Comment by Riaz Haq on October 6, 2016 at 8:03am

#US and #Indian Police bust #India's call centers posing as #IRS scam #American taxpayers of millions of dollars

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/fake-call-centers-in-india...


The Indian police have managed to uncover a huge tax scam where a large number of Americans were duped of millions of dollars by people posing as tax authorities and asking for the payment of unpaid taxes. Seventy people have been arrested as of Thursday, and hundreds questioned in relation with the fraud, a Mumbai police officer said.

The scam ran for almost a year, the Indian police told the Associated Press (AP). Fake call centers were used to voice mail messages to U.S. nationals, telling them to call back regarding the back taxes they owed. When any of these people did call back, the scammers would manage to take out thousands of dollars from them to “settle” the tax cases.

“They would make threatening calls to honest taxpayers in the U.S., ask them to deposit money through pre-paid cards,” Param Bir Singh, the police chief of Thane, a Mumbai suburb, told Indian news network NDTV.

According to Mumbai police officer Parag Marere, the elaborate plan brought in more than $150,000 a day — possibly amounting to almost $55 million in the one year the scam ran.

“We are questioning those who were involved in the fraud, including those posing as tax investigators,” Marere said, according to the AP.

Of the 600 or more people being questioned, many are expected to face charges for running the fake call centers, the police said. They include alleged leaders of the scam, as well as those associated with other tasks within the fraudulent enterprise that ran out of several stories in a Mumbai office building.

The criminal charges filed against those involved include extortion, impersonation and violations of the country’s information technology laws, the AP reported.

Indian media reported that the scam involved collaborators based out of the United States as well. At least one company in the U.S. reportedly supplied the Mumbai call centers with personal information of those targeted by the scam. Almost 70 percent of the money made stayed in India, while the remaining was shared with those based outside the country.

In police raids this week, hundreds of hard disks, high-end servers and other electronic equipment were seized from the offices of the fake call centers.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 6, 2016 at 5:03pm

#Modi unable to defend role in #Gujarat massacre, abruptly cuts off interview with Karan Thapar IBN-CNN https://youtu.be/tAGAYL8dtic  via @YouTube

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 12, 2016 at 8:17am

The Strange History of How Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' Became a Bestseller in India

https://mic.com/articles/120411/how-hitler-s-mein-kampf-became-a-be...


Like almost anywhere else in the world, Indian bookstores tend to place national bestsellers at the entrance, enticing readers as they walk in. Foreigners might be surprised to discover the book very often featured among that coveted selection is none other than Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. One of the biggest publishing companies in India distributing the book has seen sales of it steadily increasing annually.

More than a dozen editions of Mein Kampf have circulated through India, translated into various languages such as Hindi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Tamil and Bengali. The English edition distributed by publishing house Jaico sold more than a hundred thousand copies between 2003 and 2010. 

"The initial print run of 2,000 copies in 2003 sold out immediately and we knew we had a best-seller on our hands. Since then the numbers have increased every year to around 15,000 copies until last year when we sold 10,000 copies over a six-month period in our Delhi shops," R. H. Sharma, Jaico's chief editor, told the Telegraph in 2009, at which point his publishing company was reprinting the book twice annually to keep up with demand. 

The ebook version has been topping the charts, surpassing hardcopy sales and becoming a bestseller online in 2014. Right now, for a mere 76 cents USD, you can purchase the Kindle version of Mein Kampf, which sits at Amazon India's 11th bestselling book.

While a lack of official numbers and piracy issues mean these figures are likely an underrepresentation of the manifesto's prevalence, suffice to say that the book and its author's popularity have been on a steady rise in the world's second biggest country. 

The fanfare in India extends beyond the written word. In 2011, capitalizing on the figure's popularity, the Indian film industry produced a film entitled Dear Friend Hitler, also known as Gandhi to Hitler. The IMDb synopsis reads, "Adolf Hitler assists India in its freedom struggle against the British, while Mohandas Gandhi writes to him to end violence." The reviews were not good, but the film exists nonetheless.

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 14, 2016 at 8:41pm

Among Donald #Trump’s Biggest #US Fans: #Hindu Nationalists. #Modi #BJP #India

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/us/politics/indian-americans-trum...

As one of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hindu financial backers, Mr. Kumar, who runs an electronics manufacturing company in Illinois and grew up in the state of Punjab along the Pakistani border, has helped organize a speech by the Republican nominee in Edison, N.J., at a Bollywood-themed charity concert on Saturday. The proceeds will benefit terrorism victims.

“It will be an incredible evening,” Mr. Trump said in a video promoting it, one of the few ethnic events he has agreed to do during this campaign.

