Syrian Oil and US Troop Withdrawal - Explained

United Thieves of America.

"A supposed champion of the rule of law, the US is violating its own anti-Syrian sanctions by smuggling crude from oil fields it seized from Damascus",  " a nation that repeats ad nausea that it sticks to democratic values and rule of law in international relations, is pumping oil… under a pretense of fighting ISIL, other wise know as thief's  using double standards to try to hide there
deeds.

Not smuggles! They steal. What do you expect from descendants of British? Outside looks white but inside is darker then crude oil colour.

Nothing is surprising about this infested country. Robbery is not new for America. Stealing is the culture of most businessmen in US.

"stealing" is in the category of "being smart" in US.

So this is what Trump meant when he said 'We have secured the oil".

Does anyone really expect anything different from USA? The same people who murdered at least 60 million native Americans and stole their lands. Murder, lies and deceit has been their method right from the start.

Syrian Oil and US Troop Withdrawal, Explained
South Front, 2 November 2019

The United States is to keep forces at the oil fields in Syria despite the troops’ withdrawal from the north of the country. The formal justification of the move is the need to “deny ISIS access” to the oil fields. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that the US military is already “taking some actions” to strengthen and reinforce their position in Deir Ezzor. This, Esper said, will include “some mechanized forces”.

US military convoys already started entering Syria from Iraq and moving towards the US-controlled oil fields on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. The Pentagon provided few details regarding numbers of troops and equipment that will remain in the area. Media reports speculate that around 500 personnel reinforced with dozens of pieces of military equipment  will be stationed there. For example, Newsweek reported that the US is seeking to deploy a half of an US Army armored brigade combat team battalion that includes as many as 30 Abrams battle tanks to the oil fields. The US is also going to keep its military garrison in the al-Tanf area, on the Damascus Baghdad highway, where about 150-200 troops remain.

The version of the troops’ withdrawal from Syria that the media is trying to sell its audience says that the US is leaving the country. In reality, the US actions look more like re-deployment than withdrawal.

Firstly, the withdrawal of “a majority of 1,000 troops” is hardly possible if, at the same time, 650-700 troops are to remain in the Deir Ezzor oil fields and al-Tanf.

Secondly, the Trump administration, including the Defense Secretary, said that it was moving troops out of northern Syria, but not that they would be leaving the country. Trump himself described the withdrawal from Syria as a “process”.

Thirdly, the US military convoys which left northern Syria during the active phase of Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring for western Iraq are now returning. Dozens of US military vehicles accompanied by fuel tankers entered Syria on October 26 and 27 alone. US forces also remained deployed at the Qasrak base on the Tell Tamr-Qamishli highway.

Therefore, in the best case the US contingent is being reduced, while the rest of the forces just change their deployment area. The stance of Iraq, which at the highest level rejected the long-term presence of the US troops withdrawing from Syria to western Iraq, also played its own role. Some experts initially suggested that Washington could keep forces on the Iraqi side of the border to project military power to Syria while keeping the troop withdrawal promise at the same time. However, this plan caused too much resistance from the Iraqi government, which is already in much closer relations with Iran than the US has ever wanted.

Another factor is money. The control of a part of Syrian oil does not impact the US economy in general. However, it does open particular prospects for the US campaign in the region and gives the Trump administration additional leverages of pressure on Syria and its allies.

Before 2011, Syria had a lucrative oil industry, pumping about 400,000 barrels a day and having 2.5 billion barrels of reserves. The ensuing war and wide-scale Western sanctions devastated the country’s economy, cutting production by around 90% and forcing the Assad government to rely heavily on foreign imports of oil, mainly from Iran.

The known oil reserves are mainly in the eastern part of the country near its border with Iraq and along the Euphrates River. The largest and most mature fields are the Omar and Jbessa fields, which reportedly had production capacities of 100,000 and 200,000 barrels a day, respectively, in 2010. This is the area where the US is planning to keep its military presence. It is estimated that around 75% of Syrian oil reserves are under the direct or indirect control of the US. A number of smaller fields are located in the center of the country, which is controlled by the Syrian Army, and in the country’s northeast, which is now under the joint control of the Syrian Army and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

When the SDF and the US-led coalition seized the fields, the revenue from smuggling of Syrian oil was estimated at around $10 million a month with the price of around $30 per barrel. However, thanks to assistance from companies affiliated with US intelligence agencies and private military companies the oil output and thus revenue grew significantly.

According to an October 26 report by the Russian Defense Ministry, the US military and private military contractors are now actively involved in protecting and managing oil smuggling in eastern Syria. The oil production itself is carried out using equipment provided by Western corporations bypassing all US sanctions. The oil exportation is implemented by the US-controlled company «Sedkab», created under the so-called Autonomous Administration of Eastern Syria, a political body created by the SDF, when US troops were deployed in northern Syria. The income from the smuggling goes through brokerage companies interacting with various accounts of US private
military companies and US intelligence agencies. The Russian side says that the barrel cost of smuggled Syrian oil is $38 and estimates a monthly revenue for the US “business” involved in the operation of over $30 million.

The business interests of US agencies and entities involved in the operation offer more reasons for the US presence in the area. It can be expected that if the situation in this part of Syria remains unchanged, the Trump administration will indeed go forward with its withdrawal “process” and more and more US troops will be replaced by US-linked private military contractors. Meanwhile US
agencies and private military corporations will use revenue from the oil smuggling for further operations across the Middle East.

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US smuggles crude worth $30mn per month from occupied Syrian oil fields, violating its own sanctions – Russian Foreign Ministry
RT : 1 Nov, 2019

A supposed champion of the rule of law, the US is violating its own anti-Syrian sanctions by smuggling crude from oil fields it seized from Damascus, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has said.

