastated by the “Christmas bombing” of 1972 on the orders of President Richard Nixon. Carter officially inspected Vietnamese troops. A Vietnamese military band played the US national anthem. The US defense secretary then gave Thanh a belt and a diary that was stripped from a Vietnamese soldier’s corpse in 1972. Carter referred to them as tokens of “a shared past.”

Vietnamese Communist Party secretary general Nguyen Phu Trong is scheduled to visit the United States soon, possibly within the month. Further details of Hanoi’s military cooperation with Washington will no doubt be hammered out.

Vietnam’s economy was left in smoldering ruins in 1975, when the Vietnamese people succeeded in defeating the US military occupation of the country. As in China and the Soviet Union, the Vietnamese Stalinist bureaucracy’s nationalist program was incapable of keeping pace with the integrated world economy. In 1986, the Communist Party leadership opened up the country as cheap labor platform for the imperialist powers, on whose behalf they policed the working class. In 1995 Washington and Hanoi normalized relations.

Over the past five years, Washington has used tensions with China, which it has deliberately inflamed, to drive a wedge between Hanoi and its leading trade partner, Beijing. As the threat of war in the region has mounted at a breathtaking rate, driven by the policies of the Obama administration, so too has the process of converting Hanoi into a proxy of US interests in the region. Carter’s visit marked a further escalation of that process.

Parasitism and the economic crisis

Andre Damon

The US Commerce Department released figures Friday showing that the US economy contracted sharply, shrinking at an annualized rate of 0.7 percent in the first three months of this year.

Yet despite the disastrous condition of the real economy, all three major US stock indexes reached record highs during the three months covered in the report. In fact, less than 48 hours before the release of the data, the Nasdaq Index closed at an all-time high of 5,107.

While the US real economy has grown by only 13 percent since the depth of the recession in 2009, all three major American stock indices—the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq—have more than tripled, each hitting all-time highs.

Far from being mere coincidence, the run-up in stock values and economic slump represent two sides of the same process. They express the extent to which, seven years after the 2008 financial crisis, the whole world economy has become an object for unremitting plunder by the global financial aristocracy, with disastrous social and economic consequences.

This plunder manifests itself in the continual diversion of economic resources into the coffers of billionaire shareholders and corporate executives at the expense of productive activity. This was reflected in the Commerce Department report on the collapse of business investment, which fell at a rate of 2.8 percent in the first quarter of this year.

The sharp fall in investment came despite the fact that US corporations are holding a hoard of some $1.4 trillion in cash and similar assets, the largest such figure on record, amassed as a result of years of record profits amid falling wages and an influx of cheap money from the world’s central banks.

Instead of using this cash to hire workers and build factories, corporations are diverting it to raise dividends, buy back shares, hike executive pay and carry out mergers and acquisitions—all at record levels.

In the aftermath of the 1929 financial meltdown, caused by rampant Wall Street fraud, speculation and parasitism, bankers guilty of many of the greatest crimes that led to the crash were tried and convicted, while new financial regulations, including the Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial and investment banking, put limits on the size and power of Wall Street. This was the response of the ruling class to immense revolutionary struggles of the time.

As the New York Times recently noted, “In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the nation’s finance industry shrank severely—and remained in a humbled state for most of the next four decades. The economy boomed in this period, with no major financial crises and less income inequality than in recent decades.”

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, on the other hand, none of the basic causes of the crash, including the enormous size of the global financial sector and its pervasive criminality, have been even remotely addressed. Rather, under the guidance of the Obama administration, the dominant position of Wall Street in economic, social and political life has only been entrenched and expanded.

The growth in financial parasitism is so pervasive that even mainstream economic institutions have been forced to warn of its dangers. Last month the International Monetary Fund, a bastion of the political establishment, declared in a research paper that economic growth “weakens at higher levels of financial development” and called on governments to take measures to rein in the size of the financial sector.

Despite these warnings, governments throughout the world have shown neither the will nor desire to rein in even the most brazen and criminal manifestations of financial parasitism.

