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.

Echoing my own arguments, comes Ramesh Thakur, an expert on international diplomacy:

“George Orwell, where are you when your country of birth needs you? Consider two cases of consular officials two years apart. One shoots and kills two locals, the other pays her nanny wages below local minimum but above home rates.

The same U.S. president insists on diplomatic immunity for the first but stays silent on the second. Had host-country law prevailed, the first — Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor in Lahore, Pakistan — could have faced the death sentence. Instead he was brought home without trial. Then-Sen. John Kerry went to Pakistan to appease its anger. The U.S. media managed to contain its outrage on his victims.

The second — a female career diplomat, not an intelligence agent — is strip- and cavity-searched. The U.S. media are oh so touched by the plight of the poor maid and the sanctity of the law of the land. No apology from Kerry, now the secretary of state. Guess which country they accuse of hypocrisy? Yes indeed, the second one, India. And praise which for standing up for the rule of law that must treat everyone equally? Yep, the good ole USA.

There are three complex issues but three simple points.

First, there is a history to the status, wages and work conditions of India-based domestic staff employed by Indian diplomats abroad. What constitutes fair wage; can monetary value be put on perks like free housing, board, health benefits and annual return passage home; and is this matter to be decided by the home or host country, using whose benchmarks?

Some domestic staff are cruelly treated; some are seduced by job opportunities in rich countries. In the absence of physical mistreatment and given how the maid’s family was spirited out beyond the reach of India’s legal system, there are suspicions about the motives of a politically ambitious district attorney in search of populist publicity.

Second, there are different Vienna conventions dealing with diplomatic and consular relations. Their distinctions have become increasingly blurred in practice with growing cross-linkages of functions and personnel. The meaning and applicability of relevant clauses to any particular dispute may be interpreted differently.

The sniffy U.S. reaction to the explosion of Indian anger, that Devyani Khobragade was treated like anyone else, has a fatal flaw. She is not just anyone, but the official representative of a sovereign country. Her arrest and treatment was a full-frontal assault on the authority and dignity of the state of India. The whole point of both Vienna conventions, distilling centuries of experience among international political actors, is to prevent local authorities from fabricating false charges against accredited representatives of foreign governments.

But I forget. The United States is uniquely virtuous, exceptional and wise. All others are venal and must be stopped from maliciously interfering with resident U.S. officials, even killers. The Vienna Convention must be upheld for U.S. diplomats abroad but may be ignored for foreign diplomats in the U.S. Washington’s interpretations of all clauses are beyond question and it has the might to enforce it. If others don’t like it, tough.

Third, which country’s laws and judicial process have primacy?

There was a prior case in the Indian courts against Sangeeta Richards, which the self-righteous promoters of the rule of law have conveniently ignored. India kept Washington apprised of every legal step.

Did the then-CEO of Union Carbide face his day in court for the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy — the world’s worst industrial accident in which between 2,259 and 16,000 Indians were killed? Strict adherence to the rule of law for everyone is a bedrock American value — yeah, right.

In a spirited public intervention on Dec. 19, the U.S. prosecuting attorney insisted that it’s his duty to protect Richards’ civil rights and enforce U.S. law on anyone who breaks it. He explained the reason for “evacuating” Richards from India two days before Khobragade’s arrest was to neutralize efforts to silence the Richardses and compel Ms. Richards to return to India. He impugned the integrity of India’s judicial system, yet it has a better track record of robust independence from the executive than the U.S. judiciary.

Matching the Bush administration’s practice of kidnapping people from anywhere in the world and renditioning them for torture in secret locations, Bharara proclaimed an extraterritorial right to evacuate an Indian citizen from Indian territory, against the directives of the Indian government and in defiance of court orders. He might have left himself open to contempt citations.

All three issues are complicated and open to contrary interpretations. India might be in the wrong (or right) on all three. It certainly has much to be ashamed of on persisting feudal practices. Regardless, as the first simple point, it is unacceptable for one party to resolve an intergovernmental dispute by criminalizing the conduct of an individual diplomat caught up in the mess, stripping her and subjecting her to bodily searches over a labor dispute.

