Firstpost.com

Indian government sources told this writer thus: “Tax evasion from a school (read AES) which is charging so much from the students is a willful deceit of Indian laws.”

The American Embassy School must be among the most expensive schools in the country where lots of rich Indians send their wards to in the hope of securing a better future for them in the US years later. See the AES fee structure. A pre-Kindergarten child is charged $10,310 annually in tuition fee, a Grade 6-8 student is charged $21,690 annually and a grade 11-12 student is charged $22,390. This is only tuition fees. There are other fees like the application fee of $300 (which is non-refundable), a registration fee (KG-Grade 12) of $11,110, registration fee (pre-K) of $ 5,110 and English as an additional language (EAL) support fee of $ 2500. Then there is a lunch fee of $550. Over and above all this, there is a bus fee too which ranges from $1,170 to 1,800, depending on the distance.

Sources have told this writer that what has stumped the Americans is that many of their diplomats have their spouses working in the American School or elsewhere but they have not been putting these incomes on record. Moreover, when the AES started, the Indian government had given certain leverages and concessions to the Americans, including exempting the school and a particular number of its faculty members from income tax. The problem is that the Americans have unilaterally elongated the tax-exemption list sizably. There are many staffers in the US embassy in New Delhi, mostly Americans, who have been evading taxes as per Indian laws for years for the simple reason that Indian government has been turning a blind eye to this malpractice. However, the Devyani episode has forced India to call the Americans’ bluff.

The Americans were at the wrong end of the stick several years ago when the American School in Mumbai was found to be indulging in the same malpractices and as a result of the intervention of the Bombay High Court the Americans were made to shell out huge money (with arrears) to India. The current scenario looks the same.

Obama versus the Little Sisters of the Poor:

“The Little Sisters of the Poor are an order of Roman Catholic nuns who have taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They operate nursing homes for those who cannot afford them and employ more than 50 persons. The sisters have objected to the requirement that they must pay for health insurance coverage that provides for birth control, as those payments directly violate Catholic teachings and beliefs.

In a pluralistic society, one would expect that the government would accommodate the sisters. In a free society in which everyone who works for the government takes an oath to uphold the Constitution, the feds have a legal obligation to accommodate them. In a political society in which many Catholics are Democrats who elected the Congress that gave us Obamacare, one would expect an accommodation. But we expect in vain, as the federal government has resisted the sisters mightily and asked the courts to turn down their pleas.”

The only point is this is true for everyone.

All those of us who oppose aggressive wars are forced to pay taxes to support the killing of strangers we have nothing against. Or we’re forced to support so-called NGO’s working hand in hand with an army of spies to destabilize and defraud the countries from which some of us emigrated.

Maybe the Little Sisters should take up some foreign policy activism, while some foreign diplomats can stand up for the Little Sisters.

Then we might really get some where….

DNA India.com describes the extent of institutionalized fraud in American Schools in India (i.e. tax fraud on India by US citizens OFFICIALLY ENCOURAGED)

“The sprawling school, located next to the US Embassy on American government-owned land, has about 1500 students on its rolls, nearly 500 of whom are from the US. The remaining students are from several other countries, including some locals.

Government sources said that they have information that several teachers of the school are working “illegally”, in violation of visas granted to them. Moreover, it is in violation of tax laws.

Government views these violations seriously and is likely to initiate action in this regard, the sources said.

India, in 1973, had granted to 16 teachers of the school the “tax exempted status”. However, as per information available with government, there were many more teachers who were working but not shown as such.

Meanwhile, a report in New York Times says that a handout for new teachers at the school has offered “some unusual guidance” to female teachers whose husbands will also be teaching at the school.

Instructing female spouses to list their occupation on visa applications as “housewife”, the handouts state that they should not mention that they would be working.

Indian officials regard this advice as illegal.

As per the news report, the handout notes that India has placed restrictions on the number of tax-free visas available to school employees. “So, if you are a teaching couple,” the handout says, “we usually have the male spouse apply for the ’employment’ visa and the female spouse be noted as ‘housewife’ on the visa application.”

The report said that Paul Chmelik , the school’s administrator had refused to comment on the visa issue.

The issues pertaining to the school are among those raised by the Ministry of External Affairs with the US government through a diplomatic note and figured in the discussions between US Deputy Secretary of State William J Burns and new Indian Ambassador to the US S Jaishankar in Washington two days ago.