In the US, the Obama Justice Department has ensured that the major banks have been given effective legal immunity for the crimes they have committed before, during and after the 2008 crash. This has been evidenced by one scandal after another—from selling fraudulent subprime mortgages, money laundering, and tax evasion, as well as rigging benchmark interest and foreign exchange rates—for which not a single bank executive has been prosecuted.

Meanwhile, led by the US Federal Reserve, the world’s central banks have responded to every sign of renewed weakness in the global economy by either expanding their money printing operations or scaling back their plans to “normalize” monetary policy.

Two interrelated processes find expression in the response to the 2008 crisis: 1) the long-term decline of American capitalism, and 2) the elevation of financial parasitism to the basic mode of operation of the ruling class. Even in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the United States was still a rising industrial power, which would establish its global hegemonic position following the Second World War.

The past four decades, however, have seen a relentless decay and decline, with entire industries wiped out, facilitated and demanded by the operations of finance capital. The process through which the ruling class acquires and maintains its wealth has become ever more divorced from the actual process of production.

The policies of the Obama administration are ultimately the expression of the domination of the financial oligarchy over all aspects of economic and political life in the US, the center of international finance. This social layer uses its political and economic leverage not only to promote its parasitic activities, but also to further the drive toward war and dictatorship throughout the world.

There exists no solution to the crisis gripping the global economy outside of the expropriation of the ill-gotten wealth of this oligarchy and the reorganization of society on an egalitarian and socialist basis.

Implications of Modi’s Three-Nation Tour in East Asia

Sandip Kumar Mishra


To understand and evaluate the outcomes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s East Asian tour of China, Mongolia and South Korea, it would be useful to separate them into at least three domains: popular, economic, and security-strategic. 

Overall, it can be said that Modi was able to create sufficient public attention on his visit to China. This may not appear important but by connecting India and China through various mediums such as Twitter, a momentum for people-to-people exchange between the two neighbours could be created. India and China both are rising powers in Asia and have big information as well as perception gaps - these gestures cannot therefore be called superficial. In Mongolia, which no other Indian PM has officially visited before, Modi’s first stop was Gandan Monastery where he gifted a Bodhi Tree. He talked about India and Mongolia’s historical linkages and addressed the Mongolian parliament, which was a first. He also talked about Buddhism and democracy as two important connectors between the two countries. In South Korea also, Modi visited the War Memorial and remembered the Indian soldiers who helped South Korea during the Korean War and referred to other historical connections. His visit to South Korea got remarkable coverage in the local media.

On the economic front, India and China signed 12 different agreements along with a promise of US$20 billion Chinese investment in India. India has been looking at possible investors for its infrastructure sector, which needs around US$1 trillion. China has a foreign reserve of around US$4 trillion, and during his visit to China, Modi tried to communicate India’s needs and opportunities for Chinese investments in a win-win dynamic. Modi also raised the issue of the imbalance in India-China bilateral trade which has reached around US$48 billion and which must be corrected. India is an eager partner in the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and looks forward to benefitting from this Chinese initiative. 

India and China realise that the economic opportunities are immense and must be realised. Modi’s visit to China thus was largely in line with this understanding and trajectory. His visit underlined that economic cooperation must increase even if both countries are not able to reach consensus on political and security issues. During his Mongolia trip also, Modi’s visit resulted in several agreements in the economic, trade, transport, highways and energy sectors. He laid the foundation for an Information Technology Centre in Mongolia and gifted a Bhabhatron to the National Cancer Centre of Mongolia. Cooperation in the minerals sector was also sought; this includes cooking coal, copper, rare earths and uranium. The economic outcomes of Modi’s Mongolia visit may not look very impressive quantitatively, but they are definitely strategic. India, during Modi’s trip to South Korea, signed 7 agreements along with other several other proposals to connect economic and trade institutions of both countries. South Korea promised to invest around US$10 billion in India and both countries are going to revise their Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) by next year. Modi took special interest in South Korea’s shipbuilding sector and visited a Hyundai plant in Ulsan. Modi appears to be convinced that the role of South Korea would be crucial in India’s ‘Make in India’ project and this visit was also an attempt to display India’s commitment to it.