Khobragade is not a suspected terrorist, an armed criminal or a threat to public safety. (Revelations about questionable incidents involving her back in India are irrelevant to this narrative.) In an Orwellian euphemism, state-sanctioned rape (digital penetration without consent or under coercion) is called “cavity search.” Sorry, I forget. Indian social practice bad, U.S. police practice good. Silly me. Smack!

[Lila: Which is just what I wrote about the Sharma piece at the WasPo that scolded India for being “in the wrong.” Since then, we have learned that while strip-searches do indeed involve cavity “inspection” as a matter of course, they do not involve cavity “penetration,” which was assumed by many in the media, including me. However “baring the labia for inspection” is still a gross violation of modesty and a form of sexual assault, even if short of rape.]

Second simple truth: Diplomatic relations are governed as much by tacit understandings as formal rules. Few U.S. consular families would not be in breach of some Indian law. If the strict letter of the law was applied worldwide, diplomatic intercourse would grind to a halt.

Finally, Diplomacy 101. India is one of the very few countries where, against decades of instinctive hostility, public approval ratings of the U.S. have stayed positive. The episode risks setting back bilateral relations by validating many negative perceptions of the U.S.

The entire Indian foreign service bureaucracy — the permanent custodian of India’s permanent interests — has been antagonized by a colleague’s traumatic experience. As U.S. relative power wanes, is it worth breaking trust with a growing number of friends and allies?

[Lila: Correction: “permanent custodian of their own interests, which is the case in most countries these days.]

The foreign minister has said the world has changed and so has India. Delhi has demanded formal U.S. apology and unconditional release of Khobragade.

If Washington insists on saving face and not admitting its mistake, a soured India will likely withdraw all extra courtesies to U.S. officials beyond legal requirements, to the detriment of their ability to function most effectively.”

[Lila: Which would be an excellent thing since they seem to be busy-bodies of the worst kind, without any of the cosmopolitan understanding that officials of the British empire -whatever its faults – possessed.]

Ramesh Thakur, a professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, is coeditor of “The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy.”

From GreatGameIndia.blogspot.com

The Ford Foundation, which completes six decades in India next year, provides a continuing flow of  grants to institutions, think-tanks, civil society, and even farmer groups, to carry out research and advocacy work. The sums are not inconsequential—about $15  million (about Rs 70 crore) a year. And the recipients—320 grants, over the past four years—are the who’s who of civil society and advocacy groups in India.

Its representative, Steven Solnick, said the Foundation’s last installment to Kabir (an NGO run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia) was in 2010. “Our first grant to the NGO was of $1,72,000 in 2005 ; the second was in 2008 of $1,97,000,” he told Business Standard.

Kabir, run by Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, key figures in AAP(Aam Aadmi Party), has received $400,000 from the Ford Foundation in the last three years.

Link for $197,000 – now removed by Ford. Refer screenshot of the same below.

http://www.fordfoundation.org/grants/grantdetails?grantid=107117

In reply to an RTI query that questioned the funding and expenditure of Kabir, the organisation has disclosed that they have received funds from the Ford Foundation (Rs 86,61,742), PRIA (Rs 2,37,035), Manjunath Shanmugam Trust (Rs 3,70,000), Dutch Embassy (Rs 19,61,968), Association for India’s Development (Rs 15,00,000), India’s friends Association (Rs 7,86,500), United Nationals Development Programme (Rs12,52,742) while Rs 11,35,857 were collected from individual donations between 2007 to 2010.

Interestingly, a major part of the funding to an organisation that is prominent in the “War against corruption” has come from abroad and mainly from the United States. Apar from the UNDP, Ford Foundation and the India Friends Association are US-based organisations, while PRIA and Association for India’s Development are headquartered in Asia.

The foundation, on its part, makes no bones about its neo-liberal agenda, broadly pro-market,  seeking accountability in governance, and promoting marginalised groups. It funds a small number of  institutions, but chooses effectively. At a post-budget meeting two years back, it was noted that all the think-tanks represented (NCAER, NIPFP, ICRIER and the Centre for Policy Research) on the dais received grants from the foundation. Academicians and scholars from these think-tanks are regularly consulted by the government on various policy issues.

