From Firedoglake:

(will post author’s name and link later)

“What is also wrong is for the State Department to be following a double-standard in what it expects from foreign diplomats, and what it expects from its own.

Rape

According to court documents, a U.S. Department of State diplomat and her husband tricked an Ethiopian woman into accompanying them as their domestic servant to Japan, where they held her virtually as a prisoner in their home and forced her to work for them for less than $1 per hour and where the husband repeatedly raped the woman with his diplomat wife’s consent. A Virginia federal judge awarded the victim $3.3 million in damages on a default judgment against the couple. The diplomat retired from the State Department with full pension and then fled the country.

The victim, identified only as “Jane Doe,” told the court she was hired by the Howards in 2008 as a live-in housekeeper at the couple’s home in Yemen, where Linda Howard worked at the U.S. embassy. Doe says she agreed to move with the couple to Japan after Linda Howard was transferred to the embassy there and that she was promised wages of $300 per month, time off each week, health insurance and a safe place to live and work.

Once in Japan, Doe says, Russell Howard repeatedly raped her, forced her to perform oral sex and sexually assaulted her. Doe says Linda Howard was complicit in her husband’s sexual abuse, telling Doe that she should gratify her husband and make him happy. Doe, who speaks little English and no Japanese, says the Howards also used nonphysical force, such as isolation and threats of deportation, to coerce her into servitude.

Justice?

After five months in Japan, Doe says, she fled the Howards’ home in the middle of the night. She says that after she reported the abuse, the State Department removed Linda Howard from her overseas post and launched an investigation into the Howards.

Once back in Washington and while the so-called investigation took place, Howard, according to her LinkedIn profile, worked among other places as a recruiter and assessor for people seeking jobs with the State Department. She tells us on LinkedIn that she received a Superior Honor Award, with cash bonus, from State in June 2011, which would have been well after any investigation commenced. Her LinkedIn profile also references Cleared Connections, an employment site for government workers, suggesting she retained her security clearance from State.

Linda Howard acted in bad faith by telling the court that she was unaware of any upcoming overseas job-related travel and then two weeks later retiring and leaving the country, the magistrate judge said. She also refused to appear for a deposition as ordered by the court and refused to communicate with Doe’s attorneys to facilitate discovery as ordered by the court, Magistrate Judge Jones said.

Now, a question: if the allegations are true– and a Virginia court says they are– Mr. and Mrs. Howard committed felonies on federal property. Mr. Howard is an Australian citizen, so maybe it is a huge guess to wonder if they are outback there. Has the FBI been called in by State, as the FBI has jurisdiction over crimes on federal property.

Murder

Earlier this year in Kenya, an American diplomat who police say was speeding crossed the center line in his SUV and rammed into a full mini-bus, killing a father of three whose widow is six months pregnant. The embassy then rushed the American and his family out of Kenya the next day, leaving the crash victims with no financial assistance to pay for a funeral and for hospital bills for the eight or so others who were seriously injured.

“It is difficult for me to handle this matter because my kids need to go to school. They need everything, basic needs,” the widow said. “And we have no place to stay because we have to pay the rent. We have no money. … Even if my kids are sick I have no money to take them to hospital.”

The U.S. embassy commented “The embassy is fully cooperating with the Kenyan authorities as they investigate the accident and work to aid the victims.”

Abuse and Visa Fraud

Harold Countryman, along with his spouse Kimberly, was a U.S. diplomat assigned to Seoul, Korea. Before leaving the country, he and his wife hired a Cambodian woman to work for them in the U.S. Harold falsified the necessary U.S. visa application to get the Cambodian woman into the U.S., falsely claiming he would pay her minimum wage. Instead, once in the U.S., the Countrymans “Held her passport,” says Chuck Rosenberg, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “Her wages came out to roughly a dollar an hour.” The woman was berated and sometimes assaulted. She was not allowed to leave the Countrymans’ house. Luckily, a neighbor noticed something wrong and called the cops, who luckily took it all seriously. This story has a semi-happy ending of sorts: The couple pleaded guilty to visa fraud, and are paying the Cambodian woman $50,000 in restitution. Harold Countryman, the diplomat, only received probation, however.

Alleged Forced Abortions and Inter-Office Sex

Ms. Kerry Howard, the community-liaison officer at the U.S. Consulate in Naples, claims she was run out of her job with the State Department after complaining about the consul general’s alleged office trysts with subordinates and hookers. One subordinate was allegedly forced to have an abortion.

Ms. Howard stated she had been bullied, harassed and forced to resign after she exposed U.S. Consul General Donald Moore’s alleged security-threatening shenanigans in the Naples, Italy, office. She explained that when she revealed allegations about her boss, State Department officials swept it under the rug, according to an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint she filed with the Department’s Office of Civil Rights. State tried to disappear the issue by transferring Moore out of the country, but now the FBI is allegedly involved.

Sexual Assault

Chuck Lisenbee, a former State Department Beirut security officer who was being probed for allegedly sexually assaulting local guards, is now a special agent in Washington for the Office of Diplomatic Vehicles, Enforcement and Outreach, according to a State Department phone directory. Agents were only given three days to investigate the allegations against him, according to a memo seen by the Post. It is alleged that Lisenbee first got into trouble when he tried to make out with a fellow (male) security officer in Baghdad. His depredations against local guards in Liberia were then discovered. Lisenbee started every lunch with prayer because “Jesus Christ, my lord and savior, is the most important thing in my life” (exact quote heard by this source on at least 50 occasions).

U.S. Embassy Prostitution

The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo has had its share of problems. In the early part of this decade, the embassy paid-for-dormitory for domestics (so they did not have to live with their diplomatic masters) was found full of women not connected with the embassy, some of whom were prostituting themselves on and out of U.S. government property. The public restroom just outside the dorm was a known quickie spot for night time taxi drivers looking for sex. Things were handled nice and quietly by State and the story stayed out of the news and out of the taxpayers’ attention.

Sexual Solicitation of a Minor

Former U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman was allowed to retire in July of this year. A State Department investigator believed Gutman solicited “sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children.” Gutman and members of Clinton’s security detail were also accused of hired prostitutes.

Sex Tapes and Affairs

Brett McGurk — a former senior adviser to the ambassador to Iraq — was appointed the deputy assistant secretary for Iraq and Iran in August, according to the State Department Web site. He was President Obama’s nominee for ambassador to Iraq but withdrew after his extramarital affair with a Wall Street Journal reporter was exposed, alongside saucy emails sent from his official government account and an alleged sex tape. Apparently, investigators never interviewed McGurk because Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, intervened.

Economic Enslavement?

A bit further back, one Tokyo embassy U.S. diplomat identified here as Thurmond Borden, had domestic troubles. The story is that in 1993, 40 year-old Lucia Martel was working as a domestic in Manila. In March of that same year, Mr. Borden was visiting the Philippines on vacation with his Filipino wife, and the couple was looking for a woman. Mr. and Mrs. Borden offered Lucia a monthly wage of about Y30,000 (USD300). To comply with the Japanese immigration regulations, a written contract was signed that contained very different language. The contract stated her working conditions as six days/week, eight hours/day, a monthly salary of Y150,000 (USD1500), and an overtime pay of 125%. The contract papers were submitted both to the U.S. Embassy and to the Japanese Immigration Bureau.

Lucia started working at Borden’s residence October 16, 1993. Despite her contract, she was forced to work from six in the morning to ten in the evening, and was not allowed to rest even on Christmas and New Years according to reports.

On May 22, 1994, reports were that Lucia complained to Mrs. Borden and the latter confiscated Lucia’s original contract, return air-ticket and Alien Registration Certificate. This Certificate is very important for expatriates in Japan. It must be carried at all times and if caught without it, one may end up being taken into custody by the police. Lucia went to the Naka-ward municipal office to have a new card issued. The shocked office staff who heard her story contacted the police. A Japanese cop visited the Borden’s residence to take Lucia’s Registration Certificate back from Mrs. Borden. Mr. Borden, returning from his work, was said to have become enraged. He allegedly shouted, “Go back to the Philippines!” to Lucia. Lucia feared that she might be assaulted. She fled the residence taking none of her belongings except the clothes she was wearing.

