Speeding up the Internet using Proxy Server

Well, who doesn't want fast Internet? One easy way to boost the speed is to subscribe for faster speed. But that will cost money. Here is one easier method. All I needed to do was to enter 202.70.64.15 (Proxy Server IP address of Nepal Telecom) on the Firefox browser settings (under Tools/ Options/ Advanced/ Network). If you are using Internet Explorer, then you go to Tools/ Internet Options/ Connections/ LAN Settings.

Kathmandu, center of U.S. espionage in South Asia

Interesting article. No doubt every country will spy against other country. This has been going on for ages and Nepal is no exception. Due to strategic location of Nepal, she is undoubtedly a hotbed of foreign powers staking their claims. The reason why U.S. embassy was built without Nepali contractor assistance is understandable though. There is less chance of foreign adversaries planting bugs or other spy equipment in new building if the construction work is done by your own contractor.

Well, here is the article.

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Special Reports
Kathmandu, center of U.S. espionage in South Asia
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Oct 17, 2008, 00:21

(WMR) -- The new U.S. embassy in Kathmandu occupies the grounds of a former CIA safe house and operations center in the Nepali capital. The embassy, in the Maharajgunj district of Kathmandu, is a one-block long fortress-like structure and the subject of derision among the Nepali people. The embassy is built along Stalinesque architectural standards now common with new U.S. embassies around the world: stark, rectangular structures that convey the notion that the United States is an impenetrable fortress that is closed to the outside world.

A drive-by of the embassy did not afford the opportunity to take a photograph of the monolithic building because the embassy frontage is well protected by Nepali contract security personnel.

WMR has spoken to a number of informed Nepali and foreign sources who confirmed that espionage has been and is the number one priority of the American diplomatic mission in Nepal’s capital. The current U.S. ambassador is Nancy Powell, who one Nepali official described as “weird.” Powell has done nothing to convince the Bush administration to drop its designation of the Maoist Communist Party that now governs Nepal in a coalition with two other Communist parties, as a “terrorist organization.”

There is widespread belief among the intelligence community that the Bush administration may try to carry out another massacre like the one its helped to plan and carry out against the royal family in 2001. This time, former Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of Nepal is being disarmed with a plan to integrate it with the Nepali Army and Police. In the meantime, the PLA have been directed to containment camps supervised by the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), which is now trying to slow the military integration process, as well as delaying the process of writing a new constitution for Nepal. The stalling action by the UN and UNMIN head Ian Martin, against the backdrop of the U.S.-Indian nuclear deal, may be a prelude for another coup in Nepal, one designed by the United States to destabilize a country that sits between China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). In the event of a coup, the disarmed PLA ranks would be sitting ducks for a massacre similar to the bloody anti-Communist purge in Indonesia in the 1960s, carried out by the Indonesian government with the support of the CIA.

The new U.S. embassy was built without Nepali contractor assistance. Instead, the State Department contracted to have construction personnel brought in from Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Egypt, driving up labor costs because the foreign workers were housed in some of Kathmandu’s most expensive hotels.

The embassy is built on the grounds of the Brahma Cottage, a center for the operations of the CIA’s and State Department’s joint Surveillance Device Unit. The CIA contracted with Nepali contractors to carry out surveillance of the palace of the then-Prince Gyenendra and Nepal Police Headquarters. Gyanendra became King after the June 1, 2001, regicidal coup d’etat against the royal family, which saw Gyanendra accede to the throne. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and its coalition partners later deposed Gyanendra and declared a new Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal.

The Brahma Cottage CIA center, which was next door to Gyanendra’s palace, was also used by the CIA to plan the regicide and coup d’etat with the assistance of former Nepali police officers and the cooperation of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). The old U.S. embassy was across the street from Brahma Cottage.

In September 2002, this editor wrote, “In the months leading up to the Nepali coup, the CIA established an office in the Maharajgunj District of Kathmandu, next door to the residence of Prince Gyanendra. Witnesses reoprtedly saw streams of Nepali police and military officials streaming into the offices. Other U.S. ‘civilians,’ said to be with private military contractor CIA fronts like MPRI, were also seen arriving at the offices. In the spring, a U.S. Special Operations Forces team arrived in Kathmandu on a secret exercise code-named Bailey Nightingale I. The cover for the exercise was said to be earthquake disaster training. But it now appears it had another disaster in mind. The military team was composed of U.S. psychological operations (PSYOPs) personnel adept at coming up with tales like the one about the Crown Prince murdering his family.”

Crown Prince Dipendra was reported to have shot his entire family in a pique of rage over a his choice of a bride. The BBC report of the incident exemplified the psyop used to spread the word about the Crown Prince killing his family: “The King and Queen of Nepal have been shot dead after the heir to the throne went on the rampage with a gun before turning it on himself. Eleven people died in the incident which started when Crown Prince Dipendra allegedly had a dispute with his mother over his choice of bride. King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and Prince Niranjan were among the victims of the tragedy at the royal palace in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. The other victims included three of the King’s children, his two sisters and one more member of the family by marriage.” The report by the BBC, which increasingly acts as an echo chamber for British intelligence, was false.