On whether the views of these intellectuals actually get reflected in subsequent policies, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia declines to comment. “I don’t really have a view on it,” he says. He does, however, concede that India’s association with the foundation “is something that has been on for a long time”.

Moreover, three of core members ( Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Manish Sisodia) are also Magsaysay award winners which are endowed by the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller.

As far as the Magsaysay Award winners are concerned, this award is an American award for Asians established and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation ostensibly in memory of Ramon Magsaysay, the former President of Philippines.

According to well-placed sources in  the U. S.  Intelligence community opposed to the State Department’s policy toward the Philippines, $30 million in covert funds was supplied to the Philippine opposition to  help finance  its presidential campaign.  This  $30 million was  laundered through Hong Kong,  where the money was converted into  the Philippine peso at the black market rate of 20 pesos to the dollar.

Philippine  sources reported that  the money  had, been  in part funneled  into the CIA-controlled citizens elec­tion watch group,  called Namfrel ,  the National Movement for a Free Election, which was originally created  in  1953 in order  to  bring Ramon Magsaysay into power.  Namfrel  was central  in the State Department’s policy of intervening  into the Philippines election.

In 1957, the Rockefeller Foundation established the Ramon Magsaysay Prize for community leaders in Asia. It was named after Ramon Magsaysay, president of the Philippines, a crucial ally in the US campaign against Communism in Southeast Asia. In 2000, the Ford Foundation established the Ramon Magsaysay Emergent Leadership Award. The Magsaysay Award is considered a prestigious award among artists, activists and community workers in India. M.S. Subbulakshmi and Satyajit Ray won it, so did Jayaprakash Narayan and journalists, P. Sainath. In general, it has become a gentle arbiter of what kind of activism is “acceptable” and what is not. In reality the award is the living memory of the dictatorial president of Philippines known for the murder of thousands of communist guerrillas during the Huk Rebellion under US-planned anti-communist counter-insurgency operations. It explains the silence of the anti-corruption group against corporations and the private sector.

For more details read : CIA manipulation of 1953 elections

This perfectly fits in with a recent shift in the US policy of association with India, which is now focusing on building state-to-state partnerships by “engaging Indian state and local leaders” throughout the country on “topics of mutual interest”. Civil society groups and think-tanks are expected to play an important role in this. As Prof Anil Gupta of IIM-Ahmedabad observes, “Their influence is far beyond what is recognized, and not always benign.”

Should NGOs receiving grants from international agencies like the Ford Foundation and others be barred from participating in the shaping of public policy?

And are these civil society groups working as stooges of the West to execute an “American agenda” ?

These are the question the Aam Aadmi has to answer.

Not the copyrighted ones; but the real Aam Aadmi.

At First Post Rajeev Sharma writes on Jan 1, 2014:

“It is now a question of when, not if, the United States throws in the towel in the long and ugly Indo-US diplomatic spat involving Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York, and withdraw all criminal cases against her…….

“Thanks to the Devyani incident, we have come to know several things. The first thing is that the American diplomats in India have routinely been enjoying all sorts of privileges without reciprocating these to the Indian diplomats in the US. This has been going on for years and no government in New Delhi ever dared to question this unequal diplomatic practice. This may change forever, and it should, after the Devyani incident has blown the lid off this diplomatic apartheid. Two, the US must understand that it has to take India as seriously as it takes China and Russia. The Americans are known to handle China and Russia with kid gloves mainly because it knows that if Washington were to do anything outrageous with Beijing and Moscow the retaliation will be fast and furious. As per the World Bank-IMF projections, India will be Number Three economy in the world in just 15 years, relegating Japan to the fourth spot. Even now, India is ranked Number Eleven, with Canada managing to have nudged past India for the tenth spot. This economic reality should be reflected in the international politics and diplomacy too. India can do this and drive the point home to the Americans in the coming weeks. New Delhi has already directed the American embassy in New Delhi to submit all relevant details of the salaries being given to all employees in American diplomatic missions in India. The deadline for furnishing this information was 23 December. The Americans have sought more time in submitting the data as many American diplomats serving in India are on vacation at this point of time. India needs to ensure compliance from the Americans. The Americans are bound to be found breaking several Indian laws once this exercise is completed.