Lucia eventually tried to sue the Borden’s, and organized protest marches outside the U.S. embassy. The State Department, however, claimed diplomatic immunity on Borden’s behalf and the Japanese legal system dropped the case. State Department records list Borden now as the head of the Consular Section in Jakarta where, among other tasks, he has responsibility for issuing maid visas to U.S. diplomats’ domestic help bound for the U.S.

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Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, We Meant Well, and writes about current events at his blog. Van Buren’s next book, Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent, will be available April 2014 from Luminis Books.

WindowtoRussia.com explains why the rest of the world is waking up to the Western NGO Trojan Horse and the “human rights” agenda it has misused to subvert nations, provoke secession and conflict, and enable the predation of the globalist financial cartel behind it:

“Cutting through the NGO web of conspiracy that began to inflict the world since the mid nineteen seventies demands skills in deciphering the deceptive use of language: from the very beginning, the NGO movement stole the terminology of the Marxists such as “solidarity”, “people power,” “grass roots empowerment” and “gender equality” for camouflaging their operations and sloganeering.

The “NGO” label itself is the best example of deceptive nomenclature they adopted: in reality NGOs are not ‘non-governmental’ organisations at all as the name implies: they receive funding from foreign governments, in addition to the vast amounts of funding they receive from multi-national corporations (MNCs), international money lenders and corporate-funded private Foundations.

Leading international NGOs such as World Vision, CARE, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and Oxfam receive 80 – 90 per cent of their income from western government sources, the dubious Soros, Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and the EU. But they have successfully spread the myth that they are “non-governmental”.

Contrary to their rhetoric about “grassroots” involvement, most NGOs are located in posh offices in urban areas, do not have a membership base, and are run by a self-appointed core management team with permanent tenure and absolute control while drawing lucrative salaries and enjoying extensive perks. In structural and operational terms, they are undemocratically operated entities only accountable to the foreign financiers.

The NGOs’ claim to be representing “civil society” obscures the existence of divided ‘classes’ of people in civil society, making it impossible for any ‘one’ group, other than established political parties, to meaningfully represent significant numbers of people in civil society. But they present themselves individually and collectively as civil society.

The term “solidarity” the NGOs have stolen from Marxists essentially means, in their context, channelling foreign aid to designated groups through mechanisms that resemble nineteenth century Christian missionary activity. This approach is totally alien to the original Marxist concept which meant solidarity within oppressed groups (women and people of colour) for common action against their foreign and domestic exploiters. NGOs on the other hand serve the neo-liberal aim of pulverising such groups to be manipulated to serve their interests.

Such deceptive use of language by the NGO movement helped them hide the real nature of the activities they were engaged in for several decades.

NGOs have created a new elite and shadow governments

NGOs world-wide have become the vehicle for a select group amongst the ambitious intellectuals, academics, lawyers and other professionals as well as journalists in developing countries to earn exorbitantly high incomes in hard currency, provided they are prepared collaborate with foreign governments and intelligence agencies to carry out their ‘dirty work”. Such participation has enabled the collaborators to reach a new elite status, distinct from that is defined by inherited wealth or high level government jobs, and from the “nouveau riche”.

Professor James Petras brands the new class as a “neo-comprador” group that trade in domestic poverty for personal benefit. Lacking solid organic support within their native societies, this new petty bourgeois thrives on international endorsement and rewards received in return for acting as the new viceroys who ensure conformity with the goals, values and ideology of the donors.

NGOs play an insidious political role in developing countries: they enter into collaborative relations with foreign neo-liberal elites and serve their agenda of criticising national governments of human rights violations and other crimes against humanity on flimsy grounds, as required by their masters. The humanitarian NGOs never denounce the free market policies of the IMF or the World Bank that impoverish the masses in their home countries.

Through such collaborations, NGOs foster a new type of cultural and economic colonialism in that the objectives of the programs they implement are restricted to the priorities of the Western funding groups; The projects are never voted on but ‘sold’ to the communities they purport to serve. The only accountability the NGOs display is to overseas financiers who oversee and review their performance according to objectives and criteria set down by foreign governments.

The most sinister aspect of NGO activity is that they compete with elected local leaders and other socio-political movements in developing countries for influence among the people, with particular emphasis on ethnic and other minorities, the poor, and women. They intervene in the domestic politics under the guise of forming ‘solidarity’ with minorities, clamouring for international intervention in conflict resolution.

Through these processes NGOs undermine democracy in developing countries by taking social programs and development projects out of the hands of elected local leaders, creating dependency on non-elected anointed local operatives of foreign governments. During any internecine conflict, they campaign for the division of countries under the pretext of ‘devolution’.

The NGO ideology depends heavily on identity politics, engaging in the dishonest polemic that poverty in developing countries is always caused by ‘exclusion’ and ‘gender or racial discrimination’ by their national governments. They routinely choose to ignore the obvious fact that poverty in poor countries cuts through racial, ethnic and gender identities. NGOs totally ignore the structural conditions of the ruthless globalised market economy, IMF privatisations and MNCs due to the handsome payments they receive from such free market operators.

The feminist NGOs’ fight for gender equality is confined to the micro-world of the household, and only addresses humdrum social and cultural issues such as patriarchy, sharing of domestic workload, family planning and divorce, portraying the equally exploited and impoverished male peasant as the villain of the piece…..

…After nearly forty years of uncontrolled growth and increasing levels of influence in international affairs, and domestic affairs of developing countries, the NGOs are beginning to get their ‘just deserts’.

Russian authorities have been concerned for some time about the thousands of NGOs using foreign funding to foment political unrest in their country: in 2006, The Russian security service, the FSB, broadcast a film showing four British spies, working as diplomats, and a Russian national attached to the human rights NGO ‘Moscow Helsinki Group’ downloading classified data from a transmitter hidden inside a fake rock left on a Moscow street.

In 2011, the head of the FSB accused US and other foreign intelligence services of using NGOs to spy on Russia and foment political upheaval in ex-Soviet republics. President Putin alleged that protests surrounding his re-election were orchestrated by US-funded NGOs via cash transfers from the US State Department.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) was expelled from Russia with effect from 1 October 2012 for “meddling in politics” through its grants. The termination of the USAID’s work in Russia is bound to seriously harm the operations of the election monitoring NGO ‘Golos’ and Russia’s largest human rights group, ‘Memorial’. Russia has also given UNICEF until Dec 31 to conclude its projects in Russia because Moscow “no longer requires the services of the international fund.

As of November 21, 2012, NGOs in Russia that receive finances from abroad and engage in political activities, defined as activities aimed at influencing the decisions of government, will be treated as Agents, and espionage statues of the Russian Criminal Code have been strengthened.

In addition, all receipts over $7,000 from abroad for use by Russian NGOs will need to be reported to the “Committee for Corruption and Anti-Terrorism.”

President Vladimir Putin also proposed bringing NGOs under closer government supervision, with the introduction of a set of criteria for evaluating the quality of services provided by them, as well as a public ratings system, to be finalised by April 1, 2013. Russia insists that the new laws are about bringing order to the jungle of Russian NGOs and enforcing rules of financial transparency.

On November 21, following the new NGO laws coming into force,the Russian branch of TI was picketed by youth groups, with signs and slogans that urged it to register as a “foreign agent.” According to a public opinion survey conducted in July 2012, 64 percent of Russians expressed the view that it is unacceptable in the political life of a country to have NGOs financed from abroad.

It is happening in other countries too: in March 2012, the U.A.E. shut down the local office of the US based NGO National Democratic Institute, and the Gallup Poll Centre, and the German think tank Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. These expulsions from the Gulf came after these groups and other human rights and pro-democracy NGOs were expelled from Egypt last year following the Spring.