The third set of issues are related to security and strategy. In China, Modi had little success, though many observers were expecting ‘historic’ steps. India shares a long and disputed border with China and but nothing significant emerged on this front. Several other issues such as Chinese trade routes proposed under the One Belt One Route (OBOR) project, growing proximity between China and Pakistan and regional issues such as the South China Sea were not taken up during the visit. Modi’s Arunachal Pradesh visit before the China trip, his indirect reference to China during his Japan visit in 2014 and India’s common vision document with the US for the Asia-Pacific, there have been clear indications that there is little possibility of improvement in this area between the two countries. There are allegations that Modi’s diplomacy vis-à-vis China in particular and East Asia in general have been too loud and thus his visit to Mongolia along with China was given a special context by some observers. It is said that Modi is interested in forging a closer partnership with Mongolia on strategic issues and his visit brought out this dimension of India’s objective. On the security and strategic partnership front, Modi’s visit to South Korea can be considered quite successful. He raised the bilateral relationship to the ‘special strategic partnership’ level, with the provision of annual summit meets between the respective leaders and annual 2-2 meetings between the foreign and defence ministers. That the same provisions that are present in the India-Japan relationship have been incorporated into the India-South Korea relationship would be to the latter’s satisfaction.   

Overall, it seems that Modi’s three-nation tour in East Asia has been successful in connecting their historic and popular bonds with India as well as forging more dynamic economic cooperation. The energy invested in the visits should hopefully bear positive results in the future. However, from the security and strategic points of view, only his South Korea visit might be called a success. Another important aspect of these visits are going to be the follow-ups, which are equally if not more important to realise these agreements. It would be interesting to see how India is going to implement these economic partnerships and whether they are going to have a spill-over effect in the security and strategic domains.

India-China: Current Status and Expectations for the Future

Siwei Liu


Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid his first visit to China since assuming office, from 14-16 May 2015. The visit has a great significance for present-day Sino-India relations, and also has a high importance for the geostrategic dynamics of the Asia Pacific region. Both China and India should seize the opportunity to build closer bilateral ties and work together for the stability and prosperity of the Asia Pacific.

Modi’s three-day China trip created a positive and friendly atmosphere for Sino-India bilateral relations. Modi received a warm welcome form the Chinese government and people. It is worth mentioning that Modi had visited China twice before he took office and so he has some previous personal experience of interacting with Chinese people. For example, Modi opened his Sina Weibo, the popular Chinese microblog, saying "Hello China!" ahead of his visit. He successfully used social media to narrow the distance between him and Chinese people. 

Modi’s first stop in China was Xi’an, a famous historic and cultural city in the country’s Shaanxi Province. Xi’an is the incumbent Chinese President Xi Jinping’s hometown. There is no denying that Modi’s Xi’an trip easily echoes Xi’s September 2014 India trip in which the latter travelled to Modi’s home state Gujarat before flying to the capital, New Delhi. Previously, President Xi had never welcomed a foreign leader in Xi’an. The extraordinary arrangement demonstrated that the two leaders want to strengthen their personal relations in the future. 

It is worth mentioning that as an ancient Chinese capital, Xi’an has an important link for cultural and economic interactions between China and India. So choosing Xi’ an as Modi’s first stop in China also demonstrated the two sides purposely emphasise their cultural exchange and economic cooperation. 

Modi’s cultural diplomacy was indeed impressive. In Xi’an, Modi not only visited the Da Ci'en Temple and the Wild Goose Pagoda – built in commemoration of the Buddhist monk, Xuan Zang, and his efforts to popularise Buddhism in China – but also visited the famous Terracotta Warriors and Daxingshan Temple. In Beijing and Shanghai too, there were many cultural and educational exchange activities in Modi’s itinerary. They included attending the Yoga-Taichi demonstration event; addressing students at Tsinghua University; and participating in the opening ceremony of the Center for Gandhian and Indian Studies at Fudan University. 

