A Malayali Christian (the same state and religion as the Devyani maid, Sangeetha Richard) is the  SAC chief trader who got nabbed by Preet Bharara in his quest to nail one of the biggest racketeers on Wall Street,  Stephen Cohen.  I have no problems with that, except that Bharara is again missing the big picture.

SAC’s Cohen hasn’t even been charged and the real racketeering between Goldman and the Fed Reserve is nowhere addressed.  Meanwhile, insider trading with expert networks was MARGINAL to the crisis of 2008, which was a crisis of cheap money compounded by off-shore and other book-cooking (manager looting of firms via account control fraud), in some of which the intelligence agencies (AIG’s Hank Greenberg who is tied to the CIA) were fully involved. Thus has the whole investigation into Wall Street been skewed.

Dealbook:

“SAC hired Mr. Martoma to help Mr. Cohen gain that edge. The son of Indian immigrants, Mr. Martoma was born Ajai Mathew Mariamdani Thomas, but changed his name in 2003, according to legal records. Raised in Merritt Island, Fla., outside Cape Canaveral, Mr. Martoma graduated summa cum laude from Duke University in 1995, where he studied biomedicine, ethics and public policy. After college, Mr. Martoma worked in Washington at the National Human Genome Research Institute.

He spent a year and a half at Harvard Law School, then dropped out to earn a business degree at Stanford University. He blended his passion for medicine and a desire to work on Wall Street by pursuing a career as a stock analyst covering health care companies. After a stint at a smaller hedge fund, Sirios Capital Management in Boston, Mr. Martoma joined SAC.

He became part of a new unit, CR Intrinsic, which was set up as a research engine of SAC. CR Intrinsic (the CR stands for Cumulative Return) was led by Matthew Grossman, an ambitious young analyst who became Mr. Cohen’s right-hand man. Mr. Grossman had worked at Tiger Management, the hedge fund known for its rigorous research and longer-term investment horizon.

With a deep network of contacts in the pharmaceutical and biotech fields, Mr. Martoma made a mark at CR Intrinsic. The volatile health care stocks in which Mr. Martoma specialized had long been favorites of Mr. Cohen’s, offering the potential for big returns through betting on the outcome of events like clinical trials for promising drugs.

To bolster his knowledge, Mr. Martoma tapped into expert-network firms, which employ consultants who match money managers with industry specialists, including public company employees.

For an information-driven hedge fund like SAC, the temptation to exploit the expert-network relationship was immense, two former employees said.

Two of the former SAC employees who have admitted to insider trading said they used expert-network firms to obtain secret information about public companies. And of the roughly 70 insider trading cases that federal prosecutors in Manhattan have brought in the last three years, more than a dozen have involved expert networks.

Mr. Martoma’s case began in 2006, when the expert-network firm Gerson Lehrman Group connected him to Sidney Gilman, a neurology professor at the University of Michigan and a specialist in Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Gilman, who moonlighted as a consultant for Gerson Lehrman, helped oversee clinical trials for bapineuzumab, or bapi, a new Alzheimer’s drug being jointly developed by Elan and Wyeth.

He also brazenly leaked to Mr. Martoma secret data about the trials throughout 2008, according to the government, violating his duty to the drug companies and breaching his agreement with Gerson Lehrman not to divulge confidential information to money managers. Dr. Gilman earned $108,000 from his work for SAC, the government said.”

From EconomicPolicyJournal.com:

Overstock CEO: I May Accept Bitcoins But I Am Not Holding On To Them
I just had this illuminating twitter exchange with Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.

Patrick M. Byrne @OverstockCEO Follow

Patrick M. Byrne @OverstockCEO Follow

Brett Stevens at Amerika. org points out the fraudulent crisis of rape in India being pushed by the Western Cultural Marxist media, showing that even with the increase of violence against women in the last ten years (which has everything to do with the neo-liberal shredding of the social/cultural fabric), the statistics do not back an Indian “rape crisis”. The only thing this heroic blogger gets wrong is that India is ALREADY chock full of leftist feminists. No need to import them. In the cities the whole anti-family agenda is in full swing …..