In Bolivia, President Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous leader in its 500 year history, accused some of the NGOs in his country of being “the fifth column of espionage”. According to journalist Eva Golinger, USAID poured at least $ 85m into destabilising the Bolivian government by training separatists from the predominantly white Santa Cruz district and to court the Indigenous communities through the environmental NGOs. In June 2012, foreign ministers of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) bloc countries passed a resolution that: “USAID openly meddles in sovereign countries’ domestic affairs, sponsoring NGOs and protest activities intended to destabilise legitimate governments. USAID operates via its extensive NGO networks, which it runs outside of the due legal framework, and also illicitly funds media and political groups.” The resolution was signed by Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

In September 2012, Pakistan expelled foreign staff of Save the Children, due to government suspicion that they helped US spies hunting Osama bin Laden to recruit Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor, who helped the CIA locate bin Laden. Afridi was charged with treason for helping the US and was sentenced to 33 years in jail.

In December 2012 Laos expelled Anne-Sophie Gindroz, the country director of Helvetas Swiss Inter-cooperation for slandering Laos in a letter, just prior to the 2012 “Implementation Roundtable” of donors, accusing the government of creating a hostile environment for civil society groups by stifling debate and freedom of association. The government viewed Gindroz’s letter as demonstrating her explicit rejection of the Laos’ Constitution and law, and its political system. She was given 48 hours to leave.

In India, the crime branch of Tamil Nadu Police and CBI have filed cases against four NGOs for violation the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, diverting funds meant for charity to fuel protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP). A German national with links to the NGOs was deported for assisting the agitators. The actions came days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in an interview to ‘Science’ magazine, accused NGOs based in the US and Scandinavia of funding anti-KNPP protests.

These developments show that at long last, the world is beginning to see the NGO conspiracy for what it is, and are taking remedial action. The NGO cabal in Sri Lanka is one of the most ‘engaged’ by international standards and may be the Sri Lankan government needs to take a careful look at their activities and the roles of local collaborators.“

http://transcurrents.com/tc/2010/06/_is_there_a_move_to_make_venez.html:

“Does the Global Tamil Forum (GTF) and the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) represent the Tamil Diaspora and the entire Tamil community?

No, they don’t!

The GTF and the TGTE claim that they represent the ‘Tamil Diaspora,’ which is then rehashed by individuals like Ron Ridenour, to justify claims of genocide and hence the need for a separate State.

Both organisations were formed by international leaders of the earlier LTTE and are composed of LTTE front organisations and their supporters in various Western countries. What they have in common is their LTTE origins and the demand for a separate State. Having lost territory and control over the Tamil community in Sri Lanka, claims of genocide has become a facile argument to justify foreign intervention to help create a separate State.

The TGTE is a re-branded manifestation of the LTTE overseas structure. Its co-architects are Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran, former international legal advisor of the LTTE and New York based Lawyer, and Selvarasa Pathmanathan alias KP, previously International Chief in charge of international LTTE branch administration, global fund raising and arms acquisition. The TGTE is unambiguously clear about its ultimate goal being creation of a separate State. At its inaugural Congress in Philadelphia, the LTTE flag was openly flaunted alongside the US flag, despite it being a banned terrorist organization, and Rudrakumaran was elected as Interim Chief Executive of TGTE. As I mentioned earlier, the GTF too is an entity formed by bringing together several LTTE front organisations in the West.

These organisations are unrepresentative, but project themselves as the ‘sole representatives of the Tamil people.’ Their leaders belong to a financially powerful and influential class of educated professionals and businesspeople residing in the West and benefiting from external political and financial backing.

Let us recall the brutal war the LTTE waged against other groups issuing from the Tamil community, assassinating intellectuals, politicians and activists to establish itself as the ‘sole representative.’ At the same time, its representatives moved into gain a stranglehold over the Tamil community in the west – including through intimidation, assault, and threats to families in Sri Lanka. Paris and Toronto were prime examples of the phenomenon, where unquestioning compliance was demanded and wrought.

The TGTE too has made clear that it will not take into account decisions of the so-called “Tamil leadership” inside Sri Lanka unless they accept its separatist agenda.

No, the Tamil community is not a homogenous group!

Our perceptions of who we are and the choices we make depend essentially on our historical origins, our economic and social status, geographic location, and cultural background. For instance, the demand of almost 1 million workers belonging to the Tamil community brought as indentured labour by the British from India was to obtain Sri Lankan nationality. The LTTE showed no concern whatsoever for the fate of this working class.

Within Sri Lanka, even in regions such as the East and the northern Jaffna peninsula, which separatists claim as their territory, there is no popular support for the separatist cause.

As for INGOs and their backers and individuals who tow the LTTE/TGTE line, genocide is only a pretext for achieving a hidden agenda. Perhaps we are seeing a new model for external intervention in the making, creation of a dangerous precedent. First, encourage groups without territory or control over the population to establish ‘Transnational Governments.’ Then, facilitate a campaign of defamation to justify intervention by a nebulous ‘international community’ to exercise the so-called ‘Responsibility to Protect’.’ Of course, all this has nothing to do with the principles of the UN Charter or human rights!

My question to you is, would you like to see this happening in Latin America where regional integration, the dream of Bolivar, is on the agenda?

6. In Latin America we have little information about Sri Lanka. Was there a popular insurrection in your country?

Insurrection implies an organised rebellion aimed at overthrowing the Government in place. The goal of the LTTE was not to overthrow the Government but to establish a separate State of Tamil Eelam under its totalitarian control. That is why they projected the Sinhalese people as the enemy.

The LTTE was NOT a liberation movement. It never had an economic or social programme nor did it concern itself with development of the areas it controlled or in improving the well-being of the Tamil community. The only institutions they set up were institutions of coercion – police stations, tribunals, prisons. They had airplanes, a fleet of tankers, and even submarines.

It was a terror organisation terrorising even members of the community they claimed to represent. Theirs was an anti-civilian approach! Child soldiers were forcibly recruited for their notorious baby-brigades and forewarned that their families would be wiped out if they surrender. They invented the suicide belt and pioneered the use of women in suicide attacks. Their soldiers wore cyanide vials for consumption upon capture.They practiced extortion. They were known within the Tamil community as the “Eelam Enterprise” for their involvement in human, arms and drug trafficking and sea piracy.

Tens of thousands of civilians from the community who did not subscribe to their separatist goal were physically eliminated, including leaders of progressive political groups and their cadres, politicians and intellectuals. In one day alone, they killed 175 leaders of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation. Then they machine-gunned the entire Central Committee of the left-wing EPRLF – the Eelam Peoples´ Revolutionary Liberation Front.

It shocks me to hear comparisons being made between the LTTE and genuine liberation movements in Latin America and the Middle East.

Is it ethical to brand an entire community – the Sinhalese in this case – as enemy? Is it moral to target innocent civilians and workers in pubic places, transit hubs, buses, trains, marketplaces, temples, banks, office buildings, etc.

Ron Ridenour’s presentation of Rudrakumaran, top LTTE and TGTE leader and associate of the mafiosi KP, as a moral reference is an insult to the intelligence of people, particularly of the Tamil community itself!”

Bhaskar Roy at The Chennai Center for China Studies:

“Many Americans cannot understand why there is such outrage in India over the arrest and treatment of Ms. Devyani Khobragade, India’s Deputy Consul general in New York, while there was no such outrage when an Indian soldier was beheaded by Pakistani soldiers on the border.

The American disbelief is not surprising. The Americans have failed to understand the strong cultural bindings, tribal relations and religious sentiments in Asian societies. American TV footage of their soldiers invading the bedrooms of Iraqis, pulling out men, women and children, and sometimes shooting the men in front of their families during the invasion of Iraq, (on concocted evidence), caused outrage. To Muslims, it is not the killing of their men so much, as invading the privacy of their women, that is an unpardonable and sacrilegious act, never to be forgotten.

Similarly, there is a misunderstanding over the status of women in India. The education of average American diplomats, media personnel, and others are based on media reports about dowry deaths, treatment of the girl child in certain levels of society etc. They do not understand that this is not part of Indian culture but forced by economic deprivation. The basic cultural concept of the worship of the “mother goddess” is completely missed. Woman is considered a well of power and compassion. In short, she is the revered “Mother” in the pages of ancient Indian texts and scriptures as in the prayer “Oh, mother! We bow before thee”.