Doubtlessly, Modi’s attendances in these activities were welcomed in China. The Chinese media and the Chinese people were positive in their views of Modi’s visit.

Modi’s China visit has had fruitful results. Twenty-four agreements were signed during the visit. Both sides emphasised their cooperation in various fields, ranging from cultural and educational exchange to trade and investment. Additionally, Indian and Chinese companies inked 21 agreements worth $22 billion during the India-China Business Forum in Shanghai. Both sides also agreed to boost increased cooperation between Chinese provinces and Indian state governments and inked agreements towards the establishment of sister-state/province partnership between Karnataka and Sichuan, and sister-city relationships between Aurangabad-Dunhuang, Chennai-Chongqing and Hyderabad-Qingdao. 

Predictably, these agreements will help deepening the bilateral and will benefit local communities as well.

Additionally, Modi announced a new electronic visa scheme for Chinese nationals in his speech at Tsinghua University. Obviously, China appreciated Modi's decision, though the e-visa decision had not figured in the aforementioned 24 agreements. If Modi’s promise is kept, it will help enhance people-to-people ties. 

Admittedly, Modi’s visit has begun a new era in bilateral relations, but the fact that the two sides have different interests and trust deficits on some issues could be neglected. In recent years, the increasing geopolitical competition between the two nations is apparent. India has concerns over China’s growing influence in South Asia and the India Ocean and the Chinese strategic community is concerned about Indian closer defence relations with US and Japan. Even in economic relations, the two nations have to deal with various challenges such as the potential energy competition and trade deficit. In addition, although the two sides have underlined enhancing border defence cooperation during this visit, their differences on border issues are still big.

Perhaps, national interests, competitions and trust deficit between New Delhi and Beijing cannot be resolved overnight; but given that India and China have common interests in various fields, there are possibilities for more cooperation between the two. In fact, many Asian experts and business leaders in both countries are positive in their views of a deeper cooperation between the two countries.

Modi’s visit has come at a very critical time, one that coincides with the rise of the two Asian giants – China and India – in a changing Asia-Pacific architecture. The visit has provided a good and positive platform for the two sides to promote the cooperation relations.

Both sides should recognise that pursuing a win-win approach to intensify cooperation is not only beneficial for the two countries, but also can contribute to regional stability, development and prosperity. If possible, the two sides should discuss more practical ways to deepen cooperation and perfect related-regime construction. For example, given that the two sides are likely to link the Chinese 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative with India's Project Mausam and the Spice Route Project together, they need to undertake more dialogues and interactions both through Track-I and Track-II channels and let the other side know more details about projects.

US-GCC Summit: More Hype than Substance

Ranjit Gupta


On 17 April, the White House announced US President Barack Obama’s invite to GCC monarchs for a summit on from 13-14 May to reassure the Saudi Arabia-led GCC bloc about the nuclear framework agreement with Iran and against the backdrop of the then three-week-old war against Yemen embarked upon by Saudi Arabia and its GCC allies without consultation with the US. Reflecting the widespread sentiment amongst GCC governments, a senior Arab diplomat had said, “We don't have to ask America's permission… we won't wait for America to tell us what to do.”

GCC expectations were well summed up by the Ambassador of the UAE Youssef Al Otaiba who, on 7 May, said in Washington that, “We are looking for (some form of) security guarantee given the behavior of Iran in the region. In the past, we have survived with a gentleman’s agreement with the United States about security ... I think today we need something in writing. We need something institutionalized.”