“Right now, the Western liberal elite media is hive-minding about rape in India. See here, here, here, here, and here (CNN reporting on its own crowd-sourced report).

This fits into the modern narrative of “putting out fires”: overworked, we soldier on, but then we notice a problem so urgent that we must even break out of the normal drudgery of modern life. Rape! That’s as bad as racism… wait, nothing is as bad as racism… it might be racist, but at least one of these victims is white, so… almost as bad as racism. But still very bad.

Finding a problem like this justifies our intervention. It justifies summoning up ten thousand Slutwalks, several Public Dialogues, many collaborative art projects, thousands of investigative journalism pieces, at least a dozen public speeches, and perhaps the sale of 1.2m self-help books about rape, how to avoid it, and how feminism will save us.

And that last point is worth noting: how feminism will save us. The point is to use this justification for action as a backdoor to bring in Western liberal elite-style feminism, which requires a backdrop of Social Marxism, which in turn requires the liberal concept of progress and with a few quick steps, we can dominate this society with our neurosis too.

Cynics like myself think that the point of this expansion is power, with a side dose of “misery loves company.” Or in other words, we’re not going down alone. Everyone must join us in our maniacal quest for Ideological purity and if it destroys us, it will destroy them, and we’ll all be equal in destruction.

But how real are these claims? A helpful BBC article provides some statistics:

It says that the city of Delhi, home to 7.5 million women, recorded 585 cases of rape in 2012, compared with a total of 484 cases from the cities of Mumbai (232 cases), Calcutta (68), Chennai (94) and Bangalore (90 cases). Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta are megacities with populations of more than 10 million people.

Let’s compare that to statistics from major American cities. New York had 1,092 rapes in 2011. Los Angeles had 828 rapes in 2011. Chicago had 1,439 rapes in 2009 (the most recent year they reported statistics). Houston had 771 rapes in 2011.

In other words, Delhi probably has fewer rapes than most big American cities. Where’s the outrage? Oh, we already have feminism. Time for another Slutwalk.

Western elites spread their cancerous liberalism through jihads such as the manufactured “India rape crisis.” By ignoring statistical evidence, and instead picking a few of the inevitable crimes of a big city, the media can make it appear as if a crisis appears where none exists.

[Lila: The anti-trafficking and “modern slavery” campaign” is more of the same. It’s all political and imperialist and follows the exact script used in drumming up support to bomb Iraq to save Iraqi women from Saddam’s allegedly misogynist society. Of course, no one gave a damn that after the war, the entire society was plunged in misery, resulting in a real crisis of rape among Iraqi women – which was the subject of a series of long articles I wrote on the topic – which found very little media attention. So it goes.  Will anyone remember this? Will the media stop and say, wait a minute, we’ve been here before? No. Will any left or right-wing “controlled opposition” alternative bloggers delve into this going-on-right-now psyop instead of keeping on rehashing old psyops from twenty years ago? Nope. Because, of course, they controlled opposition sites TOE the government line, because they want their media presence and money making talks and books, so they fall silent….”

The audience for this media, naive in the belief that the news somehow reports on factual reality, will see the increasing frequency of stories and assume that there is an increasing frequency of crime, when in fact the rate of crime is lower than where they live.

However, this gives the left their true source of power, which is socialization. In every chattering circle, people can talk about rape in India as if they knew something. This embarrasses Indians, and motivates them to atone for that by importing Western-style liberalism and with it, cultural Marxism and other forms of social control.

It’s time to hold our press accountable for the vast amount of damage they do in the name of their own holy jihad of spreading the religion of liberalism to every corner of the globe.”

UPDATE: After reading through this again, my eye caught a few things.

1. Why does Padma Subrahmanyam take care to defend the UN charter on women and distinguish it from contemporary feminists, who still see themselves as in line with that charter? (see below)

2. Why does she not mention which schools in Chennai were going to introduce condoms and were instructing girls to sleep with their friends? (see below)

3.  Akhilia Sreenivasan, the business woman funding the movement, is active in the Art Of Life foundation, the movement of Sri Sri Ravishankar

You can see it mentioned here involved in co-sponsoring an interfaith vigil in remembrance of the Mumbai terrorist attack of 26/11 (notice the similarity to 9/11)

The site notes that the foundation is affiliated with the UN:

“The Art of Living Foundation is an international non-profit educational and humanitarian organization that works in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. Its educational and self-development programs offer powerful tools to eliminate stress and foster a sense of well-being.”