Devyani Khobragade is that Indian “woman” for the people of India. It is not the arrest of Ms. Khobragade, but the strip search and cavity search of a “woman” representative of India. Figuratively, an Indian woman “molested” and “raped” by the American system.”

Devyani Khobragade, the Indian diplomat at the center of the nanny-gate scandal, has filed to have her indictment deadline (set for January 13) waived, because the extension would facilitate talks between the two countries involved, the US and India.

What kind of talks?

It seems that the Indian government, determined to roll-back US diplomatic privilege to the level of true reciprocity, has unearthed dozens of tax and other legal violations of US embassy personnel in India, to which, until now, India had turned a blind eye.

Washington Post:

“The filing came after Indian authorities said they had unearthed cases of tax and other legal violations by U.S. Embassy staff members in New Delhi that they are prepared to make public and act upon if Khobragade’s case is not resolved to India’s satisfaction.

Indian officials declined to characterize their plans as a threat. But “it could all come out in the open like a can of worms,” said one senior official who was not authorized to speak openly to the news media on the matter.

“What we have is a wide array of issues that are under the scanner. Each aspect will be proceeded on with due care, if we have to,” the official said. Among the alleged irregularities, the senior official mentioned the sale by U.S. diplomats of duty-free alcohol and other goods to those who are not legally entitled to them and the employment of diplomatic spouses without the necessary papers or tax filings.

On Friday, India asked the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi to stop screening movies at the American Center there unless the proper licenses and certificates from Indian censors are obtained.”

If the GOI were really smart, they would simply use this case as an excuse to back out of any further commitments to the US, strategically or economically, and revert to their more traditional partners.

It would be wise to make nice with Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and China, India’s physical neighbors.

Interestingly, Pakistan publicly supported the GOI on this case.

Joseph Cox at Vice.com asks why India’s nuclear scientists are being “suicided” and ties their mysterious fates to that of murdered nuclear scientists in Iran and the sabotage of the Indian Space Research Organization.

Someone wants to cripple India’s technological and nuclear capacity.  While China and Pakistan also have a motive to do it, the more likely candidates are the US and/or Israel.

“Indian nuclear scientists haven’t had an easy time of it over the past decade. Not only has the scientific community been plagued by “suicides,” unexplained deaths, and sabotage, but those incidents have gone mostly underreported in the country—diluting public interest and leaving the cases quickly cast off by police.

Last month, two high-ranking engineers—KK “Josh and Abhish Shivam—on India’s first nuclear-powered submarine were found on railway tracks by workers. They were pulled from the line before a train could crush them, but were already dead. No marks were found on the bodies, so it was clear they hadn’t been hit by a moving train, and reports allege they were poisoned elsewhere before being placed on the tracks to make the deaths look either accidental or like a suicide. The media and the Ministry of Defence, however, described the incident as a routine accident and didn’t investigate any further.

This is the latest in a long list of suspicious deaths.”

And

“Two authors have alleged that the US have dabbled in sabotaging the country’s technological efforts in the past; China is in a constant soft-power battle with India; and the volatile relationship with Pakistan makes the country a prime suspect. “It could be any of them,” Madhav said.

But the most pressing issue isn’t who might be behind the murders, but that the Indian government’s apathy is potentially putting their high-value staff at even greater risk. Currently, these scientists, who are crucial to the development of India’s nuclear programes, whether for energy or security, have “absolutely no protection at all. Nothing, zero,” Madhav told me. “Which is amazing for people who are in a such a sensitive program.”

My question. Doesn’t this prove that a large part of the Indian media and government have no concern for the body politic and/or are bought and paid for?

Erin O’Brien, an Australian researcher, demonstrates the highly politicized nature of the anti-trafficking program, with numbers being made up, exaggerated, and revised as needed. Remind you of anything? Climate research, maybe?

“The magnitude of the problem in Australia still remains largely undefined, with recent reports continuing to rely on the range identified at the 2004 Parliamentary Inquiry. A report prepared for the Australian Parliament identifies the higher estimate of between 300 and 1,000 trafficking victims brought to Australia annually (Phillips 2008, 3). However, it also calls this figure into question, noting that between 1999 and 2005 only 133 cases of suspected trafficking were referred to the Australian Federal Police, with just 10 prosecutions taken forward by the Department of Public Prosecutions (Phillips 2008, 9; 14).
United States estimates
In the initial US Congressional hearings leading to the development of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act 2000, the figure most often cited as the number of trafficking victims brought into the United States each year was 50,000. Theresa Loar, Director of the President’s Inter-Agency Counsel on Women put forward that, ‘It is estimated that there are over 1 million women and children trafficked every year, over
5
50,000 into the United States’ (House 14 September 1999, 14)2. This estimate of 50,000 was most likely drawn from research conducted by Amy O’Neill Richard on behalf of the State Department, in which she declared that, ‘government and non-governmental experts in the field estimate that out of the 700,000 to two million women and children who are trafficked globally each year, 45,000 to 50,000 of those women and children are trafficked to the United States’ (O’Neill Richard 1999, 3). Initially the 50,000 figure remained unscrutinised, though the worldwide estimate of 1 million was challenged by Dr Laura Lederer of the Protection Project. She testified that ‘UNICEF is estimating that 1 million children are forced into prostitution in South-East Asia alone and another million worldwide’ (House 14 September 1999, 38).
This disparity was recognised by members of the Committee, with Representative Faleomavaega expressing disbelief that the State Department’s figures differed so greatly from Lederer’s, stating that, ‘If they don’t even have the accurate figures, how can they possibly declare a policy that is accurate and correct’ (House 14 September 1999, 47-48). Despite this questioning, the figure of 50,000 trafficking victims brought into the US each year remained unchallenged, and was repeated by Senator Brownback in a Senate hearing on trafficking in early 2000 (Senate 22 February 2000, 2). Although the estimate initially only referred to women and children trafficked into the US, it became the estimate quoted in the hearings in reference to all victims trafficked into the United States. At the Senate hearing in April of 2000 , Paula Dobriansky, US State Department Under-Secretary retained the 50,000 figure, but relied on a slightly lower figure of 700,000 victims of trafficking worldwide each year. (Senate 4 April 2000, 22).
Over the next few years, however, the 50,000 figure has been progressively downgraded. In 2003 the then-Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (also known as the TIP Office) John Miller declared that, ‘We now estimate that this modern-day slavery also includes 18,000 to 20,000 victims who enter the United States annually’ (House 29 October 2003, 58). By 2004, the figure was downgraded even further, with Senator Russell D. Feingold telling a Senate hearing on trafficking that ‘Estimates of the number of people trafficked in the United States each year range from 14,500 to 17,500’ (Senate 7 July 2004, 5). This lower figure also appeared in a Department of Justice Report produced in early 2006 (Newman 2006, 5), though in that same year US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales reduced the estimate further, suggesting that government estimates of between 15,000 and 20,000 victims each year may have been too high (Washington Post 2007: A1).
Sister Dougherty, testifying on behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (who sub-contracted much of the US Government’s funding for support for victims of trafficking) bemoaned the ongoing changes in the estimates of the scope of the trafficking problem:
2 References from United States Congressional hearings will be abbreviated as either House (to indicate a Congressional Hearing in the US House of Representatives) or Senate (to indicate a Congressional Hearing in the US Senate).
6
It is interesting to me that in 1999, the study that was put out by the State Department — I think it was commissioned by the CIA of Amy O’Neill Richard as an independent researcher — that study that was behind the passing of the law said 50,000 people. And 2 years later, we drop from 50,000 people to 20,000 people, and now we have dropped from 20,000 people to 17,000 people being trafficked into the United States.
(Senate 7 July 2004, p.30).
While Sister Dougherty believed that the numbers were being underestimated, even these downgraded estimates have been challenged due to the relatively small numbers of victims identified over the last decade. Feingold argues that ‘even with a well-trained law enforcement and prosecutorial system, less than 500 people have been awarded T visas, the special visas given to victims in return for cooperation with federal prosecutors’ (Feingold 2005: 30). This demonstrates that either prosecutions are failing to stop traffickers, or that the scale of the problem is not as large as first estimated. Only 1,362 victims have been identified between 2000 and 2007 (Washington Post 2007: A1). This substantial disparity between the estimated and identified number of victims was so stark that the Bush administration hired a public relations firm, Ketchum, to assist in the effort to ‘find’ victims. (Washington Post 2007: A1).”