On 7 May, US Secretary of State John Kerry met King Salman; on 8 May the US announced fixing the King’s special meeting with President Obama at the White House. On 10 May Saudi Arabia announced the cancellation of the King’s visit. With Bahrain now under complete Saudi tutelage, Bahrain’s king preferred to go to London to attend the derbies. Only the Emirs of Kuwait and Qatar went, though the latter attended the derbies in London too. The rulers of Oman and the UAE could not attend due to genuine health reasons. Two rising stars, the Crown Prince, and Deputy Crown Prince – who seems to be running the war in Yemen –  represented Saudi Arabia. All this was a strong public manifestation of the growing Saudi/UAE exasperation with US policies towards the region, particularly in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring.

What did the GCC countries actually get? Some extracts from the lengthy Joint Communiqué and a lengthier Annexe provide an answer:

“The United States is prepared to work jointly with the GCC states to deter and confront an external threat to any GCC state's territorial integrity that is inconsistent with the UN Charter…. to determine urgently what action may be appropriate, using the means at our collective disposal, including the potential use of military force, for the defense of our GCC partners”.  The US also agreed to support GCC countries “to counter Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region.” These statements, the strongest language in the Joint Communique, can hardly be construed as the US “ironclad commitment” that President Obama spoke of as a Summit outcome; particularly as another of his comments clarified that "the purpose of security cooperation is not to perpetuate any long-term confrontation with Iran or even to marginalise Iran."

The US will be particularly pleased about paragraphs: “The United States and GCC member states also affirmed their strong support for the efforts of the P5+1 to reach a deal with Iran by June 30, 2015, that would verifiably ensure that Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon, noting that such a deal would represent a significant contribution to regional security…. At the same time, the United States and GCC member states reaffirmed their willingness to develop normalized relations with Iran should it cease its destabilizing activities and their belief that such relations would contribute to regional security….”. And, “With regard to Yemen, both the United States and GCC member states underscored the imperative of collective efforts to counter Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula, and emphasized the need to rapidly shift from military operations to a political process…..(there is) a shared recognition that there is no military solution to the regions’ civil conflicts, and that they can only be resolved through political and peaceful means…” 

However, these sentiments are likely to remain mere aspirations as Saudi Arabia resumed its intensive bombing across Yemen within minutes of the conclusion of the five-day ceasefire. If anything, the intensity of the bombing has been steadily increasing, inflicting greater casualties, causing ever increasing damage to the already weak infrastructure and displacement of increasing numbers of people, already in the thousands; all of this is going to engender long-term bitterness, even enmity towards Saudi Arabia. The Houthis remain undaunted. Saudi Arabia cannot succeed in reinstalling the Al-Hadi administration through this approach. Meanwhile, al Qaeda is gaining ground by the day.  

Frankly, the only elements of the joint communiqué that could be implemented soon are those related to the greatly expanded supply of weapons, and the installation of a GCC-wide Ballistic Missile Early Warning System. In his first term, the Obama administration agreed to sell over $64 billion in arms and defence services to the GCC countries with almost three-quarters of that going to Saudi Arabia. New offers worth nearly $15 billion were made to Riyadh in 2014 and 2015. Now, even more weapons will be made available. The US military-industrial complex is celebrating. 

Thus, the summit ended with the US coming out a winner, Iran not losing anything and little for the GCC countries beyond lots more weapons. Saudi Arabia’s new assertiveness will increase in the short term as paranoia and pique continue to override rationality; President Obama will persist with his top foreign policy priority, a deal with Iran; the increasing misery of the peoples of the region will continue unabated; and prospects for meaningful political processes to end conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen in the foreseeable future remain bleak.

The Public Speaking Racket

Binoy Kampmark

“The eye-watering fee works out at £275 a second for the proposed 20-minute speech.”

-Daily Mail, Jun 1, 2015

He may well have been one of the most insincere of political figures, but that has not stopped Tony Blair filling his money bags with heft since the days when New Labour seemed to be the only force in British politics worth looking at. It was the highpoint of hypocrisy and cant, of swindling effects and spinning deceptions. Taking Britain to war with Iraq on President George W. Bush’s belligerent ticket topped it off.

Then came the lecturing circuit, that money-laden trail of rich gravy and cost that has typified the retirement, if one can term it that, of political figures who capitalise on their supposedly hard won wisdom. They know; they were there.