Each month the US smuggles crude worth $30 million out of Syria, according to Zakharova. The fuel comes from fields in the northeastern part of the country, where the US maintains a military presence after pulling its troops back from the Syrian-Turkish border.

“A nation that repeats ad nauseam that it sticks to democratic values and rule of law in international relations, is pumping oil… under a pretense of fighting ISIL,” the official said, using an outdated name for terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

Oil fields in the Deir ez-Zor governorate, east of the River Euphrates, were captured by US-backed Kurdish militias as they advanced on IS forces. Washington makes no secret of the fact that it keeps an illegal military presence in the area in order to deny Damascus access to the natural resources that it has every right to possess under international law.

The US considers the Syrian government illegitimate and has used various means to attempt to topple it over the past eight years, from imposing harsh economic sanctions to arming and training whoever was willing to fight against Damascus. The fact that the US banned oil trade with Syria and is now smuggling oil out of it is particularly ironic, Zakharova said.

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Trump is an honest thief among dishonest thieves.

‘I like oil!’ Trump reaffirms predatory intentions in Syria as Assad calls him ‘the best’ US president for his honesty
2 Nov, 2019

Donald Trump is not trying to hide Washington’s true policies and intentions behind doublespeak about freedom and democracy – and that makes him “the best American President,” Syrian President Bashar Assad said.

“We’ve stayed back and kept the oil,” Trump reiterated on Friday, reaffirming the main US interest in Syria and making clear that all less immediately lucrative endeavors like keeping peace and reconstructing the devastated country should be taken care of by someone else. “Other people can patrol the border of Syria... let them – they’ve been fighting for a thousand years.”

Trump’s remarkably blunt approach was commended by Syria’s Assad, who noted in a recent interview that Nobel Peace Prize laureate presidents always pose as the “defenders of human rights and noble and unique American values,” rather than “criminals who represent the interests of American lobbies.”

    He is the best American President, not because his policies are good, but because he is the most transparent president… What can be better than an honest enemy?

While giving Trump credit for not mincing words, Assad noted that the crumbling moral high ground facade only reveals what’s always been there.

    This is the reality of American policy... All American presidents perpetrate all kinds of political atrocities and crimes…

Oil fields in the Deir ez-Zor governorate, east of the River Euphrates, were captured by US-backed Kurdish militias as they advanced on Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorist forces. After pulling its ‘advisers’ back from the Syrian-Turkish border, Washington has made no secret of the fact that it keeps an illegal military presence in the area in order to deny Damascus access to its natural
resources.

According to Russia’s estimates, each month the US smuggles crude worth $30 million out of Syria – not only in violation of international law but, ironically, also in breach of its own unilateral sanctions against the war-ravaged state.

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US ‘pullout’ from Syria looking more like permanent occupation with 800 troops reportedly tasked to ‘protect’ oil
RT : 6 Nov, 2019

The long-awaited US pullout from Syria appears to have been postponed, with Pentagon sources claiming some 800 troops will stay behind to “guard” Syria’s oil, in a mission even pro-war US politicians are calling “reckless.”

US troops will occupy a large, oil-rich area stretching 150km from Deir ez-Zor to al-Hasakah, the Trump administration announced on Tuesday. A total of about 800 troops will be stationed in the country, with some 600 in the Kurdish-controlled northeast plus the 200 currently garrisoned at al-Tanf in the south, anonymous administration officials told the AP.

The decision appears to cancel out President Donald Trump’s promise made last month to bring home the 1,000 troops stationed in Syria, representing another triumph of the hawks in his administration over the president’s non-interventionist impulses. Trump has repeatedly bragged “We’re keeping the oil.”

The explicit purpose of the occupation - guarding the Kurdish-controlled oil fields in northeast Syria not only from terrorists, but from the Syrian government - is illegal under international law, as Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin pointed out on Tuesday. Even American politicians who were previously champing at the bit for Trump to keep troops in Syria have criticized the move. They point out that the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force - the post-9/11 resolutions that have been stretched to justify invasions of several countries under the guise of “fighting terrorism” - don’t allow the US to occupy another country’s oil fields, given that the US is not at war with Turkey or (officially, at least) Syria.

The US is building two new military bases in Deir ez-Zor, according to Turkish media reports, indicating Trump is settling in for the long haul. One base, near the town of Rmelan in al-Hasakah province, is reportedly situated near some 1,300 oil wells and fills up approximately 4 square km.

Officials told the AP that the order’s approval does not include a “mandate” to take Syria’s oil, while Defense Secretary Mark Esper attempted to smooth out the president’s words to that effect by saying he “interprets” them to mean US troops are guarding Syria’s resources from the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) - even though the president has declared the terror group defeated.

Trump announced troops would be pulled out of northeast Syria last month, allowing Turkey to clear the border area of the Kurdish militias Ankara considers terrorists. The president's critics in Washington recoiled at the prospect of peace, slamming Trump for abandoning the US' Kurdish allies, even when his administration negotiated a cease-fire with Turkey that gave Kurdish forces several days to clear the area and cleared the way for Russia and Turkey to reach a peaceful settlement of their own.

Switzerland & United States are the world’s most corrupt nations

No wonder the "neutral" Switzerland piles up hundreds of NGOs filling their pockets with "donations". The bastion of justice is indeed the ultimate repository of wealth stolen worldwide.

About USA it was not a secret.. The US gouvernement under Obama said it clearly that they wanted to  bring all the money to the US...

They attacked Switzerland banking system with the law suit against UBS..  nothing new !!