For example, the manner in which the family of Devyani’s maid Sangeeta Richard was “evacuated” from India to the US will inevitably expose the Americans in breaking several Indian laws, including taxation laws. It is extremely likely that the American staff in Indian diplomatic missions, particularly some semi-skilled Indian staff, would be getting the wages which are well below those prescribed under India’s Minimum Wages Act.

Already, it has come to light that an Indian Visa Officer gets a salary of around Rs 17,000 per month as against about Rs 1.10 Lakh for an American holding similar position and a particular Indian security guard has been hired for a lowly sum of Rs eight thousand per month for an eight-hour duty daily, which is way below the Minimum Wages Act.”

Read more at: http://www.firstpost.com/world/why-the-us-will-have-to-eat-crow-over-devyani-khobragade-row-1317477.html?utm_source=ref_article

From EPJ, December 30, 2013:

Bob Wenzel commented on Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne’s comments at Fortune Magazine on Bitcoin.

Byrne said he didn’t endorse Bitcoin but would be accepting them at his company as a type of payment.

Wenzel commented on this (see below), pointing out that Byrne was really seeing BTC as an investment, rather than money.

Byrne then responded to the post, saying that BTC was interesting to libertarians because it seemed to offer some things they wanted in money, like constraints on production – physical, in the case, of gold, mathematical in the case of money.

I thought that the Overstock CEO of all people would be sensitive to the possibility of market manipulation, which is the biggest argument against BTC and said as much (see below).

I also pointed out the curious fact that all the Rothbardians  (Wenzel, North, Block) who do not recognize such a thing as “market manipulation” are against BTC, because it can be manipulated.

And all the  libertarians who seem to recognize market manipulation, that is, people who are close to liberals on that issue, seem to like BTC (which seems to be the poster boy for market manipulation).

I put Byrne in this category.

Following this post, Block, returned to correct Wenzel and imply that yes, he thinks BTC is being used as money, after all.

Block now distances himself from his previous position here.

Hmmm. I’ll draw my own conclusions on why he changed his tune. You draw yours.

Block then conceded that Rothbard can be wrong, after all.

More hmmmm. I’ve been saying that for a while, as have others, who have been branded traitors, dissemblers, and leftist stooges, for being honest.

Folks, let go of  ideology for a while and spend more time on “conspiracy” research.  That is the solution. That is where the real face of the  NWO emerges. That gets beyond the partisan and ideological wrangling.

A few hours researching Bitcoins will show you it is a Trojan Horse straight from the elites.

Solve the conundrum of SATOSHI NAKAMOTO, and it’s there for all to see.

Wenzel’s Post:

The Overstock CEO on Bitcoin

6 comments:

1. 
   AnonymousDecember 30, 2013 at 10:05 AM

   Stop posting so much about bitcoin. Be more libertarian, and try to live and let live. We get it, you don’t like bitcoins. We get it. We get it. Understand. Comprende.

   Reply

   Replies

   

   Alan AndersenDecember 30, 2013 at 3:52 PM

   @ Anonymous:
   So you are saying a true libertarian would be completely silent about bitcoin and never post about it?? It seems like libertarians make the most posts about bitcoin.

   And how is it non-libertarian to think that bitcoin is not a medium of exchange and/or not a good investment?? The only non-libertarian position would be to advocate government restrictions on bitcoin, which RW has never done. RW posts lots of investment advice and speculations, including his thoughts on whether one stands to gain or lose by buying bitcoin. What is non-libertarian about that?

   Reply

2. 
   Patrick ByrneDecember 30, 2013 at 5:35 PM

   The tie-in to libertarianism, and Austrian school economics, is that we Austrian school people want a monetary system based on something that mandarins cannot “manage” (i.e., screw up). Hence, our affinity for gold (mankind’s stock of which has been growing at a 2-3% rate for about 5,000 years) and aversion to fractional reserve banking. Being so disposed, Bitcoin strikes a chord with us: It is mathematically constrained (as opposed to physically constrained, like gold) but constrained is constrained.