Mr. Trump may be largely indifferent to the reasons behind his Hindu loyalists’ fervor, but his most senior advisers are not. The campaign’s chief executive, Stephen K. Bannon, is a student of nationalist movements. Mr. Bannon is close to Nigel Farage, a central figure in Britain’s movement to leave the European Union, and he is an admirer of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist Mr. Bannon has called “the Reagan of India.”

It may be pure coincidence that some of Mr. Trump’s words channel the nationalistic and, some argue, anti-Muslim sentiments that Mr. Modi stoked as he rose to power. But it is certainly not coincidental that many of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hindu supporters are also some of Mr. Modi’s most ardent backers.

At times, the similarity of Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Modi’s political vocabulary is striking. Mr. Modi fed the perception that India’s feckless leaders had failed to allow the country to reach its full potential. And he campaigned as the only one capable of fixing that.

“I will make such a wonderful India that all Americans will stand in line to get a visa for India,” he said once. A centerpiece of his agenda is the “Make in India” program, which is aimed at stimulating economic growth by encouraging more manufacturing in the country.

“It’s all about India first, or ‘Make India Great,’ ” said Sujeeth Draksharam, a civil engineer from Houston who supports Mr. Trump and planned to attend Saturday’s event. “Look at Donald Trump. It’s the same thing. ‘Make America Great Again’ — strong again.”

Another similarly powerful sentiment that both leaders have harnessed is grievance. Mr. Trump has seized on how the working class feels out of place and left behind in a country that is changing demographically and economically.

Even if Mr. Modi’s appeals were never as crass as Mr. Trump’s, his followers say he always understood that many Hindus felt their concerns were ignored by India’s secular and, in their minds, deeply corrupt government, which Mr. Modi vowed to clean up.

“One of the things that Modi very subtly articulated, but was very clear about, was something which nobody wanted to say,” said Subramanian Swamy, a longtime Indian politician and Hindu nationalist who is often a thorn in the side of the country’s political elite. “And that is that Hindus, despite being 80 percent of the population, feel like they got a raw deal.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 16, 2016 at 8:01am

12 Most Incredibly Absurd Things Happened At The “#Hindus For #Trump”. #Modi #Bollywood https://www.buzzfeed.com/sahilrizwan/big-fan-of-hindu?utm_term=.fiz... … via @sahilriz @BuzzFeedIndia

Last night, the Republican Hindu Coalition in New Jersey held a charity event titled “Humanity United Against Terror”, with Donald Trump as the chief guest.

Dominick Reuter / AFP / Getty Images

The benefit was held for victims of terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere in the subcontinent.

The event featured performances from celebrities across the Indian film industry, including Prabhu Deva, Shriya Saran, and Malaika Arora Khan.

Kena Betancur / Getty Images

Getty Images

 

1. However, it was everything other than the performances that anyone could talk about – like fliers portraying Sonia Gandhi and Hillary Clinton as evil beings out to frame Narendra Modi.

View image on Twitter

 Follow

Ben Schreckinger 

✔@SchreckReports

Was just handed this at Hindu event in NJ where Trump is about to speak

4:02 PM - 15 Oct 2016 · Edison, NJ, United States

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•  578578 Retweets
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The fliers were handed out to all attendees, and accused Clinton of colluding with Gandhi to organise a “witch hunt” against Modi.

2. It also featured the bones of dead cattle.

View image on Twitter

 Follow

Michael Oman-Reagan 

✔@OmanReagan

This is so weird, but also you can't say Trump's campaign hasn't done research on what the BJP supporters want to see.

9:52 PM - 15 Oct 2016

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3. Posters of Trump photoshopped on a lotus, the BJP’s official party symbol, adorned the arena.

View image on Twitter

 Follow

Sowmiya Ashok @sowmiyashok

Flip the banner and it's Trump on a lotus at the RHC#HindusForTrump (3/n)

9:43 PM - 15 Oct 2016

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4. Banners around the venue tried to woo the NRI crowd with promises that Trump would facilitate a faster green card process.

View image on Twitter

 Follow

Michael Tracey 

✔@mtracey

This one might come as a surprise to the immigration restrictionists...

1:36 PM - 15 Oct 2016

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•  278278 Retweets
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•  304304 likes

 

This, despite one of the Trump campaign’s main focuses being a push for tighter immigration laws.

5. It wasn’t all hunky-dory though, with anti-Trump groups protesting outside the venue even as the event began.

View image on Twitter

 Follow

Narendra Trump LIVE @BabaGlocal

My dump trump camp #NarendraTrumpLIVE

12:27 PM - 15 Oct 2016

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6. The highlight of the night was a performance involving Indian dancers being attacked by terrorists with lightsaber-y guns, and being saved by the U.S. army.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZYpK2bGMpY 

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 3, 2016 at 10:03pm

Pro #Trump #Hindu Group's Ad Attacks #HillaryClinton As 'Sympathetic' To #Pakistan http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/republican-hindu-body-attacks-hillar... … via @ndtv

A Republican Hindu organisation is running anti-Hillary Clinton advertisement on Indian-American television channels, attacking the Democratic presidential candidate as "sympathetic towards Pakistan" and her longtime aide for her Pakistani origin.