The devil is in the details: Tax havens become absolutely ethical when they serve to reduce the burden on the citizens of corrupt governments who coerce tax money from people -at threat of incarceration- in order to transfer a large percentage of that tax money to politicians and cronies by various kickback schemes, one of them being criminal and deadly wars of aggression, fought to grab
resources for private corporations.

Switzerland & United States are the world’s most corrupt nations – report
RT : 5 Feb, 2018

A new study from advocacy group Tax Justice Network reveals that Switzerland is the world’s most-corrupt country, with a “high secrecy score of 76.” It’s followed by the US and the Cayman Islands.

“Switzerland is the grandfather of the world’s tax havens, one of the world’s largest offshore financial centers, and one of the world’s biggest secrecy jurisdictions or tax havens,” said the group’s report ‘Financial Secrecy Index — 2018 Results’.

It explained that “the Swiss will exchange information with rich countries if they have to, but will continue offering citizens of poorer countries the opportunity to evade their taxpaying responsibilities.

“These factors, along with ongoing aggressive pursuit of financial sector whistleblowers (resorting at times to what appear to be non-legal methods) are ongoing reminders of why Switzerland remains the most important secrecy jurisdiction in the world today,” said the report.

The index ranks countries for the assistance their legal systems provide to money-launderers, and to all people who seek to protect corruptly-obtained wealth. The higher the secrecy score, the more corrupt the government is.

In order to create the index, a secrecy score is combined with a figure representing the size of the offshore financial services industry in each country.

According to the report, the United States’ secrecy score (60) is rising, which results in attracting corrupt wealth. In 2013, the US was in the sixth place, and in 2015 it took the third in the rating.

“The continued rise of the US in the 2018 index comes off the back of a significant change in the US share of the global market for offshore financial services. Between 2015 and 2018 the US increased its market share in offshore financial services by 14 percent,” said the report. In total the US accounts for 22.3 percent of the global market in offshore financial services.

“The US provides a wide array of secrecy and tax-free facilities for non-residents, both at a Federal level and at the level of individual states.”

The report added that “Financial secrecy provided by the US has caused untold harm to the ordinary citizens of foreign countries, whose elites have used the United States as a bolt-hole for looted wealth.”

Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Germany, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, and Guernsey closed out the top-10 most corrupt countries.

The least corrupt nations among the 112 covered in the rating were San Marino, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Montserrat.

The countries with the lowest secrecy score were UK (42) and Slovenia (42), Belgium (44), Sweden (45), Lithuania (47), Italy (49) and Brazil (49).

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EU has 'whitewashed' Switzerland, one of the 'world's most harmful tax havens' - Oxfam
RT : 10 Oct, 2019

The European Union has removed seven countries from its list of tax havens, the bloc’s finance ministers announced on Thursday. They include Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and five other countries.

Brussels set up a blacklist and a gray list of tax havens in December 2017, following revelations of widespread avoidance schemes used by corporations and wealthy individuals to lower their tax bills. Blacklisted countries face reputational damage and stricter controls on transactions with the EU.

The largest financial center on the blacklist, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was removed after it adopted new rules on offshore structures in September.

The Gulf state charges no corporate taxes, making it a potential target for firms seeking to avoid paying tax in the countries where they actually operate.

The EU does not automatically add countries that don’t charge tax - which can be a sign of being a tax haven - to its blacklist, but it requested the UAE introduce rules that would allow only companies with a real economic activity there to be incorporated in order to reduce the risks of tax dodging.

The Marshall Islands has also been removed from the blacklist, which still includes nine extra-EU jurisdictions - mostly Pacific islands with few financial relations with the EU.

Switzerland, one of the EU's close trading partners, had been on the gray list. According to the EU, the nation has "delivered on its commitments" to prevent it from being a tax haven and is now off the list.

Albania, Costa Rica, the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius and Serbia have also been removed from the gray list, with around 30 jurisdictions remaining on it.

Countries on the gray list risk being moved to the blacklist if they fail to deliver on their commitments.

“The EU has whitewashed two of the world’s most harmful tax havens,” said Chiara Putaturo of Oxfam, referring to the de-listing of Switzerland and Mauritius.

“Despite recent reforms, both countries will continue to offer sweet treats to tax-dodging companies,” she said, as cited by Reuters.

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European Union blacklists 17 countries as tax havens
RT : 6 Dec, 2017

The European Union (EU) finance ministers have adopted a blacklist of 17 countries for refusing to cooperate with its crackdown on tax evasion.

The countries listed are American Samoa, Bahrain, Barbados, Grenada, Guam, South Korea, Macau, Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Namibia, Palau, Panama, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.

The President of Panama Juan Carlos Varela said the country was “not in any way a tax haven.”

EU tax commissioner Pierre Moscovici said the blacklist represented "substantial progress,” adding, "Its very existence is an important step forward. But because it is the first EU list, it remains an insufficient response to the scale of tax evasion worldwide."

Forty-seven other nations were included in a public “gray” list of countries which are currently not compliant with EU standards but have committed to change their tax rules. The lists followed the recent leaking of the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers.

To determine whether a country is a "non-cooperative jurisdiction" the EU index measures the transparency of its tax regime and tax rates. It also checks whether the tax system encourages multinationals to unfairly shift profits to low tax regimes, avoiding higher duties in other states.

According to French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, the blacklisted countries could lose access to EU funds. Other possible countermeasures will be decided in the coming weeks, he said.

Last month, Le Maire said tax havens should be blocked from any right to seek help from global financial institutions like the International Monetary Bank or the World Bank.

Some countries such as Luxembourg and Malta have opposed stricter sanctions while EU Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said: “stronger countermeasures would have been preferable.”