However, a senior Nepali intelligence officer told WMR that Dipendra did not kill himself but was shot to death by a royal guard. There is reason to believe that Dipendra was the first person shot in the royal massacre.

The CIA’s involvement in Nepal’s covert operations is nothing new. From 1956 to 1962, the CIA ran a Tibetan exile Khampa guerrilla army that launched attacks within Tibet from bases in the small kingdom of Mustang, a principality in Nepal on the northern border with Tibet. After India lost its two wars with China in the early 1960s, the CIA reactivated its Tibetan guerrilla army to open a front against China, which was militarily supporting North Vietnam and the Vietcong, in Operation Shadow Circus.

In August 1974, the CIA ordered the liquidation of its last Tibetan guerrilla army leader Wangdu Gyatotsang and his men after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger began opening up to China and, in a Ribbentropian policy, began cutting loose U.S. allies in Southeast Asia and gave approval to India’s swallowing up of the Kingdom of Sikkim. According to intelligence sources, the CIA received the approval of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India in using other Tibetan contractors to eliminate the last Tibetan guerrilla army. The CIA was more concerned about its secret operations in Mustang becoming public than in protecting its own guerrilla forces.

In 1987, the CIA’s station in Kathmandu oversaw the burglary of the German Democratic Republic’s embassy in Kathmandu. According to a Nepali intelligence official, among the items taken from the embassy were code books, encryption machines, and classified documents. The operation was carried out with the assistance of the First Secretary of the East German embassy and a Nepali police inspector. Both were spirited out of Nepal and given political asylum in the United States.

Documentarian Yoichi Shimatsu, in his film “Prayer Flags,” points out that the CIA continued to use Nepal as a base for its covert operations throughout the 1990s when it used the guise of installing seismographic and geological monitoring systems to place surveillance systems and sensors at high elevations in the Himalayas.

The new Maoist-led government of Nepal has told Mustang’s powerless and nominal king, Jigme Parwat Bista, that his small principality was being abolished, along with the other three small kingdoms of Salyan, Jajarkot, and Bajhang. However, Bista was not a supporter of the last king, Gyanendra, according to informed sources in Kathmandu. His kingdom’s past support for the CIA’s operations against China has resulted in “blowback” in his kingdom being abolished by Nepal’s Maoist government.

The CIA’s old Nepal proprietary airline, Fishtail Air, founded by a veteran of Camp Walker in Seoul, South Korea, still flies around Nepal.

Nepal also served as a terror nexus between individuals connected to the CIA in Kathmandu and the Dawood Ibrahim criminal syndicate that carried out the March 12, 1993 bombings of the Bombay Stock Exchange, Bombay hotels, cinemas, and shopping centers that killed over 300 people. The bombings were a reprisal for the destruction of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya by Hindu extremists. Over two thousands Muslims, including women and children, were massacred by rampaging Hindus after the mosque’s destruction. Ibrahim is now believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

Currently, the U.S. embassy in Kathmandu continues to conduct covert operations against China, mostly through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Trace Foundation, a Tibetan support group run by Andrea Soros Colombel, and funded by her father, George Soros. The recent outbreak of violence in Tibet by pro-independence Tibetans was an attempt at fomenting yet another “colored themed” revolution by Soros, a one-time Hungarian Jewish Nazi and not the first Nazi to have an interest in the Himalayan region where swastika religious symbol is ubiquitous.

The Trace Foundation is working with one of the Buddhist Tantric sects that has the aim of revealing the Kalachakra prophecy, which predicts a final global war between the forces of good versus a future Islamic Mahdi. A Buddha-type figure is foreseen as returning as a new Messiah. This construct is similar to the neocon “Clash of Civilizations” that sees a final showdown between the West and Islam. The Trace Foundation is trying to co-opt the old messianic Buddhist tradition to unify major world religions to install a global government, according to a specialist who has followed Soros’ activities in Tibet and Nepal.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

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List of FM stations heard in Kathmandu

Just few years back listening to radio meant Radio Nepal in 792 KHz AM. Then in mid 1990s FM stations began cropping up. First ones to emerge on FM dial were Radio Sagarmatha (104.2 MHz) and Hits FM (91.2 MHz). FM band starts at 87.5 MHz and ends at 108 MHz. It is hard to believe but there are actually 30+ stations operating in this band in Kathmandu as of today!! Unless you have a digital tuner, it is really difficult to tune stations. One option is to use your mobile phone FM tuner for digital tuning.

Some stations are hard to hear since they use low power transmitters. Others are still in test phase so may not be heard at times. Most of the stations have their own websites and I will list them below. Here is the complete list of stations I have monitored using my trusty old Sony 2010 radio:

Skype

We all know how helpful Skype can be. Unless you have been hiding under rock all these years, Skype is a software that allows users to audio/video chat for free. Today I found out that when multiple users are using Skype within the same network (eg. home network), Skype bandwidth is not limited by Internet router.