   Yours in limited government,
   Patrick

   Reply

3. 
   Lila RajivaDecember 30, 2013 at 8:42 PM

   @Dr Byrne

   I am surprised that you would fall for this false equivalence of mathematical constraint with physical constraint, without a second thought.It is a meme, a mantra.

   Gold has been a monetary metal, not only because of limitation of supply and difficulty of mining, but from a history of use that has both cultural and religious significance. The religious significance is of utmost relevance here and involves a recognition of the physical properties of metal and its effects on man, biologically, emotionally, and spiritually.

   This will seem far-fetched only to people who do not know their own histories. It is the reason why gold was the object of the alchemist’s pursuit.

   The physical constraint justification is thus secondary to the justification from history and tradition.

   BTC’s “mathematical constraint” is nowhere near equivalent as a justification.
   While BTC cannot be produced ad infinitum, it can be duplicated. Gold cannot.

   Third point. Physical constraint is IRRELEVANT if the entire operation is digital and publicly available.

   That means that effective control of BTC is with those who use it (CONSUMERS). This is a libertarian wet dream, only if your libertarianism is of the kind that doesn’t recognize collusive manipulation of consumers, which, Dr. Byrne, obviously you do, unlike the an-caps promoting BTC.

   So here is the paradox: Rothbardians who do NOT recognize such a thing as market manipulation are AGAINST BTC, even though market manipulation is the most cogent argument against it.

   Meanwhile, libertarians who DO recognize manipulation (or are closer to the LIBERAL position) are FOR BTC.. I am putting Dr. Byrne in this category.

   I seem to be the only one with a consistent position since I have always recognized markets are not just jungles and can be manipulated. And I am about 98% sure that BTC is an elite operation, coming out of defense-related cryptographic research.

   Just trace back the promotion of this story and decode SATOSHI NAKAMOTO.

   Reply

   Replies

   

   Lila RajivaDecember 30, 2013 at 9:04 PM

   I should add that I own no gold and thus am not talking my wallet.

The New Indian Express:

” US-India relations are based on strong economic factors as important to the US as they are to India. Lately the US also began seeing India as a pivotal strategic partner in its new East Asia policy. It defies common sense that America would throw all this away just because an Indian consular official paid below minimum wages to her housemaid.

[Lila: That hasn’t been proved yet.]

What then is it really about? Let’s look at two known facts: America’s consistent hypocrisy and India’s continuous servility. The hypocrisy story is well documented. According to the Russell Sage Foundation, an independent research institute, 40 per cent of American workers in apparel, textile and repair services are paid less than minimum wages. As much as 41 per cent of minimum-wage violations in the US are against maids and housekeepers. Add to this the rampant racial discrimination against Latino workers.

Hypocrisy expands further at the international level. America is the only democracy in the world to not recognise the International Court of Justice at the Hague. This enables the US to do things that are illegal and still not be answerable. The US government mined Nicaragua’s harbours in 1984 in a bid to topple the government there. The Hague Court found the US guilty of violating international law. But America ignored it and blocked the UN Security Council from enforcing the judgment.

India, too, has tasted US duplicity. David Headley, who played a crucial role in the terrorist attack on Mumbai, was protected by the US from extradition to India. And of course there is Bhopal. The gas-leak victims’ voice was heard again last week. “The US is so worried about the rights of one maid, but it turns a blind eye to hundreds of deformed children who have been maimed by (Union Carbide’s) greed.”

Bhopal also throws light on India’s long history of servility to the US. Indian authorities helped Union Carbide’s culpable boss, Warren Anderson, to escape from India. Delhi took it lying down when a former President was frisked by a US airline and when its defence minister was searched while on an official visit to Washington. Never once did India protest meaningfully against such insults, let alone subjecting an American official to the courtesy of a cavity search. Is it because many of our IFS/IAS officials crave for a posting in the US? And our politicians love American hospitality? Sure, Delhi showed some guts by cancelling airport passes and ID cards given even to US diplomats’ families. But why were these given in the first place when America does nothing of the kind? US sees such servility as weakness.