At the Daily Mail. former Indian Consul General, Prabhu Dayal, reveals how false exploitation charges have become an easy route to asylum and a  green-card for domestic workers brought in by Indian diplomats:

“Devyani Khobragade’s arrest has resulted in an unprecedented Indo-US row which shows little sign of abating. Since I was Consul General in New York from September 2008 till February 2013, I feel duty-bound to put the situation in a full and correct perspective.

Devyani worked as my deputy towards the end of my term. Moreover, I also faced a lawsuit about which some misinformed comments continue to be made in sections of the media.

I met (Devyani’s domestic help) Sangeeta Richard several times at the consulate. She not only seemed happy and cheerful, but also struck me as being quite well-groomed and educated – not the usual type of domestic worker.

Given the recent history of problems faced by the consulate, I advised Devyani to be careful. I also told her that there were plenty of people around who could misguide Sangeeta and create trouble.

Cases of desertion by domestic assistants are not new. For decades, domestic assistants accompanying our diplomats to the US have gone missing, preferring to stay there illegally and pursue their dollar dreams.

Countless security guards, including many from the police and paramilitary services, have also done likewise.

Although the US authorities have invariably been informed whenever this has happened, they have done nothing to nab them. As is well known, the US has a very large number of illegal, undocumented aliens who provide cheap labour.

However, in October 2000, the US Congress enacted the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA). In terms of this Act, our domestic assistants who abscond can now obtain a trafficking visa by alleging that they were subjected to involuntary servitude and not paid wages as per US laws. They can get a three year T Visa which gets converted to full resident status.

Naturally, such persons allege that they would face extreme hardship if they were deported back, as Sangeeta Richard has done. In return, they have to cooperate with the law enforcement agencies against the alleged traffickers – their former employers.

Then in 2010, New York state enacted the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, after which there has been a spate of lawsuits filed by domestic workers.

HOOK OR CROOK
Devyani Khobragade may have fallen victim to a common menace – maids desperately seeking green cards

Devyani Khobragade may have fallen victim to a common menace – maids desperately seeking green cards

It is no secret that many Indians go to the US and try to stay on by hook or crook. Thousands of Sikhs have managed to obtain political asylum by alleging that they are being persecuted in India and thus getting full resident-status.

Privately, many of them admit that they only took the asylum route as it was the only way they could get a Green Card. However, the US authorities continue to give asylum visas to many Sikh applicants, blindly ignoring the fact that the Sikhs are a thriving community in India, and that our Prime Minister is himself a Sikh.

However, the asylum visa is not available to everybody. This is where the TVPA has opened the doors to people like Sangeeta Richard, who can obtain official passports as domestic assistants of our diplomats, get an A3 visa from the US Embassy, reach US shores, work there for some months, abscond and then obtain a T Visa.

The visa fraud allegedly committed by Devyani Khobragade was in fact committed by Sangeeta Richard as she misrepresented her terms of employment to the US Embassy during her interview with the Consular officer to get an A3 domestic worker visa, which would later enable her to leapfrog to a trafficking T Visa.

Now, a few words about two earlier cases which took place in New York.

Shanti Gurung worked as a housekeeper for Dr Neena Malhotra, Consul for over three years. I met her often as she would come to the consulate to attend functions such as Republic Day, Independence Day, Diwali, Baisakhi etc, as well as music concerts, and she was always happy and contented.

I was shocked when she went missing on the eve of Dr Neena’s departure from New York on transfer, and even more shocked when she filed a lawsuit a year later against her employer alleging confinement, forced labour, slavery, illtreatment etc. No doubt, she did so to obtain a T Visa.

Mrs Santosh Bhardwaj worked as my housekeeper for two years in India and four years in Morocco before joining me as my domestic assistant in New York in February 2009. Eleven months later, in January 2010, she absconded from the consulate building where she lived.

Seventeen months after that, she filed a suit against me alleging slavery, forced labour, non-payment of full wages etc. She alleged that she was not given proper accommodation and was made to sleep in a storage area. She also made an allegation about an incident of sexual harassment. These allegations were prominently reported in the media.

Six weeks later, her lawyers filed an amended suit in which the allegation about sexual harassment and being made to sleep in a storage area were voluntarily dropped.

Under US judicial practice, a plaintiff enjoys absolute litigation privilege and can amend a suit by adding or deleting charges. However, these and many other allegations had already received wide publicity in the media and continue to be referred to even now.

The fact was that she was not made to sleep in a storage area but was provided a fully-furnished one bedroom apartment in the consulate building with heating, air-conditioning, television and an attached bathroom, and there were many witnesses to this fact.

As regards sexual harassment, this charge was also completely false. The media gave very little coverage to the voluntary dropping of these charges.
Immunity at the UN

She was so well treated in Delhi and Morocco that she voluntarily went with us to New York. Did our treatment towards her suddenly change so drastically in New York that it was tantamount to slavery and involuntary servitude?

The suit alleged that I had not paid her wages at $10 an hour as per the contract. Here, I would like to draw attention to the website of the US State Department which states the following: “As of March 2011, the Department has decided that no deductions are allowed for lodging, medical care, medical insurance or travel. As of April 2012,deductions taken for meals are also no longer allowed”.

However, Mrs Bhardwaj worked for me in New York from January 2009 till February 2010, when deductions for perks were allowed by the State Department. If perks are included, the emoluments of my domestic assistant were considerably more than what she was to get under the contract. A fully furnished one bedroom apartment in the Upper East part of New York does not come for less than $2,500!

Added to this were the expenses towards water, electricity, heating, air-conditioning, food, medical cover, travel passages (including for home leave) plus a handsome salary.

BIASED & HIGH-HANDED

The emoluments of all officials posted by the MEA to Embassies and Consulates include salary and perks; the emoluments of a domestic assistant accompanying an Indian diplomat are built into the officer’s own package, and also include salary and perks.

It is only after March 2011 that the US State Department has begun to disallow deductions for perks for domestic assistants. Litigation in the US is a very expensive and stressful process. Most lawsuits end up in an out of court settlement without acknowledgement of wrongdoing.

I, too, had no option but to settle the case. India’s view has been that the domestic assistants of our diplomats hold official passports and should be outside the purview of US labour laws.The US side has not agreed to this, insisting that US laws apply to them. This impasse continues.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2528046/Fear-loathing-New-York-Former-diplomat-Prabhu-Dayal-reveals-Indian-envoys-US-fall-victim-maids-pursuing-American-dreams.html#ixzz2pZYib9CY
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Update:

Two hours after I spotted this, Zeenews India – which has been fair in its commentary on this –  reported that US officials had also disclaimed the video as a hoax and a provocation.

ORIGINAL POST

A fake video entitled “CCTV footage of  Indian Diplomat Devyani Khobragade Being Strip Searched By US Police” is on the net, stirring up angry comments from Indians and others.

The tape is clearly fake since it contradicts Khobragade’s own description of her strip-search.

She nowhere states that she was pushed to the floor or man-handled by male officers.

While there is a divergence between what happened (visual inspection of cavities) and the media description (probe of cavities), there is nothing to suggest that the search was conducted by male members of the NYPD.

Point two. Khobragade has much longer hair than the woman in the tape.

So why would someone put out such a tape?

If it’s not just a prank, it stands a good chance of being disinformation.

Similar sorts of tapes were constantly being put out during the Iraq war, purporting to show torture of prisoners.  The idea is to muddy the waters to make actual evidence of crimes look suspect.

I imagine something of the sort is at work here.