I must admit this makes me feel that the “Chennai Declaration” is co-opted from above. It’s a way of creating an anti-Western feminist Indian movement that is still within the confines of the socialist UN agenda.

ORIGINAL POST

The great classical Indian dance Padma Subramanyam has declared war on modern feminism, taking for her starting point the introduction of condoms into Chennai schools. So glad to see India’s great classical artists have not drunk the kool-aid that some of her literary lions have (like Vikram Seth and Arundhathi Roy).

Declaration’ at January 23 convention
The Pioneer /Chennai

Traumatised and shocked by the action of certain schools in Chennai installing condom vending machines on the school premises and the authorities counselling parents that “there was nothing wrong in their daughters having sex with friends,” a group of eminent women have come together to fight for women’s respect.

The New Year resolution for women would be in the form of Chennai Declaration which is expected to bury the failed and outdated women’s liberation movement. The new demand is respect for womanhood.

“The women’s liberation movement of the late 60s has been found to be a total failure and the reason behind the ever growing attacks on women. Concept of feminism itself has changed drastically from what it was in the early 1970s. What the women need today is respect. If women are respected there will be no rape, harassment and molestation,” said Dr Padma Subrahmanyam, the legendary danseuse and scholar.

To give a new thrust and direction to the fights against injustice meted out to women all over the world, Dr Subrahmanyam and a group of renowned women who have excelled in their fields of work launched a collective on Monday. Named Swami Vivekananda 150 Women’s Initiative (SV150 WI), the movement will create awareness and sustain the spirit of Indian womanhood.

The SV 150 WI has convened a massive convention at Chennai on January 23, 2014 where the participants will bury the women’s lib movement once and for ever and launch a new initiative with the objective of making the world respect women.

“When you come across news that school managements have installed condom vending machines in the school and advice parents of girl students that there was nothing wrong in their daughters having sex with their friends, it is time for us to intervene. Otherwise this country will end up in ruins,” said the eminent danseuse. She declined to reveal the names of the schools.

She said Swami Vivekananda had great confidence and trust in Indian women. “The 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda is being observed all over the world. We feel this is the right occasion to launch such an initiative. The kind of feminism being practiced all over the world right now is the root cause of all our problems,” said the eminent danseuse.

She pointed out that some women in India aped the western concept of individualism and modernity. “For them modernity and individualism mean total individual freedom without any concern for family or human values. In the United States, this has led to breaking down of more than 60 per cent of the marriages. More than 50 per cent of the second marriages break down. This is as per the data of the US Government itself and is described as the major reason for the economic ruin of that country,” said Dr Subrahmanyam.

She said modernity and individualism has been defined by the United Nations Charter. “But what we see today in the name of modernity and individualism has no resemblance to what is mentioned in the UN charter,” she said.

More than 1,000 women are taking part in the January 23 convention and is expected to come out with the Chennai Declaration, which DR Subrahmanian and women like her feel would set the agenda for women for the next century. Instead of burning brassieres, the Indian women would set fire to the western concept of feminism and ideology of women lib and ask the world to respect womanhood.

Akhila Srinivasan, corporate honcho, who represents an equal mix of modernity and tradition and one of the moving spirits of the WI said women alone could mould the destiny of the nation, people and families. Well, it is time for Simone de Beauvoir, icon of the western world, who declared that traditional family represses women sexuality, to move over and usher in the Indian woman!”

Via LRC blog, Nick Turse on Special Operations Command Center (SOCOM), the military’s own black operations (covert operations) center and its manipulation of academia, media, and aid organizations:

“One unsung SOCOM partner is U.S. AID, the government agency devoted to providing civilian foreign aid to countries around the world whose mandate includes the protection of human rights, the prevention of armed conflicts, the provision of humanitarian assistance, and the fostering of “good will abroad.”  At a July 2013 conference, Beth Cole, the director of the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation at U.S. AID, explained just how her agency was now quietly aiding the military’s secret military.