China is NOT engaged in 'debt trap diplomacy!

Here is the MSM's logic: Debt owed to the west is okay but to China is a "trap". While Chinese loans, that account for 20% of Sub-Saharan countries' external debt, are used to improve infrastructures, the Western loans fall into the pockets of arm dealers and corrupt politicians. Of course, the west won't acknowledge this fact or China's debt forgiveness.

Western countries pursue the death trap diplomacy since 1500. From 1500 to the present, the death trap diplomacy of the Western countries have killed one billion people. The US accuses China of exactly what they themselves do through the IMF. It goes to show that they know it's wrong!

In reality it is the western institutions like the IMF and WB with all their strings attached to loans that precipitate countries who accept such loans into generations of debt slavery. What easier way to distract from that reality than to accuse Chiba of debt diplomacy!

Well, even if it is a trap, countries are free to take it or not.  Several countries have agreed to build Silk Road projects without taking on Chinese debt.  Others have decided that the debt, and the resulting obligation, is worth the added jobs and development.  The important difference is that previous US and British deals with African countries brought military obligations WITHOUT jobs and development.

Under President Xi, China's Confucian Marxism "shares" its economic benefits with other nation-states. In response, Imperial America has enacted laws to "counter" these efforts in every country and on every sea. Australia has been forced to invest future revenues in military purchases from USA and must demonstrably "counter" China in the South Pacific. Consequently, Australia today is in a bigger debt-trap to the American Empire than any Pacific island is to China.

The corporate psychology of the west is pathetic. Projection is what mentally ill people do -- the practice of blaming others for the pathological behavior they themselves display. The west, America in particular, has engaged in  “debt-trap diplomacy”, under the guise of aid, for a long time now.

In the late 1990's when the Western (US) bankers caused the collapse of Russian and Asian Tiger economies, China vowed to ensure that they would never be able to do it again. The US. abused its power and now the US is losing its power. Both China and Russia are more reliable business partners than the US/West ever was. The multi-polar world is the only way to go.

Debt-trap is exactly what America has been doing for decades. Read John Perkins "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" so they are, as always "projecting". In fact, as President Putin made clear in the recent highly successful "Russia-Africa Summit" Russia is doing the exact opposite, and we can be confident that her partner in so many ventures will be the same. It's specified as being the opposite  - a "No strings" trade agreement, and no political venturing.

The west slowly realizes China’s wise policies of the BRI: creating a world trade area and building the necessary infrastructure for it to be profitable. It is about Chinese markets, not debt diplomacy. And the west realizes that it ridiculed the Chinese efforts for years, just to find itself now 6 years behind. Not only did China invest its money gainfully but it builds infrastructure and trade communities that are equally gainful for both, the host country and China. As a consequence some 130 countries joined the BRI to date.

Experts say Beijing is NOT engaged in 'debt trap diplomacy', but anti-China propaganda is relentless
Darius Shahtahmasebi
RT : 30 Oct, 2019

A new report has shed some light on predominantly western critiques of China’s foreign policy strategy, particularly in the Pacific; and it has put to rest an issue which has dominated media discourse for some time now.

The Australian – a prominent Australian-based media outlet – published an article last weekend claiming that a “Chinese diaspora” could be changing the Asia-Pacific. According to the report, given “China’s economic rise, its build-up in the South China Sea, US-China trade tensions, the ubiquitous Belt and Road Initiative, debt-trap diplomacy, foreign interference, soft power and cyberwarfare” examining this diaspora is a timely exercise worth doing.

The key buzzwords in the latter sentence are “debt-trap diplomacy.”

Debt-trap diplomacy

China has been accused of using “debt-trap diplomacy” on smaller, less developed nations for some time now. The accusations have surfaced not just from mainstream, corporate media outlets, but from the highest echelons in the Trump administration. As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put it, China is “using the debt trap…to put these countries in a place where it isn’t a commercial transaction. It’s a political transaction designed to bring harm and political influence in the country in which they’re operating.”

In other words, China hands out loans so excessive that it knows the smaller nation could never realistically pay it off. At which some time China would make a trade-off for the debt, with something much more valuable (and almost certainly, tangible).

You’d have to wonder why so many countries would be willing to accept Chinese money if this were indeed the case. Yes, money will always be appealing, but to find yourself at the complete mercy at a rising superpower that supposedly will turn your ports into assets for its growing naval might is surely asking for trouble, at least as far as your domestic population would be concerned. Considering that these countries will even cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan just to take a share of the money that China is offering (even though Taiwan was already providing them with financial support to a reasonable extent), it wouldn’t make sense if these nations were digging themselves into a trap filled with major consequences. China was even able to bring Kiribati onside and turn it against Taiwan, by providing full funds to purchase airplanes and commercial ferries.

It also doesn’t seem to present a clear picture of what actually happens in reality. Earlier this year, Forbes reported that China had forgiven close to nearly $10 billion in debt. Between 2000 and 2018, over half of the countries receiving loans from China have had their debt wiped clean. Others have had their loans turned into gifts. Altogether, some 20 African nations have had their Chinese loans forgiven, with at least six of them getting a round of free cash twice (in fact Sudan and Zimbabwe have had a round of debt forgiveness more than three times).

According to the Australian-based Lowy Institute, in its most recent report, China’s global infrastructure strategy in fact represents something much more “nuanced” than the supposed debt-trap diplomacy, though the report is not without its criticisms either.

“The evidence suggests China has not been engaged in problematic debt practices in the Pacific as to justify accusations of debt trap diplomacy, at least not to date,” it reads.