Of course, for the target herself, it only exacerbates the original violation of her modesty and privacy.

Shelley Kasli at GreatGameIndia comes to the same conclusion I did about the agitation at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP). He says it was funded and initiated by foreign groups.

Kasli also sees sabotage in the massive Indian electricity outage in 2012, as I did: “Is Massive Electricity Outage Sabotage by Elites?”

He blames it on Stuxnet. I was among the first (in 2010) to finger Stuxnet as a creation of the Western spy agencies

(See – Stuxnet: A Chronology).

See also these comments at EPJ “India’s Power Grid Fails for Second Day”

Lila RajivaJuly 31, 2012 at 10:00 AM

“Don’t rule out the possibility of sabotage.

I’ve been watching this situation day to day with family members.

The state, yes. But it also has to do with the demands of the the elites that the Indian government speed up on “liberalization.”

This could be a show of power.

India was also hit by the stuxnet a while back. Now we know that the CIA and Mossad was behind that.

There have been ongoing low-grade attacks on India in the past two years (ranging from psywar in the media to small, apparently unrelated attacks).

The Rajat Gupta conviction was one part of it, IMHO.

The state with the highest level of outsourced industries, Tamil Nadu, has a chief minister who is bending backward for the neo-cons and their softpower NGOs and missions.

There have been raids on Hindu temples and theft of their gold by ostensibly secular governments (actually commie), who are hand in glove with the Christian outfits (read pro-Western). There is a lot of gold in some of those temples, and it is being pushed back into the government, via psywar against Hinduism. The idea is to get the money into the Indian government where the western elites can then draw it back to themselves.

Tamil Nadu is also the state with a huge number of multinationals and lots of electricity shortages, as it is.

There is instigated rioting in the NE where supposedly Hindus and Christians are attacking Muslims. I say supposedly because there is so much intelligence activity there (CIA and Mossad) it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s not.

There was an attack on India’s naval HQ on the east coast, allegedly by Chinese hackers, but since Stuxnet (US-Israeli) who knows.
And then the US shot down an Indian fishing boat.

So don’t rule out that this could be a deliberate attack.”

AND

1. 
   Lila RajivaJuly 31, 2012 at 1:10 PM

   @Jkll.

   I didn’t say who was behind it. I said don’t rule out the possibility.

   CIA and Mossad ARE operating in India. Google David Headley and the Mumbai bombing.

   (Kochi is now a leading center of the Asian drug trade, as is Mumbai. There is Mossad activity there too. Look it up.)

   Multinationals are fighting Adivasis over mineral-rich lands in the east. Google Binayak Sen, Naxalites, etc.

   There IS a rift between globalist-elites like Mittal and the Indian government.

   There is a rift between the globalists themselves, like the one between the Ambani brothers (Mukesh and Anil) which is being played out in Andhra, also a center of high tech.

   It’s led to rioting and looting in the past against Reliance outlets.

   The looting was instigated by the reading out of a piece by Mark Ames, wildly speculating that Ambani murdered someone.

   Ames, (Taibbi’s partner) has his own motives for spreading such rumors irresponsibly among illiterate people. The point is to provoke unrest.

   That is why this Anna Hazare (trojan horse NGO backed anticorruption movement) has quickly claimed that the Indian government is behind the electricity failure. That conspiracy is covering the first few pages of Google. Hazare is trying to use the grid failure/sabotage as an excuse to provoke rioting and more unrest and confront the government to topple it. Color revolution anyone? And the color revolutions were Soros backed, weren’t they? That is CIA.

   There were violent riots in the NE area in the last few days where the electricity outages began. Coincidence?

   There was a cyber attack on Indian naval HQ in Vizag a couple of months ago.

   CIA and Mossad admitted to having created Stuxnet.
   Iran’s nuclear facility was hit by Stuxnet.
   India also was hit by Stuxnet a couple of years ago, but more mildly.

   India partnered earlier this year with Iran in barter and non-dollar trade. Since there, the pressure has ratcheted up.

   Those are conspiracy facts.

AND

Lila RajivaJuly 31, 2012 at 2:21 PM

Centralization is a problem. Yes. But there is much much more going on.

I don’t like government and no doubt India is hugely corrupt.

But revolution in India is not like some Tea Party guys holding a Townhall meeting.

Check out what really happened in the Rajat Gupta case on my blog.

http://mindbodypolitic.org/2012/07/31/war-on-india-is-massive-electric-outage-sabotage-by-elites/
I’ll be adding links as I find to this post.

Lila RajivaDecember 7, 2013 at 9:07 PM

@Jkll

1. Mossad presence in India is well-known, not documented. Mossad has been training Indian troops, for decades. Fact, not conspiracy.

2. Yes, Indian own multinationals too. What’s that got to do with it? Ambani is one of the richest men in the world. “Multinational” doesn’t automatically mean Western, although Western companies are heavily involved and most of the multinationals (duh) have international and Western interests.
Please read my writing about globalization before making silly assumptions.

3. Barter with Iran is a good thing.Did I say not? The elites do not like it, because they prefer the dollar regime.

4. The elites or power-elite is polite short-hand for the central banking cartel, backed by the biggest financiers, bankers and business houses in the West, but including some non-Western groups as well.

Lila Rajiva

Two years later,  the New York Times confirmed that analysis – the CIA and Mossad were behind Stuxnet.

SHELLEY KASLI:

“Last year there was a rather hasty exit of the key officials of KKNPP, namely Mr. M. Kasinath Balaji(transferred to Mumbai), Dr. S. K. Jain(moved to Tokyo to be the head of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO)) and Dr. Srikumar Banerjee(retired without given any extension) leaving the huge responsibility of commissioning the plant on a rather junior staff. The People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy(PMANE) cried foul play and hinted at a conspiracy behind this claiming that these officials were responsible for corruption and buying substandard parts for the power plant.

The mystery deepens when an anonymous threat letter is received threatening the site director, other officials and their families. The post card was handwritten and posted from Chennai. A Tamil Nadu police official said that a case has been registered and that investigations were underway.

The letter, undersigned as ‘Makkal Nanban’ (people’s friend in Tamil), addresses KNPP officials and says,“Neither you nor your wife and children enjoy the three-stage protection of the nuclear plant. If we desire, we could kidnap, murder and throw you and your family into the sea. Better, you leave the place along with your family to your native places or countries.”

It is still not known whether it was the PMANE activists who wrote that letter or was it someone else who did it in their name.

However what we do know is that there were many foreign hands channeling their funds and engaged not only in organizing the protests but also other dubious activities as well. Below are a few of them to give you an idea.

·        Joshua Anand, London

Tamil Nadu Police is investigating reports of $55,000 transferred from a source a certain Joshua Anand (a London based software engineer) to the wife of a leading local protester. The case against Ambika under Sec 102 CrPChas been registered by police after a branch of Canara bank reported the transfer of Rs 29,98,782 into her savings bank account.

·        German National deported from Kudankoolam

A German national, Sonnteg Reiner Hermann was deported from Kudankoolam on charges of funding the anti-nuclear protests who allegedly had close links to S.P. Udayakumar, who has been spearheading the agitation.

·        Rumors of Blasts

Protestors belonging to the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) spread rumors that there were blasts and deaths at the nuclear power plant. The rumors were supported by the local church authorities, who have been at the forefront of the protests. According to a report in the Deccan Chronicles, bells tolled at intermittent hours since midnight and public address systems asked people to assemble at open spaces in their villages since midnight. The fishermen and villagers were warned of leaking radiation, according to several media reports. Later Ratan Kumar Sinha,the chairman of the Atomic Energy commission confirmed, “These are baseless rumors being spread to create panic among the citizens living near the plant.No blast has occurred. It is someone’s wild imagination.”