“Deputy Secretary Burns conveyed that we take their concerns very seriously and will continue to address them via appropriate diplomatic channels,” the US State Department said in a statement later.

India initiated a slew of initiatives in retaliation to the arrest and strip-search of its senior diplomat Devyani Khobragade, a 39-year-old 1999-batch IFS officer, on December 12 in New York on charges of visa fraud.

When contacted, the Spokesperson in MEA said, “we are aware of these reports (handouts). These are very serious issues and we will very carefully examine them.” India has been demanding withdrawal of charges against Khobragade, who was indicted by a jury in New York hours before she left that country after getting full diplomatic immunity.

Apart from downgrading the privileges enjoyed by the US diplomats and their families, India also sought details about staff in American schools in the country for possible tax violations. It has also asked the Embassy to “discontinue” commercial activities undertaken by the American Community Support Association (ACSA) from its premises from today.

With India deciding to enforce strict reciprocity about the privileges enjoyed by American diplomats posted in the country, the government has already withdrawn extra privileges enjoyed by them such as airport passes which gave them special access at Indian airports.”

Will Grigg, writing about the police killing of an unarmed homeless man with mental problems says North Korean police are better:

“Two days ago, a jury in Orange County, acquitted the two police officers who led the fatal gang-beating of Thomas, an unarmed, mentally troubled homeless man. The jurors acted on the assumption that the lethal violence was justified because the victim tried to defend himself after the police began their assault.

“American police taught to treat any act of non-compliance as “resisting arrest,” a supposed offense that justifies the use of pain compliance and – in cases like that of Kelly Thomas – lethal force, if it is necessary to subdue the victim. In fact, most police who go “hands-on” with a victim will pre-emptively shout “Stop resisting!” even when no resistance is offered. Any incidental contact with the sanctified person of a police officer is treated as criminal battery or even aggravated assault.”

AND

“Often now when North Koreans are challenged for infringing a certain law, as long as the offense is not political, they won’t hesitate to protest if they believe the law to be irrational,” explains Jiro Isimaru, the Japanese journalist who organized the underground videographer network. This is in stark contrast with the common perception that North Koreans have been “brainwashed” into docile conformity and reflexive submission.

That isn’t true, apparently, of a growing segment of the population suffering under Communist rule in North Korea. It is emphatically true, tragically, of too many citizens of the purported Land of the Free.”

As I’ve felt for a while, no “activists” or “whistle-blowers” here are going to change anything.

There are only two things that will stop the increasing recklessness of US policy, whether in its quantitative easing policies or in its imperial overreach.

The first is economic reality.….which  can be postponed only so far.
The other is the Rest Of the World…..if it can get off its knees.

The Telegraph, Calcutta, reports:

“The vicarious pleasure that the foreign diplomatic community living in the United States of America has drawn from Washington being outwitted by a Third World country on its own terrain is a startling indication of how deeply foreign governments — even some close allies of the United States of America — resent American bullying. But very often they are helpless and unable to do anything about it. That India stood up to Uncle Sam is something many of these diplomats would like to emulate. Unfortunately, even as they daily face from the American bureaucracy the kind of treatment that the Indian deputy consul-general in New York faced — albeit in lesser and varying degrees — they are made to suffer in silence more by their own political bosses back at headquarters, who like to be more American than the Americans themselves.

Manmohan Singh is not the only head of a foreign government to have claimed in public, in the White House Oval Office, and to the eternal discomfiture of his aides (to which I was witness), that the people of India love George W. Bush. I was once at a Central European embassy in Washington, whose diplomats were being treated like dirt in that city even as the Americans were demanding and getting whatever they wanted from that country in return. That country’s prime minister was visiting the US and the occasion was its ambassador’s reception for him.”

UPDATE: So when the maid “Sangeeta Richard” was gifted an I-Phone by Dr. Devyani and got to use her computer, all she needed to do was to use the software to emit radio-waves that could sus out computers not even connected to the net. Her connection to Wayne May suggest where she could have acquired the software and suggest also why he was so hasty in spiriting her out of the country.

ORIGINAL POST

The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world – but not in the United States – that allows the U.S. to conduct surveillance on those machines, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The Times cited NSA documents, computer experts and U.S. officials in its report about the use of secret technology using radio waves to gain access to computers that other countries have tried to protect from spying or cyberattacks.

The agency has planted most of the software through getting access to computer networks, but has also used a secret technology that allows it entry even to computers not connected to the Internet, the Times said, citing U.S. officials, computer experts and documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The software network could also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.