In my test I used 256 kbps ADSL router, 54 Mbps wireless router, and two computers logged on to Skype. While transferring a large (1 GB) file from one computer to another, the transfer rate exceeded 500 kbps! That's twice the speed of ADSL bandwidth. That proved that Skype is intelligent enough to switch to high speed mode when users are in same network. Thanks to Charles Parker Watson for helping me out for this test.

Another screen-shot is the network connection in XP while the file was being transferred. Note the transfer rate is almost 2 Mbps that far exceeds ADSL router's limit of 256 Kbps.

Computer backup

One day your computer is running fine and next day it refuses to boot. You try to think what could have went wrong. Oh, the USB thumb drive you took to photo studio for printing got infected with virus and now your computer has it. Hopefully you have made backups of all your important files in different location. God forbid all your attempts to fix windows doesn't work and your only option is to reformat with fresh install of Windows.

Well, I don't know how many times I have been through this rigmarole. Installing Windows XP takes about an hour and then you have to install all of your favorite programs like Office, Photoshop etc. etc.

There must be an easy way! I recently had a chance to try couple of programs and I would like to share my experience. The first one is called Deepfreeze and the second one is called Norton Ghost.

Let's say you installed your Windows and all of your favorite programs and your computer is running just the way you want. Then all you do is to install Deepfreeze which takes a snapshot of your machine and every time you boot your computer, it goes back to the same configuration. The obvious benefit is you can test with programs or even virus and not to worry about permanent damage. There is a option for "thawing" the program so you can make changes permanent (eg. when updating anti-virus). More information about this wonderful program can be found at:
Deepfreeze

The second program basically clones your hard disk when the system is running good and when disaster strikes you just revert back to the original state. Norton Ghost creates a bootable CD that you pop in your computer during backup/recovery. I have tried version 11 and I am satisfied with the performance. Restoring 4 GB big XP files took me less than 15 minutes!! More information about this program at:
Ghost

No matter which option you choose, make sure you have backups of your important files in different locations. It is not fun to lose all your precious photos due to some nasty virus. Regular backup is a must. For most of us regular backup simply involves copying/pasting or better yet burning files on CD/DVD. Deepfreeze and Ghost are good for operating system level files (not user created files).

Scam email

I am used to receiving all types of scam emails in my mailbox. But this one got me! It read:

How are you doing,I hope all is well with you. I'm sorry, but I am in England for a Seminar and unfortunately I seem to have misplaced my Bag on my way from the Airport.

I need a favor from you because I'm completely stranded and i need you to assist me with a loan of $1,750 to sort myself out right now and help myself back home.

Please this is very urgent and I will appreciate whatever you can help me with and i promise to refund the money back to you as soon as i return. Kindly let me know if you can be of help so that i can send you my full details when sending it through moneygram or western union because there is one close by.

Thank you

It sounded so real! Upon checking the mail header, it's X-Originating-IP was 41.219.234.71 which was registered to Lagos, Nigeria.

It turns out my relative's email was hacked and spammer sent the email to bunch of others as well from his account.

Flashing WLAH-G54 router with DD-WRT

Having to work with Japanese language in Wireless router was like trying to tour Japan without learning Japanese. It was hit and miss to try to work out some settings. It was specially difficult to set up router for WDS (Bridge) mode. Google translation was helpful but it was a pain. So I searched Internet to see if there was a way to convert Japanese firmware to English. Lo and behold DD-WRT does exactly that plus more. So I decided to download dd-wrt.v24_mini_generic.bin from the site and flash the firmware.

It wasn't that bad at all actually!!! There was a risk I could damage the router but I decided to take the risk anyways.

Here are the steps I followed:
1. Did 30-30-30 reset as suggested. It was fun holding the reset button for 90 seconds while it was on, then power removed and then turned it on.
2. Set my PC's IP as 1.1.1.2 since router defaults to 1.1.1.1
3. Verified it pinged from 1.1.1.1 and also saw it pinged at TTL of 128 for 3 times before pinging at TTL of 64
4. Opened tftp window with "C:\>tftp -i 1.1.1.1 PUT dd-wrt.v24_mini_generic.bin" command typed and turned the router on and as soon as I saw TTL of 128, hit ENTER on the tftp window
5. After few seconds presto!! Got the message "Transfer successful: 2920448 bytes in 4 seconds, 730112 bytes/s"
6. After waiting for a minute while the red light blinking, I did netstat and got
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.146
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
7. The router's IP is now 192.168.1.1 but I have to change it since my ADSL modem uses the same IP. And DD-WRT also let me choose root password.
8. At last I was able to get DD-WRT!!! The whole process lasted less than 5 minutes and I feel like a champ!!!

You can see some embedded screen-shots of the firmware in Japanese which I am going to miss, NOT!!

So far I am happy with my decision. One feature that doesn't work is AOSS that lets you automatically choose wireless encryption that is not available in DD-WRT firmware. However one feature that I like the most is now I can choose the output of the router anywhere from 1 mW to 251 mW!!! Earlier I could chose from 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%.

Link for DD-WRT