“Still, the sheer scale of Chinese lending and the lack of strong institutional mechanisms to protect the debt sustainability of borrowing countries mean a continuation of business as usual would pose clear risks.”

While western nations criticize China’s strategy and warn developing nations not to get caught in any potential traps, they do seem to be missing the fact that a lot of these nations prefer Chinese money as an alternative to the other sources at hand. China backs huge infrastructure development in many countries throughout the Pacific, and as the Lowy Institute noted, Chinese money is “perceived to be faster, more responsive to the needs of local political elites, and have fewer conditions attached.”

“We like China because they bring the red flags, not the red tape,” one senior Pacific official once said.

The Lowy report even seems to suggest that Chinese projects have been known to deliver good quality infrastructure.

Despite this damning reality, as soon as I saw the Lowy report last week, I did make a bet with myself that it would not be long before the media began re-using accusations of “debt-trap diplomacy” and flat-out ignoring the experts’ view on the matter. As the Australian example shows, my prediction was fairly accurate.

As I’ve said before, despite Australia’s record low aid budget, it is still the largest aid provider to the Pacific region. However, its recently announced Pacific Step-Up program seems to suggest that Australia will be looking to compete more heavily against China for influence through loans, grants and callable capital.

This dilemma could lead to an infrastructure arms race with China in the Pacific, which would only make the situation worse for the states that Australia and the US are supposedly concerned about. According to Lowy Institute, “in seeking to compete directly with loans from China, Australia might simply exacerbate debt sustainability problems in the Pacific.”

In that case, you can bet that no one will be accusing Australia of using “debt-trap diplomacy” to entrap Pacific Island nations.

The Chinese Diaspora threat

For countries like Australia, Chinese debt in the Pacific may end up being the least of their worries. As the Australian reports, Beijing can potentially use its influence on Chinese expatriates across the globe to score political victories in their new places of domicile. The media outlet claims that as this young generation of Chinese expats becomes more influential in these nations, government decision-making may fall like dominos as a result. The Australian is even suggesting that policy decisions regarding hot-potato issues such as Taiwan and China’s military build-up in the Pacific would be included in this category.

Like most things involving China, I suspect this is another potential threat overhyped to the worst possible extent. I have lived in different parts of the Pacific, and the anti-Chinese sentiment emanating from this type of propaganda can be felt quite strongly in certain circles. Among those circles is Winston Peters, New Zealand’s deputy prime minister, who is viscerally anti-Chinese and has already been pushing strong immigration reform targeting Chinese migrants.

And yet as the Lowy Institute report has revealed, sometimes the allegations against China just don’t stack up.

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Darius Shahtahmasebi is a New Zealand-based legal and political analyst who focuses on US foreign policy in the Middle East, Asia and Pacific region. He is fully qualified as a lawyer in two international jurisdictions.

Jihadism was used as antidote to communism...

This shouldn't surprise anyone after having realised that USA is the mastermind behind IS jihadists...

How Islamic Jihadism Was Conceived as Antidote to Communism?

By Nauman Sadiq

Global Research, November 05, 2019

During the Soviet-Afghan conflict from 1979 to 1988 between the capitalist and communist blocs, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab States took the side of the former because the Soviet Union and the Central Asian states produced more energy and consumed less. Thus, the Soviet bloc was the net exporter of energy, whereas the capitalist bloc led by Washington was the net importer of energy.

It suited the economic interests of the oil-rich Gulf countries to maintain and strengthen a supplier-consumer relationship with the capitalist bloc. Now the BRICS countries are equally hungry for the Middle East’s energy, but it’s a recent development. During the Cold War, an alliance with the industrialized world was predicated upon the economic interests of the Gulf states, which was given a religious color of purportedly “anti-communist” Islamist ideology by the Salafist preachers of Saudi Arabia.

All the celebrity terrorists, whose names are now heard in the mainstream media every day, were the spawns of the Soviet-Afghan War: including Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, the Haqqanis, the Taliban, the Hekmatyars etc. But that war wasn’t limited only to Afghanistan. The alliance between the Western powers and their regional client states during the Cold War funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized the Islamic jihadists all over the Islamic World. We hear the names of jihadist groups operating in regions as far a field as the Central Asian States, the North Caucasus and even in Bosnia and Kosovo in the Balkans.

Regarding the objectives of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, then American envoy to Kabul, Adolph “Spike” Dubs, was assassinated on the Valentine’s Day, on 14 Feb 1979, the same day that Iranian revolutionaries stormed the American embassy in Tehran.

The former Soviet Union was wary that its forty-million Muslims were susceptible to radicalism, because Islamic radicalism was infiltrating across the border into the Central Asian States from Afghanistan. Therefore, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 in support of the Afghan communists to forestall the likelihood of Islamist insurgencies spreading to the Central Asian States bordering Afghanistan.

According to documents declassified by the White House, CIA and State Department in January, as reported [1] by Tim Weiner for The Washington Post, the CIA was aiding Afghan jihadists before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. President Jimmy Carter signed the CIA directive to arm the Afghan jihadists in July 1979, whereas the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December the same year.

The revelation doesn’t come as a surprise, though, because more than two decades before the declassification of the State Department documents, in the 1998 interview [2] to The Counter Punch Magazine, former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, confessed that the president signed the directive to provide secret aid to the Afghan jihadists in July 1979, whereas the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan six months later in December 1979.

Here is apoignant excerpt from the interview. The interviewer puts the question:

    “And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic jihadists, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?”

Brzezinski replies:

    “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

Despite the crass insensitivity, one must give credit to Zbigniew Brzezinski that at least he had the courage to speak the unembellished truth. It’s worth noting, however, that the aforementioned interview was recorded in 1998. After the 9/11 terror attack, no Western policymaker can now dare to be as blunt and forthright as Brzezinski.