"Hillary, sympathetic towards Pakistan gave billions of dollars in aid and military equipment used against India. She was instrumental in blocking PM Modi's visa. (She) takes contributions from countries and individuals known to support radical Islam," says the ad endorsed by the Republican Hindu Coalition (RHC).

The advertisement also attacks former US president and Clinton's husband Bill, and her longtime aide Huma Abedin. 

"Her current aide Huma Abedin is of Pakistani origin and will become chief of staff if she wins. Her husband Bill Clinton wants to give Kashmir to Pakistan," it says and calls on Americans to "Vote Republican - great for you, great for US-Indian relations and great for America."

Comment by Riaz Haq on November 30, 2016 at 8:49pm

Does #India’s Right Wing #Hindu Have Any Ideas? #Modi #BJP
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/opinion/does-indias-right-wing-ha...


What all these people had in common was an immense sense of grievance against an establishment they had vanquished electorally, but whose ideas still defined them. As the journalist Ashok Malik said while pointing out the right’s many victories, “Rather than confidently advance tomorrow’s agenda, the intellectual warriors of the right are still comfortable fighting the battles of yesterday.”

The targets of their rage are internationally familiar: the liberal elite, the news media, academia. But in India there is an added twist, a double sense of affront. It was not merely elitism that the New Right is reacting against, but an elitism that had the secret backing of the West, through its various newspapers, nongovernmental organizations and think tanks.

“So if you are an embattled Hindu, or even an atheist Indian,” Rajeev Srinivasan wrote in the right-wing magazine Swarajya, “you feel there is an entire constellation of powers with a negative intent arrayed against you, and that they have created a galaxy of sepoys, especially in media and academia.”

Historically, a “sepoy” was an Indian soldier serving in the British Army. It has become a favorite jibe on the right for an Anglicized liberal elite that was seen to be working against its own country.


At first glance it would seem that Shaurya Doval, who had organized the conclave, is part of such an elite. His father had been the director of India’s internal intelligence agency. He grew up in privilege, traveling the world. He has a business degree from the University of Chicago, and spent 10 years as a Wall Street banker.

But Mr. Doval, in fact, represents a new pain that globalization has wrought: the pain of cultural loss. In America, he had a revelation. “The eureka moment,” he told me, “came when I discovered the disconnect between what India really is, and who I am.”

It was true. The Indian elite had gloried in this disconnect; “foreigners in their own land,” Gandhi had called them in 1916. Even the modern state had in many ways been an extension of colonial power. Here, in Goa, it was as if the entire intellectual enterprise was suspect. Many felt that Western ideas like liberalism, secularism and freedom of speech had been used cynically against them to maintain the power of a cultural oligarchy. These exalted words were now terms of abuse.

But that did not mean the right wing had ideas of its own. Mr. Doval spoke of the need for “modern Indian state players” to make “a connect” with “India’s civilizational ethos.” He felt India had not been able to unlock the potential of its young, energetic population because the modern state represented too abrupt a break with the continuity of old India.

But was it really possible to reverse this process? Could modern India be remade to fit these sentimental longings? And didn’t all modernity represent a rupture with tradition?

The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which had, until recently, dominated politics since independence, was the supreme political achievement of an older English-speaking elite. Mr. Modi’s election was the crowning achievement of this new Indian elite.

The writer Patrick French, who was also at the Goa conclave, said of the right, “I’ve never ignored these people because I could see they had a political future.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 4, 2016 at 2:13pm

ECP declares Masroor successful in PP-78 election

http://pakobserver.net/ecp-declares-masroor-successful-in-pp-78-ele...

Jhang—The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has declared official result of by-election in PP-78, held on Thursday, December 1. As per results, an independent candidate Maulana Masroor Nawaz Jhangvi has been declared successful with 48,563 votes.
A notification, issued here by District Election Commissioner/ Returning Officer Tanvirul Hassan Langah, stated that out of total 118,627 male voters 57,611 used their right to vote, while out of 97,935 female voters 37,925 voters cast their vote. 1,794 votes were rejected and total turnout remained 44.11 per cent.
The notification said that Haji Azad Naser Ansari of the Pakistan Muslim League-N got 35,471 votes, Sarfraz Rabbani of the Pakistan People’s Party secured 3,924 votes, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf candidate Arfa Majeed 2,845 votes.—APP

Total turn-out: 44%

Jhangvi's votes: 50%

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 30, 2017 at 7:57am

#India Cuts Lobbying Expenses In #Washington. #Modi #Trump #Congress #Senate #State #Trade http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/india-cuts-lobbying-expenses-in-us-1... … via @ndtv

India has cut expenses toward lobbying in the US with a total payment of $120,000 to its registered lobbyist firm in the second quarter of 2017 - the first cut in nearly seven years. The disclosure has been made by BGR Government Affairs, which lobbied on behalf of India on issues relating to "bilateral US-India relations". According to the latest quarterly disclosure report filed with the US Senate, BGR has disclosed a total income of $120,000 from India toward "all lobbying related income from the client".