These facts throw a different kind of light on the Devyani/Sangeeta case. The maid had good connections (her husband and mother also worked for US diplomats). She asked for permission to take up other work which would have been illegal and, denied permission, went missing. Perhaps Devyani knew what was going on. On her complaint, a Delhi court issued an arrest warrant for Sangeeta. Sensing trouble, US authorities surreptitiously evacuated  Sangeeta’s family to the US. Then they humbled Devyani, successfully turning the matter into a maid-exploitation cause celebre.

Very similar was the case of RAW officer Ravinder Singh [Lila: A Sikh] who was spying for America. As soon as India was about to arrest him, he was smuggled out to the US. Clearly Sangeeta was, like Ravinder Singh, a high-value espionage asset for the US. They and the maid of former Indian Ambassador to the US, Meera Shankar, who also disappeared and remains untraced must all be safe and enjoying themselves under American auspices.

How easily Indians have been fooled into seeing as a human rights issue what is really a spying rights issue.

A comment on Facebook by Sunil Khobragade via Bahishkrutbharat.blogspot.com:
(my edits)

“Preet Bharara belongs to the Democratic Party, to which Barack Obama belongs. He is angling for a mayoral post in New York City. He is going to contest it from Manhattan.

If we examine the demographics of this area, we will see that 65.2% of the population is White American and 25.8% is Hispanic or Latino in origin, meaning Whites, but not of American origin.

Apart from this, the population is 18.4% Black or African American and 12.0% Asian.

Manhattan has the second highest percentage of non-Hispanic Whites (48%).

From these demographic figures we can learn that Bharara depends mostly on white voters for his win.

Of the 12.0% Asians and 25.8% Hispanics, most of them are illegal immigrants. The bill for regularization of these illegal immigrants is being pushed by the Democratic Party but being strongly opposed by Republicans.

Preet Bharara wants to gain sympathy from Hispanics and at the same time appease American whites; that’s why he targets high-profile Asians to prosecute and tries to show that he is more American than Americo-Asian.

In the end, it is all vote-bank politics, just like in India.”

An Indian blogger on why the average Indian is stupefied by the Devyani “slave-wage nanny” and the unbelievable cheek of the US attorney, embassy, and police:

“Sangeeta Richards had a good life on any reasonable benchmark. She was housekeeper to the diplomat Devyani Khobragde. Then she was possessed with a desire to moonlight for more money.

[Lila: She could hardly have wanted a second job, if she was so overworked in the first.]

Not that Sangeeta was not well paid. If accounts are to be believed she made $600 in the US and another $ 500 in India, on top of this

[Lila: the $500 is the amount sent home, which was misconstrued by the jackasses at the Embassy and the police.]

she would have been housed (apparently a two room tenement in NYC), fed and watered.

[Lila: Actually, she had two rooms in the diplomat’s office in the Indian mission, from what I read.]

In all, she could not have cost less than $4,000 a month to the first idiot in this case: the Indian taxpayer.

Here, you can get some details: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/131220/news-current-affairs/article/sangeeta-richard-was-paid-rs-30000-her-diary-says-she-was-happy

Preet Bharara had a problem with that. He says, and frankly he is right, that US regulations require $4,000 per month in NYC.

[Lila: The author is relying on earlier reporting which was based on the USG agent’s misreading of the visa application form. The $4000 was not the salary Devyani intended to pay the maid; it was her salary, which had to be reported.]

I don’t understand this calculation. At $10 an hour, minimum wage should be about $1600 – $2000 per month, but I guess $4,000 is the minimum wage applicable in the context of the Visa.

https://labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/laborstandards/workprot/minwage.shtm

The problem is that this minimum wage cannot possibly apply to people coming on an official India passport. The Indian government pays its staff in a diplomatic office, and it has the discretion to pay whatever it wants.

Preet Bharara’s idiotic definition of a minimum wage at Rs. 24 Lakhs per annum is laughable in the Indian context. Not even the president of India is entitled that amount.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/what-pranab-mukherjee-will-earn-246288

Which means that the next time Pranab da is traveling to the US, he could, technically, go to Preet and request him to file a minimum wages claim for the duration of travel in the US.

[Lila: I doubt the Embassy was that stupid that it didn’t understand the Indian context. I believe it acted high-handedly, because it had gotten used to acting that way without reprisals.]