The mundane, the mediocre and the disingenuous rock up the receipts, uttering banalities on behalf of openings, the addressing of clubs, and conferences where six figure price tags are commanded. They tend to feature the insoluble themes: retaining peace; abolishing hunger; alleviating poverty. Organisers and the speakers are entirely complicit in this endeavour – neither intend resolving the difficulty whose purpose sustains them. An entire industry, rooted in public relations deception, has grown up, gold plating speakers with coaching tips and suggestions.

One product of this system is Scott Berkun, who gives lists on the hireable types for speaking, and cost scales. His Confessions of a Public Speaker observes that the circuit itself transformed with free market tremors and technological stresses. “Lecture series, training conferences, and corporate meetings created thousands of events that needed new speakers every year.” Grass-roots community services vanished before the monetary flood. Value became meaningless to fluff.

The recent rejection by Blair of an engagement that would have cost £330,000 returned the public speaking circuit to the lime light. If ever an event says it all, with its message, and its participants, this had to be the Eat Food forum in Sweden. The gathering deems itself a forum where “science, politics and business can share insight and ideas into achieving our common goal of sustainability feeding a healthy world population.”

Suspiciously, it looks like a forum where failed figures go to preach, a communion of disaster in session and subsidised sermonising. Blair had just finished up his stint as Middle East Envoy, a position that seemed to entail a trail of cock-up and woe. Adding spice to that are his other sources of revenue, raked in for the strategy consulting concern Tony Blair Associates, advisor to such clients as Kuwait and Kazakhstan. Blair may speak of advice and reform; his clients are otherwise disposed.

For all that, Blair demanded, through Kruger Cowne talent agency, over two hundred thousand pounds, in addition to eighty thousand pounds in expenses for a twenty minute address.

In that, he was joined by another man of silver tongue and persuasion, Bill Clinton. In an address to the same forum last year, Clinton netted around the same fee – Kruger Cowne were certainly not going to let that amount go by, though it was reported by an unnamed source in The Express (Jun 1) that “Blair is not Clinton” and that his appeal was “fast diminishing.”

This is the world of public speaking speculation, stock chips that provide regular returns, or gradually tail off into the investment sunset. “So for his talent reps to think Eat was going to pay massive bucks for him shows they overestimated his worth.” Eat itself suggested that the deal failed to materialise because “the fee they wanted was quite high.” As a result, claimed the organisation’s executive producer Odd Arvid Stromstad, “we didn’t want to go into it” (Daily Mail, Jun 1). No talk, naturally, about the theme of the conference: to alleviate hunger and forge sustainable consumption. A conference about hunger could not feature the starving.

The response from Kruger Cowne has deflected the light on plain avarice and shifted it to charity. When in need of a good cause, charity will step in to provide the suitable alibi for greed. Not that the choice of where Blair’s planned fee was destined to go non-partisan. The agency had requested that Eat pay the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women his fee. Yes, equal opportunity for women and all that.

Blair’s office simply cited logistical impediments as to why this “donation” was never finalised. “Prior commitments meant it would be logically impossible.” Nor did his office negotiate “the amount of money that he would be earning” as he was not going to earn anything in any case. The spinning hand of Alistair Campbell still works its spectral magic.

Such form of public speech making acts as a racket, a form of verbal colonisation and graft. For 20 minute talks, Blair finds himself earning tens of thousands of pounds. In 2007, he is reported to have received £327,000 from Chinese property developer Dongguan Guangda to address 600 Communist party officials, business figures and bankers. Two years later, the Philippines was the site of the next Blair public speaking invasion – one which cost £400 thousand for two engagements.

It is a sign of modern measurement that in terms of public good, worth lies not in the content, or the sagacious nature of the speaker, so much as the delivery and name. Signatures, not substance, count. In this way, faecal matter resembles gold dust. It is a form of cost-laden ventriloquising. And it is bound to continue.