All lobbyist firms need to get registered in the US for undertaking any lobbying activities and file quarterly disclosures including about the payments received, specific issues for lobbying and the agencies approached by it.

During the second quarter of 2017 ended June 30, BGR lobbied on behalf of the Indian government at the US Senate, the US House of Representatives, the Department Commerce, the Department of State and the US Trade Representative.

Prior to the latest quarter, BGR's quarterly lobbying income from the Indian government stood unchanged at $180,000 since the fourth quarter of 2010. Before that, the Indian government had paid BGR $60,000 in the third quarter of 2010 and less than $5,000 in the second quarter of that year, according to the disclosure reports filed over the years.

The latest disclosure report did not cite any reason for the decline in the quarterly payment to $120,000. The highest quarterly amount so far has been recorded in the fourth quarter of 2009 when BGR was paid $200,000, as per an analysis of all disclosure reports filed by it.

While the "specific lobbying issue" disclosed by BGR for Indian government has been "bilateral US-India relations" for many quarters now, the firm also used to lobby "issues related to the civil nuclear agreement" between the US and India till 2009.

BGR began lobbying in the US on behalf of the Indian government in late 2005. In its registration disclosure filed in October 2005, BGR had said it has been mandated to "provide guidance and counsel with regard to issues impacting bilateral relations between the United States and the Republic of India".

Subsequently, in its year-end disclosure report for 2005, when BGR was paid a total of $240,000, the lobbyist disclosed that it "provided guidance and counsel with regard to issues impacting bilateral relations between the US and the Republic of India, including a potential civil nuclear agreement".

Issues on bilateral relationship and civil nuclear agreement continued to be listed as "specific lobbying issues" in the disclosure reports for the years 2006-2009, after which the disclosed lobbying area has been limited to 'bilateral US-India relationship'.

Since 2005-end when BGR began lobbying in the US on behalf of the Indian government, it has been paid a total of $8 million (approximately Rs. 50 crore at the current exchange rate).

Comment by Riaz Haq on October 30, 2017 at 9:38pm

Savitri Devi: The mystical fascist being resurrected by the alt-right

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41757047

Savitri Devi, a mystical admirer of Hitler and a cat-loving devotee of the Aryan myth, seemed destined to fade into obscurity after her death 25 years ago. But thanks to the rise of the extreme right, her name and her image now crop up online more and more, writes Maria Margaronis.
In 2012, browsing the website of Greece's Golden Dawn party for an article I was writing, I stumbled on a picture of a woman in a blue silk sari gazing at a bust of Hitler against a blazing sunset sky.
What was this apparently Hindu woman doing on the site of an openly racist party devoted to expelling all foreigners from Greece? I filed her as a curiosity at the back of my mind, until the rising tide of extreme-right politics in Europe and America threw up the name "Savitri Devi" once again.
It isn't hard these days to find discussions of Savitri Devi's books on neo-Nazi web forums, especially The Lightning and the Sun, which expounds the theory that Hitler was an avatar - an incarnation - of the Hindu god Vishnu, and Gold in the Furnace, which urges true believers to trust that National Socialism will rise again. The American extreme-right website Counter-Currents hosts an extensive online archive of her life and work.
Her views are reaching a wider public, too, thanks to American alt-right leaders such as Richard Spencer and Steve Bannon, former Trump chief strategist and chair of Breitbart News, who have taken up her account of history as a cyclical battle between good and evil — a theory she shared with other 20th Century mystical fascists.

Dark metal bands and American right-wing radio stations also roar about the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age of Hindu mythology, which Savitri Devi believed that Hitler was once destined to bring to an end.
Who was Savitri Devi, and why are her ideas being resurrected now? Despite the sari and the name she was a European, born Maximiani Portas to an English mother and Greek-Italian father in Lyon in 1905.
She learned Indian languages, married a Brahmin, and forged an elaborate synthesis of Nazism and Hindu myth
From an early age, she despised all forms of egalitarianism. "A beautiful girl is not equal to an ugly girl," she told an interviewer sent by the Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel in 1978.

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