Regardless, that the CIA was arming the Afghan jihadists six months before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan has been proven by the State Department’s declassified documents; fact of the matter, however, is that the nexus between the CIA, Pakistan’s security agencies and the Gulf states to train and arm the Afghan jihadists against the former Soviet Union was forged years before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Pakistan joined the American-led, anticommunist SEATO and CENTO regional alliances in the 1950s and played the role of Washington’s client state since its inception in 1947 as a former colony of the British Empire. So much so that when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defense Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory, Pakistan’s then President Ayub Khan openly acknowledged the reconnaissance aircraft flew from an American airbase in Peshawar, a city in northwest Pakistan.

Historically, Pakistan’s military first used the Islamists of Jamaat-e-Islami as proxies during the Bangladesh war of liberation in the late 1960s against the Bangladeshi nationalist Mukti Bahini liberation movement of Sheikh Mujib-ur-Rahman – the father of current prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina Wajed, and the founder of Bangladesh, which was then a province of Pakistan and known as East Pakistan before the independence of Bangladesh in 1971.

Jamaat-e-Islami is a far-right Islamist movement in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh – analogous to the Muslim Brotherhood political party in Egypt and Turkey – several of whose leaders have recently been imprisoned and executed by the Bangladeshi nationalist government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed for committing massacres of Bangladeshi civilians on the orders of Pakistan’s military during the Bangladesh war of liberation.

Then during he 1970s, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto began aiding the Afghan Islamists against Sardar Daud’s government, who had toppled his first cousin King Zahir Shah in a palace coup in 1973 and had proclaimed himself the president of Afghanistan.

Sardar Daud was a Pashtun nationalist and laid claim to Pakistan’s northwestern Pashtun-majority province. Pakistan’s security establishment was wary of his irredentist claims and used Islamists to weaken his rule in Afghanistan. He was eventually assassinated in 1978 as a consequence of the Saur Revolution led by the Afghan communists.

Pakistan’s support to the Islamists with the Saudi petro-dollars and Washington’s blessings, however, kindled the fires of Islamist insurgencies in the entire region comprising Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Soviet Central Asian States, and even in the Indian-administered Kashmir.

Regarding the Kashmir dispute, there can be no two views that the right of self-determination of Kashmiris must be respected in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions on the right of plebiscite to the Kashmiri people, and the international community must lend its moral, political and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people. But at the same time, the militarization of any dispute, including Kashmir, must be avoided due to human suffering that militancy and wars anywhere in the world inevitably entail.

The insurgency in Kashmir erupted in the fateful year 1984 of the Orwellian-fame when the Indian armed forces surreptitiously occupied the whole of Siachenglacier, including the un-demarcated Pakistani portion, on the Pakistan-India border in Kashmir.

Now, we must keep the backdrop in mind: those were the heydays of the Cold War and Pakistan army’s proxies, the Afghan jihadists, were triumphantly waging a guerrilla warfare during the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s, and the morale of Pakistan’s military’s top brass was touching the sky.

In addition, Pakistan’s security establishment wanted to inflict damage to the Indian armed forces to exact revenge for the dismemberment of Pakistan at the hands of India during the Bangladesh War of 1971, when India provided support to Bangladeshi nationalists and took 90,000 Pakistani soldiers as prisoners of war after Pakistan’s defeat in the Bangladesh war of liberation.

All the military’s top brass had to do was to divert a fraction of its Afghan jihadist proxies toward the Indian-administered Kashmir to kindle the fires of insurgency. Pakistan’s security agencies began sending jihadists experienced in the Afghan asymmetric warfare across the border to the Indian-administered Kashmir in the late 1980s; and by the early 1990s, the Islamist insurgency had engulfed the whole of Jammu and Kashmir region.

*

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.

Notes :

[1] CIA was aiding Afghan rebels before the Soviets invadedin 1979

[2] Brzezinski Interview: How Jimmy Carter and I Started theMujahideen

Why Uranus Is Tipped Over?

Almost no planets rotate exactly on its axis but the case for Uranus is very different...

Astronomers May Have Discovered Why Uranus Is Tipped Over

Evan Gough

Universe Today, January 22, 2019

 

Astronomers think they know how Uranus got flipped onto its side. According to detailed computer simulations, a body about twice the size of Earth slammed into Uranus between 3 to 4 billion years ago. The impact created an oddity in our Solar System: the only planet that rotates on its side.

One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

A study explaining these findings was presented at the American Geophysical Union's (AGU) Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C. held from December 10th to 14th. It's led by Jacob Kegerreis, a researcher at Durham University. It builds on previous studies pointing to an impact as the cause of Uranus' unique orientation. Taken all together, we're getting a clearer picture of why Uranus rotates on its side compared to the other planets in our solar system. The impact also explains why Uranus is unique in other ways.

When the Solar System formed, it all started with a massive cloud of gas and dust. The cloud swirled as it became more dense and eventually, the sun formed in the center with the rest of the gas and dust swirling around it. The sun contains about 99.8 percent of the mass in the solar system, and as the remaining 0.2 percent swirled around it, clumps began to form into the planets we know today. As they formed, the rotation of the gas cloud was imparted to the planets. So, all of the planets rotate the same way, except for Uranus (and Venus, which was likely struck by an asteroid).

The planets aren't all exactly alike; Earth is tilted on its axis a little, giving us seasons, and so are Jupiter, Neptune, and Saturn, to varying degrees. But they're still oriented more or less the same as the rest of the planets and moons. But Uranus isn't. It's tilted on its side relative to its fellow planets, by about 98 degrees.