·        Rosbalt Sergei Stutov Hoax

Apparently there was news about a certain Sergei Stutov published in a Russian journal Rosbalt accusing the guy of corruption and selling cheap steel to nuclear power plants in India, Iran,China and Bulgaria. It was reported that Sergei Shutov, a director of Zio-Podolsk, a subsidiary of Rosatom was arrested on charges of corruption,fraud and supplying cheap Ukrainian steel blanks and steam generators in nuclear reactors. The story was published in 2 parts in Rosbalt from where it was quoted by Indian mainstream media, alternative media taking the que and politicians from all round the spectrum; no one waiting for a moment and trying to authenticate the news or even applying a little commonsense.

Considering the seriousness of the critical situation at hand and as portrayed well in India, interestingly no one in Iran,Bulgaria, China or even Russia seemed to bother about the issue except for the2 part articles on Rosbalt. This is a very delicate issue and would have undoubtedly been picked up by any of the countries to which the blanks were supplied or the international media given that the news was legitimate.

Below are the news links :

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=

1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rosbalt.ru%2Fmoscow%2F2012%2F02%2F22%2F948901.html&act=url

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=

1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rosbalt.ru%2Fmoscow%2F2012%2F02%2F22%2F949018.html&act=url

·        Saint Kudankoolam

Bank accounts of four NGOs have been frozen after an inquiry conducted by the Home Ministry reportedly found them diverting funds meant for charity to fuel the protests. On Sept 20 2011, R. Christopher Rajkumar, Executive Secretary, Commission on Justice, Peace and Creation,National Council of Churches in India, issued a call: “It is a very crucial time. Therefore, I kindly request you to please go there [Koodankulam] and register your solidarity with your colleagues. Secondly, please take a print out of the attached letter and send it to the Chief Minister and Prime Minister today yourself. Let us not waste a minute in this regard.”

Subsequently, Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières, in its November 2011 report, “India: On the protest movement against Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant,” issued a collage of articles,including Rajkumar’s appeal, urging New Delhi to cancel the plant. What Rajkumar represents has little to do with religion. The National Council of Churches (NCC), with its international ties, has long been an instrument of the British liberal-leftist faction in the West. Over the years, under the pretext of being a religious organization, it has pushed its human rights,environment-protection, and rights of indigenous people campaigns for the colonial forces in order to stop development activities. There are serious claims against NCC being virulently anti-science and anti-development.

·        Babus cautioned against Foreign Spies

Recently an official with the National Security Council secretariat S S Paul was put under surveillance after being “compromised” by a US embassy official Rosanna Minchew. The most famous recent case being of Rabinder Singh, a senior RAW official who was spirited away to the US since he had become a double agent.After many instances of babus falling into the foreign booby traps and reports of foreign NGOs funding people for anti-government protests the Centre has asked its senior officers not to mingle with foreigners working with different embassies or high commissioners as some of them could be spies looking to cultivate ‘sources’ within the government or push their agenda.

·        NSG Mafia

The Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), V. Narayanaswamy, the point-person coordinating talks among all parties – state government, central government, and the villages around Kudankoolam—had said at a public meeting in Chennai, that those foreign anti-nuclear intruder-activists, stirring up trouble at the nuclear site, were all from America, Finland, France, Australia and Germany, among other places. What he doesn’t mention is that all these nations are the Nuclear Supplier Group(NSG) member-nations. NSG is the 45-member-nation body that controls supplies and re-transfer of all nuclear-related materials. It is important to note however that on Sept 6, 2008 it waived a 34 year old nuclear ban on India and are now getting ready to sign agreements to supply uranium to India.
·        Greenpeace – The Green Monster’s Assault on Science & Reason

The 2012 Blackout started a huge debate on India’s power consumption and energy requirement. With the recent Uttrakhand Disaster these voices have gotten more louder. This is the backdrop on which the next part of this report is based which deals with much recent events. Fortunately we’ll be in a position to detect the espionage before it happens. To prevent the folly however is in the hands of the political establishment along with the informed pressure from all aspects of society.”

Greenpeace holds a vital key for our discussion. It’s essential hence to understand its philosophy, workings and how it affects the case at hand. We’ll see a bit about it here and pick up on it as we move along.

Origins of Greenpeace

What is Greenpeace’s philosophy, this organization that enjoys the reputation as an environmental multinational with a million-dollar budget, modem technological equipment, and spectacular actions?
The first members of Greenpeace in the late1960s in Canada were Quakers, a religious congregation driven from England in the 17th century, which called themselves the Society of Friends or the Children of Light.

The goal of this New Age movement, despite its advocacy of seemingly benevolent causes like animal rights and disarmament, is a Malthusian New World Order that, among other things,dictatorially determines questions of population density. Could that turn out to be as portrayed with alarming candor by Michael Solverstein, president of Environmental Economics, in a letter to the editor in the English-language magazine Greenpeace: “If necessary, nations of the Third World must be forced to remain poor if their development threatens resources on which all life depends”?

Greenpeace continually refers in its own publications to the change of consciousness introduced by the Club of Rome and to its advocacy of the “limits to growth”. The bylaws of Greenpeace Germany specify that, in case of dissolution of the organization, all assets are to go to Amnesty International.

On Nov. 14, 1993, Denmark’s TV-2 aired a documentary called “The Rainbow Man,” a damning expose of Greenpeace’s financial misconduct and connections to international terrorism. The documentary was co-produced by internationally renowned Icelandic filmmaker Magnus Gudmundsson, who had previously made two film documentaries showing the unsavory money making activities of Greenpeace. “The Rainbow Man” opened with an interview with Brian Metcalfe, founder of Greenpeace and its leader during the first decade of the organization’s existence.

Metcalfe said, “When I think back over the years of the Greenpeace story, how it developed from the way we started it and the way it is today, I often see myself as a kind of Dr.Frankenstein, who created a monster that now has a life of its own.”

Some of the features of “Eco-Extremism“Greenpeace is charged with are as follows:

•  It is anti-human. The human species is characterized by Greenpeace and other ecological extremists as a “cancer” on the face of the Earth. The extremists propagate the belief that all human activity is negative,whereas the rest of nature is good. This results in alienation from nature and subverts the most important lesson of ecology: that we are all part of nature and interdependent with it.

•  It is anti-technology and anti-science. Eco-extremists dream of returning to some kind of technologically primitive society. Horse-logging is the only kind of forestry that these people can fully support. They see all large machines as inherently destructive.

•  It is anti-democratic. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of radical environmentalism. The very foundation of our society, liberal representative democracy, is rejected as being too ‘human-centered’. In the name of “speaking for the trees and other species,” we are faced with a movement that would usher in an era of eco­ fascism. The”planetary police” would “answer to no one but Mother Earth herself.”

•  It is basically anti-civilization. Eco-extremism rejects virtually everything about modern society. We are told that nothing short of returning to primitive tribal society can save the Earth from ecological collapse! No more cities, no more airplanes, no more polyester suits. This is a naive vision of a return to the Garden of Eden.

(more on Greenpeace’s heroic deeds in the next part)

While everyone from Software Social Engineers to Nuclear Saints to NSG Mafia and even the Green Monster Hulk seemed to be overly interested in the welfare of the villagers of a relatively unknown remote village the name of which they hardly can pronounce; no one from our own establishments tried to clear the air and offer a reasonable explanation of what really was going on. The answer however could be found 3000 miles away in Iran.

New Era of Warfare

Last year Iran captured and executed many spies accused of cyber attacks. However these were no regular spies with no regular cyber attacks. They were accused of carrying out a very serious cyber attack of a worm called STUXNET.

When first discovered in 2010, the Stuxnet computer worm posed a baffling puzzle. Beyond its sophistication loomed a more troubling mystery: its purpose. However, after a detailed research conducted by a German control system security consultant Ralph Langner and his team its purpose and its perpetrators were unmasked.