Since Bharara feels he is God’s gift to mankind, he had the diplomat arrested, strip searched, cavity searched and imprisoned in an appropriate cell. This, according to Proper Preet, is standard procedure. Well, I’ll be damned. This is the part of the whole episode that I cannot stop laughing about.

The US has gone nuts. If you have a pay dispute with your housekeeper, then the standard procedure in the US is to strip you nude and poke a (hopefully) vaselined fist up your rear, before the case is even contemplated by adults. This is just too funny to let go.

I mean, think about it: in order to make you feel safe the US arrests you, gets you nanga as a newborn and pokes your butt. If you don’t like it, then you must be a Fascist Terrorist. It must be pointed out that astonishingly, this search is worse than the definition of rape envisaged in India Law. In other words, Tarun Tejpal is in the slammer for a crime that is, in at least its physical aspects, less damaging that the US intake procedure!

The land of the free has a bloody normal process where anyone accused of a serious enough crime has to stripped naked, felt up his or her butt, imprisoned in any slammer available without even having the chance to talk to an attorney.

I see Raj Rajaratnam and Rajat Gupta in new light. They must feel buggered! And rightly so. I see every one of the celebrity arrests, Dominic Kahn, Brtiney Spears, Whitney Houston, that Tigerblood fellow, Mike Tyson, Rampage, our very own Toorjo (full of Oorjo) Ghosh, et al. in new light. They would all have had their asses oiled for their own good. Raj Rajaratnam was arrested early in the morning. What could the US Marshalls have possible found in his cavity search?

Raj was just the sort of guy to have crapped on them. Is that the sole reason why they are after him like crazy?

Bharara’s statement is a gem: “The prosecutor in the case is Indian born U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. He also cited procedure as an excuse: “It is true that she was fully searched by a female deputy marshal – in a private setting – when she was brought into the U.S. Marshalls’ custody, but this is standard practice for every defendant, rich or poor, American or not … This is in the interests of everyone’s safety.”

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Strip+cavity+search+simply+procedure+official/9309290/story.html#ixzz2oBWjOU9y

In any half civilized nation, such a practice would be barbaric. I see Delhi and Haryana police in new light now. They are all, every single one of them, civilized and decent men when compared to this idiocy. The US ought to be ashamed.

India was right to reciprocate, though not exactly in kind. While it isn’t standard procedure, it is quite common to get slapped around in an Indian police station if you irritate the officer. So, should that be applied to the US diplomatic staff?

To top his continued moronic excursion, Preet Bharara also had the bai’s family air lifted to the US so that, and I quote: http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/maids-family-evacuated-to-us-bharara/article5477828.ece ” Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade, the India-born U.S. prosecutor Preet Bharara on Thursday defended the action against her and confirmed that her maid’s family has been “evacuated” from India…. Acknowledging that maid Sangeeta Richard’s family has been brought to the U.S., Mr. Bharara said a legal process was started in India to “silence her and attempts were made to compel her to return to India.”

So, this is new to me. And to a lot of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and Philipinos and Salvadoreans and Ecuadoreans, not to mention all of Africa. Is that all it takes?!! Forget the insult to the Indian legal system; just mull the stupidity of this man’s action! Well, for starters I can guarantee that the family will never be able to come back to India and not face immediate arrest and imprisonment. Maybe we will even throw in a strip and cavity search just to get even. So Bharara might as well now grant them US citizenship.

Which is of course the whole point of what Sangeeta Richards was attempting to do all along. The bai has not only had her mistress, she has also outfoxed the Chief Prosecutor of NYC! Here, this is where it all started: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-12-20/india/45416020_1_visa-complaint-delhi-police. and http://www.asianage.com/mumbai/devyani-case-example-us-misdirected-moralising-735

“…Seven months later, Sangeeta left her job and disappeared. Devyani says Sangeeta wanted to moonlight for more dollars, which was against her visa conditions, and started to blackmail her when she refused to allow this. New York public prosecutor Preet Bharara, who took up Sangeeta’s case, says Sangeeta left because she was being paid less than legal minimum wages, and for this crime, he had Devyani arrested…”

Clearly, Bharara doesn’t know his rear from his face on this case. He will of course pay for his misdirected zeal and stupidity.