I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

For years, evidence has been building that supports a collision between Uranus and a body about twice the size of Earth. This most recent study builds on that evidence and comes from a group of scientists led by Jacob Kegerreis from Durham University. According to an abstract from their presentation at the AGU, they "performed a suite of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations to investigate in detail the results of a giant impact on the young Uranus." SPH is a computational method developed in the 1970s to study astrophysical problems. It's also used in ballistics, volcanology, and oceanography.

"We ran more than 50 different impact scenarios using a high-powered super computer to see if we could recreate the conditions that shaped the planet's evolution. Our findings confirm that the most likely outcome was that the young Uranus was involved in a cataclysmic collision with an object twice the mass of Earth, if not larger, knocking it on to its side and setting in process the events that helped create the planet we see today," said Kegerreis.

The results of their simulations explain not only Uranus' obliquity, but also some of its other properties:

• Not only does Uranus rotate on its side, but so do its five largest moons.
• Its magnetic field is also lopsided, and doesn't go out the poles.
• It's the only planet where the interior heat doesn't escape from its core.

The collision that made Uranus what it is today happened two or three billion years ago, but according to the simulation it was over in a matter of hours.

The simulation shows that a body about twice the size of Earth slammed into Uranus, tilting it to about 98 degrees. The object that slammed into it was made of rock and ice, and some of that material fell into Uranus' core. According to the abstract, not all of it did, and that explains why Uranus doesn't shed heat from its core: "Furthermore, most of the impactor's ice and energy is deposited in a hot, high-entropy shell at a radius of 3 R. This could explain Uranus' observed lack of heat flow from the interior..."

The abstract also says that this could help explain the planet's weird magnetic field. While Earth's magnetic field is tilted from its geographic poles by 11 degrees, Uranus' field is tilted by 59 degrees.

The simulation also suggests that the moons of Uranus formed after the collision. There was likely a ring of debris as the result of the impact, and the moons formed from that debris. That's why the five largest moons rotate on the same axis as the planet.

Uranus and the solar system's other ice giant, Neptune, are the least studied planets in our system. There've been no dedicated missions to either planet, though Voyager 2 did visit them briefly in the late 1980s. Scientists rely on observation and computer simulation to understand them both. This latest study builds on other evidence pointing to impacts as the cause of Uranus' tilt. Once such study suggested multiple impacts were responsible, but that line of evidence hasn't persisted.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that an impact is responsible for Uranus' predicament. The history of the solar system is full of impacts. The so-called "Late Heavy Bombardment" about 4 billion years ago pelted Earth and the inner solar system with asteroids. Earth's moon may have been created from a collision between Earth and a doomed planet called "Theia." On the moon, Venus, and other bodies, we can see the abundant craters caused by impacts. And, of course, a massive asteroid strike here at home brought on the demise of the dinosaurs and changed the history of our planet forever.

Many missions to Uranus have been proposed, but so far none have been approved. But space scientists are nothing if not patient. Eventually, a dedicated mission to this far-flung neighbor will be launched, and some of this ice giant's secrets will be unlocked.

45 Population Control Quotes

45 quotes that prove the elite really do want to dramatically reduce the number of people on the planet…