PURPOSE

Although current and former US officials agree Iran is years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead and has no secret uranium-enrichment site outside the purview of UN nuclear inspections recent revelations of the Stuxnet computer virus that destroyed several hundred centrifuges in Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility constitutes an act of deliberate and unparalleled sabotage. Stuxnet remains the most sophisticated malware discovered thus far, the virus targets Siemens’ Simatic WinCC Step7 software,which controls industrial systems such as nuclear power plants and electrical grids from a Microsoft Windows-based PC. The virus exploits security gaps referred to as zero-day vulnerabilities, to attack specific targets. Prior to its discovery, Stuxnet was previously undetected and remained unidentified by anti-virus software, as the malware was designed to appear as legitimate software to Microsoft Windows. Upon delivery of the Stuxnet payload, the malware manipulated the operating speed of centrifuges spinning nuclear fuel to create distortions that deliberately damaged the machines, while giving the impression of normal activities to the monitoring operator and disabling their emergency controls.

PERPETRATORS

Let’s hear it out from the expert himself who cracked the code.

Chris Anderson [Host]: I’ve got a question. Ralph, it’s been quite widely reported that people assume that Mossad is the main entity behind this(STUXNET). Is that your opinion?

Ralph Langner: Okay, you really want to hear that? Yeah. Okay. My opinion is that the Mossad is involved, but that the leading force is not Israel. So the leading force behind that is the cyber superpower. There is only one, and that’s the United States — fortunately,fortunately. Because otherwise, our problems would even be bigger.

To get a full understanding of the workings of this 21st-century cyber weapon, check out this talk by Ralph Langner :

http://www.ted.com/talks/ralph_langner_cracking_stuxnet_a_21st_century_cyberweapon.html

Last year anonymous government officials came forward to tell The New York Times that researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory, which is overseen by the US Department of Energy, passed technical information to Israel regarding vulnerabilities in cascades and centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant. That information, it is believed, was used to design the Stuxnet worm that set Iran’s nuclear program back an estimated two years.

There are serious accusations that STUXNET was tested in the never-acknowledged nuclear arms program at the Dimona Complex, Israel.

“To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”

The US and Israel have long been accused of collaborating on the virus in a bid to damage Iran’s nuclear program. While accusations against Washington and Tel Aviv have never been confirmed by either government,a NATO Commission has now confirmed it as an “act of force.”

Retired Marine Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright has been told he is a target of the probe, NBC News and The Washington Post reported Thursday. A“target” is someone a prosecutor or grand jury has substantial evidence linking to a crime and who is likely to be charged.

On 1 June 2012, an article in The New York Times said that Stuxnet is part of a U.S. and Israeli intelligence operation called “Operation Olympic Games“, started under President George W. Bush and expanded under President Barack Obama.

Add to this more than 5 Iranian Nuclear Scientists who were assassinated while on their morning commute in a similar fashion.

A couple of years ago, Iranian television broadcast the confession of one alleged agent who described studying a scale model of the home of the scientist he helped assassinate by hiding a bomb on a motorcycle outside the front door. “It was the exact copy of the real one,even the size, material, its color, the tree next to it, its asphalt, the street curb, the bridge,” said Majid Jamali Fashi on the air. He said he viewed the model in Mossad’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, which he described in detail. Intelligence sources confirmed Fashi’s involvement in a Mossad cell that the sources claim was revealed to Iran by a third country.

Although not content with that even the families of the scientists were wiped out.

The relatives of the nuclear scientists from Iran who were assassinated in 2010 have filed a lawsuit against Israel,the U.S. and Britain, saying the countries are responsible for the deaths of their loved ones.

In simple words what STUXNET did was infecting the very controlling systems of the plant itself. The controlling PLCs were manufactured by Siemens, Germany. Recently the Director of KKNPP has officially confirmed that Germany’s Siemens Corporation provided components for the construction of the nuclear power plant along with other companies.

India’s Space Research Organization(ISRO) is also a Siemens customer. According to the resumes of two former engineers who worked at the ISRO’s Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre, the Siemens software in use is Siemens S7-400 PLC and SIMATICWinCC, both of which will activate the Stuxnet worm.

The recent arrest by the FBI of American space scientist Stewart David Nozette for espionage has cast a shadow over India’s Chandrayaan-I mission that successfully located water on the moon’s surface recently. The US scientist allegedly leaked information to Mossad.

The Russian power-plant company Atomstroyexport whose laptops were targeted and infected with STUXNET is believed to have brought the virus to the Iranian power-plant Bushehr. Atomstroyexport is currently also building a nuclear power plant in Kudankulam.

Whether KKNPP or ISRO or any other facility was infected or not could only be known after a thorough investigation is carried out.

However the figures released by Symantec & Kaspersky Lab Experts already show a troubling picture. According to these companies the figures indicate that it was actually India that was the epicenter of STUXNET activity.

If so, what were its targets and what are its implications ? To approach the question first we must fully understand the extent of threat posed by STUXNET. Here is a bit of its taste.

Next Pearl Harbour

STUXNET seemed like a Pandora’s Box with U.S. Intelligence Officials to Computer Security Experts all going crazy arguing it opened up a new era of warfare and that the Next Pearl Harbour could very well be a STUXNET-like Electro MagneticPulse(EMP) High Impact Low Frequency Cyberattack targeting  key critical infrastructure able to shut down the nation’s power grid and other functions, such as food and fuel supply systems, sending the nation back to the 19th century; so much so that President Obama even in this fiscal climate have cut $1 billion from FEMA budget for a possible EMP recovery.

Stuxnet represents the new warfare

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/60-minutes-stuxnet-represents-the-new-warfare/70773

Yes I am talking about Firesale.For those of you who didn’t get it check out Die Hard 4.0; it brilliantly plays out this particular scenario to the edge.
Now that you get the gravity of the situation we can approach our question of the possible targets of STUXNET and implications of India being the epicenter of STUXNET activity.

March 2011 >
The government fears a cyber attack on the power transmission lines and air traffic control systems by the new and sophisticated computer program Stuxnet. “One of the routers in the power sector was attacked by a very sophisticated stuxnet type of virus” said a senior official of Power Grid’s IT department.

PowerGrid Corporation has about seven ‘Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition’ (SCADA)-based systems installed. “Previously, our systems were not connected to the internet.But now we need to provide data to various parties online. This increases risks and we need to secure our systems adequately,” the officer added. PowerGrid is the power supply backbone of India, which carries over 51% of electricity supplied in India.

“Systems that are installed at our load dispatch centres control the main backbone of the electricity distribution system of the nation and they need to be secured,” another PowerGrid official said.

July 2012 >

India experienced the largest power outage in history, occurring as two separate events on 30 and 31 July 2012. The outage affected over 620 million people, about9% of the world population or half of India’s population, spread across 22states in Northern, Eastern, and Northeast India. An estimated 32 gigawatts of generating capacity was taken offline in the outage

The three-member investigating committee consisting of S. C. Srivastava, A. Velayutham and A. S.Bakshi issued its report on 16 August 2012 concluding that four factors were responsible for the two days of blackout:

– Weak inter-regional power transmission corridors due to multiple existing outages (both scheduled and forced)

– High Loading on 400kV Bina-Gwalior-Agra link.

– Inadequate response by State Load Despatch Centers (SLDCs) to the instructions of – Regional Load Despatch Centres (RLDCs) to reduce over drawal by the Northern Region utilities and underdrawal/excess generation by the Western Region utilities.

– Loss of 400 kV Bina-Gwalior link due to mis-operation of its protection system.

However on September2012 >

A government official, privy to NTRO’s analysis and speaking on condition of anonymity, told India Today that of the 10,000 infected Indian computers at the time, 15 were located at what are called ‘critical infrastructure’ facilities.These included the Gujarat and Haryana electricity boards and an ONGC offshore oil rig. While the flaw caused Stuxnet to reach these computers, thankfully, it did not activate itself on them. In other words, India was only a few flawed lines of code away from having its power and oil sectors crippled.
Read more at : http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/stuxnet-cyber-war-critical-infrastructure-of-india-ntro/1/216107.html

As is the case in this game of espionage and Gang Wars of the so called Superpowers, it is always the third world countries that become the guinea pigs. I leave it upto you to draw your own conclusions.

To quickly bring us back on track – whats going on here is not some randomly funded anti-nuclear activities or a randomly planned espionage blackout. The question here is much bigger. It is a Resource War, more specifically in our case – Energy Geopolitics.