“In Yemen, for example, our mission director has SVTCs [secure video teleconferences] with SOCOM personnel on a regular basis now. That didn’t occur two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, five years ago,” Cole said, according to a transcript of the event.  But that was only the start.  “My office at U.S. AID supports SOF pre-deployment training in preparation for missions throughout the globe… I’m proud that my office and U.S. AID have been providing training support to several hundred Army, Navy, and Marine Special Operations personnel who have been regularly deploying to Afghanistan, and we will continue to do that.”

Cole noted that, in Afghanistan, U.S. AID personnel were sometimes working hand-in-hand on the Village Stability Operation initiative with Special Ops forces.  In certain areas, she said, “we can dual-hat some of our field program officers as LNOs [liaison officers] in those Joint Special Operations task forces and be able to execute the development work that we need to do alongside of the Special Operations Forces.”  She even suggested taking a close look at whether this melding of her civilian agency and special ops might prove to be a model for operations elsewhere in the world.

Cole also mentioned that her office would be training “a senior person” working for McRaven, the man about to “head the SOF element Lebanon” — possibly a reference to the shadowy SOC FWD Lebanon.  U.S. AID would, she said, serve as a facilitator in that country, making “sure that he has those relationships that he needs to be able to deal with what is a very, very, very serious problem for our government and for the people of that region.”

U.S. AID is also serving as a facilitator closer to home.  Cole noted that her agency was sending advisors to SOCOM headquarters in Florida and had “arranged meetings for [special operators] with experts, done roundtables for them, immersed them in the environment that we understand before they go out to the mission area and connect them with people on the ground.”  All of this points to another emerging trend: SOCOM’s invasion of the civilian sphere.

In remarks before the House Armed Services Committee, Admiral McRaven noted that his Washington operation, the SOCOM NCR, “conducts outreach to academia, non-governmental organizations, industry, and other private sector organizations to get their perspective on complex issues affecting SOF.”  Speaking at the Wilson Center, he was even more blunt: “[W]e also have liaison officers with industry and with academia… We put some of our best and brightest in some of the academic institutions so we can understand what academia is thinking about.”

 

Not content with a global presence in the physical world, SOCOM has also taken to cyberspace where it operates the Trans Regional Web Initiative, a network of 10 propaganda websites that are run by various combatant commands and made to look like legitimate news outlets.  These shadowy sites — including KhabarSouthAsia.com, Magharebia which targets North Africa, an effort aimed at the Middle East known as Al-Shorfa.com, and another targeting Latin America called Infosurhoy.com — state only in fine print that they are “sponsored by” the U.S. military.”

The USG’s unconscionable behavior in the Khobragade case (compounded by 24/7 propaganda on behalf of the despicable Bharara) continues, but some voices of sanity still exist.

Here’s a good piece in the Asian age:

“The concern for the poor that the Americans, and some Indians with colonised minds, are displaying seems to spring from guilt. It is visible in the children of wealthy elites who want to expiate their guilt with lip service to equality, while having benefited all their lives from the systemic inequalities that their ancestors bequeathed to the world, and them. The spectacle of “lords” and Brahmin men with American accents claiming to represent subaltern positions, while Dalit mobs of the Republican Party of India in Mumbai raged against the stance they supported, was ridiculous.
If you really want poor people from India or anywhere to earn the fancy wages of Sangeeta, the maid ($4,500 is `2,79,000), then ask for America to open its doors and hearts wide to immigrants from all classes of society. At present, it only welcomes investors with more than $1 million to invest in the US, those with “superior specialist skills”, and similar. The chances of Sangeeta ever getting a visa by herself to even set foot in America would be negligible.
People of her class see the real face of American immigration policy towards poor people when they try to emigrate. They often migrate via Mexico, paying enormous sums to human smugglers in the hopes of better lives in the US. They are greeted with fences 21 feet high, guard dogs, and heavily armed border patrols.
Why not change the immigration laws so that women like Sangeeta can migrate without having to implicate their employers, perhaps falsely, in order to obtain visas for themselves and their families as victims of human trafficking?
Obviously, that will never happen.”

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.

—————————————-

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.“