1. Charles Darwin (his thinking is at the foundation of so many of our scientific theories today): “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”
2. Bill Gates: “The problem is that the population is growing the fastest where people are less able to deal with it. So it’s in the very poorest places that you’re going to have a tripling in population by 2050. (…) And we’ve got to make sure that we help out with the tools now so that they don’t have an impossible situation later.”
3. Bernie Sanders: “In poor countries around the world where women do not necessarily want to have large numbers of babies, and where they can have the opportunity through birth control to control the number of kids they have, is something I very, very strongly support.”
4. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson: “The primary challenge facing our species is the reproduction of our species itself…It is time we had a grown-up discussion about the optimum quantity of human beings in this country and on this planet…All the evidence shows that we can help reduce population growth, and world poverty, by promoting literacy and female emancipation and access to birth control.”
5. UK Television Presenter Sir David Attenborough: “The human population can no longer be allowed to grow in the same old uncontrolled way. If we do not take charge of our population size, then nature will do it for us.”
6. Paul Ehrlich, a former science adviser to president George W. Bush and the author of “The Population Bomb”: “Solving the population problem is not going to solve the problems of racism… of sexism… of religious intolerance… of war… of gross economic inequality. But if you don’t solve the population problem, you’re not going to solve any of those problems. Whatever problem you’re interested in, you’re not going to solve it unless you also solve the population problem.”
7. Dave Foreman, the co-founder of Earth First: “We humans have become a disease, the Humanpox.”
8. CNN Founder Ted Turner: “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
9. Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso: about medical patients with serious illnesses: “You cannot sleep well when you think it’s all paid by the government. This won’t be solved unless you let them hurry up and die.”
10. David Rockefeller: “The negative impact of population growth on all of our planetary ecosystems is becoming appallingly evident.”
11. Richard Branson: “The truth is this: the Earth cannot provide enough food and fresh water for 10 billion people, never mind homes, never mind roads, hospitals and schools.”
12. Environmental activist Roger Martin: “On a finite planet, the optimum population providing the best quality of life for all, is clearly much smaller than the maximum, permitting bare survival. The more we are, the less for each; fewer people mean better lives.”
13. HBO personality Bill Maher: “I’m pro-choice, I’m for assisted suicide, I’m for regular suicide, I’m for whatever gets the freeway moving – that’s what I’m for. It’s too crowded, the planet is too crowded and we need to promote death.”
14. Al Gore: “One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principal ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women. You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children to have, the spacing of the children… You have to educate girls and empower women. And that’s the most powerful leveraging factor, and when that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.”
15. MIT professor Penny Chisholm: “The real trick is, in terms of trying to level off at someplace lower than that 9 billion, is to get the birthrates in the developing countries to drop as fast as we can. And that will determine the level at which humans will level off on earth.”
16. Julia Whitty, a columnist for Mother Jones: “The only known solution to ecological overshoot is to decelerate our population growth faster than it’s decelerating now and eventually reverse it—at the same time we slow and eventually reverse the rate at which we consume the planet’s resources. Success in these twin endeavors will crack our most pressing global issues: climate change, food scarcity, water supplies, immigration, health care, biodiversity loss, even war. On one front, we’ve already made unprecedented strides, reducing global fertility from an average 4.92 children per woman in 1950 to 2.56 today—an accomplishment of trial and sometimes brutally coercive error, but also a result of one woman at a time making her individual choices. The speed of this childbearing revolution, swimming hard against biological programming, rates as perhaps our greatest collective feat to date.”
17. Colorado State University Professor Philip Cafaro in a paper entitled “Climate Ethics and Population Policy”: “Ending human population growth is almost certainly a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for preventing catastrophic global climate change. Indeed, significantly reducing current human numbers may be necessary in order to do so.“
18. Professor of Biology at the University of Texas at Austin Eric R. Pianka: “I have two grandchildren and I want them to inherit a stable Earth. But I fear for them. Humans have overpopulated the Earth and in the process have created an ideal nutritional substrate on which bacteria and viruses (microbes) will grow and prosper. We are behaving like bacteria growing on an agar plate, flourishing until natural limits are reached or until another microbe colonizes and takes over, using them as their resource. In addition to our extremely high population density, we are social and mobile, exactly the conditions that favor growth and spread of pathogenic (disease-causing) microbes. I believe it is only a matter of time until microbes once again assert control over our population, since we are unwilling to control it ourselves. This idea has been espoused by ecologists for at least four decades and is nothing new. People just don’t want to hear it.”
19. Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General from 1997-2006: “The idea that population growth guarantees a better life — financially or otherwise — is a myth that only those who sell nappies, prams and the like have any right to believe.”
20. Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, UN Under-Secretary-General from 2000-2010: “We cannot confront the massive challenges of poverty, hunger, disease and environmental destruction unless we address issues of population and reproductive health.”
21. Bill Nye: “In 1750, there were about a billion humans in the world. Now, there are well over seven billion people in the world. It more than doubled in my lifetime. So all these people trying to live the way we live in the developed world is filling the atmosphere with a great deal more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than existed a couple of centuries ago. It’s the speed at which it is changing that is going to be troublesome for so many large populations of humans around the world.”
22. Actress Cameron Diaz: “I think women are afraid to say that they don’t want children because they’re going to get shunned. But I think that’s changing too now. I have more girlfriends who don’t have kids than those that do. And, honestly? We don’t need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet.”
23. Democrat strategist Steven Rattner: “WE need death panels. Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.”
24. Matthew Yglesias, a business and economics correspondent for Slate, in an article entitled “The Case for Death Panels, in One Chart”: “But not only is this health care spending on the elderly the key issue in the federal budget, our disproportionate allocation of health care dollars to old people surely accounts for the remarkable lack of apparent cost effectiveness of the American health care system. When the patient is already over 80, the simple fact of the matter is that no amount of treatment is going to work miracles in terms of life expectancy or quality of life.”
25. Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger: “All of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class”
26. Gloria Steinem: “Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal chords has to be an opera singer.”
27. Jane Goodall: “It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it — but there are so many of us.”
28. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
29. Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger: “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
30. Salon columnist Mary Elizabeth Williams in an article entitled “So What If Abortion Ends Life?”: “All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides.”
31. Paul Ehrlich: “Basically, then, there are only two kinds of solutions to the population problem. One is a ‘birth rate solution,’ in which we find ways to lower the birth rate. The other is a ‘death rate solution,’ in which ways to raise the death rate — war, famine, pestilence — find us.”
32. Alberto Giubilini of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and Francesca Minerva of the University of Melbourne in a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics: “[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.”
33. Nina Fedoroff, a key adviser to Hillary Clinton: “We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can’t support many more people.”
34. Barack Obama’s primary science adviser, John Holdren: “A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men.”
35. Another quote from John Holdren: “If population control measures are not initiated immediately and effectively, all the technology man can bring to bear will not fend off the misery to come.”
36. David Brower, the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club: “Childbearing [should be] a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license … All potential parents [should be] required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
37. Maurice Strong: “Either we reduce the world’s population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutally.”
38. Thomas Ferguson, former official in the U.S. State Department Office of Population Affairs: “There is a single theme behind all our work–we must reduce population levels. Either governments do it our way, through nice clean methods, or they will get the kinds of mess that we have in El Salvador, or in Iran or in Beirut. Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control, it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it…”
39. Mikhail Gorbachev: “We must speak more clearly about sexuality, contraception, about abortion, about values that control population, because the ecological crisis, in short, is the population crisis. Cut the population by 90% and there aren’t enough people left to do a great deal of ecological damage.”
40. Jacques Costeau: “In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it.”
41. Finnish environmentalist Pentti Linkola: “If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating if it meant millions of people would die”
42. Author Dan Brown: “Overpopulation is an issue so profound that all of us need to ask what should be done.”
43. Prince Phillip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II and co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.”
44. Ashley Judd: “It’s unconscionable to breed, with the number of children who are starving to death in impoverished countries.”
45. Charles Darwin: “With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”

Source: Zero Hedge